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KALEIDOSCOPE

There was none to help him out

Parents and teachers cannot afford to be aloof. They should make friends with their teenage children and students, try to share their feelings and watch out for anything going amiss, and know when they are in need of help. Nafis needed this help.

Syed Fattahul Alim
THE Bangladeshi youth Nafis has nothing in self-defence as he has admitted to having plotted to blow up the Federal Reserve Bank in New York. Had the explosive device he used to carry out the terrorist attack on the US establishment not been a fake, it would be devastating. But nothing like it happened, thanks to the undercover agents who intercepted Nafis' plot at its inception.
The whole circumstances of this boyish looking person's posing as a daredevil terrorist are shrouded in complete mystery. The very fact of his falling into the trap laid by FBI's undercover agents at the very beginning proves his naivety and credulity. The FBI men duped him into thinking that he was really going to do something big. That he wanted to do something very big he confided as early as July 2012 to the FBI informant, who he believed was an al-Qaeda man, a friend helping him to materialise his grand design: "I don't want something that's like, small. I just want something big, something very big. Very very very very big, that will shake the whole country."
The way he was so easily taken for a ride by
undercover agents gives the lie to his posture as a real terrorist. The reaction of Nafis' parents to the news of his arrest and the charges brought against him was one of disbelief. For they knew their son to be a very timid boy as he would not even dare to go alone to the roof of their three-story house at Jatrabari in Dhaka. And as much as could be gathered about his past days back home, there was no report of his involvement in any kind of terrorist activities in Dhaka. How then could such a timid boy turn into a violent and adventuresome person within months of his entry in the USA? What motivated this credulous, delicate and puerile person to go for something so dangerous?
If one is to believe what he wrote in his letter to the Brooklyn federal court, Judge Carol Bagely Amon, so she might consider his case with leniency, the young man had always been in a trance. He was a loner, a misfit and without many friends. His academic performance was also miserable. Unable to come to terms with this reality, he chose to escape it and take refuge in a world of make-believe.
So he grabbed at anything that looked grandiose, and the preaching of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, whohe knew to be behind the 9/11's Twin Tower blast, might, as reported by the agents involved in the sting operation, have appealed to his fantastic scheme of things. Unsurprisingly, he made friends through Facebook with imagined al-Qaeda men, who he thought would help him to fulfil his foolish scheme.
By his thoughtless act, Quazi Muhammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis broke the hearts of his beloved parents and sister and many of his well-wishers. His father invested all his savings in his only son's education. His beloved parents, with whom he never shared the truth that he was performing badly at college or that he was losing his grip on his life, were happy thinking that their child was carrying out his studies well in the USA. But even in their worst nightmares they did not think what their child would ultimately become and finally land in jail in a faraway land. And they may not even live to see him return home after serving his long jail term 1
How many more such apparently innocent-looking youths like Nafis have undergone similar transformation for the worse unbeknown to their parents, siblings, close relations, society and even to themselves? Neither are we aware when and how they undergo a violent change, but always cheating their parents, guardians and teachers with their ingenuous appearance.
But it won't also be fair to lay all the blame at these Nafis-like youths' door. In the case of Nafis, his failure
to do well in his studies and get along with his peers forced him to find solace in drugs and in a world of fantasy. And the undercover agents were just waiting there to lead him down the garden path. But these hapless youths need help to come out of the self-spun cocoon they have been weaving around themselves to hide from reality.
Parents like to think that the money they are spending for their education would automatically meet all their child's needs. Teachers think the instructions they provide in the classroom will solve their students' educational needs. But what the parents, teachers and guardians are missing is that these growing boys and girls are often falling out of step with reality which is in a state of constant flux.
Parents and teachers cannot afford to be aloof. They should make friends with their teenage children and students, try to share their feelings and watch out for anything going amiss, and know when they are in need of help. Nafis needed this help, but there was none to help him out
The writer is Editor, Science & Life, The Daily Star.
E-mail: sfalim@gmail.com