Probe outcome of RHD shootout Will the lessons be learnt?

After probing the shootout incident at the Roads and Highways Department (RHD), the three-member committee has confirmed that it was a turf war between two pro-Awami League groups over assuming full control of the lucrative tender business. The probe report says that the RHD workers' union leaders assailed and shot at some Swechchhasebak Lague men in what was a retaliatory act on the part of the former. This is outrageous, to say the least, and a clear demonstration of the extent to which a section of unscrupulous RHD officials and pro-AL political groups are involved in corruption and tender manipulations. Now that the culprits have been identified, we demand of the incumbent communications minister to take legal actions against them and give them exemplary punishment.
As we know it, the RHD is responsible for repairing and maintaining all the run-down roads and highways of the country and every year a huge amount of money is allocated to this department to accomplish its work. In the backdrop of frequent road accidents claiming hundreds of innocent lives due to faulty construction and dilapidated conditions of highways, this department's work in the form of timely repair and structural reinforcement has become all the more important.
In fact, the probe report has brought to glaring light why the seriously potholed, dilapidated roads still remain so to the peril of commuters even after hefty amount of allocated funds and even after repeated outcries from media and different public quarters. Most of the fund is misappropriated by the corrupt coteries leaving the roads either very poorly repaired or entirely unchanged.
Therefore, we think the communications minister's response to the report should not be confined to punishing the shootout culprits only; he should rather break the nexus between corrupt RHD officials, influential political quarters and greedy contractors. In addition to containing the corrupt elements in the RHD, he must cleanse this department of the influence of all ruling party elements and thereafter make sure that the contracts are awarded to reputed and eligible contractors.

Biden, in leaked memo, told Obama war plan flawed

As President Barack Obama considered adding as many as 40,000 US forces to a backsliding war in Afghanistan in 2009, Vice President Joe Biden warned him that the military rationale for doing so was flawed, a new book about Obama's expansion of the conflict says.
The book, "Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan," also says that in planning the drawdown of troops two years later, the White House intentionally sidelined the CIA. Obama purposely did not read a grim CIA assessment of Afghanistan that found little measurable benefit from the 30,000 "surge" forces Obama eventually approved, the book quotes a US official as saying.
A copy of the book by Washington Post correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran was obtained by The Associated Press. It will be released today.
A previously undisclosed Biden memo to Obama in November 2009 reflects his view that military commanders were asking Obama to take a leap by adding tens of thousands of forces whose role was poorly defined.
Although Biden's doubts have become well known, the new book details how Biden used a months-long White House review of the war to question the basic premise that the same "counterinsurgency" strategy that had apparently worked in Iraq could be applied to Afghanistan.
"I do not see how anyone who took part in our discussions could emerge without profound questions about the viability of counterinsurgency," Biden wrote to Obama. To work, the counterinsurgency or "COIN" doctrine requires military gains to be paired with advances in government services, a "credible" Afghan government and Afghan security services that can take over, Biden's memo said.
Although the US military could accomplish any technical assignment related to the new strategy, such as sweeping insurgents from a village, "no one can tell you with conviction when, and even if, we can produce the flip sides of COIN," Biden wrote. He supported a buildup of 20,000, half the number requested by then-war commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal.
The memo echoed a secret message to Washington from then-US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry that had called Afghan President Hamid Karzai an unreliable partner for the proposed surge. Eikenberry, a former top Army general who had served in Afghanistan, said more forces would only delay the time when Afghans would take over responsibility for their own security.

Malaysia detains 33 Bangladeshis

Malaysian authorities have detained 81 illegal immigrants, including 33 Bangladeshis, in the first joint enforcement drive by the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) and 11 other government agencies.
The illegal immigrants were held on June 21 from the construction sites in the Kuala Lumpur Federal Territory, namely, Sri Hartamas, Cheras and Sentul, said Federal Territory Immigration Department (enforcement) Assistant Director James Musa Singa.
Of the other detainees, 41 were from Indonesia, three from Myanmar, two from Pakistan and one each from India and Sri Lanka, reports Malaysian official news agency Bernama.
"The number of illegal immigrants nabbed could have been higher if we had intelligence on the areas earlier," he told reporters.
Among the departments involved were the Malaysian Immigration Department, Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission and Department of Environment.
Kuala Lumpur Federal Territory CIDB Assistant Director Nur Iskandar Zulkefli said four notices of notifications were issued to sub-contractors for not having certificates of registration.
A fine of RM 50,000 would be imposed and the construction works could be stopped, he said.