Photo: Reuters

During the first few years after I came to America as a graduate student, my life was a monotonous repetition of long cold nights in my attic den, day long lab and class and daily lunchtime walk to the student centre for a 99 cent taco with a plastic glass of water. This lunchtime break was my window to the campus life and also the time to be reminiscent about the left behind life at the faraway homeland.

As I observed the student life in my campus in this new country and culture, the ethnic segregation of the students in the students’ centre cafeteria was one of the first cultural shock for me. Young white men and women are crowding around one table. Blacks have their own corner. First generation Indian sub-continental students are flocking together, so are the first generation Chinese or the second generation desis.

This picture of the American life was in sharp contrast to the description of United States of America I got from the booklets I received from the USIS. I almost memorised the salad bowl versus melting pot concept. I tried to construct a picture of my upcoming life in America when I saw all the glossy pictures of smiling black, white and Asian students chatting together on a green turf under a tree in the covers of college brochures. The reality on the ground was much different from the picture I constructed.

And almost on a daily basis, while walking in cold Michigan or seating in a lonely corner table with the taco, my mind used to revolt. An uncontrollable urge to escape from this self-exile — just simply run back to home sweet home — back to wild unbound youth; used to grip me very frequently. There used to be a dream of running barefoot to catch the un-tethered kite flying aimlessly in the open sky — with other boys of the neighbourhood — crossing rice paddy and tiny streams — through people’s backyard — climbing the imposing wall of the mosque.

Photo: Reuters

Four years ago, I discovered another person who had a stunningly similar urge to revolt. The same uncontrollable desire to throw everything away and running with the tethered kite. Exactly in the same fashion, bare foot, with bunch of bare body boys, through rice paddy, across people’s backyards.

The name of the man with this dream was Barack Hussein Obama. The day Barack Obama received his acceptance letter from Harvard law school, he suddenly felt like revolting and going back to his boyhood days in Indonesia and start running, barefoot, after the un-tethered kite, across the rice paddy. [Source: Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. Author: Barack Obama].

Four years ago, Mr. Obama, the man with whom I share the same dream, came to us as a revolutionary. The white young men and women had finally joined hands with those black youth of the next tables, for one goal – elect Barack Obama. That was a strong statement from young America to leave behind the century old racial distrust and move forward for a change.

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Thanks to the strong participation and activism of youth America, after a landslide election victory, Barack Obama became the 44th president of the USA and the first non-white man for this job. The paths of a revolutionary and the chief executive of the capitalistic hub of the world do not always go parallel. Barack Obama could definitely have done better. The economy, which was in shambles when Obama took over, could have recovered in a faster pace. Mr. Obama could have taken a more reasonable and pragmatic stand on Arab-Israel conflict and could have taken steps to fix immigration flaws.

Mr. Obama however has steered, albeit slowly, the country back to the right direction. The squeaky wheels of the huge juggernaut called American economy started rolling again. One cannot expect such a mammoth machine to take up full speed overnight. A healthy vibrant US economy is vital for a prosperous global economy. The most important long term investments in safeguarding the future of US economy are the early measures of healthcare reform President Obama undertook through his ambitious health policy.

Photo: Reuters

General Collin Powel was the Secretary of States under President George W Bush, National Security Advisor for President Ronald Reagan and Joint Chief of US forces under President George H W Bush during first gulf war. This decorated republican statesman, while endorsing President Obama for re-election, correctly stated that “the president get us of one war, start to get us out of a second war and did not get us into any new wars…”. Although over the last decade, war mongering has become a powerful political rhetoric in USA, despite intense provocation and pressure, President Obama did not commit USA in any more ground war.

On a Bangladeshi-American perspective, in contrast to the Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s ideological policy of a smaller government, President Obama’s commitment to a strong federal government and robust federal program for the people in marginal and vulnerable socio-economic situation is a strong reason for the Bangladeshi-Americans to support re-election of President Barack Obama.

If President Obama is re-elected, Bangladeshi-Americans would expect him to oversee a full recovery of the economy, promote a humane and effective immigration policy, take pragmatic steps to resolve continued Israeli occupation of Palestine, successfully complete a full withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and reign on corporate greed and Wall Street excesses.

During his nomination acceptance speech at the republican convention this summer, presidential candidate Governor Mitt Romney mocked President Barack Obama’s effort to quell climate change. Drawing laughter from the partisan crowd, Mr. Romney, with a dismissive smirk on his face had this to say, “President Obama promised to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet.”

Bangladesh is one of the countries which is deemed to be most vulnerable to the climate change related calamities. A significant part of Bangladesh may go under water and as many as 30% of Bangladesh population is poised to be displaced due to the effects of global warming. Bangladesh needs a strong leadership from USA in combating climate change. Governor Mitt Romney may not even believe in global warming and definitely does not believe in a US leadership role in combating climate changes. From a Bangladeshi-Americans point of view, the promise Governor Romney attributed to President Obama, can very well be the sole reason to vote to re-elect President Obama.

Godspeed Barack Obama!

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Rumi Ahmed is a blogger at alalodulal.org and writes from Florida, USA.

Let me be more specific. As alleged by the law enforcement agencies of the USA, Bangladeshi student Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis planned  and attempted to detonate a weapon of mass destruction in New York City of USA. It is however alleged that through the sting operation, in fact an undercover FBI agent pretending to be a fellow Muslim with a Jihadi passion, influenced, provoked and facilitated Nafis to attempt to commit the alleged action of terror.

This may be true that Nafis’ insecure unstable mindset was heavily influenced by the FBI agent. But it is also true that Nafis indeed attempted to commit a major crime. If a religious cleric or a best friend or a person who you respect immensely, asks you to kill people or blow up cities for Jihad, will you agree? Let alone causing a massacre, will any of you ever be convinced by the best of your friends to murder only one innocent person for the best of the causes? I have no doubt the answer will be an emphatic and unanimous ‘No’. And this makes you different from Nafis.

The majority of 9/11 airplane bombers were clueless students like Nafis. Instead of an FBI agent, the person who influenced them was a man named Mohammad Atta. And as a result we saw the devastation of 9/11. Just try to think what Nafis would have done, if the person influencing Nafis was someone like Mohammad Atta instead of the undercover FBI agent! Yes, Nafis was influenced by religion and provoked by the FBI agent but that does not clear Nafis of the horrendous crime he attempted to commit. Even a ten-year-old boy has the capacity to differentiate from good to bad and refuse to do the wrong thing. Nafis, in contrast is an emotionally competent adult.

A few decades ago, thousands of young men of this region of Indian sub-continent, influenced by a revolutionary leader named Charu Mazumder, started killing innocent people in the name of red revolution and class warfare. Law enforcement agency members hunted down all those thousands of bright young men one by one and then either killed them or maimed them for life or threw them in prisons. Nobody gave them a pass because they committed all the crimes being influenced by an extreme band of Marxism or by Charu Mazumder.

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New York Police Department Commissioner Ray Kelly speaks to the media regarding the arrest of Nafis. Photo: Reuters

Now the question you may ask, how we can be so sure that Nafis indeed attempted to commit all the crimes the FBI is attributing to him. What is the guarantee that the FBI is not making things up? OK, it seems the FBI is proceeding with normal US judicial process. FBI says they have all the audio recordings of conversations as well as the suicide video message Nafis recorded. Before even the trial of Nafis can proceed, i.e. before even Nafis can be charge-sheeted (indicted in US legal terms), all these evidences must be seen by a group of randomly selected New York residents. Once this group of people, called the Grand Jury, is convinced that the FBI evidence is sufficient to proceed with a trial, then a jury trial will begin. During this lengthy process, Nafis will be able to meet and talk to any lawyer he decides to employ. Nafis will also be able to meet people from Bangladesh embassy. Nafis will get numerous chances to say and prove that all these allegations against him are false. The trial will be open to public and all proceedings of the trial will be on record. And the persons who will look at the evidence and decide whether Nafis is guilty or not are not the judges, rather members of a jury board. This jury board will be randomly selected from New York and there is all the statistical possibility that a Bangladeshi American or a Muslim American may be part of the jury. After all the rigorous and transparent scrutiny of the evidence, it will be very difficult for the government to punish a defendant with fake and unsubstantiated evidence. And if the evidence is not strong enough, Nafis will be freed and exonerated.

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The case of Nafis brings forward some other very relevant issues and demands discussion. The problem with Nafis did not start with his arrest. The problem started way before that.

Was Nafis prepared (emotionally, academically and financially) to move to USA to study and struggle to make a career? From media reports and statements of the university Nafis attended in Dhaka, it is clear that Nafis was having difficulty with studies even in Bangladesh. How can we expect a student, who, even in the most favourable circumstances i.e. no financial responsibility, free boarding and dinning at parent’s place, cannot cope with the studies, will be able to make it in the USA? Here in the USA, in addition to full load of studies, foreign students must enrol; he was expected to work to earn his tuition and make his ends meet.

Mr Ahsanullah said he spoke to his son 24 hours before he was arrested. Photo: Reuters

It is true that parents in Bangladesh want to believe that sending their kids overseas will solve all the problems. The kid is not catching up with studies, the kid is too lazy, the kid is having drug problem – send him abroad and all the problems will be solved! This is blissful ignorance.

Yes, in the past many young people came this way and ultimately made a living in the USA and other places. But the world has changed. The events of 9/11 have changed the whole west, not only the USA. Also has changed the economic situation in the Americas and Europe. In the past there were lots of low-end jobs and foreign students were tapped to do those jobs. It is not like that anymore. In America, unemployment rate is very high. The government is cracking down on employers who hire people without legal documents to work.

It is also important to understand that undergraduate studies in the USA are a protracted process. Student life could be much easier if one comes to the USA to finish graduate level education after finishing undergraduate studies in Bangladesh. A student who comes to the USA for a Master’s degree is much more likely to complete his education and join the work forces, either here in the USA or back home in Bangladesh.

Another point also worth mentioning is that the moment Nafis was transferred from the first school in Missouri to a non-degree offering technical training institute in New York City, he decidedly pulled himself out of education-professional job track. The institute he enrolled in New York would not give him any degree that would enable him to be considered as a skilled employee. It seems he moved to New York to work and earn his living. This path is a very slippery slope and there are high chances of losing legal status in the USA. In the past decades, thousands of Bangladeshis dropped out of universities, moved to New York for easier life and ultimately ended up spending rest of their life under constant uncertainty as an illegal alien in USA.

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But the most glaring problem in this Nafis fiasco is the blatant double standard that is being shown in Bangladesh. Since this government came to power, on the excuse of zero tolerance to Islamic extremism, young men, suspected of having the slightest connections to Islamist organizations, are being rounded up and taken into custody. Unlike Nafis case, in most of these cases the families of the young men have no clue of their whereabouts. People are being kept in custody for indefinite period without any charges or hope for any chance of transparent trial in near future.

At least, it seems Nafis is going to get a due and transparent judicial process, which the Nafises in Bangladesh are not getting.

Let me end this piece with another question. If a foreign student in Bangladesh or even a Bangladeshi citizen is caught red handed while trying to blow up our parliament building or while planning to harm our leaders, what treatment, you think, the culprits will get at the hand of our law enforcement agencies? Would this really matter who or what influenced the person to commit such a crime? If the wrath of Bangladesh legal system can come down on that alleged culprits with full vigour, what is the problem with the US legal system clamping down on a foreign student who planned and attempted to destroy the main US city?

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Rumi Ahmed is a blogger at alalodulal.org and writes from Florida, USA.