Kaniz Kakon

“There’s a grief that can’t be spoken

There’s a pain goes on and on

Empty chairs at empty tables

Now my friends are dead and gone…”

                                                          — Song from Les Misérables

21 July 2025 was just another Monday. Children were in their classrooms, some scribbling math problems, others glancing out the window, probably dreaming of the weekend just gone. There was nothing unusual about the sky that day, no storm clouds, no sign of warning. And then, without reason or mercy, the sky broke. An air force jet, roaring down in a trail of fire, crashed straight into Milestone School and College in Uttara. In seconds, desks became debris. Laughter turned into screaming. And a building that held futures was reduced to a grave. Thirty-two individuals lost lives, twenty nine of them being children. Over 170 others were injured, some clinging to life in overburdened hospital wards. It was the worst air disaster the country has seen in years. Perhaps, it could have been prevented. That is what keeps replaying in my mind. Not just the crash itself, but the knowledge that it did not have to happen. That we, as a country, allowed it to happen—not out of malice, but out of something even more dangerous: blindness and a broken idea of what it means to be secure.

 The jet was an F-7 BGI, a model no longer in use in most modern militaries. Its reliability had been questioned for years. Its age was no secret. And yet, there it was roaring over one of the most crowded cities in the world, as part of a routine training flight. What kind of routine is this that risks the lives of so many civilians? What kind of training is this that takes place above schools and homes? When you stop and really ask these questions, the answers are hard to stomach. We allowed this because we have grown used to believing that state strength lies in how many fighter jets we can put in the sky. We have glorified the roar of military planes as if it were a national anthem. But what if we have been looking at strength the wrong way? What if true strength is the softest thing of all—keeping a child safe in school, making sure a teacher makes it home, knowing a hospital has enough burn beds for those who might need them? The jet that crashed did not just bring down a building. It brought down our illusions, too.

I keep thinking about the parents, the ones who dropped their children off that morning, expecting nothing more than a regular school day. Maybe they packed a lunchbox, tied a shoelace, gave a distracted kiss on the forehead. In one blink, everything changed. And yet, in the aftermath, what did we see? Hospitals flooded not only with the injured but with VIP visitors and cameras. Burn units scrambling to cope. Families begging for updates. And the same cycle we always see—statements, committees and silence. The children became numbers. The smoke cleared. And life, for everyone else, marched on. But for those families, time stopped. The grief did not come in headlines. It came in waves, in empty beds, unopened textbooks, and the haunting quiet of a life interrupted too soon. And if we cannot find the courage to name this (not just as an accident but as a failure of values), then we will lose more than lives. We will lose our way.

This was not just a plane crash. It was a warning shot from within. For years, we have allowed military logic to dictate civilian reality. We have permitted war machines to hover over homes and schools under the guise of “training,” as if Dhaka were a no-man’s-land rather than the beating heart of a nation. And when something goes wrong, we call it “tragic” and move on. But maybe it is time we stopped accepting that language. Maybe it is time we asked: Who made the decision to fly a faulty jet over children’s heads? Indeed, this is about poor planning; and this is about sheer negligence. But we need a new imagination, one that does not place machinery above humanity.

What would that new imagination look like? For one, it would put people first. Not as a slogan, but as policy. Military training flights should never take place over residential zones, full stop. No out-dated aircraft should be used if its track record puts civilians at risk. We should have urban plans that make schools sacred ground, not incidental structures under flight paths. The sky should not be feared. It should be something children look up to in wonder, not in dread. What happened on 21 July was not just the fall of a jet. It was the collapse of a way of thinking. And we have a choice: to rebuild it differently, or to keep pretending when nothing has changed.

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The writer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at IUBAT and pursuing a Masters in Human Rights and Multiculturalism at University of South Eastern Norway