The ugly scenes we witnessed outside New York's JFK International Airport at the start of the week, as the Bangladesh delegation arrived for UNGA80, the showpiece event in the geopolitical calendar each year, could not have been beneficial to the country's image on the world stage. It wasn't meant to be.

The wounded supporters of the fallen regime had been signaling for weeks that they planned to cause some sort of ruckus during UNGA week - reportedly stocking up on eggs, in anticipation that Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus and his colleagues in the interim government's Council of Advisers would obviously be attending. Once they learned about the inclusion of representatives from the three major parties active in the arena right now, including the National Citizen Party, you can be sure those eggs would've flown off the shelves in the supermarkets of Queens and Brooklyn even faster.

The NCP's youthful leaders are always keen to make the point that in the event of the Awami League resuming its presently banned activities in the country's political arena, none of the other parties' leaders should expect to face the same 'occupational hazards' as them. Although this has not been healthy for their political growth, reducing them to reactionaries who almost define themselves by their opposition to AL, you won't find too many people who disagree with that assessment.

Anyone who does should see the attack at JFK, that saw the two young NCP representatives - Akhtar Hossain, who has a long record of fighting the Awami League, and Tasnim Jara, the brilliant Cambridge-educated doctor who put her promising career with the NHS on hold for this - dangerously exposed amid a rowdy horde of AL supporters. In that brief but agonising moment, what the NCP leaders have been sounding out all year, seemed to crystallise right before our eyes, even as the Jamaat and BNP leaders, who they were walking side-by-side with moments earlier, suddenly vanished from sight. As time seemed to stand still, we saw not only what the NCP leaders have been saying play out under the New York sky where they had just emerged, but also what they have been leaving unsaid: that in this existential battle that awaits them down the the path they have chosen, they cannot expect to rely on other political forces, even those who bonded with them to ensure the triumph of their Uprising, to stand beside them.

Not that they couldn't handle it. Considering how exposed they became, with their physical proximity to the AL thugs who kept waiting, long after the CA and others in his official delegation had cleared immigration and exited the airport. Within the wider Bangladeshi-American community, and back home, the general tendency was to condemn the attack as cowardly and distasteful. Much of the anger seemed to accrue at the New York consulate, for failing to coordinate with police to ensure the entire delegation's security. Which was fair enough, but we have to acknowledge that the government's ability to provide security on foreign soil is severely limited. Particularly at a time like this, when the famed NYPD is anyway stretched for resources, with the entire world seemingly descending on the Big Apple.

Within AL circles, mostly overseas or online, there was jubilation, with the main perpetrator celebrated as a hero - earning himself a virtual audience with Hasina herself. It all seemed to symbolise what the party had become reduced to, far and away from the levers of state power and policymaking. And perhaps even more, it reflected the huge gulf between itself, and the nation it wants to govern again.