All they want is an apology : Pakistan's viewpoint

As Bangladesh is gearing up to celebrate its 4o years of independence on 16th December, young Bengalis, growing up with the haunting narratives of 1971, seek apology from Pakistan for the alleged war crimes committed by the Pakistan Army.

Twenty-nine years old journalist Zahidul Haq from Rajshahi District emphasizes: “Although the slaying of innocent Benaglis during military operation is beyond apology for the Bangladeshi people yet an official apology from Pakistan will console our suffering souls and aggrieved minds. We cannot bring back the departed but it is a matter of grave concern for us to seek justice for the hideous war crimes committed by Pakistani establishment. I think this is the least compensation for the criminal acts of Pakistan Army but it will make a huge difference to lessen the prevalent Bengali repugnance against Pakistanis”.

This repugnance as Deeba, 28, who hails from Natore tells us is against those who raped women, looted businesses and killed civilians during military operations. “It makes my blood boil when I think of those atrocities and feel nothing but disgust for those Pakistanis but it doesn’t mean I hate all Pakistanis as they can’t be blamed for their for past events. Yet as a common Bangladeshi woman I think an official apology is all that we need from Pakistan to mend our blood-tainted relationships”

Sabbir Ali, a Bangladeshi student living in Germany, said that “it is a concept of modern democracies to bury the past amiably and move ahead for future relationships. If Germany can express its regret over the Holocaust and international figures like Willy Brandt can kneel down before Poland then why can’t Pakistan admit its mistake and apologize to Bangladeshi people?”   

Recently in November 2011 Bangladeshi Foreign Minister, Dipu Moni in, a meeting with Pakistani officials demanded an official apology from Pakistan and stressed that resolving long standing issues is crucial for the bilateral relations in future. Moni’s demand echoes the feelings of Bengali people like Riazul Hasan, a post-graduate student of Media Studies at Bonn University Germany, who feel their friendly ties with Pakistan rely only on an honest confession of Pakistan of its army’s excesses. In Riazul’s opinion “Pakistan must admit the cruel treatment incurred upon us otherwise we cannot have good relations while having hatred and malice in our hearts”.

Ghosts of a bloody Past

Politically conscious and fully aware of their history Bangladeshis, especially the youth, don’t appear to have forgotten their history and insist that the world must acknowledge their claim of ‘genocide’ by the Pak Army.

Most of them believe that the linguistic and ethnic discrimination in the early years of Pakistan led to their demand for ultimate independence from suppressive Pakistani regime.  “Not a single significant step was ever taken by the Pakistani state for the welfare of Bangla people in the East Pakistan,” says Deeba in a bitter voice. “They were even deprived of speaking their own language right at the formation of Pakistan when Urdu was declared as national language by Mr. Jinnah,” she adds. Sharraf Ahmed a teacher from Rjshahi, however, views Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s decision of making Urdu a national language his political mistake not bad intention. “Mr. Jinnah was an enlightened leader but  could not judge the sensitive correlation between Bengali culture and identity”.  Riazul too believes that Mr. Jinnah’s decision was awful for Bengalis “he didn’t have the right to determine what should we speak it was our right to make Bangla our official language. Yet it is not fair to blame Jinnah solely for what Pakistani state and marshal law administrators did later”. According to Zahidul Haq, Mr. Jinnah was under the influence of elite leaders of Muslim League who wanted the domination of Urdu.

For Riazul, independence or separation of East Pakistan was somehow inevitable as Bangla people had very distinct culture, customs, language and history and it was only ‘religion’ that united them with Pakistan. “Perhaps it was bound to happen sooner or later since there was a willingness among Bengalis to be independent. In 1947 Bengalis actually wished a divided Bengal but it did not happen so they deemed it better to be part of Pakistan” . He adds: “Though there was a possibility that if the power was democratically handed over to Mujeeb he would not have declared independence but the alienation of Bengalis had brought them at a point of no return”.

Disagreeing with Riazul Hasan, Zahidul, Deeba and Ashraf, however, hold Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto responsible for the chaos that followed the Election of 1971. While Sabbir thinks that Bhutto had a personality clash with Mujeeb, Deeba accuses Bhutto of betraying Mujeeb: “The army operation was started right after the night Bhutto met Bagabandhu who was arrested afterwards. Bhutto in fact tried to manipulate Mujeeb’s influence but couldn’t succeed”.

“Awami League had stolen the 71s election from right under Bhutto’s nose,” tells Ashraf Ahmed,  “and the people had elected Sheikh Mujeeb with a heavy mandate. Bhutto and the military did not want a Bengali to rule Pakistan that is why they sabotaged the democracy. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto could have convinced Yahya Khan for transferring power to Mujeeb but he himself wanted to become the prime minister”. Ashraf Ahmed thinks, “Bhutto was hand in gloves with Yahya Khan who ordered Operation Searchlight and tried to quell the Bengali movement by butchering intellectuals and teachers”. 

While insisting on the Bangladesh’s official claim that Pakistan Army massacred 3 million people, they acknowledge the Pakistani allegations of Mukti Bahini’s involvement in target killing of pro-Pakistani Bengalis and Biharis.

“It is an open secret that Mukti Bahini was trained by Indian Army to fight against Pak Army during liberation movement but their activities were confined to the border areas not inside the city centres, however, it can by no means justify the massacring of Bengalis by Pak Army,” says Ashraf Ahmed. Riazul sees the reprisal of Mukti Bahini as a retributive justice: “When you are attacked and violently suppressed then you have no choice but violence. It was liberation war and in war everything is legitimate to get your freedom. It was Pak Army and its collaborators who initiated aggression against innocent Bengalis” .  

When asked who was the real villain of the Bangla movement, “all Pakistani leaders are equally responsible for the massacre of Bengalis” was the common response. As Zahidul Haq puts it: “Whether it was Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, Gen Tikka Khan, Gen.Niazi or Z. A. Bhutto all the civil and military leaders of West Pakistan were our enemies and we still hate them”.  “Actually it was not just a few persons rather a whole system of injustice and discrimination which treated the Bengalis as second class citizens,” says Riazul. 

Bangladesh and Pakistan today

With an estimated growth rate of 6.3 percent e Bangladesh’s economy has seen significant rise since the days of its independence, however, with 40 percent of its population still living below poverty line Bangladesh has many challenges ahead.  

But the optimism of Bangalis is remarkable. “We are free now and we can do everything we want without any fear of economic or social domination,” says Deeba. Zahidul shares the same view: “Of course we are far better than Pakistan which has failed as a country and embroiled in terrorism. Bangladesh has no issue of Islamic extremism since it is a moderate and secular country. Bangladesh has tackled and nipped the Islamist terrorism which erupted in 2004 and 2005.”  

“40 years on Pakistan has a whole new generation which could not be blamed for the crimes it was not involved in,” thinks Sharraf Ahmed. “But we cannot forget those crimes against humanity committed 40 years ago,” says Riazul and explains: “I still feel terrible when I think of the war of liberation. I have met many Pakistanis who express their guilt and shame but there are those who don’t have the least idea what Bengalis have gone through”. For emotionally charged Deeba it is very important for the young Pakistanis to know the sufferings of Bengalis.

Zahidul Haq also feels the same: “Since Pakistan hasn’t apologized for its brutalities I feel a bit apprehensive when I hear the word ‘Pakistan or Pakistani’ but I think Pakistani youth acknowledges the inhuman treatment and plight of the (then) East Pakistanis”.

On India

Bengalis view India as their “savior and liberator who made it possible for us to win freedom. Most of the Mukti Bahini guerrillas were trained in Agartallha, India and without India we could not have made it,” says Zahidul.

Riazul also feels indebted to India for the liberation which “helped us achieving independence but we are not influenced by India rather have foreign relations based on equality”. Zahidul Haq says, “We don’t consider India a big brother since we don’t like to be taken as minnows of South Asia. Though India sometimes underestimates the state of Bangladesh for instance India is constructing dams like Tipaimokh without taking Bangladesh into confidence which is not acceptable to us”.  

On the defensive:  Pakistan

For Pakistanis discussions about the debacle of East Pakistan are very painful and upsetting since they lost their eastern wing and had to surrender the arch rival India which reached its defining moment by successfully segregating Pakistan. It is interesting to note that as compared to Bengalis, Pakistani youth don’t know much about the breakup of East Pakistan except the text book narrative, though some are even unable to recall schoolbook description of the 1971 war.

“Recollecting the debacle of 1971 is a shocking and depressing experience which leaves so many questions unanswered. I think it is the most horrific time in our history,” says 22- year-old Saira Zaman who teaches at a local school in Lahore. She blames Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto for being stubborn and selfish at such a crucial time: “Actually Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto broke Pakistan up and let India take advantage of our internal anarchy. He was very proud Sindhi feudal lord who thought it was his right to be the next prime minister. He could not accept a Bengali as the head of state therefore he had had a power tussle with Mujeeb ur Rehman who was very popular in East Pakistan”.

Then there are those who believe it was a great international conspiracy against Pakistan spearheaded by none other than ‘our greatest enemy India’ who according to Tanveer Rizvi, a medical representative in Lahore, “wanted to take revenge of the ‘defeat in the war of 1965’ and eventually succeeded due to the inefficiency of a retarded and drunk general Yahiya Khan”. Some Pakistanis like Abid Ali,  who resides in Rawalpindi, rely more on facts than rhetoric for analyzing this great national catastrophe: “We never treated Bengalis equally and let me say that even today we think we are superior to them. You might have heard people making fun of a weak and poor person by calling him Bengali. What we reaped in 71 was just what we had sown.” 

History as told by text books

Restating the narrative presented by the course books, 19 years old Sana Tehrem says, “We lost one  of our province because of Hindus who entered from the neighboring India and provoked rage among the Bengalis”. Frarooq Khan,28,  thinks “geographical, cultural and ethnic divisions caused estrangement between the people of a same country and India took full advantage of it”. He laments the incompetence of “power-hungry politicians who were incapable of safeguarding national integrity in the aftermath of Bengali uprising”. Abid Ali discredits the information given in the books and highlights the fact that “What I studied about fall of Dhaka during school days was basically half-truth. The facts about the surrender were fudged by the inclusion of statement that UN intervened and a enforced a ceasefire”.   

Military vs Mukti Bahini

Abid Ali thinks that this kind of misleading information impedes the possibility of holding the military accountable of its alleged corruption and incompetence which led to the chaos. Others, however, think that it was Pakistan Army’s national duty to control the rebellion which was orchestrated by India. “When insurgents challenge the writ of state as Mukti Bahini and Mujeeb did, then all countries have only one option…crush the rebellion using all means,” justifies Farooq Khan. On Army’s accountability he says, “There was a massive infiltration of Indian guerillas in East Pakistan and it is really hard to say who killed whom in this situation. Besides, if Indian Army’s interference and military support to Bengalis was justified then India should also not bitch about Pakistan’s involvement in Kashmir as they also demand freedom,” he concludes.

Saira Zaman, too thinks similarly: “What Pak Army is often accused of is just disinformation. They were in a state of war when Agartallha Conspiracy was exposed. They might have killed some innocent people while hunting the traitors of Mukti Bahini so they should be tried but accusing them of genocide is totally sham propaganda”.

“It is very important to set up an international war tribunal which may judge objectively and independently  what actually happened during the separation of East Pakistan. There is evidence that both Pakistan Army and Mukti Bahini killed people but the figures presented by both are disputable,” argues Abid Ali.

On comparing Bangladesh and Pakistan Saira and Farooq believe its illogical since “we are Pakistanis and we think our country is best no matter how turbulent these days are”. Moreover,  “it is unfair to compare Bangladesh’s economic growth with Pakistan which is destroyed by the prolonged war on terror” Farooq says. “Bangladesh is growing it is good but you know they don’t have 3 million Afghan refugees scattered across their country,” he thinks. In Tanveer’s view: “Bangladesh is hugely dominated by political and social intervention of India”.

On Apology

It is interesting that all these Pakistanis this writer talked to dispute the allegations of war crimes yet feel for the Bengalis and regret this part of history deeply. Saira Zaman says: “If our apology can heal their wounds we must go ahead. I want to apologise for the loss of all those pro or anti-Pakistanis killed during the war even if I am not a culprit”.

Abid Ali and Tanveer Rizvi are also ready to reconcile with Benaglis because “we both are Muslim nations and Islam preaches that a Muslim shall not hurt another”. Abid Ali has his own reason: “Pakistan is already notorious for extremism and militant mindset it will help us improve our image as a tolerant and responsible society”.

Farooq Khan is an exception in this regard as he opposes the idea of apologizing: “They cannot ask for an apology without an inquiry rather we should urge Bengalis to apologize for betraying and dividing Pakistan. There is no single Pakistani who had not mourned the separation….it tore us apart. Can Bengalis undo the hurt and tragedy we have suffered after the fall of Dhaka? ”.

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Getting rid of 'the nuisance' : Pakistan's viewpoint

“Why was Pakistan Created?” The issue remains controversial to date. Pakistan appears as a weird entity having none of its organs in proper form. Whoever looks at it defines it in the light of its own perspective. We also have the distinction of being the only nation in the world which is always obsessed with the fear of fragmentation and a horrible end.

Our security establishment presents itself as an indomitable force while all rights of the state are reserved for Pakistan army. Politics, the affairs of the state, the ideology and relations with neighboring countries and all other international players is a task religiously undertaken by the army. What is to be taught to school children and what has to be the media policy are areas determined by the army. Issuance of certificates of patriotism and treachery is also included in the job description of the army. So much so that all residents of a particular province can be declared traitors, while with the exception of Punjab, people from all other provinces have been declared traitors and Indian agents in the past. Presently the disloyalty of the Baluch people has reached the same proportions as that of the Bengalis and an identical military operation is underway in Baluchistan.

Pakistan, when created was configured in two geographical regions with a distance of 1000 miles in between. The hegemony of the security establishment could only have been established if India could be declared an eternal enemy. To further strengthen hostility towards India and establish a centralized rule, the concept of Islamic ideology was invented.

The basic tenet of a federation is the understanding that the provinces would join hands to create the federation and not the other way round. The federal system is based on the voluntary accession of all the federating units into a federation whereas in Pakistan the security apparatus retained the federal structure through coercion wherein Islam and animosity against India were used as weapons. East Pakistan was the majority province in terms of population. To usurp the rights of the Bengalis, who comprised the majority, one unit based on parity principle was instituted while Urdu was imposed on them replacing native Bengali.

Since the creation of Pakistan, provinces have been crying hoarse for their rights. For 64 years the “ridiculous” NWFP was not allowed to change its name while to counter demands for provincial autonomy the federating units were taught the lessons of Islam and the threat from India.

One thousand miles away, surrounded by the “arch enemy” the Bengalis were a nation who would take pride in their land, culture and nationality. The security establishment and its ally the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) kept working on the Bengalis to make them “better” Muslims and “better” Pakistanis; however the Bengalis refused to accept a certificate to qualify as the “true believers” and “true patriots”.

In 1971 the military ruled Pakistan and Yahya Khan was the all powerful President of the country. The JI was his ally and a part of his cabinet. Yahya was fond of wine and women while the whole nation was being taught the “message” of Islam. The JI in collusion with Yahya Khan was all set to come up with an “Islamic” 

constitution when elections were held in 1970 wherein Sheikh Mujeeb-ur-Rahman sweeped the elections from East Pakistan while Z.A Bhutto’s PPP emerged as the party with majority seats in West Pakistan. As per the election results, it was Sheikh Mujeeb-ur –Rahman who should have been invited to form the new government in the centre yet the military junta and Bhutto refused to accept the electoral results which were declared null and void. This caused the Bengalis to revolt against the establishment. The army retaliated by taking Mujeeb into custody and Awami League was banned. Later, “phony” elections were conducted in East Pakistan which resulted in the “victory” of JI and PPP.

While army crackdown was underway in East Pakistan, an armed conflict and guerilla warfare ensued between Mujeeb loyalists and Pakistan army belonging to West Pakistan. As a result of full scale insurgency, around 10 million Bengalis, in order to save their lives, crossed the border into India. All independent sources corroborate that Pak army was involved in the massacre of Bengalis. Since a direct war had erupted between the Bengali nationalists and Pak army and while 10 million Bengalis were occupying refugee camps in India, it was not possible for India to remain a silent spectator when the international public opinion was also in India’s favor.

While the situation was critical in the East, the Pakistani generals committed another blunder by launching an air assault on Indian air fields from the West. This led to the formal declaration of war between India and Pakistan on the 3^rd of December 1971.

The East Pakistani populace which had turned against the establishment was being butchered by the Pak army as the whole world watched in shock. At the same time Bhutto was indulging in theatrics in the United Nations to “save” Pakistan. He tore down the Polish Resolution calling for ceasefire and left the Security Council.

While in West Pakistan, the military junta, JI and Bhutto were constantly befooling the entire nation, BBC was the only source of reliable information.

During the last days of the conflict in East Pakistan when preparations were underway for the surrender ceremony, the President, General Agha Mohammad Yahya khan was addressing the nation; fully drunk: “We will fight in the streets in the lands and in our houses and devastate the enemy which dared to attack us.”At the same time the nation was being comforted with the news of the arrival of the sixth US fleet.

And then BBC informed that 90,000 Pak army regulars, Para-military and others surrendered before General Jagjit Singh Arora of the Indian army.90000 was a huge number in terms of POW’s which surrendered ever to an enemy while Pakistan stood dismembered. The people of West Pakistan were in a state of shock and stricken with grief, yet Yahya Khan, despite defeat and dismemberment was shamelessly reluctant to quit the corridors of power. Most likely some middle order officers of Pak army forced Yahya to quit his seat.

A commission was constituted to investigate the East Pakistan debacle whose report was never made public. No army officer was ever court martialed thus strengthening the notion that blunders by the uniformed are not to be brought on record. Whatever they do to the country and its people was beyond accountability.

East Pakistan was a nuisance to our generals who got rid of it so that the remaining state could be made more manageable and fully controlled. Ironically, Baluchistan is treading the path once followed by East Pakistan. However, nothing has changed in the mindset of the generals who still think that they can save Pakistan by destroying it.

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Dead Reckoning: Disappearing stories and evidence

The 40th anniversary of the liberation of Bangladesh is special not simply because it marks the passing of decades, but because of the current passionate attempt to recapture the founding spirit of the nation. The recent debates on the Constitution and an attempt to return it to its original secular character of 1972 are vital to the future survival of the country. But the hurried changes made, with an ultimate outcome of keeping Islam as the state religion, have disappointed many. In contrast, the war crimes trials that are underway still offer hope. 

But I observe that, in London, Bangladeshis seeking justice are isolated and told instead to seek reconciliation, and even that genocide didn't happen. Further, Bangladesh is criticised for holding the trials in a national court rather than as a Rwanda or Yugoslavia style international process. But the establishment of an International Criminal Court was intended to step in only when national judiciaries failed to act, or collapsed entirely. 

The current war crimes trials should be able to provide a basis for future examination of other issues. Ending the impunity enjoyed by those responsible for violence in 1971 will go some way towards reassuring minorities that attacks on them will not be tolerated. As it grapples with one kind of impunity, Bangladesh, which has shown the way on many issues, should be able to tackle the constitutional questions that were avoided earlier. Removing Islam as the state religion is one of the key changes that will begin to ensure full citizenship for all, and a framework for addressing more modern forms of impunity. 

My own encounter with 1971 was War Crimes File, a documentary I produced for Channel Four (UK). The film investigated three men of Bangladeshi origin, by then all British nationals, for 1971 war crimes or crimes against humanity. David Bergman was a stubborn and persistent reporter, and he led the research with a large team of Bangladeshi academics, filmmakers and young researchers until we found a trail of information that led to the three accused. We found serious and credible allegations that they were involved in making lists of people to be picked up, ordering killings, being involved with torture centres and participating in the killing of the intellectuals. Many of those we interviewed were eye witnesses, or even targets who had evaded capture.

Our interviewees told us that local collaborators of Jamaat e Islami “not only collaborated with the Pakistani army in the genocide, but had their own scheme of killing.” But recently, a number of recent writings about Bangladesh have obscured this story entirely.

At a December 8th presentation at SOAS, London, Sarmila Bose presented a talk “The legacy of 1971 - 40 years on,” at the invitation of the Center for the Study of Pakistan. During the Q&A session I asked her directly why, in her book Dead Reckoning, she had been dismissive about Razakars, as if it was a figment of fevered Bengali imaginations. She had treated them as a “discourse” rather than a fact on the ground that needs examination. Why was there no discussion of their actions, no mention of peace committees or their political linkages to the Jamaat e Islami? In reply, she simply said that these issues were not her concern and the book dealt with only certain incidents. This evasive response is elaborated in her just-published essay “The question of genocide and the quest for justice in the 1971 war” (Journal of Genocide Studies, November 2011), where she states: “It may be argued that the groups doing the killings were the creation of the regime, but their exact identity and motives remain shrouded.” 

Looking at how she responded to various questions at SOAS, she appears to be going through a central shape shifting in the face of mounting criticism of her book. At the time of launch, she claimed Dead Reckoning was groundbreaking, a new account of the war, showing that the major narrative was not merely flawed or incomplete but fundamentally wrong. By now, after months of published criticisms of her book (Mookherjee, Mohaiemen, in EPW, among others), she says it is only a “few incidents” and when key issues like Razakars are brought up, she says these are “not her concern.” 

When the book was first launched, the Pakistanis were gentlemen and the Bengalis were racist and nasty towards them. Now, she states, she was not intending to be rude, but rather to display “the richness of the vocabulary” of Bengalis criticising Pakistanis. Then, there was no genocide (except of Biharis). Now, she says she has written an article saying that there might have been some genocidal killings.

That is why I call her a shape shifter.

One method used by her is to look at written narratives, and then take them apart by “checking” with the Pakistani army. She clearly started out with a great deal of access, but she uses none of the material which could help make a case against the Pakistan army. In several cases, people are alive and she could have talked to them directly rather relying on hearsay. Bose has certainly not attempted to raise the shroud she referred to, although she had the perfect opportunity to do so. 

In Dead Reckoning, Bose quoted General Niazi, who wrote that sanction to set up al Badr and al Shams was given at the end of August 1971 and they were drawn from well-educated students from schools and madrassas. But by the time she writes this new article on genocide, she has apparently forgotten this citation and all mention of al Badr. In the book, she discusses accounts of “the killing of the intellectuals.” Now, in the article, she concludes that there is no evidence that the Pakistani army was involved. In neither the book nor the article does she connect al Badr and al Shams to the Jamaat e Islami or examine their ideology, intentions or actions. There is a blackout in her book about the peace committees and the role of the Jamaat in systematic killings and torture. 

The most striking thing about the book is the complete absence of any framework, theoretical or political. Some of her material clearly shows an uprising in progress. Fear, rumours and exaggeration are well known features of uprisings, but you don't get any sense that she understands this, or has read anything about the behaviour of crowds. There is also a non-discussion of genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanityeither legal or political movements for accountability, or the case that has developed through international tribunals

Now it is true that only certain incidents are discussed, so she may argue she does not need to cover every incident. But the book claims to dismiss the genocide allegation based on these selective incidents. In her book, she summarily denied genocide allegations against Pakistanis. For instance, she makes no determination on the crimes committed at Dhaka University, though she doesn't deny the direct accounts of targeted attacks on civilians. But she mocks them for “cowering” instead of fighting. There is a strong whiff of admiration for the military, instead of these paltry people who hid when the army launched a massive attack. Her main concern is numbers and other issues of burial and evidence.

There was an emphasis in her EPW article on rape (preceding this book) on randomness, as she keeps calling rape “opportunistic.” In the book, there is a refusal to see any patternstargeting of civilians, even where it is described, it is not commented on. After being challenged on the EPW article (by Mookherjee, Mandal, Rahman and others), she excluded some of the rape material from the book. Although Yasmin Saikia is cited as a reliable source, none of Saikia's information about rape, or contrition of Pakistani soldiers, is used. Other secondary sources are frequently used, so why not this one? My film The War Crimes File is cited, but very little of the material in it, except for footage of the killings in Dhaka University, is discussed. 

One of the difficulties of the definition of genocide is that there is a requirement to prove “intent.” That, along with the requirement to show that a group (for instance, religious or ethnic but not political) is being destroyed is of paramount importance. This requirement does not have to be met in the case of war crimes or crimes against humanity. But evidence that crimes are either “widespread” or “systematic” would be crucial in determining a crime against humanity. As the Rwanda tribunal showed, inflammatory speeches calling for extermination of a group, can be an element in genocide. It would be important to show whether there were organised groups, whether they were acting on their own or under military command. Bose's failure to gather and present such evidence, in a book and subsequent article on genocide and other grave crimes, is inexcusable.

BY : Gita Sahgal.

  

Genocide in Bangladesh : The report that changed history

"How many did you get?" Major Rathore asked Major Iftikhar of the 12th Frontier Force Rifles of Pakistan army. 

It was April 17, 1971. Rathore of the 9th Division was approaching Chandpur and met his friend Iftikhar.

Iftikhar smiled bashfully listening to the question and said, "Only twelve. And by God we were lucky to get them. We would have lost those, too, if I hadn't sent my men from the back." 

The conversation was reported by Anthony Mascarenhas, former assistant editor of Morning News, Karachi, in his article "Genocide," published on June 13, 1971 in The Sunday Times.

Yesterday as Bangladesh celebrated the 40th anniversary of Victory Day the BBC ran a special story by Mark Dummett on Anthony's article. 

The report "Bangladesh War: The article that changed the history", drew attention of The Daily Star.

In “Genocide”, Anthony, born July 10, 1928 in Goa and educated in Karachi, wrote about his experience during the ten-day tour to Bangladesh in 1971. 

After driving all foreign journalists, Pakistan army arranged the tour for eight Pakistani journalists for spreading the propaganda that peace was returning to Bangladesh following military intervention.

All the invited journalists, except for Anthony, helped spread the propaganda as set by Pakistan military.

Anthony's writing has become one of the evidences of military atrocities during the Liberation War and the role of collaborators like Ghulam Azam, against whom the prosecution has placed 52 war crimes charges to the International Crimes Tribunal.

Major Iftikhar went on describing how after much searching in Hajiganj he had discovered twelve Hindus hiding in a house on the outskirts of the town. 

He was one of several officers assigned to "kill and burn missions" across the East Pakistan. "Now Major Iftikhar was on the second part of his mission: burn," reports Anthony.

Mainly accompanied by Rathor, Anthony talked with a number of senior military and civil officers in Dhaka and Comilla during the tour and escaped to London from Pakistan to get his article published in The Sunday Times. 

"We are determined to cleanse East Pakistan once and for all of the threat of secession, even if it means killing of two million people and ruling the pro­vince as a colony for 30 years," Anthony quoted senior military and civil officers in Dhaka and Comilla as saying.

"For six days as I travelled with the officers of the 9th Division headquarters at Comilla I witnessed at close quarters the extent of the killing. I saw Hindus, hunted from village to village and door to door, shot off-hand after a cursory "short-arm inspection" showed they were uncircumcised. I have heard the screams of men bludgeoned to death in the compound of the Circuit House (civil administrative headquarters) in Comilla.”

Anthony described how all the killing and arson were carried out in cold blood by the Pakistan military. 

This was genocide conducted with amazing casualness, he wrote. "Sitting in the office of Major Agha, Martial Law Administrator of Comilla city, on the morning of' April 19, I saw the off-hand manner in which sentences were meted out.”

"On April 18 Chandpur was deserted. No people, no boats. Barely one per cent of the population had remained. The rest, particularly the Hindus who constituted nearly half the population, had fled," wrote Anthony. 

The Sunday Times article also described how fake rallies were arranged in one incident by Lieutenant Javed of the 39 Baluch, who gave a bearded old man 20 minutes to gather a crowd and speak on camera asserting that military has saved Pakistan. The gathering was also asked to stage the scene of procession chanting slogans like "Pakistan Zindabad!" 

"I think that in reality there is no contradiction in the Government's East Bengal policy. East Bengal is being colonized," he wrote after giving details how fast the 25,000 Pakistan military was brought to Bangladesh by Air with the determination to eliminate all enemy.

"This is not an arbitrary opinion of mine. The facts speak for themselves."

He also explained how Bangalee officers were also being weeded out of sensitive positions in the civil and foreign services. "All are currently being subjected to the most exhaustive screening."

The article said for several weeks president Yahiya Khan and Lt-Gen Tikka Khan had been trying to get support from East Pakistan collaborators.

“The support forthcoming so far has been from people like Moulvi Farid Ahmad, a Bengali lawyer in Dacca, Fazlul Quadeer Chaudhary and Professor Ghulam Azam, of the Jamat Islami, all of whom were soundly beaten in the General Elections last December.

“Bengalis look with scorn on the few who collaborate. Farid Ahmad and Fazlul Quadeer Chaudhury are painfully aware of this. Farid Ahmad makes a point of keeping his windows shuttered and only those who have been scrutinised and recognised through a peephole in the front door are allowed into the house.”

Major works of Anthony include The Rape of Bangladesh (1972) and Bangladesh: A Legacy of Blood (1986). He reported in 1979 that Pakistan has developed nuclear weapons.

This valiant journalist passed away in 1986.

In Bangladesh, of course, he is remembered more fondly, and his article is still displayed in the country's Liberation War Museum, says BBC.

"This was one of the most significant articles written on the war. It came out when our country was cut off, and helped inform the world of what was going on here," says Mofidul Huq, a trustee of the museum.

"His mother always told him to stand up and speak the truth and be counted," Anthony's widow, Yvonne Mascarenhas, recalled. "He used to tell me, put a mountain before me and I'll climb it. He was never daunted." 

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Special : Forty Years After Its Bloody Independence, Bangladesh Looks to Its Past to Redeem Its Future

Forty years ago on Dec. 16, in front of massed throngs in Dhaka, the commander of the eastern wing of the Pakistani army tendered his country’s unconditional surrender to an Indian counterpart. That act signaled the end of a brief war between the bitter foes and the liberation of East Pakistan, a territory ruled from Islamabad but separated by 1,000 miles of India, and its transformation into the independent state of Bangladesh. But while triumphant cries of “Jai Bangla” echoed across the new capital, they were shouted by a shell-shocked, war-ravaged people. An official in the then nascent country’s government told a TIME reporter: “It is a dream come true, but you must also remember that we went through a nightmare.”

That nightmare — more than half a year of brutal, arguably genocidal repression by the West Pakistani military against a Bengali populace seeking self-determination — claimed anywhere between one and three million lives, led to some half a million rapes and roughly ten million refugees fleeing across the western border with India. By any metric, the events that birthed Bangladesh in 1971 are among the bloodiest in the post-World War Two era.

Given the trauma of its founding, forty years on, Bangladesh has done fairly well for itself. Derided initially as a “basket case” state that spends half the year submerged under floodwaters, Bangladesh boasts development indicators superior to Pakistan, the country to which it was once unnaturally conjoined. Its economy grows at a healthy clip, boosted by one of the world’s most prominent textiles industry. Its women are among the most empowered in any Muslim-majority country. Its democracy, though at times dysfunctional, is still robust. (I last visited Dhaka when the military was the de facto ruling power, the main force behind a caretaker administration of technocrats that ostensibly were seeking to reform Bangladesh’s corruption-prone political parties. They bowed out following free and fair elections and, unlike in Pakistan, the army casts a far smaller shadow over politics in Dhaka.)

Yet the skeleton in Bangladesh’s closet has always been the violence of 1971. As I’ve written here, here and here, the country failed for decades to reckon with its traumatic past, a legacy of both domestic divisions and the exigencies of the Cold War — former President George H.W. Bush, the Nixon administration’s ambassador to the U.N. in 1971, denounced the Indian intervention that ended the massacres and won Bangladesh its freedom as “aggression.” (India was closer to the Soviet Union; neighboring Pakistan and China had warmer ties with Washington.) Many of Islamabad’s top military officials behind Operation Searchlight — the spectral name for West Pakistan’s campaign of slaughter — slipped away back west, exonerated by governments in Dhaka, Islamabad and New Delhi that hoped to move beyond the horrors of 1971. Others, including some of the leading Bangladeshi collaborators with West Pakistan’s military junta, remained and even managed to enter mainstream political life in Dhaka. One of them, Ali Ahsan Mojaheed, a leading member of the Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist party, told me in an interview in 2008 that the issue of war crimes was “dead” and could not be raised.

But this was a past that could not be buried, at least not in a country where virtually every household can offer tales of parents lost or disappeared, sisters raped and children murdered. It’s a black mark on the nation that only in the past year, with the return to power of the secularist Awami League — the same party that led Bangladesh’s freedom struggle in 1971 — has the country made significant progress in prosecuting four decade-old atrocities. The government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina set up a tribunal and had Mojaheed and six others arrested; most have been charged with war crimes. The international community has cautiously applauded the move, though rights groups and observers have expressed concerns about Dhaka’s reticence to allow international mediation of the proceedings. Critics within Bangladesh say the tribunal is really a platform for Hasina to target key political opponents — the Jamaat has long been allies with the Bangladesh National Party, the main opposition and a sworn Hasina foe. Haroon Habib, a Dhaka-based journalist who has contributed to TIME in the past, shrugged off these concerns on the eve of the fortieth anniversary in an op-ed in the Indian daily The Hindu:

Whatever challenges the Hasina government faces today and whatever its failures and shortcomings are in delivering good governance, the trial of the perpetrators of the worst crimes against humanity is fundamental for Bangladesh. It is the answer to an aggrieved nation of countless bereaved families, widows and orphans, wounded and immobilised. It is an unfinished task which needs to be completed to remove a national stigma.

Still, a tribunal is no panacea for all of Bangladesh’s ills. A long history of violence and extrajudicial killings, in keeping with the brutal episodes of 1971, remains, irrespective of which government is in power. Rights groups report at least 40 people, including dissidents and opposition activists, have been disappeared since January 2010. Fingers point to the long arm and heavy hand of the government’s ominously named Rapid Action Battalion, an elite police unit.

To be sure, Bangladesh is hardly the only country in the region whose security forces and political elites behave with impunity. And the politics of South Asia is still tinged with a legacy of partitions, zero-sum games, existential divides and bitter conflict that simmers both within the countries there and the relations between capitals. More the shame then that the government in Islamabad has for many years attempted to wipe its hands clean off its military’s actions in 1971. A number of heartfelt, thoughtful articles written by Pakistanis recently lament their national amnesia over the Bangladesh genocide. 1971 is something of a taboo in classrooms and features little in the often conspiratorial, overheated conversation of Pakistan’s national media. In Bangladesh, too, knowledge of the massacres is clouded. Researchers have precious little physical, forensic evidence of the 40 year-old killings. To this day, investigators and historians struggle to come up with a clear number for those killed: Bangladesh is situated on an alluvial floodplain; its genocide victims weren’t interred in killing fields, but flushed away via streams and rivers into the ocean.

In August 1971, as Bengali rebels resisted the West Pakistani crackdown, a TIME correspondent sent in this dispatch:

The evidence of the bloodbath is all over East Pakistan. Whole sections of cities lie in ruins from shelling and aerial attacks. In Khalishpur, the northern suburb of Khulna, naked children and haggard women scavenge the rubble where their homes and shops once stood. Stretches of Chittagong’s Hizari Lane and Maulana Sowkat Ali Road have been wiped out. The central bazaar in Jessore is reduced to twisted masses of corrugated tin and shattered walls. Kushtia, a city of 40,000, now looks, as a World Bank team reported, “like the morning after a nuclear attack.” In Dhaka, where soldiers set sections of the Old City ablaze with flamethrowers and then machine-gunned thousands as they tried to escape the cordon of fire, nearly 25 blocks have been bulldozed clear, leaving open areas set incongruously amid jam-packed slums. For the benefit of foreign visitors, the army has patched up many shell holes in the walls of Dhaka University, where hundreds of students were killed.

The article goes on:

Commented one high U.S. official last week: “It is the most incredible, calculated thing since the days of the Nazis in Poland.”

Bangladesh must travel a long road before it can reconcile with the ghosts of its creation, but at least, four decades on, it is finally, imperfectly, taking those first steps.

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