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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Has Bangladesh's creation benefited India strategically?

Has India's role in the creation of Bangladesh 40 years ago benefited this country strategically? The poser, at a seminar here Wednesday, produced a rather iffy answer: The strategic environment will flow from the geopolitics of the region.

 "Can (Bangladesh Prime Minister) Sheikh Hasina carry the people and the army for another term? On this will depend the geopolitics of the region. An improved strategic environment would flow from this," noted security expert Maj. Gen. (retd) Ashok Mehta said.

He was participating in the question-nswer session at the seminar "1971 War: India's Greatest Victory" organised by the Indian Army funded think tank Centre for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS).

Mehta had earlier spoken on "Military Lessons Learnt" from the Indian Army operation that ended Dec 16, 1971, with the surrender of 93,000 troops in what was then East Pakistan and the creation of an independent Bangladesh.

"There was the question of 10 million refugees (who had poured into India after the military crackdown in East Pakistan in March 1971). What was the option? Initially it was a limited military solution of creating enclaves along the border with India to house the refugees and an interim Bangladesh government," Mehta said.

"But, as other elements began to coalesce, it was hoped the creation of Bangladesh would secure India's eastern flank from the hotbed of sanctuaries (that existed along India's northeastern states). That did not happen for several years. Sheikh Mujib (who mentored the Bangladesh freedom movement) left the scene early (being assassinated in 1975). Frequent regime changes compounded the problem," Mehta said.

"Now, the situation has changed. Our commandos are conducting joint exercises. The Bangladesh Army chief took the salute at the NDA (National Defence Academy) passing out parade. ULFA (United Liberation Front of Asom) insurgents are being deported. What was originally envisaged can happen if Sheikh Hasina can carry the people and the army for another term," Mehta maintained.

In all this, what was left unsaid was that the government has studiously refrained from celebrating the 40th anniversary of the end of the war, the last full-blown conflict the Indian Army has been involved in.

There was, however, a reference to the 25th anniversary of the surrender in 1996 and former Indian Army chief Gen. V.P. Malik, who chaired the seminar, lamented that it too had not been celebrated.

"The raksha mantri (defence minister) had agreed that the 25th anniversary would be celebrated but then there was nothing from the government. At a meeting with the three service chiefs, the cabinet secretary asked: 'Why do you want to celebrate? What do you wish to achieve?' He was told: 'Because India has never won such a victory for centuries. Strategy will change but military history will not.' All this cut no ice," Malik said.

So, what were the lessons learnt from the war and where do we stand today?

Mehta painted a rather horrific picture.

"The civil-military relations, which were at their peak in 1971, are down in the dumps. Inter-services cooperation was at its peak. Today, there is no integration despite the (creation of the) IDS (Headquarters, Integrated Defence Staff. I can't get the three chiefs to sit for one (TV programme). So much for integration," he noted.

"The modernisation process is pathetic. The measures suggested in 1986-87 by the Defence Planning Staff (created for the first time) are only now being implemented. Of the 114 recommendations in the Kargil report, only 67 have been implemented, partly implemented or are likely to be implemented. The key recommendations are not even being considered," Mehta added.

The report was formulated after the 1999 Kargil conflict when the Indian Army went into action to evict Pakistani Army intruders who had occupied the icy heights in Jammu and Kashmir. At the centre of the report is the recommendation for creating a Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) to serve as a single point of reference between the three services and the defence ministry.

Eleven years after the report was submitted in 2000, the government says the CDS can be created only after consensus on this is built among all political parties.

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US promised India help if China attacked during 1971 Indo-Pak war

Despite its intense animosity towards India during the 1971 war, the US promised New Delhi "all out" support in case China carried out any unprovoked attack on India, recently declassified documents reveal 40 years after the historic war that created Bangladesh. 

The revelations add fresh twist to the narrative of the Indo-Pak war of 1971. Based on a set of freshly declassified documents of the ministry of external affairs, TOI had in early November reported that the US hostility towards India during the 1971 war was far beyond what was publicly known. And that the US had probably also prepared a few Marine battalions for operations against the Indian military.

Communications of the Indian embassy in Washington and of the government in New Delhi show that US offered "all out" help if China were to enter the Indo-Pak standoff to favour its all-weather friend.

After a meeting with Henry Kissinger, then adviser to President Richard Nixon, on August 25, 1971, Indian ambassador to the US L K Jha reported to New Delhi, "He said that in a 1962 type of situation, US will not hesitate to give all out help to India against China, and there is no change of position on this." Kissinger was referring to the military conflict between India and China in 1962 in which India was humiliated.

A few weeks before this meeting, during a visit to New Delhi, Kissinger told then defence minister Jagjivan Ram, "I might tell you that we would take a very grave view of any Chinese move against India."

Ambassador Jha had spent three hours with Kissinger in San Clemente White House, the vacation home of Nixon, on August 25, as tension mounted in South Asia. They discussed details of issues that could crop up in an upcoming meeting between then PM Indira Gandhi and Nixon.

But "in this one (letter to foreign secretary T N Kaul), I am dealing with one specific point relating to the US attitude in the event of China joining on the side of Pakistan in a conflict with us", the ambassador wrote. Discussions with Kissinger on possible Chinese aggression were prompted by queries from New Delhi, the letter shows. New Delhi was worried that China could open a second front against India, even as it fought Pakistan. Such a collaboration between China and Pakistan still remains a worry for the Indian security establishment.

"Then I asked that in order to be quite clear and free from any ambiguity or doubt, I would welcome a fuller formulation from him of the US position in case we are involved in any kind of a conflict with China." In response, Kissinger offered "all out" help in case of a 1962 type situation. Then he went on to discuss other possible scenarios.

"If it was a 1965 type of Pakistani attack, then even without Chinese involvement, US would take the toughest measures against Pakistan, and if China came to its help, it would not hesitate to help us with arms, though not with men," Jha wrote. The situation Kissinger referred was an unprovoked Pakistani aggression.

"However, the chances were that if the present situation escalates into a conflict, it would be very hard to tell who is to blame. Thus, if India sent two divisions of irregulars into East Bengal and Pakistanis sent four such divisions into Kashmir, it would not be a situation in which the US could possibly help even if China threw its weight on the side of Pakistan," Kissinger told Jha, according to the ambassador's letter.

This letter from the Indian ambassador was seen by the foreign minister, the secretary to the prime minister and most other senior officials.

 

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