The following article is from Nitin pai's work , the 1971 East
pakistan genocide- A realist perspective.
It is a well written article but unfortunately not one without bias.
As far as the author himself is concerned i am not aware of any
affiliations of the author or have any reason to doubt his
neutrality. If any alochoks have any information as to the background
and activities of the author I feel it would be most welcomed to come
and share such views. i would request the readers of the article to
cross-check the refferences provided by the author if he or she has
any reason to doubt the sources of the undermentioned article.
The 1971 East Pakistan Genocide - A Realist Perspective
Nitin Pai
The genocide in East Pakistan was perhaps
among the few that did not come as a surprise,
not least to the victims. It accompanied the birth
of a new nation leaving horrible birthmarks that
disfigure Bangladeshi society to this day.
Bangladesh in 1971 was the site of multiple
conflicts: a civil war between the the two wings
of Pakistan, communal violence between
Bengalis and non-Bengalis, a genocide, an
guerilla war, a conventional war and a countergenocide.
In each of these conflicts perpetrators,
victims and onlookers often exchanged roles. A
total study of the conflict is beyond the scope of
this essay. This essay examines the causes,
course and results of one sub-conflict—the
genocide against Bengalis by the West Pakistani
army—and attempts to explain it through a
Realist perspective.
Kill three million of them and the rest will eat
out of our hands - General Yahya Khan1
"We have to sort them out to restore the land
to the people and the people to their Faith" - Colonel
Naim, 9th Division HQ, Pakistan Army2
...the jawan (snatched) away his lungi. The
skinny body that was bared revealed the distinctive
traces of circumcision, which was obligatory for
Muslims. At least it could be seen that Bari was not
a Hindu.(3)
Pakistan 1971, Sturm und Drang :-
Tropical Cyclone Bhola, a category 3
storm, made landfall on the East Pakistan
coastline on November 12, 1970. It claimed
between 250,000 to 500,000 lives4. It also set off a
chain of events that would result in a genocide,
another war between India and Pakistan, the
birth of a new state and the death of an old
theory.
Unequal halves:-
By 1970, the uneasy relationship between Pakistan's
two geographically-separated wings was under
severe strain. The poorer, more populous,
Bengali-speaking East Pakistan came to realise
that it was effectively a colony of the richer,
Punjabi-dominated West Pakistan. The ruling
civilian and military elite belonged to the West,
as did the top business families(5). While the bulk
of the country's foreign exchange earnings came
from the export of jute from the East Pakistan, it
received only a third of the money spent on
development projects(6). Moreover, more than
two decades of co-habitation had not
diminished the condescending attitudes that the
West Pakistanis had for their Bengali
compatriots—the latter were seen as "low lying
people of a low lying land"(7) whose commitment
to Pakistan was polluted by Hindu culture and a
large Hindu minority(8).
Some scholars have argued that by 1970,
Pakistan's ruling elite had come to realise that
the east wing was about to become a drain on
the economy: jute export revenues were
declining and the economy hadn't diversified
beyond agriculture. Also while the doctrine "the
______________________________________________________________________
© Copyright 2008. The Acorn | The Indian National Interest.
[http://acorn.nationalinterest.in]
(1) Robert Payne, Massacre, (New York: Macmillan 1973)
(2) Anthony Mascarenhas, `Genocide'
(3) Ibid.
(4) Donald Beachler, `The politics of genocide scholarship: the case
of Bangladesh', Patterns of Prejudice, Vol. 41, No. 5, December 2007,
467-492
(5) Ibid.
(6) Anthony Mascarenhas, The Rape of Bangla Desh, (New Delhi: Vikas
Publications 1971) quoted in Beachler, `The politics of genocide
scholarship:
the case of Bangladesh'
(7) This remark is attributed to Lt-Gen AAK Niazi, in Gendercide
Watch, `Case Study: Genocide in Bangladesh, 1971',
http://www.gendercide.org/
case_bangladesh.html, accessed on April 9th, 2008
(8) Philip Oldenburg, `"A Place Insufficiently Imagined": Language,
Belief and the Pakistan Crisis of 1971', Journal of Asian Studies,
Vol. XLIV, No. 4,
August 1985, 711-730
______________________________________________________________________
defence of the East lies in the West" allowed
Pakistan to devote a relatively small proportion
of its military resources directly defending the
east wing from an Indian invasion, the military
government was aware that stationing and
supplying forces there was likely to pose a
heavy financial burden in the long term(9).
An elusive transition. It was in the context
of these deepening rifts that General Yahya
Khan, the president of Pakistan's military
government, announced elections to the
national assembly that would herald the
country's transition to democracy. In mid-1970,
it was expected that a government dominated
by political parties from the west wing would be
in place, in all likelihood with Zulfikar Ali
Bhutto, the leader of the left-leaning Pakistan
People's Party (PPP) as prime minister. Mujibur
Rahman's Awami League was expected to do
well in East Pakistan.
Bhola struck after elections had been
announced but before the scheduled elections
on December 7th, 1970. The government's slow
and lacklustre relief efforts to one of the
country's worst calamities in decades further
alienated the Bengalis(10). The result was a
overwhelming wave of support for Mujib's
Awami League which had made the battle for
provincial autonomy the central plank of its
political agenda. In the event, the elections
resulted in a overall majority for the Awami
League in the national assembly(11), giving it the
power to execute its promise of securing
autonomy for East Pakistan. Seeing his political
ambitions at the risk of being washed away,
Bhutto precipitated a political crisis by refusing
to attend the national assembly session. General
Yahya postponed the session that had been set
for March 3rd, 1971, setting off protests and riots
in East Pakistan12. On March 7th, Mujib spoke at
a public meeting called for substantive
autonomy but stopped short of advocating
secession. He also called for civil disobedience
and non co-operation to protest against the
postponement (and feared cancellation) of the
national assembly session.
While hartals were widely observed,
disrupting normal life, the protests were not
peaceful. There were cases of security forces
firing on protesters and also violent riots
between Bengalis and non-Bengalis(13).
West Pakistani soldiers from the Pakistan army
were subjected to insult, economic boycotts and
in some cases fatal attacks(14).
Military moves. While the army did not
respond to these attacks on its personnel, it is
likely that the military leadership had already
decided on a brutal military course to suppress
Bengali moves towards secession. Lieutenant-
General Tikka Khan replaced Admiral Syed
Mohammed Ahsan as the military governor of
East Pakistan. Lieutenant General A A K Niazi
took over as military commander from the
conscientious Lieutenant-General Sahibzada
Yaqub Khan. While General Yahya and Bhutto
flew to Dhaka to negotiate with Mujib, the army
sent reinforcements to its eastern wing. India
had cut off overflight rights, as a result of which
troops were moved by air and sea (via Sri
Lanka). At least 10,000 additional West Pakistani
troops were moved to Dhaka between February
and March bringing (non-Bengali) troop
strength to around 30,000(15). A number of tanks
were moved from Rangpur on the Indian
border, to Dhaka. This led Sydney Schanberg, an
American journalist, to conclude that "the
negotiations were merely a smokescreen to buy
time until enough troops had been brought in to launch the attack.
" The army attacked on March 25th(16) and Mujib declared
independence for Bangla Desh soon after. The genocide had
started.
______________________________________________________________________
(9) Field Marshall Ayub Khan, quoted in Oldenburg, `"A Place
Insufficiently Imagined": Language, Belief and the Pakistan Crisis of
1971'
(10) Sydney H. Schanberg, `Pakistan Divided', Foreign Affairs, Vol.
50, No. 1, October 1971
(11) It won 167 of the 313 seats
(12) Beachler, `The politics of genocide scholarship: the case of
Bangladesh'
(13) Oldenburg, `"A Place Insufficiently Imagined": Language, Belief
and the Pakistan Crisis of 1971'
(14) Anthony Mascarenhas, `Genocide', The Sunday Times, June 13th 1971
(15) Estimated from the troop numbers cited by US officials between
the beginning and the end of March 1971. See Foreign Relations of the
United States (FRUS), 1969-1976, South Asia Crisis, 1971, Volume XI,
(Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office), 2005
______________________________________________________________________
Terror as an instrument of policy:-
A whiff of gunpowder would overawe the
meek Bengalis(17). Why did the military
government decide to use firepower against its
Bengali citizens? Firstly, it was faced with a
scenario where, at best, the government would
fall into Bengali hands, and at worst, would lead
to a break-up of the country. General Yahya and
the more hardline members of the army's top
leadership decided to terrorise the east wing
into submission. Even if they had wanted to, it
would have been almost impossible for the
army to control a hostile population of 75
million Bengalis using gentler tactics. Instead,
they calculated that the Bengalis, who they saw
as weak, non-martial and cowardly would give
up their rebellion out of fear.
Hinduphobia. Secondly, the military
leadership saw a need to destroy what it saw as
the pernicious Hindu influence over Bengali
society that had both corrupted Bengali
Muslims and fuelled secessionist impulses (and
also acted as a fifth column for India). They
calculated that purifying East Pakistan, by
cleansing the population of the Hindus, by
killing them or forcing them to neighbouring
India, would supplant its Bengali national
identity with an Islamic one(18).
Perpetrators. The West Pakistani army was
the principal perpetrator of the Bengali
genocide. In addition to regular soldiers and
paramilitary troops, the military government
also constituted razakars, or armed militias from
among the Bihari and Bengali citizens. The two
main groups—Al Badr and Al Shams—would
later gain considerable notoriety, not least for
the killing of around a 1000 intellectuals
towards the end of the war in early-December
1971. In addition, a large number of people
acted as informers and collaborators—either
voluntarily or out of coercion.
Who were the victims? The army set out to
exterminate not only those Bengalis who, in its
view, had the intention to move the east wing
towards secession, but also those who had the
capacity. In other words, both existing and
potential votaries of Bangla Desh were targets
for killing(19). The first category included Awami
League members and supporters, including
Bengali intellectuals, university students, the
urban poor. Also in this category was the Hindu
minority20 (around 10 million in number).
Among those in the second category were
Bengali members of the armed forces and police
who were automatically marked out as targets
despite having loyally served Pakistan. This
category came to include young men who were
seen as potential recruits for the insurgent
groups fighting Pakistani rule.
While all Hindus were killed, lives of
Muslim women and children were generally
spared. But rape was commonplace, and both
Hindu and Muslim women were subjected to
sexual violence by soldiers and razakars21.
The course of genocide
Three phases are discernible in the
pattern of genocide between March 25th and
December 16th, with an additional "countergenocide"
after the Pakistani military
surrender(22).
Searchlight.
______________________________________________________________________
(16) It has been argued that the military operations started on March
23rd, two days before the Yahya-Mujib talks ended in failure. See
Sujan Singh
Uban, Phantoms of Chittagong: The "Fifth Army" in Bangladesh (New
Delhi: Allied Publications 1985)
(17) Stephen P Cohen, The Idea of Pakistan, (Washington, DC:
Brookings 2004)
(18) Ibid.
(19) Anthony Mascarenhas, The Rape of Bangla Desh, 116-117
(20) Beachler, `The politics of genocide scholarship: the case of
Bangladesh'
(21) Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape (New
York: Simon & Schuster 1975)
(22) Beachler, `The politics of genocide scholarship: the case of
Bangladesh'
______________________________________________________________________
The first phase, started with
Operation Searchlight on March 25th and
extended into the middle of May. It involved a
massive operation by the Pakistan army against
its targets, with little organised Bengali armed
resistance. For instance, tanks and heavy
artillery were used against population centres of
Dhaka. Entire neighbourhoods were set on fire,
and those seeking to escape were gunned down.
Dhaka university was the site of a large number
of killings. While many of the operations were
focused around Hindus, the pattern of killings
was indiscriminate. There were pre-emptive
killings of Bengali police and paramilitary
personnel who were massacred in their
thousands. The death toll in Dhaka in the week
alone was 30,000(23). The pattern was repeated in
urban areas across Bangladesh, causing people
to flee to the countryside and to India. By mid-
May, the Pakistan army controlled the towns
and cities. Villages remained as "liberated
areas"(24).
"Search and destroy".
The second phase,from mid-May to early October.
the Bengali resistance under the banner of Mukti
Bahini was better organised and received training,
equipment and shelter in neighbouring India.
In a guerilla campaign, it targeted the army's
supply routes and carried out raids on targets of
opportunity. It enjoyed popular support among
the local population and used its superior
knowledge of the local terrain to deny the army
a chance to dominate the countryside.
Consequently, the army carried its genocidal
tactics to its counter-insurgency campaign.
The army carried out "search and
destroy" operations in the countryside—
essentially burning down entire villages on the
hint of a suspicion of their aiding rebel fighters,
or as a deterrent. Women were special targets
during this phase. A large number were the
victims of "hit-and-run" rape, often carried out
in view of their male family members (who
were subsequently killed). A relatively smaller
number were taken away and kept in captivity
as sex-slaves. Most estimates put the number of
rape victims as being around 200,000 to
400,000(25). The refugee crisis worsened and
around 30,000 to 50,000 refugees were crossing
the border into India each day.
"Scorched Earth". The final phase, from
October to December 16th, saw the outbreak of
war between India and Pakistan and ended with
the surrender of the Pakistan army's eastern
command, under Gen Niazi, to a joint India-
Bangla Desh forces under Lieutenant-General
Jagjit Singh Aurora. It also saw a final bout of
targeted killings of intellectuals: university
professors, doctors, lawyers, engineers and
other professionals, at the hands of the Pakistan
army and the razakars. Around 1000 intellectuals
were killed in Dhaka, two days before the
Pakistani surrender, in what might have been a
kind of "scorched earth policy", the objective of
which is hard to discern.
It is generally believed that these killings
were carried out to destroy the most valuable
human capital that the new nation needed. But
it was a lightning war, and while Gen Niazi and
his troops in the eastern command were aware
that their own position was increasingly
hopeless, it is possible that they continued to
believe that Pakistan would get a upper hand on
the western front, and force a overall stalemate.
In the event, Pakistan did not launch an
all-out war againt India, preferring to end the
war with the fall of Dhaka(26), and electing to not
further risk West Pakistan from being overrun
by the Indian army(27).
______________________________________________________________________
(23) Gendercide Watch, `Case Study: Genocide in Bangladesh, 1971'
(24) Rounaq Jahan, `The Bangladesh Genocide', in Samuel Totten (ed),
Teaching about Genocide: Issues Approaches and Resources,
(Information Age
Publishing 2004), 143-153
(25) Sarmila Bose argues that figures of raped women have been
grossly exaggerated. See Sarmila Bose, `Losing the Victims: Problems
of Using women as Weapons in Recounting the Bangladesh War', Economic
and Political Weekly, September 22, 2007. However, the case-study
based extrapolation method she uses is questionable in the particular
socio-economic context, where there is likely to be a reluctance by
victims to admit being raped, more than 35 years after the event.
Bose's reliance on Pakistani military sources diminishes the
credibility of her conclusions.
(26) Owen Bennett Jones, Pakistan: Eye of the Storm, (New Haven: Yale
University Press 2003) 146-186
(27) AAK Niazi, in an interview with Hamid Mir, Rediff.com, February
2nd 2004, http://www.rediff.com/news/2004/feb/02inter1.htm accessed on
March 6th 2008
______________________________________________________________________
Vengeance:-
The Pakistani surrender was
followed by widespread reprisals against
Biharis and those that the Bengalis saw as
collaborators. The Indian Army's attempt to
protect the Bihari population from the wrath of
the Bangladeshis could not prevent the killing of
around 150,000 people28. Many thousands were
interned in camps ahead of their expulsion to
(West) Pakistan. On the one hand Mukti Bahini
forces exacted vengeance against razakars and
collaborators, including Bengali men in the rural
areas. On the other the popular resentment over
the role of pro-Pakistan elements took the shape
of inter-ethnic communal riots of which Biharis
bore the brunt.
It was genocide:-
Was it genocide? In sharp contrast to other
conflicts of the late-20th century, the mass
killings in East Pakistan were labelled as
"genocide" fairly early and received
considerable coverage in the international
media.
Bad portents.
In fact, perhaps because the intentions of the military
leadership was notentirely a secret in February 1971,
Forum, a Dhaka-based weekly magazine had called
attention to the threat of genocide as early as
March 6th and also on March 20th, before the
army began Operation Searchlight29. On March
11th, Mujib himself publicly warned U Thant30,
the United Nations secretary-general, that
"threat that is now held out is that of genocide
and the denial of the fundamental human
rights".
Well covered:-
Despite the media censorship
and expulsion of foreign journalists, the story of
mass-murders in East Pakistan was extensively
covered in the international media31. On June
13th, the UK's Sunday Times published a frontpage
story on the killings in Bangladesh under a
one-word headline, "Genocide". It provided a
graphic account of the mass killings of Bengalis
by the army(32).
Diplomatic dissent. As early as April 6th,
two weeks after Operation Searchlight started, US
foreign service officers covering South Asia, in a
dissenting note (which has come to be called the
"Blood telegram" after Archer Blood, the US
consul-general in Dhaka) argued that "the
overworked term genocide is applicable" in the
East Pakistan(33). This was repeated by Kenneth
Keating, US ambassador to India, in his meeting
with President Nixon on June 15th(34). As
diplomats they were undoubtedly familiar with
the definition of genocide under the 1948 UN
Convention on the Punishment and Prevention
of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide
Convention). Despite the United States not
having ratified the Genocide Convention at that
time, they would have been aware that the term
genocide would place specific obligations on the
international community to take action to
prevent and suppress the genocide. It is unlikely
that they would have used the term lightly.
Their view was corroborated by eyewitness
accounts of American evacuees that appeared in
the Western media.
Indian voices:-
The Indian government too described the events in East
Pakistan as genocide. In late-July, Foreign Minister
Sardar Swaran Singh(35) accused the US of condoning
genocide by continuing military shipments to
Pakistan. Finally, in her letter to President Nixon
on December 5th, following India's declaration
of war against Pakistan, Prime Minister Indira
______________________________________________________________________
(28) Gendercide Watch, `Case Study: Genocide in Bangladesh, 1971'
(29) Rehman Sobhan's essays reprinted in `Countdown to Freedom',
Forum, Vol. 3, No.3, March 2008
(30) `Threat of denial of human rights to Bengalees, Mujib tells
Thant', Daily Morning News, March 11th 1971
(31) Michael Stohl, `Outside of a Small Circle of Friends: States,
Genocide, Mass Killing and The Role of Bystanders', Journal of Peace
Research, Vol. 24,
No. 2, 1987
(32) Anthony Mascarenhas, `Genocide'. UK's Sunday Times published
this report after Anthony Mascarenhas, the Pakistani journalist who
filed the
report had escaped to the UK along with his family.
(33) Document 19, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969-
1976, South Asia Crisis, 1971, Volume XI, (Washington, DC: US
Government
Printing Office), 2005, 74. Blood was replaced soon after.
(34) Document 72. Ibid., 210
(35) Pakistan: The Ravaging of Golden Bengal, TIME, August 2nd, 1971
______________________________________________________________________
Gandhi described Pakistan's "repressive, brutal
and colonial policy" as having culminated in
"genocide and massive violence"(36).
Denial. The government of Pakistan
explicitly denied that there was genocide. By
their refusal to characterise the mass-killings as
genocide or to condemn and restrain the
Pakistani government, the US and Chinese
governments implied that they did not consider
it so. In his memoirs, Henry Kissinger, who was
President Nixon's national security advisor in
1971, stops short of using the term(37). According
to him, Pakistan "had unquestionably acted
unwisely, brutally and even immorally, though
on a matter which under international law was
clearly under its jurisdiction". As we shall
discuss later, given their interests, none of these
three governments—and their officials who
were in charge of making decisions at that time
—can be expected to accept the charges of
genocide.
Scholarly disputation. Among scholars, the
main arguments against describing the events of
1971 as genocide came from Richard Sisson and
Leo E Rose in 1990. But as Donald Beachler
argues38, the evidence for their assertion comes
from interviews with Pakistani officers involved
in Operation Searchlight and a reference to a
book by Brigadier Siddiq Salik, the public
relations officer of the Pakistan army's eastern
command in Dhaka. More recently in 2005,
Sarmila Bose argued39 that "unsubstantiated
sensationalism" marred systematic historical
record-keeping in Bangladesh, and an
"unhealthy victim culture...and people are
instigated at the national level to engage in
ghoulish competition with six million Jews in
order to gain international attention". Motivated
by her objectives to move Bangladesh and
Pakistan towards reconciliation, Bose assigns a
broad moral equivalence between the various
parties claiming that "the civil war of 1971 was
fought between those who believed that they
were fighting for a united Pakistan and those
who believed...in an independent Bangladesh.
Both were legitimate political positions".
Bose's arguments suffer from several
weaknesses. First, they ignore the
overwhelming body of evidence of the military
government's use of mass-killings as a
deliberate strategy to bring the Bengalis to heel.
Diplomatic cables, newspaper reports,
eyewitness accounts of refugees and foreign
evacuees offer unimpeachable evidence of
genocide. An investigation in 1972 by the
International Commission of Jurists determined
that genocide was indeed the case40.
What is in question is the death toll—
between the much quoted figure of 3 million
dead, 30 million displaced and half-a-million
women raped (most Bangladeshi accounts) and
an unlikely figure of 36,000 dead and a few
hundreds raped (according to Bose and most
Pakistani accounts)(41)(42). Indeed, had India not
intervened in the conflict—first by supporting
the Mukti Bahini insurgency and followed by a
full-scale invasion—the death tolls might well
have been higher.
Bose does not offer convincing arguments
why the `unhealthy' victim culture should cause
one to ignore the body of evidence, comprising
of historical accounts from non-Bangladeshi
sources, that suggests that Bengalis were indeed
victims of genocide. That the genocide took
place in a context of civil war, communal riots
(which include instances where Bengalis did the
killing) and counter-genocide, should neither
mitigate nor detract us from the fundamental
______________________________________________________________________
(36) Document 226. FRUS, Volume XI, 629
(37) Henry Kissinger, The White House Years, (Boston: Little, Brown
1979), 854
(38) Beachler, `The politics of genocide scholarship: the case of
Bangladesh'
(39) Sarmila Bose, `Anatomy of Violence: Analysis of Civil War in
East Pakistan', Economic and Political Weekly, October 8th, 2005,
4463-4470
(40) Beachler, `The politics of genocide scholarship: the case of
Bangladesh'
(41) Kalyan Chaudhuri estimates that the number of Bengalis killed
was at least 1,247,000 from newspaper accounts and government reports
of the time. R J Rummel's analytical estimate of the number is 1.5
million. See Kalyan Chaudhuri, Genocide in Bangladesh (Bombay: Orient
Longman 1972)and R J Rummel, Death by Government, (New Brunswick, NJ:
Transaction Publishers 1997)
(42) Gendercide Watch, `Case Study: Genocide in Bangladesh, 1971'
______________________________________________________________________
conclusion that casts the Pakistan army as guilty
of perpetrating genocide. Legitimacy of political
positions is not a valid reason under the
Genocide Convention to explain away the
actions of the Pakistani government.
It was genocide. Beachler uses Robert
Melson's definition of partial genocide 43 to
argue that "there was no attempt to eliminate
the entire population of East Pakistan". While
this is accurate if Bengalis as a whole are taken
as the targeted group, it can be argued that the
genocide was total with respect to East Bengali
Hindus: around 70% of the 10 million refugees
in India were Bengali Hindus. In other words
around 70% of East Pakistan's Hindu
population (of about 10 million) had been
expelled. If the result of the India-Pakistan war
had been otherwise, and the refugees prevented
from returning to their homes, the military
establishment would have succeeded in its
project to cleanse its eastern wing.
A Realist explanation :-
An excuse for non-intervention? The Realist
school of international relations defines
"national interests" of states as their survival
and security. Realists argue that the
international system is anarchic, and, lacking a
world government, sovereign states act to
further their national interests by maximising
their own power relative to others. States strive
for and are sensitive to the stability of the
balance of power. Moral issues like
humanitarian intervention are contingent upon
their being in the national interests of foreign
players. Practitioners do not openly accept it,
but states champion ideological and
humanitarian causes to the extent they serve to
preserve the balance of power or change it to a
more advantageous positions.
In A Problem from Hell, Samantha Power
indicts the realist underpinnings of US foreign
policy for its indirect complicity or reluctance to
intervene in several 20th century genocides—
including those in Cambodia, Rwanda and
Bosnia(44).
While that may indeed be the case, the
events in East Pakistan between 1970, when
Bhola struck, to 1974, when India, Pakistan and
Bangladesh arrived at a tripartite agreement to
close outstanding issues, present an interesting
case of how realpolitik considerations of the
states involved explain why genocide was
carried out with impunity, why it was permitted
by international players, why it was halted by
the Indian intervention and why the
perpetrators were never punished. The purpose
of this section is not normative discussion to
study how genocides may be prevented, but
rather an attempt to explain the role of Realist
foreign policies of states during the episode.
A Cold War story. In 1971, the United
States and Pakistan were in the same Cold War
camp. In addition to formal security alliances in
the form of CENTO and SEATO, Pakistan was
set to play an important role in stitching up a
geopolitical alignment between its two main
allies, the United States and China, who were
not on talking terms at that time. The United
States under President Nixon and Henry
Kissinger, his national security advisor, saw a
chance to seize the geopolitical advantage by
reaching out to Communist China. Pakistan's
military regime saw this as an opportunity to
create obligations for itself in Washington and
Beijing. The personal friendship between
President Nixon and General Yahya (mirrored
by the personal animosity between the US
president and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi)
reinforced how the Nixon White House saw its
interests in South Asia.
India was officially non-aligned but
increasingly reliant on the Soviet Union for
military and diplomatic support perceived both
Pakistan and China as potential adversaries. At
a popular level, India and the United States saw
each other in positive light, but this did not
translate into the geopolitical domain.
______________________________________________________________________
(43) Melson defines partial genocide as "mass murder in order to
coerce and to alter the identity and politics of the group, not to
destroy it". See Robert Melson, `Modern genocide in Rwanda: ideology,
revolution, war and mass murder in an African state', in Robert
Gellately and Ben Kiernan (eds), The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder
in Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2003)
(44) Samantha Power, "A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of
Genocide", (New York: HarperCollins 2003)
______________________________________________________________________
Pakistani calculations.
The military government saw in the East Pakistan
crisis a direct risk to its territorial integrity
and indeed its survival as a state. It feared that
India's intentions to dismember Pakistan would not
stop with East Pakistan, but would extend to the
western wing as well. But it could not afford to
station the 300,000 troops that Gen Niazi later
claimed45 were necessary to pacify East
Pakistan, without dangerously jeopardising the
military balance on the western front. Knowing
that it could rely on the United States and China
to remain silent, if not lend their support, the
military government calculated that the best
chance it had to keep the country united, and
dominated by the western wing, was to unleash
a reign of terror. As indicated by the Realist
view, Pakistan did what it thought it could get
away with. In General Yahya's view, the
genocide of Bengalis in East Pakistan was in
Pakistan's national interest.
America condoned. As the documentary
record shows, the Nixon administration viewed
the conflict in Pakistan entirely through the
Cold War prism. It felt that the emergence of an
independent Bangladesh would swing the
balance of power decisively in India's (and
thereby the Soviet Union's) favour. He believed
that the victory of India over Pakistan was the
same as the victory of the Soviet Union over
China. In the middle of the crisis, in July 1971,
Pakistan arranged for Henry Kissinger's secret
trip to Beijing, cementing its position as a key
channel of communication between the United
States and China. US foreign policy, therefore,
famously "tilted" towards Pakistan.
The tilted game. The tilt was manifested in
a stubborn refusal to condemn General Yahya's
regime for its brazen violation of human rights,
covert attempts to split the Awami League-led
rebel government, dubious arms transfers,
redirection of US-made fighter aircraft to
Pakistan through Iran and Jordan, and finally
the dispatch of a aircraft carrier task force into
the Bay of Bengal during the India-Pakistan war
in December. Foreign Minister Swaran Singh
was not far off the mark when he accused the
United States of condoning the genocide. There
was also widespread domestic criticism in the
United States. Kissinger himself justifies the
Nixon administration's policy as resulting from
being "torn between conflicting imperatives".
Christopher Hitchens, a contemporary critic,
argues that the need for secret diplomacy with
Beijing was mainly dictated by domestic politics
and that even so, an alternative route to China
existed through Nicolae Ceausescu, the
Romanian dictator(46).
Indian calculations. India was opposed to
East Bengal's secession as late as March 1971(47),
fearing that Bengali nationalism could raise the
banner of secession in its own state of West
Bengal. The Indian government feared that a
war with Pakistan would also involve China
and a three-front war which it could not win. In
this context, India's initial approach up to April
1971 was to avoid direct intervention to prevent
the genocide.
Refugee crisis:-
It was only when the influx of refugees threatened
to place the Indian government's finances at risk and
precipitate a demographic change in the sensitive
North East of the country that India's attitude changed.
The concern was no longer a theoretical risk of West
Bengal seceding. It was an immediate and
growing threat to India's own security. Seeing
that intervention would be necessary and
another war with Pakistan was imminent, the
Indian government proceeded to court the
Soviet Union for a security guarantee that
would prevent China's entry into the war in
support of Pakistan. The Indian army was
unwilling to intervene until it was fully
prepared and certainly not until after the
monsoon. From May to early December, India
extended diplomatic support to the rebel
Bangladesh government, armed and trained
Mukti Bahini fighters and conducted covert
operations against Pakistani forces in East
Bengal.
______________________________________________________________________
(45) AAK Niazi's interview with Hamid Mir, 2004
(46) Christopher Hitchens, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, (London:
Verso 2001), 44-54
(47) Documents from March and April 1971, FRUS, Vol XI
______________________________________________________________________
India prepares for war:-
By November, India had concluded a mutual
security treaty with the Soviet Union, the Mukti
Bahini supported had weakened Pakistani army
positions in East Bengal, and its own armed
forces were prepared to go to war. The
opportunity came when General Yahya ordered
pre-emptive strikes on Indian airfields along the
western border on December 3rd. The war
lasted for two weeks, and ended with the
Pakistani surrender to joint India-Bangladesh
forces on December 16th. A case can be made
therefore, that India was led to intervene in East
Bengal more to protect its own interests than out
of humanitarian concern for the Bengalis.
Further, it could only intervene because it was
successful in creating a balance of power that
allowed it.
The UN failed:-
All through the conflict, the United Nations was
spectacularly ineffective in preventing the genocide.
The events in the subcontinent were predominantly
shaped by the interests and the actions of the
great powers. On December 7th, soon after the
outbreak of war, the UN General Assembly voted 104 to 11
against (with 10 abstentions) "calling for an
immediate cease-fire and withdrawal of troops.
The overwhelming vote reflected the opposition
by most states to the secession of Bangladesh
from Pakistan and India's armed intervention.
Many of them were no doubt anxious to
discourage dissident minorities in their own
states from taking the same course."(48)
Bangladeshi calculations:-
At the end of the war India took over 90,000
Pakistani soldiers as prisoners of war. Bangladesh
had around 600,000 non-Bengalis of which it wanted to
expel 260,000 to Pakistan. Pakistan had detained
over 400,000 Bengalis which it wanted to
repatriate to the newly created republic of
Bangladesh49. Given the circumstances
surrounding its creation, Pakistan, China, the
United States and the Islamic countries were
unwilling to recognise Bangladesh. Pakistan's
recognition became crucial for the new nation to
gain international recognition. Bhutto, who had
succeeded General Yahya as president wanted
to secure the return of Pakistani territory and
prisoners of war and also to avoid Pakistani
army officials from being put on trial for war
crimes in Bangladesh. India determined to use
its military victory over Pakistan to settle its
outstanding disputes with Pakistan, including
the territorial dispute over Kashmir. Although
the Simla Agreement of 1972 decided on the
contours of a settlement, the negotiations over
the POWs and exchange of populations dragged
on until August 1973.
Bangladesh's new government acutely
felt the need for international recognition, not
least because it was substantially dependent on
foreign aid. In a grand tri-partite bargain, the
three countries decided that India would release
the POWs, Pakistan would recognise
Bangladesh, repatriate the Bengalis on its
territory and admit a number of Biharis.
Bangladesh, which had by then reduced the
number of Pakistanis it wanted to put on trial
for war crimes from 1500 to 195, agreed to drop
its demands entirely. It was realpolitik that
struck the final blow in the East Pakistan
genocide by allowing the key perpetrators to
escape trial and punishment.
In the shadow of the tragedy
The Hamoodur Rahman commission,
tasked by the Bhutto government to investigate
Pakistan's military collapsed exonerated key
players in the genocide, including Gen Tikka
Khan, who came to be called the "Butcher of
Dhaka" for his role in Operation Searchlight,
and Gen Rao Farman Ali(50), the military
commander of Dhaka accused of ordering the
killings of Bengali intellectuals in the closing
days of the war. After the violent reprisals in the
immediate aftermath of the war, Bangladesh did
______________________________________________________________________
(48) International Commission of Jurists, The Events in East
Pakistan, 1971, available at
http://www.globalwebpost.com/genocide1971/docs/jurists/
1_preface.htm accessed on March 10th 2008
(49) S. M. Burke, `The Postwar Diplomacy of the Indo-Pakistani War of
1971', Asian Survey, Vol. 13, No. 11, Nov. 1973, 1036-1049
(50) Anthony Mascarenhas, The Rape of Bangla Desh
______________________________________________________________________
not put any of the alleged collaborators on trial
either. The legacy of the genocide. Of all the parties
involved in the East Pakistan crisis, the ones that
got the short shrift were the `Biharis' stranded in
Bangladesh. Left behind in squalid camps as
Pakistan refused to admit them, the number of
people technically awaiting repatriation had
grown to between 250,000 to 300,000 by 2004(51).
They live in 66 camps in 13 regions across
the country. While their status remains an open
issue between Pakistan and Bangladesh, they
live in a legal limbo: Bangladesh is reluctant to
accord them citizenship rights, while Pakistan's
refusal to accept them underlies its own fragile
ethnic composition.
No truth, no reconciliation. The Bengali
victims of the genocide did not get the closure of
bringing the perpetrators to justice. Instead, the
trajectory of Bangladeshi politics—split between
Bengali nationalism and Islam, as well as the
extreme partisanship between the Awami
League and the Bangladesh National Party—
ironically resulted in the pro-Pakistan and
razakar elements not merely avoiding
punishment but acquiring political power.
The government's failure to deliver justice
led to what Bose calls a "cottage industry of war
memoirs" as well as civil society attempts to
indict war criminals in people's tribunals. Far
from leading to closure, these attempts have
only added another dimension to Bangladesh's
political faultlines. The political legacy of the
genocide continues to plague Bangladeshi
society and politics.
______________________________________________________________________
(51) Refugees International, `Visual Mission: The Stateless Bihari of
Bangladesh',
http://www.refugeesinternational.org/content/report/detail/
4942/ accessed on March 8th 2008
______________________________________________________________________
------------------------------------
[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.comYahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/alochona/
<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/alochona/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
mailto:alochona-digest@yahoogroups.com
mailto:alochona-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
alochona-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/