The atrocities in the 1971 civil war

[gogbot]

Planned atrocities by militant groups against non-Bengali's - it was terrorism and possibly genocide.

That massacres occurred during partition does not justify the atrocities of Bengali militants in EP.

Why are you so loath to call a spade a spade and accept that what these Bengali militants did was terrorism and barbaric and are contriving poor excuses to justify those atrocities?

They are different.

PA planned a massacre, They had no reason to kill students in a college when they were unarmed.
They were an official organization with checks and balances and yet they did what did, systematically through out the country.

There was no Bengali group created with the specific purpose of Massacring all those who were not Bengali.

There was mob violence.

What PA did was as good as what the British did at Amritsar. except though out the whole nation of Bangladesh.

This sparked an armed struggle, That created the angry mobs. That caused the violence.

 

[Nemesis]

Treason.

Treason?!! The deliberate killing of civilians is not justifiable under any circumstances, certainly not on the basis of abstract ideas like treason.

Treason against whom? The Pakistani state? The majority of the people didnt want the Pakistani state at that point. So execute them all?

And treason how? Were they guilty of directly killing PA soldiers? They were civilians who were sympathetic to the cause of independence. By no means a crime that deserves a summary execution.

The PA killed them because of retribution. PA may not be technically guilty of genocide (According to the term defined by the UN) but it certainly is guilty of deliberate mass murder of civilians.

Once the violent insurgency was defeated, work on political resolutions would have followed. How that would have panned out or whether it would have been enough is only speculation at this point since it was never given a chance.

And saying that independence would not have succeeded without Indian help is not speculation?

But if the African Americans in the US could be co-opted in a political structure after hundreds of years of slavery and segregation (nowhere close to that level of discrimination or atrocities occurred in EP) then why not in EP?

Different context.

Once again, blaming India squarely for what happened and negating your policies with the phrase "some mistakes were made" is a disingenuous argument. A popular uprising does not happen unless the population is alienated by the policies of the state. Our propaganda machines were/are not so advanced that we can brain wash an entire people. You made it happen. Not us. We don't need to argue over this, just ask the Bangladeshi members. As someone on this thread said, you have only read about what happened, Bangladesh saw it happen.

 

[notsuperstitious]

The Hindus, who account for three-fourths of the refugees and a majority of the dead, have borne the brunt of the Moslem military's hatred. Even now, Moslem soldiers in East Pakistan will snatch away a man's lungi (sarong) to see if he is circumcised, obligatory for *******; if he is not, it usually means death. Others are simply rounded up and shot. Commented one high U.S. official last week: "It is the most incredible, calculated thing since the days of the Nazis in Poland."

Pakistan: The Ravaging of Golden Bengal -- Printout -- TIME

Not a systematic effort to exterminate a group of people? And all these western reports and even videos, even when the americans were so strongly behind yahya, don't dismiss it as propoganda now.

On topic, we can discuss this endlessly, the civil war was real, it had india's support, its purely speculative to say whether the bengalis would have won without india's help or not, but does it matter? what matters is that the civil war was real, india did not make it happen, india did not ask yahya not to search for people stratnded in cyclone bhola, india did not ask him not to honor the vote, the uprising was the result of that, not india controlled.

blaming india is just failing to take responsibility for your own actions and blaming on the ever so useful 'hindu' again.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

We are discussing the point that it was never an insurgency but a fight for freedom.

The earliest posts in this thread clearly establish that.

The liberation war of 1971 was between Bangladesh and Pakistan.
The Indo-Pak war of 71 is different

Please read the thread title again, the topic is whether or not the PA had the insurgency under control.

The question of whether you want to call the actions of militants in East Pakistan an 'insurgency' or a 'freedom movement' is irrelevant and was brought up by other posters.

However, looking up the definitions of these terms before bandying them about would be helpful:

Definition of insurgency: An insurgency is an armed rebellion against a constituted authority (for example, an authority recognised as such by the United Nations) when those taking part in the rebellion are not recognised as belligerents."

So yes, the violent aspect of the separatist movement in East Pakistan does classify as an insurgency, even if you want to categorize the political aspect of it, or perhaps even the combined politcal-military movement, as a 'freedom movement'.

For the purposes of this discussion the reference is to the militant aspect of the freedom movement which fits in with the definition of 'insurgency', and that is the context in which my original remarks quoted at the beginning of the thread were made.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

They are different.

PA planned a massacre, They had no reason to kill students in a college when they were unarmed.
They were an official organization with checks and balances and yet they did what did, systematically through out the country.

The PA did not plan a massacre at the level of the COAS or GHQ (Can you establish that if you believe it to be the case), nor were any of the other atrocities committed planned as a systematic policy of exterminating Bengalis which would imply genocide.

Atrocities were committed (in far lower numbers than claimed as has been illustrated by Blain), but that has been an unfortunate aspect of fighting insurgencies, as can be seen in the case of atrocities committed by the US in Vietnam and Indian Security forces in Punjab and Kashmir.

So unless you are willing to categorize both the US and Indian as also having committed genocide, your argument is flawed.

There was no Bengali group created with the specific purpose of Massacring all those who were not Bengali.

There was mob violence.

The report clearly assigns the blame for the massacre of innocent West Pakistanis and Biharis to separatists who engaged in premeditated and calculated violence.

You cannot call this mob violence since it was not a spontaneous outbreak of violence, just as many of the massacres carried out by militant Sikh groups in Punjab were not 'mob violence' since they were planned and orchestrated systematically, and not just a mob gone haywire.

What PA did was as good as what the British did at Amritsar. except though out the whole nation of Bangladesh.

This sparked an armed struggle, That created the angry mobs. That caused the violence.

The report is careful to point out that the massacre of West Pakistanis and Biharis occurred before Operation Searchlight, so your contention (or rather your attempt to excuse terrorism by Bengali militants) is wrong.

What the PA did was crack down on separatists and terrorists (a hundred thousand West Pakistanis had been massacred by then) and in the process some atrocities ocurred, not unlike what the Indian ASecurity forces have done in Punjab and Kashmir, and what the US did in Vietnam.

Insurgencies are by nature hard to combat, since the enemy blends in with the locals and is often supported by locals, and history has shown that not just Pakistan, but other nations too have had many problems in fighting 'clean' COIN campaigns.

That said, there remains absolutely no evidence that the number of those killed by the PA were over tens of thousands, or that the PA engaged in genocide.

Any interest in actually discussing the thread topic, or shall I take your reluctance to do so as validation of my point that the PA had the East Pakistan insurgency under control militarily were it not for Indian military intervention?

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Treason?!! The deliberate killing of civilians is not justifiable under any circumstances, certainly not on the basis of abstract ideas like treason.

Treason against whom? The Pakistani state? The majority of the people didnt want the Pakistani state at that point. So execute them all?

Does not matter if the people did not want the Pakistani State, they were legally a part of the Pakistani State, and if they were acting against the Pakistani State they were committing treason and the punishment for treason in many nations is death.

And treason how? Were they guilty of directly killing PA soldiers? They were civilians who were sympathetic to the cause of independence. By no means a crime that deserves a summary execution.

Treason is not limited to physically fighting the State, but can also encompass support for anti-State elements, espionage etc. and the punishment for such treason is death in many States.

The PA killed them because of retribution. PA may not be technically guilty of genocide (According to the term defined by the UN) but it certainly is guilty of deliberate mass murder of civilians.

No more guilty than the Indian security forces in Punjab and the IA in Kashmir and the US Military in Vietnam.

When you can be consistent and call the actions of the IA and US Military 'genocide', then I'll be willing to consider the veracity of your argument.

And saying that independence would not have succeeded without Indian help is not speculation?

No it is not since the reports suggest that the PA was slowly establishing control over East Pakistan and defeating the insurgents and cutting down on insurgent violence. Without India supporting the insurgents and terrorists materially and through training camps established in India, the insurgency would have been controlled even quicker and the situation stabilized quicker. The last straw was direct Indian military intervention.

Therefore, without Indian military intervention there was no way East Pakistan could have gained independence through force.

Different context.

Once again, blaming India squarely for what happened and negating your policies with the phrase "some mistakes were made" is a disingenuous argument. A popular uprising does not happen unless the population is alienated by the policies of the state. Our propaganda machines were/are not so advanced that we can brain wash an entire people. You made it happen. Not us. We don't need to argue over this, just ask the Bangladeshi members. As someone on this thread said, you have only read about what happened, Bangladesh saw it happen.

No situation is analogous to another completely, but the point remains that had Indian not intervened militarily, the violent insurgency would have been subdued and a political process of reconciliation might have taken place, possibly leading to a confederation that Mujib seemed to see as feasible.

And you raise a strawman - at no point have I suggested that the separatist movement did not have local support. What I have argued is that the insurgency was almost under control and independence through violence would have failed were it not for Indian intervention. Whether Pakistan could have taken advantage of that defeat of the insurgency to usher in political reforms and placate the East Pakistani sense of disenfranchisement is something that can never be answered, but given that other nations have done so means that it is not an unfeasible proposition.

 

[toxic_pus]

You made a claim indeed, yet have offered no support for it. Do you even understand what the definition of genocide is?

Here it is, since you and so many others love throwing the term around to devise a false justification for Indian intervention and Bangladeshi independence.

"Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group."

Nothing you have provided substantiates the killing of 3 million, 1.5 million, or 300,000 Bengalis deliberately as part of a process to 'exterminate an ethnic group'. You don't want to make this a 'numbers game', great, but as of right now you have no case justifying your allegation of genocide.

Pictures and videos of dozens of dead people lying in a ditch or being put in front of a firing squad for being supporters of violent insurgents attacking non-combatants (terrorism in today's parlance) and treason is not evidence of genocide nor XYZ million killed.

In any case, read the thread topic again. Your disingenuous and lying rants are way off topic. Whether the PA killed X number or not is irrelevant to the fact that the insurgency had been largely controlled militarily and there was little chance of East Pakistan's independence had India not intervened covertly and overtly.

You are being disingenuous, as usual.

Firstly, the genocide in Bangladesh was not to exterminate a ‘an ethnic group’. It was to exterminate a political class and the minorities.

Secondly, I have clearly disclosed my reference. Well, pardon me for not quoting the entire book or an entire chapter from the book. Once again, for your displeasure.

Death By Government by R.J.Rummel.

R.J.Rummel coined the term ‘democide’ to mean ‘genocide by Government’ and applied it to PA’s atrocities. An extract.

‘As the soldiers advanced and consolidated control over one district or town after another, atrocities were repeated ad nauseam. Bengalis were spared no torture, no way in which their lives could not be stolen from them. Some accounts seem simply the stuff of propaganda but come from reputable sources or eyewitnesses. In a letter to The Guardian of London, for example, the Reverends John Hastings and John Clapham cite instances of babies tossed in the air and caught on bayonets, women bayoneted vertically, children sliced up like meat, and the heads of others smashed. A correspondent of The Daily Mirror reported from the province that soldiers had buried two boys "in mud that came up past their noses and the crows did the rest."

There was one kind of atrocity that seems unique to the Pakistani army and should be mentioned. According to Newsweek, an army major in the village of Haluaghat announced to assembled Bengalis that blood was needed for wounded soldiers and he requested donors. Apparently those that volunteered donated blood alright - all of it until they died. This murder by blood extraction apparently happened at a number of places.

[...]

Through out the province, the army practiced a simple technique of pacification. As used in Dacca that first horrible day, soldiers would surround a hamlet, village, town, or city block. Then, whether slums or thatched huts or residential houses, they would pour gasoline around the homes, ignite it, and shoot or bayonet people trying to escape the flames.’

Or you can refer to War and Secession: Pakistan, India, and the creation of Bangladesh by Sisson & Rose.

Under the sub-chapter ‘The “Military Solution According To Plan”’, they write:

‘As threats to the interests and values important to the army increased and as expectations for a political settlement that could be trusted, declined, Yahya, under pressure from his army command, chose to pursue a "military solution according to plan." […] The costs of military action would be relatively small, and it would have the positive consequence of "cleaning the political stables'" in the east […] It was to be carried out in such a way as not to alarm India or provoke the Indian army by carrying military operations closer to border areas. Given the above objectives and conditions, Indian military involvement would be difficult to justify and was not considered a serious possibility by the Pakistani command […] The objectives were to neutralize the political power of the Awami League and to re-establish public order. First, the top leadership of the party had to be captured, The second priority was to neutralize its more radical elements, in particular student leaders and organizations and various cultural organisations that advocated a Bengali renaissance.[…] Third, the Bengali armed forces had to be disarmed end neutralized.’

Or you can refer to Foreign Relations of United States (FRUS)
‘…we have chosen not to intervene, even morally, on the grounds that the Awami conflict, in which unfortunately the overworked term genocide is applicable, is purely internal matter of a sovereign state.’ – Telegram from Consul General in Dhaka to US State Department, 6th April, 1971 (FRUS).

One example of PA’s planned extermination programme is the Hariharpara massacre. It was one of the many instances that came to be known after the war had ended. Lewis. M. Simmons of Washington Post, reported on 10th Jan, 1972:

‘According to eye witnesses, this is what happened: Beginning at sundown each evening, the soldiers dragged the Benglais, men and women, bound together in batches of six and eight, to the Burhiganga river front to be killed. While their executioners loomed above them on a wooden pier they were made to wade out into knee deep water. Then the rifles opened up. And the firing and the screaming shattered the hot night air until dawn. Each morning, village boatmen were forced to bring their high-powered craft into the bloody water and haul the bodies out to midstream, where they were cut loose to drift downriver. Victims were brought to Hariharpara by trucks from other villages, from the East Pakistani capital of Dhaka, eight miles to the north. Their hands tied behind their backs, they were kept prisoners in a large river side warehouse of the Pakistan National Oil Company until their time came to die.’

The casualty figure at Hariharpara itself is estimated at around 20,000. Rummel has also narrated this in his book.

I can also post numerous newspaper reports of that time, that appeared in Newsweek, Times, Life, New York Times etc. I can assure you, it won’t be pretty.

Thirdly, I am not the one who started this number game. It was never the scope of my post #33 . It was your good friend blain2 who have set up this strawman. Direct your frustration to him. And if you were sincere you would have noticed, that I have stayed clear of this and concentrated more on the scope of this thread.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Pakistan: The Ravaging of Golden Bengal -- Printout -- TIME

Not a systematic effort to exterminate a group of people? And all these western reports and even videos, even when the americans were so strongly behind yahya, don't dismiss it as propoganda now.

The article is completely anecdotal. I am not denying that atrocities occurred, just that they were in no way genocide in that there was not systematic attempt to exterminate an ethnic group.

In an insurgency the insurgents will hide amongst the civilian population, and given the hundreds of thousands of innocent West Pakistani civilians massacred and raped by Bengali militants in the runup to Operation Searchlight, discipline did slip in the hunt for separatists.

On topic, we can discuss this endlessly, the civil war was real, it had india's support, its purely speculative to say whether the bengalis would have won without india's help or not, but does it matter? what matters is that the civil war was real, india did not make it happen, india did not ask yahya not to search for people stratnded in cyclone bhola, india did not ask him not to honor the vote, the uprising was the result of that, not india controlled.

blaming india is just failing to take responsibility for your own actions and blaming on the ever so useful 'hindu' again.

The point being made here is that the indigenous rebel movement was being controlled, and without Indian military intervention there was no way East Pakistan would have gained independence through force, since the rebels were being defeated.

That does not mean the movement for independence would have died down, but that it would have had to take a different route if political reforms and reconciliation were not forthcoming.

 

[toxic_pus]

Nonsense, Manekshaw's comments, and other accounts by retired Indian bureaucrats etc. indicate covert Indian involvement preceding Operation Searchlight and that Gandhi had decided to go to war long before the refugee issue.

As pointed out to you before, the Indian excuse is absurd given that it tries to justify covert and overt violent intervention in another sovereign nation on the basis of instability, when that intervention itself was part of the cause of the original instability and a major reason behind the escalation in violence and instability in the aftermath of intervention.

Just pure nonsense and lies.

You haven’t provided any evidence what so ever, that India was in any way involved before ‘Operation Searchlight’.

I have also explained the context of Ms Gandhi’s comments. Whether or not you agree with it is entirely upto you. Couldn't care less.

Rest of your accusation is just garbage – a lullaby that you need to repeat to yourself to feel good and secured.

 

[toxic_pus]

Does not matter if the people did not want the Pakistani State, they were legally a part of the Pakistani State, and if they were acting against the Pakistani State they were committing treason and the punishment for treason in many nations is death.


Treason is not limited to physically fighting the State, but can also encompass support for anti-State elements, espionage etc. and the punishment for such treason is death in many States.

A quick question. When, where and how were these people tried to find out if at all they were involved in anti-state activity ?

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

You are being disingenuous, as usual.

Firstly, the genocide in Bangladesh was not to exterminate a ‘an ethnic group’. It was to exterminate a political class and the minorities.

Nonsense - if by political group you mean to suggest that the separatists were a political group, then any nation that fights separatists and seeks to eliminate them is committing genocide, and that includes India and the US.

Secondly, were the objective to exterminate the entire political group, Mujib would have been the first casualty, yet he survived the entire war.


You are being disingenuous as usual.

Secondly, I have clearly disclosed my reference. Well, pardon me for not quoting the entire book or an entire chapter from the book. Once again, for your displeasure.

Death By Government by R.J.Rummel.

R.J.Rummel coined the term ‘democide’ to mean ‘genocide by Government’ and applied it to PA’s atrocities. An extract.

‘As the soldiers advanced and consolidated control over one district or town after another, atrocities were repeated ad nauseam. Bengalis were spared no torture, no way in which their lives could not be stolen from them. Some accounts seem simply the stuff of propaganda but come from reputable sources or eyewitnesses. In a letter to The Guardian of London, for example, the Reverends John Hastings and John Clapham cite instances of babies tossed in the air and caught on bayonets, women bayoneted vertically, children sliced up like meat, and the heads of others smashed. A correspondent of The Daily Mirror reported from the province that soldiers had buried two boys "in mud that came up past their noses and the crows did the rest."

There was one kind of atrocity that seems unique to the Pakistani army and should be mentioned. According to Newsweek, an army major in the village of Haluaghat announced to assembled Bengalis that blood was needed for wounded soldiers and he requested donors. Apparently those that volunteered donated blood alright - all of it until they died. This murder by blood extraction apparently happened at a number of places.

[...]

Through out the province, the army practiced a simple technique of pacification. As used in Dacca that first horrible day, soldiers would surround a hamlet, village, town, or city block. Then, whether slums or thatched huts or residential houses, they would pour gasoline around the homes, ignite it, and shoot or bayonet people trying to escape the flames.’

Or you can refer to War and Secession: Pakistan, India, and the creation of Bangladesh by Sisson & Rose.

Under the sub-chapter ‘The “Military Solution According To Plan”’, they write:

‘As threats to the interests and values important to the army increased and as expectations for a political settlement that could be trusted, declined, Yahya, under pressure from his army command, chose to pursue a "military solution according to plan." […] The costs of military action would be relatively small, and it would have the positive consequence of "cleaning the political stables'" in the east […] It was to be carried out in such a way as not to alarm India or provoke the Indian army by carrying military operations closer to border areas. Given the above objectives and conditions, Indian military involvement would be difficult to justify and was not considered a serious possibility by the Pakistani command […] The objectives were to neutralize the political power of the Awami League and to re-establish public order. First, the top leadership of the party had to be captured, The second priority was to neutralize its more radical elements, in particular student leaders and organizations and various cultural organisations that advocated a Bengali renaissance.[…] Third, the Bengali armed forces had to be disarmed end neutralized.’

Or you can refer to Foreign Relations of United States (FRUS)
‘…we have chosen not to intervene, even morally, on the grounds that the Awami conflict, in which unfortunately the overworked term genocide is applicable, is purely internal matter of a sovereign state.’ – Telegram from Consul General in Dhaka to US State Department, 6th April, 1971 (FRUS).

One example of PA’s planned extermination programme is the Hariharpara massacre. It was one of the many instances that came to be known after the war had ended. Lewis. M. Simmons of Washington Post, reported on 10th Jan, 1972:

‘According to eye witnesses, this is what happened: Beginning at sundown each evening, the soldiers dragged the Benglais, men and women, bound together in batches of six and eight, to the Burhiganga river front to be killed. While their executioners loomed above them on a wooden pier they were made to wade out into knee deep water. Then the rifles opened up. And the firing and the screaming shattered the hot night air until dawn. Each morning, village boatmen were forced to bring their high-powered craft into the bloody water and haul the bodies out to midstream, where they were cut loose to drift downriver. Victims were brought to Hariharpara by trucks from other villages, from the East Pakistani capital of Dhaka, eight miles to the north. Their hands tied behind their backs, they were kept prisoners in a large river side warehouse of the Pakistan National Oil Company until their time came to die.’

The casualty figure at Hariharpara itself is estimated at around 20,000. Rummel has also narrated this in his book.

I can also post numerous newspaper reports of that time, that appeared in Newsweek, Times, Life, New York Times etc. I can assure you, it won’t be pretty.

You can post, and as I have repeatedly pointed out I will not deny that atrocities happened, especially given that the Bengali militants had massacred and raped over a hundred thousand women and children in the run-up to operation Searchlight, but isolated incidents, many unsubstantiated barring anecdotal accounts, do not establish a systematic policy by the PA high command to exterminate Bengalis, nor do they establish the numbers claimed, which has been debunked already.

And yes, given the conflicting and contradictory accounts out of the newly established EP government and leadership, I do doubt these accounts and will unless and independent and neutral commission appointed by the UN investigates them and establishes their veracity.

"Some accounts seem simply the stuff of propaganda but come from reputable sources or eyewitnesses"

And propaganda they are, likely sown by Indians and Bengalis eager to bolster the legitimacy of their struggle by maligning Pakistan. I will need more than anecdotal accounts to believe this rubbish.

Thirdly, I am not the one who started this number game. It was never the scope of my post #33 . It was your good friend blain2 who have set up this strawman. Direct your frustration to him. And if you were sincere you would have noticed, that I have stayed clear of this and concentrated more on the scope of this thread.

Nice deflection, but as usual you are lying. You chose to initiate a tangential argument by raising the 'genocide' canard (debunked by now), when the topic was quite clearly limited to whether or not the PA was controlling the EP insurgency.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

You haven’t provided any evidence what so ever, that India was in any way involved before ‘Operation Searchlight’.

I have also explained the context of Ms Gandhi’s comments. Whether or not you agree with it is entirely upto you. Couldn't care less.

Rest of your accusation is just garbage – a lullaby that you need to repeat to yourself to feel good and secured.

I am not going to repeat myself - we had this argument already and the sources were provided to you. Look through your post history to re-read them since you appear to get selective amnesia on these things.

The only 'lullaby' here are the lies of 'genocide and millions killed' that Indians and some Bangladeshis sing to themselves.

The argument is sound, you just don't like it since it exposes India's excuses for intervention to be flawed and unjustifiable and rips away that fairytale that keeps alive the sense of Xenophobia and hatred Bengalis like yourself have towards West Pakistanis.

 

[leonblack08]

By the way, since no one actually wants to comment on the topic, it would appear the assertion is largely correct, that the PA did indeed have the East Pakistan insurgency under control for the most part, and the situation in East Pakistan would not have deteriorated and EP would not have gained independence without Indian intervention.

I beg to differ.

Yes it was quite for some period,after Operation Search light to August.
But that was mainly due to organising the freedom Fighters.
Also I must add that there was a decision to wait for rainy season to launch attack.because by then the civilian recruits will be trained and at the same time,due to flood the W Pakistani soldiers will be in a bit difficult situation.
And thus we see the rate of attacks on Pakistani installment rose from August.And big successes like Operation Jackpot further proves the point.

Without Indian military help,i.e. indirect help through arms and trainning it would have been impossible.But the "insurgency" or in our term "Freedom struggle" was not under military control.

Some well known examples are,Operation Jacpot,where hundreds of naval commandos blew up Pakistani shipping.Also simultaneously Guerrilla attacks in targets in Dhaka by a crack commando group trained by Major ATM Haider (ex-SSG commando).

Battle of Bhairab is another where the lack of control is clearly evident.There are lots of other battles,small to medium scaled.Some large scaled.

I had posted some details in this thread: http://www.defence.pk/forums/bangladesh-defence/41456-battles-1971-a.html

That thread is now closed.

I am posting this video and its translation to expose the myth,that everything was under control.

Major General Gulam Helal Murshed Khan, Bir Bicrom.

Translation:

On 1971,General Gulam was a young officer at 2nd East Bengal Regiment (Known as Junior tigers)of Pakistan army.
After hearing 7th march's speech of Sheikh Mujib,he sensed that a war was inevitable.He came back to Bangladesh on 21st March and joined priyo paltan 2nd East Bengla Regiment.

On 28th March,along with EBR battled their way through Mymensingh and then Ashuganj and then Sylhet.From 28th March to 19th June,these men of East Bengal Regiment were able to keep this vast area free f.rom occupation.

Instead of conventional war,strategy was changed to guerrilla war fare.On June,he was selected as a Sub-sector commander.They organised people to fight against West Pakistani forces.

F.rom 13th May to 23rd May,the fighting was fierce.Pakistan army's one part was in Sylhet and the other was in Ashuganj(Bhairab).They were trying to link up,but the Freedom fighters were resisting it.

On 13th May,Maj. Gen. Gulam led an ambush with 12 student-turned-fighters.There was unexpected success.4 out of 8 vehicles were destroyed and 50 were killeda and around 40 injured.After the ops. Dhaka-Sylhet route was closed for few days.

Another ambush on this same month,East Bengal Regiment was able to kill 30 soldiers.This is known as 2nd ambush bakshit.It is written on the history of Bangladesh Army's East Bengal Regiment.

On 13th Sep. an ambush on train line,killed 27 more soldiers.

There were many other ops,in which he was a part of with Bangladesh army's Delta company.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------

After 25th March,nothing could have gone back to old days.So "everything under control" is nothing but a propaganda by the Military govt. of West Pakistan at that time.

 

[leonblack08]

As for the civilian deaths' number,I do agree that 3 million is exaggeration mainly due to political and emotional reasons.
But the original number of death is certainly not 26000 as per Hamodoor Rahman Commission.It has to be around 300000-1million.

The reason being so many mass graves were found.
Most of the time the dead bodies were dumped in the river.Eyewitnesses talk of rivers turning red.

You are saying about Biharis being killed,but you should also mention the killings committed by Biharis along with W Pakistani soldiers and the Razakars.

On 14 th December,they dragged intellectuals(Professors,doctors etc) and slaughtered them in a systematic manner so that the newly born country remains brainless.
We observe that day as Shaheed intellectual's day.

There was a Bihari who used to slaughter and then play football with the victim's head.Now these are real stories,but you are free to rate them whatever you like.

 

[Windjammer]

Your usual tripe aside, Ms Gandhi had never said any such thing. At least I am not aware of it. Feel free to provide evidence. Or not.

On the other hand, Indian officials did mention of such thing, something in the lines of, 'India would enter East Pakistan in self-defense'. Its called 'offensive-defensive'. Reference to 'self defense' was with regard to complete destruction of border economy, change in demography due to the deluge of refugees, huge outflow of funds in feeding and maintaining them and potential law and order problem associated with the refugee camps. Since Yahya was refusing to stop butchering his fellow countrymen resulting in perpetuation of such refugee problem, a swift kick in his nuts was thought to be the only way to knock some sense into his dense skull.

The comment encapsulated that strategy.

Pathetic digression of historical facts seem to restore your beliefs in self denial. Her abysmal statement to the effect is on records as being the under dog for the last six odd years, she was desperate to shed India's image of a bewildered giant. Not with standing your derelict assertion of the refugee situation, in some what same context, Pakistan then had every reason to enter Afghanistan experiencing even worse influx of refugees after the Soviet invasion. And since you justify your Mata's actions then it's relevant for Pakistan to clip your war lords round the ears for their dastardly actions against Kashmir Citizens, alias a taste of your own medicine.