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The atrocities in the 1971 civil war

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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.

Ya the biggest political party with 100% seat in parliament in East Pakistan declared independence means insurgency to some people is just living in a fools world. Army was broken, civil adminstration broken even diplomatic missions defected. Does that mean insurgency??? Give me a break.
Yes after 26th of March Bangladesh government seeked help from India, Russia and they were successfull in securing those.

First post to the entire thread :wave:
 
The East Pakistan insurgency had largely been controlled militarily - independence would not have been achieved without Indian military intervention, heck, even the insurgency, instability and unrest would not have gotten to the point it did without covert Indian intervention.But this is off topic.
You're absolutely, positively right on the money, Agno BRO. Please don't give Ram's azz what any of the Malauns Sugar Coats, makes up or throws hundred links of the books written by the war-booty holders. You can get to the bottom of the entire saga by finding the facts that BRITS had made Calcutta, the capital of BRITS ran IND, where Bengali Hindus emerged as one of the most English-learning intellectual classes. Be in PR or culture, they dominated and even in most of the primary schools, they led as teachers in E PAK later on. Their psychophant's transformation as communists and subsequent infiltration in DU in around 1935 helped to plant the seed of Vasha Andolan. They were the ones, who drummed up 60s anti-PAK rhetorics. But a big, a definite thing was that they weren't majority in E. PAK and with the migration of Muslim sufferers in the hands of their types in WB, IND they were rightly indentified, apprehanded, punished, restrainded and contained by unified PAKers. But the reach of Commie Sarder Hegelian's "Creative Chaos" was way beyond than unified PAKer's ability. I heard from very informed person that both of the super powers along with BRITs assured IND of their full supports in breaking PAK up even before the game had started. And CHN's not stepping up for help had made the disparity of power more intense. So, that should be the denominator to analyze on how we have broken up and what is our way forward, which I think you have already got it, thanks.
 
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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.

From the article I posted.

The Hindus, who account for three-fourths of the refugees and a majority of the dead

Add to that m_saint's post and you will see what the pro west pakistan razakars / jamat / al badr / al shams / biharis and indeed the army were thinking - blaming the wily hindu for the 'problem' - and a coincidence that the hindus bore the brunt?, when hindus were less in numbers in actual fighters - that IS systematic targetting of an ethnic group. When you load up hundreds of hindus on trains and take them to their slaughter, when you check their genitals on checkpoints to identify them, thats systematic targetting of an ethnic group that the pakistani ideology loved to hate. the hutus did not have a well documented plan complete with flowcharts, but the genocide occured, whereas there's more evidence in 1971 case.
 
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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.
Nice attempt at yet another argument by re-definition. First you tried to re-define what would constitute genocide in the context of Bangladesh. When got called on that, you quickly re-defined what would constitute 'political group'. No, separatists didn't form the 'political group', but leadership, workers, cadres and supporters of Awami League formed the 'political group'. The separatists were a part of that group. Putting down armed rebellion is one thing, but going door to door, marked with chalk by the lackeys of PA, and gunning the residents down, or burning down village after village, simply on a suspicion that they were Awami supporters, only reveals a sinister plan to 'clean the political stable'. India has never done anything like that.

But then, what about the extermination of Hindus? If deliberately seeking them out, often by checking at random if men were circumcised or not - an obsession still very much alive within PA - and killing them without remorse do not qualify as genocide, nothing ever will. As R.J.Rummel notes:

'In 1971 the self-appointed President of Pakistan and Commander-in-Chief of the Army, General Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan and his top generals prepared a careful and systematic military, economic, and political operation in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). They also planned to murder its Bengali intellectual, cultural, and political elite. They also planned to indiscriminately murder hundreds of thousands of its Hindus and drive the rest into India. And they planned to destroy its economic base to insure that it would be subordinate to West Pakistan for at least a generation to come. This despicable and cutthroat plan was outright genocide.'

Mujib would have been hanged if India hadn't kept the issue of Mujib on the burner, and US hadn't sat on Yahya's face. It was one of the rarest of rare moments when Yahya showed some pragmatism. The immense popularity of Mujib, not only within East Pakistan, but internationally, prevented Yahya from sending him to the gallows.

'After several abortive attempts I reintroduced the question of how the GOP would deal with Sheik Mujib. President Yahya said that as far as he was concerned Sheikh Mujib had committed a capital crime and would be tried in a duly constitutional court, and he would be given a fair and impartial trial. After noting that in the President's last address to the people of Pakistan it appeared to me as a lawyer that Sheikh Mujib had already been prejudged, and that a change of venue was impossible, I emphasized the fact that the GOP might well weigh world opinion vis-à-vis the severity of the sentence since Sheikh Mujib had a great deal international sympathy attaining. Yahya reply was noncommittal but not necessarily negative. He indicated that he would think about it.' - Telegram from Consul General in Karachi to US State Department; 22nd May, 1971

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.
You ever planning to provide evidence, other than Supplementary HRC report, of massacre and rape of 'over a hundred thousand women and children in the run-up to operation Searchlight'. There were indeed massacre of Biharis post-25 March. There were indeed stray incidents of murders in the rural East Pakistan 'in the run-up to operation Searchlight'. But so far I have never come across any independent research that says 'over a hundred thousand women and children in the run-up to operation Searchlight' were massacred and raped. You also planning to back up that figure of '100,000+', or will it continue hanging in the air?

It is also disingenuous to continuously tone down the horrendous acts of PA as 'some mistakes' and tying these down with the mythical '100,000+ deaths and massacres prior to crack down' to give an impression that PA only reacted and not acted, thereby reducing the degree of culpability of PA.

The manner of identifying homes of Awami supporters reveals plan. The manner of murdering the intellectuals, so that the Bangladeshis are left with no credible leadership, reveals plan. The manner of seeking out Hindus reveals plan. The manner of identifying non-Bengalis, so that they can be spared, reveals plan. Gutting down village after village, for miles, reveals plan. Operating death camps reveals plans. These are by no means 'stray incidents' but very much a concerted effort. Yahya's desire for 'military solution according to plan' or 'clean the political stable' or declaration, 'Kill three million of them and the rest will eat out of our hands' (refer Massacre by Robert Payne. Incidentally, this comment is attributed to the figure of '3 million' deaths.) or Tikka khan's boastful 'I want the land not the people' or the general consensus among PA that 'a whiff of gunpowder would overawe the meek Bengalis' (refer The Idea of Pakistan by Stephen. P. Cohen), reveal a 'systematic policy'.

You are fooling no one except for yourself and members of your tribe.

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.
Guess which country backed out from UN investigation on the plea of 'internal issue'.

"Some accounts seem simply the stuff of propaganda but come from reputable sources or eyewitnesses"
Yes, it was that much incredible that human being can be so much barbaric.

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.
And yet you are more than willing to swallow the Supplementary HRC Report, which, by their own account, had examined a mere 213 witnesses. I understand, denial can keep a person warm and dry. But this is hilarious.

If any first hand eyewitness to the barbarity of PA is a mere ‘anecdote’ and hence can’t be relied on, then one wonders, what would an investigation into any massacre or genocide entail? What will then be accepted as evidence? Accounting for each and every dead body? Documents ordering massacre, signed, sealed and authenticated by the goons? Images of atrocities being committed? Then again you also reject photographic evidence of piles of dead bodies. What else do you need?

Then again, who cares what you need. The world at large is convinced.

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.
That’s bulls!t. blain2 had made an assertion that Bangladesh could have been avoided, merely by subjugating the Bengalis, militarily. My question was meant to look into the political aspect of integrating an entire region of disenchanted population after that atrocious military subjugation, particularly, when the same population, before their ‘treason’, was convinced that they were consistently denied of their rights. Your good friend could have carried on with the debate with a simple rejoinder, but instead he, and now you, made the peripheral issue as primary one. Do note how he quickly forgets to explain how an administration completely devoid of Bengali representation, could at all be viable for East Pakistan or if it could be trusted by the Bengalis. The question, in the context of the thread, is not if the deaths were really that many or the massacres can be called ‘genocide’. The question is if a population which has been brandied as ‘traitors’ could still be held back from eventually breaking away. That remains unanswered even now.

Now stop giving it an unnecessary spin. Although I must give credit where it is due. You have successfully turned this into the question of if PA engineered massacres qualify as genocide. To the world at large it does. No amount of wishful denial is going to change that.

Anyway, I love the way you, from time to time, hoist that victory pennant. You never get tired of stroking your ego. Do you now?
 
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.
And yet you fail to cite that record.

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.
10 million refugees in less than 8 months is same as your Afghan refugees (how many, 6 or 7 million?) over a period of 30 (60?) odd years.

Yeah right.
 
Insurgencies are nasty and bloody.

How many innocents were killed by the US military and allies in Vietnam?

How many innocents were massacred by Indian security forces in Punjab? We already know the tens of thousands murdered, tortured and raped in Kashmir.

And while you are pontificating about 'even a single killing is condemnable' ponder this excerpt from the Hamoodur Rehman Commission Report:



Recall the earlier definition of genocide - what fits the definition better here: The massacring of West Pakistanis and Biharis by Bengalis primarily for being 'non-Bengali' (and remember this occurred before Op. Searchlight) or the killing of Bengalis in an attempt to control an insurgency?

Where are the demands for apologies to Pakistanis for the atrocities committed upon them? Where are the demands of apologies from India for supporting such murderous hordes and terrorists?

Look to your own sins sir, and stop lying and distorting history. I think in this thread it has been clearly established that no genocide occurred in EP and that the numbers killed were nowhere close to what Indians and some Bangladeshis claim.

Brother,

When you give example of US-Vietnam or so called killings in Kashmir you forget or intentionally ignore the facts. i.e.

US is a cristian country and Vietnam is not.
So Christians army is killing Iraqi/Afghan Muslims or Vietnamese Buddhist not Christians.


But, the Pakistani Army is a Islamic Army and in Bangladesh Muslim army have butchered Muslims.

So it is a very big difference. The nations that was created in the name of Muslims are killing its own Muslims.

So how can anybody justifies it.
 
And yet you fail to cite that record.


10 million refugees in less than 8 months is same as your Afghan refugees (how many, 6 or 7 million?) over a period of 30 (60?) odd years.

Yeah right.
Evidentially it seems that some of those toxic fumes are taking effect, do some fact finding before getting involved in a debate.
Firstly Mrs Gandhi didn't exactly release a video of delivering the statement as she has been quoted in several narratives of the period and for your clumsy Afghan Refugee assessment, may i remind you that even today Pakistan is still bearing the burden of theses displaced Afghan Nationals even after 30 ODD YEARS.
 
First post to the entire thread :wave:

First post to the entire thread that was off topic ...

You started the thread, quoted me and gave it that title, and you yourself have no idea what the topic means?
 
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.
First, here you have just admitted that Indian support played a crucial role in fannign the insurgency, so you did in fact validate the argument that without covert Indian support the insurgency itself would not have lasted as long as it did.

Secondly, isolated operations, even if spectacular and successful (such as the attacks on Navy ships) do not suggest that the insurgency was getting out of control. Study the Taliban insurgency for a moment, even as the PA was establishing control over Swat and Waziristan, we had a series of spectacular attacks in major cities and on military targets - hundreds of people killed, GHQ and intelligence targets attacked. Yet we also see that at the same time as those attacks the Taliban insurgency was being stifled in SW, Swat and other areas.

If one looks solely at the timeline during which the Taliban were carrying out terrorist attacks, one would think that the State was about to fall (and last year around this time that was the prediction), yet the tide has been reversed to a great deal. Are terrorist attacks going to be eliminated completely in the near term? No, But just because terrorists manage to carry out isolated attacks here and there does not mean that the insurgency is not largely under control.

The fact of the matter is that the insurgency itself would not have survived without Indian support, and even with Indian support the most it could do was a series of attacks.

Excluding Indian intervention, what would have happened is that reinforcements would have been sent, the military would have clamped down even more, and the insurgency would have been neutralized domestically. Yes, attacks would have likely continued, but only so long as the Indians continued to provide safe haven, training and equipment to terrorists attacking East Pakistan.

Without Indian support the insurgency was going nowhere, and East Pakistan would not have gained independence through force - that is fact.
 
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.
Why does it have to be 'around 300,000 to 1 million'?

Are we just inventing numbers that we 'feel good about'?

Assuming 300,000 killed, does that include the hundred thousand plus West Pakistanis and Biharis massacred by Bengali terrorists before Op. Searchlight?

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.
All of that data could have been validated, by either the Bangladeshi government or the UN. The presence of mass graves alone does not indicate innocents were killed. For example in Swat the military buried militants it killed in large numbers in mass graves. The militants themselves did the same after air strikes on their compounds with the PA advancing on them and not enough time to do individual burials.

There were children amongst them ... since the Taliban brainwashed children to fight their war and carry out suicide bombings.

So you see why establishing 'genocide' or even 'non combatant deaths' merely from mass graves is not exactly the easiest thing to do.

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.
I am pointing out the atrocities committed by Bengali militants before operation searchlight. We here lies after lies of 'millions killed' from Bangladeshis and Indians, yet this fact that Bengali militants massacred upwards of a hundred thousand West Pakistani and Bihari innocent men, women and children is conveniently ignored since it exposes the barbarism of the Separatists preceding Op. Searchlight.
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.
They were collaborators, and hence traitors - the punishment for treason is death.
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.
Could there haven been such an individual? Perhaps I can't say either way, but atrocities were committed buy both sides. Grommel here is fond of posting a picture of some Bengali boys holding the decapitated head of a Pakistani soldier. That isn't exactly respecting the dead either, is it?
 
Excluding Indian intervention, what would have happened is that reinforcements would have been sent, the military would have clamped down even more, and the insurgency would have been neutralized domestically. Yes, attacks would have likely continued, but only so long as the Indians continued to provide safe haven, training and equipment to terrorists attacking East Pakistan

You have yet to explain how West Pakistan would have been able control a population that did not want its rule. The "treason" solution? i.e Execute them all without a proper trial.
 
From the article I posted.


Add to that m_saint's post and you will see what the pro west pakistan razakars / jamat / al badr / al shams / biharis and indeed the army were thinking - blaming the wily hindu for the 'problem' - and a coincidence that the hindus bore the brunt?, when hindus were less in numbers in actual fighters - that IS systematic targetting of an ethnic group. When you load up hundreds of hindus on trains and take them to their slaughter, when you check their genitals on checkpoints to identify them, thats systematic targetting of an ethnic group that the pakistani ideology loved to hate. the hutus did not have a well documented plan complete with flowcharts, but the genocide occured, whereas there's more evidence in 1971 case.
Put in trains? Where?

And as for checking for Hindus, given Indian support for the insurgency, it was a legitimate concern in terms of checking the individual further. But that does not prove that every Hindu found was killed.

As for numbers killed, whether Hindus were or were not the majority of those killed, that can only be determined through an impartial commission that investigates these events, since history has so obviously been clouded with lies of genocide and 'millions killed'.
 
You have yet to explain how West Pakistan would have been able control a population that did not want its rule. The "treason" solution? i.e Execute them all without a proper trial.
I touched on this in my earlier posts, and would appreciate if you actually read them instead of repeating the same question.

After the violent insurgence was controlled it would have been up to the politicians to enact political reforms, possibly a confederation. I am not suggesting that this would have happened, but that it was feasible and a possibility.

It is equally possible that the Pakistani government would gone the other way and not made political compromises, but both possibilities are speculation. My only point is that once the violent insurgency was defeated are severely degraded, political unity could have been maintained through political reforms.
 
It is equally possible that the Pakistani government would gone the other way and not made political compromises, but both possibilities are speculation. My only point is that once the violent insurgency was defeated are severely degraded, political unity could have been maintained through political reforms.

After the massacres started, it would have been impossible to maintain political unity unless under the writ of the military. However this would have only delayed the inevitable. Historically speaking such enforced unfications do not last long.

The awami league supported by almost everyone in E Pakistan had declared independence, what possible compromise could they have made with West Pakistan that would have been acceptable to the people? You may call it speculation but outside of independence there was no viable alternative available after the killings began.
 
First, here you have just admitted that Indian support played a crucial role in fannign the insurgency, so you did in fact validate the argument that without covert Indian support the insurgency itself would not have lasted as long as it did.

Off course I agree on that,and that's the reason I admitted that.Without Indian help through arms,training and shelter the struggle would have been crushed eventually.

But what I beg to differ is,"that insurgency was under military control".

Secondly, isolated operations, even if spectacular and successful (such as the attacks on Navy ships) do not suggest that the insurgency was getting out of control. Study the Taliban insurgency for a moment, even as the PA was establishing control over Swat and Waziristan, we had a series of spectacular attacks in major cities and on military targets - hundreds of people killed, GHQ and intelligence targets attacked. Yet we also see that at the same time as those attacks the Taliban insurgency was being stifled in SW, Swat and other areas.

If one looks solely at the timeline during which the Taliban were carrying out terrorist attacks, one would think that the State was about to fall (and last year around this time that was the prediction), yet the tide has been reversed to a great deal. Are terrorist attacks going to be eliminated completely in the near term? No, But just because terrorists manage to carry out isolated attacks here and there does not mean that the insurgency is not largely under control.

The fact of the matter is that the insurgency itself would not have survived without Indian support, and even with Indian support the most it could do was a series of attacks.

Excluding Indian intervention, what would have happened is that reinforcements would have been sent, the military would have clamped down even more, and the insurgency would have been neutralized domestically. Yes, attacks would have likely continued, but only so long as the Indians continued to provide safe haven, training and equipment to terrorists attacking East Pakistan.

Without Indian support the insurgency was going nowhere, and East Pakistan would not have gained independence through force - that is fact.

I must say that even before Indian army launched full fledged attack,parts of Bangladesh were being liberated.Who were doing those?Not the Indian soldiers but the freedom fighters.

The introduction of Indian attack just sped up the process.What could have taken 9 years,ended in 9 months.

Let me tell my thought on what would happen if India did not intervene directly.
With the entire population against West Pakistan,except a few traitors,and continuous logistical support from India,the independence was bound to happen.Bringing in reinforcements would have only delayed the inevitable.

You can not compare war against Taliban's with this.
Reason being,they are fighting very close to your reach.Whereas in 1971,Pakistan military was fighting 1600kms from their HQs in a hostile land.
besides,Pakistan army of 1971 did not have the same capability and equipment as they have now.Pakistan army of 2010 is certainly stronger and better equipped,wouldn't you agree to that?

I repeat my words again,everything was lost after the crackdown on civilians on 25th March night.Once that happened,there was no possibility of an "United Pakistan" again.
 
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