Saturday, 6 October 2018

What would have been the worst war to fight in the 20th century?

Bangladesh Liberation War
On the night of 25 March 1971 Pakistan launched Operation Searchlight which pursued the systematic elimination of Bengali nationalist civilians, students, intelligencia, religious minorities and armed personnel[1]. “Kill three million of them, and the rest will eat out of our hands.”, said president Yahya Khan at the February Conference.
A genocide was launched. Within the night some 7,000 people were killed in Dhaka alone.
The brutal crackdown by the fascist Pak regime led to Awami League leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman declaring East Pakistan's independence as Bangladesh on 26 March 1971.
A civil war began with Mukti Bahini (guerilla freedom fighters for Bangladesh) combatting Pakistan armed forces. Systematical rape of Bengali women and preplanned killings of intellectuals and professionals like doctors, engineers, civil servants, students and social workers and burying them in mass graves was initiated by Pak army which aimed to 'demoralize the enemy' and to create a Islamic, pure, Pakistani race.[2]The Pak army sent its soldiers giving them orders to paint yellow “H” on the shops and houses of Hindus to identify the Hindus to be later killed and raped[3].
“Within a week, half the population of Dacca had fled, and at least 30,000 people had been killed. Chittagong, too, had lost half its population. All over East Pakistan people were taking flight, and it was estimated that in April some thirty million people [!] were wandering helplessly across East Pakistan to escape the grasp of the military.” (Payne, Massacre, p. 48.)
People from Bangladesh went running around seeking asylum in India. By the end of June the number of refugees in India had reached 6 million.
With the Bengalis being ethically cleansed and millions of refugees swarming into the country, India provided substantial diplomatic, economic and military support to Mukti Bahini[4]provoking Pakistan's ally, the US. President Nixon sent the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise to the Bay of Bengal[5] to make sure India doesn't meddle in the conflict. India deemed this to be a nuclear threat. Nixon also proposed China to attack India from the north and China began supplying weapons to Pakistan.
After Pakistan launched sneaky air strikes on North India on 3 December 1971, India had 2 options:
1. Stay out of the conflict
2. Stop the genocide taking the risk of being nuked by the U.S., and/or being invaded by China from the north
India chose the second option.
India was far more than lucky that the Soviet navy dispatched nuclear submarines on 6 and 13 December to the Indian Ocean that warded India's threat of being nuked.
In 13 days the war ended on 16 December 1971 with 93000 Pakistani soldiers surrendering in the largest surrender since the Battle of Kiev in World War 2.
The Pakistan army, on the verge of defeat, was determined to wipe out Bengali culture in one final act of barbarism. On December 14, 1971, the Pakistan army unleashed the paramilitary units al-Badr and al-Shams to exterminate Bengali intellectuals. The goal was to find and kill Bengali political thinkers, educators, scientists, poets, doctors, lawyers, journalists and other intellectuals. The al-Badr and al-Shams fanned out with lists of names to find and execute the core of the Bengali intellectuals. The intellectuals were arrested and taken to Rayerbazar[6], a marshy area in Dhaka city. There, they were gunned down with their eyes blindfolded and their hands tied behind their backs[7] .
The result was that Bangladesh finally won her independence. A genocide that killed 3 million Bengalis was finally put to an end. 200,000 Bengali women were raped including those systematically raped in Pakistani 'rape camps' to demoralize the enemy. Half of Pakistan's navy and air force were destroyed. While India returned most of her captured territories she retained some of the strategic territories like Turtuk that helped India to take over Siachen a decade later.

No comments:

Post a Comment