Very important point Umair!! If I am not mistaken the conversation Nixon (or Kissinger) had with the US Ambassador to BDesh was released some time back and it had Kissinger/Nixon saying “Gen. Yahya is our guy” It fits right into the “He is our SOB” foreign policy. This is completely contradictory to argument of ‘Saddam’s massacre’ as a reason for Iraq war, but unfortunately lot of people have bought it.

The Sunday Times wrote on June 13, 1971:

“The Government’s policy for East Bengal was spelled out to me in the Eastern Command headquarters at Dacca. It has three elements:

The Bengalis have proved themselves unreliable and must be ruled by West Pakistanis;

The Bengalis will have to be re-educated along proper Islamic lines. The – Islamization of the masses – this is the official jargon – is intended to eliminate secessionist tendencies and provide a strong religious bond with West Pakistan;

When the Hindus have been eliminated by death and fight, their property will be used as a golden carrot to win over the under privileged Muslim middle-class. This will provide the base for erecting administrative and political structures in the future.”

And check out Edward Kennedy on the genocide and associated refugee exodus (Senate hearings were held on the issue)):

“A traveler today in eastern India cannot help but see, smell, and feel this misery. It is etched in the faces and lives of refugees in countless ways. It is the malnourished child hanging limply in its mother’s arms – one child out of a half million who, in a matter of hours or days, can easily die from the lack of protein and adequate medical care. It is a young girl, quivering in a refugee camp in Tripura, still in a shock after seeing her mother and father slaughtered by Pakistani troops. It is a 14-year-old boy in Jalpaiguri hospital, whose face is contorted from the pain and anguish that he has experienced since he saw his family shot before his eyes and since he received a bullet wound in his spine which has paralyzed him for life. And it is the expression of hundreds of thousands of refugees living in sewer pipes on the outskirts of Calcutta, while overworked relief officials struggle to provide some food and shelter and hope for a needy and hopeless people.

To drive the roads of West Bengal is to tour a huge refugee camp. For miles along the old Jessore road north of Calcutta toward the border of East Bengal, literally millions of people sit huddled together waithing for food, or line up in endless queues for refugee registration cards, or simply encamp on the roadside under hastily constructed lean-tos. And each day their number continues to grow.

A. THE REFUGEE FLOW

The continuing flow of refugees into India is without parallel in modern history. In less than 200 days-from April 1 to mid-October-more people have found it necessary to flee their homes and lands in East Bengal than the total number of refugees generated by the IndoChina war, or the millions displaced by the natural disasters which have struck East Bengal over the past decade. In this short period, 9,544,012 refugees have been officially recorded as having crossed into India, and additional hundreds of thousands have been uprooted and victimized within East Bengal.

Since March 25th a constant stream-sometimes a flood-of refugees has crossed each day into India. The average daily influx of new refugees, according to official reports, has been 48,000-with peak periods in May and June exceeding well over 100,000 new arrivals each day. In May alone, for example, a total of 2,820,922 new refugees were registered by Indian officials.” (5)

“To avoid communal (religious) clashes, the government, where possible, has tried to keep Hindus and Muslims in seperate camps, the camps being sited in corresponding communal are as of India. Reflecting the communal representation of the refugees generally, an approximate grouping in many camps, however, is 80 percent Hindu, 15 percent Muslim, and 5 percent Christian and other.” (19)…”

“As the Pakistan army moved out into the countryside to “crush the Awami League,” all evidence-including the simple fact that the bulk of the refugees ! in India are Hindu-suggest this objective was coupled with a policy of terror directed primarily at the minority Hindu population.”

Consider this quote (not from a Bangladeshi or Indian site):

http://www.gendercide.org/case_bangladesh.html “On February 22, 1971 the generals in West Pakistan took a decision to crush the Awami League and its supporters. It was recognized from the first that a campaign of genocide would be necessary to eradicate the threat: “Kill three million of them,” said President Yahya Khan at the February conference, “and the rest will eat out of our hands.” (Robert Payne, Massacre [1972], p. 50.) On March 25 the genocide was launched. The university in Dacca was attacked and students exterminated in their hundreds. Death squads roamed the streets of Dacca, killing some 7,000 people in a single night. It was only the beginning. “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.) Ten million refugees fled to India, overwhelming that country’s resources and spurring the eventual Indian military intervention. (The population of Bangladesh/East Pakistan at the outbreak of the genocide was about 75 million.)”

This link about genocide in general (including ’71) is expressly aimed sensitizing Muslims to the issues (run apparently by a Bangladeshi).

I came across this interesting abstract (on a paper about genocide denial), and I paste an interesting quote below:

“Though there is little scholarship on the Bangladesh genocide, there is some disagreement as to the exact nature of the genocide. The Pakistani Army is alleged to have single out Hindus, who were regarded as a fifth column allied with India, for death and expulsion. Bengalis who were thought to be important to the independence movement such as writers, teachers, professors, Awami League activists, and political leaders were singled out for execution. Finally, there was a general effort to terrorize the population of East Pakistan into submission. The Pakistani government denies that any genocide took place in Bangladesh. Others within Bangladesh deny a particular a portion of the genocide, such as that aimed at Hindus. This paper will seek to explain the political motivations that lead to a denial of all or part of the Bangladesh genocide.
It will be argued the fact that perpetrator regime, the Pakistani government, was never toppled facilitates the denial of the genocide in general. The internal politics of Bangladesh, specifically the alliance of the military that ruled the country from 1975-1990 and Islamic parties, will be examined as a source of the internal politics of genocide denial.
Finally, little attention is paid to the 1971 Bangladesh genocide in the United States. Since the U.S. was allied with Pakistan in 1971 and is allied with that country again in the post September 11, 2001 period, many officials past and present deny genocide in 1971 if they devote any attention at all to the subject.”

what?

saw this comment. my version of the story is that the root cause was West Pakistan’s inability to accept Sheikh Rehman’s (from East Pakistan) assuming presidency of the country. The military’s overthrow caused a large number of Bangla’s migrating to India which led to India declaring war. This is the indian version of the story and there might be a nationalist bent to it. I would like to hear a Bangla perspective on it – if anyone could oblige. thank you.

So little penetrative analysis by the American mainstream media at the time…Scary.

Hmmm…I smell a filmi version of War Games coming out. Vivek Oberoi as the hacker-protagonist who foils the evil Dr. Khan’s (Om Puri) plans of mutual destruction. Stirring score by Adnan Sami..gotta keep it secular!

Not the only time that Pakistan has sledged during a match