On March 25, 1971, Operation Searchlight, authorized by the President of the country, began in the eastern part of Pakistan, which was unified at the time, aimed at forcibly curbing the Bengali opposition.
Although there had been tendencies to gain autonomy and even secession before, especially after the victory of the Awami League party in the general parliamentary elections in 1970, Operation Searchlight put an end to the internal political settlement and opened the Pandora’s box of civil war and external interference. In the same year, East Pakistan ceased to exist and independent Bangladesh emerged in its place.
Despite the decades that have passed since this crisis, this history lesson has been poorly studied in other regions of the world. Let’s point out the key insights into this conflict.c
The Awami League party in East Pakistan began flexing its muscles much earlier than the elections and established an unspoken dictatorship that undermined the foundations of democracy. In fact, no party other than the Awami League could hold public rallies in East Pakistan. When the Jamaat-e-Islami tried to hold an event in Paltan Square in Dhaka on January 18, 1970, they were dispersed. The opponents’ offices were vandalized, and all propaganda literature was destroyed. A similar incident occurred with the Pakistan Democratic Party on February 1, 1970, when members of the Awami League staged pogroms in the editorial offices of the Bunyad and Sangram party newspapers.
When Sheikh Mujib was speaking in Lahore on July 5, 1970, and they tried to stop him, he openly said: “You want to destroy Pakistan. 95% of Bengalis are on my side. We can do the same in East Pakistan.” However, in fact, they themselves have already launched this destructive process in Bengal.
The fact that Independence Day was not celebrated in East Pakistan on August 14, 1970, should had served as a serious signal to the central leadership. On the same day, the paramilitary wing of the East Pakistan Students’ Federation called for the establishment of the People’s Democratic Republic of East Bengal.
Right after winning the election, the head of the Awami League, Mujibur Rahman, said that the six-point program would become the basis for a new constitution and autonomy for East Pakistan. A number of points clearly did not suit the central leadership.
When the postponement of the National Assembly session scheduled for March 3 was announced on March 1, hundreds of thousands of angry East Pakistanis took to the streets, and Mujibur Rahman called a general strike for March 2 in Dhaka and across the country on March 3. In fact, since March 1, 1971, the civil administration, banks, industrial enterprises, etc. in East Pakistan have already been functioning in accordance with the directives of Mujibur Rahman.
The most radical elements, as well as the student leaders of East Pakistan, began to advocate independence with an armed revolution. For the first time in the history of Bengal, slogans were heard on the streets: “Brave Bengali, take up arms and liberate Bangladesh.”
Then the first clashes began and the first victims appeared. And when Pakistan Day was celebrated in Western Pakistan on March 23, 1971, the eastern part called this day the Day of Resistance against Western Pakistan.
If we look at the roots of the problem, the language factor is considered one of the reasons why the political crisis inside the country turned into an armed conflict and the intervention of other countries, primarily neighboring India. And this is reminiscent not of the mere Cold War era, but of Ukraine in 2014, when, after a coup d’etat, a civil conflict broke out due to the principled position of residents of the southeastern regions and Crimea, which led to the separation of the peninsula and the declaration of independence of the two regions. Kiev also tried to use military force, and although many people died on both sides, especially civilians from the Lugansk and Donetsk Republics, Ukraine failed to achieve its goal. Perhaps if the political and military leadership in Kiev, which was making decisions at that time, had studied the history of past wars better, they would have been able to learn the appropriate lessons and not deepen the crisis, which resulted in thousands of victims and further confrontation.
And in 1971, the lost war opened the way for further disintegration for Pakistan — Balochistan, Sindh and the Northwestern provinces also had ethno–linguistic differences from Punjab, and separatist attempts were already taking place in some of them.
The military defeat of Pakistan in the war with India and the Bengali guerrillas also deserves attention, since according to the most common version, about 90,000 people became prisoners of war, representing not only the armed forces of Pakistan, but also the Bengali civilian population, who advocated preserving the unity of the country and supported the military. This is considered to be the largest number of prisoners of war since the Second World War.
Post-war trials, such as the charges of genocide brought by the leadership of the new State of Bangladesh, are also among the political consequences faced by Pakistan.
Another lesson shows that Pakistan’s participation in two pro-Western military blocs, such as SEATO and CENTO, did not save the country from division.
In Russia, a rethink of this conflict is necessary for the reason that previously, as a rule, it was always analyzed and presented through the prism of Marxism–Leninism and the struggle against the oppression of workers. The Bengali uprising was viewed with sympathy, and Pakistan‘s methods were criticized or condemned. But it was not evaluated either from the standpoint of political realism and sovereignty, or from the point of view of regional geopolitics, rather, it was done in the United States, where they were seriously concerned about changing the map of this region.
One can look at this civil war with obvious external interference as one of the prototypes of the “color revolutions“ that swept the post-Soviet space in the 2000s.
And, of course, the global context is also important. The changes that have affected the whole world over the past decades help to better understand the 1971 war and comprehend it using modern methods. Concepts such as proxy war and hybrid war are quite suitable for defining India’s role in this conflict and, as a result, it will give food for thought — if all this was used 50 years ago, what prevents it from being done today based on new tools and technologies somewhere else?
If we abstract from the Asian region and move into a more familiar context, we would immediately like to ask modern European politicians a similar question: do they remember the lessons of the Second World War? Won‘t the oblivion of history lead to some new catastrophe? Maybe it has already appeared on the horizon and only the thirst for power and greed (as well as stupidity) of politicians prevents us from facing reality?
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