Tag Archives: East Pakistan

ifty-one years ago Pakistan split into two parts within 24 years of its existence. The tragedy of the Fall of Dacca in 1971 is still fresh in sensitive hearts. Unfortunately, in Pakistan even today the discussion goes only on regarding who was responsible for this debacle – the Army or the politicians? Pakistanis are so engrossed in their own internal …

With the global and the regional power balances changing, new options for openings are available for both Pakistan and Bangladesh to use all the opportunities arising. Reforging a diplomatic and economic alliance between our two countries could be a priority.

While war and civil war always include violence, the atrocities committed during the nine months in 1971 were neither a decided war strategy nor a one-sided occurrence. It was initiated by the emotional break-down of established psychological and societal limits fired by disparate nationalist theories and feelings.

In Pakistan there is an unfortunate tendency to force uniformity on people in the mistaken attempt to create unity. This unfortunate idea has had a backlash on Pakistan before, in 1971 half of the country was lost because of the efforts of the central government to unify the nation in its early days by bringing about a uniform language and declaring Urdu the sole national language, etc.

Militarily “Operation Searchlight” was necessary as a pre-emptive strike. That an outstanding military success would end in a horrible human catastrophe and an unmitigated political disaster was also inevitable. Has anyone really been held accountable in Pakistan?

India’s recent decision to let Bangladeshi Hindus stay there indefinitely has made many people happy, but the move raises some tricky questions.

The Bangladesh Army’s record in the Chittagong Hill Tracts belies its prominence in UN peacekeeping missions.

On 18 December 2013, the Indian National Congress party government introduced a bill in parliament to facilitate the realization of the 1974 Land Boundary Agreement with Bangladesh. This bill was the latest in a long series of attempts to enable the exchange of 161 enclaves — tiny pieces of Indian territory completely bounded by Bangladesh and vice-versa — by absorbing them into …

  We are a severe critic of this government on many issues. But on the issue of holding war crimes trial we have no hesitation in saying that without the AL (Awami League party of prime minister Sheikh Hasina Wajid who also happens to be daughter of Bangladesh’s founder Sheikh Mujibur Rehman) in power, and without Sheikh Hasina’s determined leadership, …