BRUTAL BIRTH OF BANGLADESH PART TWO
“PAKISTANI TROOPS DEPLOYED ALL OVER DHAKA, THE REGIONAL CAPITAL, SETTING FIRE TO ITS SLUMS AND BESIEGING ITS UNIVERSITY. GUNFIRE ECHOED THROUGHOUT THE FIRST DREADFUL NIGHT AND CONTINUED IN THE EVENINGS THAT FOLLOWED”
It could have been the greatest exodus in modern history, a displacement unseen since the Partition in 1947. In the summer of 1971 Bengalis from what used to be East Pakistan escaped their towns and villages for India, where they sought shelter in squalid refugee camps. Conditions in these temporary habitats were appalling. Millions of starving, half-naked men and women, together with innumerable children, spent their days in hovels separated by open sewers dug by hand. The flies were a pestilence. Cholera spread quickly, claiming hundreds of lives.
These desperate people were fleeing a brutal persecution that began in March, when Pakistan’s dictator Yahya Khan sent Pakistan’s army to crush Bengali dissidents. East Pakistan’s reigning political party had swept the previous year’s elections, and there was both anxiety and outrage over the fact the Awami League’s champion, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, would be denied the prime minister’s office.
Rather than accept the election results, West Pakistan’s rulers – the politicians and generals who had no belief in sharing their mandate – approved Operation Searchlight. On 25 March, Pakistani troops deployed all over Dhaka, the regional capital, setting fire to its slums and besieging its university. Gunfire
