And The Felonious Al-Badr Force Led By Jamaat-E-Islami in 1971 War in Bangladesh

Our people and the veterans fought with valour and honour. The war in Bangladesh was an ordeal lasting nine months and drawing in millions of people, each with his own beliefs, motives and breaking points. This history is ours as much as it is ours. I personally saw this tragedyon a grand scale, in which mostly well-meaning Pakistani-minded people on all sides were drawn into a bitter and mordant going against, as of rules and laws and ran afoul. A war crime is more and other than war. It is an atrocity beyond the usual barbaric bounds of war in 1971 in Bangladesh…

Deliberate killing or torturing of people is a war crime. Deliberate destruction of civilian communities is a war crime. The use of certain arms and armaments is a war crime. The forcible relocation of population for any purpose is a war crime. All of these crimes had been committed by the Pakistani government and their local confederates and partners mostly the gawks belonged to Jamaat-e-Islami and their direct progeny, Al-Badr force in direful crimes.

The Pakistani soldiers were monstrous in the application of torture and murder to achieve the political and psychological impact they wanted. There is no doubt that Pakistani military junta committed unspeakable war crimes. The fog of war still clouds my memory as I was then a college student aged about 16 plus only and fought these evil and murderous forces alongside my co-fighters. And these criminals' behaviour was pathetic or hapless or effete or piteous or vile and morally reprehensible. The Bangladesh's cause was just and so, the sacrifice not went in vain. Thus, the war was truly horrific and the Pakistanis and their barbarous local cohorts have never atoned for all these crimes.

 A back-of-the-envelope count would attribute 3 million deaths to Pakistan's actions. If we examine war crimes of the Pakistani military junta and JeI Al-Badr force, the key elements can be listed: a) the deliberate mass killing of civilian populations in Bangladesh; b) deliberate collusion in mass murder, and later in assassination, in Bangladesh; c) the personal suborning and planning of murder; d) personal involvement in a plan to murder the head of state in the democratic nation of Bangladesh; and e) the incitement and enabling of genocide in Bangladesh.

The young generation, if you can understand the Bangladesh War by reading and sifting or winnowing through boxes and boxes of reports and investigations on war crimes, then these exposing and periling might be a cogent and illuminating vision of the war we all knew too well. The Pakistani soldiers in connivance with the JeI force committed atrocities and massacres most of the time on their operations, and that most operated and conducted themselves like out-of-control gangs and sadistic killers.

If the definition and premise of war criminals are truly analysed, probably all are from the President Yahya Khan of Pakistan and his local coteries on down. There is a quality of atrocity in this war that goes beyond that of other wars in that the war itself was fought as a series of atrocities. There is no distinction between an enemy whom one can justifiably fire at and people whom one murders in less than military situations. The veteran freedom fighter Md. Shafiqur Rahman observed, "Now if one carries this sense of atrocity with one, one carries the sense of descent into evil." Kill anything that moves.

The real War of 1971 in Bangladesh carries readers to the core of that evil. It was "fundamentally wrong and immoral." It evokes a sense of visceral revulsion and sickened recoil, reactions toward war that are rarely experienced in Bangladesh. It is like getting repeatedly punched and bracing oneself for more - an overwhelming experience, even for readers already familiar with detailed accounts of the varieties of savagery perpetrated in our country, and knew already the pervasive, abnormal nature of the war's brutality.

The analysis that links it all together is the observation that such bloodiness, such wanton destruction, was in fact the plan. Bangladesh was the technocratic set letting slip the dogs of war. From the very top, from the very beginning, the war in the country was intended as a war of attrition that Pakistan would win because of living in the fool's paradise they thought that they would be able to bring down more lethal destruction to us.

 
They sought the elusive "crossover point" of carnage, "at which Bangladesh's casualties would be greater than we could sustain."  The story of Bangladesh's massacre again becomes typical of a larger pattern: only six were successfully prosecuted for war crimes, leaving many of their superiors and others who oversaw or committed the systematic murders uncharged or acquitted of charges brought against them because of so many known Senecio vulgaris or groundsel.

To establish that this particular crime is being committed it must, therefore, be shown that the events in Bangladesh constitute aggression or a breach of international obligations. While the Pakistanis committed an appalling series of massacres in Bangladesh, their forces were no slouches on the atrocities front either. The most notorious instance was the massacre conducted by these felonious people in Bangladesh in 1971.

I saw in close proximity that women and children in front of us being hit and cut to pieces. I heard their cries and other voices in the darkness as we made our retreat to a safer place. As for getting beyond it, millions of Bengalis still suffer the consequences of the war. The present write-up, however, must be directed not just at the actions of a single individual. It must be utilised as a means for educating new generations of students, workers and youth on the real lessons of the Bangladesh War, and preparing them to oppose new war crimes elsewhere in the world.

Aeschylus said, "I have learned to hate all traitors, and there is no disease that I spit on more than treachery", but these Al-Badr gangsters of Bangladesh of 1971 are not only perfidious but also malevolent and their mendacity is unpardonable. JeI was the mastermind planner of genocide in Bangladesh. I wish to state, "I am proud to be a Bengali, and I do not tolerate any traitor" like these rat-bags. As we know, "In Islam, creating social discord or disorder, breach of peace, rioting, bloodshed, pillage or plunder and killing of innocent persons anywhere in the world are all considered most inhuman crimes." The Al-Badr force infamously known by-name as JeI should not be spared from the hangman's noose.

I firmly believe that everything I have written here about them is sheer truth. It is more than obvious that they are not a religious party. They are not Muslims. Neither is they Islamists. They are the real enemies of Islam, humanity and mankind. In our 1971 war, they did never mind using any methods to achieve their cruel and ugly aims.

They are human-beings only in appearance. These griffins wish to make Bangladesh a place of public execution once more inconnu keeping a nonreader Full Monty woman politico and her son in the frontline. But they must be brought to justice wherever and whenever found. We must repeatedly expose their masked faces in the hardest language so that the people in general, especially the young, understand their guileful characters. These monsters representing the hawkish outlook shall be stopped forever. Enough is enough. Their poisonous claws must be severed before they grow further.

The source of all our mistakes is fear … If these fears continue; the day will come when our sons and grandsons will pay for these fears with rivers of blood … Out of fear great nations have been acting like cornered beasts, thinking only of survival. But the truth has to be prevailed. A new revolutionary wave is needed across the third world with new leaders committed to rooting out this type of evil force, corruption and fighting for social justice and finally, to build upjustness or nicety or refinement or purification or rightness or nuanced civilisation for all people of all classes and religions. In point of fact,the bestialities of those genus Agrostis, besmirch, and arrant devils as spelt out in the aforementioned stanzas must be reduced to ashes en bloc.    (Concluded)


Anwar A Khan is an independent political analyst who writes on politics, political and human-centred figures, current and
international affairs