Ghamdi entitled "The blunders of the past and distortion of facts" (Jan 27). I am afraid that the writer, while responding to an article published in the Bangladesh newspaper, The Daily Observer, has made some serious errors in his study of conditions relating to Bangladesh's War of Liberation in 1971. Allow me the privilege of pointing them out one by one. First, there is no fabrication in the statement that Bangladeshi men were subjected to sexual assaults by the soldiers of the Pakistan army at military checkpoints in 1971. Indeed, there is photographic evidence to prove that the soldiers did indulge in such despicable behavior. I am surprised that an expert of Dr. Al-Ghamdi's standing is unaware of such facts. Second, Bengali women were not allegedly subjected to rape. These women, altogether 200,000, were very much the victims of rape and molestation by Pakistan's soldiers. A large number of war babies, many of whom were adopted by people in the West, such as Canada and Scandinavia, were born out of such rape. After the war, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh's founding father, took measures to rehabilitate them. Forty-five years after the country's liberation, many of these women happen to be alive and are growing old in the many villages and towns of Bangladesh. I would suggest that Dr. Al-Ghamdi read at least one book (Women, War and the Liberation of Bangladesh by Yasmin Saikia) to get his facts straight. Third, Dr. Al-Ghamdi notes that the Pakistani forces were defeated by the Indian army and were taken to India as prisoners of war. He refrains from mentioning the fact that the Pakistan army, with 93,000 soldiers, surrendered to the Joint Command of India-Bangladesh forces, the Bangladesh component being the Mukti Bahini which waged a guerrilla war against Pakistan from March to December 1971. Dr. Al-Ghamdi persistently calls the crisis a civil war when in fact it was an independence war for Bengalis, who had their own government in exile, led by Prime Minister Tajuddin Ahmad, leading the armed struggle. Fourth, the writer makes a factual error when he informs readers that the 195 Pakistani military officers were freed following the Shimla Agreement reached by Indira Gandhi and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. The Shimla deal was arrived at in July 1972. The 195 officers, earmarked for trial, were freed under the 1974 tripartite agreement between India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Again, let it be noted that Prime Minister Bhutto promised Sheikh Mujibur Rahman that the officers would be tried in Pakistan by Pakistan. His fear was that if the officers were tried in Bangladesh, the Pakistan army would overthrow his fledgling civilian government (re: Bangladesh: Quest for Freedom and Justice by Dr. Kamal Hossain). Fifth, the core of Dr. Al-Ghamdi's argument relates to what happened to the Biharis. In fact, this focus on the atrocities allegedly perpetrated on the Biharis by Bengalis in 1971 is a relatively new narrative in light of the recent war crimes trials and subsequent execution of some notorious Bengali collaborators of the Pakistan army. Apologists for these men have been raising the Bihari question. The fact is that in 1971, three forces - the Pakistan army, its local rightwing collaborators and large numbers of Biharis (an Urdu-speaking ethnic group which had settled in former East Pakistan in the aftermath of the partition of India in 1947) - together subjected Bengalis to unspeakable atrocities. After the war, most of them were given the option of being citizens of Bangladesh or Pakistan. They opted to go to Pakistan. It was Pakistan's refusal to accept them all which has, sadly, contributed to their plight. Yes, after the war, many Biharis were the target of Bengali wrath over their collaboration with the army. That was regrettable but was swiftly brought under control. But to compare the genocide of Bengalis with the travails of the Biharis is nothing short of a travesty of the truth. It is a very bad analogy. Finally, your writer commits one more factual error. Immediately after the war, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto took over as President, not Prime Minister, of what remained of Pakistan from a disgraced General Yahya Khan. He assumed the office of prime minister when Pakistan adopted a new constitution in mid-1973. I present these points in the interest of a fair and realistic assessment of the tragedy the people of Bangladesh went through in 1971. Syed Badrul Ahsan Associate Editor The Daily Observer Dhaka, Bangladesh
