195 Pak army men to be tried by Dhaka for war crimes

[LaBong]

I hardly think that they were putting in the same work as regular labour and were getting the same perks. There was only so much work India could draw from them before it would be deemed contrary to human rights and the Geneva Convention.

They were made to lay roads and bridges. Once again we could've kept them as long as we like. It's a moot point actually, we won fair and square, had USSR on our side to veto any resolution in UN and could have put whatever kind of terms as per our discretion! Bhutto's machismo and nautanki in UN aside, Pakistan actually printed stamps to appeal to world community and if remember correctly Bhutto sold it by saying that if we don't free the POWs and if the terms are too humiliating thenit would be too hard to keep the people content who's already disillusioned and it will be death sentence for democracy in Pakistan.

I'm not what kind of snake oil you are peddling here but this is reality as far as it goes.

 

[Slayer786]

LOL. Really? Is this a joke? C'mon.

 

[Vinod2070]

Do I read Sarmila Bose and Dead Reckoning! Her "field research" has been debunked many times over and doesn't worth a toilet paper. For starter she based her research on findings of HR commission and never actually went to BD or interviewed witnesses. She actually lobbied to US for selling F16s to Pakistan back in 2005 and is more Pakistani than MA Jinnah!

I have read some of her articles. She is surely not someone who can be remotely called unbiased.

 

[Icarus]

Do I read Sarmila Bose and Dead Reckoning! Her "field research" has been debunked many times over and doesn't worth a toilet paper. For starter she based her research on findings of HR commission and never actually went to BD or interviewed witnesses. She actually lobbied to US for selling F16s to Pakistan back in 2005 and is more Pakistani than MA Jinnah!

Absolutely incorrect, it clearly mentions in the operationalization of hr research that she conducted field interviews with both Bangladeshi and Pakistani subjects who's testimonies she cites throughout the book on quite a regular basis. She made several trips to both states and her trips have been referenced in the book. If you expect me to believe that an Oxford Research Fellow would lie on her research and furthermore, that the Oxford University Press would publish research without any scrutiny then you are asking too much of me and are clearly unaware of the standards that literature has to meet to be able to secure a publishing agreement with Oxford. And I don't recall ever reading that she lobbied for F-16 sales to Pakistan, can you please provide me link to back the HR (No visit to BD) and F-16 lobby claims? I will be very grateful.

 

[ExtraOdinary]

Bose is more Pakistani than Jinnah the Quaid

It is possible that Dead Reckoning: Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War by Sarmila Bose is the definitive impartial account of Bangladesh's liberation war that the author smugly claims it to be. But if her previous scholarship on 1971 is anything to go by, I wouldn't count on it.

The reason that I doubt her grandiose and self-satisfied claim is that her previously published work on 1971 is replete with shoddy research and riddled with bias. Indeed, her arguments in her two articles published in Economic and Political Weekly (EPW) on 1971 are so specious and her stated methodology so laughably amateurish that it is hard to credit that they are the work of a historian who even aspires to impartiality.

Nor does Bose's previous history support her claim that she is an unbiased academic, concerned solely with setting the record straight. How many unbiased academics co-author articles with ex-US ambassadors advocating for the sale of F-16 fighter aircraft to Pakistan, as Bose did in 2005?

Now, Bose is perfectly entitled to her viewpoint that Pakistan gets a bum rap from analysts, and that, especially in India, it is important to question and deconstruct the simplistic goodies versus baddies narrative that she feels dominates the discourse surrounding 1971 and South Asian geo-politics in general. But, whatever else it is, scholarship aimed at furthering this particular agenda is anything but impartial and unbiased.

Her two EPW articles on 1971 are laughably one-sided and have been thoroughly eviscerated by critics. As Nayanika Mookherjee of Durham University points out in her response to Bose's piece (also published in EPW), the very title of Bose's first article "Anatomy of Violence: Analysis of Civil War in East Pakistan in 1971" is indicative of her bias, as by using the terms "civil war" and "East Pakistan" Bose apparently refuses to recognise the Bangladeshi government-in-exile's 10 April 1971 proclamation of independence, showing clear partiality to the Pakistani viewpoint.

Everywhere in her two EPW articles Bose gives priority to Pakistani accounts and dismisses Bangladeshi ones. Pakistani accounts are unquestioningly accepted and where there is a conflict in views, Bose treats the Pakistani version as both Gospel truth as well as evidence of the unreliability of the Bangladeshi account, a rhetorical trick which a grade-schooler could see through.

Bose takes at face value the transparently self-serving accounts of the Pak military and consistently dismisses Bangladeshi accounts as being unlikely or not credible, the criteria apparently being her own subjective judgment. She is uniformly sympathetic to the Pak viewpoint and hostile to the Bangladeshi one.


Bose's most controversial "finding" in her EPW pieces was the fact that in the case studies she analysed she was not able to find any evidence of rape, which, if extrapolated to the war as a whole, would make it unique in the history of conflict. So absurd was this finding that she was forced to subsequently qualify it, but the fact that her "findings" were so outlandish did not apparently incline her to question her obviously faulty methodology.

Bose has since gone on record questioning the official number of rapes (estimated as between 200, 000-400, 000) with the specious reasoning that it would not have been possible for Pakistani soldiers to rape so many in such a short period of time, nonsensical reasoning which is rendered even more problematic by the fact that she undercounts the number of Pak soldiers by two-thirds.

What makes Bose's shoddy scholarship even harder to stomach is her preening self-importance and smug superiority. She suggests that her work is ground-breaking, the only impartial scholarship extant on 1971, and rubbishes or dismisses anything else, a position as offensive as it is incorrect.

There is no doubt that more research needs to be done on 1971 and that much of the nationalist historiography is indeed questionable. The official death count of three million is unlikely to stand close scrutiny and certainly there were horrendous atrocities also committed by pro-liberation elements.

But something tells me that nothing produced by a scholar who has shown such naked bias and partiality in the past and whose scholarship is so flawed and methodology so wilfully obtuse is going to be worth much.

I could be wrong and I will withhold judgment on Dead Reckoning until I read it. But I am already plenty familiar with Sarmila Bose's work — and her record as apologist for the Pak military establishment does not inspire me with much confidence.

 

[Icarus]

I have read some of her articles. She is surely not someone who can be remotely called unbiased.

As an Indian and a Bengali to boot, I would expect her "Domestic" testimony and understanding of Bengal society to be pure gold in such a research but since you have problems with her work, I wonder if you would have similar problems believing Richard Sisson and Leo Rose.

 

[Icarus]

Do I read Sarmila Bose and Dead Reckoning! Her "field research" has been debunked many times over and doesn't worth a toilet paper. For starter she based her research on findings of HR commission and never actually went to BD or interviewed witnesses. She actually lobbied to US for selling F16s to Pakistan back in 2005 and is more Pakistani than MA Jinnah!

I just realized you quoted Wikipedia on me. Is this a joke?
BTW, through Wikipedia I was able to find the article that you picked up and I wonder if you even took the time to read it or you just saw a mention in the first paragraph and lobbed it in your post right away.
The article was co-written with a former US Ambassador and supported Pakistan's right to F-16s that had been already paid for before the Pressler Amendment was brought into effect.
I think that's a perfectly justified demand and there's nothing wrong with it.

Bose is more Pakistani than Jinnah the Quaid

You expect me to offer Academic Opinion on an article out of a Sunday newspaper? Why don't I note down a Biryani recipe while I'm at it.
Please quote an Academic critique of her technique or research, not a bloody Sunday magazine article written by an editor of the Dhaka Tribune who:

1) Will be biased towards the content outright.
2) Has no Academic Qualifications that entitle him to do a critique.

 

[LaBong]

Absolutely incorrect, it clearly mentions in the operationalization of hr research that she conducted field interviews with both Bangladeshi and Pakistani subjects who's testimonies she cites throughout the book on quite a regular basis. She made several trips to both states and her trips have been referenced in the book. If you expect me to believe that an Oxford Research Fellow would lie on her research and furthermore, that the Oxford University Press would publish research without any scrutiny then you are asking too much of me and are clearly unaware of the standards that literature has to meet to be able to secure a publishing agreement with Oxford. And I don't recall ever reading that she lobbied for F-16 sales to Pakistan, can you please provide me link to back the HR (No visit to BD) and F-16 lobby claims? I will be very grateful.

She did visit Dhaka and went to Jaganath Hall of Dhaka University but that's that, her "field research" is but selectively ignoring accounts of eye witnesses and glorifying Pakistani attrocities to the point of revulsion! It would take some time to aggregate all the articles which dissected Bose's tripe so bear with me.

As far lobbying to US for F16s for Pakistan, here it is.

The right stuff: F-16s to Pakistan is wise decision - CSMonitor.com

 

[Icarus]

Bose takes at face value the transparently self-serving accounts of the Pak military and consistently dismisses Bangladeshi accounts as being unlikely or not credible, the criteria apparently being her own subjective judgment.

Every single entry is corroborated by at least two Bangladeshis and two Pakistanis and after the end of the chapter, the common testimony and the difference are recorded separately.

Bose's most controversial "finding" in her EPW pieces was the fact that in the case studies she analysed she was not able to find any evidence of rape, which, if extrapolated to the war as a whole, would make it unique in the history of conflict. So absurd was this finding that she was forced to subsequently qualify it, but the fact that her "findings" were so outlandish did not apparently incline her to question her obviously faulty methodology.

Critic fails to cite report or historical reference to support his criticism of the rape finding, rendering it invalid.

Bose has since gone on record questioning the official number of rapes (estimated as between 200, 000-400, 000) with the specious reasoning that it would not have been possible for Pakistani soldiers to rape so many in such a short period of time, nonsensical reasoning which is rendered even more problematic by the fact that she undercounts the number of Pak soldiers by two-thirds.

At no point are Pakistani soldiers undercounted and there is no "Official Figure" of rape. There is the 300,000 figure that is "Alleged" by Bangladeshi Govt but rejected by all neutral observers and intellectuals.

The official death count of three million is unlikely to stand close scrutiny and certainly there were horrendous atrocities also committed by pro-liberation elements.

Again there is no official figure that has been produced on record and the failure to cite any such reference leads the critic to note that "We shall never know", in which case he cannot question a narrative without a counter narrative.

She did visit Dhaka and went to Jaganath Hall of Dhaka University but that's that, her "field research" is but selectively ignoring accounts of eye witnesses and glorifying Pakistani attrocities to the point of revulsion! It would take some time to aggregate all the articles which dissected Bose's tripe so bear with me.

As far lobbying to US for F16s for Pakistan, here it is.

The right stuff: F-16s to Pakistan is wise decision - CSMonitor.com

From never having gone to BD, she has now gone to Jaganath Hall? You need more google or I can start posting interview references by geographical location too.

 

[LaBong]

I just realized you quoted Wikipedia on me. Is this a joke?
BTW, through Wikipedia I was able to find the article that you picked up and I wonder if you even took the time to read it or you just saw a mention in the first paragraph and lobbed it in your post right away.
The article was co-written with a former US Ambassador and supported Pakistan's right to F-16s that had been already paid for before the Pressler Amendment was brought into effect.
I think that's a perfectly justified demand and there's nothing wrong with it.



You expect me to offer Academic Opinion on an article out of a Sunday newspaper? Why don't I note down a Biryani recipe while I'm at it.
Please quote an Academic critique of her technique or research, not a bloody Sunday magazine article written by an editor of the Dhaka Tribune who:

1) Will be biased towards the content outright.
2) Has no Academic Qualifications that entitle him to do a critique.

I enever knew you don't know how to find the citation from wikipedia. So I'll do it the hard way although it kills my valuable time.
-----------------------------

Bose’s basic contention is unexceptionable. The 1971 conflict was not only about the Pakistani army’s repression of the Bengalis. There was a wider mosaic of civil conflict, wherein some Bengalis killed other Bengalis, Bengalis and Biharis killed each other, and Bengali Muslims killed Bengali Hindus. But Bose’s treatment is deeply problematic. For all her claims to “non-partisan analysis”, the book is marred by a strong bias against the dominant current of Bangladeshi nationalism in 1971. The hallmark of this movement, she writes, was “violent xenophobic expression of a narrow ethno-linguistic ‘Bengali’ nationalism”. Except when it targeted the Hindus, she claims, the Pakistan army committed only “political killings”. By contrast, the “killing of non-Bengalis — Biharis and West Pakistanis — by Bengalis was clearly ‘genocide’”.

It is impossible to review the entire catalogue of evasions, obfuscations, omissions and methodological errors that suffuses the book. I will discuss only a couple of major technical historical flaws. The book examines a number of “case studies” of violence. The contextual framing of most of these is either skewed or missing, resulting in systematic misrepresentation of events. Consider Bose’s treatment of the killing of Bengalis by the Pakistan army in March 1971. Yahya Khan was keen only on “returning the country to democracy”. But the movement led by Mujibur Rahman was violent and armed. The major clashes with the army were actually provoked by the Bengalis.

This is seriously misleading. There is ample evidence to show that the army junta sought to preserve a major role for itself in any future dispensation. By February 20, 1971, the military had begun planning for a crackdown, if Mujib remained unrelenting on his six-point programme. By the end of the month, East Pakistan was beginning to be reinforced by two divisions of the Pakistan army. This was the trigger for popular calls among the Bengalis for resistance. The ostentatious parading with dummy rifles and sticks for a few days hardly counts as training for war.

But this is precisely what Bose would have us believe. Commenting on the testimony of a Dhaka University student who partook in these so-called preparations and was later caught up in the army’s brutal assault on the university halls, Bose writes: “Having trained to wage war, he was apparently surprised and offended that the enemy had actually attacked!” This propensity to blame the victim pervades the book.

Take another example, her account of the massacre of Bihari jute mill workers in Khulna. Her claim that “several thousand Biharis” were killed by Bengalis in a single incident is dubious. More importantly, her attempt to pass off these (and other) reprehensible killings of Biharis as driven solely by ethnic hatred — the basis of her claim about “genocide” by Bengali nationalists — is utterly tendentious. There was a long history of tensions between Bihari and Bengali mill workers dating to the late 1940s. The Biharis’ support for West Pakistani owners during stand-offs with workers, their participation in anti-Bengali riots in Khulna among other jute mill towns, their consistent support for West Pakistani parties — all created the ground for a deep political divide between the two communities of workers. Once the Pakistan army’s crackdown began, efforts to maintain communal amity broke down and Biharis were the first victims of the Bengali workers’ insecurity and ire. The cycle of violence and revenge continued thereafter. Bose strains to convey the impression that such violence was central to Bangladeshi nationalism.

She conveniently elides the fact that Mujib (and others) repeatedly averred that the Biharis and non-Muslims “are our sacred trust”.

Equally problematic is Bose’s consistent effort to present the Bengalis in negative light— even when her own evidence suggests otherwise. For instance, she quotes a recorded army intercept during the operation against the university, which shows that the army deliberately killed anyone it encountered. The intercept also shows that the army’s immediate estimate of dead was around 300. The university’s own assessment of students killed is 149. But Bose goes on to condescendingly observe that Bangladesh has never carried out a scientific exhumation of the graves because, “It is possible that a dig would reveal fewer bodies than the numbers claimed by the Bangladeshis.”

By contrast, despite irrefutable evidence of the Pakistan army’s murderous approach to dealing with the Bengalis, Bose tries to exonerate it of any institutional culpability. The massacre of a large group of Hindu refugees at Chuknagar is presented as the handiwork of a mysterious group of soldiers, “a band of twenty-five to thirty men brought lasting disgrace to an entire army”. The torture and killing of young rebels by the army is condoned by the assertion that “whatever their methods”, they were only picking up active militants. Bose rhetorically asks whether the army can be “castigated for thinking it was all right to kill ‘enemy combatants’… who had taken up arms to dismember their country?” Clearly, legal and moral restraints on the conduct of war don’t matter at all to her. Nor is she interested in the widespread ethnic stereotyping and dehumanisation of Bengali Muslims, which help explain the brutality with which the army cracked down on them.

Bose makes an important point about the unreliability of most figures of the dead. Yet, her own approach to numbers scarcely inspires confidence. Take her assessment of the army’s attack on Shankharipara in Dhaka. Relying on interviews with two survivors, she claims that the earlier of figure of 8,000 killed is absurdly high and that the soldiers had entered only one house and shot a few residents. The number of dead, she concludes, is only 16. But Bose does not even mention two contemporary testimonies by American citizens who visited the area immediately after the attacks. Both reported shelling and the use of heavy armament by the army, and a much larger scale of destruction. Surely, the author is underplaying the enormity of the incident.

Bose asserts that all Bangladeshi scholarship on 1971 suffers from “multiple layers of partisanship and poor quality and blatant selectivity in ‘documentation’”. Much the same can be said of her own book. Far from advancing the cause of truth, it ends up muddying the waters of scholarship.

Srinath Raghavan skewers Sarmila Bose’s Historical Revisionism

A Dhaka Debacle - Indian Express

Thoughts on <i>Dead Reckoning</i>

Some more articles putting Bose's work to it's proper place. Too lazy to quote relevant sections.

From never having gone to BD, she has now gone to Jaganath Hall? You need more google or I can start posting interview references by geographical location too.

Her visit to Bangladesh is inconsequential, like I said she didn't include the witness's accounts and throughout the book she followed a partisan and selective approach. I already provided the article where she lobbied for arming Pakistan with F16 back in 2005. So it is obvious that she has an agenda and biased in her approach. I'd appreciate if you continue referring more neutral sources hereon and not someone controversial like Bose.

 

[Vinod2070]

As an Indian and a Bengali to boot, I would expect her "Domestic" testimony and understanding of Bengal society to be pure gold in such a research but since you have problems with her work, I wonder if you would have similar problems believing Richard Sisson and Leo Rose.

See, if she had claimed that all the claims of genocide were true, the same attributes would be held against her.

So it is not about the origin of the person but his or her objectivity. I have read some of her articles that put that in doubt. For instance:

The courageous Pakistan army stand on the eastern front —Sarmila Bose

By Sarmila Bose

There is much for Pakistan to come to terms with what happened in 1971. But the answers don’t lie in unthinking vilification of the fighting men who performed so well in the war against such heavy odds in defence of the national policy. Rather, in failing to honour them, the nation dishonours itself.

Won't you say it sounds partisan for an impartial academic? This and the F-16 lobbying.

Haven't your own leaders like even Imran Khan also admitted the the atrocities by PA and written about it in their books?

I have not read the other two you have mentioned.

 

[LaBong]

As an Indian and a Bengali to boot, I would expect her "Domestic" testimony and understanding of Bengal society to be pure gold in such a research but since you have problems with her work, I wonder if you would have similar problems believing Richard Sisson and Leo Rose.

Her Indian and Bengali credential has no bearing here. She was obviously wooed by retired PA officers or pay-rolled by you know who. No Indian Bengali having her head firmly in place would advocate giving Pakistan F16s!

The hallmark of this movement, she writes, was "violent xenophobic expression of a narrow ethno-linguistic 'Bengali' nationalism". Except when it targeted the Hindus, she claims, the Pakistan army committed only "political killings". By contrast, the "killing of non-Bengalis — Biharis and West Pakistanis — by Bengalis was clearly 'genocide'".

Stockholm syndrome or what!

 

[Armstrong]

@Secur - Waisee huddd ho gaiii haiii janaab for someone who was born in East Pakistan & is half Bengali (because of his love for fish not by blood) you're not contributing anything to this thread ?

 

[LaBong]

An old post of mine from an old thread where Icarus also participated, I think back then his moniker was Kakgeta!

In September Iranian President Mahmud Ahmedinejad delivered a speech at Columbia University amidst much protest. The protests stemmed from his views on the Holocaust. Under questioning Ahmedinejad conceded that the Holocaust had indeed happened, but he was calling for further &#8220;research&#8221; to &#8220;approach the topic from different perspectives.&#8221; In doing so, Ahmedinejad was engaging in the modern form of Holocaust Denial. Ahmedinejad&#8217;s &#8220;different perspectives&#8221; were on display last year when he called for a conference on the Holocaust. At the time, his spokesman declared, &#8220;I have visited the Nazi camps in Eastern Europe. I think it is exaggerated.&#8221;

Modern Holocaust Denial has three key elements. The Deniers argue that the Nazis did not kill five to six million Jews; that the Nazis did not have a systematic policy of killing Jews; and, that the genocide was not carried out in extermination camps. Ahmedinejad and others call for further &#8220;research&#8221; to investigate one or more of these key elements. Their goal is to diminish the genocide by, first, questioning its extent and then by arguing that whatever killings took place were part of the normal savagery of war and not as a result of any systematic campaign by the Nazis. Holocaust Denial is anti-Semitism in the cloak of &#8220;scholarship.&#8221; Over a half century after perhaps the most well-documented act of genocide in the history of mankind, Holocaust Deniers still persist in trying to diminish its horrors.

Holocaust Denial is an example of the phenomenon of genocide denial that crops up to challenge almost every accepted case of genocide. The genocide committed by the Pakistan army during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 is no exception. Because of the scale of the atrocities in 1971 against a civilian population of 70 million people it has proved impossible for genocide deniers to claim that the atrocities did not occur. Instead, they have focused on two tactics used to try to deny the Holocaust: that the scale of the genocide was not that great, and that the Pakistan army had no systematic policy of genocide.

Most estimates of the 1971 genocide put the death toll between 300,000 and 3 million Bangladeshis dead, with between 200,000 to 400,000 women raped. R.J Rummel, in his book Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900, puts the death toll at around 1.5 million. According to Gendercide Watch:



Susan Brownmiller, in her book Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, puts the number of women raped by the Pakistan military and their local collaborators, the Razakars, between 200,000 and 400,000. She writes:



On March 25, 1971 the Pakistan army unleashed a systematic campaign of genocide on the civilian population of then East Pakistan. Nine months later a defeated Pakistan army left in its wake one of the most concentrated acts of genocide in the twentieth century.

After the Bangladesh Liberation War the government of Pakistan produced a report on the actions of the Pakistani army during 1971 known as the Hamoodur Rahman Commission Report. While the report acknowledged that the Pakistani army had indeed committed atrocities in Bangladesh, it downplayed the extent of the atrocities and denied that there was any systematic policy of genocide:

[Emphasis added.]

The Report&#8217;s estimate of 26,000 dead stands in stark contrast to every other study of the death toll, which put the death toll between 300,000 to 3 million. The Report was an attempt by the Pakistani government and army to dictate the narrative before the true extent of the genocide became evident to the world. The Pakistani Report has nonetheless stood as the document of last resort for most 1971 genocide deniers.


[Sarmila Bose.]

Following up on her 2005 paper denying the extent of the 1971 genocide published in the Economic and Political Weekly, Sarmila Bose has now published a paper denying the extent of the rapes of Bangladeshi women by the Pakistan army and the Razakars. In her paper entitled &#8220;Losing the Victims: Problems of Using Women as Weapons in Recounting the Bangladesh War&#8221; she states in the introduction:

That rape occurred in East Pakistan in 1971 has never been in any doubt. The question is what was the true extent of rape, who were the victims and who the perpetrators and was there any systematic policy of rape by any party, as opposed to opportunistic sexual crimes in times of war.

At the very beginning of her paper, she lays down the two tactics familiar to all genocide deniers: she questions the extent of the rape and questions whether there was any systematic policy of rape. Ms. Bose argues that claiming &#8220;hundreds of thousands&#8221; were raped trivializes &#8220;the possibly several thousand true rape victims&#8221; of the war. She however does not offer a good explanation as to how she reached the &#8220;several thousand&#8221; number other than saying that so many rapes would not be possible by the size of the Pakistani army in 1971. She also, unsurprisingly, quotes the passage from the Hamoodur Rahman Commission Report that I cited above to support her assertion that so many rapes could not have occurred.To try to bolster her argument that the Pakistani forces in Bangladesh could not have raped so many women, she claims:




[A Pakistan stamp depicting the 90,000 PoWs in Indian camps. This stamp was issued with the political aim of raising the POW issue at a global level in securing their release.]

The actual number of Pakistani forces at the end of the war, and taken PoW by the Indians, was 90,368, including over 54,000 army and 22,000 paramilitary forces. It is not unreasonable to conclude that a force of 90,000 could rape between 200,000 to 400,000 women in the space of nine months. Even if only 10% of the force raped only one woman each in nine months, the number of rapes are well over &#8220;several thousand&#8221; claimed by Ms. Bose. Since Ms. Bose does the math in her paper, I will do the macabre calculation for the total force here. To rape 200,000 Bangladeshi women a Pakistani force of 90,000 would have to rape 2 to 3 women each in nine months. Not only is this scale of atrocity possible by an army engaged in a systematic campaign of genocide, it also has parallels in other modern conflicts (for example, the rape of between 250,000 to 500,000 women in Rwanda within 100 days).Ms. Bose also paints a picture of the Pakistani military as a disciplined force that spared women and children. She writes:




[Blood Telegram.]

However, her &#8220;field research&#8221; is contradicted by all available evidence. From the early days of the war, women and girls were targeted for rape and killed. On March 30, 1971 the American Consul General in Dhaka, Archer Blood, sent a telegram to the State Department recounting the Pakistani atrocities in Dhaka. In it he wrote:




The continuing rape of Bangladesh

 

[Armstrong]

Phir @Secur - Abbb ignore kar rahaa haiii Bhai koo ?