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| India-Pakistan |
| Will History Repeat Itself in Pakistan? |
| 2003-07-20 |
| Itâs a good article. Canât really summarize, you need to read the entire article. âIt was recognized from the first that a campaign of genocide would be necessary to eradicate the threat: "Kill three million of them," said President (general) Yahya Khan at the February conference, "and the rest will eat out of our hands". On March 25 (1971) the genocide was launched. The university in Dacca was attacked and students exterminated in their hundreds. Death squads roamed the streets of Dacca, killing some 7,000 people in a single night. It was only the beginning. "Within a week, half the population of Dacca had fled, and at least 30,000 people had been killed. Chittagong, too, had lost half its population. All over East Pakistan people were taking flight, and it was estimated that in April some thirty million people were wandering helplessly across East Pakistan to escape the grasp of the military." â Robert Payne, Massacre [1972] Paraphrasing Christopher Hitchens, every decade or so, the US writes a blank check to some obscure dictator in Pakistan, and the Pakistani army happily uses this free ride to perpetrate genocide in its neighborhood. In the 70âs, we turned a blind eye while Gen. Yahya killed millions in Bangladesh, with a kill rate that would put Hitler to shame. Even after the US congress cried foul and the US ambassador to Bangladesh declared âgenocide in Bangladeshâ, Nixon and Kissinger praised Yahya and sent him arms to aid in the killing. In the nineties, after the Russians had left Afghanistan, the Pakistani army happily armed, fed, financed and trained a band of jihadi hoodlums, now known to us as the Taliban; of course, the Taliban directly caused the death of hundreds of thousands of Afghan civilians in the nineties. While the cleansing continued unabated, oil executives busily negotiated oil-pipelines with the Taliban, with nary a consequence for the Pakistanis. After 911, writing blank checks to the Pakistanis seems to have come back in vogue. The only question that remains unanswered is â where will the genocide be, this time? |
| Posted by:rg117 |
| #4 "genocide" requires the targetting of a particular race/religious/ethnic group That ethnic group would be Bengalis. Rabindranath Tagore is Bengal's most famous son. Like China, India is a hodgepodge of languages (even more distinct than China's misnamed dialects) and ethnic groups. Unlike China, India was never a unitary empire prior to British rule. India consists of an agglomeration of Britain's South Asian holdings. When the British left, traditional ethnic rivalries bubbled to the surface. Pakistan itself is a mix of ethnic groups ranging from Mohajirs (Indian Muslims who fled India - Keralan, Tamilian, et al), Sindhis, Pathans (Pashtuns), Hazaras, et al, all of whom speak distinct languages. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2003-7-20 9:40:37 PM |
| #3 I don't dispute this, but from a semantics freak, "genocide" requires the targetting of a particular race/religious/ethnic group. Who do you speak of? |
| Posted by: Lu Baihu 2003-7-20 9:17:43 PM |
| #2 Let's not get out of hand here. Yes, the Paks did arm the Taliban but not with genocidal intentions. Furthermore, the Afganistan conflict would have been much more difficult without the support of the Paks. The Paks have their bad side, their intrigues, etc. but does anyone think they are really into genocide. |
| Posted by: mhw 2003-7-20 6:54:59 PM |
| #1 There are no good dictatorships - I'd hoped the Bush administration had finally learned that.Now I'm not so sure.Persia,Saudi-Arabia,Iraq,Pakistan,Indonesia - with friends like these,who needs enemies? |
| Posted by: El Id 2003-7-20 6:42:28 PM |