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220 22 BIRTH OF A NATION the war was over, they had won, and the young guerrilla fighter known as “the tiger of Tangail” seemed intent on improving his reputation as part of claiming a political role in his new country. During almost nine months of struggle against the Pakistani Army and its local supporters, Abdul Quadir Siddiqui had become known as a ruthless, even vicious warrior who took no quarter. The former student leader had headed a band of mukhti bahini, as the guerrilla “liberation forces” were named in Bengali , based in the Madhupur Jungle region in Tangail district. The band operated some fifty miles northwest of Dhaka, capital of the area that had been East Pakistan but with victory became independent Bangladesh. Now, Siddiqui told a Dhaka crowd on December 18, 1971, two days after the Pakistani Army had surrendered to the invading Indian Army, the new nation for which they had fought must be built on a sound basis. After divisive bloodshed, revenge killings must be replaced by judicial processes. Law and order must be restored, he said. As Siddiqui spoke, bodies festered in Dhaka’s streets and in dumping grounds on the outskirts of the city. Civil government had not begun to revive. As an example of restoring order, Siddiqui said he would turn over to the proper authorities for trial three youths sitting on the ground near the crude wooden platform where he spoke. While he was on his way to the rally, Siddiqui said, he had seen the three trying to rob a merchant and kidnap some girls off the street. He and his men had stopped such lawlessness, which must now end. Rifle-carrying followers of Siddiqui guarded the young men, whose hands were tied behind their backs. The three looked worried. The rest of the mostly young people on Paltan Maidan, the traditional political meeting ground in the heart of Dhaka’s new commercial area, were in a celebratory mood. It reminded me of the last time I had watched youths rally Birth of a Nation 221 here, the previous March 23. Dhaka University student leaders, carrying amateurish weapons, then raised a new flag of green and red with a golden outline of East Pakistan. This, they proclaimed, was to be the flag of Bangladesh, a new nation that they wanted to be independent of West Pakistan. But two days after the rally, the Pakistani Army had thrown off the subterfuge of political negotiations over the East’s status. The result was bitter internecine war that finally brought what the youths had wanted. The cost was high. No one knew how many had died during the nine months. Immediately after achieving independence, many Bangladeshis used a figure of 3 million killed. Although the 3 million figure continued to be used in political rhetoric to emphasize the sacrifices required to escape from control of West Pakistan’s Punjabi power elite, more educated guesses were later reduced to 1 million, and the United Nations’ World Health Organization published a study in 2008 that estimated the actual figure at 269,000. Despite the war’s end by the December rally, more were yet to die—some before my eyes. Covering this cycle of violence for the Washington Star was the culmination of a dozen years in which I had, off and on, been reporting on Pakistan. During that time, I had gotten to know the differences and divisions between the two awkwardly joined parts of a never really well-unified nation, to understand a little about the regional and linguistic fissures within each part. I had come to appreciate the subtle beauty of the East’s delta land with its myriad rivers populated with picturesque big sailing boats, its diverse shades of green as rice crops and jute ripened in flooded fields, its tea-covered northeastern hills and jungled southeastern hills, its swampy riverine coastlines and one long stretch of pristine beach. And the usually quiet, polite, hospitable people—them had I also come to appreciate in a wide range of urban interviews and on numerous trips into the countryside to talk with farmers. My first visit was in August 1959, when I was a correspondent based in New Delhi for the Associated Press. At the time, East Pakistan was considered a quiet backwater of a nation whose capital was in Karachi, fifteen hundred miles west of Dhaka across the breadth of India. The two parts—or “wings,” as Pakistanis called...

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