Documents on assassination of Sheikh Mujib

Anatomy of a Coup: A Journey of a Quarter Century
Lawrence Lifschultz

In the autumn of 1975, a few months after the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, a young Bengali stood in front of a hotel in Sacramento, California. His name was Robi Chakravorti. He was the only Bengali in a small crowd that had gathered to hear the last speech of Jimmy Carter's campaign for President of the United States. Carter had stopped over in Sacramento, capital of California, the night before the election.

"It was a routine campaign speech," wrote Chakravorti four years later in the Calcutta weekly, Frontier. "But a part of it sticks in my memory. He [Carter] said that he would stop undercover operations of the type for which the CIA had been criticized 'whether in Chile or Bangladesh'. I vividly remember the juxtaposition of those two countries. Reports of CIA involvement in one was well known but in the other it was a matter of gossip and speculation among Indian and Bangladeshi journalists."

Standing only a few feet from Carter, Chakravorti is quite certain that he heard Carter correctly. Carter's "reference to Bangladesh... puzzled me to no end," recalled Chakravorti. "The association of Chile with Bangladesh surprised me. I thought it could be a slip of the tongue or a matter of rhetoric. In either case, I wondered, why a tongue-twisting name like Bangladesh over names, which are easier to pronounce? Another interpretation... was that as a Presidential candidate, Carter was briefed regularly by the Ford Administration, that he learnt about CIA operations in Bangladesh and deliberately included it in his speech for effect."

In fact, during a presidential campaign in the United States, the two leading candidates are regularly provided intelligence briefings by the CIA, even when the candidates are neither a sitting President nor a Vice-President. The 1975 campaign was no exception. During the summer and autumn of that year, Jimmy Carter, the candidate, received regular intelligence briefings from the CIA.

Two years after Chakravorti stood listening to Carter under a California sun, this writer sat down at the US State Department in Washington with an American diplomat who had served in a senior position at the American Embassy in Dhaka in August 1975. We had met previously when I was South Asia Correspondent of the Far Eastern Economic Review (Hong Kong). We were joined by my colleague, the American writer, and journalist, Kai Bird, who was then an editor at The Nation magazine in New York. Our diplomatic source was a serious and troubled man. He was distressed about the way Mujib and much of his family had died. Moreover, he was disturbed by what he knew about prior contacts and relationships between US Embassy personnel and the group that had planned the coup d'etat.

We had encountered a rare item. An American government official with a conscience. As we talked, he set out before us the pieces of a puzzle. The challenge was for us to pick them up and to begin piecing them together. Clearly, the man before us knew selected parts of a greater puzzle.  But, what he knew was crucial. The story, as we knew it, of the coup d'etat, which killed Mujibur Rahman was unraveling and taking a new shape.

Stories get told and stories get reported. Frequently, a foreign correspondent, trying to penetrate the surface appearance of a complex set of events filled with their own macabre web of killings and betrayals, fails at first to get the reports right. A coup d'etat or a midnight murder occurring in distant spots at moments of unexpected crisis, are often reported with little real accuracy at the time.  Few writers go back to those reports, once put on page one to discover later that the real story was a very different one.

Just such a case occurred a quarter century ago on the night of 14 August 1975. Martin Woollacott and I filed one of the most detailed reports of what happened for The Guardian (London). It ran as the lead story on page one for August 23, 1975. I also filed a report for the Far Eastern Economic Review. Looking back, we certainly missed a great deal. As with all such events when they happened, no one except the actual participants knew what had really gone on.  Curious and skeptical I began to retrace my steps to look again at the story of Sheikh Mujib's death.

The coup happened on one of those hot sweltering monsoon nights that blow up each summer from the Bay of Bengal. It was a quiet evening and the political talk in the teashops of Dhaka that day was about Mujib's speech planned for the next morning at the university. Life had become difficult in Bangladesh and people wondered if one of the left wing underground parties might try to make trouble during the university ceremony. But, otherwise, the night did not seem very different from many others that summer.

Yet, life in Dhaka did take a sudden turn that August evening. For many who only four years earlier had celebrated Bangladesh's independence their lives would never again be quite the same. Just after midnight, the Bengal Lancers and the Bangladesh Armoured Corps slowly trundled out of the capital's main cantonment toward the runways of the abandoned half-built second airport on the capital's edge. As they lined up in formation on the main runway, the commanding officer of the column, Major Farooq, stood on a tank and told his men that on this very evening they would overthrow Mujib's government. It was a fire-eating speech and by the time Farooq had finished, they were ready to go. They move out and split into three columns. Within three hours, Mujib and many of his family would be dead.

The "official story" that emerged at the time was that six junior officers with three hundred men under their command had acted on their own in overthrowing Mujib. The motives for the coup were attributed to a mixture of personal grudges held by certain of the officers against Mujib and his associates, together with a general mood of frustration at widespread allegations of corruption among elements within the Mujib government. In reporting the coup, no foreign or Bengali journalist probed beyond the most superficial aspects of what had happened. What contacts the officers had made before August, and which politicians had been contacted, were simply not explored. The version of events that the "Majors" had acted alone without prior political planning was an unexamined myth that came to stand as fact.

The morning Mujib and much of his family were killed, the figure installed by the young majors as President was Khondakar Mustaque, generally considered to be the representative of the rightist faction within Mujib's

Awami League. After the putsch, Mustaque remained impeccably reticent about any part he personally might have played in Mujib's downfall. He neither confirmed nor denied his prior involvement. He simply avoided any public discussion of the question and desperately attempted to stabilize his regime.

In June 1976, nearly a year after Mujib had been killed and eight months after Mustaque had himself been thrown out of the presidency by another military upheaval, I interviewed Mustaque for three hours at his residence in old Dhaka. He denied to me any knowledge of the coup plan or prior meeting with the army majors who carried out the action. Mustaque claimed that he was as surprised as everyone else on the morning of the 15th, and had acceded to the major's request to assume the Presidency only to avoid further bloodshed in the country. "When they came to my house that morning," Mustaque told me, "I thought they had also come to kill me. I was completely surprised when they asked me to become President." The man was lying.

The Majors and their associates ultimately told a very different story which was at wide variance with Mustaque's account. In a series of interviews conducted from exile in London for British television in August 1976 by The Sunday Times journalist, Anthony Mascarenhas, the Majors claimed they were in direct contact with Mustaque in the weeks prior to the coup. Major Rashid told Mascarenhas, "I had the first contact with him [Mustaque] around the first week of August and subsequently met him on the 13th and 14th."

However, Rashid's public statements to Mascarenhas about his contact with Mustaque was itself only partially true. Prior meetings between Mustaque and the Majors did occur. However, the first contacts between Major Rashid and Mustaque were not in August but much earlier.

This new information is based on a detailed interview with an acutely knowledgeable Bangladeshi military officer, now living in exile, who was present during meetings between Rashid and Mustaque, and subsequent encounters between Rashid and senior army officers. The interview took place in a European capital in 1997. Indeed, throughout the latter part of '74 and the first half of '75, the Majors had held simultaneous discussions with both Mustaque and senior military figures, such as General Ziaur Rahman, more than six months prior to the actual coup.

Of course, these were not the only crucial meetings taking place during 1974 and 1975. According to our senior American Embassy source, officials at the American Embassy were approached by people intending to overthrow the government of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. This source stated that a series of meetings took place with Embassy personnel between November 1974 and January 1975. These discussions were held with the purpose of determining the attitude of the US Government towards a political change in Bangladesh if a coup d'etat were actually to happen.

The contacts occurred during the period in which the Church and Pike Congressional Committee hearing in Washington on CIA assassinations of foreign leaders were gearing up. The committee hearings were having their own impact within the American diplomatic and intelligence bureaucracies, creating great nervousness and anxiety. The American press was openly speculating that senior American intelligence officials might face imprisonment for illegal clandestine action in Chile and elsewhere. According to this senior Embassy official, the American Ambassador, Davis Eugene Booster, gave strict orders that all contacts with the group planning the coup be broken off.

"In January 1975 we came to an understanding in the embassy that we would stay out of it," said our source. "I can't say there was any approach to the embassy by any of these people in the period from January to August. In the period before that they did try to approach us." Another Embassy source claimed that while contact was broken off at the level of diplomatic and foreign service officials who wished to remain "clean", liaison was taken over and carried on through the channel of the American Embassy's CIA Station Chief, Philip Cherry and other station agents.

Indeed, Embassy sources claim that Ambassador Boster was deeply disturbed to see that the men who were at the centre of the coup in August were precisely those with whom six months earlier he had ordered all contact be broken. An Embassy source, who worked closely with Boster, claimed the Ambassador believed the CIA Station had acted behind his back, possibly with "back channel" authority from CIA headquarters in Langley or from Washington.

When I interviewed Philip Cherry in September 1978, he categorically denied these allegations. "We had no Bangladeshi come into the office and tell us anything about any plans for coups or anything like that," he said. "We had all kinds of Bangladeshi coming into the office, but not for that reason. If anyone like that had come in, I would have heard from my colleagues who were there before, they would have been listened to but told to go away."

Cherry did, however, add an important qualification. "There is one thing," he said. "There are politicians who frequently approach embassies, and perhaps have contacts there. They think they may have contacts. But that's a far cry from any of those embassies involved in assisting them in involvement in a coup. A political officer's job is to assist his government by providing information on what is going on a good political officer has many contacts. But that does not mean he is advising these politicians or coup leaders to overthrow governments."

Indeed, Khondakar Mustaque had an important basis on which to "think he had contacts." For years among those familiar with the events of Pakistan's civil war, there had circulated vague stories and rumours of secret contacts and negotiations carried out by the Americans in 1971. However, there had never been any precise information confirming the existence and nature of these contacts. Yet, according to documents contained in an unpublished study commissioned by the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a leading American foreign policy research institution, the existence of these links were definitively established.

In 1973 the Carnegie Endowment commissioned a study of the conduct of US policy during the 1971 Bangladesh crisis to examine the process whereby the US "tilt" toward Pakistan virtually countenanced genocide. The project was directed by Roger Morris, a former National Security Council aide to Henry Kissinger. Morris had resigned from Kissinger's staff due to sharp differences with Kissinger following the invasion of Cambodia by American military forces in 1970.

Due to internal dissension at Carnegie the nine-month study was never completed, despite the fact that over 150 senior officials from the State Department to the Central Intelligence Agency had been interviewed in detail. What the Carnegie documents made unequivocally clear is that secret contacts were made in 1971 with a faction of the Bangladesh Provisional Government in the hope of splitting the independence movement. The US contacts were made with the Mustaque faction of the Awami League in Calcutta and were highly sensitive since they bypassed the dominant leadership of the provisional government, in the person of the then Prime Minister Tajuddin Ahmed.

Tajuddin and virtually the entire Bengali leadership were adamant regarding complete independence. The refusal of the Pakistan authorities in March 1971 to accept the results of the elections (which would have made Mujib the prime minister of all Pakistan), combined with the brutal magnitude of the repression, made the Provisional Government's standpoint clear and unconditional: there would be no negotiated solution short of full independence for Bangladesh.

The solitary exception to this among the exiled Bengali leadership was Khondakar Mustaque. Henry Kissinger then working with Pakistan's military junta, through whom he was simultaneously channeling the most sensitive negotiations of his career those with China began an exercise aimed at dividing the exiled Awami League on the question of independence. Absolute discretion and secrecy was the key to splitting the Bengali leadership and supporting that faction which would be prepared to compromise with Pakistan and not demand full independence.

However, Mustaque's secret liaison was discovered in October 1971 and he was placed under virtual house arrest in Calcutta. According to Herb Gordon, the American Consul General in Calcutta, the secret contacts with Mustaque were handled by the senior political officer at the Consulate, George Griffin. Although Gordon knew little about what had transpired during these discussions, he knew that Griffin had handled them. A decade later Griffin would be at the centre of a diplomatic storm between Washington and New Delhi when he was denied permission by India to take up a post at the US Embassy. According to India Today, India denied Griffin permission to live in New Delhi due to "griffin's questionable role during the 1971 Bangladesh War." During my three-hour interview with Mustaque at his home in Dhaka in 1976, Mustaque confirmed the contacts that had taken place in Calcutta in 1971, but refused to specify what had been agreed with the Americans at the time. "If you want to know," Mustaque told me, "You should go ask Nixon. I am not going to tell you." 

Although some American scholars have questioned the relative importance of these contacts, a newly declassified "Memorandum for the Record" describes in detail a White House meeting on August 11, 1971 specifically held to discuss the Bangladesh crisis. It was attended by Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and Harold Saunders, among others. In the document, John Irwin, Under Secretary of State, is quoted as saying, "We have had reports in resent days of the possibility that some Awami League leaders in Calcutta want to negotiate with Yahya on the basis of giving up their claim for the independence of East Pakistan." According to a member of Mustaque's 1971 Calcutta staff who this correspondent interviewed in 1976, Irwin's reference to "some Awami League leaders in Calcutta" referred only to Khondaker Mustaque Ahmed and his two leading proteges from the days of the Calcutta liaison - Mahbub Alam Chashi and Taheruddin Thakur.

Following the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, Mustaque was pardoned by Mujib for his indiscretions but given only minor positions in the post-independence regime. Yet, four years later it was Mustaque, together with Chashi and Thakur, who emerged as the political leadership of the putsch which killed Mujib. In the immediate post-coup period Mustaque appointed to leading positions in the bureaucracy and national intelligence organisations people who had been prominent among the Bengali "Vichy" of 1971 - the minute per cent of the Bengali population who had actually collaborated with the Pakistan Army following Pakistan's crackdown in Dacca in March 1971.

Among these were AMS Safdar, Director-General of the National Security Intelligence (NSI) agency, and Shaiful Azam, former chief secretary of the East Pakistan government during the period of the civil war. A cohesive right-wing political and intelligence group, which had risen to prominence in the Pakistan period and were swept aside by Mujib after independence in 1971, finally staged the coup in August 1975, in alliance with a faction of Mujib's party, and reinstated themselves in power. What happened in August 1975 was by no means as simple as it was once made to appear.

The version accepted by both the foreign and Bengali press was a simple story, Mujib's regime was in trouble. The country had just suffered a famine that had killed an estimated 50,000 peasants, for which government incompetence and corruption was blamed. Democratic rights were increasingly being crushed by the authorities who were closing newspapers and locking Mujib's opponents away. Civil unrest and rural insurgency were growing problems. In this atmosphere, so the story went, six young majors with 300 men under their command took it upon themselves to organise a putsch, acting with a mixture of motives stretching from personal embitterment to their own Messianic delusions of Islamic Bonapartism.

The story emphasised that they had acted alone and unilaterally, and that after the killing of Mujib they suddenly decided to pick up Kondakar Mustaque as a replacement. In taking on the presidency, Mustaque was portrayed with all the innocence of a victim of circumstance. But whether Mustaque had himself taken part in a complicated plan nearly a year old, involving a variety of links, remained unexamined.

In 1997, this correspondent met an unquestionably authoritative source with intimate and direct knowledge of the planning of the coup. This individual, a retired Bangladeshi military officer, was the consummate "insider" to the events of August 1975, and the planning which preceded it. I had met this individual briefly in 1975 and had hoped to meet him again. However, twenty-two years would elapse before a meeting was ultimately arranged.

After prolonged negotiations through intermediaries I flew from the United States and made contact with this individual in a European capital. Our meeting lasted five hours. Many new insights were gained and many old ones were confirmed.

Among the many things that he talked about my source described how both Mustaque and General Ziaur Rahman had been in contact and discussions with the Majors for more than six months prior to the actual coup. This individual had personally attended numerous meetings that Major Rashid had held separately with Zia and Mustaque. In his television interview with Anthony Mascarenhas, Rashid described a meeting with General Zia on March 20, 1975, in which a coup was discussed in detail. This meeting took place five months before the coup. My source attended this meeting with General Zia but claimed it was not the first in which plans for a coup were discussed.

General Zia, who was then Deputy Chief of the Army, expressed continuing interest in the proposed coup plan, but also expressed reluctance to take the lead in the required military action. The junior officers had already worked out a plan, Rashid told Zia, and they wanted his support and leadership. Zia temporised. According to the account given by Rashid to Mascarenhas and confirmed by my source, Zia told him that as a senior officer he could not be directly involved but if they junior officers were prepared, they should go ahead.

According to my unusual source, the Majors hoped right up until the end that Zia would take the lead in the coup. Their view was that the best option would be not to bring in Mustaque with whom they were in constant, yet discreet, contact. The best option from the Majors perspective was to establish a Military Council as the commanding authority after the coup. In fact, it was largely Rashid who was in charge of defining the options for his group. It was their hope that Zia would lead such a council. While the junior officers might have preferred a senior officers' coup with Zia at the head, they secured the next best option. With General Zia's neutrality or even tacit support assured, the junior officers could move ahead without fear that Zia would throw his forces against them at the crucial moment.

My unusual source made a rather interesting comment when he noted that he had been present during two different meetings: one with Zia and a separate one on a different day with Mustaque, in which Major Rashid independently raised a question concerning what the attitude of the United States would be to the planned coup. "Both Zia and Mustaque independently told us that they had checked with the Americans," said this military officer. "Their answers were the Americans. I then realized that Zia and Mustaque had their separate channels to the Americans. After that the subject didn't come up again."

The Majors hoped until the last that Zia would take command of a new military Council that would be set up in the immediate aftermath of the coup. Even on August 15th they believed this was still a possibility. But, according to this source, Zia stepped back into the shadows once it emerged that a massacre had occurred at Mujib's house and the houses of other relatives in which women and children were mercilessly killed alongside their menfolk.

According to this source, Rashid himself was shocked at the killings and believed in the years that followed that there had been a "hidden plan" submerged within the coup that he neither knew about nor controlled. Nevertheless, neither Rashid nor Farooq, the two military principals of August 15th, did not publicly disown the killing of the families. Walking on thin ice, they were not about to disown the action of the small contingent of soldiers which were solidly behind them and now deeply implicated in an action that Rashid and Farooq had led them into.

Indeed, this source claims, killings were planned for August 15th. At least four Awami League leaders were to be removed from their residences and taken to a designated location where they would be executed. This plan included the killing of Sheikh Mujib. However, this source claims there was no premeditated plan among the officers organizing the coup to fire weapons on the families. As in all such situations, the unpredictable ruled and brutality took command.

After the coup there was very little analysis of the contradictory phenomena which existed. Ignored was the stark juxtaposition that, in the two years prior to the coup, it was the country's organized left wing parties such as the JSD, the National Awami Party Bhashani), and the underground organizations like the Sharbohara Party, which had developed and mobilized public sentiment against Mujib's regime; yet, when the critical moment of collapse came for Mujib, it was not from a leftist mass uprising – “The Revolution" - as had been feared, but from a narrowly-based conspiracy of the right.

The challenge being developed and prepared by radical nationalist forces was preempted by the August events. The coup itself was an inside job by right wing elements within Mujib's own party, his own cabinet, his own secretariat, and his own national intelligence service, who viewed Mujib's leadership as no longer capable of holding out against a left wing challenge to their interests.

Whether or not the United States had prior knowledge of these plans – given the assertions of State Department sources and the counter assertions of CIA officials - could never be conclusively settled without the power of Congressional subpoena. (See accompanying article: "The Solarz Correspondence: A Congressional Investigation Deliberately Derailed?") But, one thing is clear beyond a doubt that the United States had important prior relationships with the political and intelligence leadership of the coup.

In my interview with Phil Cherry, the CIA Station Chief, he insisted throughout that he had been completely under the supervision of the US Ambassador. "We knew that Mujib was in trouble. We also knew that no matter what happened there, no matter who overthrew Mujib, or what overthrew Mujib, we also knew we would be blamed for it.... So we were extra extra careful to be super clean. To make sure all of us were directed by Ambassador Boster. To cut any contact which would possibly give credence to the theory we knew was going to come about. We indeed followed Ambassador Boster's instructions."

The difficulty with Cherry's statement is that in 1980 the State Department admitted to US Congressman Stephen Solarz that meeting had taken place in the period between November 1974 and January 1975, precisely as our key Embassy source had reported to US. The State Department's admission to Solarz flatly contradicted Cherry's statement that "we had no Bangladeshi come into the office and tell us anything about any plans for coups or anything like that."

Furthermore, one of our American diplomatic sources who had also served in the US Embassy bluntly disputed Cherry's denials.  He told us that Ambassador Boster suspected that Cherry had not followed his instructions. "We should always be informed by the Station Chief about his activities or contacts.  But, I cannot guarantee that Cherry was not making contacts that were not approved by the Ambassador."

If this in fact had occurred, it would hardly have been a novel incident in the annals of American foreign policy.  Congressional investigators studying US-backed coup initiatives in Chile in 1970 and 1973 unearthed explicit directives from Nixon and Kissinger tot he Central intelligence Agency that the US Ambassador, Edward Korry, and other foreign service officials in the embassy should be kept in the dark about covert operations then being put into motion.  Had bolster been played like another Korry?

This dualism has been the centre of intense antagonism between the State Department and the US intelligence community for decades.  Besides the Chilean experience, there have been instances in many countries where clandestine CIA operations have been carried forward, quite independent of the knowledge of ambassadors or reluctant political staffs, who might have qualms or may be unreliable from a security and secrecy point of view. In such instances, the US diplomatic corps serves as a well -dressed "fig leaf" for covert operations.

In 1979 and 1980, I published a series of articles in the European, American, and South Asian press on the intrigue behind the army coup, which toppled Sheikh Mujib. I also published a book, which examined these questions in some detail. Unfortunately, readers in Bangladesh were denied access to this material for many years. Indeed, I was banned from the country or more than a decade and my writings were censored from the press. The sordid details surrounding the coup against Mujib were taboo subjects during the military and quasi-military regimes, which ruled Bangladesh through the 1970's and 1980's.

A time has come to write a new chapter in the relationship between Bangladesh the United States.  When Bill Clinton visited Dhaka last March, I wrote in Prothom Alo "The real road to a better relationship between the two countries will be best served by clearing up the record of the past."  The prime Minister of Bangladesh is uniquely placed to raise this issue. Twenty-five years ago, her mother, her father, and many members of her family were killed, including her twelve-year-old brother. Sheikh Hasina and others have a right to know that happened. Last year in Guatemala, President Clinton publicly apologized for American involvement in the 1953 overthrow of the Arbenz government and the subsequent terror that a series of American backed military regimes inflicted upon Guatemala's population. It is conservatively estimated that more than 100,0000 people lost their lives in the decades of military rule that followed the coup. Perhaps, the moment is not yet ripe for an apology to be offered by the United States to Bangladesh. The time may yet come. But, a definitive accounting is due.

The Solarz Correspondence is a clear and definitive starting point. Its significance is that the United States government for the first time admitted that there were Embassy meetings in 1974 and 1975 with opponents of

Mujib's regime. Hitherto, the only mention in the public domain of such meetings came from our confidential Embassy sources. We published their statements. Yet, our sources also claimed quite specifically that these Embassy meetings took place with representatives of Khondaker Mustaque Ahmed.

Is the American government prepared to reveal the nature of these meeting which took place prior to the coup?  Who were the participants on the both sides?  What were the questions explored?  Was a red, amber, or a green light given? Was an impression communicated that if a coup d'etat took place it " was 'not a problem' for the Americans"? Was a quiet "nod" given at the appropriate moment? Were Ambassador Boster's instructions ignored? If so, by whom?

The time has come for democratic representatives in Bangladesh to publicly challenge American democracy to be open about its past actions. A mature and sophisticated approach is required that recognizes that there are many Americans who would approve and support an open accounting of this painful chapter in US-Bangladesh relations.  These include Members of Congress, journalists, academic, and human rights organizations. A quarter century has passed. It is time to open the book.

U.S. DENIES ROLE IN MUJIB KILLING
Haroon Habib: The Hindu, Friday, October 2, 1998

The United States Ambassador in Dhaka, Mr. John C. Holzman has refuted the allegations that the CIA was involved in the assassination of Bangladesh's founding President, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The charges have ``no basis’’, he said.

The U.S. denial came after the main defence lawyer of Lt. Col. Syed Faruq Rehman, one of the masterminds of the 1975 blood political changeover, claimed in the court that the then U.S. administration including the former Secretary of State, Dr. Henry Kissinger, were behind the overthrow of the first Bangladesh Government, led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Col. Faruq was one of the 18 former army officers who were charged with the murder of Mujib and now facing trial in a court of Dhaka with full defence.

The refutal of the charge came against the backdrop of strong demonstration by Opposition parties across the country against the Sheikh Hasina Government which by all indications, is also going to begin yet another historic case for the gruesome murders of four national leaders inside the Dhaka Central Jail on November 3, 1995.

Police have arrested the three former ministers of the Mujib Cabinet who were also made ministers by Khandaker Mostaque Ahmed, who succeeded Mujib after the August 15, 1975 carnage. Mr. Shah Moazzem Hossain, Mr. K. M. Obaidur Rahman and Mr. Nurul Islam Manzur were arrested at their houses on September 28 by the CID police after intense investigation for more than a year.

Mr. K. M. Obaidur Rahman, is now an MP belonging to the main Opposition BNP and Mr. Nurul Islam Manzoor is the BNP's national committee leader, Mr. Shah Moazzem Hossain, who was one of the deputy Prime Ministers during Gen. Ershad's tenure, is a central leader of the breakaway faction of the Jatiya Party. The Opposition parties held protest marches in Dhaka yesterday denouncing the arrests. An emergency meeting of the BNP central policy-making Standing Committee, with former Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia in the chair, blasted the Government for the ``false cases'' against their leaders and demanded their immediate release. Begum Zia said the arrests were made to ``divert the people's attention from the Government's failure in facing the flood situation.'' The BNP and the Jatiya Party are likely to have a joint action programme to force the government to release their leaders.

But it seems that the Sheikh Hasina administration is firm on holding the trials of the two historic murders - one of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his family members and the other is the jail killing of November 3, 1975 when four key leaders of country's independence war were gunned down. They were Bangladesh's acting President Syed Nazrul Islam, wartime Prime Minister Tajuddin Ahmed and Liberation War heros Capt. Mansoor Ali and Kamruzzaman. Ever since the murders occurred, all successive governments had avoided the trials to protect their political interests.

The U.S. Ambassador explained in detail various issues relating to the ongoing trial of the Mujib killers including the recent arrests of the three leading Opposition figures. Replying to questions, Mr. Holzman said his Government wanted that the accused were given full benefit of law, but did not elaborate.

On the Bangladesh Government's request for extradition of those accused, mostly ex-military officers now living in the United States, in the Mujib murder case, the envoy said that it was difficult as Bangladesh and the U.S. had no formal extradition treaty.

Mr. Holzman also promised Washington's continued help and assistance to overcome the flood calamity. He also said Dhaka and Washington were maintaining the best of relations and pointed out that Washington's proposal to Bangladesh to sign the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) was ‘unfortunately misunderstood.'

Bangladesh wants its 'Killer Majors' back
By Mahendra Ved

NEW DELHI: Major Shariful Haq, Dalim to his friends, who announced on radio the killing of Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh's founding father and President, is believed to be in hiding, moving between the US and Canada. So are two other former Bangladesh army officers, dubbed "Killer Majors". One of them is Col A.M. Mohiuddin Ahmed, supposed to be living in Boston, as per reports in Bangladeshi media.

It is not clear whether the American law is pursuing them. Bangladesh does not have an extradition treaty with the US or Canada, and can at the best appeal to the sense of propriety of the two countries.

This was what Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina did, though without naming anybody, during US President Bill Clinton's visit to Dhaka on March 21. There was no immediate response from the US to her appeal.  

Bangladesh strongly suspects that some of the 10 fugitives convicted in absentia for killing Mujibur Rahman are hiding in North America and wants them handed over. Fourteen persons were convicted for the "conspiracy" in July 1998. While four are in jail, 10 others, including Dalim, were convicted in absentia.

In taking a public stand, Sheikh Hasina was reiterating what her government has been saying about the need to punish those guilty of the murder of 24 people, most of them her close relatives, in a military coup on August 15, 1975.

Diplomatic circles here note that Bangladesh chose to raise the issue during the first-ever visit by an American head of state. But for this contentious issue, the visit was all about building democratic institutions, development programmes and aid.

Although Bangladesh was among the first countries to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, Bangladeshis have viewed with suspicion the US role during its war of independence from Pakistan in 1971. "The people of Bangladesh cannot forget that the US had dispatched the Seventh Fleet at the height of the liberation struggle in December 1971 and did not recognise the new country for another year," says a diplomat who has observed Bangladesh since the days it was East Pakistan.

The US opened its mission only in 1974, along with that of Pakistan, days before the then Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto visited Dhaka. The August 1975 military coup itself was credited to a "CIA conspiracy". Lawrence Lifschultz, in his book, "Bangladesh: An Unfinished Revolution", alleged that through its operative, Philip Cherry, posted as First Secretary in the US embassy, the CIA had plotted the overthrow of the Mujibur Rahman government. Cherry has, however, denied being a CIA operative and having played any role in the violent changes in Dhaka that year. There has been no substantiation of the agency's involvement.

The "Killer Majors" ruled Bangladesh from August 15 until November 3 when, in a counter-coup, they were ousted. Although the second coup lasted barely four days, the   officers fled to Bangkok. They were later sheltered by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Some of them also moved to Saudi Arabia.

Earlier, through an indemnity ordinance issued by their handpicked President, Khandaker Moshtaque Ahmed, the officers had received presidential pardon and protection from trial by any court under any law of the land. The Hasina government went through a parliamentary process in 1997 to annul this ordinance and start the trial process.

The government of Gen. Ziaur Rahman, which captured power on November 7, 1975, reinstated some of the officers in the Army and posted the main leaders on diplomatic assignments. Gen. H.M. Ershad, who ruled Bangladesh between 1982 and 1990, did not disturb this arrangement. The government of Begum Khaleda Zia, Ziaur Rahman's widow, also continued to patronise these fugitives.

Dalim began as a first secretary and rose to be ambassador. His last posting was as high commissioner to Kenya when the Hasina government assumed office. Summoned back, Dalim went into hiding.

Risaldar Moslemudin, the junior commissioned officer who was supposed to have opened fire on Mujib and his family members, was reported to have crossed over into West Bengal. He fled to Nepal when the Indian police, on a tip-off from Dhaka, were closing in on him.

Bangladesh signed a treaty with Thailand and extradited Major Bazlul Huda. Another army officer, Col. Khandaker Farooq Rahman, floated a political party and unsuccessfully contested elections. He justified his participation in the August 15 events in several media interviews and public speeches. Also arrested was Major Khairuzzaman. These are among the four convicts in Dhaka Central Jail, awaiting a decision on their judicial appeal.

Cover Story
Murders Most Foul
Ahmed Salim

Although the Hamoodur Rehman Commission report refutes the charges, increasingly chilling evidence emerges to suggest the involvement of Pakistani troops in collaboration with Al-Badr activists in the meticulously planned execution of 50 of Bangladesh's leading intellectuals.

On December 16, 1971, the state of Bangladesh was born, from a sea of blood and gore.  The rejoicing was, however, short-lived. Within a week, 5000 mass graves and charnel houses were discovered, and in the following months, other mass cemeteries were discovered all over the new country.

In a press statement on January 1, 1972, Madame Isabella Blum, the head of the World Peace Commission, said, "This genocide has been even more terrible than the Nazi gas chambers."

The French writer, Andre Malreaux, echoed Blum's sentiments. "I have seen atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis during World War II, but the brutality I have witnessed here is even more terrible," he maintained.

A Sunday Times report compounded the horror. In a story printed on December 19, 1971 the newspaper contended that before they surrendered at Dhaka, the Pakistani army arrested and shot more than 50 of the city's surviving intellectuals, scientists and businessmen. It was implied that the massacre - ostensibly a sudden military operation - was, in fact, a carefully planned elimination of elite Bengali citizens, conducted with the full knowledge of the Pakistan high command, including the commanding officer, General Niazi.

The newspaper further contended that the kidnapping was apparently done early in the morning of December 14, when squads of Pakistani soldiers drove to selected addresses, and took away men and women under armed guard. They were taken to the Rayar Bazar's brickfield said the Times, shot, and the corpses were lined up along the mud dykes so as to fall into the adjoining water pools.

It is conjectured that Major General Rao Farman Ali was the principal architect of the plan to massacre Bengali intellectuals. Rao Farman Ali's support of the Jamaat in the 1970 elections was no secret, and, it is believed, the emergence of the militant wing of Bangladesh's Jamaat-e-Islami, the Al-Badar, at this time was no coincidence. The abduction and subsequent massacre of intellectuals was widely attributed to Al-Badar operatives and their ponsors, Pakistani army personnel. Lending credence to Al-Badar's involvement was the fact that the killings continued even after independence was achieved and the Pakistan army had withdrawn.  There is absolute conviction in some circles that the Al-Badar were responsible for the mysterious murders of Zahir Raihan (at Mirpur) and Professor Humayun Kabir.

Despite substantial evidence to the effect, however, the recently published Hamoodur Rahman Commission Report (HCR), denies the involvement of Pakistan army personnel in the murders of Bengali intelligentsia. 

Gen. Farman Ali categorically denies the charge levelled at him that he had 200 intellectuals killed. The Bengalis' claim these killings occurred on December 14, and not on December 16, as General Farman contends. While the latter accepts that a sizeable number of corpses were found on the morning of December 17, he maintains that Pakistani army personnel could not have conducted the killings since they had already surrendered on December 16. According to Maj.

Gen. Farman Ali on December 9 or 10, 1971, he was summoned by Maj. Gen. Jamshed to Peelkhana. On reaching the headquarters he says, he saw a large number of vehicles parked there.  Maj. Gen. Jamshed was getting into a car and asked Maj. Gen. Farman Ali to come along. On the way, Gen. Jamshed informed Gen. Farman that they were thinking of arresting certain people. Gen. Farman Ali maintains he advised against it. On reaching General Niazi's headquarters he says, he repeated his advice, but neither Gen. Niazi nor Gen. Jamshed responded. Gen. Farm an Ali states that he does not know what transpired after he left, but he thinks no further action was taken (Para 24).

However, in his book, 'How Pakistan Got Divided,' Maj. Farman does express the fear that "orders countermanding the earlier orders were perhaps not issued and some people were arrested. I do not till this day know where they were kept. Perhaps they were confined in an area which was guarded by mujahids. The corps or the Dacca garrison commander lost control over them after surrender and they ran away out of fear of the Mukti Bahini who were mercilessly killing mujahids. The detained persons might have been killed by Muktis or even by the Indian army to give the Pakistan army a bad name. Dacca had already been taken over by the Indians."

The Hamoodur Rahman commission accepts without demur General Farman Ali's account of the events.

For his part, Lt. Gen. A.A.K. Niazi also denied any arrests. The commission report reads, "When questioned on this point, Lt. Gen. A.A.K.Niazi stated that the local commanders had, on December 9, 1971, brought a list to him which included the names of miscreants, heads of the Mukti Bahini etc, but not any intellectuals... but he had stopped them from collecting and arresting these people. He denied the allegation that any intellectuals were arrested and killed on December 9, 1971 or thereafter."

In his statement to the Hamoodur Rahman Commission, Maj. Gen. Jamshed took a different position, which contradicted the statements issued by General Farman and General Niazi.  He maintained that it was on December 9 and 10 that General

Niazi expressed his apprehension of a general uprising in Dacca city and ordered him to examine the possibility of arresting certain persons according to lists which were already with the various agencies, namely the martial law authorities and the intelligence branch. Gen. Jamshed said a conference was held on December 9 and 10, 1971, in which these lists were produced by the agencies concerned, and the total number of persons to be arrested came to about two or three thousand.  According to Gen. Jamshed, he suggested to Gen. Niazi that the proposal be dropped, and stated that thereafter no further action was taken in this matter." (Para 26)

The commission considers the statements by all three generals as truthful, and concludes that unless the Bangladesh authorities can produce some convincing evidence, it is not possible to record the finding that any intellectuals or professionals were arrested and killed during December 1971.

The ghosts of '71 were not laid to rest after independence on the other side of the divide either. Almost two decades after independence, various commissions, established over the post '71 years, are continuing to probe war crimes, identify criminals and collaborators and bring them to justice. One of these commissions is the Ekatarer Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee. On January 19, 1992, 101 well known Bangladeshi personalities including retired Supreme Court judges, university teachers, veterans of the independence war, artists and journalists formed a committee known as the Ekatarer Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee, to uproot the killers and collaborators of the 1971 war of independence.  The committee demanded that the government take decisive action against Ghulam Azam, the amir, Jamat-i-Islami of Bangladesh, who had collaborated with the Pakistani rulers and committed heinous crimes in 1971.  A trial was held, and the people's court found Azam guilty of crimes which are usually punishable by death in most democratic countries.

On the basis of the Nirmul Committee's investigations of the killings of intellectuals, BBC's Channel 4 aired a documentary film titled 'War Crimes File.' The film documented the involvement of three war criminals in the killings of Bangladeshi intellectuals and other serious crimes.  Abu Saeed, Lutfur Rehman and Chowdry Moeen-ud-Din, all Bengalis, were prominent members of the East Pakistan Jamaat-e-Islami and the Al-Badar. It is common knowledge that the three also had direct links with Gen. Farman Ali.  All three men are now British nationals. One of them is running a Muslim school, and the other two are pesh imams of mosques in the UK.

The Nirmul Committee is currently working towards establishing a resistance against the rise of fundamentalist forces in Bangladesh.

As the movement for accountability of Ghulam Azam, the amir of the Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh, spread, following the symbolic trial of the amir by the People's Court on March 26, 1992, the people of Bangladesh became vocal in their demand for the official trial of Azam and other war criminals, including those responsible for the killings of Bengali intellectuals. This agitation resulted in the formation of the National People's Enquiry Commission of Bangladesh.

On March 26, 1993, a long-term programme was announced at a rally in Dhaka to investigate the activities of front-ranking collaborators of the martial law regime during 1971. Eight leading collaborator-suspects were selected for investigation during the first phase of the commission's probe. The focus of the probe was the alleged involvement of these individuals in the murder of intellectuals, and the establishment of grounds for initiating war crimes trials. The 11-member commission comprised poets, writers, university teachers, members of the judiciary, members of parliament and lawyers. Poet, Begum Sufia Kamal, was the chairperson of the commission.

Unlike the Hamoodur Rahman Commission, which had complete access to the information required for its report and to the people involved, the People's Commission encountered serious obstacles in the course of its investigation. They discovered that many documents dating to the genocide period had been destroyed. Furthermore, government officials demonstrated a visible reluctance to make available what information there was in the archives.  Moreover, the commission found that the situation in the home districts of the accused during the investigation was a cause of great concern. The ordinary people in these areas were haunted by the memory of 1971 and suffered from an acute sense of insecurity.

The summary of the commission's investigation revealed that during the war the minority Hindu community were the principal targets of the brutalities of the Yahya regime and their local allies such as the Razakar and Al-Badar

Para-military forces and other collaborators, and even after the establishment of Bangladesh continued to be victimised by communal elements. As such they were unwilling to talk and the commission had to gather information from their neighbours. Families who lost near and dear ones or suffered torture provided information only on the condition of anonymity. Many others refused to do even that.

A report on the findings of the People's Enquiry Commission titled 'The Activities of The War Criminals And the Collaborators' was released in March 1994. It stated that due to the constraints mentioned, the commission's report carried only a portion of the vast range of crimes actually committed by the eight under investigation.  

The eight accused included Abbas Ali Khan, Maulana Matiur Rehman Nizami, Mohammed Kamruzzaman, Maulana Dilawar Hussain Sayeedi, Maulana Abdul Mannan, Abdul Kader Molla and Abdul Alim.

Abbas Ali Khan held the second highest position in the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami and became a minister in the cabinet of quisling governor M.A. Malik.  Members of the Razakar force (who were given short courses in military training) were, under his leadership, given powers equal to those of the regular armed forces, and they allegedly carried out widespread killings, rapes and looting in villages.

Maulana Matiur Rahman Nizami was the secretary general and leader of the parliamentary party of the Jamaat-e-Islami.  Addressing meetings of the Razakars he would exhort them to "carry out [their] national duty to eliminate those who are engaged in war against Pakistan and Islam," and to finish off Awami League supporters.  After one such meeting, Al-Badar forces in cooperation with the Razakars, surrounded the village of Brishlika and burnt it to the ground. Mohammad Kamaruzzaman, assistant secretary general of the Bangladesh Jamaat-i-Islami, was in charge of recruiting members for and organising the Al-Badar in Mymensingh.

A member of the Jamaat-i-Islami's Majlis-i-Shoora, Maulana Dilawar Hussain Sayeedi took active part in the organisation of the Razakars, Al-Badar and Al-Shams forces.  He was also accused of involvement along with Pakistani army troops in the killing of sub-divisional police officer (SDPO) Faizur Rahman, father of Humayun Ahmad, a renowned writer and professor of chemistry at the University of Dacca.

Maulana Abdul Mannan, the president of the Jamiat-e-Mudarresin, an organisation of teachers of madrassahs and the owner of the daily Dainik Inquilab, the country's second highest circulated newspaper, was one of the key collaborators of the Yahya regime during 1971. A minister under General Ziaur Rahman after 1976 and subsequently in President H M Ershad's cabinet, Mannan was also associated with the killing of intellectuals, specifically eminent physician Alim Chowdhury.

Abdul Kader Molla, the publicity secretary of the Jamaat-i-Islami, was known as a 'butcher' in the Dacca suburb of Mirpur, mainly populated by non-Bengali Muslim migrants in 1971.  An eyewitness to Molla's criminal activities in 1971 told the commission that Razakar men, under the command of Kader Molla, brutally murdered the poet Meherunnessa in October.

According to the commission's report, 'Abdul Alim himself carried out execution of Bengalis by lining them in rows and shooting them.

The sons and daughters of the intellectuals killed in the war, some of them still in the womb when their fathers were massacred, formed an organisation in 1991 called Generation '71.  The members of the organisation say they aim to discover why their parents were slaughtered, to investigate war crimes, and to provide financial  assistance to families who were left destitute after the '71 carnage.

The organisation is currently trying to organise itself nationally.  "We have to establish links with human rights bodies all over the world, even in Pakistan," says Tauhid Raza, son of journalist Sirajuddin Hossain, who was taken away one night in 1971 by para-military personnel and Al Badar workers and was never seen again.

Newsline, Karachi, Pakistan: 29 November, 2000

National Security Archive Update, December 16, 2002: *The Tilt: The U.S. and the South Asian Crisis of 1971* 

Today, on the 31st anniversary of the creation of Bangladesh, the National Security Archive published on the World Wide Web 46 declassified U.S. government documents and audio clips concerned with United States policy towards India and Pakistan during the South Asian Crisis of 1971. 

The documents, declassified and available at the U.S. National Archives and the Presidential Library system detail how United States policy, directed by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, followed a course that became infamously known as "The Tilt."  The documents published today show: 

• The brutal details of the genocide conducted in East Pakistan in March and April of 1971 
• One of the first “dissent cables” questioning U.S. policy and morality at a time when, as the Consulate General in Dhaka Archer Blood writes, "unfortunately, the overworked term genocide is applicable." 
• The role that Nixon’s friendship with Yahya Khan and the China iniative played in U.S. policymaking leading to the tilt towards Pakistan 
• George Bush Senior’s view of Henry Kissinger 
• Illegal American military assistance approved by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger to Pakistan following a formal aid cutoff by the United States 
• Henry Kissinger’s duplicity to the press and towards the Indians vis-àà-vis the Chinese 

Follow the link below to view the Electronic Briefing Book:  http://www.nsarchive.org/NSAEBB/NSAEBB79

The Washington Post

 September 23, 2004 Thursday  Final Edition

SECTION: Metro; B04 

LENGTH: 628 words 

HEADLINE: Archer K. Blood;  Dissenting Diplomat 

BYLINE: Joe Holley, Washington Post Staff Writer 

Archer Kent Blood, 81, a career diplomat whose Blood Telegram denouncing the complicity of the United States in "genocide" in the former East Pakistan prompted his recall from his post as consul general in Dhaka, died Sept. 3 of arterial sclerosis at a hospital in Fort Collins, Colo. He had lived in Fort Collins since 1993.  

Mr. Blood served for 35 years in the State Department, with postings in Greece, Algeria, Germany, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and India. He was the senior official among 20 members of the U.S. diplomatic corps who signed the dissenting cable, which was prompted by the Pakistani military's brutal crackdown against the Bengali inhabitants of what was known as East Pakistan in March 1971. At least 10,000 civilians were massacred in the first three days; the eventual civilian death toll might have been as high as 3 million. Some 10 million Bengalis, about 13 percent of East Bengal's population, fled across the border into India.  

In their cable, Mr. Blood and his fellow signatories charged: "Our government has failed to denounce the suppression of democracy. Our government has failed to take forceful measures to protect its citizens while at the same time bending over backwards to placate the West Pakistan-dominated government. Our government has evidenced what many will consider moral bankruptcy, ironically at a time when the U.S.S.R. sent President Yahya Khan a message defending democracy. . . ."   Writer Christopher Hitchens, in his 2001 book "The Trial of Henry Kissinger," described the cable as "the most public and the most strongly worded demarche, from State Department servants to the State Department, that has ever been recorded."  President Richard M. Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, seeking to use Pakistan as a backdoor diplomatic opening to China, immediately recalled Mr. Blood from his post. Although he had been scheduled for another 18-month tour in Pakistan after home leave, he never returned to his post. He was assigned to the State Department's personnel office.  

Government sources told The Washington Post the next year that reports about the magnitude of the killings were disbelieved at the time. State Department officials considered the dispatches alarmist.  Although Mr. Blood received the Christian A. Herter Award in 1971 for "extraordinary accomplishment involving initiative, integrity, intellectual courage and creative dissent," his career suffered. "I paid a price for my dissent. But I had no choice," he told The Post in 1982. "The line between right and wrong was just too clear-cut."

Mr. Blood, who was born in Chicago, graduated from high school in Lynchburg, Va. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Virginia, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1943, and received a master's degree in international relations from George Washington University in 1963.  He served as a naval officer in the North Pacific during World War II, and joined the Foreign Service in 1947. During the last decade of his career in the Foreign Service, he was acting ambassador to Afghanistan and served two terms as charge d'affaires of the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi. He retired in 1982.  After his retirement, which he called "self-imposed exile," he was a diplomatic adviser to the commandant at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa. Mr. Blood wrote the 2002 book "The Cruel Birth of Bangladesh: Memoirs of an American Diplomat" and was professor emeritus of political science at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pa.  Survivors include his wife of 56 years, Margaret Millward Blood of Fort Collins; four children, Shireen Updegraff of Fort Collins, Barbara Rankin of Denver, Peter Blood of Alexandria and Archer Blood of Shaker Heights, Ohio; three sisters; and eight grandchildren. 

Bangladesh and USA: victims of a common enemy
Jamal Hasan

Exactly two months before the dastardly attack on the New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon on July 11 precisely, Voice of America Television network's weekly "On the Line" program was in recording session. The topic was publication of Khalid Duran's latest book Children of Abraham and its impact on the Muslim and Jewish community in the world.

Although his book was the main subject of discussion, Khalid Duran brought Bangladesh politics a few times in the show. A few months earlier, the author (Duran) was exposed to the works of some of the liberal and freethinking Bangladeshi writers. He thought those writers were the pioneers in a growing movement of enlightenment in Muslim societies across the globe. His expertise included the status of Islamic fundamentalism in U.S.A., Europe, and Pakistan. In the TV show, he generously covered Bangladesh taking good amount of sound bites as he said, "We have Muslim countries where the majority of the population, and I'm referring particularly to Bangladesh, decided in favor of secularism. In addition, they are very pious people. I have never seen people run to the mosque as much as in Bangladesh. But they have songs about dhormoniropekkhota,glorifying secularism. It was a principle of state in Bangladesh until, unfortunately, the Saudis said we will support you economically only if you erase the principle of secularism from your constitution. So there you see one type of Islam, Islamism coming from Saudi Arabia, imposing itself upon Bangladesh, which is probably the country in the world with the world's largest Muslim population." Probably, Duran was referring to the period of the two military dictators - General Ziaur Rahman and General H.M. Ershad who were mainly responsible for completing the process of Islamization in Bangladesh. During the tenure of these two nonchalant army men, the last vestiges of secularist values in Bangladesh went down the drain.
However, the story does not end here. From early seventies to a few months ago, Saudi Arabia's heinous cultural imperialistic ambition did not appear to be confrontational to western interests.  But not everybody would go with the flow.  Two months before the Voice of America TV's "On the Line" program, I received an interesting letter from a national security expert. This individual supposedly had been a frequent visitor to the U.S. Congress and might have been an occasional guest at Bush White House. Readers, I am giving you excerpt from his (the security expert) May 16 letter that he wrote to me, "My Dear Friend,  ...The SOLE reason for Pakistan's not being on the terrorism list is politics – mainly Saudi and Chinese patronage.  Tells you just how serious Washington is regarding fighting terrorism, radicalism, etc..."

Although Khalid Duran and the above security expert might have carried some political clout inside the beltway, the country's oil politics probably drowned their voices to the bottom of edifice. Remember, Saudi Arabia has world's largest accumulation of liquid gold, probably one fourth of the entire world's reserve. Also, U.S.A. and most of the free world are dependent, to a great extent, on the constant flow of Arab oil.

Please allow me to go back to Bangladesh one more time to connect Saudi's growing influence on Muslim majority nations in South Asia.  The nation of Bangladesh witnessed the evil design of Saudi monarchy. This monarch used the Islam card whenever Allah-fearing Bangladeshi Muslims felt vulnerable to the divine dictum. People of Bangladesh suffered as we all know the worst case of genocide during much of 1971. Most of the Bangladeshi Islamist political parties sided with the genocidal Pakistani army and received blessings from the Saudi rulers in return. They were responsible for loot, arson, rape, and mass murder.  They also made a blueprint to annihilate most of the intellectuals of the nation. As the country of Bangladesh became an independent entity, the same Saudi royalty was the unhappiest regime on earth. The aftermath of the political development in South Asia resulting in the split up of a friendly Islamic country like Pakistan was cause for concern for the Saudis. Similarly, the nascent nation Bangladesh's adherence to secularism was hardly palatable to Saudis' worldview. In their parochial worldview, the Saudis wanted to see all the non-Arab Muslim majority countries detach themselves from secularism and other "infidel" political ideology and join the Arab hegemonistic Islamist camp. Turkey and Algeria economically were never in dire straits as compared to the war-torn Bangladesh of early seventies. They could have the luxury of keeping secularism as state's principle. Bangladesh, however, since its inception, got the pressure from the gatekeepers of oil and Islam. As the leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman did not succumb to the monarch's wishes, the country faced some sort of "Hajj embargo" and chances of Saudi's diplomatic recognition appeared not to be in the distant horizon.  Consequently, Bangladeshi Muslims were not allowed to perform Hajj for years. Hajj is thought to be one of the important pillars of Islamic belief system (in fact, one of the five pillars). No financial assistance came from the oil rich "Muslim brethren." The Saudi regime's tacit pressure on Bangladesh government was nothing short of naked intervention in Bangladesh's body politic. This had three fold objectives. (1) Bangladesh has to make amends with Pakistan so that a confederation of the two sovereign nations could be materialized. (2) Bangladesh has to bring back war criminals like Golam Azam and others exiled in Saudi Arabia and give them legitimacy in the political field. (3) Bangladesh government should declare Bangladesh as an Islamic country or scrap secularism as state policy.

The assassination of populist leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (basically masterminded by the Islamists of his own party with ties to Pakistani intelligence backed by Saudi and western sympathizers) on August 15, 1975, brought in the downfall of a secular but authoritarian administration in
Bangladesh. That gave the golden opportunity for the Saudis. The subsequent years saw emergence of army rulers with strategic access to the fountain of petro-dollars, global Islamism and the presence of Pakistani intelligence outfit I.S.I (Inter Services Intelligence) on Bangla soil.  In changed circumstance, the Saudis were gratified to see at least (2) and (3) of the above-mentioned objectives were more or less fulfilled. Thus, the proliferation of unofficial madrassahs in nooks and corners of Bangladeshi society became a common phenomenon. It goes without saying that many of the madrassahs housed mysterious "foreign visitors" with unexplainable activities.  Therefore, it should not surprise anybody if a few of the aides of the Taliban leader Mullah Omar were found to be of Bangladesh variety. Also, no eyebrow should be raised if a few detainees at Camp X-Ray in the Guantanamo Bay speak Bengali as their native tongue.  Unfortunately, the process of "Talibanization" in this nation of one hundred thirty million started even before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the rest of the civilized world made no qualms about it.  But then, it was the pre-9/11 world.

While Saudi Arabia was the main supplier of wealth and idea to conquer the whole world under the banner of Islamist doctrine, Pakistan played a crucial role in perpetuating the agenda. Like thousand points of light, Pakistan was the safe haven of numerous outfits of Islamist political forces. Islamist groups were nurtured and flourished in this country.  Be it Jamat-i-Islami, be it al-Qaeda, be it Lashkar-i-Tayyeba, Harkatul Mujahedeen, or Jaishe-Muhammad - all the extremist and violent Islamist organizations got direct blessings from Pakistan's powerful military intelligence I.S.I., often times which seemed to be more powerful than any legitimate government of the country.  The recent U.S. led war on terrorism has jeopardized the equation and currently the pain of separation is evident everywhere in Pakistan.

While the Saudis exported its version of Wahhabite Islam to cash strapped Third World Muslim majority nations, the West got a different treatment altogether. The Saudis spent well over $100 billion on American weapons, construction, spare parts, and support, and for years ranked first in the world as a customer for American arms makers. As the former Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Edward S. Walker Jr., explains it, " ...we got lot of money out of Saudi Arabia".

Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi Ambassador to U.S.A. was the Saudis' eyes and ears in Washington. For years, he played a pivotal role in channeling funds to different causes that could appease U.S.A. The oil spigot filled the cups in no time and more and more Saudis and their homegrown enterprises such as Bin Laden family of businesses became a good friend to the world's mightiest power.
Bill Clinton, the then governor of Arkansas asked Saudi Arabia to donate some money for a new center for Middle East studies in his state university. When the governor became the president, he was probably overwhelmed with joy as King Fahd of Saudi Arabia pledged the new U.S. president with US $20 million for the Arkansas University. Before this, in 1985, King Fahd gave $1 million to First Lady Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" anti-drug program. The successor First Lady Barbara Bush received another million for her campaign against illiteracy. The list goes on and on. According to some analysts, Saudi contribution came in handy for every modern presidential libraries of U.S.A. Money needed in fulfilling U.S. foreign policy agenda does not come as easily. Sometimes U.S. Congress appears to be the main obstacle on the path of U.S. State Department's goals. The Contra War against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua is a point in question. When President Ronald Reagan wanted further allocation of dollars to finance the Contras, the U.S. Congress blocked the issue. Bandar's contacts became valuable. He was instrumental in funneling Saudi money leading to $ 30 million dollar contributions to the Contras who were battling Communists in Nicagaragua.
The Saudi-U.S. bonding evolved on mutual gains. Oil and money were the primary reasons for the tie, which critics would portray as a marriage of convenience. Over the years, though, thousands of secular minded people in the Islamic societies were alarmed at the rising tide of Islamism (in other words Islamic fascism) patronized by the Saudi Arabia. Historically speaking, U.S.A. was not affected adversely by this global menace until it came to the eastern seaboard on 9/11/2001. It is not unusual that she bothered least about this dangerous "virus." Many of the secular analysts opined, someday Islamic fascism would challenge the free world. They saw in Islamism an inherent trend of global hegemony.

As I mentioned, money played an important role to win friends and favors in U.S.A.  That is why, any citizen of the Arabian Peninsula was usually not under suspicion as he, or she was entering into U.S. territory. While any Iranian coming to this country, even for a soccer tournament, may have to undergo humiliating fingerprinting at the port of entry, the Saudis even did not need a visa interview. This policy of the Americans to go easy with the Saudi tourist had its pitfall. No wonder, a majority of the 9/11 terrorists had carried the Saudi passport. Other than enjoying the advantage of lax American immigration policy meant for them, the Saudis also exploited the benefit of liberal U.S. policy in the religious sector. Thus, a network of U.S. mosque systems led by clerics with Wahhabite leanings were well financed. Millions of dollars came to U.S.A. to convert "Other Muslims," mainly immigrants from South Asia to mold into Wahhabite variety.  American Taliban John Walker Lindh's conversion to militant Islamism started on U.S. soil. This could be a tip of the iceberg.  It is time the U.S. mosque systems dominated by anti-West fundamentalists should go under broader scrutiny.  Many political analysts and security experts raised hell on this disturbing development before. But sadly, nobody had listened. It took thousands of innocent lives to wake up the sleeping tiger.

The terrorist attacks on September 11 is a clear evidence that Islamic fascism does not discriminate whom it wants to extinguish if it perceives the other side to be a formidable adversary. The three thousand plus innocent lives in today's America and millions of innocent lives in 1971's Bangladesh, were victims of a single evildoer.  That is, an ambitious vicious monster and pestilence called Islamism.
 

Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the Saudi Raj

By Wasif Sattar

When Bangladesh became a free country, most Islamic nations held off recognition of Bangladesh. Even after Pakistan established diplomatic relations with Bangladesh many countries like Libya and Saudi Arabia did not
extend recognition to Bangladesh.

I have just returned from a trip to Bangladesh where I picked up a copy of "Mujibeyr Rokto Lal" by M.R. Akhtar Mukul (3rd Ed Sep 1992). He accompanied Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as a part of his entourage (in his official capacity as the Director General of Bangladesh Betar) to the Non-Aligned Nations conference in Algiers in late 1973. Mr. Mukul writes about a brief meeting between BB SMR and Saudi monarch King Faisal. According to Mr. Mukul, this meeting had been engineered by the ceaseless efforts of Barrister Amirul Islam.

Quote from Mr. Mukul's book (pp 39-41): [I have translated verbatim from the Bangla so the English rendition may sound a bit awkward]. ... ... ... ... "The introduction was prefaced by a formal hug and kisses. Next the two
leaders sat next to each other on a sofa. King Faisal’s interpreter sat on a nearby chair. On the sofa facing them sat representatives of the two countries. After exchanging pleasantries about each other's health, the conversation proceeded thus:

Faisal: Your Excellency, I have heard that Bangladesh is actually expecting some assistance from us. But the question is, what kind of assistance are you looking for? Of course we have some pre-conditions for providing any form of assistance.

Mujib: Your Excellency, please forgive me for my brashness. I am the Prime Minister of Bangladesh. But I don't think Bangladesh is begging for alms from you.

Faisal: Then what is it that you are expecting to receive from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia?

Mujib: The pious Muslims of Bangladesh wish to claim their right to worship at the site of the Holy Kaaba. Your Excellency, you tell me if there can be any preconditions to that? You are great and the Bengali Muslims hold you in high esteem. You are the custodian of the Holy Kaaba. Muslims from all over the world have a right to worship there. Can there be any conditions for exercising that right? Your Excellency we are looking forward to brotherly relations with you on an equal basis.

Faisal: But this not a political discussion. Your Excellency, please tell me what is it that you want from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Mujib: Your Excellency, you are aware that after Indonesia, Bangladesh is the country with the second highest Muslim population. I wish to learn why Saudi Arabia has not recognized the independent and sovereign nation of Bangladesh to this day.

Faisal: I do not have to answer to anybody expect the Most Merciful Allah. But since you are a Muslim, I can tell you that in order to receive Saudi recognition, the name of Bangladesh has to be changed to the "Islamic Republic of Bangladesh".

Mujib: This condition cannot be applied to Bangladesh. Whereas the overwhelming majority of the population of Bangladesh is Muslim, we also have over 10 million non-Muslims. All participated together in our fight for
freedom or suffered its consequences. Besides Almighty Allah is not only for the Muslims but He is the creator of the universe. Your Excellency, please forgive me, but your country is not named the "Islamic Republic of
Saudi Arabia". This great country is named after one of the greatest geniuses and politicians of the Arab world the late King Ibn Saud as the "Kingdom of Saudi Arabia". None of us objected to this name.

Faisal: Your Excellency, besides this we have another condition which is the release of all Pakistani POWs.

Mujib: Your Excellency, this is a bilateral matter between Bangladesh and Pakistan. There are many other unresolved issues between the two countries. Among these are the issues of the return of several hundred thousands of Pakistani citizens and the proper distribution of assets to Bangladesh. These matters may take some time to be settled. That's why the matter of unconditional release of Pakistan POWs cannot be dealt with independently. Why is Saudi Arabia so concerned about this?

Faisal: Your Excellency please be informed that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are practically the one and the same. Pakistan is our closest friend. Then your Excellency, there is nothing else to discuss between us. But please
think over our two conditions. One is the declaration of an Islamic republic and the other is the unconditional release of all Pakistani prisoners of war.

Mujib: Your Excellency, I would appreciate if you explain one thing to me.

Faisal: Your Excellency, please tell me what it is.

Mujib: Due to the non-recognition of Bangladesh by Saudi Arabia for almost two years, the pious Muslims of Bangladesh are not able to perform the Hajj. Has your Excellency given thought to this? Is it fair to create such a barrier? Muslims from all over the world have a right to worship at the Holy Kaaba. Then why has this barrier been created? Why do thousands of faithful Bengali Muslims have to travel on Indian passports to perform Hajj?

The meeting abruptly ended at this point but Mujib managed to utter one of the favorite quotes of his one-time mentor Maulana Bhashani - "La Kum Din Ukum Wal Ya Din (For you your religion, for me my religion)"
before parting. ... ... ... ...

Things have changed a lot in the last 22 years. Although Bangladeshi Muslims are treated as second-class Muslims (right next to Muslims from the rest of the subcontinent) in Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh is still considered to be one of the most favored nations by Saudi Arabia. This is evident from the fact that we are the largest recipient of Saudi aid. There are anywhere from 400,000 to 750,000 Bangladeshis working in Saudi Arabia.

Riyadh and Jeddah serve as a transfer point for Bangladeshi garment exports. Many facilities (landing rights, parking fees, etc.) are extended to Bangladeshi passenger and cargo flights at little or no cost.
In spite of the above, I find it difficult to accept the fact that Saudi Arabia took over 3 and a half years to recognize Bangladesh. ====================================================================================

The essay was originally published in News from Bangladesh on19th October, 1998