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Operation Searchlight

Operation Searchlight
Part of the Bangladesh Liberation War

Human remains and war material from the Bangladesh genocide at the Liberation War Museum, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Date26 March 1971 – 20 May 1971[1]
Location
East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh)
Result

See Aftermath section

Belligerents

Bangladesh Bangladesh Provisional Government

 Pakistan

Commanders and leaders
Strength

Bengali Resistance Forces:

Paramilitary Forces:

Reinforcements:

  • Unknown number of ex-servicemen and civilian volunteers

Pakistan Army:

  • 14th Infantry Division (approx. 18,000+ troops)[4]
  • 1 armoured regiment (75 M24 Chaffee tanks)

Paramilitary Forces:

Pakistan Navy:

Pakistan Air Force:

Land Reinforcements:

Casualties and losses
Mukti Bahini:
Civilian death toll: Around few hundred thousand Bengali civilians
Part of a series on the
Independence of Bangladesh
National emblem of Bangladesh
Events
Organisations
Key persons
Related
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Operation Searchlight was a military operation carried out by the Pakistan Army in an effort to curb the Bengali nationalist movement in former East Pakistan in March 1971.[8][9] Pakistan retrospectively justified the operation on the basis of anti-Bihari violence carried out en masse by the Bengalis earlier that month.[10][11][a] Ordered by the central government in West Pakistan, the original plans envisioned taking control of all of East Pakistan's major cities on 26 March, and then eliminating all Bengali opposition, whether political or military, [13] within the following month.

West Pakistani military leaders had not anticipated prolonged Bengali resistance or later Indian military intervention.[14] The main phase of Operation Searchlight ended with the fall of the last major Bengali-held town to West Pakistan in mid-May 1971. The operation also directly precipitated the 1971 Bangladesh genocide, in which between 300,000 and 3,000,000 Bengalis were killed while around 10 million fled to neighbouring India as refugees.[15][16]

Bengali intelligentsia, academics and Hindus were widely targeted alongside Muslim Bengali nationalists—with widespread, indiscriminate extrajudicial killings. The nature of these systematic purges enraged the Bengalis, who declared independence from West Pakistan to establish the new nation of Bangladesh in the erstwhile region of East Bengal.[17]

The widespread violence resulting from Pakistan's Operation Searchlight ultimately led to the Bangladesh Liberation War, in which Indian-backed Mukti Bahini guerrillas fought to remove Pakistani forces from Bangladesh. The civil war escalated in the following months as East Pakistani loyalists (mostly from the persecuted Bihari minority) formed militias to support West Pakistani troops on the ground against the Mukti Bahini. However, the conflict took a decisive turn in the Bengalis' favour following the ill-fated Operation Chengiz Khan, which resulted in direct Indian military intervention in the civil war, eventually prompting Pakistan's unconditional surrender to the joint command of Indian forces and the Mukti Bahini[18] on 16 December 1971.

  1. ^ a b Salik 1977, p. 90.
  2. ^ "Bangladesh Islamist leader Ghulam Azam charged". BBC News. 13 May 2012. Retrieved 5 December 2023.
  3. ^ a b Islam 2006, p. 66.
  4. ^ Qureshi, Kakeem Arshad. The 1971 Indo-Pak War: A Soldier's Narrative. Oxford University Press. p. 20. ISBN 0-19-579778-7.
  5. ^ Salik 1977, p. 135.
  6. ^ Hamdoor Rahman Commission Report, Chapter IV, paragraph II.
  7. ^ Islam 2006, p. 274.
  8. ^ Ganguly, Sumit (2002). Conflict Unending: India-Pakistan Tensions Since 1947. Columbia University Press. p. 60. ISBN 978-0-231-12369-3.
  9. ^ Abu Md. Delwar Hossain (2012). "Operation Searchlight". In Sirajul Islam and Ahmed A. Jamal (ed.). Banglapedia: National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh (Second ed.). Asiatic Society of Bangladesh. Archived from the original on 5 October 2021. Retrieved 5 December 2015.
  10. ^ Ian Talbot (28 July 2000). India and Pakistan. Oxford University Press. p. 258. ISBN 978-0-511-99741-9. Archived from the original on 7 February 2023. Retrieved 4 December 2018.
  11. ^ D'Costa, Bina (2011). Nationbuilding, Gender and War Crimes in South Asia. Routledge. p. 103. ISBN 9780415565660.
  12. ^ Biswas, pp. 78.
  13. ^ Salik 1977, pp. 63, 228–229.
  14. ^ Pakistan Defence Journal, 1977, Vol. 2, pp. 2–3.
  15. ^ "Bangladesh Islamist leader Ghulam Azam charged". BBC. 13 May 2012. Archived from the original on 15 December 2018. Retrieved 13 May 2012.
  16. ^ "Bangladesh sets up war crimes court – Central & South Asia". Al Jazeera. 25 March 2010. Archived from the original on 5 June 2011. Retrieved 23 June 2011.
  17. ^ Southwick, Katherine (2011). Brad K. Blitz; Maureen Jessica Lynch (eds.). Statelessness and Citizenship: A Comparative Study on the Benefits of Nationality. Edward Elgar Publishing. p. 119.
  18. ^ Salik 1977, p. 235.


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