Conflict	Afghan civil war
Date	27 April 1978 - present
Place	Afghanistan
Result	Ongoing. Military coup - Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (1978) - popular uprising - Soviet invasion (1979) - 'mujahideen' resistance - Soviet withdrawal (1989) - collapse of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (1992) - establishment of the Islamic State of Afghanistan (1992) - foreign (military) interference - internal war - establishment of the Taliban Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (1996) - resistance to the Taliban Emirate by the United Front - 9/9 and 9/11 (2001) - NATO intervention (2001) - fall of the Taliban government and establishment of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (2001) - Taliban insurgency.
Casualties3	600,000 - 2,000,000}}

The Afghan civil war began when the communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) took power in a military coup, known as the Saur Revolution, on 27 April 1978. Most of Afghanistan subsequently experienced uprisings against the unpopular Marxist-Leninist PDPA government. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979 to keep the Afghan PDPA communists in power. Afghanistan's resistance forces, known as the mujahideen, fought against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Some factions received support by the United States, with the Pakistani ISI serving as the U.S. middleman, and Saudi Arabia. The Soviet Union had to withdraw its troops in February 1989. The Soviet-backed Afghan communist regime survived for three more years until the fall of Kabul in 1992.

In 1992, the Afghan political parties agreed on the Peshawar Accords which established the Islamic State of Afghanistan and appointed an interim government. Militia leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was opposed to the agreement and with Pakistani support started a bombardment campaign against Kabul. Additionally, three militias who had been able to occupy some suburbs of Kabul engaged in a violent war against each other. Regional powers such as Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan seeking influence over the geostrategically located Afghanistan each supported and in some cases controlled one of those militias. While Kabul and some other major cities witnessed most of the fighting during that period most of the more rural parts of Afghanistan, which had seen especially massive bombardment by the Soviets and Communists, remained relatively calm. In late 1994/early 1995 as the Islamic State's minister of defense Ahmad Shah Massoud had been able to defeat most of the militias militarily in Kabul and had restored some calm to the capital, the Taliban emerged as a new faction threatening Kabul.

The Taliban had initially emerged as a new force in the southern city of Kandahar conquering many southern and central provinces not under Islamic State control in the course of 1994. In early 1995, as they launched a major operation against the capital Kabul, they suffered a devastating defeat against the Islamic State forces of Massoud in what many analysts saw as the movement's end. By 1996, however, they had regrouped with massive military support by Pakistan and financial support by Saudi Arabia. In September 1996 they took power in Kabul and established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. The United Islamic Front (Northern Alliance) was created under the leadership of Ahmad Shah Massoud as a military-political resistance force against the Taliban Emirate which was backed militarily by Pakistan's Army and enforced by several thousand Al Qaeda fighters from Arab countries and Central Asia. Following the September 11 attacks inside the United States in 2001, NATO invaded Afghanistan under Operation Enduring Freedom. The purpose of the invasion was to defeat Al-Qaeda, remove the Taliban from power and create a viable democratic state.

Rise and fall of communism

Zahir Shah, who became the last king of Afghanistan, was overthrown by his cousin Mohammed Daoud Khan in 1973. The nation transformed from a monarchy to a republic, with Daoud Khan becoming the first president of Afghanistan until his assassination in a 1978 military coup d'état (Saur Revolution), which was organized by the communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA).

The first communist leader in Afghanistan, Nur Muhammad Taraki, was assassinated by fellow communist Hafizullah Amin. Amin was known for his independent and nationalist inclinations, and was also seen by many as a ruthless leader. He has been accused of killing tens of thousands of Afghan civilians at Pul-e-Charkhi and other national prisons. 27,000 politically motivated executions reportedly took place at Pul-e-Charkhi prison alone. The Soviet Union looked at him as a threat for communism in Afghanistan and Soviet Central Asia. In December 1979, Amin and 200 of his guards were massacred by teams of Soviet Army's Spetsnaz.

The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. The government of the Soviet Union forced Babrak Karmal to leave Czechoslovakia, where he lived as Ambassador from Afghanistan, to return to Kabul as the new president of his nation. Karmal's leadership was seen as a failure by the Soviet Union because of the rise of violence and crime during his administration. He was replaced with Mohammad Najibullah, who was able to cling to power until 1992, three years after the withdrawal of the Soviet army.

The Soviet government realized that a military solution to the conflict would require far more troops. Because of this they had discussions about troop withdrawal and the search for a political peaceful solution as early as 1980, but they never took any serious steps in that direction until 1988. Early Soviet military reports confirm the difficulties the Soviet army had while fighting on the mountainous terrain, for which the Soviet army had no training whatsoever. Parallels between the Vietnam War was frequently referred to by Soviet army officers. The whole time during the Soviet withdrawal over the border troop convoys were coming under attack by Afghan rebel fighters. In all 523 Soviet soldiers were killed during the withdrawal. The total withdrawal of all Soviet troops from Afghanistan was completed in February 1989. The last Soviet soldier to leave was Lieutenant General Boris Gromov, leader of the Soviet military operations in Afghanistan at the time of the Soviet invasion.

After the Soviet withdrawal, the Republic of Afghanistan under Najibullah continued to face resistance from the various mujahideen forces. Najibullah received funding and arms from the Soviet Union until 1991 when the Soviet Empire collapsed. For several years the Afghan army had actually increased their effectiveness past levels ever achieved during the Soviet military presence. But the government was dealt a major blow when Abdul Rashid Dostum, a leading general, created an alliance with the Shura-e Nazar of Ahmad Shah Massoud. Large parts of the Afghan communist regime capitulated to the forces of Massoud in early 1992. After the Soviet defeat the Wall Street Journal had named Massoud "the Afghan who won the Cold War". He had defeated the Soviet forces nine times in his home region of the Panjshir Valley in northeastern Afghanistan.

Islamic State and foreign interference

After the fall of Najibullah's regime in 1992, the Afghan political parties agreed on a power-sharing agreement (the Peshawar Accords). The Peshawar Accords created the Islamic State of Afghanistan and appointed an interim government for a transitional period to be followed by general democratic elections. According to Human Rights Watch: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar received operational, financial and military support from Pakistan. Afghanistan expert Amin Saikal concludes in ''Modern Afghanistan: A History of Struggle and Survival'': In addition, Saudi Arabia and Iran - as competitors for regional hegemony - supported Afghan militias hostile towards each other. According to Human Rights Watch, Iran was assisting the Shia Hazara Hezb-i Wahdat forces of Abdul Ali Mazari, as Iran was attempting to maximize Wahdat's military power and influence. Saudi Arabia supported the Wahhabite Abdul Rasul Sayyaf and his Ittihad-i Islami faction.}}

Due to the sudden initiation of the war, working government departments, police units or a system of justice and accountability for the newly-created Islamic State of Afghanistan did not have time to form. Atrocities were committed by individuals of the different armed factions while Kabul descended into lawlessness and chaos as described in reports by Human Rights Watch and the Afghanistan Justice Project. Because of the chaos, some leaders increasingly had only nominal control over their (sub-)commanders. For civilians there was little security from murder, rape and extortion. Mullah Omar started his movement with fewer than 50 armed madrassah students in his hometown of Kandahar. Massoud tried to initiate a nationwide political process with the goal of national consolidation and democratic elections, also inviting the Taliban to join the process. Massoud had united political and cultural personalities, governors, commanders, clergymen and representatives to reach a lasting agreement. Massoud, like most people in Afghanistan, saw this conference as a small hope for democracy and for free elections. His favourite for candidacy to the presidency was Dr. Mohammad Yusuf, the first democratic prime minister under Zahir Shah, the former king. In the first meeting representatives from 15 different Afghan provinces met, in the second meeting there were already 25 provinces participating. Massoud unarmed went to talk to some Taliban leaders in Maidan Shar, but the Taliban declined to join this political process. When Massoud returned unharmed the Taliban leader who had received him as his guest paid with his life: he was killed by other senior Taliban for failing to execute Massoud while the possibility was there.

The Taliban started shelling Kabul in early 1995 but were defeated by forces of the Islamic State government under Ahmad Shah Massoud. Amnesty International, referring to the Taliban offensive, wrote in a 1995 report: The Taliban's early victories in 1994 were followed by a series of defeats that resulted in heavy losses. Many analysts like Amin Saikal describe the Taliban as developing into a proxy force for Pakistan's regional interests which the Taliban decline. On September 26, 1996, as the Taliban with military support by Pakistan and financial support by Saudi Arabia prepared for another major offensive, Massoud ordered a full retreat from Kabul. The Taliban seized Kabul on September 27, 1996, and established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

Taliban Emirate against United Front

The Taliban imposed on the parts of Afghanistan under their control their interpretation of Islam. The Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) analyze: }}

Women were required to wear the all-covering ''chador'', they were banned from public life and denied access to health care and education, windows needed to be covered so that women could not be seen from the outside, and they were not allowed to laugh in a manner they could be heard by others. The Taliban, without any real court or hearing, cut people's hands or arms off when they were accused of stealing. Taliban hit-squads watched the streets, conducting arbitrary brutal public beatings.

Ahmad Shah Massoud and Abdul Rashid Dostum, two former archnemesis, created the United Front (Northern Alliance) against the Taliban that were preparing offensives against the remaining areas under the control of Massoud and those under the control of Dostum. see video The United Front included beside the dominantly Tajik forces of Massoud and the Uzbek forces of Dostum, Hazara factions and Pashtun forces under the leadership of commanders such as Abdul Haq, Haji Abdul Qadir, Qari Baba or diplomat Abdul Rahim Ghafoorzai. From the Taliban conquest in 1996 until November 2001 the United Front controlled roughly 30% of Afghanistan's population in provinces such as Badakhshan, Kapisa, Takhar and parts of Parwan, Kunar, Nuristan, Laghman, Samangan, Kunduz, Ghōr and Bamyan. According to a 55-page report by the United Nations, the Taliban, while trying to consolidate control over northern and western Afghanistan, committed systematic massacres against civilians. UN officials stated that there had been "15 massacres" between 1996 and 2001. They also said, that "[t]hese have been highly systematic and they all lead back to the [Taliban] Ministry of Defense or to Mullah Omar himself." In a major effort to retake the Shomali plains, the Taliban indiscriminately killed civilians, while uprooting and expelling the population. Kamal Hossein, a special reporter for the UN, reported on these and other war crimes. Upon taking Mazar-i-Sharif in 1998, about 4,000 civilians were executed by the Taliban and many more reported tortured. The Taliban especially targeted people of Shia religious or Hazara ethnic background. Among those killed in Mazari Sharif were several Iranian diplomats. Others were kidnapped by the Taliban, touching off a hostage crisis that nearly escalated to a full scale war, with 150,000 Iranian soldiers massed on the Afghan border at one time. It was later admitted that the diplomats were killed by the Taliban, and their bodies were returned to Iran.

The documents also reveal the role of Arab and Pakistani support troops in these killings. Bin Laden's so-called 055 Brigade was responsible for mass-killings of Afghan civilians. The report by the United Nations quotes eyewitnesses in many villages describing Arab fighters carrying long knives used for slitting throats and skinning people.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf - then as Chief of Army Staff - was responsible for sending thousands of Pakistanis to fight alongside the Taliban and Bin Laden against the forces of Massoud. In total there were believed to be 28,000 Pakistani nationals fighting inside Afghanistan. 20,000 were regular Pakistani soldiers either from the Frontier Corps or army and an estimated 8,000 were militants recruited in madrassas filling regular Taliban ranks. The estimated 25,000 Taliban regular force thus comprised more than 8,000 Pakistani nationals. A 1998 document by the U.S. State Department confirms that "20-40 percent of [regular] Taliban soldiers are Pakistani." The document further states that the parents of those Pakistani nationals "know nothing regarding their child's military involvement with the Taliban until their bodies are brought back to Pakistan." Further 3,000 fighters of the regular Taliban army were Arab and Central Asian militants. From 1996 to 2001 the Al Qaeda of Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri became a state within the Taliban state. Bin Laden sent Arab recruits to join the fight against the United Front. Of roughly 45,000 Pakistani, Taliban and Al Qaeda soldiers fighting against the forces of Massoud only 14,000 were Afghan.

Abdul Rashid Dostum and his forces were defeated by the Taliban in 1998. Dostum subsequently went into exile.

The only leader to remain in Afghanistan, and who was able to defend vast parts of his area against the Taliban, was Ahmad Shah Massoud. In the areas under his control Ahmad Shah Massoud set up democratic institutions and signed the Women's Rights Declaration. In the area of Massoud, women and girls did not have to wear the Afghan burqa. They were allowed to work and to go to school. In at least two known instances, Massoud personally intervened against cases of forced marriage. To Massoud there was reportedly nothing worse than treating a person like an object. He stated:

Author Pepe Escobar wrote in ''Massoud: From Warrior to Statesman'':

While it was Massoud's stated conviction that men and women are equal and should enjoy the same rights, he also had to deal with Afghan traditions which he said would need a generation or more to overcome. In his opinion that could only be achieved through education. Humayun Tandar, who took part as a Afghan diplomat in the 2001 International Conference on Afghanistan in Bonn, said that "strictures of language, ethnicity, region were [also] stifling for Massoud. That is why ... he wanted to create a unity which could surpass the situation in which we found ourselves and still find ourselves to this day." This applied also to strictures of religion. Jean-José Puig describes how Massoud often led prayers before a meal or at times asked his fellow Muslims to lead the prayer but also did not hesitate to ask a Christian friend Jean-José Puig or the Jewish Princeton Professor Michael Barry: "Jean-José, we believe in the same God. Please, tell us the prayer before lunch or dinner in your own language."

Human Rights Watch cites no human rights crimes for the forces under direct control of Massoud for the period from October 1996 until the assassination of Massoud in September 2001. One million peolple fled the Taliban, many to the area of Massoud. National Geographic concluded in its documentary ''"Inside the Taliban"'':

The Taliban repeatedly offered Massoud a position of power to make him stop his resistance. Massoud declined. He explained in one interview: }}

And in another:

Massoud with his Proposals for Peace wanted to convince the Taliban to join a political process leading towards nationwide democratic elections in a foreseeable future. Massoud also stated:

}}

In early 2001 Massoud employed a new strategy of local military pressure and global political appeals. Resentment was increasingly gathering against Taliban rule from the bottom of Afghan society including the Pashtun areas. see video He stated that the Taliban and Al Qaeda had introduced "a very wrong perception of Islam" and that without the support of Pakistan and Bin Laden the Taliban would not be able to sustain their military campaign for up to a year. On this visit to Europe he also warned that his intelligence had gathered information about a large-scale attack on U.S. soil being imminent. The president of the European Parliament, Nicole Fontaine, called him the "pole of liberty in Afghanistan".

On September 9, 2001, Massoud, then aged 48, was the target of a suicide attack by two Arabs posing as journalists at Khwaja Bahauddin, in the Takhar Province of Afghanistan. Massoud died in a helicopter taking him to a hospital. The funeral, though in a rather rural area, was attended by hundreds of thousands of mourning people.Sad day (video clip).

The assassination was not the first time Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, the Pakistani ISI, and before them the Soviet KGB, the Afghan Communist KHAD and Hekmatyar had tried to assassinate Massoud. He survived countless assassination attempts over a period of 26 years. The first attempt on Massoud's life was carried out by Hekmatyar and two Pakistani ISI agents in 1975, when Massoud was only 22 years old. In early 2001, Al-Qaeda would-be assassins were captured by Massoud's forces while trying to enter his territory. O'Neill died on September 11, 2001, when the South Tower collapsed.

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Massoud's United Front troops ousted the Taliban from power in Kabul with American air support in Operation Enduring Freedom. In November and December 2001 the United Front gained control of much of the country and played a crucial role in establishing the post-Taliban interim government of Hamid Karzai in late 2001.

Islamic Republic and NATO

The US-led war in Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001, as Operation Enduring Freedom. It was designed to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda militants as well as replace the Taliban with a US-friendly government. The Bush Doctrine stated that, as policy, it would not distinguish between al-Qaeda and nations that harbor them.

Several Afghan leaders were invited to Germany in December 2001 for the UN sponsored Bonn Agreement, which was to restore stability and governance in their country. In the first step, the Afghan Transitional Administration was formed and was installed on December 22, 2001. Chaired by Hamid Karzai, it numbered 30 leaders and included a Supreme Court, an Interim Administration, and a Special Independent Commission.

A loya jirga (grand assembly) was convened in June 2002 by former King Zahir Shah, who returned from exile after 29 years. Hamid Karzai was elected President for the two years in the jirga, in which the Afghan Interim Authority was also replaced with the Transitional Islamic State of Afghanistan (TISA). A constitutional loya jirga was held in December 2003, adopting the new 2004 constitution, with a presidential form of government and a bicameral legislature. Karzai was elected in the 2004 presidential election followed by winning a second term in the 2009 presidential election. Both the 2005 and the 2010 parliamentary elections were also successful.

In the meantime, the reconstruction process of Afghanistan began in 2002. There are more than 14,000 reconstruction projects under way in Afghanistan, such as the Kajaki and the Salma Dam. Many of these projects are being supervised by the Provincial Reconstruction Teams. The World Bank contribution is the multilateral Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF), which was set up in 2002. It is financed by 24 international donor countries and has spent more than $1.37 billion as of 2007. Approximately 30 billion dollars have been provided by the international community for the reconstruction of Afghanistan, most of it from the United States. In 2002, the world community allocated $4 billion at the Tokyo conference followed by another $4 billion in 2004. In February 2006, $10.5 billion were committed for Afghanistan at the London Conference and $11 billion from the United States in early 2007.

The UN Security Council established the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in December 2001 to provide basic security for the people of Afghanistan and assist the Karzai administration. Since 2002, the total number of ISAF and U.S. forces have climbed from 15,000 to 150,000. The majority of them belong to various branches of the United States armed forces, who are not only fighting the Taliban insurgency but also training the military of Afghanistan and the Afghan National Police. They are scheduled to withraw slowly until the end of 2014 but Vice President Joe Biden has proposed to remain an unknown number of U.S. military personnels after the 2014 deadline if the security situation required and the Afghan government and people desired. Germany has announced to keep teaching Afghan police recruits until after the 2014 withdrawal date for military troops.

NATO and Afghan troops in recent years led many offensives against the Taliban, but proved unable to completely dislodge their presence. By 2009, a Taliban-led shadow government began to form complete with their own version of mediation court. In 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama deployed an additional 30,000 soldiers over a period of six months and proposed that he will begin troop withdrawals by 2012. At the 2010 International Conference on Afghanistan in London, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he intends to reach out to the Taliban leadership (including Mullah Omar, Sirajuddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar). Supported by senior U.S. officials Karzai called on the group's leadership to take part in a loya jirga meeting to initiate peace talks. According to the Wall Street Journal, these steps have been reciprocated so far with an intensification of bombings, assassinations and ambushes. Many Afghan groups (including the former intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh and opposition leader Dr. Abdullah Abdullah) believe that Karzai's plan aims to appease the insurgents' senior leadership at the cost of the democratic constitution, the democratic process and progess in the field of human rights especially women's rights. Dr. Abdullah stated: }}

According to a report by the United Nations, the Taliban were responsible for 76 % of civilian casualties in 2009. Afghanistan is currently struggling to rebuild itself while dealing with the results of 30 years of war, corruption among high level politicians and the ongoing Taliban insurgency backed by Pakistan.

By end of July 2011, the Netherlands became the first NATO country to end its combat mission in Afghanistan after 4 years deployed. 1,900 Dutch troops is not much, but it is politically significant due to rising casualties and growing doubt about the war. It also brought down a Dutch government. Canada will withdraw 2,700 troops in 2011 and Poland will pull out his country's 2,600 soldiers in 2012.

References

External links

Afghanistan Conflict Monitor

Backgrounder on Afghanistan: History of the War October 2001

Ending Afghanistan’s Civil by James Dobbins, The RAND Corporation, Testimony presented before the House Armed Services Committee on January 30, 2007

Fueling Afghanistan's War-Press Backgrounder

More information on Post-Conflict Reconstruction from the Center for Strategic and International Studies

* Category:Cold War military history of the Soviet Union Category:Cold War rebellions Category:Warlordism Category:Wars involving the Taliban

de:Krieg in Afghanistan es:Guerra Civil Afgana hi:अफ़ग़ानिस्तान का गृहयुद्ध id:Perang Saudara Afganistan lv:Afganistānas pilsoņu karš ja:アフガニスタン紛争 pt:Guerra Civil do Afeganistão ru:Гражданская война в Афганистане

A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same nation state or republic, or, less commonly, between two countries created from a formerly-united nation state. The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies. The term is a calque of the Latin ''bellum civile'' which was used to refer to the various civil wars of the Roman Republic in the 1st century BC.

A civil war is a high-intensity conflict, often involving regular armed forces, that is sustained, organized and large-scale. Civil wars may result in large numbers of casualties and the consumption of significant resources.

Civil wars since the end of World War II have lasted on average just over four years, a dramatic rise from the one-and-a-half year average of the 1900-1944 period. While the rate of emergence of new civil wars has been relatively steady since the mid-19th century, the increasing length of those wars resulted in increasing numbers of wars ongoing at any one time. For example, there were no more than five civil wars underway simultaneously in the first half of the 20th century, while over 20 concurrent civil wars were occurring at the end of the Cold War, before a significant decrease as conflicts strongly associated with the superpower rivalry came to an end. Since 1945, civil wars have resulted in the deaths of over 25 million people, as well as the forced displacement of millions more. Civil wars have further resulted in economic collapse; Burma (Myanmar), Uganda and Angola are examples of nations that were considered to have promising futures before being engulfed in civil wars.

Definition

James Fearon, a scholar of civil wars at Stanford University, defines a civil war as "a violent conflict within a country fought by organized groups that aim to take power at the center or in a region, or to change government policies". Ann Hironaka further specifies that one side of a civil war is the state. The intensity at which a civil disturbance becomes a civil war is contested by academics. Some political scientists define a civil war as having more than 1000 casualties, while others further specify that at least 100 must come from each side. The Correlates of War, a dataset widely used by scholars of conflict, classifies civil wars as having over 1000 war-related casualties per year of conflict. This rate is a small fraction of the millions killed in the Second Sudanese Civil War and Cambodian Civil War, for example, but excludes several highly publicized conflicts, such as The Troubles of Northern Ireland and the struggle of the African National Congress in Apartheid-era South Africa.

Based on the 1000 casualties per year criterion, there were 213 civil wars from 1816 to 1997, 104 of which occurred from 1944 to 1997. If one uses the less-stringent 1000 casualties total criterion, there were over 90 civil wars between 1945 and 2007, with 20 ongoing civil wars as of 2007.

Further definitions

The Geneva Conventions do not specifically define the term "civil war". They do, however, describe the criteria for acts qualifying as "armed conflict not of an international character", which includes civil wars. Among the conditions listed are four requirements:

The party in revolt must be in possession of a part of the national territory.

The insurgent civil authority must exercise ''de facto'' authority over the population within the determinate portion of the national territory.

The insurgents must have some amount of recognition as a belligerent.

The legal Government is "obliged to have recourse to the regular military forces against insurgents organized as military."

Causes of civil war in the Collier-Hoeffler Model

Scholars investigating the cause of civil war are attracted by two opposing theories, greed versus grievance. Roughly stated: are conflicts caused by who people are, whether that be defined in terms of ethnicity, religion or other social affiliation, or do conflicts begin because it is in the economic best interests of individuals and groups to start them? Scholarly analysis supports the conclusion that economic and structural factors are more important than those of identity in predicting occurrences of civil war.

A comprehensive studies of civil war was carried out by a team from the World Bank in the early 21st century. The study framework, which came to be called the Collier-Hoeffler Model, examined 78 five-year increments when civil war occurred from 1960 to 1999, as well as 1,167 five-year increments of "no civil war" for comparison, and subjected the data set to regression analysis to see the effect of various factors. The factors that were shown to have a statistically-significant effect on the chance that a civil war would occur in any given five-year period were:

;Availability of finance A high proportion of primary commodities in national exports significantly increases the risk of a conflict. A country at "peak danger", with commodities comprising 32% of gross domestic product, has a 22% risk of falling into civil war in a given five-year period, while a country with no primary commodity exports has a 1% risk. When disaggregated, only petroleum and non-petroleum groupings showed different results: a country with relatively low levels of dependence on petroleum exports is at slightly less risk, while a high-level of dependence on oil as an export results in slightly more risk of a civil war than national dependence on another primary commodity. The authors of the study interpreted this as being the result of the ease by which primary commodities may be extorted or captured compared to other forms of wealth, for example, it is easy to capture and control the output of a gold mine or oil field compared to a sector of garment manufacturing or hospitality services.

A second source of finance is national diasporas, which can fund rebellions and insurgencies from abroad. The study found that statistically switching the size of a country's diaspora from the smallest found in the study to the largest resulted in a sixfold increase in the chance of a civil war.

;Opportunity cost of rebellion Higher male secondary school enrollment, per capita income and economic growth rate all had significant effects on reducing the chance of civil war. Specifically, a male secondary school enrollment 10% above the average reduced the chance of a conflict by about 3%, while a growth rate 1% higher than the study average resulted in a decline in the chance of a civil war of about 1%. The study interpreted these three factors as proxies for earnings foregone by rebellion, and therefore that lower foregone earnings encourages rebellion. Phrased another way: young males (who make up the vast majority of combatants in civil wars) are less likely to join a rebellion if they are getting an education and/or have a comfortable salary, and can reasonably assume that they will prosper in the future.

Low per capita income has been proposed as a cause for grievance, prompting armed rebellion. However, for this to be true, one would expect economic inequality to also be a significant factor in rebellions, which it is not. The study therefore concluded that the economic model of opportunity cost better explained the findings.

;Military advantage High levels of population dispersion and, to a lesser extent, the presence of mountainous terrain increased the chance of conflict. Both of these factors favor rebels, as a population dispersed outward toward the borders is harder to control than one concentrated in a central region, while mountains offer terrain where rebels can seek sanctuary.

;Grievance Most proxies for "grievance" - the theory that civil wars begin because of issues of identity, rather than economics - were statistically insignificant, including economic equality, political rights, ethnic polarization and religious fractionalization. Only ethnic dominance, the case where the largest ethnic group comprises a majority of the population, increased the risk of civil war. A country characterized by ethnic dominance has nearly twice the chance of a civil war. However, the combined effects of ethnic and religious fractionalization, i.e. the more chance that any two randomly chosen people will be from separate ethnic or religious groups the less chance of a civil war, were also significant and positive, as long as the country avoided ethnic dominance. The study interpreted this as stating that minority groups are more likely to rebel if they feel that they are being dominated, but that rebellions are more likely to occur the more homogeneous the population and thus more cohesive the rebels. These two factors may thus be seen as mitigating each other in many cases.

;Population size The various factors contributing to the risk of civil war rise increase with population size. The risk of a civil war rises approximately proportionately with the size of a country's population.

;Time The more time that has elapsed since the last civil war, the less likely it is that a conflict will recur. The study had two possible explanations for this: one opportunity-based and the other grievance-based. The elapsed time may represent the depreciation of whatever capital the rebellion was fought over and thus increase the opportunity cost of restarting the conflict. Alternatively, elapsed time may represent the gradual process of healing of old hatreds. The study found that the presence of diaspora substantially reduced the positive effect of time, as the funding from diasporas offsets the depreciation of rebellion-specific capital.

Duration of civil wars

Ann Hironaka, author of ''Neverending Wars'', divides the modern history of civil wars into the pre-19th century, 19th century to early 20th century, and late 20th century. In 19th century Europe, the length of civil wars fell significantly, largely due to the nature of the conflicts as battles for the power center of the state, the strength of centralized governments, and the normally quick and decisive intervention by other states to support the government. Following World War II the duration of civil wars grew past the norm of the pre-19th century, largely due to weakness of the many postcolonial states and the intervention by major powers on both sides of conflict. The most obvious commonality to civil wars are that they occur in fragile states.

Civil wars in the 19th and early 20th centuries

Civil wars through the 19th century to early 20th century tended to be short; the average length of a civil war between 1900 and 1944 was one and half years. The state itself was the obvious center of authority in the majority of cases, and the civil wars were thus fought for control of the state. This meant that whoever had control of the capital and the military could normally crush resistance. If a rebellion failed to quickly seize the capital and control of the military for itself, it was normally doomed to a quick destruction. For example, the fighting associated with the 1871 Paris Commune occurred almost entirely in Paris, and ended quickly once the military sided with the government.

The power of non-state actors resulted in a lower value placed on sovereignty in the 18th and 19th centuries, which further reduced the number of civil wars. For example, the pirates of the Barbary Coast were recognized as ''de facto'' states because of their military power. The Barbary pirates thus had no need to rebel against the Ottoman Empire, who were their nominal state government, to gain recognition for their sovereignty. Conversely, states such as Virginia and Massachusetts in the United States of America did not have sovereign status, but had significant political and economic independence coupled with weak federal control, reducing the incentive to secede.

The two major global ideologies, monarchism and democracy, led to several civil wars. However, a bi-polar world, divided between the two ideologies, did not develop, largely due the dominance of monarchists through most of the period. The monarchists would thus normally intervene in other countries to stop democratic movements taking control and forming democratic governments, which were seen by monarchists as being both dangerous and unpredictable. The Great Powers, defined in the 1815 Congress of Vienna as the United Kingdom, Habsburg Austria, Prussia, France, and Russia, would frequently coordinate interventions in other nations' civil wars, nearly always on the side of the incumbent government. Given the military strength of the Great Powers, these interventions were nearly always decisive and quickly ended the civil wars.

There were several exceptions from the general rule of quick civil wars during this period. The American Civil War (1861–1865) was unusual for at least two reasons: it was fought around regional identities, rather than political ideologies, and it was ended through a war of attrition, rather than over a decisive battle over control of the capital, as was the norm. The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) was exceptional because ''both'' sides of the war received support from intervening great powers: Germany, Italy, and Portugal supported opposition leader Francisco Franco, while France and Russia supported the government (see proxy war).

Civil wars since 1945

In the 1990s, about twenty civil wars were occurring concurrently during an average year, a rate about ten times the historical average since the 19th century. However, the rate of new civil wars had not increased appreciably; the drastic rise in the number of ongoing wars after World War II was a result of the tripling of the average duration of civil wars to over four years. This increase was a result of the increased number of states, the fragility of states formed after 1945, the decline in interstate war, and the Cold War rivalry.

Following World War II, the major European powers divested themselves of their colonies at an increasing rate: the number of ex-colonial states jumped from about 30 to almost 120 after the war. The rate of state formation leveled off in the 1980s, at which point few colonies remained. More states also meant more states in which to have long civil wars. Hironaka statistically measures the impact of the increased number of ex-colonial states as increasing the post-WWII incidence of civil wars by +165% over the pre-1945 number.

While the new ex-colonial states appeared to follow the blueprint of the idealized state - centralized government, territory enclosed by defined borders, and citizenry with defined rights -, as well as accessories such as a national flag, an anthem, a seat at the United Nations and an official economic policy, they were in actuality far weaker than the Western states they were modeled after. In Western states, the structure of governments closely matched states' actual capabilities, which had been arduously developed over centuries. The development of strong administrative structures, in particular those related to extraction of taxes, is closely associated with the intense warfare between predatory European states in the 17th and 18th centuries, or in Charles Tilly's famous formulation: "War made the state and the state made war". For example, the formation of the modern states of Germany and Italy in the 19th century is closely associated with the wars of expansion and consolidation led by Prussia and Sardinia, respectively. The Western process of forming effective and impersonal bureaucracies, developing efficient tax systems, and integrating national territory continued into the 20th century; as late as World War I, some French military conscripts from rural regions were unable to name the country they were fighting for. Nevertheless, Western states that survived into the latter half of the 20th century were considered "strong" by simple reason that they had managed to develop the institutional structures and military capability required to survive predation by their fellow states.

In sharp contrast, decolonization was an entirely different process of state formation. Most imperial powers had not foreseen a need to prepare their colonies for independence; for example, Britain had given limited self-rule to India and Sri Lanka, while treating British Somaliland as little more than a trading post, while all major decisions for French colonies were made in Paris and Belgium prohibited any self-government up until it suddenly granted independence to its colonies in 1960. Like Western states of previous centuries, the new ex-colonies lacked autonomous bureaucracies, which would make decisions based on the benefit to society as a whole, rather than respond to corruption and nepotism to favor a particular interest group. In such a situation, factions manipulate the state to benefit themselves or, alternatively, state leaders use the bureaucracy to further their own self-interest. The lack of credible governance was compounded by the fact that most colonies were economic loss-makers at independence, lacking both a productive economic base and a taxation system to effectively extract resources from economic activity. Among the rare states profitable at decolonization was India, to which scholars credibly argue that Uganda, Malaysia and Angola may be included. Neither did imperial powers make territorial integration a priority, and may have discouraged nascent nationalism as a danger to their rule. Many newly independent states thus found themselves impoverished, with minimal administrative capacity in a fragmented society, while faced with the expectation of immediately meeting the demands of a modern state. Such states are considered "weak" or "fragile". The "strong"-"weak" categorization is not the same as "Western"-"non-Western", as some Latin American states like Argentina and Brazil and Middle Eastern states like Egypt and Israel are considered to have "strong" administrative structures and economic infrastructure.

Historically, the international community would have targeted weak states for territorial absorption or colonial domination or, alternatively, such states would fragment into pieces small enough to be effectively administered and secured by a local power. However, international norms towards sovereignty changed in the wake of WWII in ways that support and maintain the existence of weak states. Weak states are given ''de jure'' sovereignty equal to that of other states, even when they do not have ''de facto'' sovereignty or control of their own territory, including the privileges of international diplomatic recognition and an equal vote in the United Nations. Further, the international community offers development aid to weak states, which helps maintain the facade of a functioning modern state by giving the appearance that the state is capable of fulfilling its implied responsibilities of control and order. The formation of a strong international law regime and norms against territorial aggression is strongly associated with the dramatic drop in the number of interstate wars, though it has also been attributed to the effect of the Cold War or to the changing nature of economic development. Consequently, military aggression that results in territorial annexation became increasingly likely to prompt international condemnation, diplomatic censure, a reduction in international aid or the introduction of economic sanction, or, as in the case of 1990 invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, international military intervention to reverse the territorial aggression. Similarly, the international community has largely refused to recognize secessionist regions, while keeping some states such as Cyprus and Taiwan in diplomatic recognition limbo. While there is not a large body of academic work examining the relationship, Hironaka's statistical study found a correlation that suggests that every major international anti-secessionist declaration increased the number of ongoing civil wars by +10%, or a total +114% from 1945-1997. The diplomatic and legal protection given by the international community, as well as economic support to weak governments and discouragement of secession, thus had the unintended effect of encouraging civil wars.

There has been an enormous amount of international intervention in civil wars since 1945 that served to extend wars. While intervention has been practiced since the international system has existed, its nature changed substantially. It became common for both the state and opposition group to receive foreign support, allowing wars to continue well past the point when domestic resources had been exhausted. Superpowers, such as the European great powers, had always felt no compunction in intervening in civil wars that affected their interests, while distant regional powers such as the United States could declare the interventionist Monroe Doctrine of 1821 for events in its Central American "backyard". However, the large population of weak states after 1945 allowed intervention by former colonial powers, regional powers and neighboring states who themselves often had scarce resources. On average, a civil war with interstate intervention was 300% longer than those without. When disaggregated, a civil war with intervention on only one side is 156% longer, while intervention on both sides lengthens the average civil war by an addition 92%. If one of the intervening states was a superpower, a civil war is extended a further 72%; a conflict such as the Angolan Civil War, in which there is two-sided foreign intervention, including by a superpower (actually, two superpowers in the case of Angola), would be 538% longer on average than a civil war without any international intervention.

Effect of the Cold War

The Cold War (1945–1989) provided a global network of material and ideological support that perpetuated civil wars, which were mainly fought in weak ex-colonial states, rather than the relatively strong states that were aligned with the Warsaw Pact and North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In some cases, superpowers would superimpose Cold War ideology onto local conflicts, while in others local actors using Cold War ideology would attract the attention of a superpower to obtain support. Using a separate statistical evaluation than used above for interventions, civil wars that included pro- or anti-communist forces lasted 141% longer than the average non-Cold War conflict, while a Cold War civil war that attracted superpower intervention resulted in wars typically lasting over three times as long as other civil wars. Conversely, the end of the Cold War marked by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 resulted in a reduction in the duration of Cold War civil wars of 92% or, phrased another way, a roughly ten-fold increase in the rate of resolution of Cold War civil wars. Lengthy Cold War-associated civil conflicts that ground to a halt include the wars of Guatemala (1960–1996), El Salvador (1979–1991), Nicaragua (1970–1990) and Peru (1980–2000).

See also

The Logic of Violence in Civil War

War of Independence (disambiguation)

Wars of national liberation

References

Bibliography

Ali, Taisier Mohamed Ahmed and Robert O. Matthews, eds. ''Civil Wars in Africa: roots and resolution'' (1999), 322 pages

Mats Berdal and David M. Malone, ''Greed and Grievance: Economic Agendas in Civil Wars'' (Lynne Rienner, 2000).

Paul Collier, ''Breaking the Conflict Trap: civil war and development policy'' World Bank (2003) - 320 pages

Stathis Kalyvas, "'New' and 'Old' Civil Wars: A Valid Distinction?" ''World Politics'' 54, no. 1 (2001): 99-118.

David Lake and Donald Rothchild, eds. ''The International Spread of Ethnic Conflict: Fear, Diffusion, and Escalation'' (Princeton University Press, 1996).

Roy Licklider, "The Consequences of Negotiated Settlements in Civil Wars, 1945--1993," ''American Political Science Review'' 89, no. 3 (summer 1995): pp 681–690.

Andrew Mack, "Civil War: Academic Research and the Policy Community," ''Journal of Peace Research'' 39, no. 5 (2002): pp. 515–525.

David T. Mason and Patrick 3. Fett, "How Civil Wars End: A Rational Choice Approach," ''Journal of Conflict Resolution'' 40, no. 4 (fall 1996): 546-568.

Patrick M. Regan. ''Civil Wars and Foreign Powers: Outside Intervention in Intrastate Conflict'' (2000) 172 pages

Stephen John and others., eds. ''Ending Civil Wars: The Implementation of Peace Agreements'' (2002), 729 pages

Monica Duffy Toft, ''The Geography of Ethnic Violence: Identity, Interests, and the Indivisibility of Territory'' (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003). ISBN 0-691-12383-7.

Barbara F. Walter, ''Committing to Peace: The Successful Settlement of Civil Wars'' (Princeton University Press, 2002),

Elisabeth Jean Wood; "Civil Wars: What We Don't Know," ''Global Governance,'' Vol. 9, 2003 pp 247+ online version

External links

Royal Air Force Doctrine - The Nature of War and Armed Conflict

Royal Air Force Doctrine - The Nature of War and Armed Conflict

"What makes a civil war?", ''BBC News'', 20 April 2006

Category:Wars by type

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Conflict	Bangladesh Liberation War
Partof	Cold War
Date	26 March – 16 December 1971
Place	East Pakistan
Territory	East Pakistan secedes to become Bangladesh
Result	• Indian and Mukti Bahini victory against Pakistan • Subsequent independence of Bangladesh• Eastern Military High Command collapse • Disintegration of United Islamic Republic of Pakistan
Combatant1	East Pakistan ---- Mukti Bahini ---- India (joins the war on 3 December 1971)
Combatant2	West Pakistan ---- Pakistan Defence Forces
Commander1	General M A G Osmany
Commander2	20px LGen A.A.K. Niazi20px LGen Tikka Khan20px RAdm M. Shariff20px Air-CDRE Enamul Huq
Strength1	Bangladesh Forces: 175,000 India: 250,000
Strength2	Pakistan Combatant Forces: ~ 365,000 Para Military: ~250,000
Casualties1	Bangladesh Forces: 30,000India: 1,426 KIA 3,611 Wounded (Official)1,525 KIA 4,061 Wounded
Casualties2	Pakistan ~8,000 KIA ~10,000 WIA 91,000 POWs (56,694 Armed Forces 12,192 Paramilitary rest civilians)
Notes	Civilian death toll: 300,000–3,000,000 (estimates) }}

The Bangladesh Liberation War⁽ⁱ⁾ ( ''Muktijuddho'') was an armed conflict pitting East Pakistan and India against West Pakistan. The war resulted in the secession of East Pakistan, which became the independent nation of Bangladesh.

The war broke out on 26 March 1971 as army units directed by West Pakistan launched a military operation in East Pakistan against Bengali civilians, students, intelligentsia, and armed personnel who were demanding separation of the East from West Pakistan. Bengali military, paramilitary, and civilians formed the Mukti Bahini ( "Liberation Army") and used guerrilla warfare tactics to fight against the West Pakistan army. India provided economic, military and diplomatic support to the Mukti Bahini rebels, leading Pakistan to launch Operation Chengiz Khan, a pre-emptive attack on the western border of India which started the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971.

On 16 December 1971, the allied forces of the Indian army and the Mukti Bahini defeated the West Pakistani forces deployed in the East. The resulting surrender was the largest in number of prisoners of war since World War II.

Background

In August 1947, the Partition of British India gave birth to two new states; a secular state named India and an Islamic state named Pakistan. But Pakistan comprised two geographically and culturally separate areas to the east and the west of India. The western zone was popularly (and for a period of time, also officially) termed West Pakistan and the eastern zone (modern-day Bangladesh) was initially termed East Bengal and later, East Pakistan. Although the population of the two zones was close to equal, political power was concentrated in West Pakistan and it was widely perceived that East Pakistan was being exploited economically, leading to many grievances.

On 25 March 1971, rising political discontent and cultural nationalism in East Pakistan was met by brutal suppressive force from the ruling elite of the West Pakistan establishment in what came to be termed Operation Searchlight.

The violent crackdown by West Pakistan forces led to East Pakistan declaring its independence as the state of Bangladesh and to the start of civil war. The war led to a sea of refugees (estimated at the time to be about 10 million) flooding into the eastern provinces of India. Facing a mounting humanitarian and economic crisis, India started actively aiding and organising the Bangladeshi resistance army known as the Mukti Bahini.

East Pakistani grievances

Economic disparities

Although East Pakistan had a larger population, West Pakistan dominated the divided country politically and received more money from the common budget.

align="right" align="right" align="right" align="right" align="right"

Year	Spending on West Pakistan (in millions of Pakistani rupees)	Spending on East Pakistan (in millions of Pakistani rupees)	Amount spent on East as percentage of West
style="text-align:center;"	1950–55	11,290 ||	5,240	46.4
style="text-align:center;"	1955–60	16,550 ||	5,240	31.7
style="text-align:center;"	1960–65	33,550 ||	14,040	41.8
style="text-align:center;"	1965–70	51,950 ||	21,410	41.2
style="text-align:center;"	Total	113,340 ||	45,930	40.5

Political differences

Although East Pakistan accounted for a slight majority of the country's population, political power remained firmly in the hands of West Pakistanis. Since a straightforward system of representation based on population would have concentrated political power in East Pakistan, the West Pakistani establishment came up with the "One Unit" scheme, where all of West Pakistan was considered one province. This was solely to counterbalance the East wing's votes.

After the assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan, Pakistan's first prime minister, in 1951, political power began to be devolved to the President of Pakistan, and eventually, the military. The nominal elected chief executive, the Prime Minister, was frequently sacked by the establishment, acting through the President.

East Pakistanis noticed that whenever one of them, such as Khawaja Nazimuddin, Muhammad Ali Bogra, or Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy was elected Prime Minister of Pakistan, he were swiftly deposed by the largely West Pakistani establishment. The military dictatorships of Ayub Khan (27 October 1958 – 25 March 1969) and Yahya Khan (25 March 1969 – 20 December 1971), both West Pakistanis, only heightened such feelings.

The situation reached a climax when in 1970 the Awami League, the largest East Pakistani political party, led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, won a landslide victory in the national elections. The party won 167 of the 169 seats allotted to East Pakistan, and thus a majority of the 313 seats in the National Assembly. This gave the Awami League the constitutional right to form a government. However, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (a Sindhi and former professor), the leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party, refused to allow Rahman to become the Prime Minister of Pakistan. Instead, he proposed the idea of having two Prime Ministers, one for each wing. The proposal elicited outrage in the east wing, already chafing under the other constitutional innovation, the "one unit scheme". Bhutto also refused to accept Rahman's Six Points. On 3 March 1971, the two leaders of the two wings along with the President General Yahya Khan met in Dhaka to decide the fate of the country. Talks failed and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman called for a nationwide strike. Bhutto feared a civil war, therefore, he sent his most trusted companion, dr. Mubashir Hassan. West Pakistanis believed that Bengalis were not "martially inclined" unlike Pashtuns and Punjabis; the "martial races" notion was dismissed as ridiculous and humiliating by Bengalis. Moreover, despite huge defence spending, East Pakistan received none of the benefits, such as contracts, purchasing and military support jobs. The Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 over Kashmir also highlighted the sense of military insecurity among Bengalis as only an under-strength infantry division and 15 combat aircraft without tank support were in East Pakistan to thwart any Indian retaliations during the conflict.

Language controversy

In 1948, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan's first Governor-General, declared in Dhaka (then usually spelled Dacca in English) that "Urdu, and only Urdu" would be the common language for all of Pakistan. This proved highly controversial, since Urdu was a language that was only spoken in the West by Muhajirs and in the East by Biharis, although the Urdu language had been promoted as the ''lingua franca'' of Indian Muslims by political and religious leaders such as Sir Khwaja Salimullah, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, Nawab Viqar-ul-Mulk and Maulvi Abdul Haq. The language was considered a vital element of the Islamic culture for Indian Muslims; Hindi and the Devanagari script were seen as fundamentals of Hindu culture. The majority groups in West Pakistan spoke Punjabi, while the Bengali language was spoken by the vast majority of East Pakistanis. The language controversy eventually reached a point where East Pakistan revolted while the other part of Pakistan remained calm even though Punjabi was spoken by the majority groups of West Pakistan. Several students and civilians lost their lives in a police crackdown on 21 February 1952. The day is revered in Bangladesh and in West Bengal as the Language Martyrs' Day. Later, in memory of the 1952 killings, UNESCO declared 21 February as the International Mother Language Day in 1999.

In West Pakistan, the movement was seen as a sectional uprising against Pakistani national interests and the founding ideology of Pakistan, the Two-Nation Theory. West Pakistani politicians considered Urdu a product of Indian Islamic culture, as Ayub Khan said, as late as 1967, "East Bengalis... still are under considerable Hindu culture and influence." But, the deaths led to bitter feelings among East Pakistanis, and they were a major factor in the push for independence.

Response to the 1970 cyclone

The 1970 Bhola cyclone made landfall on the East Pakistan coastline during the evening of 12 November, around the same time as a local high tide, killing an estimated 300,000 to 500,000 people. Though the exact death toll is not known, it is considered the deadliest tropical cyclone on record. A week after the landfall, President Khan conceded that his government had made "slips" and "mistakes" in its handling of the relief efforts due to a lack of understanding of the magnitude of the disaster.

A statement released by eleven political leaders in East Pakistan ten days after the cyclone hit charged the government with "gross neglect, callous and utter indifference". They also accused the president of playing down the magnitude of the problem in news coverage. On 19 November, students held a march in Dhaka protesting the slowness of the government response. Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani addressed a rally of 50,000 people on 24 November, where he accused the president of inefficiency and demanded his resignation.

As the conflict between East and West Pakistan developed in March, the Dhaka offices of the two government organisations directly involved in relief efforts were closed for at least two weeks, first by a general strike and then by a ban on government work in East Pakistan by the Awami League. With this increase in tension, foreign personnel were evacuated over fears of violence. Relief work continued in the field, but long-term planning was curtailed. This conflict widened into the Bangladesh Liberation War in December and concluded with the creation of Bangladesh. This is one of the first times that a natural event helped to trigger a civil war.

Operation Searchlight

A planned military pacification carried out by the Pakistan Army – codenamed ''Operation Searchlight'' – started on 25 March to curb the Bengali nationalist movement by taking control of the major cities on 26 March, and then eliminating all opposition, political or military, within one month. Before the beginning of the operation, all foreign journalists were systematically deported from East Pakistan.

The main phase of Operation Searchlight ended with the fall of the last major town in Bengali hands in mid-May. The operation also began the 1971 Bangladesh atrocities. These systematic killings served only to enrage the Bengalis, which ultimately resulted in the secession of East Pakistan later in the same year. The international media and reference books in English have published casualty figures which vary greatly, from 5,000–35,000 in Dhaka, and 200,000–3,000,000 for Bangladesh as a whole, and the atrocities have been referred to as acts of genocide.

According to the Asia Times,

At a meeting of the military top brass, Yahya Khan declared: "Kill 3 million of them and the rest will eat out of our hands." Accordingly, on the night of 25 March, the Pakistani Army launched ''Operation Searchlight'' to "crush" Bengali resistance in which Bengali members of military services were disarmed and killed, students and the intelligentsia systematically liquidated and able-bodied Bengali males just picked up and gunned down.

Although the violence focused on the provincial capital, Dhaka, it also affected all parts of East Pakistan. Residential halls of the University of Dhaka were particularly targeted. The only Hindu residential hall – the Jagannath Hall – was destroyed by the Pakistani armed forces, and an estimated 600 to 700 of its residents were murdered. The Pakistani army denies any cold blooded killings at the university, though the Hamood-ur-Rehman commission in Pakistan concluded that overwhelming force was used at the university. This fact and the massacre at Jagannath Hall and nearby student dormitories of Dhaka University are corroborated by a videotape secretly filmed by Prof. Nurul Ullah of the East Pakistan Engineering University, whose residence was directly opposite the student dormitories.

Hindu areas suffered particularly heavy blows. By midnight, Dhaka was burning, especially the Hindu dominated eastern part of the city. ''Time'' magazine reported on 2 August 1971, "The Hindus, who account for three-fourths of the refugees and a majority of the dead, have borne the brunt of the Pakistani military hatred."

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was arrested by the Pakistani Army. Yahya Khan appointed Brigadier (later General) Rahimuddin Khan to preside over a special tribunal prosecuting Mujib with multiple charges. The tribunal's sentence was never made public, but Yahya caused the verdict to be held in abeyance in any case. Other Awami League leaders were arrested as well, while a few fled Dhaka to avoid arrest. The Awami League was banned by General Yahya Khan.

Declaration of independence

The violence unleashed by the Pakistani forces on 25 March 1971, proved the last straw to the efforts to negotiate a settlement. Following these outrages, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman signed an official declaration that read:

''Today Bangladesh is a sovereign and independent country. On Thursday night, West Pakistani armed forces suddenly attacked the police barracks at Razarbagh and the EPR headquarters at Pilkhana in Dhaka. Many innocent and unarmed have been killed in Dhaka city and other places of Bangladesh. Violent clashes between E.P.R. and Police on the one hand and the armed forces of Pakistan on the other, are going on. The Bengalis are fighting the enemy with great courage for an independent Bangladesh. May Allah aid us in our fight for freedom. Joy Bangla.''

Sheikh Mujib also called upon the people to resist the occupation forces through a radio message. Mujib was arrested on the night of 25–26 March 1971 at about 1:30 am (as per Radio Pakistan's news on 29 March 1971).

A telegram containing the text of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's declaration reached some students in Chittagong. The message was translated to Bangla by Dr. Manjula Anwar. The students failed to secure permission from higher authorities to broadcast the message from the nearby Agrabad Station of Radio Pakistan. They crossed Kalurghat Bridge into an area controlled by an East Bengal Regiment under Major Ziaur Rahman. Bengali soldiers guarded the station as engineers prepared for transmission. At 19:45 hrs on 27 March 1971, Major Ziaur Rahman broadcast the announcement of the declaration of independence on behalf of Sheikh Mujibur. On 28 March Major Ziaur Rahman made another announcement,which was as follows:

''This is Shadhin Bangla Betar Kendro. I, Major Ziaur Rahman, at the direction of Bangobondhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, hereby declare that the independent People's Republic of Bangladesh has been established. At his direction, I have taken command as the temporary Head of the Republic. In the name of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, I call upon all Bengalis to rise against the attack by the West Pakistani Army. We shall fight to the last to free our Motherland. By the grace of Allah, victory is ours. Joy Bangla.'' Audio of Zia's announcement (interview – Belal Mohammed)

The Kalurghat Radio Station's transmission capability was limited. The message was picked up by a Japanese ship in Bay of Bengal. It was then re-transmitted by Radio Australia and later by the British Broadcasting Corporation.

M A Hannan, an Awami League leader from Chittagong, is said to have made the first announcement of the declaration of independence over the radio on 26 March 1971. There is controversy now as to when Major Zia gave his speech. BNP sources maintain that it was 26 March, and there was no message regarding declaration of independence from Mujibur Rahman. Pakistani sources, like Siddiq Salik in ''Witness to Surrender'' had written that he heard about Mujibor Rahman's message on the Radio while Operation Searchlight was going on, and Maj. Gen. Hakeem A. Qureshi in his book ''The 1971 Indo-Pak War: A Soldier's Narrative'', gives the date of Zia's speech as 27 March 1971.

26 March 1971 is considered the official Independence Day of Bangladesh, and the name Bangladesh was in effect henceforth. In July 1971, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi openly referred to the former East Pakistan as Bangladesh. Some Pakistani and Indian officials continued to use the name "East Pakistan" until 16 December 1971.

Liberation war

March to June

At first resistance was spontaneous and disorganised, and was not expected to be prolonged. But when the Pakistani Army cracked down upon the population, resistance grew. The Mukti Bahini became increasingly active. The Pakistani military sought to quell them, but increasing numbers of Bengali soldiers defected to the underground "Bangladesh army". These Bengali units slowly merged into the Mukti Bahini and bolstered their weaponry with supplies from India. Pakistan responded by airlifting in two infantry divisions and reorganising their forces. They also raised paramilitary forces of Razakars, Al-Badrs and Al-Shams (who were mostly members of the Muslim League, the then government party and other Islamist groups), as well as other Bengalis who opposed independence, and Bihari Muslims who had settled during the time of partition.

On 17 April 1971, a provisional government was formed in Meherpur district in western Bangladesh bordering India with Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who was in prison in Pakistan, as President, Syed Nazrul Islam as Acting President, Tajuddin Ahmed as Prime Minister, and General Mohammad Ataul Ghani Osmany as Commander-in-Chief, Bangladesh Forces. As fighting grew between the occupation army and the Bengali Mukti Bahini an estimated 10 million Bengalis, sought refuge in the Indian states of Assam and West Bengal.

June – September

Bangladesh forces command was set up on 11 July, with Col. M A G Osmany as commander-in-chief (C-in-C) with the status of Cabinet Minister, Lt. Col. Abdur Rabb as chief of Staff (COS), Group Captain A K Khandker as Deputy Chief of Staff (DCOS) and Major A R Chowdhury as Assistant Chief of Staff (ACOS). Bangladesh was divided into Eleven Sectors each with a commander chosen from defected officers of the Pakistani army who joined the Mukti Bahini to conduct guerrilla operations and train fighters. Most of their training camps were situated near the border area and were operated with assistance from India. The 10th Sector was directly placed under the Commander in Chief (C-in-C) General Osmany and included the Naval Commandos and C-in-C's special force. Three brigades (11 Battalions) were raised for conventional warfare; a large guerrilla force (estimated at 100,000) was trained.

Guerrilla operations, which slackened during the training phase, picked up after August. Economic and military targets in Dhaka were attacked. The major success story was Operation Jackpot, in which naval commandos mined and blew up berthed ships in Chittagong on 16 August 1971. Pakistani reprisals claimed lives of thousands of civilians. The Indian army took over supplying the Mukti Bahini from the BSF. They organised six sectors for supplying the Bangladesh forces.

October – December

''Also See: ''Evolution of Pakistan Eastern Command plan'', Bangladesh 1971: Opposing Plans'', Pakistan Army Order of Battle December 1971'' and '' Mitro Bahini Order of Battle December 1971'' Bangladesh conventional forces attacked border outposts. Kamalpur, Belonia and Battle of Boyra are a few examples. 90 out of 370 BOPs fell to Bengali forces. Guerrilla attacks intensified, as did Pakistani and Razakar reprisals on civilian populations. Pakistani forces were reinforced by eight battalions from West Pakistan. The Bangladeshi independence fighters even managed to temporarily capture airstrips at Lalmonirhat and Shalutikar. Both of these were used for flying in supplies and arms from India. Pakistan sent another 5 battalions from West Pakistan as reinforcements.

Indian involvement

{| style="float:right; font-size:80%; border:1px solid #ddd; background:#fefefe; padding:3px; margin:1em;" | Major battles

Battle of Boyra

Battle of Garibpur

Battle of Dhalai

Battle of Hilli

Battle of Kushtia

|}

Wary of the growing involvement of India, the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) launched a pre-emptive strike on Indian Air Force bases on 3 December 1971. The attack was modelled on the Israeli Air Force's Operation Focus during the Six-Day War, and intended to neutralize the Indian Air Force planes on the ground. However, the plan failed to achieve the desired success since India had anticipated such an action. The strike was however seen as an open act of unprovoked aggression by India. This marked the official start of the Indo-Pakistani War.

As a response to the attack, both India and Pakistan formally acknowledged the ''existence of a state of war between the two countries'', even though neither government had formally issued a Declaration of War.

Three Indian corps were involved in the invasion of East Pakistan. They were supported by nearly three brigades of Mukti Bahini fighting alongside them, and many more fighting irregularly. This was far superior to the Pakistani army of three divisions. The Indians quickly overran the country, selectively engaging or bypassing heavily defended strongholds. Pakistani forces were unable to effectively counter the Indian attack, as they had been deployed in small units around the border to counter guerrilla attacks by the Mukti Bahini. Unable to defend Dhaka, the Pakistanis surrendered on 16 December 1971.

The speed of the Indian strategy can be gauged by the fact that one of the regiments of Indian army (7 Punjab now 8 Mechanised Inf Regiment) fought the liberation war along the Jessore and Khulna axis. They were newly converted to a mechanised regiment and it took them just 1 week to reach Khulna after capturing Jessore. Their losses were limited to just 2 newly acquired APCs (SKOT) from the Russians.

India's external intelligence agency, the RAW, played a crucial role in providing logistic support to the Mukti Bahini during the initial stages of the war. RAW's operations, in then East Pakistan, was the largest covert operation in the history of South Asia.

Pakistani response

Pakistan launched a number of armoured thrusts along India's western front in attempts to force Indian troops away from East Pakistan. Pakistan tried to fight back and boost the sagging morale by incorporating the Special Services Group commandos in sabotage and rescue missions.

The air and naval war

The Indian Air Force carried out several sorties against Pakistan, and within a week, IAF aircraft dominated the skies of East Pakistan. It achieved near-total air supremacy by the end of the first week as the entire Pakistani air contingent in the east, PAF No.14 Squadron, was grounded because of Indian airstrikes at Tejgaon, Kurmitolla, Lal Munir Hat and Shamsher Nagar. Sea Hawks from INS Vikrant also struck Chittagong, Barisal and Cox's Bazar, destroying the eastern wing of the Pakistan Navy and effectively blockading the East Pakistan ports, thereby cutting off any escape routes for the stranded Pakistani soldiers. The nascent Bangladesh Navy (comprising officers and sailors who defected from the Pakistani Navy) aided the Indians in the marine warfare, carrying out attacks, most notably Operation Jackpot.

United Nations Security Council involvement

Though the United Nations condemned the human rights violations during and following Operation Searchlight, it failed to defuse the situation politically before the start of the war.

Following Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's declaration of independence in March 1971, India undertook a world-wide campaign to drum up political, democratic and humanitarian support for the people of Bangladesh for their liberation struggle. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi made a whirlwind tour of a large number of countries in a bid to create awareness of the Pakistani atrocities against Bengalis. This effort was to prove vital later during the war, in framing the world's context of the war and to justify military action by India. Also, following Pakistan's defeat, it ensured prompt recognition of the newly independent state of Bangladesh.

Following India's entry into the war, Pakistan fearing certain defeat, made urgent appeals to the United Nations to intervene and force India to agree to a cease fire. The UN Security Council assembled on 4 December 1971 to discuss the hostilities in South Asia. After lengthy discussions on 7 December, the United States made a resolution for "immediate cease-fire and withdrawal of troops." While supported by the majority, the USSR vetoed the resolution twice. In light of the Pakistani atrocities against Bengalis, the United Kingdom and France abstained on the resolution.

On 12 December, with Pakistan facing imminent defeat, the United States requested that the Security Council be reconvened. Pakistan's Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was rushed to New York City to make the case for a resolution on the cease fire. The council continued deliberations for four days. By the time proposals were finalised, Pakistan's forces in the East had surrendered and the war had ended, making the measures merely academic. Bhutto, frustrated by the failure of the resolution and the inaction of the United Nations, ripped up his speech and left the council.

Most UN member nations were quick to recognize Bangladesh within months of its liberation.

Surrender and aftermath

On 16 December 1971, Lt. Gen A. A. K. Niazi, CO of Pakistan Army forces located in East Pakistan signed the Instrument of Surrender. At the time of surrender only a few countries had provided diplomatic recognition to the new nation. Over 90,000 Pakistani troops surrendered to the Indian forces making it the largest surrender since World War II. Bangladesh sought admission in the UN with most voting in its favour, but China vetoed this as Pakistan was its key ally. The United States, also a key ally of Pakistan, was one of the last nations to accord Bangladesh recognition. To ensure a smooth transition, in 1972 the Simla Agreement was signed between India and Pakistan. The treaty ensured that Pakistan recognised the independence of Bangladesh in exchange for the return of the Pakistani PoWs. India treated all the PoWs in strict accordance with the Geneva Convention, rule 1925. It released more than 90,000 Pakistani PoWs in five months.

Further, as a gesture of goodwill, nearly 200 soldiers who were sought for war crimes by Bengalis were also pardoned by India. The accord also gave back more than 13,000 km² of land that Indian troops had seized in West Pakistan during the war, though India retained a few strategic areas; most notably Kargil (which would in turn again be the focal point for a war between the two nations in 1999). This was done as a measure of promoting "lasting peace" and was acknowledged by many observers as a sign of maturity by India. But some in India felt that the treaty had been too lenient to Bhutto, who had pleaded for leniency, arguing that the fragile democracy in Pakistan would crumble if the accord was perceived as being overly harsh by Pakistanis.

Reaction in West Pakistan to the war

Reaction to the defeat and dismemberment of half the nation was a shocking loss to top military and civilians alike. No one had expected that they would lose the formal war in under a fortnight and there was also anger at what was perceived as a meek surrender of the army in East Pakistan. Yahya Khan's dictatorship collapsed and gave way to Bhutto who took the opportunity to rise to power. General Niazi, who surrendered along with 93,000 troops, was viewed with suspicion and hatred upon his return to Pakistan. He was shunned and branded a traitor. The war also exposed the shortcomings of Pakistan's declared strategic doctrine that the "defence of East Pakistan lay in West Pakistan". Pakistan also failed to gather international support, and found itself fighting a lone battle with only the USA providing any external help. This further embittered the Pakistanis who had faced the worst military defeat of an army in decades.

The debacle immediately prompted an enquiry headed by Justice Hamoodur Rahman. Called the Hamoodur Rahman Commission, it was initially suppressed by Bhutto as it put the military in a poor light. When it was declassified, it showed many failings from the strategic to the tactical levels. It also condemned the atrocities and the war crimes committed by the armed forces. It confirmed the looting, rapes and the killings by the Pakistan Army and their local agents although the figures are far lower than the ones quoted by Bangladesh. According to Bangladeshi sources, 200,000 women were raped and over 3 million people were killed, while the Rahman Commission report in Pakistan claimed 26,000 died and the rapes were in the hundreds. However, the army's role in splintering Pakistan after its greatest military debacle was largely ignored by successive Pakistani governments.

Atrocities

During the war there were widespread killings and other atrocities – including the displacement of civilians in Bangladesh (East Pakistan at the time) and widespread violations of human rights – carried out by the Pakistan Army with support from political and religious militias, beginning with the start of Operation Searchlight on 25 March 1971. Bangladeshi authorities claim that three million people were killed, while the Hamoodur Rahman Commission, an official Pakistan Government investigation, put the figure as low as 26,000 civilian casualties. The international media and reference books in English have also published figures which vary greatly from 200,000 to 3,000,000 for Bangladesh as a whole. A further eight to ten million people fled the country to seek safety in India.

A large section of the intellectual community of Bangladesh were murdered, mostly by the Al-Shams and Al-Badr forces, at the instruction of the Pakistani Army. Just 2 days before the surrender, on 14 December 1971, Pakistan Army and Razakar militia (local collaborators) picked up at least 100 physicians, professors, writers and engineers in Dhaka, and murdered them, leaving the dead bodies in a mass grave. There are many mass graves in Bangladesh, and as years pass, more are being discovered (such as one in an old well near a mosque in Dhaka, located in the non-Bengali region of the city, which was discovered in August 1999). The first night of war on Bengalis, which is documented in telegrams from the American Consulate in Dhaka to the United States State Department, saw indiscriminate killings of students of Dhaka University and other civilians. Numerous women were tortured, raped and killed during the war; the exact numbers are not known and are a subject of debate. Bangladeshi sources cite a figure of 200,000 women raped, giving birth to thousands of war babies. The Pakistan Army also kept numerous Bengali women as sex-slaves inside the Dhaka Cantonment. Most of the girls were captured from Dhaka University and private homes. There was significant sectarian violence not only perpetrated and encouraged by the Pakistani army, but also by Bengali nationalists against non-Bengali minorities, especially Biharis.

On 16 December 2002, the George Washington University's National Security Archive published a collection of declassified documents, consisting mostly of communications between US embassy officials and United States Information Service centres in Dhaka and India, and officials in Washington DC. These documents show that US officials working in diplomatic institutions within Bangladesh used the terms ''selective genocide'' and ''genocide'' (see The Blood Telegram) to describe events they had knowledge of at the time. ''Genocide'' is the term that is still used to describe the event in almost every major publication and newspaper in Bangladesh, although elsewhere, particularly in Pakistan, the actual death toll, motives, extent, and destructive impact of the actions of the Pakistani forces are disputed.

Foreign reaction

USA and USSR

The United States supported Pakistan both politically and materially. U.S. President Richard Nixon denied getting involved in the situation, saying that it was an internal matter of Pakistan. But when Pakistan's defeat seemed certain, Nixon sent the aircraft carrier USS ''Enterprise'' to the Bay of Bengal, a move deemed by the Indians as a nuclear threat. ''Enterprise'' arrived on station on 11 December 1971. On 6 and 13 December, the Soviet Navy dispatched two groups of ships, armed with nuclear missiles, from Vladivostok; they trailed U.S. Task Force 74 in the Indian Ocean from 18 December until 7 January 1972.

Nixon and Henry Kissinger feared Soviet expansion into South and Southeast Asia. Pakistan was a close ally of the People's Republic of China, with whom Nixon had been negotiating a ''rapprochement'' and which he intended to visit in February 1972. Nixon feared that an Indian invasion of West Pakistan would mean total Soviet domination of the region, and that it would seriously undermine the global position of the United States and the regional position of America's new tacit ally, China. In order to demonstrate to China the ''bona fides'' of the United States as an ally, and in direct violation of the US Congress-imposed sanctions on Pakistan, Nixon sent military supplies to Pakistan and routed them through Jordan and Iran, while also encouraging China to increase its arms supplies to Pakistan.

The Nixon administration also ignored reports it received of the genocidal activities of the Pakistani Army in East Pakistan, most notably the Blood telegram.

The Soviet Union supported Bangladesh and Indian armies, as well as the Mukti Bahini during the war, recognising that the independence of Bangladesh would weaken the position of its rivals – the United States and China. It gave assurances to India that if a confrontation with the United States or China developed, the USSR would take countermeasures. This was enshrined in the Indo-Soviet friendship treaty signed in August 1971. The Soviets also sent a nuclear submarine to ward off the threat posed by USS ''Enterprise'' in the Indian Ocean.

At the end of the war, the Warsaw Pact countries were among the first to recognize Bangladesh. The Soviet Union accorded recognition to Bangladesh on 25 January 1972. The United States delayed recognition for some months, before according it in April 1972.

China

As a long-standing ally of Pakistan, the People's Republic of China reacted with alarm to the evolving situation in East Pakistan and the prospect of India invading West Pakistan and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir. Believing that just such an Indian attack was imminent, Nixon encouraged China to mobilise its armed forces along its border with India to discourage it. The Chinese did not, however, respond to this encouragement, because unlike the 1962 Sino-Indian War when India was caught entirely unawares, this time the Indian Army was prepared and had deployed eight mountain divisions to the Sino-Indian border to guard against such an eventuality. China instead threw its weight behind demands for an immediate ceasefire.

China was also among the last countries to recognize independent Bangladesh, refusing to do so until 8 October 1975.

See also

Recipients of Bangladeshi military awards in 1971

Artistic depictions of Bangladesh Liberation War

Timeline of the Bangladesh War

Mukti Bahini

Liberation War Museum

Footnotes

References

Pierre Stephen and Robert Payne: ''Massacre'', Macmillan, New York, (1973). ISBN 0-02-595240-4

Christopher Hitchens "The Trials of Henry Kissinger", Verso (2001). ISBN 1-85984-631-9

Library of Congress Country Studies

Further reading

External links

Category:Secession in Pakistan Category:Civil wars involving the states and peoples of Asia Category:Civil wars post-1945 Category:Religion-based civil wars Category:History of Bangladesh Category:History of Pakistan Category:Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 Category:War crimes in Bangladesh Category:Surrenders Category:Wars involving Bangladesh Category:1971 in India Category:Military history of Bangladesh

bn:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ de:Bangladesch-Krieg es:Guerra de Liberación de Bangladés fa:جنگ آزادی‌بخش بنگلادش fr:Guerre de libération du Bangladesh hi:बांग्लादेश मुक्ति युद्ध bpy:বাংলাদেশর ৱাইসাঙনির লালফাম id:Perang Kemerdekaan Bangladesh it:Guerra di liberazione bengalese lt:Bangladešo išsivadavimo karas mr:बांगलादेशाचे स्वातंत्र्ययुद्ध ja:バングラデシュ独立戦争 no:Den bangladeshiske frigjøringskrigen pl:Wojna o niepodległość Bangladeszu pt:Guerra de Independência de Bangladesh ru:Война за независимость Бангладеш simple:Bangladesh Liberation War fi:Bangladeshin itsenäisyyssota sv:Bangladeshs befrielsekrig ta:வங்காளதேச விடுதலைப் போர் tr:Bangladeş Kurtuluş Savaşı uk:Війна за незалежність Бангладеш ur:جنگ آزادی بنگلہ دیش zh:孟加拉国解放战争

name	Rizwan Khan
birth date
birth place	Aden, South Yemen
education	University of Wales Medical Physiology (B.Sc.) University of Portsmouth Radio Journalism (B.A.)
occupation	Reporter and Anchor at Al Jazeera
years active
website	}}

Rizwan "Riz" Khan (born April 1962) is a British television news reporter and interviewer who until April 2011 hosted his own eponymous television show on Al Jazeera English. He first rose to prominence while working for the BBC and CNN.

Life and career

Khan was born in Aden, South Yemen, to a Punjabi father and Gujarati mother. His father's roots hail from Pakistan-administered Kashmir while his mother's roots go back to Kutch, Gujarat. He considers himself as a British Pakistani. Khan moved with his family to London, at the age of four. He attended both Springwell Junior and Hounslow Manor Comprehensive Schools and joined the Air Training Corps, and graduated with a Bachelor of Science with Honours in Medical Physiology from the University of Wales, and then completed a postgraduate course in Radio Journalism at the University of Portsmouth.

In 1987 he was selected for the BBC News Trainee scheme - a two-year BBC training system, usually taking only 6 people per course. Khan progressed to jobs as a BBC reporter, producer, and writer, working in both television and radio, and would later become one of the founding News Presenters on BBC World Service Television News. He hosted the news bulletin that launched BBC World Service Television News in 1991. In 1993, he moved to CNN International, where he became a senior anchor for the network's global news shows. Events he covered included the 1996 and 1999 coverage of elections in India; the 1997 historic election in Britain; and in April 1998 the unprecedented live coverage from the Muslim pilgrimage, the Hajj.

In 1996 he launched his interactive interview show ''CNN: Q&A; with Riz Khan'', and he has conducted interviews with guests including former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, former US Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela, and genomic scientist J. Craig Venter. Khan also secured the world exclusive with Pakistan's General Pervez Musharraf following his coup in October 1999. Khan also hosted ''Q&A-Asia; with Riz Khan''. These interactive shows put world newsmakers and celebrities up for viewer questions live by phone, e-mail, video-mail and fax, along with questions and comments taken from the real-time chatroom that opens half-an-hour before each show.

Khan hosted his show, ''Riz Khan'', on Al Jazeera English, interviewing analysts and policy makers and allows viewers to interact with them via phone, email, SMS messages or fax. The show came to an end in April 2011.

Khan speaks Urdu and Hindi and also understands other South Asian languages such as Punjabi and Kutchi. He has studied French, and can understand some other European languages, including Swedish.

In 2005 he authored his first book, ''Al-Waleed: Businessman Billionaire Prince'', published by Harper Collins.

In 2011 he authored a preface for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) annual report "Attacks on the Press 2010", which examined working conditions for journalists in more than 100 countries.

References

"Why I'm Joining Al Jazeera", op-ed by Riz Khan, ''The Wall Street Journal'', 13 June 2005, p. A1

"Q&A; CNN Anchor: Riz Khan". ''India Today''. February 19, 2001.

External links

Riz Khan's official website

Profile at Al Jazeera English

MySpace Profile

Interview with Baron Dave Romm of KFAI-FM at the Republican National Convention Sept. 2, 2008 and picture

Category:1962 births Category:Al Jazeera people Category:Alumni of Cardiff University Category:Alumni of the University of Portsmouth Category:British Muslims Category:British people of Indian descent Category:English people of Pakistani descent Category:British journalists Category:British television presenters Category:Living people Category:Punjabi people Category:Gujarati people Category:People from Aden

ar:ريز خان he:ריז ח'אן sw:Riz Khan no:Riz Khan

John R. Stockwell is a former CIA officer who became a critic of United States government policies after serving in the Agency for thirteen years serving seven tours of duty. After managing U.S. involvement in the Angolan Civil War as Chief of the Angola Task Force during its 1975 covert operations, he resigned and wrote ''In Search of Enemies'', a book which remains the only detailed, insider's account of a major CIA "covert action."

Early years

Born in Angleton, Texas, his Presbyterian father moved the family to the Belgian Congo so that he could provide engineering assistance. Stockwell attended school in Lubondai before studying in the Plan II Honors program at The University of Texas.

CIA career

As a Marine, Stockwell was a CIA paramilitary intelligence case officer in three wars: the Congo Crisis, the Vietnam War, and the Angolan War of Independence. His military rank is Major. Beginning his career in 1964, Stockwell spent six years in Africa, Chief of Base in the Katanga during the Bob Denard invasion in 1968, then Chief of Station in Bujumbura, Burundi in 1970, before being transferred to Vietnam to oversee intelligence operations in the Tay Ninh province and was awarded the CIA Medal of Merit for keeping his post open until the last days of the fall of Saigon in 1975.

In December 1976 he resigned from the CIA, citing deep concerns for the methods and results of CIA paramilitary operations in third world countries and testified before Congressional committees. Two years later, he wrote the exposé ''In Search of Enemies'', about that experience and its broader implications. He claimed that the CIA was counterproductive to national security, and that its "secret wars" provided no benefit for the United States. The CIA, he stated, had singled out the MPLA to be an enemy in Angola despite the fact that the MPLA wanted relations with the United States and had not committed a single act of aggression against the United States. In 1978 he appeared on the popular American television program ''60 Minutes'', claiming that CIA Director William Colby and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger had systematically lied to Congress about the CIA's operations.

Civil Disobedience and Activism

Writing career

Stockwell was one of the first professionals to leave the CIA to go public by writing a bestselling book, ''In Search of Enemies''. The CIA retaliated by suing him in the 4th District Court in Washington, D.C.. Part of the suit intended to eliminate the possibility of selling the story for the purpose of making the movie and requested all future publications be submitted to the CIA for review. Unable to afford the travel necessary to contest the case, Stockwell filed for bankruptcy in Austin, Texas. After the litigation was processed through the bankruptcy, the CIA eventually dropped the suit. It's been previously reported that Stockwell lost the suit as his case is often confused with that of ex-CIA operative Frank Snepp.

His book is useful in many ways for researchers and journalists interested in uncovering secret information about the conduct of US foreign policy in Africa and Asia. For example, a brief story in the book is about a CIA officer having Patrice Lumumba's body in the trunk of his car one night in then Elizabethville, Congo. Stockwell mentions in a footnote to the story that at the time he did not know that the CIA is documented as having repeatedly tried to arrange for Lumumba's assassination.

His concerns were that, although many of his colleagues in the CIA were men and women of the highest integrity, the organization was counterproductive of United States national security and harming a lot of people in its "secret wars" overseas.

"Red Sunset" was Stockwell's next book and was published in 1982 by William Morrow Publishing Co., Inc. in hard back, then in paperback by Signet a year later. In it he discusses his prediction of a peaceful end to the cold war. Stockwell presented these ideas in fiction form in order to get it published.

In 1991, Stockwell published a compilation of transcriptions of many of his lectures called ''The Praetorian Guard''.

Organization Founding

Stockwell was a founding member of the short-lived Association for Responsible Dissent, an organization of former CIA and government officials who were critical of the CIA's Cold War activities.

Lectures

During the 1980s Stockwell visited college campuses to speak out against CIA support for Central American death squads.

Quotes

''"It is the function of the CIA to keep the world unstable, and to propagandize and teach the American people to hate and fear, so we will let the Establishment spend any amount of money on arms."'' ''"Enemies are necessary for the wheels of the U.S. military machine to turn."'' ''"Short, successful military adventures are as effective as the Super Bowl in diverting peoples' attention from unpleasant truths."''

In 1980, Stockwell said,

''"if the Soviet Union were to disappear off the face of the map, the United States would quickly seek out new enemies to justify its own military-industrial complex."''

Further reading

External links

Category:1937 births Category:American activists Category:American anti-war activists Category:American spies Category:History of Angola Category:Living people Category:People of the Central Intelligence Agency Category:Historians of the Central Intelligence Agency Category:University of Texas at Austin alumni Category:American whistleblowers