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== Operation Searchlight ==
[[File:dead intellectuals rayerbazar 1971.jpg|thumbnail|250px|left|Intellectuals murdered during ''Operation Searchlight''.]]
In November 1970, a cyclone of tremendous magnitude made landfall in Bangladesh, leaving the rural population in need of governmental relief. The sluggish and limited response from West Pakistan only exacerbated the bitterness growing in the minds of Bengalis. They responded in the following month’s election by overwhelmingly voting AL candidates into national offices and the majority of congressional seats. The Muslim elite in the west were unwilling to relinquish power which left President Yahya Khan with the conundrum of having to simultaneously satisfy Bengali liberals in the East and Muslim elites in the West. His solution satisfied neither. He called for a parliamentary meeting in March 1971 with the hope of reaching a compromise on what was to be done with the government. West Pakistani elites refused to participate in a compromise with Bengalis, who they viewed as “devious, deceitful, villainous people.”<ref>Lawrence Ziring, ''Bangladesh: From Mujib to Ershad, An Interpretive Study'' (Karachi, Pakistan: Oxford University Press, 1992), 70.</ref>That being the case, Yahya postponed the session and stalled Mujib and the AL in order to provide time for the Pakistani Army to prepare for an attack on East Bengal.
"Operation Searchlight" was the code name given to the attack that began on March 25, 1971. Lieutenant General Tikka Khan, who had been installed as military governor of East Pakistan, ordered the attacks that began by disarming police and paramilitary units in the capital city, Dhaka. Once the armed opposition was neutralized, Bengali males were summarily rounded up and executed so as to provide no further threat from able-bodied young men. Civilians were taken from their homes as tanks rolled down the streets of Dhaka toward the university. After being expelled from Dhaka with his fellow newsmen, ''London Daily Telegraph'' journalist, Simon Dring filed a report from Bangkok three days after Operation Searchlight ended. His eyewitness accounts tell of Pakistani troops “firing incendiary rounds into the buildings,” and in the “Hindi area of the old town, the soldiers reportedly made the people come out of their houses and shot them in groups.”<ref>Simon Dring, “Dacca Eyewitness: Bloodbath, Inferno,” ''The Washington Post, Times Herald'' (1959-1973), March 30, 1971, http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/docview/148145683.</ref>Bengali Hindus were the primary targets of the Pakistani army as the Islamist elites demanded what they considered a pure Pakistan. In order to erase Bengali and Hindu influences from Pakistan, the troops were ordered to eliminate artists and intellectuals; they murdered them. They were also ordered to utilize women to degrade the “burgeoning Bangladeshi national identity,” and “boost the morale of soldiers;” they raped them.<ref>Jalal Alamgir and Bina D’Costa, “The 1971 Genocide: War Crimes and Political Crimes,” ''Economic and Political Weekly,'' March 26, 2011.</ref>
== Rape as a Tool of Genocide ==
*[[Why did Operation Market Garden in 1944 fail?]]
*[[How did Mussolini become Prime Minister of Italy?]]
*[[Why was France defeated in 1940?]]
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