Operation Kilo Flight: Night Attack By Otter Aircraft – A First-Hand Account

Operation Kilo Flight was inaugurated on 28 September 1971 by Air Chief Marshal P. C. Lal in the presence of Group Captain A. K. Khondker, who was our second-in-command with the Armed Forces/Mukti Bahini during the liberation war of 1971, Sqn. Ldr. Sultan Mahmood, Flt. Lt. Shamsul Alam, Flt. Lt. Badrul Alam, Capt. Khaleque (Ex-PIA), Capt. Sattar (Ex-PIA), Capt. Muqueet (Ex-PIA), Capt. Shahab (Ex-PIA), Capt. Akram (Ex-Plant Protection Pilot), Capt. Sharfuddin (Ex-Plant Protection Pilot) plus 58 airmen of various technical trades of the PAF.

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Making of the Bangladesh State: Shaheed Dhirendranath Datta, Bengali Language Movement and Birth of a Nation

Any history of the Bengalis’ fight for their linguistic heritage and cultural rights cannot be told without a reference to Shaheed Dhirendranath Datta, who played a pioneering role in the formative phase of the Bengali Language Movement. On 25 February 1948 for the first time he demanded recognition of Bengali as one of the state languages of the new nation of Pakistan. He had remained an ardent defender of the Bengali language, both in the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan (CAP) and in the East Bengal Legislative Assembly (EBLA).

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Guest Editor’s Introduction

At the turn of the 21st century, the world entered a new period of development. The customary bipolar system that prevailed after World War II had collapsed following the self-destruction of one of its poles. Russia’s refusal to follow the Western course is only the first poignant sign of confrontation between the West’s united world project and the emerging multipolar world.

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Editor’s Note

This year, Bangladesh is celebrating 50 years of the War of Liberation. The struggle for freedom, which started soon after the creation of Pakistan in 1947, culminated in signing the Instrument of Surrender on 16 December 1971. On that fateful day, Pakistan’s Gen. A.A.K. Niazi, along with 93,000 Pakistani forces, publicly surrendered to the joint forces or the Mitra Bahini that comprised the Indian Army and the Mukti Bahini. It was the largest military surrender after World War II. Bangladesh was born as an independent nation-state and reclaimed its identity.

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Reducing Nuclear Dangers after the A.Q. Khanspiracy

This article defines Pakistan’s brazen retailing of sensitive nuclear technologies as Bomb Process Outsourcing (BPO) and places it in a larger perspective. It offers a short retrospective of the development and manufacture of nuclear weapons by the P-5 in which significant manpower and materials were ‘foreign’. This is true of the programmes of Israel, Iraq, South Africa, Argentina and Brazil as well. Pakistan, has now, contributed to North Korea, Libya and Iran.

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