Bangladesh: On The Shahbagh Movement Against War Criminals Of 1971

To see The Hindu slide show on the Shahbagh Movement, click on this link:

Shahbag: Bangladesh’s war against fundamentalism – The Hindu.

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Badruddin Umar

Bangladesh22 March, 2013
Courtesy: Countercurrents.org

Some young people gathered on the cross-roads of Shahbagh in Dhaka on February 5, 2013 , to protest against the judgment of t he International Crimes Tribunal ( ICT ) which sentenced Kader Mollah, a 1971 war criminal, to life imprisonment. They demanded capital punishment for Mollah and eight others who are now under trial in the ICT.

In many ways it was an extraordinary situation. First, this demand was being made to a war crimes tribunal which has been constituted for the first time after forty-two years since the end of the war of independence and the emergence of Bangladesh in 1971. Second, the trial is being conducted only of some local collaborators of the then Pakistan government and the Pakistan army. The 195 Pakistani army officers who were initially identified as the principal war criminals and on whose bidding the collaborators committed their crimes, have been left out of this trial.

DSU poster for a Delhi University program on the Shahbagh Movement

Today it seems amazing that in spite of the Bangladesh government’s occasionally demanding apology from Pakistan government for war crimes of 1971, a demand for the return of the 195 army criminals for trial in Bangladesh was never made. But the Awami League (AL) government under Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had forgiven all the arrested Pakistani army personnel, including the 195 identified criminal army officers, and returned them to their country as a gesture of goodwill towards Pakistan ! In this case, in their own interest, India played the role of a decisive mediator. Referring to this gesture of goodwill Sheikh Mujibur Rahman ‘magnanimously’ declared that the people of Bangladesh knew how to forgive and forget.

Yet in spite of this, in fact false, declaration of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on behalf of the people of Bangladesh , the latter never forgot the atrocities committed against them, and they have always sought justice against the military and civilian war criminals who perpetrated every imaginable crime against them. Nothing could be a more conclusive proof of this than the movement for the proper trial and punishment of the 1971 war criminals which began on February 5.

A small number of young men and women started the movement, but almost immediately it began to spread like wildfire all over the country. The way it spread cannot be properly explained only in terms of peoples’ desire to try and punish the war criminals of 1971. In this connection it should be noted that the movement has started by a new generation of people who had no direct experience of Pakistani atrocities committed in 1971. They were not even born at that time. Thus the stirring which happened was caused by reasons other than the mere desire of the people to punish the war criminals, though at the surface nothing else was visible. It actually happened because the ground was prepared by what happened to the people of this country since the independence of Bangladesh.

During the independence movement and the war, the aspirations of the people were very high. But after independence the government led by Sheikh Mujib threw overboard what the people actually stood for and what they understood by the spirit of liberation war.

Arundhati Roy on Indian-Pakistani war clouds and the ‘secret’ hanging of Afzal Guru

Does Your Bomb-Proof Basement Have An Attached Toilet?

Afzal Guru

An execution carried out to thundering war clouds

by Arundhati Roy

What are the political consequences of the secret and sudden hanging of Mohammed Afzal Guru, prime accused in the 2001 Parliament attack, going to be? Does anybody know? The memo, in callous bureaucratese, with every name insultingly misspelt, sent by the Superintendent of Central Jail No. 3, Tihar, New Delhi, to “Mrs Tabassum w/o Sh Afjal Guru” reads:

“The mercy petition of Sh Mohd Afjal Guru s/o Habibillah has been rejected by Hon’ble President of India. Hence the execution of Mohd Afjal Guru s/o Habibillah has been fixed for 09/02/2013 at 8 am in Central Jail No-3.

This is for your information and for further necessary action.”

The mailing of the memo was deliberately timed to get to Tabassum only after the execution, denying her one last legal chanc­e—the right to challenge the rejection of the mercy petition. Both Afzal and his family, separately, had that right. Both were thwarted. Even though it is mandat­ory in law, the memo to Tabassum ascribed no reason for the president’s rejection of the mercy petition. If no reason is given, on what basis do you appeal? All the other prisoners on death row in India have been given that last chance.

Since Tabassum was not allowed to meet her husband before he was hanged, since her son was not allowed to get a few last words of advice from his father, since she was not given his body to bury, and since there can be no funeral, what “further necessary action” does the jail manual prescribe? Anger? Wild, irreparable grief? Unquestioning acc­eptance? Complete integration?

After the hanging, there have been unseemly celebrations. The bereaved wives of the people who were killed in the attack on Parliament were displayed on TV, with M.S. Bitta, chairman of the All-India Anti-Terrorist Front, and his ferocious moustaches playing the CEO of their sad little company. Will anybody tell them that the men who shot their husbands were killed at the same time, in the same place? And that those who planned the attack will never be brought to justice because we still don’t know who they are.

In The US, Mass Child Killings Are Tragedies. In Pakistan, Mere Bug Splats

George Monbiot, The Guardian, Monday 17 December 2012

 

[A memorial to the victims of the Sandy Hook school shootings in Connecticut. The children killed by US drones in north-west Pakistan ‘have no names, no pictures, no memorials of candles and teddy bears’. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty.]

“Mere words cannot match the depths of your sorrow, nor can they heal your wounded hearts … These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change.” Every parent can connect with what President Barack Obama said about the murder of 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut. There can scarcely be a person on earth with access to the media who is untouched by the grief of the people of that town.

It must follow that what applies to the children murdered there by a deranged young man also applies to the children murdered in Pakistan by a sombre American president. These children are just as important, just as real, just as deserving of the world’s concern. Yet there are no presidential speeches or presidential tears for them, no pictures on the front pages of the world’s newspapers, no interviews with grieving relatives, no minute analysis of what happened and why.

Pakistan: a Tribute to Dave Brubeck

Sachal Studios’ Take Five Official Video

Apr 4, 2011
Recorded at Sachal Studios, Lahore, Pakistan – the premiere of Take Five’s Official Video!

In Pakistan, Drone Protest Takes Detour for Safety

Imran Khan speaking in the Pakistani town of Tank on Sunday during a rally against American drone strikes.The demonstration was originally intended for the tribal town of Kotkai.   A Majeed/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By SALMAN MASOOD, New York Times,  October 7, 2012

TANK, Pakistan — Imran Khan, a cricket star turned opposition politician, abandoned plans to hold a much-heralded rally against American drone strikes at a village deep inside Pakistan’s tribal belt on Sunday after the Pakistani military warned him of “imminent danger” if he went ahead with the event.

Instead, Mr. Khan led a motorcade that included thousands of supporters and a contingent of American peace activists to the edge of the South Waziristan tribal agency, then returned to the town of Tank, 11 miles away, where he held his rally.

Mr. Khan’s supporters said their “peace march” offered a new focus for Pakistani anger over the Obama administration’s controversial drone campaign in Pakistan’s border areas, which has killed up to 3,300 people, including as many as 880 civilians, since 2004, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London, which tracks drone strikes. Critics derided the event as little more than a political stunt that capitalized on widespread anti-Americanism in Pakistan and was intended to lift Mr. Khan’s wavering political fortunes.

Mr. Khan declared the rally a success despite the fact that it could not be held in South Waziristan, saying it highlighted the deaths of innocent civilians. “The response has been overwhelming,” he said in an interview.

US Citizens to lead anti-drone march in northern Pakistan

Medea Benjamin in Tucson: “Obama’s Tuesday kill list responsible for assassination of 16-year-old from Denver”

By Brenda Norrell, Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com

Thursday, August 2, 2012

TUCSON — President Obama’s Tuesday kill list is responsible for the assassination of a 16-year-old boy from Denver, Medea Benjamin of CodePink said here today. Describing the US program of targeted assassinations using drones, the CIA out of control, and the US Congress refusing to act, Benjamin said it is time for US citizens to show the world they do not support US drone assassinations in Pakistan and elsewhere.

Benjamin called for citizens in Tucson to join the march with Pakistanis in northern Pakistan, during the week of September 21, and show the world that the people of the US seek global peace and understanding, and do not support US drone killings.”President Obama signs off on the kill list,” Benjamin said, speaking at a public gathering in the downtown Tucson library. Obama meets with his advisers on Tuesday to review the list. “They decide who will live and who will die,” Benjamin said. Any male on the ground of military age is considered fair game. She said that in a signature strike, drone operators manning the computer screens can fire at anything that looks suspicious, on the other side of the world, without the suspect being given a chance to surrender, or defend themselves against charges. Benjamin, author of “Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control,” described the drone warfare that has killed both the US Constitution and innocent people, including children and teens, in Pakistan and Yemen.

During the Bush administration, drone strikes were every 40 days. During the Obama administration, the drone strikes increased to 1 every 3 days. Currently, there is a drone strike every 4 days.

US drone killing in western Pakistan.

Those drone strikes have killed 175 children. Few US citizens ever see the photos of those children who are disintegrated or burned by those drones. Sometimes only pieces of their flesh can be found for burial. A drone’s victim never hears the missile that kills him or her.

Benjamin described how one teenager, Tariq Aziz, attempted to take the case of a relative killed by a US drone to court in Pakistan. After meeting with attorneys, Tariq was assassinated by a US drone.

Benjamin pointed out that this type of US killing is counter-productive and driving people in other countries toward extremists out of despair and desperation.

Anwar Al-Awlaki was a 16-year-old from Denver. He was on Facebook and his friends said he was a normal teen, not interested in politics, who enjoyed rap and hip hop. He was enjoying an evening sharing a meal with his cousin in his family’s home village in Yemen, when he and his cousin were assassinated by a US drone strike.

Obama refuses to respond to questions about the US drone killing of Anwar Al-Awlaki of Denver.

“Barack Obama is responsible for this killing,” Benjamin said.

The US drone operations have been largely kept secret until now and operated by the CIA and Joint Special Operations.

Pakistan: CIA Drones Kill Large Groups Without Knowing Who They Are

By Spencer Ackerman

November 4, 2011

• 

  Drone warfare-The expansion of the CIA’s undeclared drone war in the tribal areas of Pakistan required a big expansion of who can be marked for death. Once the standard for targeted killing was top-level leadership in al-Qaeda or one of its allies. That’s long gone, especially as the number of people targeted at once has grown.This is the new standard, according to a blockbuster piece in the Wall Street Journal: “men believed to be militants associated with terrorist groups, but whose identities aren’t always known.” The CIA is now killing people without knowing who they are, on suspicion of association with terrorist groups. The article does not define the standards are for “suspicion” and “association.”

Strikes targeting those people — usually “groups” of such people — are called “signature” strikes. “The bulk of CIA’s drone strikes are signature strikes,” the Journal’s Adam Entous, Siobhan Gorman and Julian E. Barnes report.

And bulk really means bulk. The Journal reports that the growth in clusters of people targeted by the CIA has required the agency to tell its Pakistani counterparts about mass attacks. When the agency expects to kill 20 or more people at once, then it’s got to give the Pakistanis notice.

Determining who is a target not a question of intelligence collection. The cameras on the CIA fleet of Predators and Reapers work just fine. It’s a question of intelligence analysis — interpreting the imagery collected from the drones, and from the spies and spotters below, to understand who’s a terrorist and who, say, drops off the terrorists’ laundry. Admittedly, in a war with a shadowy enemy, it can be difficult to distinguish between the two.

Fundamentally, though, it’s a question of policy: whether it’s acceptable for the CIA to kill someone without truly knowing if he’s the bombsmith or the laundry guy.

The Journal reports that the CIA’s willingness to strike without such knowledge — sanctioned, in full, by President Barack Obama — is causing problems for the State Department and the military.

Pakistan: US-CIA Intelligence and Special Ops in “medical-humanitarian” disguise

[Once again, the results of a deceptive “humanitarian” cover for a military operation.  After finding the wolf in sheep’s clothing, all sheep become suspect, and are avoided. — Frontlines ed.]

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CIA’s vaccine ruse in Pakistan carries fallout

The phony campaign was aimed at helping find and kill Osama bin Laden, but the doctor involved now faces treason charges, and real immunization workers say Pakistanis don’t trust them.

October 07, 2011|By Alex Rodriguez, Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan — A phony vaccination campaign orchestrated by the CIA to help find and kill Osama bin Laden is undercutting Western-backed immunization drives against polio and other diseases, and now has the Pakistani doctor involved in the program possibly facing treason charges.

A Pakistani government commission investigating the U.S. raid that killed Bin Laden in May recommended late Thursday that treason charges be filed against Dr. Shakeel Afridi, who helped carry out the fake vaccination effort designed to obtain DNA evidence from the Al Qaeda leader’s sprawling compound in Abbottabad.

If Afridi is charged and convicted, he could face the death penalty. U.S. officials have been seeking the doctor’s release since his arrest in May by Pakistani intelligence agents and have defended the ruse, arguing that extraordinary measures were needed to track down the world’s most wanted terrorist.

UK: Campaigners Seek Arrest of Former CIA Legal Chief over Pakistan Drone Attacks

Arrest of ex-CIA lawyer sought over drone use Human rights lawyers seek warrant against John Rizzo for approving drone strikes in Pakistan that killed hundreds.

17 Jul 2011, Al Jazeera

Victim of US drone attack in Pakistan Hundreds of drone (unmanned predator plane) attacks on Pakistan since 2004, ordered by Presidents Bush and Obama ”]Human rights lawyers in the UK and Pakistan are seeking the arrest of the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) former legal director for approving drone strikes that killed hundreds of people. John Rizzo, who served as the acting general counsel for the agency, has admitted approving drone attacks inside Pakistan, beginning in 2004.In February, Rizzo, who left the CIA more than a year ago, told Newsweekmagazine he agreed to a list of people to be targeted by drone strikes, which started under the Bush administration.”It’s basically a hit list,” Rizzo said. “The Predator is the weapon of choice, but it could also be someone putting a bullet in your head.” A study by the New America Foundation, a Washington-based think tank, said 42 drone attacks were approved in four years. The report said that the amount of strikes has quadrupled under the administration of US President Barack Obama and estimates about 2,500 people were killed in attacks on targets in Pakistan since 2004. Arrest warrant “There has clearly been a crime committed here,” Clive Stafford Smith, a British human rights lawyer who is leading the effort to seek a warrant for Rizzo, told Al Jazeera. “The issue here is whether the United States is willing to flaunt international law. “One of the purposes of doing this is because there is no sense in the United States of how catastrophic this whole process is.” US government lawyers argue that drone strikes are conducted on a “solid legal basis”, however, Stafford Smith said there has to be a war going on in order for any of these strikes to be legal. “Outside a combat zone the US has no possible, plausible legal basis to conduct these drone strikes. They think they can get away with it. This process is meant to make sure that they can’t,” Stafford Smith said.

US drive-by drone attacks: Gunboats and gurkhas in the American Imperium

A complicit government in Pakistan, enabled by US interlocutors, continues to support US drone strikes. by Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, in an opinion piece in Al Jazeera 14 Jul 2011

”]Meet Resham Khan. The 52-year-old shepherd was brought on a stretcher to a psychiatric hospital in Islamabad in January, traumatized and unable to speak. The father of six witnessed 15 members of his extended family perish last June when a US drone attacked a funeral procession in his native North Waziristan. The atrocity has left him mute and emotionally paralyzed, his vacant eyes staring into the distance. He gave up on food and drink in the months following the attack; shortly afterward, the pious Muslim gave up on prayer too. His condition also prevented him from looking after his ailing mother who died soon thereafter. And his surviving children have suffered. When the Reuters journalist finally got him to talk, one of the few things he said was ‘Stop the drone attacks.’ Kareem Khan, too, has suffered. On December 31, 2009, his son Zaenullah Khan and his brother Asif Iqbal were among the three people killed in a US drone attack which destroyed their home in Mir Ali, North Waziristan. Kareem’s absence spared him the sight of his mutilated family; and unlike the helpless shepherd, he had the wherewithal to demand justice. In November 2010, his lawyer, Barrister Shahzad Akbar served legal notices to the CIA station chief Jonathan Banks, former Defence Secretary Robert Gates, and former Director of Central Intelligence Leon Panetta for $500 million in damages.  Banks, who was in Pakistan on a business visa, took fright and soon fled the scene, and the US government was so terrified of the legal challenge that last month it denied a visa to Barrister Akbar to travel to the US. More survivors have since come forward demanding justice. Meanwhile, the Pakistani state hasn’t just forsaken the people of FATA, it has actively aided the slaughter and abetted the cover-up. After each drone strike, the Pakistani military rushes out an official who ‘on the condition of anonymity’ announces that all the dead were ‘militants’. The press dutifully reports the numbers without asking why the claim should be trusted when the state has made no effort to confirm the identity of the dead. The numbers are subsequently laundered by Washington-based think-tanks and recycled back to the media. The media then report the stats with attribution to a ‘foundation’ or an ‘institute’, giving them a pseudo-academic pedigree. In addition, the human rights industry is either AWOL or has actively abetted the programme. In a recent appearance on Democracy Now!, the head of Human Rights Watch Kenneth Roth justified the attacks while waxing idealistic about the rule of law. Most have taken their cue from Harold Koh — Obama’s own John Yoo — who has declared the extrajudicial murder of the indigent thousands of miles from home ‘legitimate self defence’. The terrorized population now finds itself silenced, adrift between the Scylla of a mercenary state complicit in their oppression and the Charybdis of comprador hacks erasing their suffering.

Maoist leader in India assesses the situation in South Asia (India, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan)

[The following is an excerpt from a recent interview with Ganapathy, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Maoist).  The entire interview can be read and downloaded at: http://www.bannedthought.net/India/CPI-Maoist-Docs/Interviews/Ganapathy-101108-Full-Final.pdf – Frontlines ed.]

India: A woman guerilla reading

How do you assess the revolutionary situation in the whole of South Asia? What do you think would be the impact of the recent changes in Nepal on it?

COMRADE GANAPATHY : According to our party’s assessment, the revolutionary situation in the whole of South Asia is excellent. The assessment of the Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organizations of South Asia (CCOMPOSA) is also the same. In all the countries of South Asia the condition is more or less the same. Though the chauvinist Sinhala government may be arrogant that they had completely suppressed the Tamil Eelam movement under LTTE’s leadership, it is impossible for them to permanently suppress the Tamil national aspirations. The conditions for it to raise its head within a short period in another form exist there. The struggle forms and organizational forms may vary. Tamil people have made immense sacrifices and have a long experience of struggle. Freedom-loving Tamil people would never rest. It would be an illusion of the chauvinist Sinhala government if it thinks that it had established permanent social peace by eliminating LTTE.

Severe revolutionary crisis is still continuing in Nepal. The state machinery has become paralyzed. All class forces are intensely clashing with each other. But the unfortunate thing is that, the Maoist party there let go the opportunity to seize political power using this excellent crisis situation. At a time when it should continue the people’s war and seize political power, it wants to come to power through the parliamentary system instead. Our party’s Central Committee wrote an open letter to that party in this matter and had issued statements too.

Concerned by US strengthening its ties to India, Pakistan seeks aid from China for nuclear projects

[In a time of crisis in the worldwide imperialist system, the imperialist powers as well as the countries they dominate are driven to seek new alignments to maintain and extend their power. Each new power alliance sharpens the tensions with other powers, who seek new alignments in response. This dynamic shapes world events every day.–Frontlines ed]

Time Magazine, October 1, 2010

Declarations of solidarity and the $2 billion in promised military aid received by a high-level Pakistani delegation in Washington last week belie the hardening of U.S. attitudes toward Islamabad. A White House report to Congress in early October accused the Pakistani army of avoiding “military engagements that would put it in direct conflict with Afghan Taliban or al-Qaeda’s forces,” suggesting this inaction was a “political choice.” Mounting exasperation within the Administration at the failure of Pakistan to do its designated part in the U.S. war in Afghanistan is prompting calls in Washington to take a much tougher line with Islamabad.

But rather than produce a more pliant Pakistan, an escalation of U.S. pressure could prompt Islamabad to strengthen its ties with a more forgiving ally, China.

Despite the Pakistani military’s long-term reliance on U.S. support, anti-American sentiment in the country is dangerously high, stoked in part by growing anger over civilian casualties from U.S. drone attacks as well as disquiet with Washington’s warming ties with Pakistan’s archrival, India. President Obama is due to travel to India this week in a high-profile state visit.

In an exclusive interview with TIME conducted in late September, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi complained about the controversial civil-nuclear-energy deal the Bush Administration negotiated with India. No similar deal is on the cards for the Pakistanis, with Washington skittish about the security of Islamabad’s nuclear program and about the continued links between members of its military intelligence agency, the ISI, and various jihadists. “We were the traditional allies — the Indians remained in the Soviet camp,” says Qureshi. “Ever since that changed, the American approach has changed. Today, America values India a lot.”

A New Shenzhen: Beijing aims to turn the remote western city of Kashgar into the country’s next big boomtown.

[In the remote city of Kashgar in western China, accelerated development of a Special Economic Zone, involving massive displacement of ethnic Uighurs, is linked to new pipeline and railroad projects which are projected to run through Kashmir and Pakistan. China has, reportedly, over 130 development projects inside Pakistan, and over 12,000 troops in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).  The Indian government has raised objections, while strengthening its strategic alliance with the United States.  In this region, people’s struggles are set on an increasingly complex stage.  This Newsweek article provides some background from the strategic perspective of US imperialism.–Frontlines ed.]

by Isaac Stone Fish

September 25, 2010

Construction workers build high-rises in Kashgar in Western China, which Chinese officials hope to turn into a new boomtown.

The dusty silk-road oasis of Kashgar sits at the precipice of empire. The western- most city in China borders the remotest parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan; nondirect flights from Beijing, which became available only in September, take more than six hours. Kashgar’s average income hovered at about $1,000 a year in 2008, low even for the poorer corners of China. Ethnic tension simmers. Muslim Uighurs, who make up the vast majority of Kashgar prefecture’s mostly rural population of 4 million, feel like they’re the underclass in their own heartland. Ethnically, culturally, and aesthetically, it’s one of the least Han cities in China. Geographically separated from the rest of China by the fierce Taklimakan Desert, “Kashgar’s not exactly at the center of things,” says Willy Lam, a China analyst at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

China’s High-Tech Underclass

Yet the central government is trying to change just that. It’s notable that the flying time from Kashgar to Beijing is the same from the West to East Coast of America, because if Beijing has its way, Kashgar will resemble China’s Los Angeles—a regional economic hub in a far western hotbed of ethnic diversity.

The Sentencing of Dr. Afia Siddiqui to 86 Years in Prison: A Travesty of Justice

By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

24 September, 2010,  Countercurrents.org

Not unexpectedly, the 86 years jail sentence against Dr. Afia Siddiqui, the Pakistani neuroscientist once dubbed by the US media as Al-Qaeda Lady, triggered outrage across the country [Pakistan] with protesters taking to the streets in many places. It was 10 p.m. Thursday (Sept. 23) in Pakistan when US District Court in Manhattan by Judge Richard M. Berman announced the judgment but protesters were up in arms in several cities of the country.

There were demonstrations, mainly from students in Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar burning US flags and effigies of US leaders. They chanted anti-American slogans. In Lahore, a young demonstrator was shown on a Pakistani TV network saying that “we will burn the US consulate.” In Karachi, a large number of people gathered at the residence of Dr. Afia’s sister Dr. Fowzia Siddiqui. She said “This decision proves that the system of justice that the US believes is its pride is no longer effective.”

Shahbaz Sharif, Chief Minister of the Punjab Province with largest population, described it a verdict against humanity. Mufti Munibur Rehman, a prominent religious leader said that the verdict will foment extremism in Pakistan.  Maulana Fazalur Rehman, Chairman of parliament’s Kashmir Committee, announced that he will cancel his forthcoming visit to the US in protest against the US verdict.

Pakistan: To save US military base from flood, floodwaters diverted, destroying town

the flooded town Dera Allahyar

How U.S. Fears Over Flood Play Into Pakistan Army’s Hands

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 27 (New America Media) – Nothing sums up the plight of Pakistan like what happened—or did not happen—at the Shahbaz military base in Jacobabad.

The U.S. Air Force has been operating out of that base since the war in Afghanistan began nine years ago. According to Pakistani media, Jacobabad was in the path of the approaching flood waters. The waters were diverted to save the base, inundating the town of Dera Allahyar instead. Some 800,000 people were added to the swelling list of millions already displaced by the floods.