Exhaustion
The war is going to end. A war? No, this wasn’t a war. It was an invasion. Countless times, they’d been attacked. What was all of this for? They just wanted one simple right, but they had to die for it? Rahul was just another face. A face that was not seen often, another soldier. He used to have a family. His family, they were killed. Pakistan did not want them to have this one simple right. It was the right to govern themselves as they saw fit even when they had become a country of their own. Bangladesh, a country recently made, originally the province of Bengal from India. It hadn’t even been a century since its creation.
But that didn’t matter. Pakistan did not want Bangladesh to have its own language. It wanted the population of Bangladesh to learn Urdu and forgot Bangali. Eventually, they would have gotten further, taken Bangladesh’s right to govern and exist as a separate country. It was going to too far. This was not going to be another take over. Even though Pakistan had a military and could take what it wanted, Bangladesh wouldn’t just give up that easily.
It wanted the rights it had rightfully claimed for itself. The right to govern, to speak Bangali as the population saw fit. They weren’t going to be stopped by Pakistan, but it was hard.
It was very, very hard. This was not a battle that was easy to win. Bangladesh was new, it had just started to grow, to learn how to run as a country. Pakistan had practice, it was at an advantage, it had weapons and the training to reach its goal. So how was Bangladesh going to fight back? It did not have weapon. It was poor and learning. So how had it lasted so long?
Bangladesh was fighting. From every household, anyone who wanted to help the resistance was taken. It was the beginning of this invasion. Pakistan was surprised that this was going to happen, they had not expected much resistance. I was not a part of that original movement. However, Pakistan stopped that resistance. Pakistan was suspicious now. It took action against this. Pakistan decided that it was going to put a stop to this. It started to go around to every house and check if there was a tool to fight back. If there were any guns, the men of the family would be shot on the stop, the woman raped and sometimes, the house burned. It was horrifying. It was inhumane, and yet, history repeated itself to play out these same events over and over all over the world. They continued to do this with every house. Eventually, it looked like it was going to be over for Bangladesh. Eventually, Bangladesh did not stand for it. The resistance did not stop.
I am proof. I resist and I am going to defend my rights to the very end. It was going to be a hard battle but I was still fighting and so were the people around me.
I was not giving up, and neither was my country. Everyone said that this battle was going to be over soon. Pakistan was confident that it was going to win. There was nothing we could do, even people from our own country said that. I did not believe that.
I had a friend who did. He went and helped the Pakistani people. He used to be part of the resistance, but he was taken away. He told them everything. All the hidden weapons were taken from us and our companions killed. It was a devastation defeat, but only for that time. A resistance has risen again. This time, we were ready and we were going to stop them.
We are going to do this. We are ready and we are going to strike. The final battle, that’s what I want. That’s what we all want. I am ready.
Bangladesh liberated itself in 1971. Pakistan agreed to allow Bangladesh to speak its own language and stay as separate countries. While tensions still run high between the two countries, there has been no more aggression between the two. We did it.