To confront this loss of authority, the Pakistani government formed auxiliary forces such as the Razakars, Al-Badr, and Al-Shams. The intelligence documents provide detailed accounts of the organisational structure, activities, and attacks on these collaborators. The Pakistani state sought to keep local administration functioning through them. However, an analysis of the documents shows that this strategy backfired. Peace Committee members and Razakars became easy targets for the freedom fighters. Incidents such as the killing of Peace Committee chairmen or grenade attacks on their homes in districts like Faridpur, Khulna, or Noakhali regularly appeared in police reports. This proves that a form of ‘civil war’ was underway in society and that the Pakistani Army was failing even to protect its local collaborators. This failure further deepened a mix of fear and respect for the freedom fighters among the general population and intensified distrust toward the Pakistani state.
In the intelligence documents, an extraordinary picture of sound warfare or ‘sonic war’ and psychological warfare can also be found. The war was not confined to the barrel of a gun; it was waged through sound, rumours, leaflets, and symbols. Intelligence officers regularly reported hearing slogans of ‘Joy Bangla’ in cities and villages or seeing the flag of independent Bangladesh flying. These ‘sounds’ and ‘sights’ alone were enough to shatter the morale of the Pakistani administration. Freedom fighters distributed leaflets threatening government officials and police, creating intense psychological pressure. What police reports referred to as ‘rumours’ were in fact counter-flows of information that rendered Pakistani state propaganda ineffective. The sound of grenade explosions in the dead of night, slogans written on walls, or secretly distributed pamphlets – all were part of this sonic and psychological warfare that kept Pakistani forces in a constant state of invisible terror.
In writing the history of Bangladesh’s Liberation War, these “enemy documents” or “hostile archives” can be used as important source materials. By portraying the military-political conflict as a mere “law and order problem,” these documents prove that a blind Leviathan, on the path to its own downfall, was leaving behind evidence against itself with its own hands.
Mohammad Sazzadur Rahman is a part-time lecturer, at Independent University, Bangladesh
