Paradoxically, where death becomes macro, cerebral distortions occur easily. In keeping with the Einstein formulation that in a stellar domain mass can deform space, it may be averred that where a whole state machinery is committed to mass killing, normal morality and ethics are warped and elite responsibility evaded. Most objective genocide studies point to this pattern.

However, the purpose of this comment is not to cast aspersions on the veracity of one study or the other - more qualified voices will have to address that - but to relate the events of 1971 with the current turmoil in Pakistan.

Currently, the Pakistan Army - which in the Zia years became the defender of the Islamic faith - is caught in deep strategic denial about its murky and blood-splattered past. The empirical reality is that this institution since the first war for Kashmir in October 1947 to Kargil of May 1999 has been tasked in covert operations that have used terror stoked by religious radicalism and sectarian xenophobia against the 'adversary' - whether the much reviled Hindu Indian or the fellow Pakistani, be it the Bengali Pakistani of 1971 or the Baluchi of current times.

Like Oscar Wilde's 'Picture of Dorian Grey', the institutional face of the Pakistan Army is best exemplified by the chutzpah of General Pervez Musharraf is a visage of supreme confidence - now further bolstered by the nuclear firewall. But the ugly reality is of a once proud army - its track record in World War II as part of the erstwhile British Indian Army is lustrous - that has lost its moral compass. The result has been the ignominy of killing fellow citizens on an unprecedented scale and where arch enemy India has been engaged - not being able to acknowledge the deaths of its regular troops in battle or even claim their bodies. A la Lady Macbeth, this is a stain that cannot be wiped away.

The inflexible mindset of the Pakistan Army has to be radically altered and there is no historical precedent that this will occur by consensus and deep introspection. The military acquires its legitimacy to use proportionate force for a larger national objective from adherence to the rule of law and a distilled code of professional conduct. But when the deviant becomes the norm, the correlation between principle and power is subverted.

The Pakistan Army is caught in an inflexible mode of strategic denial about its past, which is why it appears both unable and unwilling to deal with its present internal security challenges. This is the 'truth' that President Asif Ali Zardari has been trying to reveal - but with limited success. The reverberations of the Dhaka genocide conference must be picked up by Pakistan's accomplished intellectuals - both in the media and academia - and a false narrative corrected. The army must finally confront its mea culpa moment through the bloody cross of East Pakistan.

(C. Uday Bhaskar is a well-known strategic analyst. He can be reached at cudayb@gmail.com)