1971: When Pakistani Generals went on to destroy their own country!
By: M S Nazki
They unleashed a mass butchery in East Pakistan and the result had to be devastation of the country as India walked in, stormed the citadel and Bangladesh was created! But before that plenty had happened!
-‘After everything is said and done, a memory remains a treacherous thing! But this one from Mohammed Ali Jinnah I’m sure everybody would remember as riding on all the enthusiasm he said, ‘we have undoubtedly achieved Pakistan, and that too without a bloody war, practically peacefully, by moral and intellectual force, and with the power of the pen, which is no less mighty than that of the sword and so our righteous cause has triumphed. Are we now going to besmear and tarnish this greatest achievement for which there is no parallel in the history of the world? Pakistan is now a fait accompli and it can never be undone, besides, it was the only just, honorable, and practical solution of the most complex constitutional problem of this great subcontinent’. Let us now plan to build and reconstruct and regenerate our great nation. That was the beginning but the joy that vanished all too soon. The leadership in Pakistan began falling apart and at the moment has reached the edge of an abyss but the beginning of everything was 1971 the heights of misadventure which the prophets of false hood led by Yahya Khan and Tikka Khan began the rout of the people in Bangladesh but as India entered the fray within 17 days Pakistan had its one limb in form of East Pakistan was severed! Jinnah’s Pakistan had been dismembered!’
-‘Stanley Wolpert in his book Jinnah of Pakistan in a very lucid way wrote, few individuals significantly alter the course of history. Fewer still modify the map of the world. Hardly anyone can be credited with creating a nation-state. Mohammad Ali Jinnah did all three. But what happened after that is also history as the Nation that Jinnah created a country that shot itself in the foot and now stands in the middle of nowhere where the blunders committed by the leadership both democratic (which was hardly there), Military (Pak Army has produced some great megalomaniacs) and fundamentalists (always in a hard line mode and never ever prepared to listen to reasoning) stare at them menacingly’!
-‘In 1971 it was Richard Nixon led United States of America that was on a global misadventure and plenty was happening all over, the cold war, the Cuban crisis, the Asian scenario, the African rumblings and almost everywhere the American hand was visible and could be analyzed. The man Richard Nixon had unleashed at the global stage was the then secretary of state Henery Kissinger. The man overrode all advice in order to support the Pakistani generals in both their civilian massacre policy in East Bengal and their armed attack on India from West Pakistan.This led to a moral and political catastrophe the effects of which are still sorely felt. Kissinger’s undisclosed reason for the ‘tilt’ was the supposed but never materialized ‘brokerage’ offered by the dictator Yahya Khan in the course of secret diplomacy between Nixon and China. Of the new state of Bangladesh, Kissinger remarked coldly that it was ‘a basket case’. It still remains as neither is Kissinger alive to see as to what is happening nor would he have visualized at that time as to what he was doing’! Yahya Khan the drunken monk could not have understood the minute mechanics of the policy which Kissinger had unreeled. That is a prime time example of shooting in your own foot and blowing it apart!’
1971: Abdul Bari, a journalist in the then East Pakistan had run out of luck. Like thousands of other people in East Bengal, he had made the fatal mistake – of running within sight of a Pakistani patrol. He was 24 years old, a slight man surrounded by soldiers. He was trembling because he was about to be shot. Indeed he was killed, shot in the face! He was not the only one who was done away like this in one of the brutal campaigns to suppress the people! The East Pakistanis had nowhere to run and the safest haven had to be crossing over to the North Eastern states, Bengal and that is what they did’!
No one knows exactly as to how many were killed but definitely the members were enormous.Independent researchers think that between 300,000 and 500,000 died. The Bangladesh government puts the figure at three million. The strategy failed, It helped turn world opinion against Pakistan and encouraged India to play a decisive role. Pakistan failed on every account. It lost the war on both fronts, lost a major chunk of the country and finally lost face globally. In other words the Nation that Jinnah created was in tatters. He may have said in his impressive speech (the excerpts of which I quoted in the beginning of this story) about getting Pakistan without blood being shed but when the country was splattered apart of its Eastern wing for a new Nation to be born, it’s own soldiers were instrumental in shedding the blood of its own people! The self destruction mode had begun and later on even in West Pakistan things were to take demonic proportions as it is happening now!
When the war in what was then East Pakistan broke out in March 1971, the conflict was sparked by elections, which were won by an East Pakistani party, the Awami League, which wanted greater autonomy for the region. By the way this draws familiarity with Kashmir as here too the whole thing sparked off after what was later to be known as rigged elections! From self determination to Azadi and then merger with Pakistan is a later story. Jinnah’s Pakistan’s leadership got on to a new high!
The ISI and Jamaat-e-Islami of Pakistan started recruitment of Pakistani citizens so that they too could participate in Islamic Jihad in Kashmir. Youths were selected and then recruited in Pro-Pak Hizbul Mujahideen militant outfit and other similar organisations. After this, they are sent into Jammu and Kashmir for indulging in bomb explosions in Srinagar, Rajouri, Jammu and other areas. They had been given instructions to kick up terror by blowing up passenger buses, trains, roads and bridges. After the end of the Afghan war, Afghan Mujahideens and other terrorists and fundamentalists from Algeria, Sudan, Egypt and Saudi Arab, living in Pakistan, are imparting arms training to Kashmiri terrorists. But the overall control, supervision, support and facilities to the terrorists was in the hands of the ISI. This intelligence agency sleuths summon Kashmiri terrorists to the Indo-Pak border for giving them new instructions and guidance. The Indian security forces had recovered some documents from Kashmiri militants at the time of their arrest. These documents shed enough light on Pakistan’s involvement in terrorism in Kashmir. On March 25, 1991, one Ashfaq Hussain Lone was arrested in New Delhi and a letter was recovered from him. The letter had been written by Mohd. Yusuf Shah alias Salauddin of Hizbul Mujahideen to his college teacher Assan Dar. The letter contained information regarding arrangements made by Pakistan for training and for supply of sophisticated weapons and communication apparatus to Kashmiri terrorists. Salahuddin had instructed Assan Dar to recruit more youths and send them across Pakistan for training so that no area in Jammu and Kashmir was free from terrorism. Also, the entire State of Jammu and Kashmir should be in the grip of severe terrorism so that Lok Sabha elections could not be held in this northern State. The letter had informed Dar that Rs. 2.20 lakh had been made available through Ashfaq Hussain.’ The story is old but I just found the same in my diary! It started from thousands and became crores and multiples! But for everything to develop into a flaming phenomenon it takes time! This took many years and it all began in 1947 – That was the end of British rule and partition of sub-continent into mainly Hindu India and Muslim-majority state of Pakistan. In the same year the Maharaja of Kashmir signed a treaty of accession with India after a Pakistani tribal army attack. War broke out between India and Pakistan over the region. The year had to end on a bitter note and it did!
The year next 1948, India raiseed Kashmir in the UN Security Council, which in Resolution 47 called for a referendum on the status of the territory. The resolution also called on Pakistan to withdraw its troops and India to cut its military presence to a minimum. A ceasefire came into force, but Pakistan refused to evacuate its troops. Kashmir for practical purposes remained partitioned! Could be called a Political blunder of those times but now definitely in retrospect!
Thankly for a few years three years passed off and then came in a new decade of fifties. 1951, elections in the Jammu and Kashmir backed accession to India. India said that makes a referendum unnecessary. The UN and Pakistan said a referendum still needed to be taken into account because the views of voters throughout the former princely state were different! Mind you India was developing and the world was emerging out of the second world war scenario. It had just happened a half a dozen of years before’
In 1953 the authorities dismissed and arrested Prime Minister Sheikh Abdullah, leader of the governing National Conference, after he took a pro-referendum stance and delayed formal accession to India. A new Jammu and Kashmir government ratified accession to India. He had to be because from Kashmir he wanted to get on to the globe. He was better where he was but he was the teacher who taught all wrong lessons to the generations of Kashmiris! Geelani came in later but the psyche had been blown apart!
1965 was an episode just a brief war between Indian and Pakistan over Kashmir that ended in a ceasefire and a return to the previous positions. But 1971-72was different. That ended in a total defeat of Pakistan and finally led to the 1972 Simla Agreement.This turned the Kashmir ceasefire line into the Line of Control, both sides settled their differences through negotiations, and called for a final settlement of the Kashmir dispute. The Agreement formed the basis of Pakistani-Indian relations thereafter. Pakistan discarded them but India did not!’ But it was still a chance to get rid of Pakistan from the map of the world! That was where Jinnah’s Pakistan was heading towards! I still do not understand why Mrs. Gandhi left the writer Piloo Modi of the book ‘Zulfi my friend’ just on sentiments! Should not have been the case but perhaps were just a little more than two decades old! Or could be a child nation’s folly given a pardon! And that pardon proved costly in fact to the extreme limits!
But in 1971 the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi began to think that the events in East Pakistan shocked her so deeply that it had set her on a campaign of personal diplomacy in the European capitals and Moscow to prepare the ground for India’s armed intervention. But before that an Indian lady (Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was challenging the white house)! These have been my collections about the great victory from various books and excerpts fro various articles written in those times, where one women took the trio, USA, China and Pak apart… and this is how she did it but there was a man in olive greens and I do not have to name him him, Remember the name Sam Manekshaw!
Much has been written about the bad chemistry between the then US President Richard Nixon and Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Princeton University Professor Gary J. Bass quoting from the newly declassified White House documents said they revealed a ‘stunning conversation’ between Nixon, Kissinger, the then-White -House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman in the Oval Office on June 17, 1971. Indira Gandhi’s visit took place amidst the apprehensions of an impending war between India and Pakistan. For various reasons, the visit went wrong from the beginning. Mr and Mrs Nixon received Mrs Gandhi at the White House lawns at 10 am on November 4. Indira Gandhi was put off when Nixon offered sympathy for the flood victims of Bihar but made no mention of Bengal refugees. She tactlessly chided the President for ignoring a man made tragedy in Bangladesh in her reply. After the arrival ceremony, Nixon and Gandhi met at the Oval Office and the meeting went on until 12:30pm. They talked about India-Pakistan, Bangladesh refugees, etc.
Kissinger ( The Man Friday of Nixon in those times) gives a more descriptive and in-depth account of what happened at the meetings in his book ‘White House years’. Nixon and Gandhi sat in two wing chairs near the fireplace while Kissinger and Cabinet Secretary Haksar (Parmeshwar Narayan Haskar) sat on the sofa adjoining the chairs. Gandhi was smug and expressed admiration for Nixon’s handling of Vietnam and China, which Nixon resented.
According to Kissinger, the conversation between the two leaders became the dialogue of the deaf ( Kissinger was always fond of small statements). Another one was they failed to hear each other not because they had not understood each other but because they understood each other only too well. She took up none of the points Nixon made. Instead, she gave a little lecture on the history of Pakistan. mRs. Gandhi always loved to dictate terms to the Americans and she did!
The White House banquet on November 4 also was strained. American ex-diplomat Denis Klux in his book, ‘The estranged neighbours’, writes that neither Gandhi spoke nor Nixon made much of an effort to converse with each other. During dinner even though Mrs Nixon tried unsuccessfully to break the tension with small talk, the atmosphere remained frosty. Had to be the case because she listened to none!
Nixon returned the Prime Minister’s slight on November 5 by keeping her waiting for 45 minutes for a meeting at the Oval office. Gandhi kept cool in the brief talks that followed. She was not the one to take any slight from anyone. When Nixon called on her at the Blair House, she kept him waiting for 45 minutes to emerge from her room. Nixon got the message. In the brief meeting on November 5, Nixon talked about China while Gandhi made no mention of Pakistan at all. The entire conversation was of world view. Nixon escorted Gandhi to her car at 12.20 pm after an hour’s talks. Nixon wrote in his diary about Gandhi’s dubious action against the US. When she had made up her mind to attack Pakistan at the time she saw me and assured me that she would not! But she did! That is what a woman of India can do and perhaps that is why the great Atal called her Durga! If they decide to fight then let us do it they will say! If Jinnah created Pakistan we helped Bangladesh to become the Nation! It was destined to be the story and it became one!
Gandhi told a journalist in the USA, ’times have passed when any nation sitting 3 or 4 thousand miles away could give orders to Indians on the basis of colour superiority to do as they wished.’ To this Nixon told Henry (Kissinger) that she doesn’t mind the colour of our aid dollars. Kissinger in his book said thus Mrs Gandhi’s visit ended without progress on any outstanding issues or even on a procedure by which procedure could be brought.’ When the Indo-Pakistan war broke out on December 5, 1971, all hell broke loose. Nixon told Kissinger on December 6, ‘she was playing with us. You know the cold way she was the next day, she did not (unclear) and this woman suckered us. But let me tell you she is going to pay… she is going to pay. Now I mean on the aid side. Nixon wondered if he was ‘too easy on that goddamn woman when she was here’. He then asked Kissinger whether the Chinese would make a move, which would terrify Indians. Throughout the Indo-Pak war, Nixon was hoping the Chinese would step in to petrify India. But the Chinese did not! In fact no one did and the Indian Army under the great Sam won the war! Diplomatically and democratically Indira Gandhi had defeated all three, USA, Pakistan and China! And now militarily we are the best! The 1971 war was the one in which India created a Nation known as Bangladesh! Jinnah could not have done that! Debate adjourned!
