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COMMENT: Debacle of 1971 Sirajuddin Aziz
The misplaced hope of the Seventh Fleet coming to our rescue or the expectations that the Chinese would militarily intervene in the Eastern Theatre, emerged as a major hallucination of our foreign office
It is always dangerous for
soldiers, sailors and airmen to play at politics. They enter a sphere in which the values are quite different from those to which they have hitherto been accustomed Winston Churchill.
During the long silent nights of each cold December, I recall filled with sadness the scene shown only once on PTV in its six o clock English news: our tiger, General Niazi, signing the instrument of surrender in the packed Dhaka Stadium and how he stood de-robed of his military honours, amidst the thunderous applause of the crowd. Our heads hung in shame and shock.
I was then in class IX and had grown to be a proud Pakistani teenager, who unflinchingly believed in the propaganda that we had given the veggie Indians a drubbing during the 1965 war and also firmly thought that we would repeat the performance in 1971. But alas, the hoax of having won the 1965 war ended with those glimpses from Dhaka. I remember closeting myself in a room, away from the family and crying my heart out, at this blatant surrender of a Muslim army. The mood in the air was one of total dejection. We stood a morally, financially, economically, politically and militarily bankrupt nation.
According to Lieutenant-General Gul Hasan, December 19, 1971 was indeed a day that I will never forget. It was the worst I had ever experienced in all my long service. The discipline in the army was on the verge of snapping and the repugnant odour of anarchy was in the air. The climate was all the more awesome because there would have been no authority to arrest the rot, should it have set in. The induction of a company of SSG, by no stretch of the imagination for a Samaritan role, was a move so reckless that had it materialised, it could have dispatched the country into oblivion. It would also have been a benefitting finale to Mrs Gandhis act to restore all joy to Pandit Nehrus heart.
The misplaced hope of the Seventh Fleet coming to our rescue or the expectations that the Chinese would militarily intervene in the Eastern Theatre, emerged as a major hallucination of our foreign office. On the contrary, both our US and Chinese friends coaxed and goaded the then government to mend fences with the political forces of East Pakistan. Lieutenant-General Gul Hasan in his memoirs says, Bhutto discussed political issues, wherein Prime Minister Zhou-en-Lai stressed that the turmoil in East Pakistan should be resolved politically. Use of force would exacerbate the environment. I conveyed all that transpired to the COS. What Bhutto told the president, I do not know; such was the state of mind and distrust at the top. As regards our brethren Muslim countries, they were a sleeping Ummah then and continue till date to act as descendants of Rip Van Winkle!
Herbert Feldman, in his analytical study The End of the Beginning Pakistan, 1969-1971, ends his book with these words: In the new Pakistan it remained only for Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to enter upon the task of restoring the countrys shattered fortunes. While embarking on a peace journey to Simla, Bhutto spoke of a thousand year war with India; it is another matter that he signed a peace treaty. The enigma that he was, Mr Bhutto successfully negotiated with the victors the vacation of 5,000 square miles of occupied West Pakistan territory, the release of 90,000 prisoners of war and got the iron lady, Mrs Gandhi, to accept his slogan of peace with honour. He returned to Lahore and roared to the teeming millions: We lost a political war and not a military engagement.
Mr Iqbal Akhund in his Memoirs of a Bystander chronicles the enigmatic personality of Mr Bhutto in these words: A senior army officer once said to me, a combination of political acumen and military power leads to Caesarism. We had been talking about Mr Bhutto. Bhutto never directly wielded military power but it was not too fanciful to see points of analogy between Caesar and Bhutto. He was not a military conqueror but a leader who after a defeat without honour, had recovered what had been lost on the battlefield and redeemed the countrys self-respect. Like Julius Caesar, Bhutto was a man caught between his radical ideas and the interest of his own landowner class; his reforms and diplomatic triumphs reunified a country emerging from civil war and dictatorship. His ambition was in conflict with his professed ideals. His rise was meteoric and the fall at the hands of his own people, who were closest to him, sudden and tragic.
In the book My Pakistan, which was based on a constitutional petition filed in the Lahore High Court against the illegal and improper detention of Mr Bhutto, there is a remark by way of a rejoinder to the allegations made in his material placed before the country, My footprints can be seen in the remotest part of Pakistan. My mark will be seen on every brick and mortar that has rebuilt, nay built this country. The history of the 1971 debacle has been chronicled through biographies, autobiographies, inquiry commissions, etc., but none of these have been able to place responsibility at the doorstep of the guilty.
Divine retribution and nature has its own way of reckoning. It is sad and tragic that Mr Bhuttos handpicked General sent him to the gallows. In fact, all the architects of the 1971 trauma who were either directly or indirectly involved in the killing of innocent people met a bloody end. Mrs Gandhi was shot by her most trusted personal security guards, while Mujeebur Rehman was assassinated by military conspirators. As regards General Yahya Khan, he lived in isolation and died miserably. The history of East Pakistans separation shall remain shrouded in mystery, filled with biased accounts and feelings.
The writer is an independent columnist
The misplaced hope of the Seventh Fleet coming to our rescue or the expectations that the Chinese would militarily intervene in the Eastern Theatre, emerged as a major hallucination of our foreign office
It is always dangerous for
soldiers, sailors and airmen to play at politics. They enter a sphere in which the values are quite different from those to which they have hitherto been accustomed Winston Churchill.
During the long silent nights of each cold December, I recall filled with sadness the scene shown only once on PTV in its six o clock English news: our tiger, General Niazi, signing the instrument of surrender in the packed Dhaka Stadium and how he stood de-robed of his military honours, amidst the thunderous applause of the crowd. Our heads hung in shame and shock.
I was then in class IX and had grown to be a proud Pakistani teenager, who unflinchingly believed in the propaganda that we had given the veggie Indians a drubbing during the 1965 war and also firmly thought that we would repeat the performance in 1971. But alas, the hoax of having won the 1965 war ended with those glimpses from Dhaka. I remember closeting myself in a room, away from the family and crying my heart out, at this blatant surrender of a Muslim army. The mood in the air was one of total dejection. We stood a morally, financially, economically, politically and militarily bankrupt nation.
According to Lieutenant-General Gul Hasan, December 19, 1971 was indeed a day that I will never forget. It was the worst I had ever experienced in all my long service. The discipline in the army was on the verge of snapping and the repugnant odour of anarchy was in the air. The climate was all the more awesome because there would have been no authority to arrest the rot, should it have set in. The induction of a company of SSG, by no stretch of the imagination for a Samaritan role, was a move so reckless that had it materialised, it could have dispatched the country into oblivion. It would also have been a benefitting finale to Mrs Gandhis act to restore all joy to Pandit Nehrus heart.
The misplaced hope of the Seventh Fleet coming to our rescue or the expectations that the Chinese would militarily intervene in the Eastern Theatre, emerged as a major hallucination of our foreign office. On the contrary, both our US and Chinese friends coaxed and goaded the then government to mend fences with the political forces of East Pakistan. Lieutenant-General Gul Hasan in his memoirs says, Bhutto discussed political issues, wherein Prime Minister Zhou-en-Lai stressed that the turmoil in East Pakistan should be resolved politically. Use of force would exacerbate the environment. I conveyed all that transpired to the COS. What Bhutto told the president, I do not know; such was the state of mind and distrust at the top. As regards our brethren Muslim countries, they were a sleeping Ummah then and continue till date to act as descendants of Rip Van Winkle!
Herbert Feldman, in his analytical study The End of the Beginning Pakistan, 1969-1971, ends his book with these words: In the new Pakistan it remained only for Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to enter upon the task of restoring the countrys shattered fortunes. While embarking on a peace journey to Simla, Bhutto spoke of a thousand year war with India; it is another matter that he signed a peace treaty. The enigma that he was, Mr Bhutto successfully negotiated with the victors the vacation of 5,000 square miles of occupied West Pakistan territory, the release of 90,000 prisoners of war and got the iron lady, Mrs Gandhi, to accept his slogan of peace with honour. He returned to Lahore and roared to the teeming millions: We lost a political war and not a military engagement.
Mr Iqbal Akhund in his Memoirs of a Bystander chronicles the enigmatic personality of Mr Bhutto in these words: A senior army officer once said to me, a combination of political acumen and military power leads to Caesarism. We had been talking about Mr Bhutto. Bhutto never directly wielded military power but it was not too fanciful to see points of analogy between Caesar and Bhutto. He was not a military conqueror but a leader who after a defeat without honour, had recovered what had been lost on the battlefield and redeemed the countrys self-respect. Like Julius Caesar, Bhutto was a man caught between his radical ideas and the interest of his own landowner class; his reforms and diplomatic triumphs reunified a country emerging from civil war and dictatorship. His ambition was in conflict with his professed ideals. His rise was meteoric and the fall at the hands of his own people, who were closest to him, sudden and tragic.
In the book My Pakistan, which was based on a constitutional petition filed in the Lahore High Court against the illegal and improper detention of Mr Bhutto, there is a remark by way of a rejoinder to the allegations made in his material placed before the country, My footprints can be seen in the remotest part of Pakistan. My mark will be seen on every brick and mortar that has rebuilt, nay built this country. The history of the 1971 debacle has been chronicled through biographies, autobiographies, inquiry commissions, etc., but none of these have been able to place responsibility at the doorstep of the guilty.
Divine retribution and nature has its own way of reckoning. It is sad and tragic that Mr Bhuttos handpicked General sent him to the gallows. In fact, all the architects of the 1971 trauma who were either directly or indirectly involved in the killing of innocent people met a bloody end. Mrs Gandhi was shot by her most trusted personal security guards, while Mujeebur Rehman was assassinated by military conspirators. As regards General Yahya Khan, he lived in isolation and died miserably. The history of East Pakistans separation shall remain shrouded in mystery, filled with biased accounts and feelings.
The writer is an independent columnist
