COMMENT: Debacle of 1971

[Bushy]

Fatman17, you have met Gen Niazi. You call him a crude soldier. I suppose a crude soldier is the one who does not indulge in politics, and goes straight for the enemy. If it is a fact, then why would Niazi publicly blame Tikka and Yahya?

His words from his last interview:

I swear on oath that I was given clear-cut orders from Yahya to surrender, but still I was determined to fight till the end. I even sent a message that my decision to fight till the end stands. However, General Abdul Hamid Khan and Air Chief Marshal Rahim rang me up, ordering me to act on the GHQ signal of December 14, 1971 because West Pakistan was in danger. It was at this stage that I was asked to agree on a cease-fire so that the safety of the troops could be ensured.

I don't agree with the commission's act of exonerating these three [General Tikka, Sahibzada Yaqoob Ali Khan (former commander of Eastern Command) and Rao Farman Ali (advisor to Niazi)] . It is surprising that no responsibility for the break-up of Pakistan has been apportioned to Tikka, Yaqoob and Farman. In fact, Yaqoob's inaction as commander of the eastern command resulted in aggravating the situation in East Pakistan. Having messed up everything, Yaqoob deemed it fit to desert his post and resign, while taking cover behind his conscience. He should have been sent to the gallows for betraying the nation. Yahya demoted him. However, Bhutto restored his rank and sent him as ambassador to the USA. What a prize for desertion!

The Hamoodur Commission exculpated him, thus paving ground for officers to resign instead of fighting out the enemy, whenever a difficult situation develops. Similarly, Tikka has not been mentioned in the report, although his barbaric action of March 25 earned him the name of butcher. The commission overlooked his heinous crimes.

Why didn't the Bhutto government make the Hamoodur Report public?

Bhutto was afraid of making it public given the fact that he was equally responsible for the circumstances that finally led to the dismemberment of Pakistan. A sub-committee of SEVEN Bhutto AIDES was permitted to have a glance at the report. The committee recommended that the report should not be made public. Bhutto later used his powers to modify 34 pages of the report.

You insist that the Hamoodur Report is faulty, partial and influenced by Bhutto. On the other hand, no one in the corridors of power seems ready to court-martial the generals responsible for the Dhaka debacle. With this in mind, do you have any solid suggestion to bring the culprits to task?

To find out the truth about the 1971 debacle and punish the guilty, it is essential to appoint a new commission with wider terms of reference. This exercise should be presided over by the chief of army staff. Two syndicates should take part.
It would be a very interesting exercise, with many useful lessons to be learned. A military exercise should also be held to find out how and why the small, tired and ill-equipped eastern garrison completed all the given tasks under the worst possible conditions against overwhelming odds, and why the western garrison, with enough forces and resources and having the initiative, failed and lost 5,500 square miles of territory in less than 10 days under conducive conditions.

After my return to Pakistan from Indian captivity in 1974, while preparing my report on the East Pakistan debacle, I heard persistent hints from GHQ sources that the Eastern Command had been sacrificed according to a detailed plan, and that its senior commanders were made the scapegoats for the loss of East Pakistan. My initial doubts turned into conviction when, over the years, I pondered over this episode and discussed it with people who knew that the GHQ Eastern Command had been deliberately cheated, tricked and misled as part of a grave conspiracy by the high command.

In fact it was so obvious that even the Indian Major General Shah Beg Singh told me, "Your goose is cooked, sir. They have decided to put the whole blame on you and your command for this episode." I am therefore convinced that the fall of East Pakistan was deliberately engineered. - How can such a recorded statement be a lie?

Can you substantiate your contention that the East Pakistan debacle was deliberately engineered?

Yahya and Bhutto viewed Mujib's victory in the 1970 election with distaste, because it meant that Yahya had to vacate the presidency and Bhutto had to sit in the Opposition benches, which was contrary to his aspirations. So these two got together and hatched a plan in Larkana, Bhutto's hometown, which came to be known as the Larkana Conspiracy. The plan was to postpone the session of the National Assembly indefinitely, and to block the transfer of power to the Awami League by diplomacy, threats, intrigues and the use of military force.

Connected to this conspiracy was the 'M M Ahmed plan', which aimed at allowing Yahya and Bhutto to continue as president and prime minister, besides leaving East Pakistan without a successor government. After the announcement of the date of the assembly session (to be held at Dhaka), there was pressure on the politicians to boycott it. The reason given was that East Pakistan had become a hub of international intrigue, therefore, it should be discarded.

In the end, this clique achieved its aim.


Seriously fatman17, Niazi has put everything in place so congruent to the history we have witnessed! Either he was the greatest genius in the PA to have fabricated such a story that were to hold water in the years to come, or he is simply telling the TRUTH !

 

[Icarus]

Another obvious question, and this is not a flame so please do not take offense Fatman, is why did it take India 24 years to do this?

It was obviously an impossible situation to begin with. And there was never any love lost between the two countries to begin with. And Fatman also indicates that there was never any love lost between West and East Pakistan to begin with.

So why did India simply not retaliate in 1947 at the first sign of aggression from Pakistan in Kashmir?

Were we not ready?

Why did we simply not march into East Pakistan and make it another Indian state at that time while the tawa was hot (it was obviously difficult internationally to do so in 1971)?

Cheers, Doc

At that time an attack by India would not be allowed by Gandhi, being a man of honour, he did not allow India to harm their former kinsmen,
as in the case when India with held an amount of Rs.500 million, of Pakistan's share on the excuse that it would be used to buy arms.
Gandhi responded with a hunger strike, Nehru was forced to pay 250 million however the other Rs.250 million is yet to be paid.

 

[toxic_pus]

Another obvious question, and this is not a flame so please do not take offense Fatman, is why did it take India 24 years to do this?

It was obviously an impossible situation to begin with. And there was never any love lost between the two countries to begin with. And Fatman also indicates that there was never any love lost between West and East Pakistan to begin with.

So why did India simply not retaliate in 1947 at the first sign of aggression from Pakistan in Kashmir?

Were we not ready?

Why did we simply not march into East Pakistan and make it another Indian state at that time while the tawa was hot (it was obviously difficult internationally to do so in 1971)?

Cheers, Doc

Let me take a bite. Hopefully fatman1 will not mind that I've jumped in the middle.

The answer daktaarsaab, is that neither were we ready, nor were the people of East Pakistan. Neither politically, nor militarily.

The big fat chance came in 1965, not in 1947. 1947-48 was way too early to get into a military adventure – the Kashmir conflict had already turned out to be a handful for India. Contrary to general belief in India, Indian military was stretched to the limit in Kashmir (refer Sumit Ganguly’s Conflict Unending or L.P.Sen’s Slender Was The Thread). Also, we didn’t feel the need for unilateral aggression against Pakistan, particularly in an area which clearly posed no military threat at that time. In absence of any serious threat, reintegrating a territory which had just recently seceded from the Indian Union, didn’t make any sense. We had just gained independence and our priority was to get our act together and build a socially and economically strong nation. Not to break up neighboring countries.

In 1965, though, severing East from West was militarily feasible. As I had mentioned earlier, Pakistan followed a strategy of ‘defense of East lies in West’. What it meant was that, if India ever thought of attacking East Pakistan, Pakistan would attack in the west, (something they indeed do in 1971) which would force India to concentrate more in the west and withdraw from east. This meant that they didn't really have a clear defense strategy that could be applied specifically in the East, in the event of any Indian aggression. During 1965 conflict, as a result of this strategy, East Pakistan had hardly any military presence. (Of 8 divisions, Pakistan had deployed 7 in the west, and only 1 in the east. Roughly around 20 fighters were deployed in East.) The defense of East Pakistan was almost entirely left to the paramilitary, called EPR (which later came to be known as BDR). Had India wished to sever East Pakistan, it would have been able to do so without too much of a hassle.

But it didn’t happen. The reason was China. It was believed that China may come to Pakistan’s aide and try to create mischief in the North in order to release pressure off Pakistan. As a result, during the entire conflict, India maintained a large military presence along the Indo-China border. (The general belief among Pakistanis is that Pakistan had fought against the entire Indian military juggernaut in 1965, which of course, is not true. Although India did have numerical superiority over Pakistan, it was never quite the Goliath that Pakistanis make it out to be. India had deployed 10 divisions in the west, and 6 in the north and of about 700 fighters, about 300* were held for the Chinese.) Roughly a little more than a third of Indian army were nowhere near Pakistan – East or West. This in turn ensured that India wouldn’t attack East Pakistan.

Politically also, East was not ready till 1971. In 1965, although the fissures had begun to show, these were not deep enough for the East Bengalis to rise in revolt against West Pakistan. It was only Yahya’s and Bhutto’s immature and selfish politics that alienated the entire Bengali population. Only when Ms Gandhi was certain that Indian troops in East Bengal will not be opposed, did she give her final ‘go’.

While discussing the reasons for India's support of Mukti Bahinis, J.N.Dixit makes the following observation in 'India-Pakistan in War And Peace'

The erosion of India’s territorial integrity and the dismemberment of India through the instrumentality of an anti-Indian nexus not only between Pakistan and China but between Pakistan and other smaller neighbours of India was the basic motivation of Pakistan’s India policy. It should be remembered that though Ayub ruled till 1969, and Yahya from 1969 to 1972, Bhutto was the most influential political voice of Pakistan, both domestically and internationally from the winter of 1965 onwards. Bhutto’s orientation regarding India heightened Indian strategic threat perceptions. The ramifications of Bhutto’s political views on Indo-Pakistan relations were multifaceted. East Pakistanis felt that their defence and security did not matter much to the central authorities in Islamabad. They noted that Pakistan was more inclined to delegate the responsibility of defending East Pakistan to China than strengthen East Pakistan’s defences by locating sufficiently well-equipped military forces.

As the movement for autonomy gained strength in East Pakistan from 1954 to 1956, public opinion in India, particularly in West Bengal, became supportive of the movement. Whatever the formal stance of the Government of India, the realities could not be ignored by policy makers. Though India did not want a reversal of history after Partition and the reintegration of Pakistani territories with India, it nevertheless remained deeply convinced that religion alone did not make a nation. Two wings of Pakistan with an intervening stretch of over a thousand miles of Indian territory was a geographical and political incongruity.

The possibility of a strategic nexus between China and Pakistan centred on East Pakistan was an additional factor that contributed to Indian support for the movement for autonomy in East Pakistan. If the people of East Pakistan, driven by socio-ethnic and linguistic factors and in the face of an irrational and obstinate negation of their basic rights and aspirations, wished to secede from Pakistan, India could have no objection. If Indian endorsement and support could result in the emergence of a friendly entity, it would be beneficial. A non-hostile Bangladesh in place of a hostile East Pakistan was considered desirable. [pg 179-180]

Its just that it was in 1971 that Yahya and Butto presented East Pakistan to India on a platter. India was more than happy to accept the 'gift'.

* I vaguely remember the number of fighters India had deployed against Pakistan. So the number 300 may be wrong. But I hope you would get the idea.