I am increasingly of the opinion that the rebellion and secessionist movement was planned by IB and later RAW and included not just Awami League, but many parts of the civil society, journalists, intellectuals, as well as many armed personnel from the Armed forces, EPR, Police etc.
West Pakistani leadership got wind of it as it brought the Agartala conspiracy case, but they did not address the root cause, which was the sense of disenfranchisement by East Pakistani's of Bengali origin. After 1970 election they took all the steps to help materialize India's plan of breaking Pakistan. The following are interesting excerpt from three different sources, one Indian and two Pakistani. They show the contrast or viewpoint and also fill in many blanks from individual narratives.
The Kaoboys of R&AW: Down Memory Lane - B. Raman - Google Books
.........pages 7-8
In India, one tends to think that Pakistans use of terrorism against India started in 1989 in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). It is not so. It started in 1956 in Nagaland. The ISI trained the followers of Phizo, the Naga hostile leader, in training camps set up in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of East Pakistan. It also provided them with safe sanctuaries in the CHT from which they could operate in the Indian territory through northern Myanmar.
In the 1960s, it started providing similar assistance and sanctuaries to the Mizo National Front (MNF) headed by Laldenga in the CHT. The ISIs set-up in East Pakistan also enabled the Naga and Mizo hostiles to establish contact with the Chinese intelligence. This paved the way for the training of the Naga and Mizo hostiles in training camps set up by the Chinese intelligence in the Yunnan province of China.
It was partly to put an end to the activities of the ISI in Indias North-East from East Pakistan that Indira Gandhi decided to assist the Bengali-speaking people of East Pakistan in their efforts to separate from Pakistan and achieve an independent State to be called Bangladesh. This was in the wake of the wake of the widespread disturbances in East Pakistan in the beginning of 1971 following the refusal of the military regime of Pakistan headed by Gen. Mohammad Yahya Khan to honour the results of the December, 1970, general elections in which Awami League of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman won a majority in the Pakistani National Assembly.
...........page 11
The IB before 1968 and the R&AW thereafter had built up a network of relationships with many political leaders and Government officials of East Pakistan. They were helped in this networking by the sense of humiliation of the Bengali leaders and officials at the hands of their West Pakistani rulers. This networking enabled the R&AW and the leaders and officials of East Pakistan to quickly put in position the required infrastructure for a liberation sturggle consisting of a parallel government with its own fighters trained by the Indian security forces and its own bureaucracy. The only sections of the local population, who were hostile to India and its agencies, were the Muslim migrants from Bihar.
............pages 12-13
The main hostility to India was from the US and China. Neither of them wanted India to succeed in what they perceived as its designs to break up Pakistan. They had convinced themselves that what they saw as the Indian designs was not the immediate outcome of the disturbances in East Pakistan and the resulting exodus of refugees. Instead, they tended to agree with the military rulers of Pakistan that the disturbances and the refugee exodus were the outcome of the Indian designs. Indias perceived closeness to Moscow under Indira Gandhi added to their hostility.
Those were the days of the first covert contacts between the administration of President Richard Nixon in Washington DC and the regime of Mao Zedong in Beijing. These contacts were facilitated by the military rulers of Pakistan. Yahya Khan earned the gratitude of both the US and China by making possible the first secret visit of Henry Kissinger, Nixons National Security Adviser, to Beijing in July, 1971, for talks with Mao and his associates.
The developing Washington-Beijing understanding was mainly directed against Moscow, but India too, which was perceived by both the US and China as the USSRs surrogate, came under their scan. There was an undeclared convergence of views between Washington DC and Beijing that Pakistan should be protected from India and that India should not be allowed to emerge as the dominating power of the South Asian region.
http://www.defence.pk/forums/milita...han-interview-1971-war-vetern.html#post457054
What do you say about the assertion that the seeds of secession of East Pakistan were sown in the 1960s and by the 1970 events had crossed the point of no return?
There were several reasons for the secession of East Pakistan. The biggest reason was Gandhi was able to stop the riots in East Pakistan which prevented the Hindus from being driven out to India, these Hindus were denied government jobs, they became school teachers, college professors, lawyers, businessmen, smugglers etc, they influenced the minds of the Bengalis against Pakistan.
There was a vast cultural difference between West Pakistanis and East Pakistanis and a thousand miles which separated the wings prevented any close association, the official language became an issue immediately after independence and because of the language East and West Pakistanis felt like foreigners in each others wings.In 1952-54 my father was posted to East Pakistan, when he returned he told us that East Pakistan would secede.
I was told by an American senator in 1965 that East Pakistan would secede, when I had never considered it possible. My younger brother Squadron Leader Shuaib after serving in East Pakistan told us East Pakistanis were saying that West Pakistan would separate from East Pakistan because of the economic disparity. The events of the 1960s and 1970s were the culmination, there was nothing common except religion, East Pakistan should have been separate state from the beginning.
Indian RAW's 'Kao Plan' unleashed in Balochistan ~ Terminal X
When Indira Gandhi took over as Prime Minister of India in the late 60s, among her basic priorities was to undo the division of India that created a new State, Pakistan which was highly irritating the Indian leaders since its birth.
In that particular era, Indias all intelligence related matters, both internally and externally were managed by only one intelligence agency of the country that was the Intelligence Bureau (IB).
The Daily Mails research indicates that when Mrs. Gandhi assumed the charge of the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) at New Delhi, she ordered the IB to prepare comprehensive plans to destabilize Pakistan and to transform into a failed State and to negate the 2-Nation Theory which was the foundation of the creation of Pakistan.
The Daily Mails research indicates that in 1968, the then head of IBs External Division Wing and the founder of Directorate General of Security, commonly known as DG(S) in India, Rameshwar Nath Kao, a confidante of Indira Gandhi and her late father as he was cleared of falling to any honey trap because of being a gay, presented a very comprehensive plan to fulfill Indira Gandhis wishes regarding Pakistan.
This, around 240-page plan, which is still known as The Kao Plan in Indias clandestine community had three different operations to destabilize Pakistan.
The Kao Plan, which is described as a three-pronged strategy by the Indian officials, had three different operations to eliminate Pakistan. The first, known as Kaos Bangla Plan(KBP) was chalked out to start an insurgency movement in East Pakistan and transform the Eastern part of Pakistan into a new State. The 2 nd plan, known as Kaos Balochistan Plan (KBP-II) was architected to create a similar scenario in Pakistans Balochistan province, while the 3 rd one was relating to organize a separation movement in the then North Western Frontier Province(NWFP) and now Khyber Pakhtun Khowah to establish an independent State there and this one is known as the Kaos Pakhtoonistan Plan (KPP).
Indira Gandhi, the research indicates, went through Rameshwar Nath Kaos plans with all the comprehensions .she, however, held a detailed meeting with Kao and discussed his plans in deep details. After the meeting, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi reached to the conclusion that Kao plans were very comprehensive and were having all the potential of earning far reaching results but she was very much aware of the limited capacities and abilities of country top intelligence agency the IB. after detailed deliberations with Kao and her other, very close associates, Mrs. Discovered the IB was not at all capable of executing the Kao plans. According to some Indian media persons, who were close to the developments at the PMO in late 60s, Indira Gandhi finally decided that since IB had not enough capabilities to run the foreign missions, prominently the Kao plans, there was an immense need for India to have a separate, more powerful and more resourceful intelligence operates to execute extremely high profile projects like the Kao Plans. According to these journalists, Indira, while contemplating upon forming a brand new intelligence mechanism, apart from Kao plans regarding Pakistan, was also eyeing on China.
The Daily Mails investigations indicate that after all the discussions and deliberations, it was decided to a new secret agency but to keep its profile as a research body and not as spy agency for the outer world, an agency, with the title of Research and Analysis Wing, commonly know as RAW these days, was finally formed on 21 st September, 1968 under the Cabinet Division and no one else was made the first Chief of Raw but Mr. Rameshwar Nath Kao. The Prime minister approved all the Kao plans regarding Pakistan but directed Kao to go step by step instead of executing all at once as it would add more creditability to the operations and advised him start with East Pakistan plan (KBP) and to execute the remaining ones in the light of the outcomes of the 1 st plan in this direction.
The research reveals that soon after the formation of RAW, Rameshwar Nath Kaos first priority was to form a team of professionals at the top level of agency. For this purpose, he brought in many like-minded officers from the Intelligence Bureau and from the Indian Police Service (IPS) cadre. According to certain media reports, the top wing of RAW in it its early days was comprising all the well trusted guys of Koa as majority of them was known as gays and thus were very commonly called the Kaoboys of RAW, not within the agency but also in the media across India and those officials who were not inducted in RAW by Kao, despite being falling on merit were the main sources of such leaks to the media and also to the young RAW officers.
These Kaoboys were initially given the task of enhancing the capabilities of the agency to the maximum for running the covert operations while a special wing was formed to launch the KBP in East Pakistan. The details of Kaos Bengla Plan would be discussed at another stage though; the research reveals that RAW launched the Bengla plan soon after its inception. It is worth mentioning here that soon after the inception of RAW, Kao also formed a high profile Monitoring Division, comprising the retired and serving officers from the Indian armys corps of Signals.
The basic features of Kao plan were to launch a Psychological Warfare operation in East Pakistan; to communicate with East Pakistani politicians, mainly those belonging to Awami League; to get on board all the East Pakistani civil servants working in East and West Pakistan and also in Pakistani embassies across the worl; to launch extensive media campaign against Pakistan armys actions in East Pakistan and to project a highly exaggerated plight of the people of East Pakistan in the world media and to organize moots and conferences across the world to highlight the sham miseries of the people of Pakistan; to establish a sense of deprivation amongst the general public in East Pakistan; to create a feeling of hatred amongst the people of East Pakistan and West Pakistan through social circles etc. While the training of militants of Mukti Bahni goons at training camps inside Indian territory, at West Bengal, Assam and Tripura and to arm them for an ultimate civil war was decided to be organized with the help and assistance of Indian army, headed by General Manekshaw and Indian Border Security Force(BSF), headed by K.F. Rustomji while the IB was also kept engaged for other covert operations. According to a veteran journalist Qutubuddine Aziz , who was stationed in former East Pakistan during the execution of India Kao plan for creating Bangladesh and the gentlemen who wrote the famous book Blood and Tears, India trained Mukti Bahini militants massacred at least one million non-Bengalis in former East Pakistan. He says "The sheaves of eye-witness accounts, prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that the massacre of West Pakistanis, Biharis and other non-Bengalis in East Pakistan had begun long before the Pakistan Army took punitive action against the rebels late in the night of March 25, 1971. It is also crystal clear that the Awami Leagues terror machine was the initiator and executor of the genocide against the non-Bengalis which exterminated at least a million of them in less than two months of horror and trauma. Many witnesses have opined that the federal Government acted a bit too late against the insurgents. The initial success of the federal military action is proved by the fact that in barely 30 days, the Pakistan Army, with a combat strength of 38,717 officers and men in East Pakistan, had squelched the Awami Leagues March-April, 1971, rebellion all over the province. They were all trained and armed by Indian army and were given details of non-Bengalis by a new spy agency of India, the Research and analysis Wing".
The Daily Mails investigations indicate that before launching the 1st phase of the Kao plan, the RAW leadership decided to dominate the Indian diplomatic Missions across the world to ensure the availability of strongest possible platforms to run RAW operations, specially the operations relating to the Psychological Warfare. Though the PMO had approved the placement of RAW officials in Indian diplomatic Missions under diplomatic covers, yet RAW decided to dig out and secure personal or official scandals of the as many as possible Indian diplomats across the world after it was found at the agencys Headquarters that in many cases, the diplomatic staff at different stations did not cooperate with RAW under cover officials in commissioning of certain undiplomatic practices in different parts of the world. It was this exercise of RAW that helped it immensely in launching aggressive media campaigns against Pakistan army and in mobilizing the world opinion in favor of east Pakistanis to have a separate State and to justify Indias open interference in the East Pakistans affairs, from the platforms of Indian diplomatic Missions across the world and it was started with blackmailing the Indian ambassador in Burma (Myanmar) in the late 60s while the practice is still going on very effectively for RAW. In the beginning of the launching the Kao plan in East Pakistan, RAW also attempted to use certain British parliamentarians and journalists for organizing moots and conferences in favor of separation of East Pakistan from the rest of Pakistan.
