Inside
the Military Mind - II
By Ahmad Faruqui,
PhD
Dansville, CA
The military mind during Ayub Khan’s period
was discussed last week. This column analyzes
the succeeding period, by relying upon Brig. A.
R. Siddiqi’s recollections, “East
Pakistan: The Endgame, An Onlooker’s Journal:
1969-71.” He served as the president’s
press advisor.
Siddiqi’s narrative begins when Ayub, fatigued
by nationwide protests over his 10-year rule,
asks the army chief to “fulfill his constitutional
duties” and declare martial law. Yahya,
in his first address to the nation on the 25th
of March, 1969, says that only the armed forces
“can restore sanity and put the country
back on the road to progress in a civil and constitutional
manner.” Thus unfolded an oxymoronic drama
that continues to this day.
Seeking to differentiate himself from Ayub, Yahya
would later say that even though he wore four
hats, the least important was the president’s
and the most important was the army chief’s.
He emphatically declared that martial law would
stay for an interim period. Privately, Siddiqi
tells us, he told his coterie of generals (including
Gul Hassan, Hamid, Pirzada, Umar and Mitha) that
it would take 14 years to put the country “back
on the rails.”
Yahya’s Legal Framework Order decreed that
general elections were to be held and the National
Assembly convened with a 120-day mandate to develop
a constitution. But, Siddiqi suggests, Yahya made
four fatal assumptions:
No party would have a majority
• The National Assembly would be unable
to meet its 120-day mandate and stand dissolved
• New elections would be held
• This cycle would continue indefinitely.
The landslide victory of the Awami League caught
the military off-guard. In February, in connivance
with Bhutto’s People’s Party, the
generals delayed the convening of the National
Assembly, triggering large-scale protests in East
Pakistan.
Bhutto fatuously suggested Pakistan needed two
prime ministers and threatened to break the legs
of anyone who went to Dhaka. Behind the scenes,
GHQ put Plan B into place, envisioning military
action. It spelled the death knell, not just for
democracy, but for Jinnah’s Pakistan.
On March 6, 1971, as events spun out of control,
Yahya said that the armed forces were honor bound
to “ensure the integrity, solidarity and
security of Pakistan — a duty in which they
have never failed.” Operation Searchlight
was launched on 25th March, 1971, the second anniversary
of the second martial law.
Mujib, the only Awami League leader to be captured,
was brought to West Pakistan. By putting “Big
Bird” in a cage, the generals thought they
had routed the enemy.
In the months to come, they denied that a civil
war was taking place. By this time, writes Siddiqi,
“The army had … gone berserk. Young
officers had become trigger-happy.”
The army began conducting murderous “sweeps”
in which whole villages were wiped out. The “whiff
of grapeshot” had turned into a fusillade
of death. Gen. Niazi did not deny rapes were being
carried out and opined, in a Freudian tone, “You
cannot expect a man to live, fight, and die in
East Pakistan and go to Jhelum for sex, would
you?”
In the midst of bedlam, there appeared “a
macabre joke,” a government documentary
called, “The Great Betrayal.” It was
intended to show the evils carried out by the
“miscreants.” But the footage of human
skulls even irked Yahya’s sensitivities.
He asked, “How could you differentiate between
the two skulls – Bengalis and non-Bengalis?
I am damned if I can tell one from the other.”
As the insurgency expanded, black protest flags
replaced the national flag everywhere except in
the cantonments. A furious general told Siddiqi,
“No national army in the world has ever
been subjected to such public humiliation,”
but never wondered why matters had come to such
a sorry pass.
In June, Yahya told the nation, “No government
worth its name could allow the country to be destroyed
by open and armed rebellion against the State.”
The army’s onslaught continued to no avail.
Finally, in November, Mujib was sentenced to death.
A “Crush India” campaign was initiated
in the West, since that was how the army intended
to defend the East. An effete top brass boasted
of taking on India and defeating it.
On December 3, Siddiqi was given a coded signal,
“The balloon has gone up,” i.e., the
PAF had launched sorties into India. When he asked
Air Marshal Rahim to justify the raids, he retorted,
“Success is the biggest justification. My
birds should be right over Agra by now, knocking
the hell out of them.”
At GHQ, thinking they had won the war, the generals
ordered a round of drinks “in an unbroken
chain.” Imagining himself in a bar-room
brawl, one gloated, “We will give the enemy
a broken nose.” Even a teetotaler colonel
who worked with Siddiqi “had a couple of
stiff ones and downed them straight.”
An army thrust was directed at Indian forces in
Ramgarh, from where Delhi was going to be an easy
target. It suffered a serious setback. Even Chamb,
the prize of the 1965 war, was not taken. The
much awaited counter-offensive under Gen. Tikka
never took off.
It did not take the Chinese military attaché
in Islamabad long to conclude that the war had
come to an end, “The Indians are holding
you on, waiting to get it over with in East Pakistan.”
As the denouement loomed, Gul Hassan asked Siddiqi
to do his “usual PR stuff.” When the
latter said he was at a loss for words, he was
scripted, “The army was out-numbered, out-gunned
but not out-classed. Cut off from its main base,
it did what could be expected from the best of
armies.”
On December 16th, a terse statement was read on
Radio Pakistan: “Under an arrangement between
the commanders of India and Pakistan in the eastern
theatre, Indian troops have entered Dhaka and
fighting has ceased in East Pakistan.”
Siddiqi says that the endgame was the inevitable
consequence of military mismanagement. There was
some poetic justice. Yahya was dismissed and put
under house arrest. The Supreme Court ruled that
he was a usurper who treated the country like
chattel. He developed paralysis and died in August
1979 after a prolonged illness. Hamid outlived
Yahya by a number of years but died “unsung
and un-mourned.”
But Siddiqi fails to note that there was no real
justice. The independent commission report into
the debacle recommended that Yahya and 11 generals
who had caused the dismemberment of the country
be court-martialed, saying it was not enough to
retire them. The military suppressed the report
for 30 years. One day, it suddenly popped up on
“the other side of the hill.”
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