Ground Realities
Pakistan, post-December 16 . . .
It is time to go back to a recapitulation of history. No, not ours, but that of the state of Pakistan as it was in the days immediately after the emergence of Bangladesh out of the ashes of what used to be East Pakistan. As millions of Bengalis celebrated the surrender of the Pakistan occupation forces at the Race Course in Dhaka on December 16, a state of understandable, perfect gloom descended on what had been till then West Pakistan and was now all that remained of Pakistan.
The state television for sometime flashed images of what was described as the fall of Dhaka. General Amir Abdullah Khan Niazi, who had only days earlier vowed to fight on, who had indeed told the world media at the Dhaka Intercontinental (today's Sheraton) that the city could only be taken over his dead body, was shown signing the instrument of surrender before General Jagjit Singh Aurora, commander of the Indo-Bangladesh Joint Command.
For Pakistanis across the spectrum, such scenes were a cause for immediate misery and, obviously, anger. In all the months that had gone by since hostilities broke out between their army and the Bengali population of East Pakistan, they had been led to believe that first Tikka Khan and then Niazi had been squarely beating the Bengalis at any and every game.
When India entered the war on December 3, it was given out all across West Pakistan that the Hindus (and that was how most people in West Pakistan looked down on India, from a communal perspective) were about to lose the war with their braver and far superior Muslim enemies. The shock, therefore, at knowing that East Pakistan was now Bangladesh and that the streets of Dhaka pulsated with cheering Bengalis celebrating the Mukti Bahini and the Indian army, was immense. Many broke down in tears. Others were soon to turn their ire to the Yahya Khan junta, which had all along tried telling people that everything was going well in East Pakistan.
Even as news of the defeat in Dhaka began to sink in, the war on the western front went on. Unknown to many at the time, the Nixon administration, through soliciting the assistance of the Soviet Union, was in full gear trying to persuade Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to call a ceasefire along the western front. The fear in Washington, as also among Pakistanis themselves, was that after helping to liberate Bangladesh, the Indian army would go on to dismantle the rest of Pakistan.
No one in the Pakistani military regime appeared before the country on December 16 to report on the calamity that had overtaken the army in Bangladesh. And Pakistan Television, after initially showing images of the surrender in Dhaka, clamped a ban on any further display of such footage. Across Pakistan, in cities like Peshawar, Quetta and Karachi, demonstrations broke out demanding the trial of the leaders of the junta.
The next day, December 17, the Indian government called an end to hostilities on the western front, sending a sigh of relief all over Pakistan. Rump Pakistan, after all, would not be broken into further pieces. The same day, late in the evening, President Yahya Khan spoke to Pakistanis over radio and television and showed no contrition over the way events had turned out for the Pakistan army in Bangladesh. He vowed to go on waging a war against the enemy until final victory had been achieved by Pakistan.
Even as he spoke, Pakistan's soldiers, now prisoners of war in Bangladesh, were being herded into camps across the new country under the protection of the Indian army. And Pakistan's local Bengali collaborators were on the run from the Mukti Bahini and Bangladesh's people. A pro-Pakistan politician was seized by a mob in Dhaka and never seen again.
An academic who had been complicit in the actions of the army was beaten and left for dead on a street in central Dhaka. In Rawalpindi, a clutch of Bengali politicians who had arrived in November to be part of new political arrangements with Yahya Khan found themselves stranded and without a country to go back to. Nurul Amin, named prime minister in early December, suddenly did not matter any more. Mahmud Ali and Raja Tridiv Roy knew that having collaborated with the regime, they had nowhere to go.
In the four days between December 16 and December 20, Pakistanis in general and young military officers in particular made it clear that they wanted Yahya Khan and his regime to go. At one point, General Abdul Hamid Khan, chief of staff of the Pakistan army (the army was then headed by a commander-in-chief, in this case Yahya), called a meeting of army officers in Rawalpindi cantonment and attempted to explain the causes behind the debacle in Bangladesh.
He was greeted with expletives, one more profane than the next, and eventually was forced to leave the room. Hamid, who had after the Dhaka surrender begun nurturing ambitions of taking over from Yahya, now knew that the end was near. Officers like General Gul Hasan, in contact with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, were already planning to dominate the new circumstances.
In effect, President Yahya Khan was informed in no unambiguous terms that he had to quit. And to whom would power be transferred in that case? Evidently, at that point, the one man who mattered was Bhutto, then in New York, having presented the case for Pakistan as his country's new deputy prime minister and foreign minister. For his part, Bhutto assessed conditions from afar and would not return until he was certain he could feel safe in Pakistan. He had already entertained the United Nations Security Council with his histrionics by tearing up what looked like a copy of a ceasefire resolution, and leaving the hall through telling the global diplomats present there that he would not be a party to the dismemberment of Pakistan.
Bhutto arrived back in Rawalpindi around noon on December 20, and was immediately whisked away to the president's house for a meeting with General Yahya Khan. He emerged a few hours later as Pakistan's new president and, incongruously, chief martial law administrator. Late in the evening, President Bhutto addressed the nation, and in a rambling speech promised his people that he would build a new Pakistan for them. He extolled the bravery of Pakistan's soldiers in the just concluded war and asked forgiveness of his "brothers and sisters" in "East Pakistan."
He showed absolutely no contrition over his role in the making of the crisis in Bangladesh but appeared keen to reassure Pakistanis that their future was safe in his hands. He placed Yahya Khan under house arrest and appointed new chiefs of staff for the army, air force and navy. Two days later, on December 22, as Bangladesh's provisional government arrived in Dhaka from exile, Bhutto decreed that detained Awami League leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman be moved from solitary confinement in prison to house arrest.
Mujib, who had declared Bangladesh's independence in March before his arrest by the Pakistan army, had been tried before a secret military tribunal in Lyallpur and sentenced to death on charges of treason. He and Bhutto had not met since the army crackdown in Dhaka, but, on December 27, Pakistan's new leader arrived at the rest house where Mujib had been moved.
As the Indian journalist Kuldip Nayar would later report in his book, Distant Neighbours: A Tale of the Subcontinent, a surprised Mujib asked Bhutto: "Bhutto, how are you here?" Bhutto's response did not fit the question: "I am president of Pakistan." An even more surprised Mujib teased him: "But you know that position belongs to me." He was evidently referring to the Awami League's victory at the general elections of a year earlier. This time Bhutto told him: "I am also chief martial law administrator."
In the next hour or so, Bhutto gave Mujib to understand that the Indian army had occupied "East Pakistan" and that the two men needed to be together in the coming struggle to drive the Indians off. Mujib, ever the astute politician, knew better.
Evening lengthened into cold night on January 8, 1972, as President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto accompanied Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to Chaklala airport. As the plane carrying Bangladesh's founding father to freedom flew off into the dark and towards London, Bhutto said to no one in particular, "The nightingale has flown."
Syed Badrul Ahsan is Editor, Current Affairs, The Daily Star.
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