The Hamoodur Rehman Commission of Inquiry into the debacle puts the entire blame on the generals. The Commission was established by the new President of Pakistan (and later Prime Minister) Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in December 1971 to examine the causes of what went wrong. It interviewed 213 witnesses and submitted its report in July 1972 to Mr Bhutto. Given its highly sensitive nature, the Commission’s report was not released to the public.
After the repatriation of prisoners of war from India, the Commission was reactivated in May 1974. The Commission resumed its inquiry and examined 72 persons, including Lt.-Gen AAK Niazi, Commander, Eastern Command, all the Major Generals and Brigadiers who had served in East Pakistan, Rear Admiral Sharif, Flag Officer Commanding, Pakistan Navy, Air Commodore Inam, the senior most Air Force Officer in East Pakistan, and several civilian officers like the Chief Secretary, the Inspector General of Police, and two Divisional Commissioners. It also re-examined Maj Gen M Rahim Khan, who was posted in the East, at his own request.
Just like the main report, the supplemental report was not released to the public. One day, a bootlegged copy was published in India and then it made its way to Pakistan.
What did the Commission conclude? It identified several factors that were responsible for the secession of East Pakistan, but all of them pointed to the military. It concluded that “that the process of moral degeneration among the senior ranks of the Armed Forces was set in motion by their involvement in Martial Law duties in 1958 [under the tenure of General Ayub Khan], that these tendencies reappeared and were, in fact, intensified when Martial Law was imposed in the country once again in March 1969 by General Yahya Khan, and that there was indeed substance in the allegations that a considerable number of senior Army Officers had not only indulged in large scale acquisition of lands and houses and other commercial activities, but had also adopted highly immoral and licentious ways of life which seriously affected their professional capabilities and their qualities of leadership.”
Once Operation Searchlight was launched in East Pakistan on 25 March 1971, the army took over the administration of East Pakistan. One of the witnesses to the Commission, a former civil service official, said: “The installation of a civilian governor in September 1971 was merely to hoodwink public opinion at home and abroad. Poor Dr Malik [the governor] and his ministers were figureheads only. Real decisions in all important matters still lay with the Army. I remember the first picture of the new Cabinet. Maj Gen Farman Ali was prominently visible sitting on the right side of the Governor, although he was not a member of the Cabinet.”
Brig M Saleemullah, who was the commander of 203 (A) Brigade in East Pakistan, is quoted as saying, “[P]rolonged commitment on Martial Law duties and interment security roles had affected the professional standards of the Army.”
Proper and firm disciplinary action, and not merely retirement from service, is necessary to ensure against any future recurrence of the kind of shameful conduct displayed during the 1971 war
Similarly, Rear Admiral M Sharif, who was the Flag Officer Commanding the Pakistan Navy in East Pakistan, is quoted as saying the same thing: “[T]he foundation of this defeat was laid way back in 1958 when the Armed Forces took over the country ...” The Commission concluded that the top brass of the military were entirely focused on “learning the art of politics” and had “gradually abandoned their primary function of the art of soldiering.” Given all the powers they had expropriated for themselves, “they also started amassing wealth and usurping status for themselves.”
The commission unambiguously put the onus of the defeat on Lt Gen AAK Niazi, who was given the command of the Eastern Garrison on 7 April 1971. From that day onwards until the surrender on 16 December 1971, all the troops in East Pakistan remained under his operational control. He also assumed the powers of the Martial Law Administrator when a civilian Governor was appointed in August 1971.
The Commission’s report is a searing indictment of the army’s high command. It calls for booking “[S]enior army commanders who have brought disgrace and defeat to Pakistan by their professional incompetence, culpable negligence and wilful neglect in the performance of their duties, and physical and moral cowardice in abandoning the fight when they had the capability and resources to resist the enemy.”
Unequivocally, it states that “[P]roper and firm disciplinary action, and not merely retirement from service, is necessary to ensure against any future recurrence of the kind of shameful conduct displayed during the 1971 war. We believe that such action would not only satisfy the nation’s demand for punishment where it is deserved but would also serve to emphasise the concept of professional accountability which appears to have been forgotten by senior army officers since their involvement in politics, civil administration and Martial Law duties.”
Of course, given the army’s deep entrenchment in Pakistan’s strategic culture, even after its colossal loss of face in December 1971, the Commission’s recommendations were never implemented. Mr Bhutto, in conjunction with a few senior army officers, gave several senior officers who had served in East Pakistan the easy way out and retired them. None were court martialled, let alone sentenced, not even the man the Commission found guilty of the most egregious charges against him. Lt.-Gen Niazi remained a free man who would go on to write his memoir years later, exonerating himself of the high crimes of which he had been found guilty by the Commission.
The Commission’s report has not aged well. Its biggest mistake was its failure to indict the political leaders based in the western wing played in the secession of East Pakistan. ZA Bhutto was not happy with the outcome of the 1970 general elections. Concerned that Sheikh Mujib, whose party, the Awami League, had won a majority of seats in the National Assembly, would become the next prime minister, he began calling for two prime ministers, one in the West and one in the East. His party, the PPP, had won a majority of seats in West Pakistan and he wanted to become its prime minister. When it seemed the National Assembly was soon going to be called into session in East Pakistan, he forbade the elected representatives of his party to attend the session, going so far as to say that he would break the legs of anyone who travelled to the East to attend it.
He did go to East Pakistan to participate in political negotiations with Sheikh Mubib under the army’s auspices, but they went awry. He left Dhaka just before Operation Searchlight commenced. When he landed in Karachi, he said: “God has saved Pakistan.”
Bhutto had connived with several politicians in the West to put pressure on General Yahya to annul the elections. He had also won over a few generals in Yahya’s intimate circle to his side. Sensing the pressure closing in on him, Yahya annulled the elections. None of this is mentioned in the book he published in September 1971, entitled The Great Tragedy.
The Commission is silent on the role that MA Jinnah’s decision in 1948, just a year after independence, to adopt Urdu as the national language had in triggering resentment in East Pakistan, where Bengali was the primary language and Urdu was not even spoken or understood by most people. The tensions came to a head in February 1952, when language riots broke out in Dhaka.
On top of which came economic exploitation by the West. In August 1947, East Pakistan’s per capita income was slightly lower than West Pakistan’s. West Pakistan had a stronger industrial base, large irrigation projects, and was the recipient of large amounts of government assistance and foreign aid. East Pakistan remained heavily dependent on its agricultural sector and had lower levels of government investment, even though it contributed handsomely to the economy through the revenue generated from exporting jute. By the mid-1950s, the gap in per capita income had widened and West Pakistan’s per capita income was about 30% higher than East Pakistan’s.
By the time the Fourth Five Year Plan (1970-75) was issued, the Government finally sought to rectify the growing economic imbalance. It acknowledged that “The disparity in per capita income of East and West Pakistan also increased during the period because the agricultural break-through was limited to West Pakistan… The Fourth Plan must seek to integrate social change with economic progress.” Noting that a growth rate of a little over 4 per cent had been achieved during the 1960s in East Pakistan, the plan sought to accelerate this growth rate to 7.5 per cent but acknowledged that “it will require a tremendous effort.”
This was all talk and no substance and the proverbial case of doing something “too little, too late.” All along, the people of East Pakistan felt like they were second-class citizens, economically, politically and militarily. According to Pakistani economist Parvez Hasan, “the growing divergence in the lifestyles of the well-to-do in the two wings sowed the seeds of political discontent among the Bengali intelligentsia.”
It was clear to any objective observer that all power in Pakistan resided in the West, whose leaders treated the East with disdain and contempt, and exploited its resources at will, treating it like a colony. This fed resentment in the East, whose leaders ultimately put forward the Six Point Plan for creating more equity between the two wings. That plan was regarded as a treasonous statement by the west-based government of Pakistan. Sheikh Mujib and other leaders of the Awami League were branded as being party to the Agartala Conspiracy in 1962. They were arrested but later released when nationwide protests broke out against President Ayub in both wings of the country.
It is instructive to analyse how Ayub Khan viewed East Pakistan and its leaders even before he seized power through a coup in October 1958. Ayub served as General Officer Commanding of the 14th Division in the East in between December 1948 and late 1949 and was appointed the army chief in 1951. In his dairies, that were published in 2007, several years after his death in 1974, he wrote that the people of East Pakistan were “incapable of seeing beyond their noses.” He characterised Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the head of the Awami League, as being “a limited man lacking foresight and statesmanship… [who] is bound to over-react making accommodation between the two wings impossible.” Elsewhere, he called him a “charlatan.”
In 1968, a year before he fell from power, Ayub wrote: “How long will this partnership [between East and West Pakistan] last, I do not know."
S.M. Zafar, his former law minister, told Ayub that “the chances of the two wings staying together were remote.” Ayub predicted: “The East will last a few years, and the West will drag on…There is no communication between the two parts. Let us hope some miracle will save us from complete separation.”
As events got out of control in East Pakistan in 1971, Ayub counselled General Yahya Khan, who had deposed him in March 1969, through a back channel that he should negotiate a withdrawal of Pakistani forces with Shaikh Mujib (then Yahya’s prisoner) and convert Pakistan into a confederation. Ayub had rightly concluded that after the army action, it could not survive as a federation. But Yahya had tuned out Ayub, his mentor of many years and the man who had appointed him commander-in-chief of the army.
More than half a century has elapsed since the great tragedy of 1971. History has shown very clearly that the generals and the politicians who were based entirely in West Pakistan connived to implement policies that broke up the united Pakistan that Jinnah had worked so assiduously to create. 16 December, coming just nine days before Jinnah’s birth, should be commemorated as a Day of Mourning.