Daily Times

I am able to find neither a political and economic nor a moral justification for the current policy of military intervention. I have been examining the facts as closely as it is possible to do, given the censorship of news by the military regime and the resulting imbalances in news reports, some of which necessarily emanate from India.

I worry over the statements and editorials which provoke public paranoia by suggesting an Indian-Jewish-American conspiracy in this conflict. This, regardless of the fact that with arms and money the American government is underwriting the murderous mission of the military dictatorship. Above all, I am distressed by the promotion of religious fundamentalism and the systematic killing and harassment by the army of our Hindu citizens.

I should stress that no genuine restoration of civilian government will be possible until the East Pakistanis have been conceded their right to autonomy or even secession.

I believe that the only workable course for West Pakistanis is to insist on immediate and unconditional termination of martial law, the convening of the duly elected National Assembly, and a commitment that the majority decisions of that Assembly shall be binding on all, even if these decisions dismember Pakistan as a state consisting of East and West. We must reject the army’s absurd claim that it has intervened to protect the nation’s ‘integrity’ from the party that had just won, in Pakistan’s only freely held elections, a governing majority in the National Assembly.

In fact, the elected representatives of East Pakistan had insisted only on fulfilling their mandate to achieve autonomy for their province. The proclamation by the East Pakistanis of the independent state of Bangla Desh took place only after the army refused to convene the National Assembly and after it had brutally intervened in East Pakistan on March 25, 1971. In his speech of June 28, General Yahya denied the right of the National Constituent Assembly to draw up a constitution and he harshly attacked all the leaders of the Awami League. This destroyed the possibility of any settlement based on the mandate of the elections.

I know that I shall be condemned for my position. For someone who is facing a serious trial in America, it is not easy to confront one’s own government. Yet it is not possible for me to oppose American crimes in Southeast Asia or Indian occupation of Kashmir while accepting the crimes that my government is committing against the people of East Pakistan. Although I mourn the death of Biharis by Bengali vigilantes, and condemn the irresponsibilities of the Awami League, I am not willing to equate their actions with that of the government and the criminal acts of an organised, professional army.

According to reliable reports, which were not challenged by the government, no more than 10,000 persons were killed or wounded by Bengali nationalists in the riots against the Biharis. At the beginning of August, however, West Pakistan military authorities issued a white paper, which claimed that 100,000 people were killed by the Bengali opposition. These and other exaggerated claims in the white paper were obviously intended to justify trials and possible death sentences for opposition leaders. As this letter is being written, the military government has announced that Sheikh Mujib will face a secret military tribunal on August 12, on charges of “waging war” against Pakistan. Since the white paper announced that 79 members of the unconvened National Assembly will face criminal charges, Mujib’s trial may foreshadow more secret prosecutions.

I know that the army did not intervene in East Pakistan to stop the killing of non-Bengalis, which went on for three weeks while the Generals pretended to seek extra-parliamentary deals with the politicians. Saving civilian lives was not the motive behind the vast repressions that have already cost countless Pakistanis their lives and property and forced millions to flee to India. Unequal bartering of brutalities is not a function of responsible government. The very fact that this military regime seeks justification for its behaviour by referring to the excesses of the Awami League and the aroused masses is a measure of the steep decline in the civic standards of our army and civil services. Above all, criminality is not a commercial proposition: one cannot deposit the crimes of one into the account of another.

Washington’s assistance to the West Pakistan junta should be a lesson to those Pakistanis who believed that the US, given a choice between militarists and moderate democrats, would choose the latter. The leaders of the Awami League in East Pakistan failed to understand how important West Pakistan was to the Nixon-Kissinger strategy of building an informal anti-Soviet alliance of dependable clients around the Mediterranean and Indian oceans — from Spain and Portugal, through Greece and Israel, to Iran and Pakistan.

It has been said that General Yahya is now being rewarded by US support for having arranged Mr Kissinger’s recent mission to China. If this is so, then the Chinese-American detente will have started by being detrimental to the weak and poor in Asia. Whatever the reasons for US policy, however, one effect is clear: Americans have become silent accomplices in crimes against humanity in yet another part of Asia. But their obligations are not as urgent as yours and mine.

I do not know if my position would at all contribute to a humane settlement. Given the fact that our government is neither accountable to the public nor sensitive to the opinion of mankind, our protest may have no effect until this regime has exhausted all its assets and taken the country down the road to moral, political, and economic bankruptcy. However, lack of success does not justify the crime of silence in the face of criminal, arbitrary power.

(This excerpt is taken from ‘Letter to a Pakistani Diplomat’ published on September 2, 1971 in The New York Review of Books)

Eqbal Ahmad was a Pakistani writer, journalist, and anti-war activist. He was strongly critical of the Middle East strategy of the US as well as what he saw as the ‘twin curse’ of nationalism and religious fanaticism in such countries as Pakistan