On December 20th, 1971, Yahya was deposed as president, army chief and chief martial administrator by the Pakistani military. His ignominious departure provided a sharp contrast to the fanfare that had attended his arrival to that exalted office on the 25th of March, 1969, when he had replaced President Field Marshal Ayub Khan. Faced with widespread riots against his dictatorial rule, Ayub had handed over the baton to his army chief, saying he did not want to preside over the destruction of his country.
Sadly, that is precisely what happened when Yahya ordered the army to arrest the leaders of the Awami League on the 25th of March, 1971. In his first address to the nation, he had said that the armed forces would “restore sanity and put the country back on the road to progress in a civil and constitutional manner.” Publically, he declared that martial law was an interim measure. However, his intentions were entirely different.
This is disclosed in Brig. A. R. Siddiqui’s memoirs, “East Pakistan: The Endgame, An Onlooker’s Journal: 1969-71. Brig. Siddiqui, who headed the Inter-Service Publications Relations from 1967-73, says that Yahya informed his confidantes (Generals Gul Hassan, Hamid, Pirzada, Umar and Mitha) that it would take 14 years to put the country “back on the rails.”
Yahya issued a Legal Framework Order which decreed that general elections would be held and the National Assembly convened with a 120-day mandate to develop a constitution. But he 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 elections were indeed the fairest in the country’s history. But they handed a landslide victory to the Awami League. Caught off-guard, in February 1971, in connivance with Z. A. Bhutto’s People’s Party, he delayed the convening of the National Assembly, triggering large-scale protests in East Pakistan.
On March 6, 1971, as events spun out of control, Yahya said that the armed forces would “ensure the integrity, solidarity and security of Pakistan-a duty in which they have never failed.” He launched Operation Search Light.
Mujib, the head of the Awami League, was arrested. By putting the 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”The army had … gone berserk. Young officers had become trigger-happy.”
The army began conducting murderous “sweeps” in which whole villages were wiped out. Lt.-Gen. Niazi, the commander of the Eastern Garrison,did not deny rapes were being carried out. In a Freudian tone, he opined “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 the army doctrine was that the defense of the East lay in the West. The top brass boasted that they would take on India and defeat it.
On December 20th, 1971, Yahya was deposed as president, army chief and chief martial administrator by the Pakistani military. His ignominious departure provided a sharp contrast to the fanfare that had attended his arrival to that exalted office on the 25th of March, 1969, when he had replaced President Field Marshal Ayub Khan
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 Chief 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.”
However, the reality was quite different. The PAF raids were anticipated by the IAF and caused little harm. On the contrary, they gave the excuse that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi needed to order the Indian army into East Pakistan.
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.”
In the West, an army thrust was directed at Indian forces in Ramgarh, from where Delhi was going to be an easy target. It went nowhere. Even Chamb in Indian-held Kashmir, the prize of the 1965 war, was not taken. The much awaited counter-offensive under Lt.-Gen. Tikka never took off.
The Chinese military attaché told the Pakistanis, “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.”
The army made Yahya a scape goat and installed Z. A. Bhutto in his place. Yahya was dismissed and put under house arrest. The Supreme Court termed him a usurper. Yahya died in August 1979 after a prolonged illness. Hamid outlived Yahya by a number of years but died “unsung and un-mourned.”
But retirement was insufficient punishment for the generals who had lost the war and half the country, losing lives and treasure for no gain. The Hamoodur Rehman Commission found that Yahya and 11 generals had caused the dismemberment of the country and recommended their court-martial. That was never done. Indeed, the military suppressed the report for 30 years. One day, it suddenly popped up on”the other side of the hill.”
The writer can be reached at [email protected]
Published in Daily Times, December 22nd 2018.