He continued, “We find, however, that instead of giving us the opportunity to serve our country in positions where our natural talents and native genius could be used to the greatest advantage, important posts are being entrusted, as has been done in the past, to foreigners. British officers have been appointed to head the three fighting services, and a number of other foreigners are in key senior appointments. This was not our understanding of how Pakistan would be run.”The Quaid replied in deliberate and clear tones. Raising his finger, he said, “Do not forget that you in the armed forces are the servants of the people. You do not make national policy. It is we, the civilians who decide these issues and it is your duty to carry out those tasks with which you are entrusted”(Pakistan at the Crossroads by Air Marshal Asghar Khan; Chapter: Soldiers and Politics, PP 31, 32, 33).
On February 15, 1948, the East Bengal Regiment was raised at Kurmitola cantonment near Dhaka. During his first visit to East Bengal, the Governor-General, Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, reviewed a ceremonial parade of the First Battalion of the East Bengal Regiment, Senior Tigers, and complimented the men and officers on their performance. “I am much impressed with the success you have achieved in such a short spell of time. If you work with the same spirit and enthusiasm in the days to come, I am confident you will be second to none as soldiers. During the foreign regime, you were classed as non-martial. It is your country, your own state now and it is up to you to prove your worth.”
According to a pamphlet produced by the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) some thirteen years later, the Quaid’s remarks “created unbounded enthusiasm amongst all ranks, making them conscious of their stake in honour of Bengali Mussalmans.”
Once bitten by the political power bug, however, there is no stopping the truly ambitious ones to wait for the opportunity to strike and hasten to create the right circumstances for its success. General Sir Douglas Gracey, Army Commander-in-Chief (January 1948 to January 1951), in a parting message to General Ayub cautioned him about the existence of a ‘Young Turks’ party, so called after the coup that proved the Turkish army had problems under the Caliphate.
Ayub writes in his autobiography Friends Not Masters: “I took over as Commander-in-Chief on 17 January 1951. General Gracey did not say very much to me when he was leaving. Not much can be done in handing over and taking over a job like this and the new man must start all on his own. But he did mention to me, somewhat vaguely, that there as a ‘Young Turks’ Party in the army. I wanted to know what he meant by that. He was not very explicit, but did say that there were some peculiar people, like Akbar Khan. Two or three months later the Akbar conspiracy, which came to be known as the Rawalpindi Conspiracy, was discovered.” He would find it hard to believe how officers of the ranks of major generals and brigadiers, perfectly sensible people, could be that silly and irresponsible to risk such mad adventures.
The armed forces, on the contrary, had the image of a highly disciplined and organised body aglow with the flush of victory in a great global war. They looked superior to all other institutions in the country — the bureaucracy, the politicians and the commercial classes. The only flaw in the image was that it was uni-zonal, almost wholly identified with West Pakistan, from where the great bulk of the armed forces hailed. In time to come, this single flaw in the military image was to cause most of the diverse inter-wing pulls and tensions retarding the process of national image building. The wing with the predominance of the military forces emerged, quite inevitably, as the stronger of the two wings.
(Concluded)
The writer is a retired brigadier and can be reached at [email protected]