Pakistan: The Eye of the Storm by Mr. Owen Bennett Jones

Author:Mr. Owen Bennett Jones [Jones, Owen Bennett]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2008-03-19T01:22:00+00:00

Civil War

At 8.oo p.m. on 26 March General Yahya addressed the rapidly disintegrating Pakistani nation. The political negotiations, he said, had failed. Denouncing Mujib as an obstinate, obdurate traitor, he declared that it was the duty of the armed forces to ensure the integrity, solidarity and security of the country. The party that had won the overwhelming backing of the East Pakistani people, the Awami League, was banned. `I should have taken action against Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his collaborators weeks ago,' declared Yahya. `He and his party have defied the lawful authority for over three weeks. They have insulted Pakistan's flag and defiled the photograph of the Father of the Nation. They have tried to run a parallel government. They have created turmoil, terror and insecurity."

By the time he spoke, the Pakistan army had already moved into action. After the final breakdown of the talks with Mujib, Yahya had left Dhaka by plane. Operation SEARCHLIGHT began the moment he reached West Pakistani airspace. For weeks, West Pakistani troops in Dhaka had been too afraid to leave their barracks. Even to be seen in public risked violent attack from Bengali activists - some soldiers had been killed in the city in broad daylight. The troops wanted revenge and, in the words of the Hamoodur Rehman Commission, 'It was as if a ferocious animal having been kept chained and starved was suddenly let loose.'42 At midnight, a commando unit raided Mujib's house and, after a brief fight, arrested the Awami League leader. The Pakistan army's next targets were any Bengalis with weapons.

While some soldiers from West Pakistan were trying to gather arms from their erstwhile colleagues, others headed for Dhaka University, long considered a hotbed of Bengali nationalism. At 2.oo a.m. soldiers arrived at two student hostels and met strong resistance but within a couple of hours the army had prevailed. It is impossible to say how many died - quite probably hundreds. By the morning, freshly-turned earth indicated that the West Pakistani troops had dug mass graves.43

Dhaka was, more or less, under control but outside the city it was a different story. With their obstinate refusal to understand East Pakistani opinion, the senior officers in West Pakistan predicted that the general population would remain largely neutral. It did not. The Bengali population stood full square behind their arrested leader, Mujibur Rahman. The West Pakistani troops responded to this defiance with furious aggression, raping, murdering and even massacring whole villages, women and children included. The man in charge of the campaign, General Tikka Khan, himself conceded that the West Pakistani troops killed as many as 30,000 people. Presumably, the true figure was far higher.

Given what was happening, it was not surprising that Bengalis in the Pakistani army decided to make a run for it. From all over East Pakistan, Bengali soldiers headed for India where they formed the rapidly emerging Bengali resistance army - the Mukti Bahini, or freedom fighters. The Hamoodur Rehman Commission reckoned that out of 17,ooo army personnel of Bengali origin only 4,000 were successfully disarmed and that the rest made it to India.

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