(Note: This is the same article that was in the Times of London on April 18th 1971. It may have been attributed incorrectly. As I do not have the original papers and the articles were contributed by third parties, I cannot for certain say which paper it appeared in or if it was in both papers)

General Yahya Khan, President of Pakistan and C-in-C of the Pakistan army is a good man and intelligent soldier. It was simple sense of duty (and catastrophic intelligence misinformation) which persuaded him three weeks ago to order his troops to restore the law and order in Pakistan.

Because he is a decent, orthodox armyman, who acted according to orthodox army logic, General Yahya thinks he has succeeded and can now continue as leader of a united nation. He is still unaware that his attempted coup was the worst military crime of the recent years and probably the biggest political blunder.

Islamabad, the West Pakistani capital, is full of noble looking soldiers like Yahya. They stride around the orderly streets with a fine proud bearing; they play polo as if nothing had happened to disturb their sport. It is strange to arrive here and see them, so remote from the piles of dead in East Pakistan.

The officers’ wives complain that the emergency has caused the cancellation of the Islamabad gardens competition — just when the spring borders were looking their neatest. In such crisp, disciplined surroundings it gradually becomes a matter of removing some unfortunate untidyness even if they are your countrymen.

Apart from the soldiers, Islamabad is populated by ordinary West Pakistani citizens who read daily censored newspapers about happiness, tranquility and joy in the East and therefore agree that law and order operation was a great success, and the foreign community who read other newspapers and therefore disagree.

Among Islamabad people who knew there was a civil war on, diplomats for instance, I found suprising unanimity. They believe that Pakistan, as a nation built of two halves separated by geography but united by religion, is finished. East Pakistan is doomed to many years of starvation, chaos and bloodshed. West Pakistan is doomed to an economic crisis of considerable seriousness. The two must inevitably break apart.

"Sheer bloody stupidity" was the undiplomatic phrase one diplomat was driven to use; even General Yahya’s best friend in the diplomatic corps, man who strives to explain, if not to justify, what made the general act as he did, are beginning to use words like “dementia” to describe the unwillingness to recognise the horror of what he has done, and its consequences must be.

Of course, Yahya is not only feeling in this terrible story. The vacillating, neurotic personality of the East Pakistani leader, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, can also be partly blamed. During the crucial negotiation Sheikh Mujibur Rahman seemed almost to prefer the idea of prison to the awesome responsibilities of being Prime Minister of Pakistan. Nothing else explains the tame manner in which he awaited in Dacca on March 25. At all events he achieved his wish. People in Islamabad who know such things say Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is now tucked away in comfortable cells at the Attock Fort 50 miles from Islamabad.

A real heavy is Mr. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, West Pakistan’s political leader. There is evidence that Mr. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto deliberately sabotaged the negotiations between General Yahya and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. He did so to protect West Pakistani interest—perhaps with the connivance of the army but it was also obvious that he did not welcome the prospect of playing second fiddle to Sheikh Mu jib in a united Pakistan.

Also part of this stage army of the bad are the hawkish army generals and Punjabi civil servants who surrounded Yahya and are supposed by some to have pushed him into the bloody action to preserve their privilege and prosperity.

Five names are canvassed for places in this cable. There is Lt.-General Tikka Khan, Martial Law Administrator of East Pakistan. He directed troops during their first night killing in Dacca. There is Lt.-General Pirzada, Principal Secretary to Yahya, Pirzada is a Martial Law expert; he drafted the Martial Law Regulations by which Pakistan is ruled. He is an articulate and intelligent man and Yahya has come to rely more and more on him to rationalise his actions before and after they happen. Some call him the de facto Prime Minister of Pakistan.

There is Omar, as Chairman of the National Security Council, the top military spy-master. Omar is a hawk among hawks, totally impatient of Bengali secessionism.

There is Major-General Akbar, chief of the Inter-Service Intelligence Corps. Omar and Akbar between them must have provided their C-in-C with disastrous (perhaps even deliberately distorted) advice that Bengali nationalist would quickly collapse after one violent military assault.

Finally, there is M.M. Ahmed the one civilian really close to General Yahya. Mr. Ahmed is chairman of the Pakistan Planning Commission which runs the economy of the country. He is a Punjabi patiently patriotic towards his religion and less so towards Bengal. If there was any justice in the charge that Pakistan's economy has been rigged to favour the Punjab at the expense of the East, then Mr. Ahmed has played a part.

Did these men force Yahya into his military adventure? And do they still keep him pioneer of an anti-Bengali crusade? I don’t entirely think so. More likely, their role is simply to bolster the General’s bluff Punjabi impulses and to insulate him from unwelcome criticisms by foreigners and intellectuals.

Indeed it would be dangerous to say they dominate him. For General Yahya displaying the more childish aspect of his simple, extrovert nature, results nothing more than any allegation that he is the puppet of his advisers. It was tactless questioning along these lines by British journalists at the time of the East Pakistan’s flood that inspired Yahya’s obsessive dislike of newspaper reporters.

Brash young men had been disrespectful to a distinguished head of state. He brooded on it, and complained about it to Englishmen, high and low, on frequent occasions. When 35- journalists found themselves trapped in the Dacca Intercontinental Hotel on March 25, General Yahya combined pleasure with business and shipped them out of the country away from the embarrassing going on with maximum roughness.

India, too, played usual dubious game of saying and doing, everything and nothing at once. News reports on India and in the Indian Press about fighting almost as ridiculous as the reports in the Pakistani Press. As such they are God’s gift to Islamabad and Bhutto’s relentless anti-Indian campaign. But India has not invaded East Pakistan, nor done any of the overwhelming things that the Chinese allege.

Everytime Yahya’s propaganda chiefs are asked about the civil war, they responded with a stream of abuse about Indian infiltrators attacking loyal Pakistanis. They never have been able to show actual proof that more than two Indian soldiers have crossed the border and even this may be old one’s left over from the Indo-Pak war. (The trouble of course, is too many chiefs and not enough Indians—but that’s by the by).

Looking back on the long infinitely complicated history of the negotiation between General Yahya and Mujib, the General’s friends say that—given the contrasting characters of Yahya, Mujib and Bhutto, things rolled forward with the inexorability of a Greek tragedy. The Bengalis behaved like Bengalis at their worst, Punjabis likewise.

The general critics take less philosophical view. They say Yahya was an orthodox military dictator who last year began to reintroduce the parliamentary democracy, but when democracy caused him trouble, withdrew it and used bullets to those who objected.

The General's friends say that he would have been happy to hand over power to Sheikh Mujib and agreed to all the famous 6 points of the greater Eastern independence that Sheikh's Awami League demanded. If he disputed, it was only to stop a complete breakaway of East Pakistan, or the equally unpleasant alternative of a counter rebellion in the West. If he stopped talking and started shooting, it was only because he saw the Marxists and hooligans had in fact taken over from the Sheikh.

The General's enemies say he never seriously intended to give up power and the talks were charade. They point out that two of the 6 points giving East Pakistan the right to collect its own taxes and control its own exports could ultimately starve army of money and no President is going to put his soldiers at the mercy of the Bengali tax collector and the politicians. The truth probably lies, between these two extremes. What really scuppered any chance of agreement, however, was the intervention of Mr. Bhutto.

As far back as January Yahya and Mujib had a long series of talks in Dacca to work out what they could do about the election result which gave Mujib an overall majority. Yahya made concessions, and Mujib on his part promised that for at least two years as Prime Minister he would not tamper with the money supply to the army or radically change other economic arrangements.

Yahya was delighted, and on emerging from the conference room pointed at Sheikh Mujib and told reporters, ‘This is the man who will be running Pakistan.’ Then he went off to shoot birds.

The resulting headlines caused panic and fury in West Pakistan. In Islamabad his advisers descended upon Yahya determinedly, pointing out he had pawned the country’s future with only a vague promise from Bengal’s most famous prevaricator as a guarantee.

At this point Mr. Bhutto with the clean power to enflame all the West if he wanted, added his private voice to the clamour. No one quite knows what he said. But two things are certain, firstly he did not praise Sheikh Mujib whom he detests, secondly, shortly afterwards General Yahya began quietly moving troops reinforcements into East Pakistan.

By this time it was mid-Feb; things were growing tenser daily. Sheikh Mujib had won the election, why couldn’t he now take power? His supporters grew more and more bitter and unruly. Yahya promised the National Assembly would meet on March three.

Then Bhutto totally sabotaged even that chance of peace by declaring he, and, his 80 MPs simply would not turn up at the assembly even if it were convened. So even though Yahya was loudly proclaiming his willingness to inaugurate a democracy, half of it would be missing on the opening day.

Many say that Bhutto was in cahoots with the cabal, the army, and even Yahya when he made his veto. It did after all, neatly let the General out of his promise.

Oddly enough the last straw was a series of student riots on Pakistan national day when Yahya, from his conference balcony saw the violent anarchy of a typical Bengali demonstration with Marxist hoodlums waving red flags and trampling on picture of Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan.

Trampling on Jinnah? It explains much about this simple honourable man that such desecration weighed more with him than any of the other dangers of democracy. Total chaos threatened in East Pakistan, he must stop it. Plans for the military coup were intensified.

Three weeks ago came the big bang, and God knows how many thousands of people have been killed by the West Pakistani army and by Bengalis taking gruesome revenge on Punjabis. It is probable that as the ammunition for the Bangla Desh guerrilla begins to run out, the army will gain the final control of the towns. The monsoon rains, on the other hand, will help the guerrillas. Fighting will continue in some shape or other for months if not years.

The military coup was designed to stop East Pakistan sliding into chaos, race murder, starvation, and alliance with some as yet unchosen communist power. It will, on the contrary, bring all these things about, in a far more extreme forms.

Meanwhile, things are bad in West Pakistan, and getting worse. There has been no trade since the March talks began, and no export of jute from Eastern parts since the war began. No taxes have been collected for a long time. In normal times the West exploits the East by diverting aid money. No one else would buy West Pakistan’s cheap cotton clothes and other relatively shoddy goods. Without jute exports there is no foreign exchange to feed the West Pakistan industries.
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The war is using up millions of Rupees daily. If the cost of holding down 17 million Vietnamese nearly ruined the American economy what will be cost holding down 75 million Bengalis to the fragile Pakistan economy?

The foreign aid loans worth over £ 50 million a year — have dried up, because no one will hand over the money to a country half in chaos. The loan consortium made up of USA, Britain, France, West Germany, Japan and Italy has refused to say if it will hold its scheduled meeting later in April-March, all the diplomatic energy in Islamabad is being expended on furious ticking-off to each ambassadors in turn.

Otherwise, the government machine has stopped functioning because no one knows what is happening and half the civil servants are “Unreliable” men from the East. There is a national budget due to be presented in just over two months time. No one has seriously started to think about it. Everyday talented Bengalis in influential posts are sacked, and untalented inexperienced Punjabis take their place.

At the same time Bengalis in armed forces are causing problems. All Bengali military pilots have been grounded, 24 army officers in East Pakistan have reportedly been court-martialed and the navy, half manned, by Bengali sailors is unsurprisingly in a mutinous state.

For this and many other reason, and it is generally agreed that West Pakistan is headed for a virtual economic collapse within months. The result will be in many ways permanently damaging than the carnage in East which as a near-subsistence economy is used to coping with disasters.

It is an unpleasant prospect, and obviously something dras-tic must be done to stop it. The rest of the world may be held back from frank moral judgment about who is to blame by consideration of diplomatic tact, but it has financial levers to apply, and when applied then the terrible possibility is that General Yahya may ignore these sanctions, however disastrous to his country. Those who have been to remonstrate with him report that he seems to believe only what he wants to believe. He really thinks that law and order operations in East Pakistan is, after some unexpected difficulties, succeeding. He really thinks that only problem now is the dastardly Indian intervention. He believes all these, even though some one must have told him it was invented by his own propaganda machine.

There is something of the mysterious oriental Pasha in Yahya Khan, behind his Sandhurst choice. As a Moslem he is finding something intoxicating in retreating into a ferocious isolation. The more the infidel would protest, the more epic the lonely struggle becomes. (The leaders of West Pakistan may even prefer to bring everything in glorious destruction than undergo the humiliation of admitting they were wrong).

To discover this in Islamabad, after the all-too-real courage of East Pakistan, it seems even more histrionic— like an old bad film, or a wilder passage from James Flecker. The romantic band of noble warriors, crying defiance to the infidel the foreigner, and all Bengalis plunged over the cliff as their white chargers waving their sabres to the flash in the setting sun. Such an end has a poetry but it is a pity that a country, and 119 million people have to go over the cliff at the same time.