Kayhan International (Iran)

“ Oh, this is now a matter for the historian,” an East Pakistani friend told me in Dacca the other day when I asked him to give his version of the events that plunged the unhappy land into bloodshed last spring. He was perhaps right. But journalism is the writing of instant history. I decided to ask a number of people to give their accounts of what happened in East Pakistan. It might take many years before the thick fog of unreality created by propaganda and prevarication on all sides clears away. Nevertheless, it is possible to form a provisional picture approaching the reality of the events in East Pakistan. In this article, we shall see different views of the dramatic events of spring.

(i) LT.-GENERAL TIKKA KHAN

Tikka Khan is the military governor of East Pakistan.. He arrived on the scene shortly before the decks were cleared for the bloody confrontation between the army and the Awami League partisans of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. He smiles broadly, has a slight nervous tick and speaks at top speed. He received us in his mansion in the centre of Dacca. His 3i year old son was also present at the meeting, lashing out at imaginary flies with his toy whip. This is what Tikka Khan had to say in response to a series of questions I put to him:

I was sent here shortly before the rupture came. I was asked to do two things: first, to keep the army united and, secondly, to keep the door open for further negotiations with Mujibur Rahman. The President had made it clear to me that under no circumstances was I to cause a breakdown of all chances of further talks. It did not take me long to realize that Mujib was hell-bent on secession. His party and his friends were working in that direction. Yet, I did not take any action against them until the eleventh hour. We all wanted a settlement.

During the election campaign, Mujib had made it clear both publicly and in private that his Six-point Programme was negotiable. The Programme would lead to a virtual division of Pakistan, but we took no action against Mujib because he had assured us that there would be a compromise. Later, two dramatic events took place. First Mujib swore in public not to make any compromise on his Six-Points. By doing so he destroyed all chances of agreement.

Then, he set up a parallel government while we were here. He closed the National Bank in Dacca and gave its duties to another bank. He stamped on the Pakistani bank notes ‘‘The Independent State of Bangia Desh” and made it clear that he would never agree to join a National Assembly that would include representatives from West Pakistan. He wanted two Assemblies.

Furthermore, he preached hatred against the armed forces and said he would put us all on trial. Through his agents, he told the East Pakistani soldiers and officers to desert the armed forces and the police, while he set up a paramilitary organisation of his own. All along, however, we hoped that he would realise that the army would not allow him to divide Pakistan, he failed to see this and underestimated our resolve. He had told the press, radio and television in East Pakistan not to publish or broadcast any news of Pakistan and to ban whatever information we wished to publish. Then he ordered the pulling down of Pakistani flags and insignia from all public buildings and banks. At a ceremony, his supporters burned the Pakistani flags and all the pictures of Jinnah (the founder of Pakistan) were destroyed in Dacca.

As you can imagine, our patience knew no bounds. When Pakistan Day came, Mujib and his supporters called it “Bangia Desh Day” and no mention was made of Pakistan. They told the TV not to show the Pakistani flag. I told the TV people I would close down their programme if they did so. They showed the flag a few seconds after midnight—that is, after the Pakistan Day had officially ended. Then they made fun of me on that score and said they had their Bangia Desh Day. The Sheikh himself appeared all smiles and waved a Bangia Desh flag.

That was not all. We had reports pouring into army headquarters about atrocities committed against the non- Bengali soldiers, and officers of the regular army were involved in massacres of the Biharis and the West Pakistanis.

At that time my forces occupied only 20 square miles of East Pakistan’s 55,000 square miles. Mujib and his Indian backers had never thought it possible for us to fan out of this 20 square miles and work our way through a complete control of the province with amazing speed. This we did although at that time our forces were outnumbered one to 18. The rebels had some 80,000 armed men; most of them were trained by ourselves and members of the East Bengal Regiment and the East Pakistan Rifles. The Indians had given them large quantities of arms. They murdered their West Pakistani officers along with their wives and children and spread a reign of terror in the country.

I remember when I had to order the chaps into action, we had planned a cricket match that day and we had to cancel it. The boys knew they would be fighting against heavy odds, but they fought for Pakistan, and this gave them double strength. We smashed the rebels quickly and secured the borders, preventing the Indians from bringing in their regular forces to seize a part of East Pakistan and call it Bangla Desh as they had planned. Our speed surprised the Indians and destroyed all their dreams.

I cannot say the situation is completely back to normal but the army is in full control of the province. There is no fighting, although we are mopping out pockets of resistance. There are acts of sabotage, to be sure only the other day there were three bomb attacks in Dacca itself—one against a power plant. The jute convoy has also been attacked on several occasions and now we send the jute to Chittagong with an escort of soldiers.

The lies published by the Indians make me laugh. On the second day of the disturbances they said I had been assassinated. The same day the American Consul-General told me jokingly that the Indians had said he, too, had attended my funeral.

Then they spread rumours that the star was shining on my own head and that I was such a power-hungry butcher. They also said we are massacring the Hindu minority as if we had nothing else to do. Our boys attacked a village near Dacca to round up some miscreants, and in the process two villagers were killed. The Indians said we had killed 2,000 Hindus. In fact only one of the two chaps killed was a Hindu.

Now the Indians are training troops for the so-called Mukti Fouj (Liberation Army) of Mujib. There are training camps all along our borders. But they won’t be able to harm us in any serious way unless they launch a full-scale attack by their own army. That would be army fighting army and we shall meet the eventuality.

(ii) AWAMI LEAGUER M.S.

M.S., who does not wish his identity to be known, was an active member of the banned Awami League. I had met him in Dacca last winter and he called on me again last week in East Pakistan. He had escaped to the countryside when the troubles broke out, but has returned to Dacca under the general amnesty declared by President Yahya Khan. This is what he told me:

The night of the 26th of March was a true Indonesian night in Dacca. Everyone knew that the rupture had come and that there would be reprisals and counter-reprisals. The army had lists of Awami League activists and naturally it started rounding them up under the cover of a curfew. The student leaders, most of whom were active Naxalites and responsible for attacks on West Pakistani families, were the first targets. At least 100 of them were shot immediately after arrest. Others were killed while trying to make their escape.

The Awami League extremists meanwhile took their revenge and massacred as many non-Bengali as they could get hold of. The dream of a political settlement had been shattered with such speed that those of us who were still hoping for a compromise were taken completely aback.

Once the army action started, the Awami Leaguers in villages and remote towns began murdering the non-Bengalis whom they feared to be “spies.” In any case they were afraid that the non-Bengalis would help the army identify the activists. So they killed the Biharis, the Punjabis and others out of sheer fright.

In Dacca alone some 10,000 people have been killed while some people put the number as high as half a million. But there are no means of establishing any true figure. Many people have left the town and are still hiding in villages. So, their relatives and friends think they are dead. My own friends had written me off as dead while I was in hiding. Every day more people are coming out of their hideouts. So, the number of those presumed dead is being reduced every day.

Most of us do not believe that Mujib wanted secession, although the student leaders and their friends in the leadership did want it. My own reckoning is that Mujib wanted to separate East Bengal from Pakistan in the long run—not immediately—but was forced to speed up his work and reveal his plans under pressure from the Naxalites and Bengali nationalists in Calcutta.

I cannot say what will happen next. No one can. The army is in military control but the political problem remains untouched. The trouble is that so much hatred and suspicion has been created that it is difficult to start a dialogue between the people and the army. Even the Bengali civil servants who agree to co-operate with the army are still suspect. Hundreds of civil servants have been flown here from West Pakistan and their task is to keep a watch on the East Pakistani civil servants.

I don’t know what is the situation outside Dacca, but I heard that Chittagong and Cox’s Bazar have been bombed by army planes and shelled by the navy. It seems that some fighting is also going on in the north-east. But unless India intervenes openly, the Bangla Desh forces would have no chance against the well-trained and highly disciplined soldiers of Tikka Khan. With Mujib in gaol the Awami Leaguers have no recognised leader and rivalries and jealousies among his colleagues have already started. It will take a very, very long time before the two-halves of Pakistan can forget what happened here. I hope it will not take too long because with every day that passes, the chances of an understanding are reduced.

It would be easier for the East Pakistanis to talk to West Pakistani political leaders. But the West Pakistani political leaders themselves have no say in politics—not for the time being at least. Furthermore, we have the Indians who are sure to claim they must be made a party to a settlement. With Mujib in goal they are talking on his behalf and gradually claiming to express the wishes of the people of East Pakistan. The danger is that if we do not start a dialogue between political leaders of the two wings we will soon have the army and the Indians talking on behalf of both wings and perhaps, plunging us into a war.

(iii) MAJOR-GENERAL RAO FARMAN ALI

Major-General Farman Ali is a tall, intelligent and soft- spoken soldier who looks after the civilian side of the martial law in East Pakistan. He knows the region well and his understanding of the political situation is unusual for a professional soldier. This is what he had to say:

The first thing I want to make clear is that, had we not been convinced that Mujib and his party would divide Pakistan, we would not have taken the action we took. We did not want political power. We proved our goodwill by having the election and allowing all parties freedom of action. Had we wanted power, we would not have held the election and would have stayed in without further fuss. You see that we have broken the Awami League. This we could have done earlier when Mujib was still weak. I have known Mujib for a long time. I was in contact with him almost every day during the past two years. He turned out to be a weak man who could be hypocritical. He told us one thing in private and said exactly the opposite in public. He thought he had taken all of us in the army for a ride, misinterpreting our desire for a political settlement as a sign of weakness.

There is no glory for the army in undertaking such an operation. We would not have done it had we not been forced to by Mujib. The man was unfit for leadership since he was a megalomaniac who could be driven to do all sorts of things under fear of losing his popularity. He was a rabble-rouser who, through a series of coincidences, was forced to assume the task of a statesman.

Let me tell you something I have told no one before, apart from my superiors. A day before the trouble broke out and the army had to take action, I called on Mujib with a last plea for a settlement. He said he was “finished as a man”. He said that he was convinced he would be killed in any case.

“If I do what you want,” he told me, “the students will kill me. If I do what they want you will kill me. In any case I am finished.”

Now, was this the way a statesman should think at the most decisive moment in his career? I am not a politician and don’t wish to sound like one. But how can anyone with such a degree of cowardice be in politics? We were prepared to accept anything from Mujib short of secession. He did not want to stand up to his secessionists because he wanted to remain popular with everyone. How is that possible?

You say he might have been forced to take the secessionist role. Well, but a man who is induced to commit a murder by others still remains the main agent of the murder.

Now let us turn to other topics. The Indians say that we used the period of negotiations between the President and Mujib as a cover for flying green troops into East Pakistan from the West. I give you my word of honour as a soldier that not a single man was flown in during that period. We started bringing in reinforcements only after midnight of the night of March 25. Our officers were being massacred and the civilian population was being attacked, and for the first few' days we could not cope with the situation. Had we wanted to bring in reinforcements, we could have done it much earlier.

Also, the Indians say that over 35,000 West Pakistani troops have been killed by the rebels during the past few months. I assure you that if this figure were true, there would not be a single West Pakistani soldier left in East Pakistan right now.

They also say that a million people have been killed and eight million others have become refugees. This means nine million people out of a population of 70 million. How can anyone believe this? There are thousands of displaced persons but I assure you that the number of all people killed throughout East Pakistan during the disturbances does not exceed 10,000 of whom at least half were non-Bengali minorities massacred by Mujib’s storm-troopers and rebellious elements of the regular army in East Pakistan. In Dacca for example, no more than 365 people were killed on both sides. Now, the Indians speak of 10,000 or even half a million.

I would like you to do something. Walk in Dacca and ask anyone you like how many people have been killed. Chances are that he would say several thousands or more. But ask him if he himself knows of anyone who has been killed or whether or not he has lost any of his own relatives and friends. I am certain he would say ‘No’ to your second question.

The same is true of the displaced persons. Some 10 per cent of Dacca’s population have gone into hiding in the country-side. So you see shops closed and some houses abandoned. But I am sure you will see that the Indian accounts have been exaggerated. As far as the administration is concerned, we are rapidly getting back to normal. Some 90 per cent of the Bengali civil servants have returned to their posts. Some of them had gone into hiding being afraid that they might be massacred as quislings by Mujib’s supporters. As soon as the army moves into a locality they come forward and resume their tasks. We are soldiers, and we don’t wish to intervene in the civil service. Our sole task is to reinforce the administration whenever necessary, using the army’s superior organisation, discipline and resources at its disposal. Beyond this, I have nothing to do with the administration. What do I know about the economy or agriculture and things like that?

Thousands of displaced persons are returning home and we are helping them regain their villages and resume normal economic activity. We have over 20 reception centres on the border, which you will see, and we have a crash programme for the rehabilitation of all displaced persons, whether inside East Pakistan or coming from India. Those who are returning home from India have to use untracked routes since the Indian army has been ordered to stop East Pakistanis from returning home. As you know, a general amnesty has been ordered by the President and everyone can return home with complete safety.

(iv) FORMER SECESSIONIST A.A.

A.A. is a Bihari who lives in Dacca. I first met him in Dacca last February when he told me he believed that East Pakistan should be turned into a separate state. At that time he was bitterly opposed to Mujib because the Awami League leader was apparently against secession. When trouble broke out in East Pakistan, A.A. went into hiding. He has just returned to the city, benefiting from the general amnesty declared by the President. His account of the turmoil:

I have not yet recovered from the shock. As a Bihari, I risked being murdered by the Awami Leaguers. As a known secessionist, I was a legitimate prey for the zealous soldiers. Yet, you see that I am still alive. Alive but frightened, I had advocated secession because I thought the situation in Pakistan, which is divided by over 1,000 miles of Indian territory, was untenable. We were refugees when secession came and had high hopes in Pakistan. Our hopes were dashed by the dictatorship, and the fact that East Pakistan was plundered by a few capitalists from both wings.

In West Pakistan, no one was aware of our plight until Ayub was overthrown. Ayub was the man responsible for what the two wings are suffering today. A nation is not given many chances in history. Pakistan, as a nation, lost most of its chances under Ayub.

I don’t know about the atrocities on both sides. We, the Biharis, in any case, suffered in the hands of Mujib’s Liberation Army. They butchered many of my relatives and friends and I know that there were Indian troops and West Bengali volunteers in their ranks. Now I know that had Bangla Desh come into being, as I had wished, I would not have been alive today.

The people are suffering from psychosis. They have been caught unawares by the tragedy. They feel defeated, bitter, cowed and utterly helpless. The worst thing is not the death of relatives and friends. It is the death of hope.

And these people, as you know, have been living almost exclusively on hope. The people need kindness, generosity and their spiritual wounds should be healed if they are not to suffer a complete collapse. It no longer matters who was responsible. What matters is to save an entire people from psychological collapse.

I don't believe Mujib was a true secessionist. He was a plaything of political cross-currents. Had he really wanted Bangla Desh he should have taken over as Prime Minister of Pakistan sending the soldiers back to the barracks and gradually paved the way for an independent state. East Pakistan does not have the personnel, the administrative organisation nor the military backbone that an independent state needs in these circumstances. Had Mujib declared the birth of Bangla Desh and succeeded, he would have had to rely on India for day-to-day survival. In that case East Bengal would have become an Indian colony. The alternative would have been united Bengal, including both East Pakistan and Indian-held West Bengal. There is a big movement for this in West Bengal. In that case, however, India and West Pakistan would have joined hands in crushing the united Bangla Desh.

It no longer matters whether East Pakistan should remain with West Pakistan or not. In any case, that is the best course under the circumstances. What matters is that East Pakistan should remain alive.

(v) TAHSEEN MUHAMMAD

Tahseen Muhammad is a PIA steward who has been flying “more than what is good for me” between Karachi and Dacca during the past few months. This is what he told me:

When the crisis came, we were flying to and fro like mad—taking troops to Dacca and returning with plane-loads of maimed and wounded women and children. Most of the victims were Biharis. We have flown thousands of them. Many had their eyes knifed out of their sockets by the Bangla Desh forces. There were women with breasts cut, children who almost went insane after witnessing the beheading of their fathers.

I have seen enough horrible scenes to keep me awake at night for the rest of my life. We were children when Jinnah launched the Pakistan movement. We were afraid of being massacred by the Hindus in India and never thought we would see the day Muslim would butcher Muslim in a fashion worthy of Hitler.