These memoirs begin on a very particular day, March 25, 1971. On that day, General Yahya Khan, Martial Law Administrator and President of Pakistan, ordered the arrest of the leader of the Awami League, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The Awami League had literally swept the polls in East Pakistan in the national elections in 1970. Mujibur Rahman was then brought to the capital, Islamabad, in West Pakistan as a prisoner.
The news came as a shock to everyone. It was a veritable volte-face after the three years of unprecedented preference given by Yahya’s government to East Pakistanis in all government and semi-government appointments. That policy had been adopted by Yahya to assure the East Pakistanis that they were indeed equal to West Pakistanis in a united Pakistan.
Those in Islamabad who were close to government circles, including myself, knew that on that day, the ‘hawks’ led by General Hamid, Chief of the General Staff, had taken over from the ‘doves’ headed by Generals Pirzada and Umar. Yahya had initially allowed the ‘doves’ to conciliate East Pakistan. It was on their directives that the policy of accommodation with East Pakistan had been followed from 1968 to 1971. Interestingly, the ‘hawks’ were the ‘sons of the soil’ while the ‘doves’ were ‘refugees’.
The guiding thought of the ‘doves’ was that West Pakistan had enjoyed the prime fruits of freedom from Britain in 1947. It had held the reins of power in the country for almost a quarter of a century. They advocated, therefore, that it was now time for East Pakistan to have its turn. The ‘hawks’, on the other hand, did not believe that a favourable tilt towards East Pakistanis in government appointments would help convince the eastern wing of the country of being equal to the western wing and yield a Constitution acceptable to the country as a whole. Therefore, they firmly believed in the use of overwhelming force to put an end to the call of the Awami League for regional autonomy. Short-sightedly, they described the seething movement in East Pakistan for regional autonomy as a mere flash in the pan that could be doused by military force. Indeed, they blamed the ‘doves’ for letting the situation get out of control.
At that time I was serving as Director General for Middle Eastern and African Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Islamabad. In that capacity, I used to participate in the policy meetings held almost every day in the Foreign Office in Islamabad. On 26 March 1971, an apparent calm prevailed in East Pakistan. That gave the ‘hawks’ the short-lived opportunity of boasting that they were in the right after all. In the Foreign Office, however, most of us were overwhelmed by a sense of doom. Contrary to the assessments of the ‘hawks’, East Pakistan was boiling with rebellion. The long simmering resentment caused by the feeling in East Pakistan of being neglected, if also not exploited, by West Pakistan had turned into a frenzy due to the arrest and deportation of their undisputed leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Mujib had indeed taken the lead through the Awami League in giving voice to the burning issues and resentment that beset the East Pakistanis.
Consequently, the situation was fast approaching the point of widespread popular revolt. East Pakistan was not only far away from West Pakistan but, to make matters worse, a thousand miles of a bitterly hostile India lay athwart the two wings of Pakistan. The Foreign Ministry in Islamabad was daunted and full of apprehension. From the very next day, it began receiving reports couched in guarded tones from Pakistan’s diplomatic missions of a generally negative reaction abroad regarding Mujibur Rahman’s arrest. The diplomats of Pakistan, like everyone else, were scared of the ‘hawks’ in the Pakistan Army but their message to the home base was clear despite its carefully selected terminology. The world had openly condemned the arrest of the leader of the majority party and the suspension of the political process in Pakistan. Thus, the gaps in the diplomatic reports were filled by what was appearing in the international press.
No sense of doubt was left among the foreign policy causus that Pakistan stood totally isolated. All the Foreign Ministry could do by way of formulating foreign policy in that critical situation was to send to its missions lifeless directives based on the army’s doctored version of what was going on in and around East Pakistan. The worst aspect of these directives was the attempt to cajole our diplomats to secure international understanding of the draconian steps that were being taken to suppress the general revolt in East Pakistan. The national press had also been directed by the Ministry of Information in Islamabad to do the same in order to ensure a national understanding, if not consensus, of the measures adopted by the ‘hawks’.
Pakistan’s foreign policy and the public relations drive of those tragic days could, however, do absolutely nothing about the strongly negative direction that world opinion was taking regarding the crisis that the country was engulfed in. The government, feeling helpless, decided to direct the entire force of government policy towards keeping the West Pakistanis ignorant of the true facts, and assuaged with baseless stories of an atmosphere of returning calm and the restoration of law and order in East Pakistan. The spectre of Pakistanis of both wings joining together in a general uprising against the military government was the worst nightmare for the ‘hawkish’ policymakers.
