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December 15, 2002
EXCERPTS: Did Bhutto break up Pakistan?
Khalid Hasan writes about the charges levelled against Z.A. Bhutto about his role in the crisis of 1971 which resulted in the emergence of Bangladesh
A charge against Bhutto that does not go away is that had he not declared at a Nishtar Park Karachi public meeting, addressing Mujibur Rehman, “Uddhar tum, iddhar hum.” (You stay there, we stay here), Pakistan would have remained united. These words are said to have set the seal on Pakistan’s dismemberment. The truth is that these words were never said by Bhutto. It was Abbas Athar, news editor of the Lahore Urdu daily Azad, who ran the Bhutto speech under this brilliant though misleading headline.
Abbas Athar was a past master at thinking up such startling headlines. This famous headline appeared in Azad on March 15, 1971. What Bhutto had said was, “If power is to be transferred to the people before a constitutional settlement, then it is only fair that in East Pakistan, it should go to the Awami League and in the West to the Pakistan People’s Party, because while the former is the majority party in that wing, we have been returned by the people of this side.”
Yet another charge that does not go away is that Bhutto tore up a Polish resolution in the Security Council that, if accepted, would have saved Pakistan in 1971. Some years ago, I decided to fish out the text of this much-hyped Polish resolution that is mentioned in the same breath to this day with the breakup of Pakistan and the emergence of Bangladesh.
Here are the facts. What Bhutto tore up was not this resolution but his notes and doodles. Iftikhar Ali, the distinguished Associated Press of Pakistan correspondent, who was then based at the United Nations and was present in the Security Council, walked up to Bhutto’s table and picked up all the torn up papers, examined them carefully and put them back, before rushing out after Bhutto to get a comment from him before filing his report.
And now for the Polish resolution. On December 15, 1971, the Security Council met at Bhutto’s request. Bhutto had agreed to rush to the United Nations as it debated the war and crisis in East Pakistan. Two draft resolutions had been submitted to the Council on that day. There was an Anglo-French resolution that called for a cessation of hostilities, the urgent conclusion of a comprehensive political settlement and the appointment by the UN Secretary General of a special representative to “lend his good offices, in particular for the solution of humanitarian problems”.
There was also a Polish resolution that called for peaceful transfer of power in the eastern theatre of conflict to “the representatives of the people lawfully elected in December 1970”. It also called for negotiations between India and Pakistan for troop withdrawals in the western theatre. Now if any resolution should have been accepted by Bhutto, it should have been the Anglo-French one.
However, by now this really was all academic as Gen Niazi had already thrown in the towel and East Pakistan under Indian bayonets had become Bangladesh. Bhutto’s move was brilliant. It was the only way a defeated and humiliated Pakistan could retrieve what it could of its honour. The Polish resolution, moved at the express instructions of the Soviet Union which was backing India not Pakistan, Bhutto’s detractors should remember, was an unvarnished demand for power to be transferred to the Awami League with immediate effect.
Bhutto had decided the night before what he was going to do the next day. My friend Hayat Mehdi, who was deputy permanent representative at Pakistan’s UN Mission, Agha Shahi being the permanent representative, told me that as he went to Bhutto’s room to pick up some papers that he wanted, he nearly fell to the floor with shock when he heard the teenage Benazir, who had come from her school in the east to be with her father, chattering away on the phone to a friend telling her what her father was going to do the next day at the UN and that she should not miss it on television. I am not sure if Mehdi snatched the phone from her hand or put his hand on her mouth, as she was giving away the best-kept secret of the day.
Next day, Bhutto entered the Security Council looking grim and made the most emotional, though well-prepared, speech of his career. It was in that speech that he said, “I have not come here to accept abject surrender. If the Security Council wants me to be a party of the legalization of abject surrender, then I say that under no circumstances, shall it be so. The United Nations resembles those fashion houses which hide ugly realities by draping ungainly figures in alluring apparel.
“The Permanent Representative of the Soviet Union talked about realities. Mr Permanent Representative, look at this reality. I know that you are the representative of a great country. You behave like one. The way you throw out your chest, the way you thump the table, you do not talk like Comrade Malik, you talk like Czar Malik. I see that you are smiling, well, I am not because my heart is bleeding.
“I am leaving your Security Council. I find it disgraceful to my person and to my country to remain here a moment longer than necessary. I am not boycotting. Impose any decision, have a treaty worse than the Treaty of Versailles, legalise aggression, legalise occupation, legalize everything that has been illegal up to December 15, 1971. I will not be a party to it. We will fight. We will go back and fight. My country beckons me. Why should I be a party to the ignominious surrender of a part of my country? You can take your Security Council. Here you are. I am going.”
East Pakistan, there is no question, was in a state of revolt, especially after Bhutto’s Lahore speech at Iqbal Park where he had announced his boycott of the March 25 National Assembly session unless certain conditions were met by the Awami League or the martial law government of Yahya. The limit of 120 days set by Yahya Khan for the Assembly to produce a constitution was ridiculous. Whether it was deliberately so or whether it is to be attributed to the ignorance of the gang in power in Rawalpindi is hard to say.
I think it was a bit of both. The killings of non-Bengalis before the military crackdown ordered by Yahya on March 25, 1971 were chilling. The Bengalis were taking out their frustration with the West Pakistani ruling elite on the hapless Biharis who were seen as no better than the touts and agents of the by-now hated rulers. The ferocity with which the army killed the Bengalis, burnt down the villages and raped the women is partly attributable to the horrendous crimes committed against the Biharis and Punjabis unfortunate enough to be caught in the maelstrom.
Two days later Yahya “let loose” his “tigers” on the Awami League and the people of East Pakistan. These were the words he used to describe the military action to his ADC, Lt Commander Khalid Shafi, as they flew back from Dhaka with the army on the rampage. Shafi told me this story in 1972 when we were both working for Bhutto, he as his naval ADC and I as his first press secretary. Two days after the crackdown began, Bhutto, who was in Dhaka, was taken to the rooftop of the Intercontinental Hotel on the night of the crackdown to get him a bird’s eye view of the city of Dhaka with fires burning in many areas and the sound of gunfire echoing in the night air. Two days later, he took a flight to Karachi. On arrival at the airport, there was only one reporter to receive him, I.A. Khan of the Associated Press of Pakistan to whom he said, “Thank God, Pakistan has been saved.” He was never able to explain or justify this statement as long as he lived. In fact, when the case proving Bhutto’s complicity in the military crackdown on East Pakistan is argued, this single-line statement is cited as the smoking gun. The blood bath in East Pakistan continued through the summer of 1971, but not once did Bhutto make any reference to it in his speeches or statements. On the contrary, his contact with Yahya and men like Gen Pirzada, Yahya’s chief-of-staff, whom many considered the real evil presence in the General’s secretariat, increased.
I once said to Bhutto on one of his visits to Lahore that he should raise his voice against what was going on in East Pakistan. He turned to me and replied, “Marain gai.” I do not think how Yahya could have justified a crackdown in West Pakistan as well, although it is true that by June when Yahya was sure that the Awami League had been by and large neutralized, there were people in his inner cabinet who advised him to go for Bhutto now.
Yahya once told Bhutto, “I don’t say that but there are some of my generals who think that you are a secessionist too.” They argued that if Yahya was strong enough to crush Mujib, compared with the Awami League leader, Bhutto was “small potatoes”. I remember that Muslehuddin of Pakistan Television news and I interviewed Gen Tikka Khan at Lahore airport (he was on his way to Dhaka or had come back from there) and asked him how things were. He told us confidently that everything was under control and the situation had almost come back to normal. I am not sure what month it was, probably May.
What we need to remind ourselves, but don’t, is that there was hardly a voice raised in West Pakistan against the army action in East Pakistan. In fact, the overwhelming opinion in the Punjab was that Yahya had done the right thing, his only mistake being just one: he had moved too late and let the situation deteriorate. In Lahore, the only person who publicly spoke against the army crackdown was the journalist and lifelong communist Abdullah Malik who told a meeting of students at the Engineering University, “We are with the suppressed people of Bangladesh.” He had said in Urdu, “Hum Bangladesh ke mazloom awam ke saath hain.”
Malik was hauled up, produced before a summary martial law court and sentenced to a jail term and a fine. He was spared lashes because the major presiding over the court said he was being spared that particular punishment because of his “age”. The ever youthful Malik, then 51 years old, told us, “This offends me more than my sentence.”
The inevitable happened. India invaded East Pakistan. The Pakistani defence collapsed after a few weeks and Gen. “tiger” Niazi surrendered. I recall Air Marshal Nur Khan telling a news conference in Lahore. “He could have at least died like a soldier and retrieved some honour.” Bhutto who had in the meanwhile accepted the office of deputy prime minister under Yahya and been rushed to the United Nations in New York (where he tore up his notes which to this day his detractors say was the Polish resolution) returned. He was most apprehensive that the generals would actually let go and he sought several assurances before he returned through a circuitous route. He was sworn in on December 20, 1971, four days after the fall of Dhaka and the surrender in Paltan Maidan, as the President and Chief Martial Law Administrator of Pakistan. His life’s ambition had been fulfilled but at what cost and under what circumstances! Even after taking over, Bhutto did not denounce the army action in East Pakistan and on the few occasions that he did, he did so in mild terms. He did not want to alienate the army or humiliate it more than it had already been humiliated at the hands of its leaders.
Excerpted with permission from
Rearview mirror: four memoirs
By Khalid Hasan
Alhamra Publishing, Saudi Pak Tower, Jinnah Avenue, Islamabad. Tel: 051-2823862.
Email: contact@alhamra.com
Website: www.alhamra.com
ISBN969-516-081-6
299pp. Rs350
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