Article

2016-12-17 India-Pakistan

[Dhaka Tribune] On a PIA flight from Bloody Karachi
...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous...
to Lahore years ago, I became acquainted with a retired Pak brigadier named A.R. Siddiqi. He seemed to be a proper gentleman and explained to me that back in 1971 he had been in charge of Pakistain’s Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR). Siddik Salik, he told me, was his subordinate in Dhaka. Brigadier Siddiqi told me of the shock he went through when the Pakistain army launched its genocide, for he had been in Dhaka when Operation Searchlight was launched. "I am writing my account of the war," Siddiqi told me. I asked him if he meant to reveal everything in his book. He promised he would. I am glad to report that when the book, East Pakistain: The Endgame: An Onlooker’s Journal 1969-1971, appeared some years later, Siddiqi kept his promise. His account of the crisis, especially of the early days of Operation Searchlight, was riveting. It is one of the few objective books to have come out of Pakistain from a Pak who was part of the military establishment in 1971.

I have not met Brigadier Siddiqi after that conversation on the Karachi-Lahore flight. But years earlier, I did have an opportunity to come across Brigadier Siddik Salik, the writer of the acclaimed Witness to Surrender, when he accompanied General Zia ul Haq

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...the creepy-looking former dictator of Pakistain. Zia was an Islamic nutball who imposed his nutballery on the rest of the country with the enthusiastic assistance of the nation's religious parties, which are populated by other nutballs. He was appointed Chief of Army Staff in 1976 by Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, whom he hanged when he seized power. His time in office was a period of repression, with hundreds of thousands of political rivals, minorities, and journalists executed or tortured, including senior general officers convicted in coup-d'état plots, who would normally be above the law. As part of his alliance with the religious parties, his government helped run the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, providing safe havens, American equipiment, Saudi money, and Pak handlers to selected mujaheddin. Zia died along with several of his top generals and admirals and the then United States Ambassador to Pakistain Arnold Lewis Raphel when he was assassinated in a suspicious air crash near Bahawalpur in 1988...
to the first Saarc summit in Dhaka in December 1985. He spoke fondly, as he said (though I detected a certain cynicism in him) of his time in Dhaka throughout the war. I asked him what difference he noticed between 1971 and 1985. His glib reply was: "People here are poorer than before." In other words, Pakistain was good, Bangladesh was not. I decided I did not want to get into a quarrel with him and focused on General Zia ul Haq and Sahibzada Yaqub Khan, the two men sitting on my right.

Siddik Salik was taken prisoner on December 16, 1971 and spent nearly three years in a PoW camp in India before returning to Pakistain with his fellow prisoners. He perished in the air crash that killed General Zia ul Haq, a number of senior military officers and the American ambassador to Pakistain in August 1988. Sahibzada Yaqub Khan, who had resigned in March 1971 rather than initiating a military operation against Bengalis, subsequently became ambassador to the United States and, under Zia ul Haq, served as Pakistain’s foreign minister. It was a position he retained in Benazir Bhutto
... 11th Prime Minister of Pakistain in two non-consecutive terms from 1988 until 1990 and 1993 until 1996. She was the daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, founder of the Pakistain People's Party, who was murdered at the instigation of General Ayub Khan. She was murdered in her turn by person or persons unknown while campaigning in late 2007. Suspects include, to note just a few, Baitullah Mehsud, General Pervez Musharraf, the ISI, al-Qaeda in Pakistain, and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, who shows remarkably little curiosity about who done her in...
’s first government. He died in January this year.

And where did the other officers go? Khadim Hussain Raja, the general who was told by Tikka Khan early on the morning of 25 March, "Khadim, it is tonight," went into full-scale action against Bengalis as midnight drew near. Over the next couple of weeks, his soldiers fanned out all across Dhaka and then beyond it, shooting everyone they came across. Once the initial phase of the pogrom was done, Raja was transferred to West Pakistain, where he was given a fresh command. He did not return to Dhaka and therefore was lucky enough to avoid being a PoW. After his retirement from the army, he jotted down his recollections of the war in Bangladesh, leaving his family with instructions that they should not be published in his lifetime. It was only after his death that his book, titled A Stranger in My Own Country: East Pakistain 1969-1971, hit the stands. He died a few years ago.

General Tikka Khan, who in his career earned the dubious distinction of being known as the Butcher of Balochistan

...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it...
and then as the Butcher of Bangladesh, remained untouched by any questions about his role in the killing of Bengalis. After serving as governor and martial law administrator (the latter position till April 1971) of East Pakistain, he left for West Pakistain in September 1971 to take over as a corps commander. Under Z.A. Bhutto, he became Pakistain’s chief of army staff and on his retirement joined the Pakistain People’s Party. He served as secretary general of the party as well as governor of the Punjab. He died of old age ailments in March 2002.

Lieutenant General Amir Abdullah Khan Niazi took over as martial law administrator, East Pakistain, in April 1971 and continued in that position till he signed the document of the Pakistain army’s surrender to the Indo-Bangladesh forces in December of the year. After spending three years as a prisoner of war in India, he returned home to a bad reception. He was stripped of his rank and excoriated for surrendering in Dhaka. He later went into politics by joining the Jamaat-e-Ulema-e-Pakistain, but could not make much headway. He died in February 2004.

General Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan, who as president of Pakistain and chief martial law administrator, ordered military operations against Bengalis in March 1971, presided over the break-up of the country nine months later. Compelled to hand over power to Pakistain People’s Party Chairman Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
...9th PM of Pakistain from 1973 to 1977, and 4th President of Pakistain from 1971 to 1973. He was the founder of the Pakistain Peoples Party (PPP). His eldest daughter, Benazir Bhutto, would also serve as hereditary PM. In a coup led by General Zia-ul-Haq, Bhutto was removed from office and was executed in 1979 for authorizing the murder of a political opponent...
on December 20, 1971, he spent the entire period of the Bhutto dispensation in house arrest. It was only when General Zia ul Haq overthrew Bhutto in July 1977 that Yahya Khan was freed from confinement. He died, in disgrace, in August 1980.

And then there is the fate of the conspiratorial and inordinately ambitious Bhutto himself. With East Pakistain turning into Bangladesh and with the leader of the majority party, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, taking charge as Bangladesh’s prime minister, Bhutto became president of Pakistain by default. With the enactment of a new constitution for Pakistain in August 1973, he took over as prime minister under a parliamentary form of government. Overthrown by the army after a long period of violence following rigged elections in March 1977, he was executed on conviction for murder in April 1979.

Posted by Fred 2016-12-17 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11132 views ] Top
File under: Govt of Pakistan

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