Author: Samar Halarnkar
Publication: India Today
Date: August 21, 2000
A secret inquiry into
Pakistan's debacle in the 1971 war held army atrocities, widespread corruption,
cowardice and the moral laxity of it's generals as prime reasons for the
defeat in East Pakistan. The explosive Hamoodur Rehman report, suppressed
by successive Pakistani governments, has never been disclosed-until now.
A country is sometimes
overwhelmed by its own myths. Even 29 years after the ignominious
surrender in Dacca, it has become conventional wisdom to blame the separation
of East Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh on an elaborate Indian
conspiracy. It's true India played a big part in training the Bangladeshi
army of liberation -- the Mukti Bahini. It's also true Indira Gandhi
finally ordered General Sam Manekshaw's men to "liberate" East Pakistan.
But that was only part
of the story. History books and Pakistani war memoirs persist with
the claim that Bangladesh was created against the will of its people and
that the Pakistan Army wasn't really defeated, just betrayed. An
entire generation has been assured that 1971 will be avenged.
That was not the way
the War Inquiry Commission -- appointed by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, then president
of Pakistan, in December 1971 -- saw it. In its report, suppressed
by all governments since 1974, and now in the possession of INDIA TODAY,
the commission, headed by then chief justice of Pakistan Hamoodur Rahman,
held widespread atrocities, other abuses of power by Pakistani generals
and a complete failure in civilian and martial-law leadership responsible
for the loss of East Pakistan. It recommended a string of court-martials
and trials against top officers. Nothing ever happened. The
army's role in splintering Pakistan after its greatest military debacle
was largely ignored by successive Pakistani governments and many of those
indicted by the commission were instead rewarded with military and political
sinecures.
To Pakistanis, the fate
of the report is a mystery. "When Justice Hamoodur Rahman in his
official inquiry recorded the truth of 1971, Bhutto as prime minister personally
ordered that each and every copy of the report be burnt," said political
analyst Jamaluddin Naqvi in The Dawn of Karachi. "Not one copy was
saved. And to date no attempt has been made to reconstruct the causes
that led to our dismemberment."
A copy of the final report
was indeed saved. And the reconstruction that many Pakistanis --
and Bangladeshis -- seek is exactly what the commission did. It was
in a sense, Pakistan's truth commission. "There is a consensus on
the imperative need of bringing to book senior army commanders who have
brought disgrace and defeat to Pakistan by their subversion of the Constitution,
usurpation of political power by criminal conspiracy, their professional
incompetence, culpable negligence and wilful neglect in the performance
of their duties and physical and moral cowardice in abandoning the fight
when they had the capabilities and resources to resist the enemy," the
report said.
The commission examined
nearly 300 witnesses, hundreds of classified documents and army signals
between East and West Pakistan. The final report was submitted on
October 23, 1974, detailing how political, administrative, military and
moral failings were responsible for the surrender in East Pakistan.
"The publication of the
report is all the more necessary in the context of the present-day political
situation in Pakistan," journalist Akhtar Payami wrote in The Dawn in December
1999. The report has a bearing on General Pervez Musharraf's Pakistan
because it documents how political power corrupted and weakened the army.
More than anything else,
the Hamoodur report punctures the rewriting of history in Pakistan, a revisionism
that glosses over the profound anxiety in West Pakistan after Sheikh Mujibur
Rahman's Awami League won a majority on its own in the 1970 general election.
It was this unwillingness of West Pakistan to play by democratic rules
that created a political crisis and precipitated a civil disobedience movement.
It was to counter this that the army, with the tacit approval of the politicians
in West Pakistan, cracked down on the night of March 25-26, 1971.
As East Pakistan bled and millions were made refugees in India, there was
rejoicing in the West. "Thank God, Pakistan is saved," crowed Bhutto.
The army action in East
Pakistan, wrote Ikram Sahgal, editor of Pakistan's Defence Journal in March
1998, "was professionally correct and it was carried out with surgical
precision... The major part of the army behaved as professional soldiers."
But the UN Human Rights Commission in its 1981 report said the genocide
in Bangladesh was one of the worst in history. According to Bangladeshi
human rights activist Jahanara Imam, "Even if a lower range of 1.5 million
deaths was taken, killings took place at a rate of between 6,000 to 12,000
per day, through the 267 days of carnage."
It's not merely the image
of professional rectitude that the commission has demolished. The
Pakistan military has nurtured the myth that the forces in East Pakistan
weren't defeated, they were betrayed into surrendering -- variations of
this myth resurfaced during the Kargil war. In his memoirs, General
A.A.K. Niazi blamed Yahya Khan, Bhutto and General Headquarters (GHQ)
for letting the Eastern Command down.
The commission blamed
Yahya, Niazi and the GHQ for the defeat in Dacca. But reading between
the lines, it is quite clear that it was the entire Pakistani military
establishment that was at fault. Fattened, corrupted and brutalised
by power, the army just wasn't in any position to take on the Indian Army
in adverse circumstances. Put to the test, its grandiose strategic
doctrine -- "The defence of East Pakistan rests in West Pakistan" -- crumbled.
And, as the report makes clear, it wasn't merely sinful commanders in the
East who surrendered without a fight. There were repetitions in the
West as well.
The Hamoodur report is
a valuable document. Partly because of what it tells us of the 1971
war but substantially for what it tells Pakistan about its government and
its army.
