Brutal birth of Bangladesh: Part III
Part three Pakistan spent almost a year trying to wipe out the Bengali resistance. They didn’t expect to be crushed by India and suffer their worst military defeat in their history
Miguel Miranda concludes his three-part series on this war of independence
In December 1971 the nation that used to be East Pakistan was attacked from three sides by the Indian military. The air force cleared the skies of hostile aircraft in just two days, while the navy successfully imposed a tight blockade over the Bay of Bengal.
Just ten days after commencing hostilities, Indian commanders completed their encirclement of East Pakistan’s capital, Dhaka. By 13 December the air force’s jets were busy making sport of the Pakistanis still holed up in the city. The few token anti-aircraft guns on the ground hardly bothered the Migs and Sukhois dancing in the sky.
At the head of the Indian army in Bangladesh was the Sikh commander Lieutenant General Jagjit Singh Aurora. He was a decorated veteran with a soldiering career that stretched back to the days of the British Empire, which wasn’t uncommon among the top brass of both India and Pakistan at the time. They had all been comrades in arms once but had become rivals after the partition of their respective countries in 1947.
Pakistan’s garrison in Bangladesh was under the command of Lieutenant General A.A.K. Niazi, who was appointed the martial law administrator and East Pakistan’s highest ranking soldier. While defeating the local Mukti Bahini guerrillas was well within the Pakistani military’s competence, Niazi’s adherence to a ‘fortress strategy’ left his troops ill-prepared for India’s onslaught. The Pakistanis could only offer token resistance in a few towns they controlled, and these were already besieged by Bangladeshi guerrillas.
With surprising speed, three Indian corps struck from the east and west on 4 December, while paratroopers were dropped into the town of Tangail just northwest of Dhaka on
“WHILE DEFEATING THE LOCAL MUKTI BAHINI GUERRILLAS WAS WELL WITHIN THE PAKISTANI MILITARY’S COMPETENCE, NIAZI’S ADHERENCE TO A ‘FORTRESS STRATEGY’ LEFT HIS TROOPS ILL-PREPARED FOR INDIA’S ONSLAUGHT”
11 December. With help from hundreds of Mukti Bahini, the garrison defending Tangail was overwhelmed and compelled to lay down arms. This final manoeuvre was spun by the Indian army’s public relations as a huge airdrop involving thousands, when in reality just 500 elite troops had been sent to Tangail. But newspapers around the world fell for the ruse, and it was enough to sink the morale of the large Pakistani garrison in Dhaka, who still pined for a decisive battle. With Indian paratroops closing in on them, they faced complete destruction.
Desperate measures
There had been an attempt to stave off the inevitable, however. In the first week of the war West Pakistan opened a second front in the deserts of Rajasthan. The goal was to cut deep inside India’s arid frontier and perhaps seize a city or two. But this offensive got bogged down by the ambiguity of its goals.
The decisive battle of the second front was almost farcical. A Pakistani tank brigade was tasked with capturing Longewala, a remote town that military intelligence believed offered little resistance, as a springboard for seizing the more vital Jaisalmer. But once the Pakistanis’ Chinese-made Type 59 tanks reached Longewala’s outskirts they were fired upon.
As it turned out, an unknown Indian force was dug in, waiting for the Pakistanis to come within range. The Pakistanis spent the night trying to manoeuvre around the objective, which they believed was surrounded by a minefield, and crush the determined opposition. The effort proved futile and a dozen abandoned Type 59s littered the dusty terrain surrounding Longewala by daybreak.
Indian reinforcements finally arrived at noon. Two Hunter jets armed with rockets set upon the Pakistani tanks like buzzards. The lead Hunter pilot, Wing Commander K.S. Suresh, later described the engagement: “It was an awesome sight in Longewala,” he recalled. “With several tanks on fire and some still burning… tanks were going round and round in crazy circles, kicking up dust to hide themselves to the extent possible.”
Later in the day Hunter jets escorted a Canberra reconnaissance plane over Longewala,
“WEST PAKISTAN OPENED A SECOND FRONT IN THE DESERTS OF RAJASTHAN. THE GOAL WAS TO CUT DEEP INSIDE INDIA’S ARID FRONTIER”
where it captured an image of an empty desert criss-crossed by frenzied tank tracks. The timely arrival of air support decided the battle and relieved Longewala’s defenders – a single company of the 23 Punjab Regiment armed with machine guns and recoilless rifles. Not surprisingly, the details of the battle made perfect fodder for Indian newspapers, who extolled the courage of the nation’s hardy and selfless ‘jawans’.
Jacob’s gamble
So disappointing were the engagements in the second front that peace was soon restored along the closely guarded border separating West Pakistan and India. Broadening the war to save East Pakistan had proved a costly miscalculation. There was no use trying to save Dhaka, which by that point was like an island cut off from the rest of liberated Bangladesh.
Unwilling to jeopardise their main objective, which still had a 26,000-strong garrison of Pakistani soldiers, Indian army HQ decided on a compromise. The task was delegated not to Lieutenant General Aurora but imposed on the chief of staff and main war planner, Lieutenant General J.F.R. Jacob. Transported by helicopter to Dhaka on 15 December, Jacob was escorted to Niazi’s office, where he was received by an assemblage of Pakistani generals.
A 24-hour ceasefire prevailed at 5pm. The following day, Jacob presented the surrender terms to Niazi, who rebutted his guest. “You have only come to discuss a ceasefire and withdrawal as proposed by me!” a furious Niazi exclaimed. Unmoved, Jacob reminded Niazi that if he didn’t comply with the terms then the safety of his men and their families would be imperilled.
Jacob, anxious over this outcome, left a document he wanted to be acknowledged on Niazi’s desk and excused
himself.
“THE STREETS OF DHAKA ECHOED WITH CELEBRATORY CRIES OF JOI BANGLA! AND GUNFIRE FOR DAYS AS GUERRILLAS, MOSTLY TEENAGE BOYS EMACIATED FROM THEIR MONTHS IN THE WILDERNESS, REUNITED WITH THEIR FAMILIES”
The document was the Instrument of Surrender. Just three paragraphs long, it guaranteed that all West Pakistani forces would be protected according to the Geneva Conventions. Returning to Niazi’s office after half an hour, Jacob asked whether the surrender terms were accepted, eliciting no response from his counterpart. He asked again and again. Seizing the initiative, Jacob retrieved the document he had given Niazi and declared, “I take it as accepted.”
On 16 December Niazi reluctantly met Aurora in the Dhaka racecourse and signed the surrender surrounded by the press and a crowd of Indian officers at 4.55pm, just minutes away from the ceasefire’s expiration. Lieutenant General Jacob even managed to sneak in Aurora’s wife to witness the proceedings. The photograph of Niazi and Aurora hunched over the surrender papers has since become the Bangladesh war’s defining moment.
The streets of Dhaka echoed with celebratory cries of “Joy Bangla!” and gunfire for days as guerrillas, mostly teenage boys emaciated from their months in the wilderness, were reunited with their families. A huge disarmament program was soon underway, and in towns and villages across Bangladesh the guerrillas mustered and separated from their weapons.
It took a full week before all of the Pakistani troops in Bangladesh surrendered. Tens of thousands were dispersed in the countryside, unaware of the surrender in Dhaka – either cut off from the chain of command or encircled by Indian forces and Mukti Bahini. The rapid momentum of the war meant India only lost 3,800 men, with twice as many wounded. Pakistan, on the other hand, suffered 9,000 killed. But by the year’s end 93,000 of its soldiers had to be marched into camps.
A remarkable aspect of this bondage, in shocking contrast to the miseries inflicted by West Pakistan on the Bengalis, was the fair treatment accorded so many POWS. Housed in large compounds ringed by barbed wire, Pakistan’s imprisoned soldiers were fed and quartered for almost two years, their families often kept in separate camps. Harsh punishments were only justified for infractions and the occasional escape attempts. It wasn’t until the Simla
Agreement in 1972 that plans for repatriation began, a process that ended in 1974 when the POWS were sent home.
A bitter legacy
Yet there truly wasn’t much to celebrate aside from the war’s end. The nine million refugees who fled to India, having lost their homes and possessions, were condemned to dire poverty. There was no accurate measurement for the suffering visited on the Bangladeshis since the beginning of Operation Searchlight in late March. Did the Pakistanis and their Razakar proxies slaughter a million? Two million?
It was only months after the war when a proper figure – a monstrous three million deaths – became the accepted body count. These weren’t the people felled in combat. The Mukti Bahini’s casualties were higher than the conventional forces in the war, but it paled in comparison to civilian deaths. In the space of ten months Pakistani soldiers butchered 3 million people and raped anywhere between 200,000 and 400,000 women.
The liberation of Bangladesh left South Asia more divided than ever. The Awami League’s champion, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was hailed a national hero and enjoyed a popular mandate upon assuming power in 1972. But he had gained a country without a functioning government and political divisions soon emerged. On 15 August 1975 Bangladesh’s celebrated founding father, its Bangabandhu, was assassinated during a coup d’etat by disgruntled army officers. Rahman was repeatedly warned of plots against him for months by Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her intelligence chief, but he dismissed these with surprising faith: “These are my own children and they will not harm me,” he reportedly told a visiting agent from India’s secretive Research and Analysis Wing, or RAW.
Bangladesh would be swept by 22 coups and attempted coups in the next quarter-century. Meanwhile West Pakistan simply became Pakistan, with its own flawed governance model and persistent domestic unrest. The only lesson from the stinging defeat in 1971 was the futility of war with India.
This set the stage for the world’s least known nuclear arms race. India first tested an atom bomb in 1974, while Pakistan clandestinely set about researching the methods to achieve the same for the next 20 years. It wasn’t until 1998 that both countries had their arsenals of mass destruction.
Another unintended consequence of the Bangladesh war was the rise of Pakistan’s notorious spy agency the Inter-services Intelligence, or ISI, and its cultivation of terrorists groups in Kashmir. If India couldn’t be fought one way, the strategic logic went, then it was best to fight it with subterfuge. This had dire consequences for the region since Pakistan stirred up radical Islamic terrorism within its own borders and later in Afghanistan and Kashmir, to achieve a vague sense of ‘strategic depth’.
The unprecedented success of the 1971 war is an Indian fetish. But the awful truth of Bangladesh’s liberation is the steep human cost it imposed on its civilian victims.
“THE NINE MILLION REFUGEES WHO FLED TO INDIA, HAVING LOST THEIR HOMES AND POSSESSIONS, WERE CONDEMNED TO DIRE POVERTY”