Fighting to the End

by C Christine Fair

  While these conflicts emerged over language, the question of the fundamental governance structures of the still-new state was causing other problems. Constitutional debates revealed fundamental disagreements between East and West. The Objectives Resolution of 1949, with its assertion that “sovereignty over the entire Universe belongs to Allah Almighty alone,” may have been consistent with the founding logic of the state, but it “destroyed any faint hopes of co-opting East Pakistan’s substantial Hindu community into the Pakistan project” (Jones 2003, 154). In addition, representatives from West and East Pakistan clearly disagreed on how power should be shared between the federal and provincial governments. The Awami League, the dominant party in East Pakistan, wanted maximal devolution of power to the provinces, whereas the elites of West Pakistan wanted a strong central state.

  The most tendentious constitutional question for the West Pakistani elites was how, given the Bengalis’ numerical dominance and greater political coherence, the various states should be represented at the center. The first constituent assembly dodged the question by failing to specify how many representatives each province would send to the national assembly. For Bengalis, this was a clear sign that the west sought to deprive them of their rightful majority. When the constituent assembly revisited the question, it considered a proposal under which both East and West Pakistan would have equal representation. While this was an improvement, it still denied East Pakistan the representation that its population merited. But even this failed to satisfy Punjabi elites, who feared that East Pakistan would form alliances with other provinces in the West to check Punjabi political preferences (Haqqani 2005; Jaffrelot 2002a; jones 2003).

  The 1956 Constitution dealt a serious blow to the power of East Pakistan as well as to the smaller provinces of the west. It enshrined the One Unit Scheme, grouping all of the provinces of the West into one unit to balance the more politically and ethnically homogenous East Pakistan. Both East and West would have equal representation (150 seats each) in a unicameral parliament. The Awami League recognized the move for what it was: an effort to prevent the Bengalis from having a parliamentary majority, despite the fact that Bengalis represented an outright majority of Pakistan’s population. But given East Pakistanis’ political coherence, it was still certain that any election held under these conditions would nonetheless result in a majority government led by the East Pakistani representatives of the Awami League (Haqqani 2005; Jones 2003).

  The efforts of West Pakistani civilian and military elites to deprive Bengalis of political representation further angered Bengalis, who were already underrep-resented in the other organs of state power. They were overwhelmingly excluded from the military: by 1963, Bengalis composed a mere 5 percent of the officer corps and 7 percent of other ranks (Jones 2003). This was a particularly vexing issue, not only because East Pakistanis increasingly believed that they were vulnerable to Indian aggression but also because the army had governed Pakistan since Ayub’s 1958 coup. East Pakistanis were excluded from the khaki corridors of power and also were also underrepresented in the powerful civil bureaucracy because few Bengalis knew Urdu, a requirement for government service (Jones 2003). Equally important, while West Pakistan continued its path toward praetorianism, East Pakistan’s inhabitants had a longer tradition of parliamentary democracy and were more schooled in both the traditions and practice of parliamentary rule of law. In contrast, recall that much of West Pakistan was still under significant degrees of British militarized governance prior to 1947 and had not benefited from the institutionalization of provincial politics to the same degrees as other parts of the erstwhile Raj. East Pakistanis objected to the centralized, military-dominated state that was emerging out of West Pakistan.

  Thus, with the single exception of their Muslim faith, the priorities and beliefs of East Bengalis differed in almost every way from those of their fellow citizens in the west (Haqqani 2005). West Pakistani elites responded to East Pakistanis’ demurrals and complaints by denouncing them and their political leadership as Indian collaborators. As Haqqani notes, “Almost every leading Bengali political figure after partition was at one time or another accused of working in conjunction with India’s intelligence services” (63). In fact, many prominent Awami League leaders were arrested for antistate activities, including former Pakistan prime minister Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy (Haqqani 2005; Jaffrelot 2002a; Jones 2003).

  Bengali grievances regarding access to power and the constitutional dispensation were in addition to persistent complaints that the west exploited the east, extracting resources while investing very little in return. Bengali political aspirations received their clearest articulation under the leadership of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman of the Awami League. In 1966 he presented his six-point agenda, which demanded a federal structure for Pakistan; separate currencies for the two wings (to curb capital flight from east to west); a militia or paramilitary force for East Pakistan; and restriction of the federal government to defense and foreign affairs, with no central taxation authority and with both wings retaining their own foreign exchange earnings. While these demands had nearly universal support in the east, Pakistanis in the west viewed this agenda as a poorly disguised prelude to secession (Haqqani 2005; Jaffrelot 2002a; Jones 2003).

  Ayub was unwilling to relent in his belief that Pakistan needed a strong, central government (controlled by the army), and Bengalis were unwilling to relax their demands for federalism and devolution of powers. Ayub, unwilling and unable to take the needed steps to stem the discontent simmering even within his own regime, ceded power to Gen. Yahya Khan in March 1969. Yahya Khan reimposed martial law and disbanded the assemblies but promised elections would take place in December 1970. The assembly, once elected, would be tasked with producing yet another constitution. Khan reversed the One Unit Scheme and restored individual provincial representation, rejected the parity in representation that his predecessor had imposed on each wing, and even granted universal adult suffrage. These concessions amounted to a de facto acceptance of Bengalis’ numerical superiority and political dominance. Despite being delayed a month by a devastating cyclone, the elections took place. The Awami League triumphed, taking 160 of the 162 National Assembly seats allotted to East Pakistan and 288 of 300 in the provincial assembly. According to the principles of parliamentary democracy, Rahman should have been called to head the new government. But this was not to be (Haqqani 2005; Jaffrelot 2002a; Jones 2003).

  Bengalis immediately insisted on the implementation of the six points, and in principle the Awami League was in a position to enact its agenda into law if and when parliament convened. But neither Khan nor Bhutto of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) could countenance such an outcome. Bhutto refused to permit his party to sit in any parliament controlled by Dhaka and declared that “no constitution … could be framed, nor could any government at the centre be run without my party’s co-operation” (Jones 2003, 163). Bhutto’s claims were simply absurd: the new parliament could make decisions with a simple majority, and the PPP did not even have enough votes for a veto (ibid.). Khan was unwilling to take the course dictated by parliamentary procedures and failed to resolve the impasse between Bhutto and Rahman, both of whom were growing increasingly intransigent. Khan finally lost his nerve and canceled the convening of the National Assembly. This was the final straw: Bengalis, realizing that the west would never allow them to exercise their democratic strength, began demanding complete independence from Pakistan.

  On March 26, 1971, Khan announced that negotiations had failed, denounced Rahman as a traitor, and banned the Awami League. By the time he made this announcement, the military had already moved into the east and Operation Searchlight had begun. Operation Searchlight aimed to “decimate the likely sources of political opposition to the military regime in West Pakistan” (Ganguly 2001, 60). Prior to commencing the operation, the military made sure that ethnic Bengali police and military forces were disarmed and dispersed to lessen their ability to resist. Refugees began fleeing int
o India, creating mounting political and economic problems. India threw its support to the rebels. By April, the Awami League had established an office in Calcutta; later that month, India permitted the declaration of a so-called government in exile, which became known as the Mujibnagar. Once the political leadership was safely in India, India began training and arming the Mukti Bahini (Liberation Force) and provided them with sanctuary. The Mukti Bahini, which was placed under the command of retired East Pakistani army officer Col. M. A. G. Osmani, “played a vital role [by] harrying the Pakistani forces, engaging in acts of espionage and sabotage, and killing collaborators” (62).

  On May 1, 1971, India’s army chief issued a secret order to begin a war that would end in Pakistan’s dismemberment. According to Praveen Swami (2007), an Indian journalist specializing in security affairs who secured restricted and classified documents on the war, India’s objectives highly resembled those of Pakistan in the 1965 war. The plan “[envisaged] the use of a covert army as a catalyst for insurrection and a spearhead for regular forces. Its scale and objectives, however, were altogether more ambitious” than those of Pakistan in the 1965 war (118). With Operation Instruction, India’s military was formally committed to aid the provisional government of Bangladesh and to motivate the East Pakistani public to support the liberation movement. Most importantly, it committed India to “raise, equip and train East Bengal cadres for guerilla operations for employment in their in their own native land” (ibid.). These cadres were known as the Gano Bahini. India’s Eastern Command was tasked with helping the guerillas tie down Pakistan’s forces in protective tasks in the east, eroding the Pakistan Army’s will to fight, and degrading the Pakistan Army’s ability to undertake offensives against the Indian bordering state of Assam and West Bengal. Per the plan, the Indian regular troops would be inducted if Pakistan initiated hostilities against India.

  According to Swami (2007), Indian forces set up seven camps for recruiting and training volunteers: two in West Bengal; two in Meghalaya; and one in Bihar, Tripura, and Assam. Awami League officials who fled to India were tasked with screening and recommending recruits for guerilla training. Each camp was designed to handle 1,000 recruits for four weeks of training in sabotage, communications, weapons handling, and field craft. However, some camps were occupied by 3,000 trainees. By September 1971, India dramatically increased the scale of its training, which allowed it to process 20,000 guerillas a month. The training was overseen by Indian soldiers (8 soldiers per 100 trainees). By the end of November 1971, as war was looming, India had trained 83,000 guerillas, of which some 51,000 were operating in East Pakistan at that time (ibid.).

  In addition to training scores of guerillas, India employed some 1,800 commandos who operated in the Chittagong Hill Tracts in East Pakistan. These men were part of the Special Frontier Force (SFF), which was established toward the end of India’s 1962 war with China, and were Tibetan refugees in India who had fought with the Dalai Llama’s Chushi Gandruk irregular forces from the mid-1950s. Members of the SSF were trained not only by Indian military personnel but also by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at a facility near Denver, Colorado. The SSF men served under Maj. Gen. Surjit Singh Uban, who, according to Indian accounts, operated indirectly under the supervision of Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India’s external intelligence agency. Uban’s forces engaged in skirmishes with Pakistani forces and waged an “extraordinary campaign of sabotage and harassment” (Swami 2007, 119).

  By the end of March 1971 India’s leadership began to see the developments in East Pakistan as an opportunity to weaken Pakistan and were putting pressure upon the Indian army’s Eastern Command to move immediately into Eastern Pakistan. In July 1971, K. Subrahmanyam, the now deceased doyen of India’s strategic community and who was a government official at the time, called the crisis in East Pakistan an “opportunity of the century” to dismember Pakistan (Chari 2011). However, the chief of staff of Eastern Command, Lt. Gen. J. F. R. Jacob (1977), “protested that this was impractical” (36). He explained to India’s army chief Gen. Sam Manekshaw that the army was not prepared. They had only Mountain Divisions, trained for mountain warfare, with little bridging equipment or logistical capabilities. Worse, East Pakistan, with more navigable rivers than roads, would be a challenging battle terrain during the monsoons. Lt. Jacob needed more time to equip and train the force. He assessed that, at the earliest, India’s Eastern Command would be ready by November 15. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was furious but the army leadership held this ground (Jacob 1977; Nawaz 2008a).

  India’s decision to enter the war was not without risks. India, which was home to several ethnic separatist movements, had little stomach for setting a precedent by backing such a movement in East Pakistan. After all, this could justify similar intervention by outside forces to support Indian separatists. Some Indian leaders also worried that there would be a backlash in the Muslim world if they assisted the breakup of a Muslim country. Equally challenging were the diplomatic, logistical, and military hurdles that had to be cleared before military action could go forward. India was worried about both US and Chinese support to Pakistan. (Pakistan had recently played a vital role in helping the United States to reach a rapprochement with China.) The Soviet Union, however, concerned by the prospect of a US–China alliance, found it expedient to ally more tightly with India.

  While the military prepared itself for war, India’s political leadership prepared the diplomatic ground for the invasion. In August 1971, India and the Soviet Union signed a Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation, which offered India some hope of military assistance if attacked and also assured India the support of the Soviet veto at the Security Council (Ganguly 2001; Jaffrelot 2002a; Jones 2003). In October 1971, Prime Minister Gandhi undertook a tour of global capitals to make her case about the gravity of the situation in East Pakistan, the untenable refugee crisis the conflict had spawned, and the need for Indian military intervention.7

  The tour was not successful. While the United States wanted to preclude the destruction of Pakistan, President Richard Nixon did not want to “push” Yahya. When Gandhi met Nixon on November 4 in the Oval Office, Nixon refused to exhort Yahya to pursue negotiations with Mujib while Gandhi denounced Pakistan for the genocide in East Pakistan and the concomitant refugee crisis deepening in India. As their meeting concluded, Nixon warned that the United States government would continue providing humanitarian relief and to encourage Yahya to use restraint, but declared that Pakistan’s disintegration would benefit no one (Bass, 2013). Astonishingly, the Nixon administration continued to arm Pakistan in complete violation of US law, as Pakistan was still under an arms embargo due to the 1965 war. Nixon persisted in this plan despite receiving numerous admonitions from legal analysts in the Departments of Defense and State and from advisors in his own White House. With little international support other than the Friendship Treaty with the Soviets, India went it alone and began exerting military pressure on Pakistan (Bass 2013).

  While India had prepared war plans, the war formally commenced on December 3, 1971, with an “Israeli-style pre-emptive air attack by Pakistan on India’s northern air bases. … The attack failed miserably on all counts” (Ganguly 2001, 67). The war was short. On December 15, Gen. A. A. K. Niazi, the commander of the Pakistani forces in the east, sought an unconditional ceasefire, a suggestions his Indian counterpart, Lt. Gen. Jagjit Singh Aurora, rebuffed. The war finally ended on December 17, when Gandhi ordered a unilateral ceasefire; Khan immediately ordered Pakistani forces to reciprocate. The war ended with the emergence of independent Bangladesh (Ganguly 2001; Jaffrelot 2002a; Jones 2003).

  After the war, Gandhi and Pakistan’s president, Bhutto (Khan had ceded the presidency to Bhutto in December 1971), met in Simla, the former summer capital of the Raj, to reach a postwar settlement. India principally sought to secure Pakistan’s commitment to resolve outstanding disputes bilaterally, to repatriate all prisoners of war, and to accept the inviolability of all of Indi
a’s borders. Pakistan, for its part, had four objectives, which it largely secured. It sought to have its 93,000 prisoners of war released, to stop Bangladesh from holding war crimes trials of captured Pakistani soldiers, to regain some 5,000 square miles of territory that India had seized in the west, and finally to ensure that its position in Kashmir remained fundamentally unchanged. The salient features of the resulting settlement included the restoration of bilateral diplomatic relations, a mutual commitment to avoiding the use of force to resolve the Kashmir dispute, and a change in the name of the 1948 Cease Fire Line to the Line of Control (LOC) (Ganguly 2001; Nawaz 2008a).

  After the war, India emerged as the undisputed power in South Asia. The loss of East Pakistan deprived Pakistan of a majority of its populace and half of its territory. Pakistan’s inability to bring ethnic Bengalis into the national project had dealt another serious blow to the two-nation theory, which was and remains the ideological basis of Pakistan and its army.

  THE 1999 KARGIL WAR

  The Kargil War was the first war between India and Pakistan after India’s May 1998 nuclear test and Pakistan’s reciprocal nuclear tests 17 days later. Some analysts refer to this conflict as a mere skirmish or crisis. I consider it a war, both because battle deaths exceeded 1,000 (the conventional social science standard for coding a conflict as a war; Kapur 2003) and because the forces of both sides crossed a de facto international border after Pakistan made a considerable effort to seize and hold territory (Tellis et al. 2001). Pakistani planning for the conflict began sometime in mid-November 1998, a mere six months after the nuclear tests.

  Pakistan’s build-up for the Kargil misadventure in fact unfolded simultaneously with negotiations that led to a historical breakthrough in Indo-Pakistan relations. That latter process culminated in a visit to Lahore by Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee (traveling via the newly opened Delhi-Lahore-Delhi bus service), who addressed Pakistanis at the site of the Minar-e-Pakistan, the revered monument to Pakistani independence. Significantly, Vajpayee was the leader of the Bharatiya Janata Dal/Party (BJP), a Hindu nationalist party that had longed advanced the goal of Akhund Bharat (undivided India). Thus, this gesture showed that even the BJP accepted Pakistan’s independent existence.