71 War : The Polish Resolution
After the 1965 War with India, Ayub Khan was deeply annoyed with Bhutto and held him responsible for grossly misguiding the latter on the diplomatic front. In March 1966, Ayub Khan removed Bhutto as Secretary-General of the Muslim League and in June from the cabinet. Bhutto was furious, tells Roedad Khan, a retired bureaucrat:
“Bhutto was sitting all alone in his lawn with a glass of whiskey in his hand. Ghulam Ishaq Khan extended his hand. Bhutto, instead, threw his hands around Ishaq Khan and broke down. He then embraced me and told us in an animated voice, ‘The way Ayub treated me today you would not treat your orderly”.
In the past, the politicians in Pakistan had come to power by either appeasing the Army or, like Bhutto and Mujib, garnering foreign help to destroy it, thus rendering it ineffective as happened in the aftermath of the 1970 elections. After failing to sidetrack Mujib in the December 1970 elections, and frustrated in his attempts to oust Mujib from the political arena, Bhutto had started confiding among his inner circles that it was imperative to 1) Get rid of East Pakistan and;2)Destroy the Army to facilitate his ascent to power. To achieve his ends, Bhutto was successful in taking the gullible Yahya Khan for a ride.
Earlier, after being booted out of the corridors of power in the aftermath of the Tashkent Declaration, Bhutto started confiding with his friends that, in order to come into power, it was imperative that the army should be destroyed, even if it required a manipulated war with India.
Bhutto, Lt General Gul Hasan Khan, and Air Marshal Rahim Khan, during their visit to Beijing in November 1970, had decided that the Pakistan Army would not launch any meaningful operation during the war with India over East Pakistan - a war that was looming large on the horizon due to India's active support to the Awami League rebels.
Pakistan's Response to the Indian Attack on East Pakistan
Indian forces crossing the border, launched a full-scale invasion in East Pakistan on night 20th /21st November 1971, attacking simultaneously as many as 23 salients along the border. The purpose of these attacks was to knock the Pakistani forces away from the border and gain space for the establishment of firm bases to be used subsequently for launching major attacks. In many places, these attacks were beaten back by the defenders. However, the much larger Indian force kept the defenders embroiled. The Government of Pakistan just issued a proclamation of a state of emergency.
According to Lt Gen Niazi, his COS (Brig Baqir Siddiqui), who was at GHQ, was told by the CGS to rush back to Dacca as Indian invasion was expected on 21st November. On 21st November, Brig Baqir rang up Major General Qureshi, Vice Chief of the General Staff at GHQ, and followed with a written signal about the Indian invasion. Niazi tried to speak to Gul Hassan, but he had gone to Lahore to celebrate Eid “knowing full well that the Indians were going to attack East Pakistan on 21st November.”
“I tried to contact Gen Abdul Hamid Khan, COS Army. He too was not available. I learned later that both he and President had left for Sialkot, ostensibly to visit troops but actually for a partridge shoot. The callous attitude of the three senior-most officers of the Army shows that they were in the least interested in the affairs of East Pakistan or the integrity of Pakistan. This did not upset me because I had guessed their intentions and had the inkling through my COS that they had decided to quit East Pakistan and abandon us.” (Niazi, 1998)
Conduct of Operations
In his Order of the Day, broadcast on morning 4th December 1971, Maneckshaw spelt out two Indian military objectives: 1) Capture of East Pakistan, and 2)Destruction of Pakistan’s military machine. Indian strategy was to remain on the defensive on the western front till its eastern command achieved its objective of reducing East Pakistan.
On the eastern front, the enemy overwhelmed the Pakistani defences by superior forces, armour, artillery, and air. When most of the defences could not be overrun, the Indian forces after suffering heavy casualties resorted to outflanking moves.Resultantly, till the cease-fire on 16th December, the Indians did not capture a single town except Jessore, which was not defended for strategic reasons. At Khulna, heavy fighting continued till 17th December and ceased only after repeated orders by the surrendering Eastern command.
The war in the western theatre began when, on the evening of 3rd December 1971, Pakistan Air Force launched a series of half- hearted attacks on the Indian airfields. About fifty aircraft were employed and the attacks failed to do any significant damage. This was followed by limited offensives the same night by the holding formations to secure footholds in the enemy territory. Both the armies held back from launching their main offensive and waited for the other side to make the major move. From Pakistan, no major operation was launched for fear that if territorial gains were made in the west, they might result in exchange for possible losses in East Pakistan, something that went against the strategy of letting East Pakistan go.
Kissinger (2011) writes:
“For eleven days he had stood by while Indian forces pressed deeper and deeper into East Pakistan, in effect dismembering his country… On December 3 he launched his army into an attack in the West. The reaction in our government was to use the Pakistani attack as a perfect excuse to defer the statement attacking Indian transgressions”.'
On 14th December the most talked about and debated Polish Resolution (S/10453/Res-1) was tabled before the Security Council. It said:-
The SECURITY COUNCIL, GRAVELY CONCERNED over the military conflict
on the Indian sub-continent, which constitutes an immediate threat to international
peace and security HAVING HEARD the statements by the Foreign Minister of India and the Deputy Prime Minister of Pakistan, DECIDES that:
1. In the eastern theatre of conflict, the power will be peacefully transferred to the lawfully elected representatives of the people headed by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who would immediately be released;
2. after the immediate commencement of the initial period of the cease-fire, the Pakistan armed forces will start withdrawal to the pre-set locations in the eastern theatre of conflict with a view to the evacuation from the eastern theatre of conflict;
3. similarly, the entire West Pakistan civilian personnel and other persons willing to return to West Pakistan, as well as the entire East Pakistan civilian personnel and other persons in West Pakistan willing to return home, will be given an opportunity to do so under the supervision of the United Nations, with the guarantee on the part of all appropriate authorities concerned that nobody will be subjected to repressions;
4. As soon as within the period of 72 hours the withdrawal of the Pakistan troops and their concentration for that purpose will have started, the cease-fire will become permanent. As soon as the evacuation of the West Pakistan armed forces will have started, actually upon consultations with the newly established authorities organized as a result of the transfer of power to the lawfully elected representatives of the people headed by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman;
5. Recognizing the principle according to which territorial acquisitions made through the use of force will not be retained by either party to the conflict, The Governments of India and Pakistan will immediately begin consultations through appropriate representatives of their armed forces with a view to the speediest possible implementation of this principle in the western theatre of military operations.
Commenting on the resolution, A.G Noorani (2012) writes:
“The Revised Version of the next day, 15 December, was substantially identical except for one significant change. References to the release of Sheikh Mujibur Rehman and to the government headed by him were dropped. This could not have been done to please India. It was done to persuade Pakistan. If it had shown any interest at all, more concessions might have followed. It was preeminently a formula for negotiations and was eminently negotiable......... Tersely put, the Resolution provided for a direct transfer of power from Islamabad to Dhaka; for the withdrawal of Pakistan’s forces as well as India’s forces and a return to the status quo antebellum. Not a single prisoner of war would have been held by either side or an inch of the territory of the adversary state. The cease-fire line could have stayed put. There would have been no surrender of Pakistan’s forces to the Indian Command. And there would have been no Simla Agreement, either”.
That it was a choreographed war, designed to get rid of East Pakistan, is amply demonstrated by Bhutto’s behavior. When Yahya Khan rang up Bhutto who was at the UN to plead Pakistan’s case and told him that the Polish resolution was reasonable enough to be accepted, Bhutto feigned as if he could not hear Yahya and started saying “hello, hello, I can’t hear you”. The telephone operator intervened and told Bhutto that he could hear both Yahya and Bhutto and would relay his message. Upon this Bhutto told the operator to shut up and disconnected the call.
Noorani quotes an excerpt from Sher Baz Mazari’s book (A Journey to
Disillusionment; Oxford University Press; p. 217):
If the Polish resolution had been accepted, the ignominy of 17 December (surrender) would have been avoided. The fact that it demanded the transfer of power to the elected representatives rankled Bhutto. It meant a return of Mujib and the Awami League. Bhutto would then have been reduced in political rank. As a parliamentary minority leader, he would have relegated to the peripheries of power”.
This is how Bhutto came to power. Bhutto aimed at getting rid of both the Bengalis as well as the Pakistan Army. Why? As his subsequent moves substantiated, Bhutto was wary that he could not come to power in a united Pakistan. He also believed that the army was the biggest hurdle in his quest for untrammelled power. It is alleged that Air Marshal Rahim Khan, the Air Chief, and Lieutenant General Gul Hassan Khan, Chief of the General Staff of the Pakistan Army, were in cahoots with Bhutto After the war, Gul Hassan was promoted as Army Chief, but shortly thereafter forced to resign unceremoniously along with Rahim Khan. Later, both Gul Hassan and Rahim Khan were given ambassadorial assignments. Link this with Nawaz Sharif’s recent attempts to sabotage the Pakistan Army from within and reduce it to the status of the Punjab Police.
Conclusion
During the 1971 War, India used the instrument of psychological war to subvert East Pakistan, which was1000 miles away from West Pakistan with a sea in between and surrounded by India from three sides. But for the Indian military-trained 2,87000 strong Bengali rebels who engaged Pakistani forces in high-intensity insurgency for nine months, all-out support of the former Soviet Union and the deleterious role of USA, Indian ten divisions together with 32 BSF battalions and Mukti Bahinis backed by massive artillery, tank, air and naval support could not have defeated the marooned force of 34000 regular troops and 11000 paramilitary forces devoid of air and armour support and cut off from rest of the world. In order to glamorize its so-called victory, Indian writers have been repeatedly mentioning a false figure of 90,000 Pakistani soldiers surrendering to Indian forces.
The author is a Pakistan Army veteran who regularly writes on national and international affairs, defence, military history, and military technology. His talks on these subjects are aired on his YouTube Channel "The Observation Post". His blog "Sam1953.blogspot.com" features his articles. Tweets @saleemakhtar53.
REFERENCES
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