Pakistan’s current politico-economic crisis and India

 

Pakistan has remained in the eye of the storm since the 1970 general elections that resulted in a civil war, leading subsequently to India's military intervention in East Pakistan and the emergence of Bangladesh. This happened because, during the 12-year autocratic rule, starting in 1958, the cohesiveness between Pakistan's two wings weakened to the extent that the elite classes in both wings gradually lost their romance with a united Pakistan and looked for an excuse to get rid of each other. The separatist tendency in East Pakistan found open expression and was translated by the Bengali intelligentsia into a popular movement, abetted strongly by India. That the West Pakistani centers of power, particularly the Punjabi and Sindh feudal class, had also gravitated towards separating the two wings, is generally ignored.

Moving forward from the Cold War period, the India-Pakistan rivalry has shifted to a lower dimension where proxy operations against each other have replaced conventional warfare. In this scenario, nuclear deterrence acts as a stabilizer which prevents the events from getting escalated beyond a certain level. After the 71 War, and particularly after the 1998 nuclear tests by India and Pakistan, a pattern can be discerned where both India and Pakistan have resorted to an indirect approach to address their mutual differences. We notice manifestations of this approach in the Indian support of various separatist forces in Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Sindh, and its infiltration of religious extremists in Punjab.

In 1971, India took full advantage of the Bengali grievances against the Punjabi -dominated West Pakistan, exploited the flight of Bengali refugees in India, and, using it as a pretext, Invaded East Pakistan in November 1971.   Pakistan Army launched Operation Searchlight in March 1971 in a bid to control the mayhem caused by the Awami League in reaction to the postponement of the national assembly’s inaugural session. By mid-May, Pakistan Army had re-occupied all the major towns in East Pakistan and driven the battered remnants of the Mukti Bahini across the border into India, forcing the Mukti Bahini to seek training and guidance from the Indian Army for waging the insurgency in East Pakistan. 

During the 1971 War, India used the instrument of psychological war to subvert East Pakistan, which was 1000 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. To glamorize its so-called victory, Indian writers have been repeatedly mentioning a false figure of 90,000 Pakistani soldiers surrendering to Indian forces.

What the Indian decision-makers are thinking today?  India hacked off East Pakistan because of its lack of geographical contiguity to West Pakistan. More than half a century later, can India repeat Pakistan's implosion for the second time?

After the fall of Dhaka, Indira Gandhi, ostensibly under pressure from the Soviets and America, declared a unilateral ceasefire in the West also. Since then, a spirited discussion has ensued in the Indian, international as well as Pakistani circles that had the superpowers not intervened, Indian Army would have finished West Pakistan also. In this discussion, which is continuing to date, servicemen, defense analysts, diplomats, and media persons, particularly from India, have propounded various theories. J.N. Dixit, an Indian diplomat, remarked that, if ordered, Indian Army would have marched in Rawalpindi. Dixit could bluster because Yahya Khan, Bhutto, and Mujib presented East Pakistan to Indira Gandhi on a platter. 

Active Indian meddling in Balochistan started soon after the 1971 War. Presently, there is a full-blown insurgency going on in Balochistan. In this insurgency, Pakistan's security forces are suffering considerable losses in their fight against the insurgents. Pakistan has blamed Iran for providing safe havens to many of the militant outfits operating against the Pakistan Army from Iranian territory. Pakistan also points the smoking gun at India for training and financing these militant outfits. In support of its claim, Pakistan presents the Kulbhushan Jhadav episode as a living example of India's meddling.

  Kulbhushan Jhadav was arrested in Pakistani Balochistan in April 2017 on charges of terrorism and spying for India's intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).  India denies the Pakistani charge even as it denied the charges half a century ago of training, financing, and leading the Mukti Bahini during the East Pakistan insurgency.  For Pakistan, the point to note is, if India is using its intelligence agencies to foment trouble in Karachi, Balochistan, and elsewhere in Pakistan, it cannot be successful without the connivance of powerful lobbies within the country. India may be financing and arming the terrorists, but the bombers, the hit men, and the target killers are Pakistanis. The present politico-economic turmoil in Pakistan provides clear breeding grounds for centrifugal forces, particularly in the restive Balochistan province.

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 being 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.

  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.

For almost forty years, Awami League and its mentor India had been denying the existence of the Agartala conspiracy and citing it as one of the main causes of Bengali estrangement against West Pakistan - an excuse for the Indian-sponsored insurgency in East Pakistan. On 7th March 2010, Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajid confessed that her father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman did plan a comprehensive conspiracy to break Pakistan into 2 pieces with the help of the Indian government. 

On 22nd February 2011, Shawkat Ali, the surviving co-conspirator and Deputy Speaker of the Bangladesh Parliament confessed to the parliament at a point of order that the charges read out to them were correct, stating that they had formed a Shangram Parishad (Action Committee) under Sheikh Mujib for the secession of East Pakistan. 

The 1971 War, we now have concrete evidence, was choreographed by Bhutto, Air Marshall Rahim-the Air Chief, and Lieutenant General Gul Hasan, the Chief of the General Staff. The planning for Pakistan Army's defeat was done in November 1971 when the three of them were sent by President Yahya to Beijing to solicit Chinese help for the war that was looming large on the horizon. Bhutto was heading the Pakistani delegation. 

Pakistani politicians have not changed since the 1971 War. They would sell their mothers to enter the corridors of power. How else can we explain Nawaz Sharif's close relations with Indian politicians like Modi, and the Indian steel magnate Jindal? It is on record that during his last tenure as PM, Nawaz stopped the Foreign Office from ever mentioning Kulbhushan Jhadav, the RAW agent caught in Balochistan on charges of espionage and terrorist activities.  

We all know how Zardari and Haqqani, the president of Pakistan and Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S. respectively at the time of the Abbottabad incident, were overactive after the operation and defended the Americans to the embarrassment of the Pakistan Army. It looked like Zardari and Haqqani had foreknowledge about the US plans. Perhaps they did not know the details but had the inkling that something tumultuous was going to happen.   From this, we can conclude that the Americans, after receiving information about bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad from their sources, kept the Pakistan Army in the dark about the impending operation while they took Zardari and Haqqani into confidence on a need-to-know basis.

 

 

 

 

Saleem Akhtar Malik

5 May 2023