The Smearing of the Sacrificial Goat

14 Feb, 2001    ·   465

Chandra B Khanduri says the Hamdoor Enquiry has tarnished the image of uniformed people of Pakistan making them the sacrificial goat
Justice Anwarul Haq Hamoodur’s War Commission that Enquirer into the circumstances in which Lieut Gen A K Niazi surrendered former East Pakistan to the Indian Army in December 1971 is a clandestinely public document now. The butcher’s axe has squarely fallen on the Army and its leadership that also then ruled Pakistan .

 

 

Upon publication of the report, Niazi, who is living (unlike Gen Yahya Khan and others) offered to face a ‘Court Martial’ to exonerate himself from the alleged burden of defeat. In his Memories he says that his Eastern Command was prepared to defend Dacca last man, last round, but was stopped and asked to surrender. Lieut Gen Gul Hasan’s Memories however ascribe Niazi’s failure to visualize the threats posed by Indian Military and the Mukti Bahini guerrilla in totality and evolve defensive strategies including the defence of the naturally strong Dacca garrison. He frittered away, he says, his military strength in defending the indefensible hints and ignored the defence potential of Dacca .  

 

 

There were more and convincing causes to the loss of East Pakistan . The illogical and flawed strategy of the 1971 war, that ‘the defence of East Pakistan lay in West Pakistan’, becomes the first major cause. What was in fact required was to threat the two 2200 km separated wings of Pakistan to be independently defended. The Americans and the Chinese were prepared to help them- and did so- but other developments seemed to have overruled such a help when the crisis arose.

 

 

The second and the larger cause emanated from the clash of the political ambitions of Bhutto and Sheikh Mujabur Rahman an which led to the deployment of the Army under Maj Gen Tikka Khan from March 26 and untold atrocities were committed by the West Pakistan Army in its ‘sweep operations.’ And as refugees swarmed into India and the Bengali alienation became total, even the Americans and the Chinese leadership deeply embroiled in their own ‘ Vietnam ’ and ‘Cleansing’ respectively, advised Yahya Khan to ‘forestall the calam it by political reconciliation.’ But by September, it looked irreconcilable. This is where Hamoodur Inquiry visibly fails to establish  the larger malaise which made the coming of a ‘maelstrom’ virtually bringing an end to an era in Pakistan .

 

 

Leading from here one moves on to the third cause- and the phenomenal cause-of the ‘militarization of Pakistan’ virtually from 1953 where Lahore saw its Martial Law and subsequently to 1958 when Gen Ayub Khan took over as Chief Martial law Administrator (CMLA).

 

 

It led to two fallout: the turning of the military as pseudo- professional politicians and military men-the worse of the both. And, as politicization of the military lead to catastrophes, the dismemberment of Pakistan followed. Of the former, Hamoodur quotes Pak Rear Admiral M Sharif Khan, as having said before him, “While learning the art of politics in the newly assigned role to themselves they gradually abandoned their primary function of art of soldering.” So, by November, a stage was set for show down. Gen Yahya, however astute, was no political match to Mrs Gandhi, and Gen Niazi was outgeneraled by Gens Sam Manekshaw and Jagjit Aurora.

 

 

A higher political and military leadership of doubtful virtues, cultural chasms and geo-strategic in congruity made it for Pakistan hard to exist as one nation. In 1971, given other developments, its break up seemed inevitable, notwithstanding the plot India is alleged to have engineered.

 

 

My own historical analyses of the post war Enquirer have been revealing: they seldom reassure one of the total veracity, except the findings of the A grant Commission which ‘fixed’ Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan for the early reversal of the Israeli Defence Forces during the October 1973 Yom Kippur War. Both were eased out of their jobs as Prime Minister and Defence Minister. Elsewhere it is always whitewash and the smearing of the sacrificial goats. The 1965 failure of Operations Gibraltar and Grandslam were well covered by Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan. The Hamoodur Inquiry ordered by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto only saw the indefensible and the obvious taken to the alter, while exonerating him (Bhutto) and Gen Tikka Khan, the loyalist Army Chief, who had taken over after the sack of Gen Gul Hasan.

 

 

It was contrived. Even in case of India truth is often the causality. Knowing very well, as we know that the Pakistani intrusion had taken place from 1998, if not earlier, the Kargil Committee has done an ‘eyewash.’ And the earlier Henderson Brooks Enquiry on the 1962 NEFA reverses, has been stacked in double locked safes of the MOD, least the political leadership were publicly exposed for their failures.

 

 

The Hamoodur Enquiry, unfortunately, has done mud slinging and what I find, the smearing of the sacrificial goat of uniformed people of Pakistan , ignoring the real power hungry politicians behind the demise of former East Pakistan .  

 

 

 

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