1971 debacle: A political failure

This week Bol News had the privilege of speaking with one of Pakistan’s highly acclaimed and decorated officers, Lieutenant General (Rtd) Ali Kuli Khan, who served on a number of important positions in his distinguished career, including field Commander X Corps, Chief of General Staff and Directorate General Military Intelligence (DGMI). Lt. General Ali Kuli Khan is also a veteran of the 1965 and 1971 wars against India. In 1971, he was deployed in the former East Pakistan.

Extracts of his interview on the 1971 War against India and its implications for Pakistan.

Q Few years ago at a seminar, you said that the ‘71 war was a political defeat for Pakistan and not a military defeat. Can you please elaborate? How would you rate the performance of the Pakistan Army on the military front – what were the handicaps, what was the ratio between Pakistani and the enemy forces?

AKK: When you consider the relative strengths of the two opposing forces there has to be some semblance of equality. Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw in an interview with a BBC correspondent had admitted that Indian forces in East Pakistan were 17 times larger than the Pakistani forces. This was a humungous difference in relative strengths.

Manekshaw further stated that considering this huge disparity between the Indian and Pakistani forces, the Pakistanis had fought “magnificently.” I consider these views of the Indian COAS not only accurate, but generous; as should be the case between professional soldiers. This does not mean that smaller armies have not overcome bigger odds but then their leadership at all levels was far more inspiring. Alas in 1971, the Pakistani leadership at all levels, particularly political was found wanting.

Since I was there for most of the 1971 War, there was no instance where the Indian forces ever broke through the heavily outnumbered Pakistani defences; instead of breaking through Pakistani defences they went around them because they were guided by the Mukti Bahini or in other words, the East Pakistanis who had been misguided by the Indian propaganda to believe that West Pakistan had been unfair to their East Pakistani brethren in the allocation of financial resources.

Such allegations were patently false, but the tragedy was that the majority of East Pakistanis had been conditioned to believe this through sustained Indian propaganda and shenanigans over many years. While these nefarious moves were being made by India and Awami League the Pro-Pakistani response was woefully inadequate.

Q Was surrender the only option or could Pakistan have dragged on the conflict?

AKK: Surrender was not at all the only option. Pakistan could easily have carried on fighting for much longer.

Unfortunately, the whole world’s opinions due to Pakistani mismanagement of foreign affairs were turned against the Pakistani cause. Sadly, even Pakistan’s traditional friends had also lost faith in the Pakistan’s cause. This success was not achieved by India overnight. India handled their foreign maneuvers far more deftly than Pakistan and turned the tables on Pakistan and its national morale.

Pakistan’s major flaw in East Pakistan was that it fought the War with an Internal Security Deployment, which was certainly the wrong way to fight the War.

This happened because in March ‘71 when the rebellion started in East Pakistan, the Pakistani forces were deployed on the Indian Border so as to deny the Indians the ability to make small enclaves which they could call Bangladesh. As a result in March ‘71 most of the Pakistani Armed Forces were deployed along the border with India.

When the War with India became imminent in the latter part of 1971, the Pakistani forces should have converted their defensive posture to a more compact posture towards the interior of what was East Pakistan. Unfortunately Pakistan did not adopt a more compact defensive deployment, and resultantly the Indian Forces guided by the Mukti Bahini were able to infiltrate through the large gaps without coming into contact with the Pakistani forces.

Q  The Indian and Bangladeshi narrative accuses the Pakistan Army of committing atrocities against the East Pakistan population, including extra-judicial killing and rape. However, Sharmila Bose, an Indian Bengali-American writer, in her book “Dead Reckoning: Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War,” challenges the Indian and Bangladeshi narrative. What was the actual situation? Why you think that writers and activists in the West and even many in Pakistan undermine Bose’s research work? And why were the heinous crimes committed by Mukti Bahani were ignored?

AKK: As soon as the rioting and killings started in March ‘71, the International Media turned against Pakistan, because the Pakistan Government had expelled all foreign correspondents out of Pakistan. This was a bad move and resultantly most correspondents turned against Pakistan and did a lot of damage to Pakistan’s image by their negative reporting against us.

Similarly, after the surrender of Pakistani Forces a great deal of totally negative, untrue and exaggerated Bengali literature was produced against Pakistan. Due to the low morale existing in Pakistan nothing was done to counter this one-sided Anti-Pakistan propaganda.

The respite for Pakistan came from Sharmila Bose through her well researched Book ‘Dead Reckoning’. In 1971, Sharmila was a school-girl in Calcutta (now Kolkata). Sharmila Bose, herself a Bengali, is a grand-niece of Subhas Chandra Bose of the Indian National Army (INA) fame. Subhas was a politician of Jawahar Lal Nehru’s stature during the days of British Raj.

As Sharmila grew up, she found the rabid and exaggerated Bengali and Indian propaganda against Pakistan troublesome. Resultantly, she started her own research and drew her own conclusions which belied most of the findings of earlier published Indian-Bengali claims. For instance she found the claims regarding killings, rapes and other excesses as highly exaggerated and untenable. ‘Dead Reckoning’ is a balanced and a well-researched book. Sharmila is now married to a British National and runs a well-reputed Research Institute in UK.

The Indian Government’s ire against Sharmila Bose is so great that she has been declared a virtual Persona Non Grata in India.

Q Do you think politicians could have prevented the East Pakistan debacle? Whom do you hold most responsible for the tragedy? Have we learnt any lessons from the 1971 defeat as a nation?

AKK: There is absolutely no doubt that a better and more honest set of politicians in Pakistan could have averted the disaster that befell our country. Unfortunately this is such a vast and sad subject that it will take a book to apportion blame, so I leave the question of holding someone responsible, unanswered.

As far as learning lessons is concerned I hope we all have learnt lessons. Suffice to say, that the ‘ends’ which the main characters of ‘71 from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan met should tell the ‘story.’ Nature has its own way of retribution of excesses.

Q Today, the Pakistan Armed Forces are more battle hardened, but the ratio between them and the enemy forces remain as big as ever. Where would we stand against India today, should its extremist Hindu leadership impose war on Pakistan?

AKK: Today’s story of the Pakistan Armed Forces is quite different because it is happening more than five decades later. What the Pakistani Forces and population have faced for a prolonged period during the war against terrorism can only be called magnificent. Pakistan is the only country in the World which has put the terrorists on the back foot and turned the tide. Only battle-hardened troops, and a motivated population could have achieved this and Pakistan can be rightly proud of itself. Given sufficient time, Hindutva will bring its own downfall. PAKISTAN PAINDABAD