SUNDAY TIMES, DECEMBER 12,1971
PAKISTAN GAMBLE THAT FAILED
THE WAR OF THE 700 MILLION
Sunday Times reporters” at the bloody birth of Bangladesh
DAY 1
From the front row of the stalls. Sayle was watching the curtain rise on the third, decisive act of a tragedy which has been in the making since partition in 1947. The first act was the Pakistan Army’s repression of Bengali nationalism, beginning on March 25. The second act started on November 22. when the Indian Army first openly intervened in East Bengal on the side of the Mukti Bahini guerrillas.
The third act was general war, all out and on all fronts. Two countries with a combined population of 685 million people are fighting from the foothills of the Karakorums to the Great Indian Desert, and from the irrigated farmlands of the Indus headwaters to the waterlogged islands at the mouth of the Ganges.
With increasing urgency over the past few weeks, Murray Sayle reports from Rawalpindi. General Yahya Khan has been urged by many of the officers in his inner circle to lake some of the Indian pressure of East Pakistan with a series of blows in the West.
The Pakistani commander in the East, Lt-Gen Amin Abdullah Khan Niazi was told that he had to keep the Mukti Bahini guerrillas in check until mid-February. By that lime, the beginning of the rainy seasons would swell the rivers and give his soldiers some protection. By that time, too Niazi was told, some sort of political compromise would have been reached so that the guerrillas would begin to lose their support in the countryside. There was, as we shall see, some foundation for this last hope: though in the end it proved to be based on a miscalculation.
Niazi was told he could expect no reinforcements, and he was given enough supplies and ammunition to last until, mid-February. But his orders were based on the assumption that the Indians would limit themselves to shelling across the border and to supporting the guerrillas.
But the Indians stepped up the pressure and from November 22 openly joined in the fighting. The only way the outnumbered Pakistanis could hold them was by laying down curtains of fire, the most wasteful possible use of ammunition. On Wednesday. December 1 Niazi reported to Yahya Khan that his ammunition stocks would not last more than a week at the rate they were being used.
* Henry Brandon, Nicholas Carroll. Edited by Godfrey Hodgson
The same day an order went out to the troops in East Pakistan that ammunition was to be conserved at all costs and that every shot must be made to count.
It was not an order calculated to help morale, even of the excellent troops in East Pakistan. And it convinced Yahya that a surrender on the scale of Britain’s at Singapore, which is a disaster much on the mines of the Pakistani generals, was imminent in the East unless something was done.
DAY 2: Failure of the Pakistan quick-Kill
A Few Minutes after midnight on Saturday, Mrs. Gandhi arrived back in Delhi from Calcutta, where she cut short a brief visit after she heard the news. In a radio broadcast, she said that India was on a “war footing.” Later in the day she made a statement to Parliament. The politicians banged their desks with enthusiasm and quickly passed a Defense of India bill, giving her sweeping emergency powers.
DAY 3: Retreat-or Face Mukti
On Sunday, a change in tacties brought a noticeable spurt in the Indian Army’s offensive on the Eastern front Instead of wasting men, material and time on the conquest of well-fortified Pakistan Army positions: a two-pronged attack was launched on Dacca.
The Indians objective was to grab the provincial capital as quickly as possible and, by slicing the province in two. to isolate well-entrenched Pakistan Army units in both halves. These would either have to fall back on Dacca or dig in and be pleked off by the Mukti Bahini or the Indian Army at their leisure. This plan had the added advantage of keeping damage to the province to a minimum-an important factor since India would be expected to help re-establish the economy were a Bangladesh government to come to power.
Forty miles to the south, another Indian column moved across the border below Comilla into the rail junction of Laksham. From here, there was an excellent road to Daudkandi, a key ferry point on the Meghna just 22 miles east of Dacca.
The operations in these areas were facilitated by Indian air supremacy. There were no tactical air strikes by Pakistan Air Force. The Indians claimed to have destroyed all but four of the Sabres stationed in East Pakistan and these were grounded at Dacca airport by repeated Indian bombing of the only jet runway in the province.
Accordingly Indian Army units investing Jessore, instead of risking a head-on clash with the 5,000 to 7,000 Pakistani troops there moved to by-pass and outflank them in the direction of Dacca.
On the Eastern border of East Bengal, an Indian Army column moving through Agartala began to move westwards towards Ashuganj, where a major bridge offered access to Dacca.
Chittagong, the eastern terminal of the long supply line from Karachi, was kept bottle up by fighters operating from the Indian aircraft carrier Vikrant. And Chittagong’s vital road and railway link with Dacca and the north was threatened by an Indian Army thrust towards Feni, an important communications centre half way to Comilla.
DAY 4 : Enter tanks-and the vultures
On Monday December 6, India made its long-expected recognition of the “Republic of Bangladesh.”
Mrs. Gandhi told cheering MP’s in the Lok Sabha (House of the People) that”… Pakistan is totally incapable of bringing the people of Bangladesh back under its control. Now that Pakistan is waging war against India, the normal hesitation on our part not to do anything which might be construed as intervention has lost its significance…”
Pakistan retaliated by formally breaking off diplomatic relations with India, the first such break since both countries became independent in 1947.
In the East the fall of Feni to Indian troops cut Chittagong off completely from Dacca. The Indians now pushed on towards Ashuganj and Daudkandi where they hoped to ford the River Meghna for the assault on Dacca.
DAY 6: ‘The Pak’s morale is in their boots’
On Wednesday, Indian aircraft bombed and strafed Karachi, and Russian-built Indian missile boats bombarded Karachi from the sea. damaging three freighters, one of them British. But the main Indian thrust of the day was on the ground, in East Bengal.
Philip Jacob son after a brief disagreeable stint in the Presidency jail in Calcutta along with our photographer. Penny Tweedie, and three other journalists (for crossing the border without the right permission from the Indian Army) crossed again in rime to watch the Indian Army’s biggest success of the war to date: the capture of Jessore. This had been the HQ of the Pakistani. 16th Division and the strongest fortified point on the whole western border of East Bengal. Jacobson also began to understand why Pakistani resistance was collapsing in the East.
The total collapse of the Pakistani Army’s resistance in Jessore is one of the most intriguing puzzles of the war in the East. For weeks, Indian Army sources and other expert observers had been predicting that a stern siege, involving heavy Indian casualties, would be needed to take the Jessore cantonment-a vast military complex covering an area of several miles just outside Jessore town.
At the beginning of last week, Indian intelligence reported that a full infantry brigade-some 5,000 men-was defending the cantonment, supported by heavy artillery, about 40 tanks, a formidable network of minefields, reinforced bunkers and dug-in anti- tank emplacements. All the signs were that the Pakistanis would stand and fight.
Instead, in the stinging words of Colonel P. S. Deshpande, the jaunty commanding officer of the Indian 9th Division: “They ran away.” In less than 24 hours, Indian tanks and infantry took an objective they had estimated might require up to a week’s bitter fighting. The vital Jessore airstrip was captured, literally, without a single-shot being fired: “Now one round,” Colonel Deshpande repeated gleefully.
The reason for this astonishing collapse lies, more than anything else, in the utter demoralization of most of the Pakistani Army in Bangladesh. Throughout last week, Pakistani units were surrendering without resistance. At Kalampur, the garrison of 160 men of the 31 Baluch-a good fighting regiment-gave up without firing a shot. Near Comilla, the commanding officer of the 25 Frontier Force, another good unit, surrendered with 100 of his men to a platoon of Indians. In the strategic railhead town of Akhaura, a vital link in the defense of Dacca, the Pakistanis had rushed in extra troops, armour and artillery, yet the whole force chucked it in after only symbolic resistance.
It is not hard to see why, in the vivid phrase of Colonel Deshpande ‘the Paks’ morale is in their boots.” Senior officers have been slipping away to Dacca with wives and families for the past fortnight. The unconfirmed rumors of special flights to get them out to West Pakistan would certainly have percolated through to the ordinary soldiers. And they already have plenty to worry about. The Indians are bombarding them through loudspeakers, leaflets, and radio broadcasts with a simple but stark message:
Surrender to us before the Mukti Bahini (the Bangladesh guerrillas) get to you.”
There are some terrible scores to be settled and the settling has already begun; the first mangled corpese of Pakistani soldiers are beginning to turn up in the scrub or floating down the rivers in areas where the Mukti Bahini won control before the Indian Army arrived.
The lightning advances of the Indian Army in last week’s fighting only added to the demoralization of the Pakistanis. In a few areas, they have fought bravely are well: the Indians arc keeping very quiet about the Hill sector where an outnumbered and totally isolated Pakistani force seems to be holding out.
Closer to Jessore. there were two sharp engagements-or “extremely good fights” in Colonel Deshpande’s enthusiastic phrase-but they failed to halt the headlong attack on the town and the cantonment.
It is clear that the Pakistanis badly misjudged the speed of the Indian advance, in the map lined operations room at Jessore the charts of Indian positions as seen by the offenders suggest they had not expected a full scale attack for another day.
When the hasty evacuations began at 4.20 pm on Wednesday, the Indians were a bare 6.000 yard away. The Pakistanis left so hurriedly that the orders of the day were still on the duplicator and there were half-prepared meals in the officers’ mess.
The bulk of the Pakistani troops seem to have escaped, though only to the dubious security of the road to Khulna, and they seem to have taken most of their artillery pieces with them. These were probably several miles behind the cantonment and would therefore be easier to save. I saw only one burned-out Pakistani tank in the cantonment itself. The Pakistanis left behind them about 6,000 tons of ammunition and general supplies which will be badly missed in the retreat.
We had reached Jessore in what was certainly one of the most bizarre columns to pass through the gates of the cantonment. A fleet of rickety yellow taxis and venerable private cars carried us the 85 miles from Calcutta in a bone-jarring, five hour journey. As we rattled past the frontier post at Petrapole, the first of the jubilant crowds appeared. From there right through to Jessore, 25 miles away, the road was lined with cheering, beaming villagers waying the new red. white, gold and green flag of Bangladesh and ecstatically chanting the familiar “Joi Bangla” slogan. Now that Bangladesh is victorious, the new fashion is to emphasize the Joi.
Driving through the beautifully lush countryside, a chessboard of dark green paddies, brown water and brilliant vegetation, the evidence of the Pakistani Army’s precipitate retreat was everywhere, Well concealed, reinforced bunkers has been abandoned without a fight, often with a substantial pile of arms left in them.
To the surprise and relief of the Indian engineers, the retreating Pakistanis had not tried to destroy the vital tarmac road or even mine the areas around it. Even where a bridge had been blown, as at Navaran on the Betna River, the Indians were able to cut a dirt road across country and bypass the obstacle: A stream of army lorries and halftracks was churning up swirling clouds of choking brown dust but the traffic kept moving.
It was at Jhingcrgacha, too, that we found the first disturbing evidence that a new wave of killing can be expected before the bloodstained nation of Bangladesh settles down to anything like normality. Sprawled by the single track railway were the bodies of three youngish men, clad only in lungis, the flowing skirt-like costume of this region.
They were blindfolded, their arms and legs cruelly roped behind their backs. Their throats had been cut and the blood had soaked into the day, brown earth.
According to the villagers, the murdered men were collaborators, traitors who had helped the Pakistani troops rape, loot and murder. But nobody would admit that the Mukti Bahini had killed them. In the past few weeks, however, there have been persistent rumors that the Mukti are taking a terrible revenge on those they consider to have betrayed Bangladesh. There are dark rumors of mass “trials’* at kangaroo courts which invariably end with summary execution.
Yet, like so many other places in Bangladesh, Jhingergacha has every reason to indulge its hatred. When the Pakistanis began pulling out last week, they were alleged to have massacred up to 100 villagers in final spasm of savagery.
DAY 7: The headlong fight from Jessore
The Indian Troops after taking Jessore town and Jessore cantonment, fought their way on down the road to Khulna, a major river port and one of the biggest cities in East Bengal. Again Philip Jecobsan was with them:
The gruesome trail that marked the headlong retreat of the Pakistani Army from its “impregnable” position in Jessore began a few miles outside the town. The tarmac road was scarred and fun-owed by machinegun bullets and rockets. A dozen burnt-out jeeps and lorries lay twisted in the ditches: Pakistani regulars frozen in grotesque poses of agony. Some were charred and blackened; others had terrible, fly-covered wounds.
They were the first dead Pakistani soldiers we had seen in this sector since the war began. They had been caught by Indian tanks tearing through Jessore and by jet fighters: they had abandoned their vehicles and ran vainly for the ditches. A large and cheerful crowd of locals posed proudly around the corpses, right arms erect in the “Joy Bangla!” salute.
A mile further down the road were the remains of Rupdia, a hamlet unlucky enough to be the scene of a delaying action by Pakistani infantry, desperately covering the rear of a 2,000 strong column which included almost 1,000 wives and families of officers formerly stationed at Jessore. The flattened huts were still burning and three buses used for a barricade had been raked with bullets from-end to end.
Moving forward through a battalion of the Madrasi Regiment-small, cheerful men who waved and smiled at everyone-our photographer Penny Tweedie and I hitched a short ride on a Russian-built T55 tank of the India 63rd Cavalry. Clanking and grinding up the narrow road, ducking the big 105mm gun as it swivelled to point towards Pakistani positions, we arrived at the foremost point of the Indian advance. A full squadron of 1455s was assembling to support the Madrasis in their next push down the Khulna road.
Crouching nervously behind the comforting bulk of the tanks every time a shell from this Pakistanis 105mm guns landed anywhere remotely near us, we watched Indian advanced units carefully probing the enemy’s positions. A company of Pakistani infantryman-probably from the 27th Baluch Regiment was holding up the advance with mortar and machinegun fire: the sound of small arms fire could be heard clearly a few hundred yards away.
When shelling failed to dislodge the Pakistani rearguard, the local commander, Lt.Col. Naregyean-an amiable, imperturbable Madrasi-decided to call for air support. Radios crackled impressively and map references were busily exchanged, and checked.
Everyone looked expectantly upwards. Nothing happened for a while. Then, quite suddenly, two of the Indian Air Force’s Russian SU 7 fighters appeared high in the enormous blue sky. For a few minutes they circled gracefully, like hawks searching for prey.
Then, after a tank fired a blue smoke-maker shell, they banked into a steep dive and straightened out at tree-top level. From where we stood. I could see the flashes from the big 30 caliber machine-gun as the jets strafed Pakistani positions.
When the planes turned away for their base near Calcutta, the Pakistani guns had been silenced. The tanks roared into life again and crashed away through the brightyellow mustard fields, followed by the Madrasi infantry. “Khulna is finished Colonel Naregyean shouted as he sped away in his command jeep.’
DAY 8: Closing in 011 the capital
On Friday Pakistan’s hopes for a stalemate began to collapse. In the East, Indian troops began to close on Dacca where they were awaited with calm by the Bengalis and with obvious fear by the Bihari Muslims and the Punjabis. In the West, Pakistan’s desperate thrusts into Kashmir were being held. Now came the first significant crack in Pakistan’s tightly knit military establishment. The United Nations received an appeal from Major-General Rao Farman Ali, military adviser to the Governor o/East Pakistan, asking for help in ending the war on terms which clearly admitted a Pakistani defeat.
Farman Ali asked for the UN to repatriate Pakistani troops and civilian officials to West Pakistan with guarantees of their safety until this could be arranged. In return he was prepared to offer the establishment of an elected government in East Pakistan.
The Security Council had, however, barely begun to consider Farman Ali’s appeal when a message arrived from President Yahya Khan asking that it be disregarded. And in Dacca Farman Ali’s immediate superior, Ll-Gen A. A. K. Niazi. GOC Eastern Command, appeared in person at the Intercontinental Hotel to refute rumors that he had fled the country. “I am here commanding my troops by the will of Allah,” the general said. “And I will never desert them.”
Capitalizing on General Farman Ali’s apparent break with the military command in Dacca, the Indian Chief of the Army Staff, General Sam Maneckshaw addressed a personal radio message to him advising surrender: “Resistance is senseless and will mean the death of many poor soldiers.”
Maneckshaw was not exaggerating. Indian troops converging on Dacca from west, cast and north had established their first bridgehead across the River Meghna. Troops were transported across the river by helicopter at Asuganj and were only 40 miles north-east of Dacca with virtually an open road to the city.
Dacca was bombed in the morning and the afternoon as is it had been most days this week. The city’s inhabitants seemed to have become used to the bombings and near the airport they gathered to gawk ‘at an unexploded 2501b bomb with its clear markings indicating, with some irony, that it was made in the United States.
On the Western front, in the Chamb area of Kashmir Pakistani, troops continued on the offensive. In the boldest action to date, four Pakistani battalions supported by artillery and armor crossed the shallow Munawar Tavi river to attack Indian positions on the eastern bank.
India admitted it was suffering heavy casualties at the Pakistani forces pressed the mortar attack in the Chamb area. At the same time there were indications that India might accept the United Nations call for a ceasefire once the ‘Bangladesh regime had been installed in Dacca.
DAY 9: The end of Act 3
By yesterday, it was clear that Act III was over. Pakistani troops were beginning to surrender in large groups in the East.
The Indian armies, having crossed the last major water barriers, were already tightening the ring around Dacca.
In the West the Indians were holding fast along the ceasefire line in spite of everything the Pakistanis were throwing at them.
Yet it was equally clear that Act III was not the end of the tragedy. There would have to be an Act IV.
In Delhi, Nicholas Carroll found that, understandably after the Indian successes in Bengal, the immediate future course of events was seen as beguilingly simple and apparently inevitable. The scenario, in the minds of high Indian officials, he reported goes like this. The Pakistani troops in Bangladesh must in the end succumb. Even if a last ditch stand in Dacca holds up the time-table, there is no way out for them.
Under the auspices of the Indian Army, two close associates of Sheikh Mujib, Syed Nazrul Islam and Tazuddin Ahmed, were due to be installed in Jessore on Saturday afternoon as respectively. President and Prime Minister of the Republic of Bangladesh.
The Pakistani prisoners of war will be sent home quickly, though not out of any market feelings of charity (” Why should we feed those bastards ?” one senior Indian official asked Carroll) India will then withdraw her troops.
China; the Indians suppose, will go on making the threatening noises which in the Indian view are a consolatory substitute for military assistance to Pakistan. And the United States will have to swallow its disapproval and learn to live with the kind of fait accompli which Israel achieved.
In the long run, the shattering disaster to the prestige of Pakistan’s armed services in the East must shake the prestige of the military men who dominate West Pakistani.
But on the ninth day of general war the military conflict seemed far from over. The Pakistani Army still had reserves, and its commanders still had spirit.
Indian strategists were guessing, and Pakistani officials were hinting, that Act IV might see a do-or-die offensive. But in the meantime the curtain was coming down on Act III. On Saturday, after a brief period during which “a very poorly heard transmitter announcing itself as Radio Pakistan, Dacca could still be picked up by the BBC’s monitors, Radio Dacca finally faded away. The voice of Punjabi rule in Bengal had in any case, tong been drowned by the shouts of “Joi Bangla !.”