KAYHAN (INTERNATIONAL), AUGUST 1, 1971
THE DECLINE AND FALL OF SHEIKH MUJIB
By Amir Taheri
In the middle of Dacca’s fashionable Dhanmandi district there is a pale yellow three-storied building which is said to be haunted by ghosts in the dark nights of the monsoon. Most of the windows are broken and there are bullet marks on almost every wall. The wild ivy pursues its green conquest of the mud-brick walls encouraged by generous rain. Amid of thick leaves of the old trees there are soaked little slogans saying: Joy Bangla (Long Live Bengal).
People who pass from the street on which the houses are situated make sure to keep their distance from this badly designed semi-Georgian house that has already been shrouded into legend.
The house belongs to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the goaled leader of the Awami League whose meteoric rise to popularity and his equally sudden decline and fall have become something of a dream mixed with hints of nightmare to the millions of people who were stirred up to hysteria by his fiery speeches over no more than a year. .
In the modest room that was Mujib’s house we found a pile of letters still unopened invitations to weddings, requests for this or that and page after page of, for us, undecipherable Bengali scribbling. All the letters had arrived at the house in midMarch but the Sheikh, who was arrested on March 26, had no time to open them.
On his desk we found Sir Ivor Jennings, Constitutional Problems of Pakistan” dedicated to Mujib by his teacher, one Zuberi. Inside the cover we read: “Politics leads to power but knowledge is power, too. And Mujib has added a few sentences saying this was the book he read every time, he was thrown into prison. This time, however he did not have time to take the book with him.
In other rooms there are books and records scattered everywhere as well as withered flowers, colored bulbs, black flags and party slogans. The whole house has the aspect of a place where a big party has been wrecked by the intervention of vengeful gate-crashers.
The Sheikh must have been quite a desperate man during the last 48 hours of his freedom. With a thumping electoral victory behind him and with no opponents in sight in East Pakistan he had obviously found himself the Messiah of 75 million desperately poor East Pakistanis.
Throughout the complex game of man oeuvres and counter-man oeuvres that followed the election-the first in Pakistan’s history-the Sheikh had conducted himself with masterful composure and always contriving to appear to the wronged side.
He had managed to advocate his Six-points with complete freedom despite the fact that the programme was a truly revolutionary one which if implemented, would have led to a virtual end to central authority in East Pakistan, at the same time he had succeeded in holding his Party together and the Awami League which he headed with a spectrum of various political ideas and socio-economic interests. Inside his central committee there were sworn pro-Mao Communists, anti-Communist landlords and rich merchants, nihilistic student rebels, pompous middle class lawyers and rustic jute growers from the dark hinterland.
The election had been held for the formation of a constituent assembly that would write a constitution for Pakistan. But in the last days of March the Sheikh, no doubt egged on by his extremist lieutenants, asked the military government to agree to an immediate transfer of power to the assembly.
In doing so he was encouraged by numerous West Pakistani leaders including Qayyum Khan of the Muslim League and other lesser figures such as Air-Marshal Asgar Khan, Nasrullah and Mian Mumtaz Daulatana. So he thought that his call for an immediate end of martial law and handover of power to the assembly would be backed by the West Pakistanis as well. The only man he did not count on was Zulfiqar AU Bhutto, Chairman of the West Pakistani People’s Party -the second largest group in the assembly that never met.
Mujib accused Bhutto of having caused the postponement of the assembly, and when a fresh date was given by the President. Mujib was no longer interested in constitutional niceties alone. He wanted power then and there. Looking around him he found the military chiefs weak and. undecided and thought Yahya Khan would baulk at the thought of plunging the nation into, what Mujib was convinced, would be a long and bitter civil war.
To this was added his demand for an enquiry into shooting incidents that had claimed over 300 lives in East Pakistan in the second week of March. What, in effect he asked for, was a trial of the generals responsible for martial law in East Pakistan.
There was a remarkable degree of naiveté in his moves. He wanted the generals to hand over power to him and agree to be tried by him. At the same time he had no definite strategy for imposing his will upon them.
By mid-March his “Hartal” (strike) movement was in full swing although he was still negotiating with President Yahya. He talked as if he had already seized power and made it clear that from then on he would be dictating his terms to the military government as well as the assembly members elected in the west wing.
Beyond saying he would put the generals on trial, Mujib had no well-defined policy to offer as the basis for the activities of the government he proposed to form. He did not say whether this would be a government for East Pakistan alone or whether he was aiming at creating a government for both wings. The first alternative in more Plausible since the Awami League would not have been able to completely ignore Bhutto had it had a chance to form a national government.
Negotiations between Mujib and Yahya Khan dragged on and both sides gradually grew impatient. Yahya wanted Mujib to join the assembly as majority leader, help draft a constitution and then head a civilian government. The only conditions were that end his “hartal”, withdraw the demand for the trial of the army chiefs and drop his insistence on forming two separate assemblies-one for each wing of the divided country.
Mujib was adamant. He argued that the martial law government had lost its authority in East Pakistan and that he accepted nothing less than carte blanche. He told Yahya Khan that his party had won a free election and thus was entitled to power. What the military government did in West Pakistan was of no concern to him.
It was at this point that the talks broke down. Neither side knew what the next move would be. The breakdown of the talks was hailed by the extremists in Awami League as a “victory”. They began organizing group of armed volunteers and asked – Bengali soldiers and policemen to rebel against their West Pakistani officers.
Yahya Khan, on the other hand, was not given a chance to weigh the results of his nightmarish encounter with the Sheikh. He saw his army on the verge of disintegration and his government about to lose control not only in East Pakistan but also in the West Wing. For, had Mujib succeeded in doing what he had set about to do, the military government would have collapsed in West Pakistan also. Finding himself in a hopeless situation the President chose military action as the sole way out of the crisis.
By doing so he also solved a problem that must have been plaguing Sheikh Mujibur Rahman-viz. what to do next? For Mujib, having successfully pulled off his “hartal,” still had to eliminate the army from the scene and establish some form of order in the turbulent country it the mercy of “goondas” (thugs) and Naxalitc rebels. He would have been completely unable to achieve the double objective and since he had no more cards to play he decided to allow events to lake their “natural” course. Having forced the army into a head-on collision with the Awami League, the Sheikh did not have the ghost of a policy designed to save his party from destruction.
He was urged by his militant juniors to declare the independence, of “Bangladesh” and to immediately invite military aid from India. He was not sure India would be able or willing to embark upon a war with Pakistan on his behalf. He knew there would be violent repercussions in West Bengal-a development the Indians do not welcome.
Somehow he was expecting some kind of a miracle that would save him from having his back to the wall.
His middle-class supporters were gradually leaving the band-wagon. They had joined it in the hope of getting a share in East Pakistan’s trade, then entirely in the hands of the West Pakistanis. They had certainly not backed the Sheikh in order to be plunged into a civil war that would mean their own economic ruin as well.
All the properties strata of the society were by then frightened and chose “law and order”, withdrawing their support from Mujib although not saying so openly. Mujib had asked them to starve the army. But supplies continued to flow into the barracks. Notables began to have secret meetings with the military chiefs.
The extremist students were also abandoning Mujib for entirely different reasons. They wanted him to do a Mao while he was trying to do a Gandhi. In the last fateful hours of his career the Sheikh was left with the unreliable support only of the unorganized mass of the Bengali peasantry. The pace of events was too quick for him and soon his authority was superseded by that, of men like Tajuddin Ahmed, the Awami League’s secessionist secretary-general and student leaders like Noor-e-Alam Siddiqui and A.S.M. Abdur Rob.
On the other side the initiative was in the hands Lt. General Tikka Khan reputed to be the toughest officer to come out of the Punjub for a generation.
There was no room on such a stage for romantic, indecisive and utterly confused political actors such as Mujibur Rahman. From then on the only valid dialogue was that spoken in the language of bullets.
The Awami League extremists hastily announced the birth of their independent “Bangladesh” while Mujibur Rahman sat in his house in Dhanmandi ready to be arrested by the army.
Mujib was seized and flown to Karachi in the early hours of March 26. On the plane he slept for just over an hour. He did not talk to anyone. At Karachi airport he had to change planes for Quetta. the capital of Pakistani Baluchistan. He was taken into the VIP lounge and offered English tea. He asked for black coffee. Then two policemen posed behind him and a snap-shot was taken.
Few people know of Mujib’s whereabouts at present. He is being moved from one prison to another. Last month he went on a hunger strike but he agreed to eat when his wife and children were taken to see him. During the past few weeks he has been writing feverishly. No one knows what he is writing but some people say he is preparing his defense for the time he goes on trial.
There are rum ours that he has gone insane and is making unintelligible “speeches” for several hours a day, But I have First hand information that this is not true. The Awami League leader is quite-sound and has neither been tortured nor treated with disrespect. In fact, he is being treated as if he were a VIP spending some time behind bars.
A group of lawyers and military’ chiefs are preparing the case against him. He is expected to be put on trial within the next few weeks on a charge of high treason. The maximum penalty would be death by firing squad.
Few people in West Pakistan believe Mujib will be executed. No political executions have taken place in the history of Pakistan so far and there are strong reasons to believe that this tradition will not be broken. Most West Pakistanis were convinced Mujib was a secessionist and involved in a conspiracy planned by the Indian government. In East Pakis tan it is still practically impossible to assess Mujib’s present standing; Few people like to talk about him, and those who do. arc former members of his party who now accuse him of having led his people into a trap.
Meanwhile, Mujib still has to give his version of Pakistan’s bloody nightmare. When his trial opens in Islamabad he will be facing the judgment not only of a court martial but also of history.