Recollections of a Communicator: Pakistan will never live down its 1971 war defeat

Asian News International (ANI)
December 13, 2014 Saturday

Recollections of a Communicator: Pakistan will never live down its 1971 war defeat
BYLINE: ANI
LENGTH: 1029 words

New Delhi, Dec.13 (ANI): It was surprising to hear General Pervez Musharraf saying that the intrusion by the Pakistan Army in Kargil in 1999 was in response to India’s role in the 1971 war which resulted in the creation of Bangladesh out of what was then East Pakistan.
Pakistan had such ‘reasons’ in all the wars it fought with India. While the first ‘war’ with India in 1947-48 started as a tribal invasion to force Jammu and Kashmir to accede to Pakistan, it had to accept later that the Pakistan Army had backed the tribals and later deployed regular troops as well.
As Public Relations Officer for the Army, I had the opportunity to disseminate information about the operations regarding the India- Pakistan wars of 1965 and 1971. Later, as spokesman of the Government of India, it was my task to counter Pakistan’s propaganda in support of its proxy war.
The 1965 war was started by General Ayub Khan against India, which was then perceived as a weak country recovering after its war with China in 1962. General Ayub Khan also sent in tribals into Jammu and Kashmir, but they received no support from the people of the state. He chose to attack in Chamb -Jaurian to cut the state off from the rest of the country.
The war spread along the India Pakistan border in Punjab.

General Ayub made statements that the Pakistan Army would be able to conquer parts of Punjab and reach Amritsar. He even threatened that the Pakistan Army would reach Delhi’s Red Fort spearheading the assault with its Paton tanks gifted by the United States.
A cease-fire was declared after 22-days. On the day of cease fire, the Indian Army occupied the Ichhogil Canal on the outskirts of Lahore. India was able to capture territory along the canal till Burki.
India and Pakistan were invited to Tashkent by the then Soviet Union for negotiations. Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri agreed to return the captured territories to Pakistan. He passed away on the night the agreement was signed.
The 1971 war was the result of a crackdown by Pakistan on its eastern wing when there was an uprising there following the refusal of the military rulers to hand over power to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who won the parliamentary elections with 162 seats. He should have been made the Prime Minister of Pakistan.
General Yahya Khan, the military ruler of the country, sent General Tikka Khan to put down the disturbances in East Pakistan. In the crackdown that followed, hundreds of thousands of innocent people were massacred and over five million fled to India to save themselves. People of East Pakistan raised the Mukti Bahini to liberate themselves from the oppressive rule.
India responded to this ‘demographic aggression’ by supporting the ‘Mukti Bahini’ , and the war between India and Pakistan broke out when the Pakistan Air Force carried out attacks on India on December 3, 1971.
The war lasted for 12 days, at the end of which, the Indian Army secured the surrender of the Pakistan Army in the eastern wing, took 92,000 Pakistani soldiers as prisoners of war and helped to create the new nation of Bangladesh. Strategic experts call the war as the War of the Century’.
Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India, invited Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, her counterpart from Pakistan for talks in Shimla in July 1972. It was agreed at Shimla that the prisoners of war would be returned to Pakistan; captured territories along the Western border, except in Jammu and Kashmir returned; the cease-fire line would be converted as the Line of Control and Pakistan would take steps to convert it into an international border, with the hope that peace would prevail in the subcontinent.
The hope melted away with the army taking over power again. In the power struggle that followed in Pakistan Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was arrested and sentenced to death.
General Zia-ul-Haq, who assumed power in 1979, became an ally with western powers following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

In the years that followed he was instrumental in executing the ‘proxy-war’ techniques in Afghanistan.
Pakistan salted away some of the material it received from the West to fight the Soviets. General Zia planned and executed

proxy war against India in Punjab and later in Jammu and Kashmir. He could not complete his tasks as he died in a plane crash in 1988.
General Musharraf, who became the army chief in 1998, has now claimed that the Kargil War in 1999 was in response to India’s role in the 1971 Liberation War that led to the creation of Bangladesh. As the Pakistan Army Chief, he mounted the operations even though Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee went to Lahore in a bus in February 1999 and attended the flag hoisting ceremony at the Minar-e-Pakistan and hoped to start a new chapter in bilateral relations.
General Musharraf felt emboldened and occupied the heights in Kargil hoping to cut off Ladakh by attacking the Srinagar-Kargil-Leh highway. Again, Pakistan claimed that those who occupied the heights were ‘militants’ but it turned out later that they were soldiers of the Northern Light Infantry.
India has to accept that Pakistan will continue its ‘proxy war’ against it, carry out terrorist attacks, even though the terrorists have been destabilizing that country itself.
Even after 43 years of the creation of Bangladesh, Pakistan is unable to accept that it lost the 1971 war because it refused to make Shiekh Mujibur Rehman the Prime Minister of Pakistan and killed millions of its own citizens in the eastern wing.
Musharraf wants to exonerate himself from being called another general who lost a war to India-a desperate attempt to rewrite history which is not a new tactic. In Pakistan, its military rulers are used to it. They do not admit to their military failures.
For many years, India was observing Vijay Divas’ on a low key. It is time the country pays its tribute to those brave soldiers who fought in what strategic experts refer to as the “war of the century”.
The views expressed in the above article are that of Mr. I Ramamohan Rao, a former Principal Information Officer to the Government of India. He can be reached on his email raoramamohan@hotmail.com By I. Ramamohan Rao (ANI)

LOAD-DATE: December 14, 2014
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
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