BATTLE OF BANGLADESH
Role Of The Faceless Ally
By A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT, On August 17, 1971 this correspondent wrote in these columns: “The situation will be considerably simplified if Pakistan makes war on India. The guerrilla army behind Pakistani lines will be a decisive factor in a necessarily quick war.” This precisely is what happened in the bewilderingly speedy a 12 day battle in the east which ended in the surrender of General Niazi to General Aurora on December 16. This culminated in a Liddell Hart type battle by the Indian commander in a potentially Mao Tsetung situation. According to military logic, Pakistan should never have started the war. And had India invaded in the east the correct Pakistani defense would have been to fight for time in order to hold up the campaign, say for six to eight weeks during which the 7th Fleet might have had an opportunity to intervene, China might have been able to do something less negative and in the west, General Tikka Khan might at least have seized some territory for eventual bargaining. These contingencies did not materialize, but the Pakistani plan of battle in the east should have been based on these assumptions.
In Bangladesh bases in the west north and east supported by a redoubt in the river girdled Dacca, should and could have been held; Pakistan had enough manpower and tools of war in the east to hold out for several weeks after an attack on their posts. That the Pakistanis were not allowed to fight according to such a plan was mainly due to the well-harmonized strategy of the Indian Army and the Mukti Bahini. From September onwards there was a new intensity in the Mukti Bahini operations in Bangladesh both quantitatively and qualitatively, with which the infiltrated force of Razakars and the police force of doubtful loyalty were unable to cope. To support them, the Pakistani Army strung out along the border to deny the Mukti Bahini their sanctuary. As a consequence the Indian Army also had to take up border stations while the Mukti Bahini operated to the best of their ability inside the Pakistani ring.
GAPS IN DEFENSE
The bases were weakened by the scattered deployment inside Bangladesh. Several months of guerrilla attrition obviously sapped the will of the Pakistani command to fight. The Indian forces also carried the war into a new dimension; the Mukti Bahini trained by them developed an intensive river war which compelled the Pakistanis to scatter in the south in penny packets which put them off balance. Further, the Mukti Bahini provided the Indian command with intelligence in depth. When the Indian Army poured into Bangladesh, their commanders to the battalion level obviously were aware of the gaps in the Pakistani defense and the points of resistance to be bypassed. Fifth columns have in history helped the panzer columns, but no army advancing in Liddel Hart style ever had it so good as General Aurora had in Bangladesh. He used the indirect approach permitted in modern combat conditions : heli operations across the Meghna, paraoperations near Tangail and amphibious landings near Cox’s Bazar. None of them would have been so successful had not the Mukti Bahini in the locality offered help before and after the landings.
For such deliberate creation of a potential Mao Tse-tung situation for Liddel Hart style columns to operate in the Indian Command can take the fullest credit. Ordinarily a professional army like Indians officered by men of the Sandhurst-DehraDun tradition, does not like a guerrilla situation which has no formal front nor any recognized lines of communication. The idea of a handful of armed young men shooting up an army patrol is thoroughly disgusting to a regular officer who is totally opposed to subversion. In this particular case the creation of a guerrilla force in Bangladesh was helpful to India for a political or military solution.
For four Pakistani Divisions plus a host of Razakars, who were capable of genocide at the rate of more than one million men, women and children in four months an unarmed civilian commutiny in Bangladesh, however anti-dictatorial and antiIslamabad, presented no political problem at all. It would have been easy for Yahya Khan and his allies in such a situation to have the kind of “political solution” that suited themselves denying India any opportunity to send back the ten million refugees. It was therefore politically expedient to arm the Bengalies prepared for armed revolt (they were already receiving arms from other sympathetic people as well), and arming them also meant training them. This decision must originally have been political.
STRATEGIC CONCEPT
It lies however to the credit of the Indian Command that it immediately grasped the military possibilities of the frontless, faceless multi-dimensional guerrilla ally. This imaginative strategic concept was grasped by all levels of the army; the comradeship that grew up in consequence between the Mukti Bahini and the Indian field commanders lasted beyond the fall of Dacca. The coordination between the regular army and the Bangladesh irregulars was impeccable, reserving strategic initiatives for Indians only.
Such praise for the guerrillas in Bangladesh does not in the slightest detract from the outstanding strategy of the Indian Command and its brilliant tactical execution by the commanders in the field. By one major strategic stroke General Aurora turned the vulnerable flank of the Pakistani defenses in Bangladesh: he built up a corps around Tripura where even a year ago Indian military thinking would not permit the maintenance of more than a brigade.
The lines of communication from Cachar are a nightmare to any commander. Naturally, therefore the main weight of Pakistan defense has always been disposed against possible attacks only from the west and the north. By the deployment of this Corps, General Aurora put the entire Pakistani army out of position. In consequence the decisive battle east of the Meghna did not take place. Instead there was a decisive advance by the Indian Army. Not merely as a result of this, the Indian columns were placed within a short sword thrust range of Dacca, the main military target in Bangladesh; besides, the only escape route to the sea through Chittagong (even if the 7th Fleet had established a bridgehead) was cut off (the Chalna and Mangla channel being already under heavy attack by the Mukti Bahini navy). This maneuver was not as dramatic as the German circumventing of the Maginot Line by a thrust through the Ardennes. On the other hand it was a slow and deliberate building up of an administrative line by General Aurora over a geo-politically vulnerable terrain, which the Pakistani Command first watched with disbelief but later with panic. The infiltration of Pak saboteurs into the tenuous north Bengal communications and the erratic shelling of the Indian border in the east were the reactions of a terrified Pakistani army.
With the bases weakened, the main defense bastion upset by a menace from the east, intelligence coming from the Mukti Bahini and a friendly population clearing the inevitable fog of war, General Aurora had an ideal field of battle. He drove into Bangladesh on the morning of December 4 in several columns; none of these was individually overpowering. Nor did they have to be, with the Pakistani defenses scattered and psychologically unnerved (the object of a Liddell Hart style battle is to weaken the enemy’s will to fight).
The advancing columns went round the defense points; as a consequence, the troops in the front fell back in headlong retreat, often into carefully laid ambushes in the rear. The main thrust understandably developed in the east. After a brief but conclusive fight in Akhaura two columns reached the Meghna, one at Chandpur-Daudkandi and the other at Ashuganj, the Comilla side of the Bhairab bridge.
While the world’s eye was on these columns, poised for an assault across the wide river, another sharp rapier through Mymensingh was advancing directly south towards Dacca. This was first noted at Jamalpur, when a Pakistani battalion was thrown in in an attempt to stop this new assault on Dacca. The landing of the para battalion near Tangail added to the speed and sharpness of this move; it was not a massive operation but merely a Liddell Hart style booster to a fast thrust towards Dacca.
Meanwhile the Pakistani Command in Dacca, cut off from the 7th Fleet and denied any immediate help by China, was reacting in a manner fully consistent with the Liddell Hart doctrine. They did not receive even moral reinforcement from Islamabad through the wireless cipher; the heli-operations south of Bhairab across the river only added to their panic. As the commanders were signaling the U.N. and the International Red Cross for the sanctuary and succor, the Daudkandi-Chandpur column appeared near Sambhar. None of these columns was alone strong enough for the garrison in the Dacca redoubt, had the Pakistanis decided to make a stand. Niazi and his troops however were in a state of psychological collapse and what happened since December 15 is recorded history.
Even such a lighting campaign (the battle of Bangladesh was over in 12 days: it took the Germans more than a month to overrun France) has been criticized by some as unduly slow. These critics do not know the terrain of Bangladesh nor have they understood General Aurora’s campaign. The heartland of Bangladesh has remarkable natural defenses in its river system (no Ichhogil is necessary here); while Indian engineers are excellent, they do not have an unlimited stock of bridging material nor can some of the Bangladesh rivers at all be bridged, if resolutely defended. The fact is the Pakistanis could have fought for weeks at most of these rivers; it is indeed astonishing that General Aurora was able to complete his task in 12 days. The 7th Fleet added to his problem; he had to swing out to capture the Chittagong and Khulna areas to prevent an American bridgehead; even Cox’s Bazar, a strategically low priority target, had to be taken by amphibious assault.
WINE OF VICTORY
The tactical exploitation of the battle situation made the advancing army really a torrent. For this credit must also go to the formation commanders down to the company level; the new breed of Indian officer boldly exploited an opening when he saw it. He solved the problems of logistics, by requisitioning country boats, bullock carts and cycle rickshaws. It is true a jawan fights best on the wine of victory; still the new soldier showed outstanding discipline in this “slow heat” campaign in which fighting was coldly professional.
Another factor contributing to victory was the Air Force, Liddell Hart’s mobile artillery. The coordination between the fighting formations and air strikes was uncanny in accuracy. The Navy successfully bottled up the Pakistanis in Bangladesh and contributed to the psychological collapse both in Dacca and in Islamabad.
Such a speedy victory in the east was possible because Delhi made available to General Aurora a decisively superior land and air force. This involved some agonizing decision-making. The intensity of the Chinese reaction was correctly gauged; the objectives of the 7th Fleet were properly assessed. Hence it was possible for the decision-makers to cut down deployment severely in the west and North.
Reference: Hindustan Standard, 09.01.1972