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WAR SECESSION AND PAKISTAN, INDIA, AND THE CREATION OF BANGLADESH . Richard Sisson and Leo E. Rose A decade after the 1971 wars in South Asia, the principal decision makers were still uncertain why wars so clearly unwanted had occurred. This book reconstructs the complex decision making attending the 1971 breakup of Pakistan and the subsequent war between India and Pakistan by drawing on previously unavailable sources of data. Much of these data derive from interviews conducted by the authors with major players in Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. Prominent among these individ uals were General Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan, president and chief martial law administrator of Pakistan; Indira Gandhi, prime minister of India; and leaders of the Awami League in Bangladesh. In addition, Sisson and Rose analyze documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act from the U.S. Department of State, the CIA, and the National Security Council as well as international radio newscasts kept in the Archives of the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses in New Delhi. Sisson and Rose not only bring to light the complex motivations behind these two tragic wars but also place them within the broader historical context of change in South Asia. WAR AND SECESSION PAKISTAN, INDIA, AND THE CREATION OF BANGLADESH Richard Sisson and Leo E. Rose University of California Press Berkeley • Los Angeles • Oxford University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. Oxford, England © 1990 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sisson, Richard. War and secession : Pakistan, India, and the creation of Bangladesh / Richard Sisson and Leo E. Rose, p. cm. Bibliography: p. Includes index. ISBN 0-520-06280-9 (alk. paper) 1. Bangladesh—History—Revolution, 1971. 2. India- Pakistan Conflict, 1971. 3. South Asia—Politics and gov ernment. I. Rose, Leo E. II. Title. DS395.5.S59 1990 954.9205—dc20 89-32545 CIP Printed in the United States of America 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Informa tion Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. ® I Contents Preface ix List of Abbreviations xiii 1. Prologue and Overview 1 2. Pakistani Politics: Image and Legacy 8 Regionalism, Political Fragmentation, and Distrust 8 Populism and the Demise of the Ayub Regime 21 Designing the Transfer of Power 24 The Two Election Campaigns, 1970 28 Indo-Pakistani Relations: Image and Legacy 3- 35 Indo-Pakistani Relations, 1947-1970 38 A Legacy of Misperception 43 The International Dimension 46 Strategies of Coping and Exploiting 50 4- A Culture of Distrust 54 Testing and Preparation for Negotiation 58 Political Fears and Strategies of Polarization 74 Preparation for Military Action 81 Crisis Bargaining 5- 91 Reaction and Redeployment 92 The Government's Concession 96 Stratagems in the West 102 A New Context 107 6. Constitutional Consensus and Civil War i l l Preliminary Talks between Yahya Khan and Sheikh Mu jib 112 Toward a Constitutional Settlement 116 The Ascendancy of the Army 132 v vi Contents The Indian Response 134 The Foreign Policy Decision-Making Process in India, 1971 137 From Concern to Crisis 141 Pakistan, 25 March-October 1971 154 The "Military Solution According to Plan" 155 After the Crisis 160 Toward a Political Settlement 166 Elections as a Measure of Support 174 India and the Prelude to War, June-October 1971 177 The Refugee Issue and Domestic Politics 179 India and the Bangladesh Government in Exile 181 Mobilizing International Support 186 Differences with the United States 191 The Soviet Role from New Delhi's Perspective 196 India and the Other "Concerned" Powers 203 War: India 206 Military Tactics 210 The Campaign 213 International Reaction 216 War: Pakistan 221 Obsession with India 221 A Strategy of Constraint 222 The War That Wouldn't Happen 225 The Decision on War 227 The Decision to Surrender 23O The Transfer of Power 234 Soviet, Chinese, and American Policies in the 1971 Crisis 237 The Soviet Union 237 China 246 The United States 253 Interpretations 266 Negotiation and Civil War 266 International Conflict, War, and Secession 274 Contents vii Notes 281 Participants Interviewed 319 Select Bibliography 327 Index 333 Preface This reconstruction of the events and decisions leading to the creation of the new independent nation of Bangladesh in 1971 draws upon many sources, many previously unavailable. We have based our analysis primarily on interviews with key political lead ers and their principal advisers and associates in each of the countries immediately involved—Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. In addition, we have used numerous reports published by partici pants and observers of the grim events of 1971 and accounts by others with greater distance in terms of involvement, if not emo tion. In several instances, these reports constituted primary data. We have, however, extended them and modified their interpreta tions in light of extensive new primary evidence. Given the complexity of the accounts, our commitment to recon structing the decision-making process and sequence of events as closely and accurately as possible, and our concern to elicit and record to the fullest extent possible every nuance of sentiment and perception, we decided from the outset that whenever possible we would conduct the interviews together. We believe that the joint interviews created an easier atmosphere for the participants, which often resulted in our being allowed more time for our inquiries. In addition, "observer reliability" was considerably enhanced, and we were able to obtain almost verbatim accounts of the recollec tions of those interviewed. Our meetings ranged from one to two-and-one-half hours. Nearly half of those involved were interviewed twice, and several key figures were interviewed three or more times. Between inter views with one person we met with other participants, which allowed us in the follow-up interviews to present respondents with new interpretations and episodically countervailing evidence and in some cases to pursue new avenues that might otherwise have gone unexplored. In all cases we had unrestricted access to the x Preface people we interviewed, and we were able to interview everyone alone, except for Gen. Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan (president of Pakistan from 1969 to 1971), whose son was with him because of the general's physical infirmity at the time. We interviewed as wide a range of participants in the decisions affecting war and peace in South Asia in 1971 as time, reason, and accessibility allowed. We did most of our interviews in India from June to September 1978 and in Bangladesh in July 1978. In April and May 1979 we interviewed people in Pakistan, England, and Washington, D.C. In India we met with the prime minister and principal ministers privy to decision making and senior civil ser vants intimately involved in affairs concerning Bangladesh, includ ing major figures in key ministries as well as in the Prime Minister's Secretariat. In Pakistan and Bangladesh we interviewed not only important figures in the President's Office and the Office of the Chief Martial Law Administrator, their counterparts in East Paki stan, and general officers commanding at the time, but also leaders of political parties who were central participants or intermediaries in the early negotiations to reach a constitutional agreement. We were unfortunately unable to interview several important leaders: Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who was hanged the morning we arrived in Pakistan to start conducting our research; Gen. Tikka Khan, who was under confinement when we were in Pakistan; and several leaders of the Awami League, including the two most dominant—Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who had been assassinated, and Tajuddin Ahmed, who had been murdered in the Dhaka Central Jail along with several other leaders before we began our study. Before we began our interviewing, we developed a framework for a more focused and refined exploration by researching the generally accessible public documents. We spent more time in joint preparation for a particular interview than in the interview itself. We were fortunate at the outset of our research to be able to use records of international radio newscasts in the Archives of the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses in New Delhi. We are indebted to the institute's directors, K. Subrahmanyam and P. R. Chari, who made its facilities available to us, and to the research scholars affiliated with the institute, whose lively interest in our