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A tale of two Presidents . . .

IN BLACK & WHITE

Published : Tuesday, 27 December, 2016 at 12:00 AM  Count : 599
Syed Badrul Ahsan
Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was removed from Mianwali prison and placed under house arrest at a rest house outside Rawalpindi on 22 December 1971. One can be quite sure that the chief of the Awami League, imprisoned since the early hours of the Pakistan army's Operation Searchlight in Bangladesh in end-March, must at that point have guessed that change of a serious sort had come over Pakistan. Only a month earlier, perhaps less, he had been sentenced to death by a military tribunal that had been trying him in camera since August of the year on charges of waging war against Pakistan. The trial was a sham, of course, given that Bangabandhu questioned its legality. He had refused to appoint a lawyer for himself, which was when the Yahya Khan regime had the renowned Pakistani lawyer A.K. Brohi defend the imprisoned leader of the majority political party of the country.
In December 1971, things moved with dizzying speed in Pakistan. It launched an attack on India and then swiftly found itself losing the war both in its western and eastern wings. In Dhaka, the army surrendered to a joint command of Indian and Bangladesh forces on 16 December. The next day, with Indian forces deep inside West Pakistan, Mrs. Indira Gandhi ordered a unilateral ceasefire on the western front. In the evening, an inebriated General Yahya Khan spoke to the people of what remained of Pakistan, vowing to fight on in the defence of a united country. Away in New York, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, as much responsible as the generals for the massacre of Bengalis in a now vanished East Pakistan and at that point deputy prime minister and foreign minister in a toothless government with the Bengali Nurul Amin as prime minister, prepared to go back home from the United Nations. Before doing so, he went over to the White House, to confer with President Richard Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger.
Bhutto landed back in Rawalpindi on 20 December. Obviously, great drama was about to be enacted once again. Mid-ranking and junior officers of the Pakistan army, feeling the humiliation of surrender in Bangladesh, had shouted down General Abdul Hamid Khan, apologist for Yahya Khan, thereby making it clear that the disgraced regime had to go. From Chaklala airport, therefore, Bhutto was conducted to President's House, where Yahya Khan pleaded with Bhutto to be allowed to execute Sheikh Mujibur Rahman before transferring power to the Pakistan People's Party leader. Predictably, Bhutto declined. In its darkest moments, Pakistan could not afford to court fresh opprobrium by sending the leader of a victorious nation to the gallows.
It was a moment replete with irony as Bhutto was sworn in as Pakistan's President. He had the additional responsibility, rather incongruously, of being Chief Martial Law Administrator. The man who under democratic norms would have been Leader of the Opposition in the Pakistan national assembly since his party had won 88 seats in contrast to the Awami League's 167 at the elections was now Pakistan's leader by default. And Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the man who would have been Pakistan's Prime Minister, was in prison but had in April 1971 been declared Bangladesh's President by the Bengali government-in-exile. With an election repudiated, with a guerrilla war waged by the Mukti Bahini and with a swift strike by India's military, Pakistan had turned into a rump state.
Bhutto promised a New Pakistan in his first broadcast as head of state in the evening. With dramatic flourishes, he spoke of making a new beginning, referred to 'our brothers in East Pakistan'. Two days later, he had Mujib transferred from solitary confinement in Mianwali prison to house arrest near Rawalpindi. On the same day, the Mujibnagar leadership arrived in Dhaka from Calcutta to take over the administration of the new state of Bangladesh. The story of what happened subsequently, away in Pakistan, was recorded, through interviews with both Bangabandhu and Bhutto, by the Indian journalist Kuldip Nayar in his slim volume, Distant Neighbours: A Tale of the Subcontinent. On 23 December, Bhutto appeared at the rest house for his very first meeting since March of the year with the incarcerated Mujib. The Bengali leader, caught by surprise, asked Bhutto how he happened to be there. Bhutto's response was terse: 'I am the President of Pakistan.' Bangabandhu laughed, reminding Bhutto that that position was his since he had won the election. Pakistan's new leader did not respond to that, but gave his prisoner the additional information that he was also CMLA. He needed to talk. To that, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's response was that he would not talk unless there was an assurance that he was a free man. He was free, said Bhutto.
At that first meeting and again later, Bhutto was in desperate need for assurances from Mujib that Bangladesh would agree to keep certain links, however loose, with Pakistan. The Bengali leader refused to make any promises. The two men met for a second time on 27 December. Nothing worked, despite Bhutto's need to be assured that 'East Pakistan' would remain, in however tenuous a form, part of Pakistan. There is reason to suppose that a hardened Mujib, assisted by the newly-freed Kamal Hossain, would have none of it. Bhutto's problem was complex: he needed his 93,000 prisoners of war (PoWs) back at the earliest and at the same time did not wish to be seen using the Bengali leader as a hostage in his position on dealing with Bangladesh.
The showman in Bhutto went to work in Karachi on 3 January 1972. He needed the 'permission' of the crowd for the release of Bangladesh's imprisoned President. The crowd roared its approval. A 'relieved' Bhutto said 'shukriya'. That 'shukriya' was the first public indication of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's status following the liberation of his country. Nothing of his transfer to house arrest and subsequent talks with Bhutto had been made known to the world. Neither would the world know of the happenings between Bhutto's Karachi rally and Bangabandhu's flight out of Pakistan. Only when Bangladesh's founding father landed at London's Heathrow airport would the world know that he was alive.
The details of this significant part of history emerged through Kamal Hossain's account of Bhutto's last-minute maneouvres to delay Bangabandhu's departure from Pakistan. At a farewell dinner he hosted for Bangabandhu on the evening of 7 January, Pakistan's President made the sudden proposition that since Pakistan's air space had been closed off to prepare for the arrival of the Shah of Iran the following morning, Mujib could delay his departure from Pakistan. The Bengali leader was not to be fooled. He knew Bhutto would use the Shah to try to extract promises from him on the future of Pakistan in relation to Bangladesh. He made it clear that he had no desire to stay back, that as President of Pakistan Bhutto could well have his country's air space reopened.
A short while later, Pakistan's President Z.A. Bhutto accompanied Bangladesh's President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to Chaklala airport and bade him goodbye. A special PIA aircraft, with Bangabandhu and the Kamal Hossain family on board, took off. Accompanying them were senior officers of Pakistan's air force and PIA. Early in the morning on 8 January 1972, the Father of the Nation arrived in London. On hand to welcome him was Ian Sutherland from Britain's Foreign Office. Minutes later, having been roused from sleep by British diplomats to be told about the independence leader's impending arrival, M.M. Rezaul Karim, head of the Bangladesh diplomatic mission in London, turned up at the VIP lounge of Heathrow. Satisfied that Bangabandhu was finally under Bangladesh's jurisdiction, the Pakistani officers saluted him and then took leave of him.
M M Rezaul Karim drove Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to Claridges in central London.r
Syed Badrul Ahsan is Associate Editor, The Daily Observer. Email: ahsan.syedbadrul@gmail.com






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