Table Of ContentWAR 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
