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| Who broke Pakistan? |
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Monday, October 19, 2009
Khalid Ahmed (Oct 6) has correctly pointed out that the rulers were responsible for the break-up of Pakistan. According to election results, the Awami League had the right to form a government but Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was more interested in grabbing power for himself.
My own experience — I was serving in the army in East Pakistan — with the Bengalis, even after going through the catastrophic events of that tragic year is entirely different from general perceptions here. On December 16, 1971, after the announcement of a ceasefire (which is what we heard on our wireless sets) I was to withdraw from the border to join another group at Naugaon in Rajshahi district. A middle-aged Bengali from a nearby village walked up to me, hugged me and started crying and saying “we never wanted this”. A few days earlier on December 11, near Panch Bibi, the local brigade commander asked me and one of his staff officers, Major Muhammad Anis Ahmed (a Sandhurst graduate) to get in touch with the commanding officer of the 4th F F, encircled by the Indians at Hilli. Wireless and line communications were broken and we needed to make physical contact. It was a young Bengali boy who crawled through the encirclement, ducking artillery and small arms fire to bring back a written reply from Akhlaq Abbasi, the commanding officer.
My story is entirely different from what the Pakistani people have been fed by our rulers, the BBC and the All India Radio. My problem and that of my colleagues, about 30-32,000 army personnel who became POWs in India, is that we cannot narrate or write well to generate interest among readers if someone at all is keen to know the truth.
Col (r) Nazir Ahmed
Islamabad
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