KARACHI: As we mark another anniversary of the breakup of Pakistan in 1971, we talked to a few victims of the tragedy who narrated gruesome details of the violence, terror and shock they endured.
“General Niazi Marhaba! General Niazi Marhaba!” chants an eager 15-year-old Abdul Raheem as he paces from one lane of the village to the other. Holding a Pakistan flag in one hand and a Remington assault rifle in the other.
Fast forward 47 years.
I sit in front of him and intently listen to his reminiscences from a battle-weary childhood. His wrinkled eyes look down as he goes back in the past and tells me about the time, his family elders had handed over their wartime duties to him and the other adolescents in the house.
“There was this gusto, this dedication and patriotism in the air. We were very young but were ready to lay down our lives for the country at any given moment. Even though we were not the ones marching against the enemy in the battlefield and had merely been conferred with the tiny charge of guarding different areas around the town.”
He goes on to tell me how the enthusiasm had helped him detect an Indian agent. “I spotted someone from a good 100-meter distance. And since I was already so enthusiastic, my appetite was already at its highest with my senses heightened, I knew something wasn’t right about that person. So I ran up to him and upon a closer look, could suspect that this was a woman disguised as a man. He was immediately handed over to the authorities and it turned out, my suspicions were accurate. It was a woman from Tharparkar who had been scouting for India.”
“Mirpur, Dhaka 12. That is where I used to live when the war broke out,” narrates Salahuddin*. Now in his 80s, he was a banker in East Pakistan at the time when the war broke out.
“Since the area was close to the airport, we used to see dogfights on a frequent basis before the agreement of surrender,” he recalls.
With a sense of ache perceptible in his voice, he goes on to tell me: “The entire place was a killing field for Urdu-speaking people.”
“After the area got surrounded by Mukhti Bahini, food and water supply had come to a halt. Every single day, we would hear so many cries from outside entering our house.”
Treading ahead, he recounts how the unfolding events gradually started affecting his life more and more: “After the surrender, they started gathering people in the field during wintry December mornings and then they used to ransack houses and steal everything. I had been married for a year back then and I came home one day to find my house in shambles and my possessions gone.”
He continues explaining how things slowly started getting out of hand: “They took my brother away but I miraculously managed to remain safe. That is when I realized that this will only get worse. So I planned an escape. I was leaving alone because I didn’t know how the journey would unfold. As I was about to leave, my wife took my hand and put a gold ring on my palm and said: ‘I don’t know if we’ll see each other again. This is something to remember me by.’
“I later lost that ring when I was getting smuggled into India in an enclosed vehicle and the Bengali driver had asked everyone to give away all their gold possessions.”
Salahuddin spent the next six months in Calcutta, waiting for Pakistani border to open so he could cross into the country. “I later found out that people were escaping through Nepal via ICRC planes. So after an extensive period of struggle I landed in Karachi completely broke and alone. It wasn’t until much later that I reunited with my family, through the help of a few people in Islamabad,” he added.
“I may sound detached saying this now but from the inside I am completely wrecked remembering that time,” he said, and with that, brought the brief memoir to an end.
Talking to one of the second lieutenants (name withheld on request) at that time who later became a prisoner of war, a feeling of fright was noticeably manifest in the way he saw not just the past but also the present and the future state of this country. “They’re going to break this country again. They did it then they will do it again.”
He tells me how he spent years behind bars and now he sees Sindhi, Balochi, Punjabi, Mohajirs and Pathans all in conflict, waging a cold-war unconsciously on the grounds of ethnicity that God forbid, may lead to another crack on the map.
“I was a second lieutenant and I had only joined the armed forces months’ prior before the war unfolded. I was sent to a unit in East Pakistan where my family was also residing.”
“During my time in detention, as a prisoner of war, when you are restricted to a small place, it has its toll on you and you start to feel your sanity slipping after a while,” he added.
He went on to share one particularity striking memory from his time behind bars: “Me and three other people had planned an escape. In the course of that time, the air was very foggy so me and the group decided to escape the camps by digging a tunnel and then fleeing through the barbed wires. One by one each of us lost courage and started dropping out of the plan. I had a bad feeling about it so I ended up staying put as well,” he stated.
“I later found out that one of our group members was caught escaping through the barbed wires and was shot and killed by a guard immediately,” he says giving me a look melded with gratitude and agony.
“I remained in prison for more than two years. During this time, I had no idea where my family was. Whether they were even alive or not. I met them seven years later following a long and thorough search after getting released.”
An old resident of the area named Ibnull Hassan Hashmi recalls how over on this side of the then-unbroken land during those times of turmoil, Bengalis became the mark of torment by enraged non-Bengalis. “We used to live in that area during that time and some of the Bengali people were employed in the area as house help and stuff.”
He went on to recount: “A bunch of hooligans used to come with weapons and sticks to attack the Bengali people and non-Bengalis in the area used to go out and form a human shield around those subjected to the attacks. We used to protect them. That is a memory I won’t ever forget. It wasn’t just hatred and hostility between these two groups of people. There were instances of trust that could be spotted as well.”