Panel throws light on darkest chapters of Pak. history

By B. Muralidhar Reddy

ISLAMABAD, DEC. 31. The Hamoodur Rahman Commission report on the 1971 war that led to creation of Bangladesh, declassified by the military government in Pakistan on Saturday, comes out strongly against the army for its unprofessional conduct in the run up to the war. The main and supplementary reports that have been gathering dust on the shelves of the Pakistani establishment for the last 26 years throw light on one of the darkest chapters of Pakistani history and brings out vividly the horrors that led to the dismemberment of the country and the birth of Bangladesh.

Immoral character of military rulers, faulty military planning and lack of political insight on the part of players such as Zulfikar Ali Bhutto are some of the factors that led to the debacle of the Pakistani army in the hands of the Indian military. Pakistani Army comes out very poorly for its role in the then East Pakistan as chapter after chapter bring out the atrocities perpetuated by the military on its own people in the run up to the 71 conflict. The report has recommended action against most of the senior army officers who were engaged in the operations. In the chapter titled `the moral aspect' the Commission has said that the tendency on the part of the military to get involved in running the affairs of Pakistan from 1958 onwards was one of the main factors responsible for the `degeneration among the senior ranks of the Armed Forces'.

``After analysing the evidence brought before the Commission, we came to the conclusion that the process of moral degeneration among the senior ranks of the Armed Forces was set in motion by their involvement in Martial Law duties in 1958, that these tendencies reappeared and were, in fact, intensified when Martial Law was imposed in the country once again in March 1969 by General Yahya Khan and that there was indeed substance in the allegations that a considerable number of senior Army Officers had not only indulged in large scale acquisition of lands and houses and other commercial activities, but had also adopted highly immoral and licentious ways of life which seriously affected their professional capabilities and their qualities of leadership''. The report has said that the Pakistan Army officers and the troops behaved in East Pakistan as if they were operating in a foreign country. It said they had got into the practice of `living off the land' and said there was a general feeling among the troops, including the officers that they were entitled to take whatever they wanted from wherever they liked. Some of the observations made by the Commission against the conduct of Lt. Gen. A.A.K. Niazi, the Commanding Officer in East Pakistan, are devastating. The report has said that damaging evidence has come on the record regarding the ``ill repute of the General in sex matters and his indulgence in the smuggling of pan.''

``The remarks made by the last witness (against Gen. Niazi) are highly significant. The troops used to say that when the Commander was himself a raper, how could they be stopped. Gen. Niazi enjoyed the same reputation at Sialkot and Lahore,'' the Commission report has said. The report holds the Awami League activists for committing atrocities against the Pakistani Army and Biharis in East Pakistan and said these incidents provoked the Pakistan Army to launch a counter-offensive. Quoting a journalist, the report has said that between 100,000 and 500,000 persons were slaughtered by the Awami League activists in the run up to the war.

On the basis of figures supplied by the Pakistan military headquarters the Commission has said approximately 26,000 persons were killed during the Army action. ``The falsity of Sheikh Mujibar Rahman's repeated allegation that Pakistani troops had raped 200,000 Bengali girls in 1971 was borne out when the abortion team he had commissioned from Britain in early 1972 found that its workload involved the termination of only a hundred or more pregnancies''.

The Commission has been very critical of the conduct of the former Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, that precipitated the crisis in East Pakistan. The reference is to the resistance of Bhutto to let the National Assembly be convened and allow the Awami League form the government though it had emerged as the clear winner in the 1970 national elections.

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