Military Digest | An eyewitness account of Pakistan Army’s Operation Searchlight in 1971

Much has been written on this subject, but an eyewitness account survives in the form of a book, Eyewitness to Surrender, written by Brigadier Siddique Salik, who was posted in Dacca as the public relations officer of the Inter Services Public Relations in the Eastern Command headquarters. Salik later rose to become the director-general of the ISPR and died in 1988 in the aircraft crash that claimed the life of General Zia Ul Haq.

The sense of “otherness” of Bengali rank and file in the Pakistan Army was quite evident in the early weeks and months of 1971. Salik recalls that the commandant of the Bengal Regimental Centre, Chittagong, which trained Bengali recruits for the army, Colonel (later Brigadier) Mozumdar, was an ardent supporter of Sheikh Mujib.

A West Pakistani officer informed Salik that when the last batch of recruits was about to sail for Karachi, the Bengali commandant told them, “You are proud Bengali soldiers now. You are not going there to polish the shoes of Punjabi officers. Soon they will be polishing yours.”

Political events spiralling out of control and the growing despondency of the military leadership in Dacca led to the resignation of Lt Gen Sahibzada Yakub Khan as general officer commanding of the Eastern Command on March 5.

Lt Gen Tikka Khan was appointed in his place and remained in office for about a month, causing considerable damage by the time he was recalled to West Pakistan and replaced by Lt Gen Amir Abdullah Khan Niazi.

The priorities of the Pakistani leadership were clear when it came to East Pakistan. “When Major General Farman discussed the East Pakistan situation with the President and pleaded for prompt decisions to arrest the drift General Yahya said, ‘Bachu, I have to think of my base. I have to think of West Pakistan. I cannot destroy my base’,” writes Salik.

Operation Searchlight was an improvement on Operation Blitz, which had been envisioned earlier to impose martial law. Maj Gen Rao Farman Ali, who was an earlier general officer commanding of the 14 Infantry Division and now looked after political affairs in the East Pakistan command, drafted orders for Operation Searchlight.

“General Farman wrote down the new plan on a light blue office pad, using an ordinary school pencil. I saw the original plan in General Farman’s immaculate hand. General Khadim wrote its second part, which dealt with the distribution of resources and the allocation of tasks to brigades and units,” recalls Salik.

The Operation Searchlight plan presumed that all Bengali troops, including regular East Bengal battalions, would revolt in reaction to its execution. They should therefore be disarmed. Secondly, the “non-cooperation” movement launched by Mujib should be deprived of its leadership by arresting all the prominent Awami League leaders while they were in conference with the President. The plan also listed, as an annexure, sixteen prominent people whose houses were to be visited for their arrest.

On March 23—the anniversary of Pakistan Day, which commemorates the passage of the Pakistan Resolution in 1940 in Lahore—the Awami League marked a Resistance Day. General Yahya Khan was in Dacca on that day when they burnt the Pakistan flag, tore down Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s portrait and burnt his effigy. They flew the new flag of independent Bangladesh and displayed portraits of Sheikh Mujibur Rehman.

“The Radio and Television played Tagore’s Sonar Bangla as the new national anthem. It was not just a student prank. Mujib was a party to it. He received a delegation of student leaders at his residence in the morning, allowed them to hoist the Bangla Desh flag on his rooftop (the de facto President’s House), and took a salute from the student rally in front of his house,” wrote Salik.

Because of the brutal nature of the crackdown in which hundreds of Bengalis would be killed in Dacca, General Yahya Khan had doubts whether Maj Gen Farman and Maj Gen Khadim would carry out the orders. Hence, a few days earlier, he had sent Maj Gen Iftikhar Janjua and Maj Gen AO Mitha to Dacca as possible replacements for Khadim and Farman in case they refused to crack down.

The rest is history. More than 150 Bengali intellectuals are among those massacred by the Pakistan Army in Operation Searchlight.

Siddique Salik recalls that after going around Dacca on the morning after the massacres, he returned to the officers’ mess and found an air of relaxation prevailing there among Pakistan Army officers.

Salik records a conversation he witnessed in the mess in his book. “Peeling an orange, Captain Chaudhry said, ‘The Bengalis have been sorted out well and proper—at least for a generation.’ Major Malik added, ‘Yes, they only know the language of force. Their history says so’.”