। Syed Badrul Ahsan ।
There has lately been talk once again of Pakistan’s failure to officially and formally
issue an apology to Bangladesh over the genocide committed in 1971 by its army.
Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, on a recent trip
to Dhaka, made the false claim that Islamabad had apologised twice to Dhaka
over the atrocities perpetrated in 1971. He was referring to the 1974 tripartite
agreement reached by Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, through which the
Pakistan government expressed its regret for any crimes that may have been
committed in 1971 and to Pervez Musharraf’s later voicing of regret over the
cataclysm.
Note the terms ‘regret’ and ‘may have been committed’. Obviously, there is a gulf
of difference between an expression of regret and a formal tendering of apology.
Let us go back to what the tripartite agreement notes about 1971. The agreement,
signed in New Delhi on 9 April 1974 by Dr Kamal Hossain, Foreign Minister of
Bangladesh, Sardar Swaran Singh, Minister of External Affairs of India and Aziz
Ahmed, Minister of State for Defence and Foreign Affairs of Pakistan, contained
16 articles. In Article 13 of the agreement, the following statement from the
Pakistani side exposes the reality, which is that Pakistan did not apologise for its
crimes in Bangladesh:
‘The Minister of State for Defence and Foreign Affairs of the Government of
Pakistan said that his Government condemned and deeply regretted any crimes
that may have been committed.’
May have been committed? Unwilling to acknowledge the crimes that were
committed by the soldiers in full view of the global community?
An expression of regret is miles away from a statement of apology. Besides, an
apology tendered by a state to another is a formal way of coming to terms with the
past. In the last fifty-four years, successive Pakistani governments have stopped
short of apologising to Bangladesh’s people over the killings, rape and pillage
committed by Pakistan’s army in 1971.
Pakistan’s rulers, especially Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and General Pervez Musharraf,
have over the decades expressed their mere regrets over the tragedy committed
in 1971, nothing more. On his Dhaka visit in 1974, Bhutto was rather unwilling to
visit the National Martyrs Memorial outside Dhaka. But when diplomatic norms
compelled him to visit the memorial, he displayed a high degree of rudeness when
he refused to doff his cap or to sign the visitors’ book.
Pakistani attitudes to the acts of Islamabad’s soldiers in Bangladesh have been an
amalgam of the curious and the bizarre. General Ziaul Haq, who laid a wreath at
the memorial in 1985, was asked by Bangladeshi journalists about his response to
the repression exercised by his country’s army in 1971. His reply was as unclear
as it was vague. ‘Your heroes are our heroes,’ he averred. And that was that. In
subsequent years, Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto were clearly reluctant to be
drawn into the apology debate.
As for Nawaz Sharif, his government was thoroughly riled by the trials of
Pakistan’s Bengali collaborators, many of whom had been rehabilitated by the
regimes of General Ziaur Rahman and General Hussein Muhammad and by the
civilian government of Khaleda Zia in 1975-1996 and 2001-2006, by the
government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. The Pakistan national assembly
adopted a resolution, moved by Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar, condemning the
trials of what it considered loyal Pakistanis in Bangladesh.
And then comes the issue of former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s attitude to the
atrocities carried out by Pakistan’s soldiers in 1971. Prior to rising to power, of
course with the patronage of the army, Khan was quite vocal in his condemnation
of the military’s actions in 1971 on television talk shows in Islamabad. However,
once in office and despite despatching messages of goodwill to Sheikh Hasina, he
stayed clear of any public condemnation of the genocide fifty-four years ago. Out
of office, he has more than once drawn attention, out of pique more than
conviction, to the damage the army caused the state of Pakistan in the
Bangladesh war.
That the state of Pakistan remains uncomfortable over the apology issue is
nowhere more pronounced than a display of posters relating to the 1971 war in the
museum of the Pakistan army in Lahore. The posters are a powerful hint of how
Pakistan remains unable or unwilling to own up to the murder and rape of Bengalis
committed by its soldiers in the nine months of the war in Bangladesh between
March and December 1971.
One of the posters at the army museum would have one know that in 1971 it was
not the Pakistan army but Bangladesh’s Mukti Bahini which ‘committed genocide’
in Bangladesh. A second poster, referring to Delhi’s involvement in the conflict,
notes that it was the Indian government which presided over the formation of
South Asia’s first ‘terrorist’ outfit. The outfit, in the eyes of the Pakistan army, was
the Mukti Bahini.
One final point: Shehbaz Sharif, Pakistan’s current Prime Minister, could hardly
contain his glee at the chaos which overtook Bangladesh in August 2024. He
cheerfully noted the humiliation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was
subjected to by anti-state mobs in Dhaka, noting that the man who had broken up
Pakistan, meaning Bangladesh’s founding father, was getting his comeuppance.
So much for Pakistan’s attitude to what its soldiers did in Bangladesh in 1971,
indeed to its distinct and continued discomfort over Bangladesh’s emergence as a
sovereign republic out of the crucible of war.
Writer:
Syed Badrul Ahsan
Bangladeshi senior journalist, columnist and author; Residing in the UK
** The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author. It is not uncommon for the author’s opinions to differ from the editorial policy of Bangalianaa. Therefore, Bangalianaa bears no legal, orthographical, or any other responsibility for the content of the articles published here, the author’s column, or its accuracy. – Editor
