General Niazi's Failure in High Command

Niazi states that he "had vast experience of commanding troops.  The troops under my command were probably the best in the world."[1] General Hamid called him "the highest decorated officer of our Army, and one of our best field commanders." However, he had no experience of high command and had a fatal weakness for following blinkered orders.  Three such orders led to disaster.  The first order was to command the Eastern Garrison even though "I had been given a rudderless ship with a broken mast to take across the stormy seas, with no lighthouse to me any direction." The second order was to not take the war into India, even though he had planned to "capture Agartala and a big chunk of Assam [to the east of East Pakistan], and develop multiple thrusts into Indian Bengal [to the west of East Pakistan].  We would cripple the economy of Calcutta by blowing up bridges and sinking boats and ships in the Hoogly River and create panic amongst the civilians."  But this proposal was rejected by General Hamid who said that the Pakistan government "was not prepared to fight an open war with India…You will neither enter Indian territory nor send raiding parties into India, and you will not fire into Indian territory either."  And the third order was to surrender the Eastern garrison to India, "to save West Pakistan, our base, from disintegration and Western Garrison from further repulses."  Thus, the defence of West Pakistan had now become contingent on the surrender of East Pakistan, in an ironic reversal of Pakistan's strategic doctrine that "the defence of the East lay in the West."

Niazi rightfully contends that Yahya disappeared from East Pakistan after launching the infamous Operation Searchlight in East Pakistan.  To make matters worse, when asked about the situation in East Pakistan, Yahya would say, "all I can do about East Pakistan is pray." General Hamid visited the troops in the East just twice.  Gul Hassan would not answer Niazi's phone calls.  The top brass of the Pakistan army had abandoned their "most decorated officer" to his own devices.  Observe Sisson-Rose, "the war was planned and pursued with a lack of coordination and foresight not dissimilar to that of 1965."[2]

Niazi does not accept any blame for the loss of East Pakistan.  He says he challenged the Pakistan Army to court-martial him, but they refused.  Ironically, it is likely that such proceedings would have implicated not only the top army brass but also Niazi a fortiori.  This is borne out by the judgments contained in the recently released report of the Hamoodur Rahman War Commission.[3]  This report, while a state secret in Pakistan, has been published in India. Referring to Niazi, the Commission finds that: [E]very Commander must be presumed to possess the caliber and quality, appurtenant to his rank, and he must perforce bear full responsibility for all the acts of omission and commission, leading to his defeat in war, which are clearly attributable to culpable negligence on his part to take the right action at the right time.  He would also be liable to be punished if he shows a lack of will to fight and surrenders to the enemy at a juncture when he still had the resources and the capability to put up resistance. Such an act would appear to fall clearly under clause (a) of section 24 of the Pakistan Army Act.

Table 1 lists nine major offenses under which Niazi could have been indicted by a court-martial. States Brian Cloughley: "Yahya bore overall responsibility for what befell his country; but General Niazi was the commander who lost the war in the East…He was just not suited to high command."[4]   Notes Gul Hasan, it is clear why the Pakistani army surrendered in 13 days with more than 45,000 soldiers still in fighting condition because  "with Niazi at the helm, they had no chance." Of course that begs the question of who put Niazi there.  The most strategic command in the army was turned over to a "hastily promoted Major General."[5]  The list of culprits  begins with Yahya and Hamid, but neither can it exclude Gul Hasan, who was then Chief of the General Staff. 

1. Believing that India would merely conduct a minor incursion into East Pakistan to set up a puppet regime.
2. Not anticipating that he would be required to simultaneously fight a conventional war and a guerrilla war.
3. Assuming that East Pakistan could be defended with the poorly armed and fatigued troops available to him against an Indian force that was five times bigger.
4. Counting on General Hamid to send supplies from the West through the "hump back" trade route that traverses Tibet, thereby circumventing the Indian blockade of the sea routes.
5. Expecting that Pakistani forces in West Pakistan would succeed in pulling off Ayub's untested strategy that the "Defence of the East lies in the West.
6. Confining himself to Dacca once hostilities broke out.
7. Ignoring the strategic ramifications of the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation that had been signed in August.
8. Banking on the Chinese to intervene through the Himalayan passes which the winter snows had rendered impassable in December.
9. Thinking the US government would intervene on Pakistan's side, despite significant domestic opposition in the Congress and media. 

Table 1: Potentially Indictable Offenses of General Niazi

References

[1] Lieutenant General A. A. K. Niazi, The Betrayal of East Pakistan, Oxford University Press, 1999.

[2] Sisson-Rose, War and Secession.

[3] India Today, August 21, 2000 and available if full on their web site.

[4] Brian Cloughley, A History.

[5] A. A. K. Chaudhry, September '65.
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