Indo-Pakistani War of 1971

    

  Indo-Pakistani War of 1971

The Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 was a military conflict between India and Pakistan. Indian, Bangladeshi and international sources consider the beginning of the war to be Operation Chengiz Khan, Pakistan's December 3, 1971 pre-emptive strike on 11 Indian airbases.^[7][8] Lasting just 13 days it is considered one of the shortest wars in history.^[9][10]
During the course of the war, Indian and Pakistani forces clashed on the eastern and western fronts. The war effectively came to an end after the Eastern Command of the Pakistan Military signed the Instrument of Surrender, the first and perhaps the only public surrender till date ^{[11] [12]}, on December 16, 1971 following which East Pakistan seceded as the independent state of Bangladesh. Around 97,368 West Pakistanis who were in East Pakistan at the time of its independence, including some 79,700 Pakistan Army soldiers and paramilitary personnel^[13] and 12,500 civilians,^[13] were taken as prisoners of war by India.

 

Contents

• 1 Background
• 2 India's involvement in Bangladesh Liberation War
• 3 India's official engagement with Pakistan
  
  
  
  
  
  • 3.1 Objective
  • 3.2 Naval hostilities
  • 3.3 Air operations
  • 3.4 Ground operations
  • 3.5 Surrender of Pakistani forces in East Pakistan
• 4 American and Soviet involvement
• 5 Aftermath
  
  
  
  
  
  • 5.1 India
  • 5.2 Pakistan
  • 5.3 Bangladesh
  • 5.4 Hamoodur Rahman Commission
  • 5.5 Simla Agreement
• 6 Long term consequences
• 7 Important dates
• 8 Military awards
  
  
  
  
  • 8.1 India
  • 8.2 Bangladesh
  • 8.3 Pakistan
• 9 Dramatization
• 10 See also
• 11 References
• 12 Further reading
• 13 External links     
 

Main articles: Bangladesh Liberation War and 1971 Bangladesh atrocities

The Indo-Pakistani conflict was sparked by the Bangladesh Liberation war, a conflict between the traditionally dominant West Pakistanis and the majority East Pakistanis.^[4] The Bangladesh Liberation war ignited after the 1970 Pakistani election, in which the East Pakistani Awami League won 167 of 169 seats in East Pakistan and secured a simple majority in the 313-seat lower house of the Majlis-e-Shoora (Parliament of Pakistan). Awami League leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman presented the Six Points to the President of Pakistan and claimed the right to form the government. After the leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, refused to yield the premiership of Pakistan to Mujibur, President Yahya Khan called the military, dominated by West Pakistanis to suppress dissent^[14][15].
Mass arrests of dissidents began, and attempts were made to disarm East Pakistani soldiers and police. After several days of strikes and non-cooperation movements, the Pakistani military cracked down on Dhaka on the night of 25 March 1971. The Awami League was banished, and many members fled into exile in India. Mujib was arrested on the night of 25–26 March 1971 at about 1:30 a.m. (as per Radio Pakistan’s news on 29 March 1971) and taken to West Pakistan.
On 27 March 1971, Ziaur Rahman, a rebellious major in the Pakistani army, declared the independence of Bangladesh on behalf of Mujibur^[16]. In April, exiled Awami League leaders formed a government-in-exile in Baidyanathtala of Meherpur. The East Pakistan Rifles, a paramilitary force, defected to the rebellion. A guerrilla troop of civilians, the Mukti Bahini, was formed to help the Bangladesh Army.

India's involvement in Bangladesh Liberation War

The Pakistan army conducted a widespread genocide against the Bengali population of East Pakistan,^[17] aimed in particular at the minority Hindu population,^[18][19] leading to approximately 10 million^[18][20] people fleeing East Pakistan and taking refuge in the neighboring Indian states.^[17][21] The East Pakistan-India border was opened to allow refugees safe shelter in India. The governments of West Bengal, Bihar, Assam, Meghalaya and Tripura established refugee camps along the border. The resulting flood of impoverished East Pakistani refugees placed an intolerable strain on India's already overburdened economy.^[19]
General Tikka Khan earned the nickname 'Butcher of Bengal' due to the widespread atrocities he committed.^[7] General Niazi commenting on his actions noted 'On the night between 25/26 March 1971 General Tikka struck. Peaceful night was turned into a time of wailing, crying and burning. General Tikka let loose everything at his disposal as if raiding an enemy, not dealing with his own misguided and misled people. The military action was a display of stark cruelty more merciless than the massacres at Bukhara and Baghdad by Chengiz Khan and Halaku Khan... General Tikka... resorted to the killing of civilians and a scorched earth policy. His orders to his troops were: 'I want the land not the people...' Major General Farman had written in his table diary, "Green land of East Pakistan will be painted red". It was painted red by Bengali blood.'^[22]
The national Indian government repeatedly appealed to the international community, but failing to elicit any response,^[23] Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on 27 March 1971 expressed full support of her government for the independence struggle of the people of East Pakistan. The Indian leadership under Prime Minister Gandhi quickly decided that it was more effective to end the genocide by taking armed action against Pakistan than to simply give refuge to those who made it across to refugee camps.^[21] Exiled East Pakistan army officers and members of the Indian Intelligence immediately started using these camps for recruitment and training of Mukti Bahini guerrillas.^[24]
  
India's official engagement with Pakistan

Objective

By November, war seemed inevitable; a massive buildup of Indian forces on the border with East Pakistan had begun. The Indian military waited for winter, when the drier ground would make for easier operations and Himalayan passes would be closed by snow, preventing any Chinese intervention. On 23 November, Yahya Khan declared a state of emergency in all of Pakistan and told his people to prepare for war.^[25]
On the evening of 3 December Sunday, at about 5:40 p.m.,^[26] the Pakistani Air Force (PAF) launched a pre-emptive strike on eleven airfields in north-western India, including Agra which was 300 miles (480 km) from the border. During this attack the Taj Mahal was camouflaged with a forest of twigs and leaves and draped with burlap because its marble glowed like a white beacon in the moonlight.^[27]
This preemptive strike known as Operation Chengiz Khan, was inspired by the success of Israeli Operation Focus in the Arab-Israeli Six Day War. But, unlike the Israeli attack on Arab airbases in 1967 which involved a large number of Israeli planes, Pakistan flew no more than 50 planes to India and failed to inflict the intended damage.^[28] As a result, the Indian runways were cratered and rendered non-functional for several hours after the attack.^[29]
In an address to the nation on radio that same evening, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi held that the air strikes were a declaration of war against India^[30][31] and the Indian Air Force responded with initial air strikes that very night. These air strikes were expanded to massive retaliatory air strikes the next morning and there after.^[32]
This marked the official start of the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered the immediate mobilization of troops and launched the full-scale invasion. This involved Indian forces in a massive coordinated air, sea, and land assault. Indian Air Force started flying sorties against Pakistan from midnight and quickly achieved air superiority.^[4][27] The main Indian objective on the western front was to prevent Pakistan from entering Indian soil. There was no Indian intention of conducting any major offensive into West Pakistan.^[26]

Naval hostilities

 

In the western theatre of the war, the Indian Navy, under the command of Vice Admiral Kohli, achieved success by attacking Karachi's port in the code-named Operation Trident^[4] on the night of 4–5 December^[4], which resulted in the sinking of the Pakistani destroyer PNS Khyber and a minesweeper PNS Muhafiz; PNS Shajehan was badly damaged^[4]. This resulted in tactical Indian success: 720 Pakistani sailors were killed or wounded, and Pakistan lost reserve fuel and many commercial ships, thus crippling the Pakistan Navy's further involvement in the conflict. Operation Python^[4] followed Operation Trident which was on the night of 8–9 December^[4], in which Indian rocket-armed motor torpedo boats attacked the Karachi Roads that resulted in further destruction of reserve fuel tanks, and in the sinking of three Pakistani commercial ships in Karachi Harbour.^[4]
In the eastern theatre of the war, the Indian Eastern Naval Command, under Vice Admiral Krishnan, completely isolated East Pakistan by establishing a naval blockade in the Bay of Bengal, trapping the Eastern Pakistani Navy and eight foreign merchant ships in their ports. From 4 December onwards, the aircraft carrier INS Vikrant was deployed in which its Sea Hawk fighter-bombers attacked many coastal towns in East Pakistan including Chittagong and Cox's Bazaar. Pakistan responded by sending the submarine PNS Ghazi to negate the threat.^[5] Indian Eastern Naval Command laid a trap to sink the submarine and Indian Navy destroyer INS Rajput sank Pakistani submarine PNS Ghazi through depth charges off Vishakapatnam's coast^[33][34] reducing Pakistan's control of Bangladeshi coastline^[6] . But on 9 December, the Indian Navy suffered its biggest wartime loss when the Pakistani submarine PNS Hangor sank the frigate INS Khukri in the Arabian Sea resulting in a loss of 18 officers and 176 sailors.^[35]
The damage inflicted on the Pakistani Navy stood at 7 gunboats, 1 minesweeper, 1 submarine, 2 destroyers, 3 patrol crafts belonging to the coast guard, 18 cargo, supply and communication vessels, and large scale damage inflicted on the naval base and docks in the coastal town of Karachi. Three merchant navy ships - Anwar Baksh, Pasni and Madhumathi - ^[36] and ten smaller vessels were captured.^[37] Around 1900 personnel were lost, while 1413 servicemen were captured by Indian forces in Dhaka.^[38] According to one Pakistan scholar, Tariq Ali, the Pakistan Navy lost a third of its force in the war.^[39]

Air operations

Main article: East Pakistan Air Operations, 1971

After the initial preemptive strike, PAF adopted a defensive stance in response to the Indian retaliation. As the war progressed, the Indian Air Force continued to battle the PAF over conflict zones^[40], but the number of sorties flown by the PAF gradually decreased day-by-day.^[41] The Indian Air Force flew 4,000 sorties while its counterpart, the PAF offered little in retaliation, partly because of the paucity of non-Bengali technical personnel.^[4] This lack of retaliation has also been attributed to the deliberate decision of the PAF High Command to cut its losses as it had already incurred huge losses in the conflict.^[42] The PAF also did not intervene during the Indian Navy's raid on Pakistani naval port city of Karachi.
In the east, the small air contingent of Pakistan Air Force No. 14 Sqn was destroyed, putting the Dhaka airfield out of commission and resulting in Indian air superiority in the east.^[4]
Lieutenant General Jagjit Singh Aurora, who commanded the eighth, twenty-third, and fifty-seventh divisions, led the Indian thrust into East Pakistan. As these forces attacked Pakistani formations, the Indian Air Force rapidly destroyed the small air contingent in East Pakistan and put the Dhaka airfield out of commission. In the meantime, the Indian Navy effectively blockaded East Pakistan.
The Indian campaign employed "blitzkrieg" techniques, exploiting weakness in the enemy's positions and bypassing opposition, and resulted in a swift victory.^[43] Faced with insurmountable losses, the Pakistani military capitulated in less than a fortnight. On 16 December, the Pakistani forces stationed in East Pakistan surrendered.


Lieutenant General Jagjit Singh Aurora, who commanded the eighth, twenty-third, and fifty-seventh divisions, led the Indian thrust into East Pakistan. As these forces attacked Pakistani formations, the Indian Air Force rapidly destroyed the small air contingent in East Pakistan and put the Dhaka airfield out of commission. In the meantime, the Indian Navy effectively blockaded East Pakistan.
The Indian campaign employed "blitzkrieg" techniques, exploiting weakness in the enemy's positions and bypassing opposition, and resulted in a swift victory.^[43] Faced with insurmountable losses, the Pakistani military capitulated in less than a fortnight. On 16 December, the Pakistani forces stationed in East Pakistan surrendered.