KARACHI: Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari has termed the defeat of East Pakistan in 1971 as a “military failure”, while former army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa termed it a “political failure”. Bilawal made the remarks at the Nishtar Park rally organized on the occasion of the 55th foundation day of his Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). On the occasion, the PPP chairman revisited the history of his party and recalled the achievements of its founder, his grandfather Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. The Dawn newspaper quoted him as saying, “When Zulfikar Ali Bhutto took over the government, the people were broken and had lost all hope.” “But he rebuilt the nation, restored the confidence of the people, and finally brought home 90,000 of our soldiers who had been made prisoners of war because of ‘military failure’. Those 90,000 soldiers were reunited with their families. merged. And all that was made possible because of the politics of hope..of unity..and made possible because of the politics of inclusion.”
A few days before his retirement on 29 November, General Bajwa termed the East Pakistan defeat as a “political failure” and complained that the sacrifices of the soldiers were never properly acknowledged.
He rejected the common belief that 92,000 soldiers surrendered in the 1971 war and claimed that only 34,000 were combatants, while others were part of various government departments.
Addressing a defense and martyr’s ceremony at the General Headquarters in Rawalpindi last week, Bajwa said: I want to set the record straight. First, the collapse of East Pakistan was not a military but a political failure. The number of fighting soldiers was not 92,000, but only 34,000, the rest being from various government departments.
General Bajwa, 61, retired on November 29 after getting a three-year extension in 2019 by the then Prime Minister Imran Khan, the biggest critic of the Pakistan Army.
In 1971, Pakistan suffered a humiliating defeat from India in the debacle of East Pakistan. It saw East Pakistan secede to form a new country called Bangladesh.