General Yahya was the president of Pakistan in 1970. He was supposed to hand the political power over to the winner of the national election of 1970: Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as his Awami league won 162 seats out of 168 seats, more than double of his west Pakistani counterpart Bhutto. Sheikh Mujib's unprecedented victory in the general election was a crushing blow to the Panjabi military -feudal axis. So they involved in a pact known as Larkana Conspiracy to shut the Bangalees by violent massacre. In this very meeting the military macho man and the Pak feudal lord planned to implement Shahibjada Yakub's notorious Operation Blitz on the Bangalees. They modified the plan and rendered it more destructive ( to crush the Bangalee uprising forever) and renamed it Operation Searchlight. To implement Operation Searchlight they (Bhutto and Yahya) recruited (as both Gen Yakub and Admiral Ahsan recommended political instead of military measures to deal with the victory of the Bangalees in general election) two of their two most extremely notorious generals: General Tikka and General Niazi.According to the plan Yahya, since early February, 1971, secretly sent Pakistani troops to Dhaka and prepared for the final crack down. When the preparation was complete, Yahya dismissed the constituent assembly. On March 25, after giving full instruction for mass killing of the inhabitants of Dhaka, at about 11 pm that night Yahya secretly left Dhaka. He went to Dhaka airport in a private car, completely unescorted in fear of identification by the airport officials. He was scared that Indian air force may stop him in the air. But Group Captain AR Khandaker saw Yahya sneaking out of the country in the dead of the night.
Soon after Yahya's departure, the Pakistani army crashed down Dhaka city. Their main target was to devastate the center of Bangalee political strength: student halls of Dhaka university and the top leaders and intellectuals involved in nationalist movement. They crashed the whole of Dhaka city by killing thousands of innocent civilians and poor people on the street (rickshaw pullers, homeless people, day laborers, street kids etc). The casualties were more than 50, 000. They arrested Bangabondhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman from his resident and took him to Pakistan. Yahya's officers also looked for other top leaders of Awami league specially Tajuddin Ahmed. But they could not find them as they, apprehensive of Pakistani military junta's next move, disappeared from their residences. Their failure to capture top Awami leaguers fueled their hatred against Bangalees and they appeased their avenging impulses by killing them in multitudes.
After 25 March, the Dhaka crack down night, the devastation of Bangladesh topped the personal agenda of Yahya. He used all means at his disposal to crash down the Bangalees. The intensity of his personal hatred against Bangladesh rules out the " liability theory" adopted by Pakistani bureaucrats and academics to ditch, resource less but politically less obliging, Bangladesh and Bangalees. Even when the victory of the Bangladesh liberation forces became obvious, in September, 1971, Yahya manipulated all his international connections to destroy Bangladesh:
1. Exhausted his connection with Kissinger/Nixon duo to get massive arms supply from the US and finally, on the eve of the victory, to demonstrate US nuclear threat to counter Bangladesh-India alliance, Yahya managed to bring US Seventh Fleet to crush the independence of Bangladesh.
2. He used his Chinese connection against Bangladesh-India alliance.
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Courtesy : Muktodhara
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