No, Minister … Pervez Musharraf did not apologise

Foreign Minister A.H. Mahmood Ali is right to suggest that Bangladesh is evaluating its relations with Pakistan against the backdrop of Islamabad's denial of history as it pertains to our War of Liberation forty four years ago. But he is wrong when he says that Pakistan's former military ruler Pervez Musharraf apologised for the genocide the Pakistan army perpetrated in Bangladesh in 1971. Neither Musharraf nor any other Pakistani ruler, civilian or military, has ever said sorry about the atrocities the Pakistani forces committed against Bengalis soon after the Yahya Khan junta repudiated the results of the December 1970 elections and opted for Operation Searchlight in March 1971.

What General Musharraf, the fourth chief of Pakistan's army to seize power in his country, did was merely to express his regret at what transpired in 1971. Clearly, there is a gulf of difference between expressing regret and saying sorry. The Bangladesh foreign minister informs us, nevertheless, that though the general expressed his apology, his language was not strong enough. That is misleading. At the risk of sounding repetitive, let us point out again that there was no apology. But, yes, the manner in which Musharraf expressed his regret about 1971 was not strong and did not seem to come from his heart. This is borne out by the fact that not long ago, long after he had walked away from power — and this is something we must not forget — General Musharraf went on record with his statement that his assault on Kargil in 1999 was meant to teach India a lesson for its role in bringing about Pakistan's break-up in 1971.

That explains everything about Musharraf's attitude to Bangladesh. There is, therefore, no reason for Bangladesh's people to believe that he ever apologised to them for the horrors his country's army perpetrated in Bangladesh through the nine months of our armed struggle for freedom. But the Musharraf attitude is typical of the position other Pakistani heads of government and state have adopted in relation to Bangladesh before and during their stints in office. There is the rather peculiar case of Benazir Bhutto who, as a student and perhaps even in her mature years refused to believe that Pakistan's soldiers had done anything wrong in Bangladesh. Even as a whole world came to know, through constant media reports, of the murder and rape of Bengalis and the flight of ten million people to refugee camps in India during the war, Benazir as a student abroad went on believing whatever her father told her about conditions back home. The reports in the international media to the contrary did not matter to her. On her visit to Bangladesh in the times of General H.M. Ershad, she made it a point to see a 'pir' but demonstrated no desire to visit the National Memorial at Savar.

But Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, as Pakistan's prime minister, did visit or was compelled by circumstances to go to the memorial, built in honour of Bengalis martyred in the War of Liberation, in June 1974. During the visit, he showed not the slightest trace of respect for the dead. He refused to doff the Mao cap he wore, placed the wreath at the memorial in an angry frame of mind and then refused to sign the visitors' book offered to him. 'Enough of this nonsense', he told his startled hosts. He left Dhaka without reaching any deal with Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on the issue of a division of the pre-1971 assets and liabilities between Pakistan and Bangladesh. Bhutto's sense of happiness, indeed ecstasy, at the assassination of Bangabandhu in August 1975 was palpable moments after news of the coup went out to the world. He thought Bangladesh had become an Islamic republic and swiftly recognised the usurper regime headed by Khondokar Moshtaque.

In his time, General Ziaul Haq, Pakistan's third military ruler, visited Bangladesh twice in 1985. The first visit was in the aftermath of the devastation wrought by a tornado at Urir Char. The second was on the occasion of the first summit of SAARC heads of state and government in Dhaka at the end of the year. On his Urir Char related trip, General Zia visited the National Memorial in Savar, laid a wreath there and then made a comment which certainly stretched credulity. Asked for his comments on Bangladesh's war dead, Pakistan's president told them, 'Your heroes are our heroes'. The statement made little sense, seeing that Pakistan's heroes, if its soldiers were indeed being heroic in 1971, were busy waging war against our heroes in the Mukti Bahini.

And so we have here a record of how successive rulers in Pakistan have stayed clear of any public expression of apology for the murder and mayhem committed by their soldiers in 1971. Nawaz Sharif, like his predecessors, has said nothing about the war. But that his government remains psychologically unable to come to terms with Bangladesh's sovereign existence was proved conclusively through the reactions of some of its leading figures, notably Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, to the trials and executions of war criminals in Bangladesh. The Pakistan national assembly adopted a resolution condemning Bangladesh soon after Abdul Kader Mollah was executed as a war criminal in Dhaka. And in recent days, the smooth, unabashed manner in which the Pakistan foreign office chose to deny that any wrongdoing had been committed by Pakistan in Bangladesh is incontrovertible proof yet once again of how the state of Pakistan remains collectively unable as well as unwilling to acknowledge the gross manner in which its army mutated into a huge murder squad in Bangladesh in 1971.

No, Foreign Minister Mahmood Ali, there has been no apology from General Pervez Musharraf about 1971. Nor has there been any from any other Pakistani president or prime minister.