Bangladesh is a global player today

As the nation observes the 50th anniversary of its emergence as a sovereign state out of the crucible of war, it is only natural that its people look back to the strides it has made insofar as its dealings with the outside world is concerned. Today, Bangladesh is an important player not only in the South Asian region but also on a wider global level.

Its participation in a whole range of international activities – climate control, tackling refugee issues as in the Rohingya crisis, et cetera – are remarkable indicators of its reach across the world. For the last many decades, its contributions to United Nations peace-keeping operations have earned it the commendations of leaders in diverse areas of the globe. Having entered the United Nations in 1974, Bangladesh is today an active participant in its various councils.

Add to that the proactive role the country has played in the Non-Aligned Movement over the decades. Its role in the Commonwealth has given it a heft that is certainly remarkable. In the OIC, secular Bangladesh has made it clear that it remains committed to a promotion of the collective welfare of Muslims everywhere. On the issue of Palestinian rights, Bangladesh's support has been unwavering.

Closer home, indeed in South Asia, the country has remained focused on the region's shedding its legacy of conflict and moving on to build a region of peace. A country that first mooted the idea of Saarc, Bangladesh has strenuously tried to reconfigure South Asia into a conflict-free and terrorism-free part of the world.

Bangladesh's ties with the West – Europe, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada – have solidified over the years. Certainly there have been the hiccups in its dealings with the world, but that has done little to keep the country from reaching out to other nations in the task of promoting a world order based on the ideals of peace and sovereign equality.

On 16 December 2021, fifty years after it rose out of the destruction wrought by the Pakistan army – to transform itself from a province of Pakistan to an independent republic – Bangladesh is today a significant actor on the international stage.

The appeal of Joy Bangla is as sweet this morning as it was on this day, half a century back in time.

1971: Cold War…and War for Bangladesh

In early April 1971, Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny wrote to Pakistan's President Yahya Khan expressing his concern at the situation arising out of the military crackdown in East Pakistan. The missive was simple in content. The Soviet leader stressed the need for the military junta in Rawalpindi to arrive at a solution to the crisis in what would soon be Bangladesh through political means. Of course, the message upset the Pakistani leadership to no end, for the good reason that it was already grappling with the issue of Indian worries over the situation. With Bangalee refugees streaming into the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura and Assam in the face of the Pakistan army action and with reports emerging of Bangalee political leaders being part of the exodus, the junta did not need a second diplomatic front to be opened for it to handle.

And yet the Soviet President's message to General Yahya Khan was an early indication of the Bangladesh crisis getting drawn into the complexities of the Cold War. In Dhaka, Archer K Blood, the US consul, had begun to send his dispatches to Washington on the grave nature of the circumstances in East Pakistan. His warnings were ignored by Henry Kissinger and Blood would subsequently pay a heavy price for his "audacity". He would not go far in his career, for Kissinger would make sure that he played no role in the American diplomatic establishment after 1971. But in that year of terror in Bangladesh, Blood clearly expected his government to exert pressure on the Pakistani military establishment by having it step back from the fatal move it had made on 25 March through Operation Searchlight.

In the era of the Cold War, it was but natural that the crisis in Bangladesh or about it would arouse global concern. A particular reason was the failure of the Pakistani military to snuff out Bangalee resistance swiftly before the world could take notice of the growing realities in the region. Suffice it to say that the junta and its civilian supporters, notably Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, had not quite foreseen the ramifications of the act of repudiating the results of the December 1970 election and the arrest of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the leader of the majority party in the doomed national assembly. The systematic killings of Bangalee civilians would spur the Indian government on in its efforts to highlight the crisis before the world. An added feature of the Indian response to the problem was the operation of a Bangalee government from Indian territory, which demonstrated clearly Delhi's determination to keep the Pakistani government on its toes.

And into the picture would soon come China, with its statements of support for Pakistan and criticism of India's role. Besides, it was a time when Peking (today's Beijing) and Moscow did not have the best of relations, with the Chinese regularly condemning what they referred to as Soviet revisionism. There were too memories of the border clashes between the two countries in 1969. And with India, the hostilities engendered by the border war between Delhi and Peking in 1962 were another reason behind the Chinese leadership's disinclination to empathise with India on the Bangladesh issue. As the crisis dragged on, into weeks and then months, a curious turn of events brought the United States, China and Pakistan on the same page. In July 1971, Henry Kissinger travelled to Peking in clandestine manner, thereby ensuring an American opening to China. Intriguingly, Pakistan was the conduit, literally, for the trip. Kissinger flew to Peking from Rawalpindi. In the days following the visit, American readiness to stand by Pakistan over the Bangladesh issue assumed a more concrete shape. The tilt toward Pakistan was at work.

The concerns of the Soviet Union on the worsening situation in East Pakistan found echoes among the Warsaw Pact nations. The governments of all Soviet bloc countries came down firmly on the side of the Bangalees and were obviously supportive of the Indian role. In western Europe, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi would travel through a number of countries, emphasizing the need for a political solution to the crisis. Her government, under pressure with the influx of Bangalee refugees – whose number would eventually reach ten million – called on western political leaders to exert their influence on the Yahya Khan junta on the requirement of a political approach to the problem even as it prepared for an eventual and unavoidable battlefield solution. The Indians had already provided space and materiel to the Mukti Bahini, the Bangalee guerrilla army engaged in resisting the Pakistan army in Bangladesh.

For its part, the Pakistan government, even as it remained confident that its safety and territorial integrity would be guaranteed by Washington and Peking, went to work trying to convince the Muslim world that its actions in East Pakistan were purely its internal matter. The result was palpable: nations such as Iran, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Libya and others failed to condemn the atrocities committed by the army in an increasingly volatile East Pakistan. The Iranian newspaper Kayhan International spoke for the Shah and his regime when it published a series of articles condemnatory of the imprisoned Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The articles carried the misleading heading, "The Rise and Fall of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman".

The struggle by Bangalees to liberate themselves from Pakistan took a larger international dimension when India and the Soviet Union concluded the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation in August 1971. The treaty was a triumph for Delhi, which could now reassure itself that the alliance would be a deterrent to any Chinese or American designs on South Asia vis-à-vis the Bangladesh war. For Leonid Brezhnev, Nikolai Podgorny and Alexei Kosygin in Moscow, the agreement was an unambiguous assertion of where the Soviet Union stood in the developing crisis over Bangladesh. Moscow was not willing to give Washington a foothold in the region.

The Cold War dimensions of the Bangladesh crisis would play out comprehensively at the United Nations Security Council in December 1971. The Soviets vetoed an American resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in both the eastern and western theatres of the war. An angry President Nixon would order the USS Enterprise to move off the coast of South Vietnam and into the Bay of Bengal, a step which misled the Pakistanis into believing that American forces would land in Bangladesh and so prevent a collapse of their army before the Indian military and the Mukti Bahini. Pakistan's military government at the same time hoped that the Chinese too would come in from the north, specifically in the form of an attack on India and thereby force Delhi to abandon its military campaign in East and West Pakistan. It did not happen; and earlier in November, Chinese Premier Zhou En-lai had advised a Pakistani delegation headed by ZA Bhutto to go for a peaceful political solution to the Bangladesh issue.

Throughout 1971, the British government of Prime Minister Edward Heath refrained from expressing direct support for Bangladesh but regularly called for a peaceful resolution of the crisis. At the UNSC in December, the French and British governments jointly planned to introduce a ceasefire resolution but stepped back from doing so when Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi apprised them of her government's unhappiness with the move. West Germany's Chancellor Willy Brandt remained worried, especially after his meeting with a visiting Indira Gandhi. French President Georges Pompidou remained equally concerned. The ageing Andre Malraux, once culture minister in President Charles de Gaulle's government, offered to lead a brigade, as he had one in the Spanish civil war in the 1930s, to fight alongside the Mukti Bahini for Bangladesh's liberation.

The Indian army and the Mukti Bahini, by mid-December, were racing toward Dhaka before the UNSC could adopt a resolution calling for a ceasefire. A Polish resolution which General Yahya Khan thought could prevent Pakistan's forces from surrendering to the Indo-Bangladesh joint command in Dhaka was dismissed by Bhutto, who had been sent to the world body in his new position as deputy prime minister and foreign minister to speak for Pakistan. Bhutto rejected the Polish resolution and stalked out of the chamber after a demonstration of theatrics.

A day later, on 16 December, the Pakistan army surrendered to the joint command of Indian and Bangladesh forces in Dhaka.