As the shadows lengthen on this December 3rd, 2011 late afternoon, I hear some voices from afar, from a day long forgotten by most. In a flash, I am transported back to that fateful evening of December 3rd 1971, when, as an 8 year old, I was playing cricket in the rear lawn of our Cavalry Ground ( Lahore Cant) house number 533 (later 262) with our orderly, and the daughter of the CO of 25 Signal Battalion, Col. Idrees, who had come to visit our home.
My father, Lt. Col (now retired) M. Iqbal Ameen, PA 4735, was in Dhaka, serving as G2 Eastern Command. He had been sent there in February of the same year. He had been commanding the 25 Sig Btn in Lahore till then. This was father’s second posting there. His first posting there had been as a Captain, back in 1963, when I was also born there.
Suddenly, there was a deafening roar in the sky, and we looked up to see a very low-flying PAF Mirage jet zoom by overhead in a Westerly direction. That night, we heard that India had invaded Pakistan, and a war in West Pakistan was on. It had already started in East Pakistan, earlier in November.
We did not have a TV in our house in those days, so most of our information was gathered through the Radio Pakistan, and the Daily Mashriq. The other Weekly sources of articles and information were the Hoor and Zaibunnisa magazines, as well as Altaf Qureshi’s Urdu Digest. I had subscribed to the Taleem-o-Tarbiat, published by Ferozsons, and also Naunehal, published by the great Hakeem Saeed of Hamdard.
As days passed by, the mood in Lahore became grimmer. Although father would call each morning from Dhaka, but he never revealed the severity of the situation to our mother. We did not see PAF in action over Lahore, except once, when there was a dogfight over our heads, after which we heard that an Indian fighter jet had been downednear Walton. Our orderly rode off on his bicycle to fetch a souvenir for himself, but never got one. At the time when the dogfight was taking place overhead, I was playing in our rear lawn with a classmate at Cantt Public School ( Abid Majeed Road) Amir Ali Shah, whom, another class fellow of mine, Salim Yousufzai had given a harrowing beating in the school playground over a trifle matter. Our driver Safdar yelled at me to get inside the trench, that the soldiers from 25 Sig Btn had dug for us in our lawn, under 2 towering Neem trees. When I delayed, he stepped forward and slapped me on my face, and pushed me to the W shaped trench. It is another matter that I also got a scolding from my mother also, who was quite distressed already, and took me into the house. Much later, I got to know why it is so dangerous to stand beneath an on-going dog-fight.
As war went on, nearly all our neighbouring houses became deserted, as families moved to cities away from the border. But the wife of Major (later Col Muhammad Aslam of Signals) became mother’s friend, and would visit our house almost every day to chat with our mother. She was a very jovial lady and would drive mother to fits of laughter. We used to have a Fiat 600, which father had bought in 1966 from CSD for Rs: 6000, on installments. Our driver Havaldar (now deceased after a bout with Hepatitis) Safdar (given to us by father’s Unit ) used to take us to the ESSO (Put A Tiger In Your Tank) petrol pump near Rahat Bakery (where now a PSO Petrol Station operates), and we once got a CRUSH INDIA sticker, which I immediately pasted on the inside of the car’s rear window.
We read in the newspaper that General Niazi had boasted that Indian tanks would have to ride over his body to enter Dhaka. Some older boys in our colony, who were then students of Government College Lahore, formed a volunteer force, lead by Babar, the son of Col. Idrees, the CO of 25 Sig, to perform the night-watch duties. I heard that he later joined the army. But there was also a rumour at one time that he had been arrested for being in an anti-government rally.
Mother used to go to the Lloyds Bank, on the Lower Mall, where now the Standard Chartered Bank stands ( which used to be the Grindlays Bank, after Lloyds Bank ceased its operations in Pakistan) for withdrawing cash from father’s salary account, for meeting the day-to-day expenses. Fuel became expensive, at Rs: 3 per gallon. Our bread used to be purchased from Fine Bakery on Beadon Road. It is still there even today.
The flashes of the canons blasting off at the boder, used to be visible from the roof of our house, at nights. We used to have strict black-outs at night, and every window of our house had black paper pasted on it. War went on. And we used to have dry fruits and raisins, seated in a small enclosed section of our house, built under the staircase, and Ashfaq Ahmed’s Talqeen Shah would come on air from Radio Pakistan each night at 8 pm. Once we heard from our orderly that Alam Lohar had sung to a huge crowd outside Bhati Gate.
And sometimes our Nani would come to stay with us.
Then suddenly, the world collapsed around us. On 16th December 1971, the phone, that mother used to keep by her pillow, started ringing. It was around 5:45 am. She picked up, and was immediately awake. It was father from Dhaka. She listened to him in silence, and then I clearly remember her chilling ( and slightly hysterical) question to him…..”where would you go ? Where would you go ? ” He said something, then mother became quiet— very quiet. And the phone went silent. I had completely woken up by then, and saw my mother in a dazed state. And then she started crying. I had no idea what had happened. Lots of minutes later, she sobbed that the Pakistani Army was surrendering in Dhaka, and that that was father’s last call, after which, they would start destroying their equipment to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Indians. I walked out of the house to wake up our orderly Yaqoob, and driver Sarwar, who simply refused to believe when I told them the news. They said that I had misunderstood my father, because 90,000 strong Pakistan army could not surrender. It would die fighting but would never surrender.
Safdar rushed to the Unit to ascertain the factual position. When he returned, his eyes were red, and he could not speak due to strong emotions. Our younger Taya, then Major Ikram Ameen ( who later became DOS at PMA Kakul, and then Commandant Military College Jehlum, after which Secretary Education Punjab under Governor Punjab, General Sawar Khan, and died as a Brigadier at Bahawalpur while on a tour of duty) came to our house around 8 pm, and tried to console mother. Other relatives also started pouring in, but the females, instead of being brave, added to the loud expressions of grief, that exacerbated mother’s condition, and she had to be taken to a separate room to lie down.
Our house became a station of depression. My younger sister was too young to understand anything, or remember anything. But at 8 years of age, I suddenly became the man of the house. There appeared in Pakistan Times, the sickening statement of General Yahya Khan….”Setback only Temporary. Final Victory will be ours”. I still have the copy of that newspaper in my scrap book that I made after my Matric exams in 1978.
We had no idea if father was alive or not. It must have been an unbearable torture for mother. After some weeks, we received a letter from GHQ that the lists of army officers taken as prisoners was being arranged and would be made available through International Red Cross. Then one day, mother took me with her to the Red Cross office at Charing Cross ( where now the Red Crescent office operates) to look at the lists of POWs. What a day it must have been for her. She cannot remember anything now, because of the slowly advancing Alzheimer, but back then, her heart must have been beating with fear and hope.
We finally located father’s name in one of the lists, and found out that he was being held at Gowaliar Camp 61.
Life began limping back to some form of normalcy. Schools reopened. My junior Taya Major Ikram Ameen, (serving in Army Education Corp) became Incharge of Army Schools in Lahore. Letters started coming from Gowaliar, heavily censored (either in India, or Pakistan, or both) blackened out by dark black ink. Red Cross asked us to send some parcel to father, if we so wanted. Mother prepared some Kurta shalwar suits and other essential items and we handed them over to our Taya for delivering these to the Red Cross. Father never received that parcel (we learnt later) and the Indians conveniently kept that for themselves.
In 1972, mother suddenly collapsed on the bathroom floor and hurt her spinal cord. That was an injury that could have been treated successfully, but the CMH Lahore doctor was an ill-trained guy, and failed to diagnose the severity of the injury. He gave her a high dosage pain killing medicine only and sent her home. As a result, mother’s spine started to slowly deteriorate, and because of a prolonged pain-killer medicine, her stomach’s lining also became damaged. She had 2 kids to raise, and had to do all the house chores by herself. She never showed us how badly she suffered from the pain in her back. That injury has remained with her till now, and she has a slightly twisted spine, that clearly shows in her X-ray, made worse with the onset of severe osteoporosis.
I performed pretty well at Cantt Public School, Lahore, whose Headmistress was a most refined lady named Mrs. Kazmi. In fact, I topped the class in 4th grade, and then 5th grade, and became the darling of my teachers. Once, when I scored 95 marks out of 100, in my Math paper, I received a scolding from my class teacher ! She wanted me to call my father to the school so that she could complain to him about my wasting away the 5 marks. I burst out crying in front of the class, and told her through sobs that he was in India as a POW. When I stood first amongst my class in 5th grade, there was a prize distribution ceremony for all the Top students of the school over the last 2 years, in the school hall. My name was announced as having topped the class in the 4th grade’s Final exam. I walked up to the podium and received my prize and returned to my seat. A while later, they called my name again, now as the top student of 5th Grade, and there was a round of applause, as I was asked to stand up on my seat to be visible to all. Then I walked to the podium again and received a Grand Prize — a student’s table lamp; which I kept with me carefully for many years.
Somewhere along the way, Yahya Khan went away, and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto became the President.
In 1972, Zulfiqar Bhutto went to India, and signed the Simla Agreement. Hopes were raised of a quick repatriation of the POWs, but they proved false. India said that it would try some of the POWs for war crimes. We were told that in Simla, he had slept on the floor of his room, in sympathy with the POWs.
In the Cavalry Grounds, where our house was sitauted, there was a FF ( Frontier Force) Mess, two empty plots away. One early morning somewhere in March 1973, we looked out of the window of our bedroom, across the vacant plot to observe a heavy deployement of armed troops around the FF Mess. Mother was terrified. She phoned Taya Ikram to check if something was wrong so close to our house. Some moments later, he came to our house, and assured mother that everything was OK. It turned out later in the evening, that some army officers had been arrested from the FF Mess, who were conspiring to overthrow Zulfiqar Bhutto ! For me, that became quite a thrilling story to tell my schoolmates.
Towards the end of 1973, we started hearing news that some of the POWs were being released. In fact, a few officers from father’s camp did return to Pakistan, and visited mother to give news of father’s well-being. Then we received a letter from GHQ that father was also expected to be repatriated soon. My eldest Taya, Brigadier Hafiz Muhammad Islam Ameen,(also of Signal Corps), who is one of the very few living officers to have fought in the Second World War, (his 2 sons are now Brigadiers themselves) and who had served as the ADC to General Douglas Gracey, the 2nd Commander-in-Chief of Pakistan Army, took charge of the interaction with GHQ over this matter, and, slowly, an excitement began building in our house. The date of the repatriation was announced. It would be either January 9th or 10th, 1974, and the handing over would take place at Wahgah.
We decorated our house with buntings, streamers, balloons, and many decorative things, and it filled with nearly all our relatives. On 10th January, which coincided with mother’s birthday, my Taya went in his staff car to the border to receive father, complete the formalities, and then to bring him to our house.
I remember that day, that time, and that moment, so very clearly in my eyes. He came out of the car from the rear right side, and I met a thin man, on whom the uniform fitted like an oversized garment. On the front and back of his army uniform were painted in black permanent paint, the words; P X W………………………
He hugged me briefly, asked me how I was, and then looked around him at the decorations, smiled, and then went in to meet my mother. I heard cries from inside the house. But these were not of grief this time. He had finally come home. We were a family again.
He was called to Kharian, some days later, to appear before an enquiry commission, set up to debrief the returning POWs. They cleared him, and posted him to Sialkot to command the 20 Sig Btn. The GOC there in those days was General Rahimuddin. His son, Faiz and I became friends, and would often play table tennis at the Services Club, that was close to our house. In 1976, father was transferred to Rawalpindi, to the Military School (later College) of Signals. We used to live in Cambridge Barracks, close to the Presidency. Bhutto went to North Korea in the same year, witnessed a mass-gymnastic display, and got so impressed that he ordered his Education Minister Abdul Hafeez Pirzada to organise a similar event in Pindi, utilising nearly 5000 school children. Our summer vacation was cut short in mid-July, and all the students of upto class 10th in government schools were ordered to report to their respective schools. I used to be in Sir Syed School. That meant no studies at all for the next 5 months ! Special Korean instructors were imported, alongwith some trainers recruited from the local Police, who would drill us from morning till evening, on formation-making, and producing various shapes and forms on the ground, by following dotted lines, and would brutally hit us with their belts, if we made any errors. There was no way of registering our complaints against that brutality by our police personnel. The first performance was to be for King Khalid of Saudi Arabia, in October 1976. That took place in the ground of NUML, Islamabad. That so pleased Bhutto that he ordered a repeat of the event for the PPP’s founding day celebrations in November! But for us, the academic year was ruined. We were forced back to the class rooms in January, and crammed with the entire syllabus of Class 9, in 3 months, that was supposed to have been taught over the last 7 months. Its impact was to haunt me for many years to come, and altered the direction that I would take in life in the choice of my career.
Meanwhile, Pakistan lurched from one crisis to another. Anti-Bhutto demonstrations erupted all over Pakistan after the elections in 1977, and many protesting people were shot dead by the Police and security apparatus, on the streets, especially in Lahore & Karachi. On the night of July 4-5th, 1977, army staged a coup, and General Zia took over power. Military trucks, filled with battle-ready soldiers, drove past our house that night, in endless convoys.
On April 4th 1979, as I was going to an exam centre to take my Federal Board’s Math paper, Bhutto was hanged in Rawalpindi Jail.
The same year, one day, while General Zia was cycling on the streets of Pindi, in his army uniform, an enraged mob attacked and burnt down the US embassy in Islamabad in protest over the storming of Holy Kaaba by Saudi radicals. The American Centre on Bank Road, Saddar, which had a very fine library, was also burnt down, never to be rehabilitated.
That same fateful year, Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and the entire course of our history became altered for decades to come, and causing generations to be ruined, permanently. Pakistan became a player in that Great Game, and Peshawar started bearing the brunt of the tussle between competing powers. Bombs started going off in our streets, and rumours of Soviet incursion—even attack on Pakistan began doing the rounds. I enrolled in Sir Syed College on the Mall, in September 1979, where Athar Minallah (yes the famous lawyer) was the student Union leader. He would often call a boycott of the classes, owing to one reason, or another. Our great Principal Mr. M. H. Hamdani , who was the first true democrat that I saw in my life, would tolerantly, and smilingly hear him deliver his firey speeches, and later, would come up to the overhanging cantilever to logically rebut the arguments against going back to the classes. Anti Zia students demos used to take place on the Mall, in front of the college. Once, the police threw tear gas shells inside the college, chased the students furiously, and arrested quite a few of them.
In July 1980, I went to ISSB Kohat, for getting selected as a GD Pilot in PAF. I made it to the last 8, out of a batch of 102. But the Chairman of the Selection Board, a Lt. Col (who turned out to be father’s Batch-mate in 8th PMA Long Course) told me that I’d never be selected as a pilot, because I did not have that aptitude. Instead, he offered me to join the Army, via the JCB. I refused, and told him that I would never join the army. He was a bit shocked at my forceful comment and asked me the reason. I told him that the army was no longer the same that I had seen in my early life, for I had been raised amongst highest standards of professionalism, integrity, and dedication, as witnessed in my own father, and my two uncles, as well as in the company of officers like General Rahimuddin, General (late) Abrar Hussain ( Chowinda fame), General Kamal Matinuddin, Brigadier ( late ) Noor Hussain, General Anwar Masood, and many others like them.
On 10th April, 1988, the ammunition depot at Ojhri Camp Rawalpindi, (that was a holding place for ammo being used in the Afghan war by the Resistance) blew up, raining missiles, and projectiles on the hapless population of Pindi and Islamabad. It killed scores, and flattened hundreds of houses in the vicinity of that Camp, and shattered windows for miles around. I was sitting on my desk at BCCI Rawalpindi, which I had joined in early 1986, when the papers on the table suddenly flew off with the gust of a strong wind. And then there was the roar of an explosion. We rushed out to see a huge mushroom cloud, rising constantly in the sky, and sparks emanating from that black cloud. Some thought that India had attacked Kahuta, some said that a petrol depot had blown off. Some called Radio Pakistan, but could not get an answer. All the telephones in Pindi went dead, adding to the panic and confusion. And then the rockets homed in on the houses. Two of these fell on my Taya’s ( Brig Islam Ameen) house in Westridge. One of them killed Mr. Khaqan Abbasi, as far away as in Islamabad. Some fell near Melody cinema. We remained without electricity for 3 days. It brought back the bad memories of another blast in the past; that occurred in Lahore in or around September 1970, when a pile of ammunition blew up at Lahore airport, while being off-loaded. I used to be at the Toddlers Academy on the Upper Mall ( that unique school run by Mrs. Alam, next to the International Hotel). The window panes of my classroom on the first floor got shattered, and glass fragments fell on our desks. Panic ensued on a large scale. Roads choked up with anxious parents rushing to schools to collect their children. Our house on Shami road had been badly affected, and not a single window had its glass intact. All the doors of our house had become jammed due to the impact of the blast, and we had remained without electricity for 3 days.
Back in 1988, just one month after the Ojhri Camp disaster, on May 28th , a clash took place between the supporters of a Union Council leader, and an army officer, that soon turned into a free for all, in which the army officer gathered soldiers from his Unit and reportedly ransacked the Union Council’s leader’s house, and manhandled his family members. In retaliation, the Union Council head’s men blocked the main Peshawar road near Chur Harpal, and burnt down army vehicles. Next day, May 29th, while PM Junejo was dismissed by Gen Zia, while he was returning from a trip to China. But Zia’s speech that evening was a disaster, and he was very shaky, nervous, and very unimpressive. Clearly, Zia was upset because Junejo had openly declared to launch an investigation into the Ojhri Camp disaster, and also signed the Geneva Accord to end the Afghan War, by ushering in the Soviet withdrawal.
I met Gen Zia on August 4th 1988, at the wedding reception in Pindi. On 17th August, he died in the infamous C-130 crash over Bahawalpur.
Then began the musical chairs between Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. Political and economic instability became the order of the day. On May 28th 1998, Pakistan detonated 6 nuclear devices in response to India’s detonations a few days earlier. Pakistan became an openly declared nuclear weapons state. Immediately afterwards, economically crippling US sanctions followed.
In October 1999, General Musharraf staged a coup and dismissed Nawaz Sharif’s “Heavy Mandate” government. Thus commenced another long period of Military rule, that saw Pakistan slide into the painful so-called War on Terror, from which, the country has still not been able to recover.
Forty years have passed since that fateful evening in December 71, and that tragic morning of 16th December. When I look back at all these years, I am filled with deepest bitterness, resentment, anger, and disappointment.
We have really learnt nothing from history. Our own follies continue to heap tragedy, and shame on us day, after day. Our newspapers are still filled with empty boasts about the defence of the motherland being in impregnable hands, and yet they routinely breach its defences, and we cannot do a thing about it. We have never woken out from a self-induced slumber, which we have lulled ourselves in.
And so, the shadows of painful memories continue to lengthen over our land, and over our lives. In our hearts, there is a pervading feeling of anger at our recurrent failures. Our politicians’ sickening pandering to India, in negotiation after negotiation, be it over the dams it is building, or Kashmir, or the unilatral nbestowing of MFN status, is a clear sign of our confusion and lack of understanding of the Hindu’s deep mind. We continue to yield ground to our sworn enemy, and yet feel blissful about the invasion of its culture, through the screening of vulgar Indian movies even in PAF owned cinemas ! Its pilots and their families go ga-ga over these movies, and yet we imagine that we will fight them ! Our prominent TV channels never sicken of showing Indian programmes, Film award shows and even movies, and permeate the poison into the veins of our generations. Do Indian TV channels show our programmes as well, and their cinemas screen our movies ? Have we heard the term Quid pro Quo?
We launch fighter jets to force an Indian helicopter to land near Skardu, but fail to launch a single fighter jet to attack Nato’s jets that kept hovering over our skies for nearly 2 hours. And yet we have ambitions and notions of grandeur.
We have faced soul-shattering, traumatic tragedies and humiliations, but reports like Liaqat Ali Khan’s assassination, the Hamood ur Rehman Commission, Ojhri Camp, Gen Zia’s crash, Kargil misadventure, Benazir’s assassination have never seen the light of the day.
The country went through 2 absolute dictatorships of Gen Zia and Gen Musharraf, alongwith a stint of Heavy Mandate by Nawazh Sharif, but failed to construct severely needed Kalabagh Dam. What is High Treason then ? To sell your country’s interest to the highest bidder, or to prevent it internally from safe-guarding its future for the next generations ? The water crisis is upon us now, but the politicians boast of having blocked Kalabagh dam forever!
Tea-pot sized countries, that were either bombed to smithereens by bigger power-drunk bullies, till a few years ago, or those that gained their independence, much later than us, have overtaken us, economically, and socially. Airlines around the world that PIA spawned, or helped come into being, have become giants, while PIA is almost dead. Our Railways, that backbone of our transportation, is also nearly dead. Pakistan Steel, that once shining example of our industrial achievement, is bankrupt. Our textile industry has shifted to Dubai, Bangladesh, or Ajman. Even the Afghani currency is stronger than the Pak Rupee, and we thought that we were the Big Brother in that neighbourhood!
While we were in college, we used to hear that disappearances used to happen in El Salvador, San Salvador, Nicaragua, Columbia, Argentina, and Chile. But now, we are equally famous in that category. Turkey, Egypt and Iran (under Shah) used to be notorious for torturing to death their prison inmates, but we now have a near monopoly on that.
The jokers that are called the Silent Majority, that funny term coined by Gen Musharraf, actually means the dead segment of population like us— that educated, timid, decadent part of the population, that gets to play no role in the country’s decision-making process. But how can that be a majority ? 60% of our population lives in villages, and it has either no role to play in shaping the country’s destiny, or doesn’t even know what is going on, while the remaining 40% is too involved in seeking a day-to-day survival in the face of rising un-employment, price-hikes, fuel and gas shortages, electricity outages, that it does not have the strength left to raise its voice, for fear of a knock on the door at midnight, or sheer brutality on the streets. We have become silent witnesses to the power-play between the Military on one hand, and the incompetent politicians on the other. One has a strangle-hold on our policies; the other has a disastrous tendency of creating debilitating crisis upon crisis, in an unending pattern.
It is time we faced up to our true history, and told everyone the truth of what we have done, and are capable or incapable of doing, and stopped creating a fictional umbrella of invincibility, and All Is Well charade. There is a burden of history that we must clear, face up to, and then move forward with open eyes, to prevent another tragedy visiting on our nation, and motherland. 1971 cannot be forgotten by so many thousands of us, who were kids then, and have grown up to be disillusioned adults in this land. We must have change. And for the better, for once in the life of our beloved country. There is no choice now left to fail. For failure will lead us to unspeakable mayhem, and total chaos. The arbiters of our destiny need to find a Re-Set button, somewhere around the table, on which dark decisions are routinely taken. Their failure to find that button- whether deliberate, or erroneous, will make the events like 14th July 1789 in France, the Russian upheaval of 1917, or the Iranian Revolution of`1979 look like college riots in comparison.
