11.56 MARTIAL LAW
ADMINISTRATION - AN INTERIM ASSESSMENT
Public Record Office
REF: FCO 37/472
Summary
1.
The impact of the Martial Law authorities is essentially moderate, and most of
the steps taken or promised so far indicate an enlightened approach (paragraphs
1-6).
2.
The achievement of a constitutional basis for General Yahya's promised
restoration of parliamentary government is likely to provide the biggest
problems. The politicians themselves are clearly still undecided. General Yahya
has indicated that, like Ayub before him, he regards the integrity of the
nation as of fundamental importance (paragraphs 7-11).
3.
The basis of his dilemma is the fact that the demands of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman
for greater autonomy for
4.
Faced with this dilemma, General Yahva could try to risk imposing a
constitutional solution unacceptable to MUJib. There is a danger_ likely to
grow with time, that General Yahya might be tempted to resolve his difficulties
by staying on as President. This danger is, however, at present very slight
(paragraphs 13-16).
5.
His best alternative method for reconciling the two wings would be to
concentrate all efforts on removing economic and administrative disparities
between them. But the problems of doing so, however good intentions may be, are
so great that
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British High Commissioner,
The
Right Honourable
Michael
Stewart, C.H., M.P.,
etc.,
etc., etc.
Sir,
The Martial. Law Administration: An Interim Assessment
When
General Yahya Khan accepted power from President Ayub Khan, and declared
Martial Law, he gave as his main reasons for doing so the need to restore
peaceful conditions in the country, to clean up the administration, and to deal
with the grievances
of
students, labour and peasants. This, once achieved, would provide the basis for
"the smooth transfer of power to the representatives of the people elected
freely and impartially on the basis of adult franchise." In this despatch,
written two months after the advent of General, now President, Yahya's administration,
I propose to survey the progress made towards the aims he outlined in his first
speech on 26 March, and to attempt an analysis of the courses open to him.
2.
1 reported in my despatch 1/59 of 2 April that the immediate effect of the
declaration of Martial Law had been to calm the atmosphere completely. The mood
of the country remains calm now: in the first two weeks after Martial Law a few
small strikes were attempted by industrial workers or students, but since then
there has been virtually no trouble. Yet while the twenty-five Martial Law
Regulations promulgated on 25 March formed a potentially draconian system for
dealing with trouble, in no case tried so far has more than a fraction of the
maximum permissible sentence been imposed on a convicted offender. Also, while
the total number of convictions under Martial Law is now well over 400, a large
proportion of these cases are for holding unlicenced arms; like many of the
other cases, they could have been dealt with under ordinary laws - though
admittedly not with the same scope for sentencing. All in all, and despite
Sheikh Mujib's assertion that he has a list of hundreds of brutalities or
harassments committed by the Armed Forces, a fairly modest crack of the whip
has so far been sufficient.
3.
At all but the most senior levels of the administration civilian officials are
being left to get on with their work by the Martial law authorities. But
certain steps have been taken to clean up the administration and, in the
country at large, to locate tax evaders and those illegally holding assets like
foreign exchange overseas. Officials are being required to declare their
properties, and investigatory committees are at work in the central and
provincial governments. Further Martial Law Regulations issued during April cover
a wide range of offences such as tax evasion. Measures like the Improper
Acquisition of Property Ordinance and the West Pakistan Inquiry Tribunal
Ordinance give the administration ample powers to investigate suspected
offenders. About a dozen people have so far been convicted, under ordinary laws
rather than Martial Law Regulations, of foreign exchange irregularities, and
sentenced to modest jail terms but large fines.
4.
The government's gentle application of its authority to disturbers of the peace
has been justified by the generally placid atmosphere. But there are signs,
which admittedly it would be premature to find conclusive, of a similarly
gentle approach to official and private corruption, which had been recognised
as widespread. Only a few officials have yet been dismissed for malpractices,
and some known incompetents have even been transferred to posts as important as
those they held before, whereas in the months after Ayub came to power nearly
1,600 officials were dismissed. The deadline for the surrender of
illegally-held foreign exchange had to be extended from 15 May to 15 June,
supposedly because of "the pressure of this work on the banks," but
more probably because the government has not succeeded, as did Ayub in 1958, in
scaring offenders enough to make them surrender their illegal holdings. The
most likely reason is that really substantial holders of such assets, like the
"Twenty Families," have learned to conceal their assets better in the
last ten years; also they are conscious the government will not wreck the
industrial economy by seeking to expose every offender. Another possibility is
that people feel, cynically but with much justification, that many in the Armed
Forces are guilty of abuses themselves and therefore will not crack down really
hard. There is certainly time yet for the anti-corruption measures to work, and
steady painstaking exposure will be better than a rapid flurry, but having
begun at relatively
low
pressure the government may have difficulty increasing it. Nevertheless,
distaste for corruption was such a factor in the growth of disaffection with
Ayub, and Yahya has talked enough about eradicating corruption, for him to have
to show some results in due course.
5.
In dealing with the grievances of various sections of the population the
government has shown a liberal and conciliatory approach which has earned it,
despite misgivings in
6.
The steps so far promised have mostly been aimed at the urban population. This
could merely indicate that the urban and therefore more organised sections of
the population are easier to deal with quickly than the agricultural population;
but it could also indicate Yahya's recognition that the political agitation
came mainly from the towns, and that those must therefore be placated first.
However, the biggest structural fault in
7.
President Yahya made stability and administrative reform the prerequisites for
a return to civilian government: and despite the qualifications above, most of
the steps taken so far have been well-conceived (although essentially designed
to keep developments moving gently forward, rather than sharply changing
direction), and generally well received. But it is in the political field that
the long-term difficulties lie. An important example of the mildness of Yahya's
approach to Martial law was that political parties were not completely stifled:
although no meetings of party councils or public political meetings may be
held, individual party leaders are not under restriction, and the press carries
full news of their movements and statements. And Yahya has not ignored politics
and politicians: on 22 April he began a ten-day tour of both wings, during
which he met a large proportion of the country's political leaders; on a brief
further visit
to
the Frontier area of
8.
In his talks with politicians, where mostly he appears to have listened rather
than talked, Yahya has been looking for ways of effecting the promised
restoration of political life and civilian government on the twin bases of
parliamentary government and adult franchise. So far, as he has admitted,
neither he nor the politicians are clear as to the solution. But he has given a
few indications of his views, which help to define the limitations within which
he will work.
9.
After his tour of
10.
President Yahya's remarks about Islam and integrity are viewed with perhaps
excessive suspicion by many East Pakistanis, who see in them principles which
could exclude "autonomist" parties like the Awami league or the Wall
Khan National Awami Party, merely secular parties like the Peoples' Party or
the Justice party, and parties close to foreign ideologies like Bhashani's
National Awami Party, leaving only the various Muslim Leagues and the purely
Islamic parties. Other politicians, some anticipating the President's hint
about the large number of parties, have been discussing mergers of "likeminded
groups." Of the groups which might be formed by merger, far and away the
most important, in
11.
[n trying to find a political solution which will satisfy all, or at least a
clear majority of the people, however, President Yahya is faced with a complex
problem. It is abundantly clear that he was in full agreement with Ayub that
the prime danger to Pakistan as he and the Armed Forces wanted Pakistan to be,
lay not in the industrial or rural disturbances: the "utter
destruction" which he stepped in to prevent, was the chaos likely if
Martial Law had to be imposed after, and because, the Awami league's
"specialist" constitutional amendments had been passed by the
National Assembly. The industrial losses and rural disturbances were not, in
any case, as bad as had been feared: (see my despatches 5/21 of 6 May and 1/51
of 30 May).
12.
In holding this view Yahya is Ayub's heir, just as he inherited the two major
planned constitutional changes that Ayub was prepared to grant - parliamentary
government and adult franchise. He is therefore heir to the same problem that confronted
Ayub: he wishes to hand over to parliamentary government, but only on terms
which those dominant in
from
Mujib, his Awami League and, to a lesser degree, Bhashani's N.A.P. still enjoy
overwhelming support in
13.
Faced with this dilemma, Yahya has several possible courses of action:
a)
he could put forward a constitutional solution which would satisfy the Awami
league's Six Points, at the cost of losing the sympathy of most Punjabis. But
this is just the result he assumed power to prevent.
b) He
could impose a solution which provided rather more power for
c)
He could try to avoid the separatist and One-Unit issues by instituting a new
system, where a strong central parliament would have below it fifteen or more
local units, each with rather more powers than English county councils. This
suggestion has come up often enough in conversation to make it possible that it
is being deliberately aired by the government.
14.
But it is not easy to see the solution, and just because it is not, I think it
possible that President Yahya may put off any constitutional decision rather
longer than many Pakistanis hope, say for at least a year. He can use the
complementary excuses of the politicians' continuing failure to agree and the
need to complete the clean-up of the administration, to continue consultations
for some time, meanwhile permitting the investigatory committees and the courts
to pursue the task of reforms. And at the same time he might be able to put
through some uncontroversial reforms which would help to keep the peace, now
that the economic situation is better in
15.
This course of action would delay elections for more than a year, since the
processes of registering electors and arranging election machinery would take
more time after the administrative clean-up was completed. But the possibility
is there that after a while President Yahya might decide not to be quite such
an interim President, a possibility many East Pakistanis fear. He might come to
feel that the country run reasonably well under his direction, while the
politicians were still squabbling, and remain President, with suitably ordained
democratic trimmings. This would be much like Ayub over again. On the same
lines there is the alternative danger that even if Yahya decided the time had
arrived to hand over by the politicians, some of his colleagues might force him
to hand over power to them and maintain military rule.
16.
All the signs so far point to the genuineness of Yahya's professed reluctance
to assume power (and even more that of Ahsan and Nur Khan) and of the desire of
all three to run the country efficiently, find a satisfactory way to hand over
and then do so. But it is so difficult to see a way to establish a democratic
system which would satisfactorily balance the Punjab's wishes against Bengal's,
that the possibility of President Yahya staying on must be considered. However,
although East Pakistan, like West, is at present quiet, long delays on the
government's part in restoring political life, or any attempted permanent
retention, by Yahya, of the Presidency, would most likely lead to the revival
of the "movement," as the January-March events are called, in East
Pakistan. This is a fact that Yahya must bear in mind, for it affects the
extent to which he can risk a leisurely approach.
17.
But there is another alternative to purely political and constitutional
measures. East Pakistan's dissatisfaction with the past does not merely reflect
the fact that it has been dominated administratively and politically by West
Pakistan. Far more important is the fact that as a result of that domination,
which supplanted its earlier domination by Hindus and West Bengal, East
Pakistan has had less than its fair share of development money, private
investment, and allocation of Government jobs, especially in the Armed Forces.
It is this disparity that has led so many East Pakistanis to hope that through
having a greater say in their own government, through greater autonomy, they
can move to correct the imbalance. From this it follows that President Yahya's
best long-term chance, and it must be considered no more than a chance, of
ensuring a calm and balanced relationship between East and West Pakistan lies
in making very clear and substantial efforts soon to eradicate economic and
other disparity between the two wings. Possible means should include larger
increases in development expenditure in the East, a largescale effort (which
would mean joint work with India) to cope permanently with the flood problem,
thus providing East Pakistan with a project of comparable size to the Indus
Waters scheme, and even determined efforts to recruit East Pakistanis for the
Armed Forces, so that the appearance of troops in East Pakistan would not
automatically evoke a feeling of colonial domination by the Punjab.
18.
There are great problems in the way of achieving this, however. Efficient and
devoted East Pakistan officials will admit that their machinery can barely
administer present funds, let alone an increase. To work realistically with
India on the Eastern rivers question, Pakistan might have to shelve permanently
the Kashmir question: this would be difficult for West Pakistanis, especially
the Armed Forces, to accept. And it would be 20 years or more before the Armed
Forces could be brought anywhere near parity. Long before anything substantial
enough to satisfy East Pakistan could be achieved, the potential willingness of
the Bengalis even to go to perdition so long as they were free to do it in
their own way, might become irresistible. This is the dilemma confronting
Yahya.
19.
I am copying this despatch to the High Commissioner in
I have the honour to be,
Sir,
Your obedient Servant.
C.S. Pickard
Source:
The British Papers – Secret and Confidential India.Pakistan.Bangladesh
Documents 1959-1969,