Department of State

 

AIRGRAM

CONFIDENTIAL A-100

 

 

 

TO : Department of State

INFO : ISLAMABAD, NEW DELHI. PESHAWAR

FROM : Amembassy KABUL

DATE: AUG. 30, 1971

SUBJECT : CONVERSATION WITH RETIRED MAJ.-GEN. JILANI, NAP (R)

REF : Kabul 4398

 

Retired Major-General Jilani. NAP (R) political leader from Peshawar, who is visiting Kabul during the Afghan Jeshyn, had expressed a specific desire to call on the Ambassador over the past weekend. Due partly to the Ambassador's extremely tight schedule during the final days before his departure on leave but primarily because of the Embassy view that to accord an official reception to Pakistani opposition politicians in Kabul-particularly during the current delicate period-would be unwise, Jilani was seen instead by an Embassy officer at dinner on August 23. We had also considered the fact of Jilani's continuing contacts with Consul Velletri in Peshawar, through which Embassy Islamabad is able to keep adequately informed of his views.

 

Enclosed is a memorandum of conversation with Jilani, whose main theme was that the USG, in supporting the present government of Pakistan, is pursuing a policy which will lead to warfare and the rejection of the United States by the successor regimes.

Enclosure:

As stated

Lewis

 

 

 

 

Memorandum of Conversation

 

 

Kabul, Afghanistan

 

 

Participants         :Retired Maj.-Gen. Jilani NAP (R) Political Leader

                            Bertram F. Dunn. First Secretary of Embassy

Date and Place    : August 23, 1971-Residence of James Hawley III, Economic Officer, Embassy Kabul.

 

 

 

 

During the evening Jilani did most of the talking in private conversation with me, while the other guests-two Peshawar lawyers whom Jilani had accompanied from Peshawar to Kabul-chatted with the host. His points were clearly made and he stated the hope that his comments would be considered by the Ambassador and the USG for what they were-the views of a man who is a friend of democracy, the West, and the U.S. in particular, who had lived through 24 years of Pakistan and had done his duty including negotiating the first U.S. military assistance program in 1954 and fighting in Kashmir to defend the concept of Pakistan, but who now sees the inevitable loss of East Bengal and recognizes that (Punjabi establishment-dominated) Pakistan is finished "because its ideological base is destroyed."

 

Jilani made the following points:

 

1. West Pakistan cannot possibly hold onto the East Wing; effective opposition is growing and Pakistani Army casualties are mounting daily.

 

2. Punjabi elements in the Army and civil establishment (70 per cent of the total) see their hold slipping on the reins of government of the State of Pakistan (which really over the years should have been called "Punjabistan" because it has been controlled by Punjabis for their own-anti-Indian-political and economic purposes and "the other states" within the West Wing have never been accorded their due rights.

 

3. The Punjabi establishment, when it loses the East Wing, will surely, seek to continue to impose by force its domination of the NWFP, Baluchistan, and Sind. Pashtuns and Baluchis will oppose this-with help from wherever they can get it, including Afghanistan-because of a commonality of cultural, economic, and political interests (the NAP being the main party in both areas); and the Sindhis will join in because of their hate of Punjabis. The resulting political and military warfare will lead to complete chaos on the sub-continent.

 

4. Jilani and others have heard recently, and fear, that the USG will, after East Pakistan is gone, seek to perpetuate, perhaps with Iranian and Turkish help, the "artificial" state of "Pakistan" controlled by Punjabis. This will be fatal to Western and democratic interests and to any hope for stability in the area and will "drive" the Pashtun-Baluch-Sindhi confederation into radical arms.

 

5. He understands, though disapproves of, continued USG support to the GOP but fears that U.S. emotional and historical ties to its old ally "Pakistan" and the

present U.S. administration's re-espousement (for whatever good reason) of support to the GOP, will lead to blind and increased military and economic support of oppressive dictatorship in the West Wing. This (the gist of Jilani's plea runs) is not in U.S. interests: not just because it is wrong, but because (in Jilani's view) it will fail as a policy and will lead to war, insurrection and instability, and a rejection of the U.S. and the West by the eventually victorious successor regimes/states in the geographical area of what is now West Pakistan. In spite of years of association, and indeed partly because of the widespread but false impression among Americans of West Pakistan as a unitary state-a concept deliberately fostered by the Punjabi (and other) leaders of Pakistan from the beginning-there are very few U.S. officials who recognize the really basic differences among the "four nations" of the West Wing and the problems of complete Punjabi domination of the other peoples. The pursuit of this false concept of Pakistan as a unitary state will be as fatal to U.S. policy interests in the West as it is now proving in East Bengal.

 

6. Jilani believes that a new federation or confederation of the three states would be viable and could possibly even confederate with Afghanistan. Punjab could then go its own way, possibly as a landlocked state or, more probably, back into India in one form or another.

 

7. Jilani did not mention Bhutto or Mujib other than to say that although the NAP (R) had disagreed with the Foreign Trade position in Mujib's Six Points, surely acceptance of those six points, or whatever, would have been better than the situation that has resulted in East Pakistan.

 

 

 

 

 

Source: The American Papers (Secret and confidential India, Pakistan and Bangladesh Documents; page no – 647 - 649, The University Press.