After the disastrous war with India had been ingloriously concluded in December 1971, the Pakistan that remained (the provinces of Punjab, Sind, Northwest Frontier, and Baluchistan) faced its greatest crisis since Partition. East Pakistan was now an independent state with friendly ties with
Pakistan’s hostile neighbour, India; 70,000 Pakistani troops were prisoners
of war in India and Bangladesh; Pakistan’s international credit was depleted; and its most powerful if the not prestigious national institution, the military,
had its myth of invincibility exploded. Even the idea of Pakistan as the
homeland for Muslims in South Asia no longer appeared valid. Military
leadership (epitomized by President Yahya and his associates) had been
discredited in the eyes of both elites and middle-class Pakistanis within and
outside the military. Government propaganda which had deluded many Pakistanis during 1971 could not cover up or rationalize the loss of East Pakistan; nor could it justify the inability of the armed forces to “hold their own
on the western front. Faced with these difficulties, President Yahya ceded
power to ‘the individual who some held partly responsible for the loss of East
Pakistan-Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.’
Author(s): Robert La Porte, Jr.
Source: Asian Survey , Feb., 1973, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Feb., 1973), pp. 187-198
Published by: University of California Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2642735