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Roedad Khan was divisional commissioner of Quetta when I was in school in the capital of Balochistan in the 1960s. As an important civil servant in Pakistan's central government, he would rise higher and by the time 1971 came round, he had become secretary of the central ministry of information. Roedad Khan was in Dhaka during the period of the Yahya-Mujib-Bhutto negotiations in March 1971.
Why do I write about Roedad Khan? He has turned a hundred years old and tributes have been and are being paid to him in Pakistan. Mine is not a paean to the man but a simple, short recollection of his role at a very decisive point in Pakistan's history. Quite some years ago, Brigadier A.R. Siddiqi, who was head of the Pakistan military's Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) in 1971 and was also in Dhaka in March 1971, wrote a book, East Pakistan: The Endgame: An Onlooker's Journal 1969-1971.
In his work, Siddiqi notes that within hours of Operation Searchlight being launched by the Pakistan army, even as the soldiers went on with their killing mission in Dhaka, Roedad Khan went to the cantonment, where Tikka Khan and all the other generals were having a hearty breakfast, and cheerfully announced, 'Yar, imaan taaza ho gya (friends, faith has been revived)'. The comment was an indication of his happiness at the action the Pakistan army had taken against the Bengalis. In that dark hour, Roedad Khan thought his country was basking in light.
Many years later, an aged and superannuated Roedad Khan appeared on Pakistan's Geo TV to proffer his reflections on the anniversary of the Pakistan army's surrender in Dhaka on 16 December 1971. What Khan told the anchor of the programme was quite a deviation from what he was quoted by Siddiqi to have said in late March 1971 at Dhaka cantonment. He said, on Geo TV, that he had advised General Yahya Khan to go for a political rather than a military solution to the crisis in East Pakistan. But Yahya Khan went for a military assault, with predictable consequences.
The point which now is before us is simple: Roedad Khan was a bureaucrat, secretary of the ministry of information. He was not part of Yahya Khan's negotiating team in Dhaka. Neither did his position as a civil servant permit him to offer advice to the President, who had his fellow generals and legal experts to assist him in the talks with Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his Awami League colleagues. A bureaucrat, no matter how powerful in the civil hierarchy, is in little position to advise a head of state or government on policy unless specifically asked. Roedad Khan's point in Geo TV thus had little meaning.
In the dramatic hours following Bangladesh's emergence on 16 December 1971, chaos took over in what remained of Pakistan in the west. Protests against the army broke out in Pakistan's cities and Yahya Khan's home in Peshawar was razed to the ground. The police and other security forces stood by and made not the slightest move to intervene as the mobs angrily burnt down the place. But none of that seemed to bother General Yahya Khan. He yet harboured the belief that he could continue as Pakistan's President and Chief Martial Law Administrator.
On 17 December, Yahya Khan spoke to Pakistanis over radio, making no mention of the surrender in Dhaka but promising that the battle would go on. It was a rambling speech which to listeners appeared to be coming from a man who was inebriated even as his country was going through unprecedented humiliation. The next day, 18 December, oblivious of the ramifications of what had transpired in Dhaka, Yahya Khan's regime made it known that a new constitution for Pakistan was in the works, that Yahya Khan would under it remain President of Pakistan for the subsequent five years.
It fell to Roedad Khan, as secretary of the ministry of information, to make the announcement regarding the new constitution on the media, namely, Radio Pakistan and Pakistan Television, as also the print media. Meanwhile, copies of the projected constitution, having in the meantime been distributed to foreign journalists at a hotel in Rawalpindi, were within minutes taken back from them. This information comes from the book Neither A Hawk Nor A Dove by Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, Pakistan's former foreign minister and son of the prominent politician and lawyer Mahmud Ali Kasuri.
In his work, The Mirage Of Power: An Inquiry Into the Bhutto Years 1971-1977, Dr Mubashir Hasan, who served as Finance Minister in the Bhutto government following the Bangladesh war, notes that news of Yahya Khan's latest move had the army send two officers holding the rank of brigadier to Roedad Khan's office to suggest that the proposed constitutional move not be publicised. Understandably, the army was not willing to carry on with the burden of a disgraced Yahya Khan and his fellow generals, all of whom were responsible for the military defeat in Bangladesh, on its back.
But Roedad Khan refused to accede to their suggestion. Later in the evening, General Gul Hasan got in touch with Roedad Khan and clearly told him not to broadcast news of the new constitution over Radio Pakistan. Gul Hasan, who would within days take over, under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, as the new army chief, could not be ignored. Roedad Khan got in touch with President Yahya Khan, whose response was, 'Do as Gul Hasan says.'
Roedad Khan would, in his career as a bureaucrat, go on to serve the Bhutto government and the Ziaul Haq military regime. In retirement, he would be the centre of conversations attended by other bureaucrats, former judges and others owing to his role in some of the most critical periods in Pakistan's history. He is disingenuous (and this is from a 2015 write-up on him in Pakistan's Herald magazine by Aurangzaib Khan) when he tells the group, 'The lesson I learned from Dhaka is to never, never use your army against your own people.'
Questions have been raised about Roedad Khan's involvement in the preparation of corruption charges against the Bhutto-Zardaris. He has denied them, of course, as he has denied that he had any hand in an official sanctioning of the execution of deposed Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
On his century of life, Pakistanis would do well to reflect on Roedad Khan's long and crucial role in their country's civil service in much the same way that Americans and indeed the rest of the world should take a closer look into the career of another recent centenarian, Henry Kissinger.