War and Secession: Pakistan, India, and the Creation of Bangladesh

From Library Journal
A political study set in a framework of oral history, this book outlines the issues behind the 1971 secession of East Pakistan, India's two-front war with West Pakistan, and the impact of superpower foreign policy in the region. The authors present the interplay of duplicity, distrust, rigidity, and self-interest of the major leaders of this drama: General Yahya, President and Chief of the Martial Law Administration in Pakistan; Mujibar Rahman, leader of East Pakistan's Awami League; Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, leader of West Pakistan's People's Party; and Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India. With clarity, the authors detail Bhutto's aggressive thirst for power, Rahman's woolly-headed intransigence, Yahya's military bias, and Gandhi's need to expel millions of refugees. In an area whose recent political history is so fraught with prejudice, this work superbly focuses on the issues.- John F. Riddick, Central Michigan Univ . , Mt. PleasantCopyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.


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A decade after the 1971 wars in South Asia, the principal decisionmakers were still uncertain why wars so clearly unwanted had occurred. The authors reconstruct the complex decisionmaking process attending the break-up of Pakistan and the subsequent war between India and Pakistan. Much of their data derive from interviews conducted with principal players in each of the countries immediately involved--Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh--including Indira Gandhi and leaders of the Awami League in Bangladesh.


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