CUTIA operating orders

CUTIA operating orders turn a dog-tracking unit into an instrument of political surveillance and detention. They present obedience as discipline, define dissent through an elastic category of supposed threats, and invoke emergency legal powers to authorize covert arrests; the deployment to Dacca reveals the military purpose beneath that official language.

Training and Mandate

In a hut with a blackboard, Sergeant-Major Najmuddin briefs recruits in a tightly controlled question-and-answer drill. Brigadier Iskandar supervises, while the men’s barked responses echo the dogs barking outside the closed windows. The training format allows no interruptions, establishing from the outset that questioning is not part of the unit’s practice.

The recruits are told that they will work in canine units of three people and one dog, without officers present. That absence is framed not as independence from command but as a demand for personal self-discipline and responsibility under a specifically Islamic standard. Their mission is to root out “undesirable elements,” described as people who are sneaky, well disguised, and potentially anyone.

The briefing assigns those supposed enemies a sweeping political program: destroying family life, rejecting God, expropriating landowners, and abolishing film censorship. These claims are presented as established intentions rather than tested allegations. The stated causes for concern are forthcoming elections and the prospect of civilian rule, accompanied by the release of political prisoners and the return of “hooligans” to public life. In this way, the orders cast political change itself as a security threat.

Procedures and Legal Authority

The recruits’ duties are expressed as three uncompromising commands: obey without question, search without flagging, and arrest without remorse. Their procedure is to be covert, efficient, and quick. The language strips away deliberation: the unit is not asked to determine whether a target is guilty, but to locate, pursue, and detain people who fit the state’s open-ended description of the undesirable.

The legal basis given is the Defense of Pakistan Rules, which permit the pickup of such people and their detention incommunicado for six months. A footnote clarifies that the six-month period is renewable. That qualification makes the power indefinite in practice, while the briefing’s closing exchange—asking whether there are questions and receiving the required answer of no—turns procedural silence into part of the institution’s discipline.

The recruits are designated CUTIA Unit 22, and their lapels are to carry she-dog badges. The agency’s name, Canine Unit for Tracking and Intelligence Activities, is paired with the explanation that CUTIA means “bitch.” The badge and acronym make the canine identity part of the unit’s official presentation, even as its work is defined by human surveillance and political detention.

From Orders to Deployment

The orders’ political implications become concrete on March 15, 1971, when twenty CUTIA units assemble in another hut. The men and dogs are instructed to shed their uniforms. The dogs lose their identifying collars, and the men exchange military clothing for civilian dress issued by Lala Moin. The exercise is carried out without questions or complaints, disguising the force’s military character while preserving its unquestioning chain of command.

The units are flown to Dacca by way of Ceylon, alongside 60,000 West Wing troops, also in civilian clothes. Among the CUTIA members are Shaheed Dar, Farooq Rashid, Ayooba Baloch, and the man the soldiers call the buddha. At first, the unit is not told the city’s name or the purpose of the mission. Ayooba assumes they have been sent to target vegetarians, a mistaken belief that underscores how completely the men have been kept from the real objective.

On March 25, after Yahya Khan and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto break off talks with Sheikh Mujib-ur-Rahman and return to the West Wing, Brigadier Iskandar enters the CUTIA barracks with Najmuddin and Lala Moin. The men are ordered to put their uniforms back on, take up arms, and prepare for action. Iskandar then discloses that the operation is directed against Mujib. The earlier commands to pursue and capture supposed internal enemies have become part of a military campaign against a political leader after negotiations collapse.

Significance

The orders’ central contradiction is that they invoke self-discipline and responsibility while forbidding independent judgment. Their recruits are nominally expected to make their own decisions because no officers accompany the canine units, yet their stated duties are absolute obedience and remorseless arrest. The institutional ideal of responsible action is therefore emptied of ethical discretion.

The narrative also places the unit’s rhetoric of protecting family, religion, and the state beside its concealed deployment against political opponents. By defining threats as disguised and potentially anyone, and by permitting renewable incommunicado detention, the orders make exceptional powers appear routine. The episode shows how an administrative drill, complete with a blackboard, fixed responses, and a legal footnote, prepares the ground for coercive action.