Pakistan Army (fcaefbee)

The Pakistan Army is presented both as an institution and as an instrument of state power, moving from the disputed frontier of the Rann of Kutch to the occupation of East Pakistan and the eventual surrender at Dacca. Its story is told through Saleem’s family history and military service rather than through an impersonal institutional record. That form makes the army’s uniforms, orders, and official explanations part of a larger question: how military power acts, and how accounts of its actions are later controlled or challenged.

Identity and command

The army appears within a military hierarchy that shapes both public operations and private life. Zafar Zulfikar serves as a lieutenant and is posted to the Pakistan-controlled Rann of Kutch during maneuvers. His father, General Zulfikar, is a senior military figure whose wealth and authority extend beyond his formal position. In the 1971 campaign, Tikka Khan commands the West Wing force sent to Dacca, while Tiger Niazi is responsible for the city and its eventual surrender. Brigadier Iskandar and Sergeant-Major Najmuddin direct the CUTIA personnel attached to the operation, with Lala Moin handling their equipment.

The institution’s power is conveyed through its routines as much as its commanders. In March 1971, orders require sixty-one men and nineteen dogs to exchange uniforms for civilian clothing before flying east. The men obey without protest, and the dogs’ identifying collars are removed. The disguise makes the movement appear civilian while remaining a military operation: the participants are transported as ordinary airline passengers, then later ordered to put on uniforms and take up arms. The abrupt changes of dress reveal how thoroughly the chain of command governs the body and public identity of its personnel.

The Rann of Kutch and Zafar

The Rann of Kutch is described as disputed territory after Partition, though neither side initially shows much commitment to the dispute. Pakistan has constructed a line of small border posts along the 23rd parallel, each held by a six-man garrison and marked by a beacon. On April 9, 1965, Indian troops occupy several posts. Pakistani forces in the area, including Zafar’s unit, then fight for eighty-two days; the conflict ends on July 1.

Zafar’s posting also follows the personal humiliation he experiences at the Abbottabad military base. His incontinence makes him an object of ridicule among other soldiers, and a story circulates that he must wear a protective undergarment to keep his uniform dry. Saleem later connects this treatment with Zafar’s sense of shame, but the account does not make it a simple explanation for what follows. The Rann deployment places Zafar within a confusing military episode whose facts are difficult to separate from rumor and official claims.

After returning to Rawalpindi in July, Zafar discovers that his father was responsible for the Pakistani soldiers’ frightening experience in the Rann. He then kills General Zulfikar. The episode links military command to illicit activity: Saleem describes General Zulfikar’s smuggling interests as hidden behind reports portraying the conflict as a repelled Indian invasion and Pakistani soldiers as innocent victims. The press account and the family revelation stand in sharp contrast, leaving the army’s public version of the border events under suspicion.

Deployment to Dacca

On March 15, 1971, twenty CUTIA units are flown to Dacca by way of Ceylon. They travel alongside a much larger contingent of sixty thousand West Wing troops, also dressed in civilian clothes to avoid flying over India. The operation takes place amid political negotiations: Yahya Khan has proposed talks with Sheikh Mujib-ur-Rahman and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, while the troops are already being moved east. When the talks break down on March 25 and Yahya and Bhutto return to the West Wing, the disguise ends. The soldiers receive their uniforms and weapons, and Brigadier Iskandar tells the unit that its purpose is to make Mujib submit. Mujib proclaims Bangladesh that day.

That night, the CUTIA unit enters Dacca as part of the military crackdown. Saleem’s account follows the unit as it reaches Mujib, who is captured rather than shot, and taken to the airport for transfer into West Wing custody. The same account describes troops attacking city neighborhoods and pursuing people identified as opponents of national unity. The unit’s trained dogs and soldiers search the city, while the men experience the consequences of the violence they are ordered to carry out. The army’s claim to preserve Pakistan is thus set against the destruction and fear inflicted on Dacca’s residents.

The soldiers’ civilian clothing, discarded uniforms, and later reissued gear mark successive stages of the operation: concealment, mobilization, and repression. The narrative does not present the change of clothes as an isolated detail. It shows how obedience makes the transition possible, and how a force can move from a hidden deployment to overt military action without its members being asked to question the orders.

Occupation, defeat, and aftermath

The CUTIA unit remains in East Pakistan during the conflict, but the campaign becomes an extended disappearance from ordinary military oversight. Saleem says that three soldiers and their tracker vanish from the war for seven months in 1971. When they emerge in October, the Mukti Bahini is attacking Pakistani military outposts, and the group tries to rejoin the main force. The men later have no formal interrogation: Ayooba Baloch, Farooq Rashid, and Shaheed Dar do not survive long enough to be questioned. The army’s command has lost control of its personnel in the forest, while the narrative’s account of what happened to them remains entangled with Saleem’s own recollections.

By December, Saleem and the remaining soldiers encounter evidence of the army’s collapse in a field outside Dacca. A scavenging peasant explains that India has entered the war and Jessore has fallen; the field is strewn with the remains of West Pakistani soldiers and their equipment. Saleem places the defeat within a wider military and political reversal: in three weeks, Pakistan loses half its navy, a third of its army, a quarter of its air force, and, after Tiger Niazi’s surrender, more than half its population. He credits the Mukti Bahini with supplying General Manekshaw information about Pakistani movements and the strengths and weaknesses of Niazi’s forces, while also noting that China refuses Pakistan material aid.

On December 14, Saleem and Shaheed find a way through Indian lines and enter Dacca. Tiger Niazi has been swearing to fight to the last man, but surrenders the following day. The army’s defeat closes the sequence that began with the disguised deployment in March: the operation intended to preserve the state ends with the loss of its eastern wing and the surrender of its commander in the city it was meant to control.

Secrecy, narration, and significance

The army’s role is inseparable from the struggle over what can be said about its actions. In the Rann episode, reports describe a gallant defense against an Indian invasion, while Saleem recounts a different story involving General Zulfikar’s smuggling network and the payment of border guards. In Dacca, the military’s stated task of maintaining national unity stands beside Saleem’s depiction of attacks on civilians and the arrest of political opponents. These contrasts make official language part of the institution’s power, not merely a record of it.

At the same time, the article of faith offered by Saleem’s narration is not simple certainty. He acknowledges that his account of the Rann depends substantially on Zafar’s story and says the events took place amid unreality and make-believe, apart from the broad dates and military outline. Elsewhere he openly admits that memory selects, alters, and reshapes events, and that his own history contains deliberate falsehood. The army is therefore presented through a narrator who contests official versions but also subjects his own authority to doubt. Its significance in the novel lies in that double exposure: military force determines lives and political outcomes, while the competing stories about force remain vulnerable to concealment, memory, and invention.