Return To Pakistan
More than 93,000 Pakistani armed forces personnel and civilian intelligence officers, including about 34,000 regular army soldiers, were taken prisoner after the 16 December 1971 surrender. This was the largest number of prisoners of war taken since World War II, and included some senior government officials. Most would remain in captivity for more than three years after the conflict ended, as they were to be tried for crimes such as the rape and murder of Bengalis. Niazi was the last prisoner of war to cross back to Pakistan, after Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto signed the Simla Treaty with his counterpart, Indira Gandhi, the Indian prime minister. Being the last to return supported his reputation as a "soldier's general", but did not shield him from the scorn he faced in Pakistan, where he was blamed for the surrender. Bhutto discharged Niazi after stripping him of his military rank, the pension usually accorded to retired soldiers, and his military decorations.
Read more about this topic: Amir Abdullah Khan Niazi
Famous quotes containing the words return to and/or return:
“The house waited on your private beach
each day,
when you had the time to return to her.
And you so often had the time,
even when fury blew out her chimney,
even when love lifted the shingles....”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“When we suffer anguish we return to early childhood because that is the period in which we first learnt to suffer the experience of total loss. It was more than that. It was the period in which we suffered more total losses than in all the rest of our life put together.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)