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 mother as a social servant instead of a home servant will not lack in true mother duty.... From her work, loved and honored though it is, she will return to her home life, the child life, with an eager, ceaseless pleasure, cleansed of all the fret and fraction and weariness that so mar it now.”
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935)
“O God of our flesh, return us to Your wrath,
Let us be evil could we enter in
Your grace, and falter on the stony path!”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)