A couple of months into the inception of his “second revolution,” prior to his assassination on August 15, 1975, President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was working tirelessly to implement his philosophy for combating corruption, bureaucratic ineptitude, and unidentified foreign conspiracies.
He sought political solutions to the war-torn country's growing economic and social problems.
Davis Boster, then-US ambassador to Bangladesh, had the opportunity to pay a courtesy call on the president at the latter’s office on August 5 and sent details of the meeting in a telegram to the State Department the next day.
The envoy learned about the president’s plans to overcome the obstacles he had been facing, but did not share any intelligence on the possibility of the August 15 coup.
The conversation lasted for half an hour and, among other issues, Bangabandhu clarified some of his thoughts about the compulsory cooperatives, and Bangladesh Krishak Sramik Awami League (Baksal).
He said that the “controlling party” would be limited in numbers, as he wanted to be sure of the Bangalee “nationalism” of the membership. However, the fronts under the party would indeed be mass organisations with very large memberships.
The president was then diverted by this discussion into a protestation that he was not a Marxist.
“I am not a Marxist. I am a socialist, but a socialist in my own way. I want to be friends with all countries but I don’t want any country to think it can tell me what to do. I want to be good friends with the United States and with Russia, but I don’t want to be the agent of either Russia or the United,” said Sheikh Mujib.
Boster wrote: “He said this to explain why he had spoken as he had at a recent meeting to warn foreign representatives here not to abuse Bangladesh’s hospitality with attacks on other countries. I said I had noted this statement with appreciation and had felt that it had been time for some such action. Mujib said: ‘Yes some people had gone too far.’”
The US envoy observed that Bangabandhu’s repetition of the theme that he was not a Marxist, and his insistence that no other power could tell him what to do “seemed intended to ease our minds about the political direction he is taking.”
Anti-corruption measures
Discussion of the new redistricting system led President Mujib into a discussion of his efforts to curb corruption. He said it was one of his most pressing preoccupations.
“He said he had told his police and security officials to spend 60% of their time on rooting out corruption; not to bother about reporting to him the political views of this or that official but to find out whether he was involved in corruption and nepotism or not,” Boster said.
The president said he felt he had made some headway in this respect and that although there were two or three bad areas, the situation was improving.
Aim of Baksal
On June 19, in his speech before the first meeting of the Baksal central committee, Sheikh Mujib said one of his main goals was to draw the most talented in the country into his government.
He said that a free-style democratic system had not worked in Bangladesh and that the country needed a unique, indigenous, free socialist economic system. He strongly implied that his single national party was the only acceptable vehicle for change.
As part of the plan, Mujib had raised the status of the 61 subdivisions of the country to districts. The district governors – a vast majority of whom came from among politicians, followed by civil servants and military bureaucrats – were supposed to take charge on August 16.
On the other hand, Baksal was scheduled to officially replace the nation's other political parties and associations on September 1, 1975.
But, two weeks before that, the founding father of the nation was assassinated along with most of the family members at his Dhanmondi residence in Dhaka at the hands of some mid-level army officers, who were part of a conspiracy to stop the journey towards an independent, socialist-democratic and secular country as envisaged by the Awami League supremo.
Food aid
During the conversation, the envoy said Sheikh Mujib was warmer than usual.
“I take this to be a reflection of his appreciation for our large aid deliveries and his perception that we have been more sympathetic to his requests over recent months than his other donors,” Boster said.
“He thanked the United States profusely for food assistance which was enabling him to give his full attention to other government activities.” Sheikh Mujib also said he was pleased by the US performance at the June Bangladesh-Aid Group meeting in contrast with his displeasure with the attitude of some of the other donors.
“I am very grateful, really sincerely grateful and ask you to convey my gratitude to your government,” President Mujib said, adding that he had been using the army to ensure delivery of foodgrain supplies to the countryside to avoid concentrating stocks in any one area, such as Dhaka, Chittagong or Khulna, and to get sizeable amounts into godowns in all the rural areas for use against possible emergencies.
Boster said the two governments were negotiating the first of the year’s PL-480 agreements, calling for the delivery of 400,000 tons of foodgrains and 15,000 tons of vegetable oil. “He commented that this meant the outlook was also good for next year,” the envoy added.
Earlier, Bangabandhu called on President Gerald Ford at the White House following his address before the UN General Assembly in October 1974.
The meeting was more one of getting acquainted with each other than with any substantive measures toward strengthening bilateral US-Bangladesh links, according to historian and senior journalist Syed Badrul Ahsan.
It came in the aftermath of the crisis caused by Washington's decision to pull back a shipload of food grains for Bangladesh from the high seas on the ground that Dhaka had been engaging in jute trade with a sanctions-locked Cuba.
“PL-480 was the weapon Washington brought into application. The US move only exacerbated the plight of Bengalis, then engaged in a battle for survival through a famine and a grave economic crisis,” Ahsan said in a column recently.
Economic reforms
The ambassador told President Mujib that the US had been pleased by the exchange rate action and other economic reform measures the government had taken in recent months in accordance with IMF recommendations.
Results of these steps had apparently been favourable, with the cost of living holding steady and on some items declining, Boster said.
The president said he had also been well satisfied with the way these actions had turned out but noted that the US foodgrain deliveries had been important in making this success possible. He agreed with the envoy’s observations that his economic situation appeared much improved over the last year.
Cooperatives, Israel, compensation
The president initiated the conversation on compulsory cooperatives, noting that he wanted to set up 61 such cooperatives in each of the 61 districts in 1976. He was not certain that there would be any further cooperatives established next year as he felt it might take at least two years to demonstrate the virtues of these cooperatives to the peasantry.
He said he did not wish to force Bangladesh peasants into the cooperatives but felt that, if the first 61 was as successful as he thought they would be, the peasants would be eager to join in coming years to share in their benefits, Boster said.
The president explained that the government would be paid for fertilizers and other inputs supplied to the farms, and would also receive an additional 2% of the profit from the farm. This 2% would be supplied to the government in foodgrains and would be used for general development purposes. In addition, the farms would also be expected to set aside some of their profits for their own special needs.
He saw these farms eventually developing into administrative units at the rural level, combining not only the basic farms but fisheries and other activities.
Boster also wrote: “When I noted that farmers were generally a conservation group who did not always like change, the president said this was also true of Bangladesh peasants and it was for this reason that he did not wish to force them on to [sic] these farms. He recalled his trip to Chian [sic] in 1957 and his visits to Chinese farms where he ad [sic] told his hosts that their system, involving the breaking up of families, would never work in his country.”
When the envoy also raised the issue of compensation for American companies whose assets had been nationalized, the president spoke positively about the need to settle the claims.
“He noted that the two or three million dollars involved was nothing compared to the millions and millions of dollars’ worth of aid we were giving Bangladesh, but that the principal of repayment was important both to us and to them. I said this precisely described our own view,” Boster said.
The president also “listened to my points about the United Nations without much comment except critical references to Israel and the need for us to push them more strongly than he thinks we have,” the envoy said.
He told the president that the US had been concerned about the spirit of confrontation and the phenomenon of bloc voting, which threatened the UN’s usefulness.
President Mujib said that while no one wished to disrupt the UN or force countries from its membership, something had to be done to make Israel abide by the UN resolutions. “He hoped our bilateral efforts would succeed in removing this problem and said we should do more to force Israel to give up the occupied lands.”
Boster replied that the US could not force either side to particular actions and believed that conciliatory efforts were necessary from all parties; and that in any case Israel’s expulsion from the UN could not help with that but could only have harmful consequences. The president said he agreed but still felt the US had the possibility of influencing Israel’s actions.
Kissinger’s reaction after coup
After the news of Bangabandhu’s assassination reached Washington, President Nixon’s Security Adviser Henry Kissinger sat in a meeting with his team.
He questioned them again and again—as if he could not believe his ears—to know whether the US administration had warned Sheikh Mujib about the coup plotters in 1974. The answer was a “no” since the officials claimed that they had no confirmation of the plot.
Kissinger also learned that the CIA had warned him once about a coup plot, in March 1975, but “he [Sheikh Mujib] brushed it off, scoffed at it, said nobody would do a thing like that to him,” replied an official.
“He was one of the world’s prize fools,” Kissinger quipped and then wanted to learn about the assassins.
“They are military officers, middle and senior officers, who are generally considered less pro-Indian than the past leadership; pro-US, anti-Soviet…and Islamic. They have changed the name to the Islamic Republic…,” one officer replied.
“Absolutely inevitable,” Kissinger remarked.
Killers in contact with embassy
The assassins in January 1975 told the embassy officials that they would not strike soon because they wanted to observe developments in Sheikh Mujib’s new form of governance – the one-party Baksal.
The embassy heard about more coup rumours in March and April.
On May 13, 1974, Major (later dismissed) Syed Farooq Rahman of the first Bengal Lancers and second-in-command of the Armoured Corps, met with a senior US embassy official at the latter’s home, unannounced.
Farooq said that he had been sent by the highest-ranking Bangladesh Army officer to ascertain what the attitude of the US government would be if they took over power through a coup. He also wanted to know whether the US government would be able to see to it that there was no foreign interference after the coup.
Farooq told the official that a quarter of the army was very dissatisfied with the government. In response, the official said that the US would not intervene in any way in the affairs of Bangladesh.
Boster sent a cable to Washington regarding the meeting two days later. He wrote that he had known Farooq since 1972, adding that the officer was not in a command position nor did the Armoured Corps have any armour.
Farooq made a similar unusual approach on July 12, 1973.
On that day, without an appointment and uniformed, Farooq turned up at the embassy and identified himself as the director of the “Armoured Corps”. He sought information on prices and availability of armoured personnel carriers, light tanks and amphibious vehicles.
The previous day, it was Major (later dismissed) Khandaker Abdur Rashid, with the same approach, who turned up without an appointment and in uniform.
