journalists, who had presumably sensed that the denouncement with the Pak army was close.
Mazhar ali Khan wanted to meet Bangabandhu so I took him in expecting to find a big crowd as there always was. Bangababdhu had known Mazhar from the days when the was the Editor of Pakistan Times in the days when it was owned by Mian Iftikharuddin. He greeted him warmly and emptied the room so that there were just two of us with him. Bangabandhu told us that the army had decided to go for a crackdown. He went on to say, I quote from memory, “Yahya thinks that he can crush the movement by killing me. But he is mistaken. An independent Bangladesh will be built on my grave.” Bangabandhu appeared to have a rather fatalistic attitude to what he seemed to accept as his imminent death. IIe suggested that a new generation would carry on the Liberation struggle. After this meeting, Mazhar Ali Khan wanted to find out what some of the PPP leaders had to say about the impending bloodbath. From Road 32 we went to the Hotel Intercontinental where we met Mahmud Ali Qasuri. In his usual rather blustering tone Qasuri immediately greeted me with the charge that, “It appears the Awami League do not want a settlement". Since to my knowledge a draft agreement was already there waiting to be announced to the press, I asked him where he had received this confirmation. He told me that General Peerzada had told him this. Since again it was General Peerzada who had been a key figure in the negotiation, it was evident that they were feeding a different story to the West Pakistani political leaders and preparing the ground for a crackdown. Qasuri went on to say that the unity of the country was as Lincoln bad fought a Civil War to preserve the integrity of the United States. I left Qasuri with the observation that he was a well known jurist who had served on the Bertrand Ruseel War Crimes Tribunal to expose U.S. genocide in Vietnam. Since the Pakistan army was about to launch a genocide on the Bengali people I hoped that he would raise his voice in the same way that he did for the Viet Namese.
Following this confirmation of the duplicity of the Pakistani generals I went on to the house of Kamal Hossain in Circuit House Row to pass on the message that Peerzada had obviously fed a concocted version of the talks to the PPP and that the ground was now set for action. From there I went home to Gulshan. There were reports of army action which were given substance by the spectacle of some Awami League volunteers putting up make shift barricades on some of the roads. Sometime around 9-10 p.m. we heard the firtst sound of artillery fire which signaled that action by the Pakistan army against the EPR and Police barracks had begun. I phoned up a direct number I had to Road 32 to enquire after the welfare of Bangababdhu. I do not know who answered the phone but the voice at the phone indicated that he was there. Later calls went unanswered. After that all lines went dead.
For the next 36 hours we heard the sound of artillery and automatic weapons fire could see the glow in the distance from fires started by the army action and listened on the 26th to Yahya's announcement. It was clear to all of us that the Liberation war had began. It was less apparent when it would end.
