Word: mujib
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...point was that the young officers were strong enough to fend off challenges from their superiors in the army but that in order to form a government, they had been obliged to turn to a respected member of Mujib's Cabinet, Commerce Minister Khondakar Mushtaque Ahmed, to serve as their front man. By week's end, the officers were reported to have retired to a behind-the-scenes role, leaving Khondakar in charge-and the country in a state of confusion...
Though all foreign correspondents have been expelled from the country, a few more details about the men who engineered the coup began to emerge. Several had been dismissed from the army for anti-Indian prejudice and were believed to be more militantly Moslem than Mujib's secular regime. Like many other officers, they were fearful of the growing power of Mujib's special security force, the 25,000-man Rakkhi Bahini. They may have been alarmed by reports that Mujib was planning to put the armed forces under control of the ruling Awami League party. They were also...
When they struck, the officers had only about 200 soldiers behind them, but they moved with deadly speed. The focus of their predawn attack was the cream-colored mansion of Sheik Mujib. Everyone inside was killed, including Mujib, his wife and several other members of his family; overall, perhaps 100 died during the takeover. At the end of last week the capital appeared calm under martial law. About a dozen M-47 tanks, their gun muzzles covered, were posted at main intersections, and soldiers leaned against the machines as pedestrians walked by. More ominous than the tanks, however...
Apparently, the officers who overthrew Mujib timed their coup for Aug. 15, the anniversary of Indian independence. They figured that the New Delhi government would be preoccupied that day-"a sort of Yom Kippur War situation," as a Western diplomat put it. The coup was over so quickly that New Delhi had no time to respond militarily. Later, however, when New Delhi warned that it could not "remain unaffected by these political developments in a neighboring country," the new rulers of Bangladesh appealed to India for "friendship and cooperation...
...favor in Bangladesh, but there were those who were critical. "Do not forget I have had only three years as a free government," he reminded critics. "You cannot expect miracles." Yet even he seemed impatient for miracles in the end. No one ever doubted that his objectives were laudable. Mujib wanted nothing less than to build a "shonar Bangla," the golden Bengal of the poem by Rabindranath Tagore that serves as the country's national anthem...