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Sayed Farooq-ur-Rahman
Bangladeshi army officer (1946–2010) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Sayed Farooq-ur-Rahman[a] (9 August 1946 – 28 January 2010) was an army officer and politician in Bangladesh, better known as Colonel Farooq throughout the country. He was the leader and architect of the revolt by some disgruntled army personnel of the then-nascent Bangladesh to oust Sheikh Mujibur Rahman from power, a main figure in the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War and the country's first President. Farooq and other organizers of the coup installed Khandakar Mostaq Ahmad in power under the premise that he would rule in accordance to Islamic law, though this premise was later broken by Mostaq.[1] He was 2IC of the 1st Bengal Lancers Regiment and a major of the Bangladesh Army at the time of the coup whereupon he was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. Farooq would found the Bangladesh Freedom Party in 1981 with his allies and go on to run for president against Hussain Muhammad Ershad in 1986, though the election was boycotted by other major parties.[2] Upon the return of to power of the Bangladesh Awami League under the leadership of Sheikh Hasina in the late 1990s, Farooq was arrested and convicted, leading to his execution on 28 January 2010, along other coup members such as Bazlul Huda and Sultan Shahriar Rashid Khan.[3]
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Birth and Family background
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Dewan Sayed Farooq-ur-Rahman was born on 9 August 1946 into an aristocratic family in Dhaka to Sayed Ataur Rahman and Mahmuda Khatun.[b] His father, Sayed Ataur Rahman, was a physician who was a member of the Indian Medical Service and then successively the Pakistan Army Medical Corps after the Partition of the Subcontinent, he was awarded with the military rank of Major for his years of service. He belonged to a prominent family of Sufi saintly heritage, the Dewan family of Marma-Malikpur in Barshail Union, Naogaon Sadar, one of the Pir families of the Rajshahi region.[c] The progenitor of the Marma-Malikpur Dewan family was a Hadhrami Sufi Muslim missionary, Sayyid Ali al-Aydarus who had immigrated from Hadhramaut in Yemen, reaching Bengal at the dawn of the 18th Century AD, he was from the lineage of the famed luminary of Tarim, Imam Abdullah al-Aydarus ibn Abu Bakr al-Sakran (1408-1460 CE) of the Husaynid Ba ‘Alawi sada, a tribe instrumental in the dissemination of Islam in South Asia and the Malay Archipelago.[d] As he settled in the Rajshahi region, he was known as Zinda Pir Hazrat Shukr Ali Dewan by the locals, the appellation Zinda Pir meaning living saint, stemming due to him being known for his fiery temperament.[e] Farooq was a ninth-generation descendant of the immigrant Sayyid Ali al-Aydarus.[8] Farooq’s paternal grandfather Sayed Ishratullah Dewan, was the Inspector of Naogaon Sadar Police Station during British India and was also later a Sufi figure in Naogaon, called by the title Zinda Pir in honour of his ancestors by his followers.[f]
Farooq’s mother is Mahmuda Khatun, who belongs to a wealthy and well-connected zamindar family in Jamalpur District in Mymensingh, the family descends from Turkish mercenaries under the Mughal emperors.[g] Farooq’s maternal grandfather, Abdul Latif Khan was also a member of the British Indian police service like his paternal grandfather.[5] The youngest brother of his mother, Mahmuda Khatun, is the pioneer of the export-oriented ready-made garment industry in Bangladesh, Noorul Quader Khan.[1] From his maternal family’s relations, Farooq was related to several reputed figures in the politics and civil service of Bengal at the time including Khaled Mosharraf who served as the fourth Chief of Army Staff of Bangladesh, Rashed Mosharraf who was Member of Parliament for the Jamalpur-2 constituency, Ataur Rahman Khan who was the chief minister of East Pakistan and Azizur Rahman Mallick, the famed historian and educationist, and Syed Nazrul Islam, acting president of Bangladesh during the 1971 liberation war.[6]
Farooq was the oldest child and only son of his parents, he had two younger sisters. One of these sisters, Yasmin Rahman would be a pioneering pilot of Bangladesh and the first female commander of Biman Airlines.[h]
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Early Life and Schooling
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Sayed Farooq-ur-Rahman’s schooling days were largely centred upon the postings of his father, who at the time was serving as an army doctor for the Pakistan Army, thus leading to Farooq attending several different schools in both West Pakistan and East Pakistan.[6] Reflective of the location of his father’s postings, Farooq had changed schools, a total of six times within thirteen years. He started off his primary education in the year of 1952, aged six at the Fatima Jinnah Girls School in Comilla, about which Farooq joked as being his ‘one and only time in a convent.’[6] He also then attended Army Burn Hall College in Abbottabad, a selective school administered by the Pakistan Army Education Corps. He would switch to St. Joseph High School in Dhaka, then Station Road School in Rawalpindi where the daughter of the second President of Pakistan, Ayub Khan was also studying. He also studied at St. Francis’ Grammar School in Quetta, and Adamjee Cantonment College in Dhaka where he graduated with his Higher Secondary Certificate as a science student in 1964, obtaining a second-class.[i] He would finish his academic education at a college at Kohat where he completed at crash-course in Mathematics.[6] Farooq had a passion for aviation since a young age, this led him to gaining a solo-pilot licence aged seventeen, afterwards, he attempted to join the Pakistan Airforce but was unsuccessful at doing so.[6] Farooq also had enthusiasm for gymnastics in his youth, he had earned a color in East Pakistan Gymnastics in 1964.[5] Seeing his deep interest in aircraft, his parents had him admitted for a bachelor’s degree in Aeronautical Engineering at Bristol University in the United Kingdom for the 1966 intake.[6]
However, Farooq being caught up in the vehement emotions of patriotism, present in much of those of his age during the nascent post-British era in the Indian Subcontinent, was not deterred by his rejection by the Pakistan Airforce, had still desired to join the Pakistan army.[14] This desire intensified after hostility between Pakistan and India had emerged after political and armed conflict known as Operation Desert Hawk in the Great Rann of Kutch. Farooq while on his usual path to college in Kohat, had decided to take a different turn, diverting to the Inter-services Selection Board office where he had volunteered to receive a commission from the Pakistan army recruitment authorities. He was a granted a commission in a call by the authorities around a week later, he had initially faced opposition in following his inner-aspirations from his mother who did not want to lose her only son to army-service, yet Farooq was finally allowed by his parents to join the army after his father had given his consent. Farooq would later claim that he was the first second-generation Bengali officer in the Pakistan army since his father had too served as a medical officer.[j]
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Early Military Career (pre-Independence of Bangladesh)
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Farooq after receiving parental permission, ended up at the Pakistan Military Academy in Risalpur in the year of 1966, where he had quickly distinguished himself from other cadets who had volunteered for a commission by becoming appointed to the position of battalion sergeant major which had allowed him to have some initial level of seniority amongst his fellow starting cadets.[14] He eventually had graduated from the Pakistan Military Academy ranking as fourth out of two hundred and ninety-seven cadets and was awarded with being able to choose between modes of service in the army.[k] He was recommended by then-Major Ziaur Rahman and his maternal uncle, then-Major Khaled Mosharraf, who were working as instructors in the Pakistan Military Academy, that he should join the Bengal Regiment troops. Farooq however respectfully turned down these suggestions, saying that he did not desire to do “footslogging in the army”, choosing to join the armoured corps instead, resulting in his appointment to the 13th Lancers of the Pakistan Army, where he started off as a second lieutenant, the most junior rank given to commissioned officers starting off their careers as a probation.[14]
Farooq would later be transferred into the 31st Cavalry based in Sialkot in the later months of 1970 being aged twenty-four, he would become a Captain and acting squadron commander of the ‘Charlie Squadron’ also known as the C-Squadron which was equipped with M36B2 Tank Destroyers and thus became associated with the command-chain of the armoured corps in the Pakistan Army.[14] This success and career-progression of Farooq was to be attributed with him topping his tactical armour course with a B+, his advanced radio training course with an A+ and his basic armour-officer course with a B+.[l] In October 1970, Farooq received a letter from his commanding officer that he had been seconded to Abu Dhabi in the Trucial States in Arabia where the Pakistan government had made a pact that their armed forces will be assisting in the training and servicing the forces of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al-Nahyan.[14] In Abu Dhabi, Farooq became a squadron commander in the Abu Dhabi Armoured Regiment (ADDF) based near the port of Jabal Dhanna during 1971 when political tension between Western and Eastern factions of Pakistan had become catalysed at an increasing rate.[m]
Farooq lived a relaxed life during his tenure as a military officer in the Trucial States, military duties which were his sole purpose and work upon his secondment by the Pakistan Army authorities only took up a fraction of his time. He would spend the rest of his time pursuing his passion for military history and tactics by reading volumes of such-related texts, he would also be entertained by driving fast cars, he had purchased an Opel Commodore GS which he would “tear along the desert roads at a hundred miles per hour.”[14] One day in the middle of June in 1971, as he was spending time in the British officers’ dining, he encountered a bundle of newspapers, amongst them was the Sunday Times which contained an excerpt by Anthony Mascarenhas which detailed the genocide that the Pakistani forces, predominately composed of Punjabis and Pashtuns, were committing against ethnic Bengali civilians in then-East Pakistan after the general electoral victory of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman of the Awami League, based in then-East Pakistan over Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of the Peoples’ Party, based in then-West Pakistan.[14] After reading this Farooq after a moment of deep thought, decided he could no longer serve in the Pakistan Army, he left Dubai Airport going towards London, eventually reaching Bengal.[15] He would then become involved in the Bangladesh Liberation War when it was in its final phase in which he was involved in forming and by de-facto led the 1st Bengal Lancers, Bangladesh’s first armoured regiment and it’s only one in its nascent era.[n] He was also the 12th commander of the East Bengal Regiment.[5] After the liberation war, Farooq was raised from Captain to the rank of Major.[1]
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Experiences with the Awami League government post-independence
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After a few years after Bangladesh’s liberation, Farooq grew increasingly critical of the premiership of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the main leading figure of the Bangladesh Liberation War.[17] Mujib though being acknowledged by political analysts as being a revolutionary that pushed the civilians of Bengal to autonomy, had proved to be an ineffective administrator.[o] His governance was marked by the Bangladesh famine of 1974, the cause of it being widely accepted as being the mismanagement of food resources by Mujib and his ministry, this would be the precursor to public discontent with Mujib.[p] Mujib being reluctant to believe that this economic disaster was a result of his policies dismissed nine ministers and began transitioning the parliamentary system in which a prime minister leads to a presidential model somewhat similar to the system of governance in the United States by proclaiming a state of emergency on 28 December 1974 which meant that law courts would not be able to intervene in his actions, giving him more power as he believed that his initial delegation of authority to his subordinates was hampering what he claimed to be the intended effectiveness of his policies.[q] He also earlier that same year had made several amendments to the constitution which resulted in individuals other than those being part of Bangladesh Krishak Sramik Awami League unable to participate in national politics, thus legitimising his grip on power through legal means, making himself impeachable for life and reducing the National Parliament to an advisory status rather than possessing executive authority.[r] Mujib also passed the Special Powers Act, 1974, which allowed the police to detain and torture any citizen for an indefinite amount of time without any charge.[s] Farooq in an interview said regarding in particular the Special Powers Act, 1974, “I don’t see why I should obey the orders of any Bangladeshi. It does not make a difference whether they’re Bangladeshi or a Pakistani or anybody. You cannot tell me to eliminate a citizen. There is supposed to be a rule of law.”[34] All of these actions made Mujib unfavourable to ordinary citizens and the army who were being ignored and stripped of funding.[1]
Farooq first began to be shook towards planning an assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in July 1974 when he was performing his duties in leading the Bravo Squadron of the 1st Bengal Lancers when they were moved from their base in Dhaka to Demra as they were part of “an operation clean-up” of bandits ordered by Mujib.[t] At this point of time, Farooq had been pleased to be thinking that Mujib was taking responsibility and care for the day-to-day life of civilians and was allowing the army which he had initially sidelined after the liberation war, to help him in doing so. Near the roundabout on Narayanganj Road, Farooq had arrested a twenty-year-old bandit who affiliated himself with the Awami League, the had openly confessed to killing twenty-one people, upon asking the bandit why he did it, the bandit replied that his chief ordered him to do so, the chief being Mujib himself.[7] Other officers part of the Bravo Squadron were reporting similar cases, whenever they arrested any prominent Awami League member and took them to the police station, there would be a phone call from Dhaka, and they would allow to walk free. Farooq would later say about this operation, 'It meant that we were supposed to root out corruption and malpractices, but we were supposed to stop short of the Awami League. The whole thing was a damn farce.'[7] He also stated in his interview with Anthony Mascarenhas that he had received orders from Shafat Jamil, then Brigade Commander in Dhaka to beat up people aligned with the leftist faction of the opposition such as Maoists, get information and throw them into rivers, Farooq alleged these orders themselves traced back to Mujib. Farooq on the contrary did not comply with these orders, about these leftists, he said, “I was not deeply interested in Marxists, but what impressed me was that these chaps did care for the country. They may have gone the wrong way ideologically, but they had not so far done wrong to the country.”[35]
The incident that genuinely incited within Farooq, the emotions of fury and disillusionment, the desire to get rid of Mujib no matter what it takes, had occurred in Tongi.[35] Major Nasser, then a commander of another squadron of the 1st Bengal Lancers had arrested three thugs. Upon interrogation, the officers had the case of a gang-murder, a newly wed bride and groom were travelling in taxi to their home on the outskirts of the town of Tongi, until they were attacked by a gang.[35] The gang had hacked the groom and the taxi-driver to death and abducted the bride who they took to a cottage far away from common sight, and gang-raped her. Her mutilated corpse would later be found on the road near a bridge. The thug would confess that he himself was a member of the gang, and that a police investigation was initiated.[35] The thug then said that the leader of the gang was Mozammel Haque, then chairman of the Tongi Awami League, and later the Minister for Liberation War Affairs until the fall of Sheikh Hasina in the 2024 July uprising.[35] Major Nasser then arrested Haque after seeing that the thug was telling the truth after scanning through police records, taking him to Dhaka for the force of law. Farooq alleged that Haque then offered the team of officers a bribe of three hundred thousand takas for his release, he alleged that Haque smirked saying, “You will anyway have to let me go, either today or tomorrow. So why not take the money and forget about it?” They handed over Haque to the civil authorities and were later confronted with the reality that Haque had been released free of all charges due to the direct intercession of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.[u] Farooq was then filled with dismay along with his colleagues, he said about his state of mind and others, “It seemed as if we were living in a society headed by a criminal organization. It was as if the Mafia had taken over Bangladesh. We were totally disillusioned. Here was the head of government abetting murder and other extreme things from which he was supposed to protect us. This was not acceptable. We decided he must go.”[37] Farooq then out of rash thinking wanted to kill Mujib from that they onwards, he would however later calm down and devise a more strategic plan to oust Mujib from power.[37]
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Military career
In 1974, Rahman was placed in charge of recovering weapons in Demra, Munshiganj District, Narayanganj District, and Narsingdi District. He had experienced some things that made him critical of the Bangladesh Awami League government.[17] In 1975, Rahman was a major in the Bangladesh Army. He spoke against Mujib to his fellow army officers. He also told them that Mujib would give Bangladesh to India and establish a monarchy in Bangladesh.[38] He and Major Sultan Shahriar Rashid Khan discussed ways of removing Mujib from power and asked Brigadier General Ziaur Rahman for support. Zia expressed his inability to support them.[39] Zia asked them to do what they thought was necessary.[17] They were supported covertly by senior cabinet minister Khondaker Mushtaque Ahmed, who was introduced to Rahman by Major Khandaker Abdur Rashid.[17] On 12 August 1975, he discussed the plans with his fellow officers at his wedding anniversary party at the Officers Club, Dhaka. There the officers finalised 15 August 1975 as the day they would launch the coup.[17]
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Assassination of Sheikh Mujib
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On 14 August 1975, Sayed Farooq-ur-Rahman met Captain Abdul Aziz Pasha, Captain Bazlul Huda, Major Khandaker Abdur Rashid, Major Shariful Haque Dalim, Major S.H.M.B Noor Chowdhury, Major Sultan Shahriar Rashid Khan, Major Rashed Chowdhury, and other officers in his office to finalise the plan. According to the plan, Rahman commanded the tanks of the Bengal Lancers.[17] Mujib was killed in his house by Captain Bazlul Huda and Major Noor on 15 August 1975.[40] Immediately after the killing, the officers rendezvoused at the Bangladesh Betar office,[17] and installed Khondakar Mushtaque Ahmed as the new president of Bangladesh.[41] Khondakar Mushtaque called the assassins Shurjo Shontan (the gallant sons) and passed the Indemnity Ordinance, which protected the assassins from prosecution.[42]
Rahman was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel and held a position of power in the new regime until it was overthrown in a counter-coup by pro-Mujib officers led by Maj. Gen. Khaled Mosharraf, who ousted Khondakar Mushtaque. However, the 7 November 1975 coup against Mosharraf by Lt. Col. Abu Taher brought Maj. Gen. Ziaur Rahman to power. Ziaur Rahman was freed by Major Mohiuddin Ahmed. Ziaur Rahman, after assuming power, appointed the assassins in the diplomatic corps in foreign posts with the exception of Sayed Farooq-ur-Rahman and Sultan Shahriar Rashid Khan who refused to accept the diplomatic posts.[39]
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1976 Bogra Mutiny and later coup attempts
Later, in 1976, with the assistance of Air Vice Marshall Tawab, both Farooq and Rashid returned to Bangladesh to launch another coup. They mobilised the Bengal Lancer regiments who had been split between Savar and Bogra. However, they were pinned down by the Dhaka brigade, under Mir Shawkat Ali, in Savar, while they were pinned down by the 6th East Bengal Regiment and 11th division, under Hanan Shah, in Bogra. Eventually, Farooq surrendered and was allowed to leave the country. However, his supporters in Bogra were routed and the Bengal Lancers were disbanded.[1]
In 1979, the Bangladeshi parliament under Ziaur Rahman's Bangladesh Nationalist Party converted the Indemnity ordinance into an official act of parliament. Farooq-ur-Rahman was dismissed from the Bangladesh Army for his role in mutinies in Savar Cantonment and Bogra Cantonment and sent abroad. The assassins were removed from government service after they tried to launch a coup against Ziaur Rahman in 1980.[42]
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1986 Presidential election
After the assassination of Ziaur Rahman in 1981, Rahman returned to active politics by founding the Bangladesh Freedom Party and running for the presidency against Lt. Gen. Hussain Muhammad Ershad in 1986. Syed Farooq Rahman, representing the Bangladesh Freedom Party, had run for president against Hussain Muhammad Ershad of the Jatiya Party, and Muhammadullah Hafezzi of the Bangladesh Khilafat Andolan. Sayed Farooq-ur-Rahman had obtained 1,202,303 of the total 21,795,337 votes, 4.64% of the total, coming third out of the twelve other Presidential Candidates. The Oxford-trained lawyer, Kamal Hossain, who was Mujib's law minister, and later foreign minister, told Salil Tripathi, a journalist, "The impunity with which Farooq operated was extraordinary. When he returned to Bangladesh, the government facilitated him and President Hussain Muhammad Ershad, who wanted some candidate to stand against him in the rigged elections. Ershad let Farooq stand to give himself credibility."[43][2][1]
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Trial and execution
In 1996, the Awami League, under the leadership of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's daughter, Sheikh Hasina, won the general election and became the Prime Minister of Bangladesh. Under her party's majority, the Indemnity Act was repealed, and a court case was initiated over the killing of Mujib and his family.[44] In August 1996, he was arrested by the Bangladesh Police.[45] In 1998, the Dhaka High Court sentenced Sayed Farooq-ur-Rahman to death. After the Awami League's defeat in the 2001 general election, the BNP government of Begum Khaleda Zia slowed down the proceedings in the Mujib murder case. In October 2007, he filed an appeal with the Bangladesh Supreme Court.[46] After Sheikh Hasina returned to power in 2009, the court case was restarted. He was executed along with other plotters on 28 January 2010.[3][47][48]
Family life and legacy
Sayed Farooq-ur-Rahman was married to Farida Khan, a daughter of S. H. Khan, the younger brother of Abul Kashem Khan, a leading industrialist and minister belonging to the politically prominent Khan family of Chittagong.[49][1] His elder son, Sayed Tariq Rahman, is chairman of the Bangladesh Freedom Party founded by him, Tariq lives and is based in Sydney. The vice-chairman of the Bangladesh Freedom Party is his younger son, Sayed Zubair Farooq who is a Doctoral graduate in behavioral economics and ethical banking from the University of Technology Sydney. Zubair served as ministerial financial advisor to Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum.[50][51][52][53]
Farooq had a passion for flying planes, reading books on military history and tactics and driving fast cars.[1]
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See also
Footnotes
References
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