Yahya Khan in the context of "Zulfikar Ali Bhutto"

The Bangladesh Liberation War (Bengali: মুক্তিযুদ্ধ, pronounced [mukt̪iɟud̪d̪ʱo]), also known as the Bangladesh War of Independence, was an armed conflict sparked by the rise of the Bengali nationalist and self-determination movement in East Pakistan, which resulted in the independence of Bangladesh. The war began when the Pakistani military junta based in West Pakistan—under the orders of Yahya Khan—launched Operation Searchlight against East Pakistanis on the night of 25 March 1971, initiating the Bangladesh genocide.

In response to the violence, members of the Mukti Bahini—a guerrilla resistance movement formed by Bengali military, paramilitary and civilians—launched a mass guerrilla war against the Pakistani military, liberating numerous towns and cities in the war's initial months. At first, the Pakistan Army regained momentum during the monsoon, but Bengali guerrillas counterattacked by carrying out widespread sabotage, including through Operation Jackpot against the Pakistan Navy, while the nascent Bangladesh Air Force flew sorties against Pakistani military bases. India joined the war on 3 December 1971 in support of the Mukti Bahini, after Pakistan launched preemptive air strikes on northern India. The subsequent Indo-Pakistani War involved fighting on two fronts; with air supremacy achieved in the eastern theater and the rapid advance of the Allied Forces of Mukti Bahini and the Indian military, Pakistan surrendered in Dhaka on 16 December 1971, in what remains to date the largest surrender of armed personnel since the Second World War.

East Pakistan was the eastern province of Pakistan between 1956 and 1971, restructured and renamed from the province of East Bengal and covering the territory of the modern country of Bangladesh. Its land borders were with India and Burma, with a coastline on the Bay of Bengal. To distinguish this region from India's state West Bengal (which is also known as "Indian Bengal"), East Pakistan was known as "Pakistani Bengal". East Pakistanis were popularly known as "Pakistani Bengalis". In 1971, East Pakistan became the newly independent state Bangladesh, which means "country of Bengal" or "country of Bengalis" or "land of Bengalis" in the Bengali language. In standard meaning, "desh" refers to a country, but in Bangla local expressions, "desh" also means one's village or countryside, hometown, ancestral heritage, homeland, and they do not have to be a politically formed sovereign country.

East Pakistan was formed with West Pakistan at the reorganization of One Unit Scheme orchestrated by the 3rd prime minister of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali. The Constitution of Pakistan of 1956 replaced the Pakistani monarchy with an Islamic republic. Bengali politician H.S. Suhrawardy served as the Prime Minister of Pakistan between 1956 and 1957 and a Bengali bureaucrat Iskander Mirza became the first President of Pakistan. The 1958 Pakistani coup d'état brought general Ayub Khan to power. Khan replaced Mirza as president and launched a crackdown against pro-democracy leaders. Khan enacted the Constitution of Pakistan of 1962 which ended universal suffrage. By 1966, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman emerged as the preeminent opposition leader in Pakistan and launched the six-point movement for autonomy and democracy. The 1969 uprising in East Pakistan contributed to Ayub Khan's overthrow. Another general, Yahya Khan, usurped the presidency and enacted martial law. In 1970, Yahya Khan organised Pakistan's first federal general election. The Awami League emerged as the single largest party, followed by the Pakistan Peoples Party. The military junta stalled in accepting the results, leading to civil disobedience, the Bangladesh Liberation War, 1971 Bangladesh genocide and persecution of Biharis.

The Bangladesh genocide was the ethnic cleansing of Bengalis residing in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) during the Bangladesh Liberation War, perpetrated by the Pakistan Army and the Razakars militia. It began on 25 March 1971, as Operation Searchlight was launched by West Pakistan (now Pakistan) to militarily subdue the Bengali population of East Pakistan; the Bengalis comprised the demographic majority and had been calling for independence from the Pakistani state. Seeking to curtail the Bengali self-determination movement, erstwhile Pakistani president Yahya Khan approved a large-scale military deployment, and in the nine-month-long conflict that ensued, Pakistani soldiers and local pro-Pakistan militias killed between 300,000 and 3,000,000 Bengalis and raped between 200,000 and 400,000 Bengali women in a systematic campaign of mass murder and genocidal sexual violence.

West Pakistanis in particular were shown by the news that the operation was carried out because of the 'rebellion by the East Pakistanis' and many activities at the time were hidden from them, including rape and ethnic cleansing of East Pakistanis by the Pakistani military. Although the majority of the victims were Bengali Muslims, Hindus were especially targeted. In their investigation of the genocide, the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists concluded that Pakistan's campaign also involved the attempt to exterminate or forcibly remove a significant portion of the country's Hindu populace. The West Pakistani government, which had implemented discriminatory legislation in East Pakistan, asserted that Hindus were behind the Mukti Bahini (Bengali resistance fighters) revolt and that resolving the local "Hindu problem" would end the conflict—Khan's government and the Pakistani elite thus regarded the crackdown as a strategic policy. Genocidal rhetoric accompanied the campaign: Pakistani men believed that the sacrifice of Hindus was needed to fix the national malaise. In the countryside, Pakistan Army moved through villages and specifically asked for places where Hindus lived before burning them down. Hindus were identified by checking circumcision or by demanding the recitation of Muslim prayers. This also resulted in the migration of around eight million East Pakistani refugees into India, 80–90% of whom were Hindus.

The One Unit Scheme (Urdu: ون یونٹ; Bengali: এক ইউনিট ব্যবস্থা) was the reorganisation of the provinces of Pakistan by the central Pakistani government. It was led by Prime Minister Muhammad Ali Bogra on 22 November 1954 and enacted on 30 September 1955. The government claimed that the programme would overcome the difficulty of administering the two non-contiguous, unequal polities of West and East Pakistan separated from each other by more than a thousand miles. To diminish the differences between the two regions, the 'One Unit' programme merged the four provinces of West Pakistan (West Punjab, Sind, the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Baluchistan) into a single province to parallel the province of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).

The One Unit program met with great resistance and grievances were raised by the four provinces after its establishment. As per scholar Julien Levesque, the One Unit project had mainly been pushed by the Punjabi elite of West Pakistan since 1953 with the aim of preventing politicians from East Pakistan from gaining power at the centre. The National Awami Party successfully sponsored a bill in the National Assembly calling for its dissolution and providing for regional autonomy. This led to the military takeover of the national government. The One Unit programme remained in effect until 1970. Finally, President General Yahya Khan imposed Legal Framework Order No. 1970 to end the One Unit program and reinstate the provisional status of the Four Provinces as of August 1947.

Amir Abdullah Khan Niazi HJ & Bar SPk SK MC (1915 – 2004), commonly known as General Niazi, was a Pakistani military officer. During the Bangladesh War of Independence and the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, he commanded the Pakistani Eastern Command in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). He signed the instrument of surrender as on 16 December 1971, his forces had to surrender to the Indian Army's Eastern Command's commander Lieutenant General Jagjit Singh Aurora by the order of the then President of Pakistan Yahya Khan.

Niazi's area of responsibility comprised the defense of East Pakistan from India during the war in 1971. His surrender in Dhaka effectively ended the war. The result was an Indian victory as well as the independence of Bangladesh.

The Constitution of 1962 was the fundamental law of Republic of Pakistan from 8 June 1962 until martial law was declared in 25 March 1969. It was abrogated on 25 March 1969 by President Yahya Khan.