Courtesy of MMR Jalal

Courtesy of MMR Jalal

Anthony Hucarmbu

since the State wasin and having enjoyed

the confidence of many of the lead­ers of Pakistan since that time. hewrote his report with real personalregret.

"We were told by thc Ministry ofInformation officials to show in apatriotic the great job the armywas doing," told us.

There was no question of his re­porting what he saw for his ownpaper. He was allowed to file astory, which \vas published in TheSunday Times on May 2, which re­ported only the events of March 25/26, when t.he Bengali troops muti­nied and atrocities ,"vere committedagainst non-Bengalis.

Even references to the danger offamine were deleted by the censor.That increased his crisis of con·science.

After some days' hesitation, hedecided, in his own words, that"either I would write the full storyof what I had seen, or I would haveto stop writing: I would never againbe able to write with any integrity."And so he got on a plane and cameto London.

We have been able to check hisstory in great detail with other refu­gees in a position to have had a wideknowledge of events in East Bengalas a whole, and with objective diplo­matic sources,

of up his house, most of his pO!ssessJ()nsthe and his job as one of most re-

spected journalists in the country.be- There was only one condition: were- I must not publish his story until he

had gone back into P.lkistan andbrought out his wife and five chil·dren.

The Sund:J]' Times agreed, and:\Iascarenhas went back to Karachi.After,.1 wait of ten days an overseascable arrived at the private addressof a Sunday Times executive.

"Export formalities completed,"it read, "Shipment begins ft.londay."

Mascarenhas had succeeded ingetting permission for his wife andfamily to leave the country. Hehimself had been forbidden to leave.He found a way of leaving anyway.

On the last leg of his journey in­side Pakistan, he found himselfsitting in a plane across the aislefrom a senior Ministry of Informa­tion official whom he knew well. Aphone call from the airport couldhave led to his arrest.

There was no phone call, how­ever, and last Tuesday he arrivedback in London.

1\fascarenhas writes about whathe saw in East Pakistan with spe­cial authority and objectivity. As aGoan Christian by descent, he isneither a Hindu nor a Muslim. Hav­ing lived most of his life in what isnow Pakistan, having held a Pakis-

WEST PAKISTA:"'S Army has 'Supplies the missingbeen systematicnlly massacring the tragedy of Bengal:thousands of civilians in East Pakis- refugees have fled.tan since the cnd of ~Iarch. This is There is a remarkable storythe horrifying reality behind the hind Anthony !l.fascarenhas'snews blackout imposed by President port.Yahp Khan's government since the When. at the end of March, theend of March. This is the reason P,lkistan army flew two divisionswhy more than five million refugees into East Pakistan to "sort out" thehave streamed out of East Pakistan Bengali rebels, it moved in secretinto India. risking cholera and But ,lbout two weeks later the Pak·famine. istan government invited eight

The curtain of silence is broken Pakistani journalists to fly to Easttoday for the first time by Anthony Bengal. The idea - as governmentMascarenhas. the Sunday Times officials left the journalists in nocorrespondent in Pakistan. He has doubt - was to give the people ofseen what the Pakistan armv has West Pakistan a reassuring picturebeen doing. He has left Pakistan to of the "return to normalcy" in thelei I the world. eastern half of the country. Seven

The army has not merely been of the journalists have done as theykilling supporters of the idea of were intended. BlIt one wasBangIa Desh, an independent East Mascarenhas, who is assistant editorBengal. It has deliberately been of the .Morning News in Karachi,ma<,sacring others, Hindus and Ben- and was also The Sunday Timesgali l\luslims. Hindus have beenshot and beaten to death with clubs Pakistan correspondent.simply because tney are Hindus. On Tuesday, j\,1ay 18, he arrived,Villages have been burned. unexpectedly, in The Sunday Times

Sporadic and unconfirmed re- office in London. There was, he toldports of atrocities by the Pakistan us, a story he wanted to write: thearmy have been reaching the out- tflIe story of what had happenedside ,>\'odd for some time, notably in East Bengal to drive five millionfrom refugees, missionaries and people to flight.diplomats. The report by Anthony He made it plain that he under­Mascarenhas - appearing in full on stood that if he wrote his story therepages twelve to fourteen today - is could be no going back to Karachia detailed account of for him. He said he had made up

pre:C1SlOn and authority. He I his mind to leave Pakistan: to

4

Courtesy of MMR Jalal

bearded old man came haltinglyfrom the hut. Rathare pounced onhim.

"Do you know this man?""Yes, Sahib, He is Abdul BarL""Is he a jauji?""No, Sahib, he is a tailor from

Dacca.""Tell me the truth.""Khuda Kassam (God's oath),

Sahib, he is a tailor."There was a sudden silence.

Rathore looked abashed as I told"For God's sake let him go.

more proof do you want ofinnocence?"

But the jawans were apparentlyunconvinced and kept millingaround Bari. It was only after rhad once more interccded on hisbehalf that Rathore ordered Barito be released. Bv th:1I time he wasa cmmpled, speechless heap of ter-ror. But his life had h:en saved.

Others have not been as for­tunate.

For six days as I tr:1\'elled withthe officers of the lith Divisionhe3dquarters ;1[ Clmilla r witnessedat close quarters the extent of thekilling, r saw Hindu.;" hunted fromvillage to vilLige :md door to door,shot otf-hand after :J cursor;"short-arm Iilspection" .;,howed the;'were uncircumcised. I hJ\e heardthe screams of men bludgeoned [0

death in the compound of the Cir­cuit House (civ'l! administrativeheJdqu3rters) in Camilla. I haveseen truckloads \.Jf orher humantargets Jnd those who had thehumanity 10 try to, help themhauled otf "for dispos:ll" under thecover of dark ne\s and curfew. Ih3\'e witnessed the ['nlujjty d "killand burn missions" as the armyunits, after dearing \lut the rebels,pursued (he pogrom in the [Ownsand the villages,

I have seen whole villages de­vastated by "punitive action."

And in the olficers mess at nighthave listened incredulously as

otherwise brave and honourablemen proudly chewed over the d3Y'skill.

"How many did yOll gel?"The answers are seared in my

memory.ALL THIS is being done, as Jny

\Vest Pakistani officer will tell you,for the "preservation of the unity,

integrity and the ideology ofPakistan." It is. of course, too late

that. The very military actionis designed to hold togethertwo wings of the country.

by J thousand miles ofhas confirmed the ideologi-

The truckloadsof human targets

:\t le3st it could be plainly seenthat Bari was nl)t ;1 Hindu.

The interrl1gatjnf1 proceeded."Tell me, why were you run­

ning?"By this time Bari, wild-eyed and

trembling violently. could notanswer. He buckled at the knees.

"He looks like a /au;i. sir," vol­unteered one jall'lJf/ as Barihauled to his feet. (Fauji isUrdu word for soldier: theuses it for the Bengali rebels ithounding. )

"Could be," Imutter grimly,

Abdul Bari was clouted severaltimes \I.-ith the butt end of a rifle.then ominously pushed against awall. Mercifully his screamsbrought a young head peeping fromthe shadows of a nearby hut. Barishouted something in Bengali. Thehead vanished. ~foments later a

BARI had run out of luck. are not the isolated acts of back of theLike thousands of other people in commanders in the field. called out

East he had made the mis~ Pakistani soldiers are running, Sahib.take - fatal mistake of run- not the only ones who have been Major Rathore broughtning within sight of a Pakistani killing in East Bengal, of course. vehicle to an abrupt halt,

patrol. On the night of March 25 - and taneously reaching for thewas 24 years old, a man this I was allowed to report by the made light machine-gun

surrounded by soldiers. was Pakistani censor - the Bengali against the door. Lesstrembling, because he was about to troops and paramilitary units sta- yards away a man could be seenbe shot. tioned in East Pakistan mutinied loping through the knee-high

"Normally we would have killed and attacked non-Bengalis with paddy.him as he ran," I was informed atrocious savagery. "For God's sake don't shoot," Ichattily by Major Rathore, the G-2 Thousands of families of unfor- cried. "He's unarmed. He's only aOps. of the 9th Division, as we tunate l\fuslims, many of them villager."stood on the outskirts of a tiny viI- refugees from Bihar who chose Pak- Rathore gave me a dirty look

near l\fuzafarganj, about 20 istan at the time of the partition and fired a warning burst.south of ComilIa, "But we riots in 194 i, were mercilessly As the man sank to a crouch in

::.Ire checking him out for your sake. wiped out. Women \Vere raped, or the lush carpet of green, twoYou are new here and r see you had their bre3sts tom out with spe- jawans were already' on their wayhave 3 squeamish stomach." dally-fashioned knives. Children to dr3g him in.

kill him?" I asked with did not eSC3pe the horror: the The thud of :1 rifle hutt acrossconcern. lucky ones were killed with their the shoulders preceded the ques-

"Because he might be :1 Hindu or parents; but many thousands of tjaning.he might be J rebel. perhaps a stu- others must go throu;zh what life "\Vho are you'?"dent or an Awami Leaguer. They rem3ins for them with ..:yes gouged ":\1erc;;. Sahib! :\1;; name isknow we are sorting them out and out :lnd limbs roughly 3mputated. Abdul Bari. I'm a tailor from the

betray themselves by' running." \fore than 20.000 bodies of non- 0iew :\farket in Dacca,"why are you killing them? Bengalis ha\'t~ been found in the "Don't lie to me, Yl)U're a Hindu.

And why pick on the Hindus?" I m3in towns, such as Chi1l3gong. Why were you running?"perSlSted. Khuln3 and Jessore. The real toll. "It's almost curfew time, Sahib,

"\fust I remind you," Rathore I was told everywhere in East Ben- and I was going to my village."S31d .;,c\'erely. "hO\v they have tried gal, may have been as high as "Tell me the truth, \Vhy wereto destroy P:lkistan? Now under 100,000; for thous3nds of non- you running'?"the cover of the fighting we have Bengalis ha\'e \':mished without a Before the man could answer hean c'\;cellenr opportunity of tlnishing trace, W3S quickly frisked fur wcapons bythem off." The govcrnment of Pakist::.ln has a jawan while another quickly

"Of course," he added hastilY, let the world know al"out that first snatched away his lungi. The skinny'\\ e ;lfe only killing the Hindu men. horror. \\'hat it has suppressed is body that W35 bared revealed theWe ;lre soldiers. not cow3rds like the second :lnd worse horror which. distinctive traces of circumcision,the ret-els. They kill our women Jnd followed when its own :Jrmy took which is llrJigatory for \!uslims.chddren." ovcr the killing. \Vest P:lkistanl of-

I W:\S GETTI~G my first ficials pri\:lrelv calculate that alk)­glimp"C of the stain of blood \I.'hich gether both sides have killed 250,000

\pre:ld over the otherwise vcrd- people - not counting those who,lnt LInd of East Beng3!. First it was have died of famlnt: :lnd disease.the massacre of the non-Bengalis Reacting to the almost success­:n a sav3ge outburst of Bengali ful breakaway of the pnn'ince,hatred. ~ow it was maSSJere. de- \l"hich has more than h;llf the caun­liC'\crately carried out by the West try's population, General YahyaPakist:.m army. Khan's military gO\emment is rush-

The pogrom's victims are not only ing through its own "tinal solution"the Hindus of East BengJI - who of the East Bengal problem.constitute about 10 per cent of the "We are determined to cleanse

5 million population - but also East Pakist:m once and for JII ofmany thousands of Bengali Mus- the threat of secession, even if itlims. These include university and mC3ns killing orf two million peoplecollege students. teachers. Awami and ruling the province as :l colonyLCJgue and Left-Wing political for 30 years," I was repeatedly toldcadres and every one the army by senior military and civil officers

catch of the 176.000 Bengali in Dacca :lnd Camilla.militarymen and police who mud- The West Pakistan army in Eastnied on March 26 in a spectacular. Bengal is doing exactly that with athough untimely and ill-starred bid terrifying thoroughness.

create an independent Republic WE HAD BEEN racing JgainstBangIa Desh, the setting sun after J visit to\Vhat I saw and heard with un- Chandpur (the West Pakistan army

and ears during my prudently stays indoors at night inBengal in late April East Bengal) when one of the

that the kill- I jawans (privates) crouched in the

Courtesy of MMR Jalal

as thenus

with amazulgthe officeLaw Administrator ofon the morning of April 19, I sawthe off-hand manner in whichsentences were meted out. A Biharisut)-iIllSP(~t()r of had walked

of heldinin theit over.

he casuallynames on the list.

"Bring these four to me thisfor .. he said, He

at the again. Theflicked once more.••... andthis thief along with them,"

The death sentence had beenpronounced over a glass of coconutmilk. I was informed that two ofthe prisoners were Hindus, thethird a "student," and the fourthan Awami league organiser. The"thid," it transpired, was a ladnamed Sebastian who had beencaught moving the household ef­fects of a Hindu friend to his ownhouse.

Later that evening I saw thesemen, their hands and legs tiedloosely with a single rope, beingled down the road to the CircuitHouse compound. A little aftercurfew, which was at 6 o'clock, aflock of squawking mynah birdswere disturbed in their play by thethwacking sound of wooden clubsmeeting bone and flesh.

CAPTAIN AZMAT of theBaluch Regiment had two claims tofame according to the mess banter.One was his job as ADC to Major­Gen. Shaukat Raza, commandingofficer of the 9th Division. The otherwas thrust on him by his colleagues'ragging.

Azmat, it transpired, was the onlyofficer in the group who had notmade a "kill." Major Bashir needledhim mercilessly.

"Come on Azmat," Bashir toldhim one night, "we are going tomake a man of you. Tomorrow wewill see bow you can make themrun. It's so easy:'

To underscore the point Bashirwent into one of his long spiels.Apart from his duties as SSO,Bashir was also "education officer"at Headquarters. He was the only

aC(luj(~~d in the tide of resentmentthe echelons of the

the in­West

stationed in EastThe Eastern Com-

at Dacca continues to domi-nate the of the Central Gov-ernment. worth point-

out are not re-hued: Khan is a common surnamein Pakistan.]

When the army units fanned outin Dacca on the of March25, in againstthe the smallhours of nen mClrnl.ng,of them carried lists ofliquidated. These theHindus and numbers of Mus­lims; students, Awamiprofessol"S. journalists andwho had been prominent in Sheikh~fujib's movement. The charge,now publicly made, that the armywas subjected to mortar attackfrom the Jaganath Hall, where theHindu university students lived,hardly justifies the obliteration oftwo Hindu colonies, built aroundthe temples on Ramna racecourse,and a third in Shakrepati, in theheart of the old city. Not does itexplain why the sizeable Hindu pop­ulations of Dacca and the neigh­bouring industrial town of Nara­yanganj should have vanished socompletely during the round-the­clock curfew on March 26 and 27.There is similarly no trace of scoresof Muslims who were rounded upduring the curfew hours. These peo­ple were eliminated in a plannedoperation: an improvised responseto Hindu aggression would have hadvastly different results.

Touring Dacca on April 15 Ifound the heads of four studentslying rotting on the roof of theIqbal Hall hostel. The caretakersaid they had been killed on thenight of March 25. I also foundheavy traces of blood on the twostaircases and in four of the rooms.Behind Iqbal Hall a large residen­tial building seemed to have beensingled out for special attention bythe army. The walls were pittedwith bullet holes and a foul smellstill lingered on the staircase: al­though it had been heavilypowdered with DDT. Neighbourssaid the bodies of 23 women andchildren had been carted away only

and sent their own children to beeducated in Calcutta. It had reachedthe where culture wasin Hindu culture, and East Pak-istan was under the controlof the Marwari in Cal-cutta. We have to sort them out torestore the land to the andthe to their

Major Bashir. He camefrom the ranks. He is SSO of9th Dhrision at Camilla and he

boasts of a personal bodycount of28. He had his own reasons for whathas happened. "This is a war be­tween the pure and the impure," heinformed me over a cup oftea. "The people here mayMuslim names and call themselvesMuslims. But they are Hindus atheart. You won't believe that themould (mulls) of the Cantonmentmosque here issued a farhwo (edict)during Friday prayers that thepie would attain janar (paradise ifthey killed West Pakistanis. Wesorted the bastard out and we arenow sorting out the others. Thosewho are left will be real Muslims.We will even teach them Urdu."

Everywhere I found officers andmen fashioning imaginative gar­ments of justification from thefabric of their own prejudices.Scapegoats had to be found to legiti­mise, even for their own con­sciences, the dreadful "solution'" towhat in essence was a politicalproblem: the Bengalis won the elec­tion and wanted to rule. The Pun­jabis, whose ambitions and interestshave dominated government poli·cies since the founding of Pakistanin 1947, would brook nO erosion oftheir power. The army. backed themup.

Officials privately justify whathas been done as a retaliation forthe massacre of the non-Bengalisbefore the army moved in. Butevents suggest that the pogrom wasnot the result of a spontaneous orundisciplined reaction. It wasplanned.

It seems clear that the "sorting­out" began to be planned about thetime that Lt. Gen. Tikka Khan tookover the governorship of East Ben­gal, from the gentle, self-effacingAdmiral Ahsan, and the militarycommand there, from the scholarlyLt.-Gen. Sahibzada Khan. That wasat the beginning of March, whenSheikh Mujibur Rahman's civil dis­obedience movement was gatheringmomentum after the postponementof the assembly meeting from whichthe Bengalis hoped for so much.President Yahya Khan, it is said,

cal and emotional break. East Ben-can be in Pakistanheavy the

the army is dominatedwho trs1d!t!OnliUy

and the Bengalis.The break is so cornpllete

that few Bengalis willseen in thePakistani. I had Ii

of this kind duringto Dacca when I went to

an old friend. ''I'm .. he toldme as he turned havechanged. Theand I knew has ceased to existus it behind us."

later a Punjabi army of­ficer, talking about the massacre ofthe non-Bengalis before' the armymoved in, told me: havetreated us more brutally theSikhs did in the partition riots in1947. How can we ever forgive orforget this.?"

The bone-erushing military op­eration has two distinctive features.One is what the authorities like tocall the "cleansing process": aeuphemism for massacre. The otheris the "rehabilitation effort." Thisis a way of describing the moves toturn East Bengal into a docilecolony of ,\-Vest Pakistan. Thesecommonly used expressions and therepeated official references to "mis­creants" and "infiltrators" are partof the charade which is being en­acted for the benefit of the world.Strip away the propaganda, and thereality is colonisation - and killing.

The justification for the annihi­lation of the Hindus was para­phrased by Lt. Gen. Tikka Khan,the military governor of East Paki­stan, in a radio broadcast I heardon April 18. He said: 'The Muslimsof East Pakistan, who had played aleading part in the creation of Pak­istan, are determined to keep italive. However, the voice of thevast majority had been suppressedthrough coercion, threats to life andproperty by a vocal, violent and ag­gressive minority, which forced theAwami League to adopt the de­structive course."

Others, speaking privately, weremore blunt in seeking justification.

'The Hindus had completely un­dermined the Muslim masses withtheir money," Col. Nairn, of 9thDivision headquarters told me inthe officers mess at Camilla. Theybled the province white. Money,food and produce flowed across theborders to India. In some cases theymade up more than half the teach­ing staff in the colleges and schools,

6

Courtesy of MMR Jalal

khaki, each with an automatic rifle. aftermath of a storm which}\Ccor"aiflll to orders, the rifles never had hit the area afternoon. Aleft their The roads are con- heavy overcast made ghostly shad-standy patrolled by trigger- ows on the abOve

men. Wherever army is, the town.you won't find Bengalis. ning to wet uniforms of

Martial law orders, corlst~mtjlY re- Azhar and the fourpeated on the radio and in the in the exposed escortproclaim the death for any- We turned a corner and foundone in the act sabotage. a convoy of trucks parked outsideIf a is obstructed or a bridge the mosque. I counted seven, alldamaged or destroyed, all houses filled with jawans in battledress. Atwithin 100 yards of the are the head of the column was a jeep.liable to be demolished their Across the road two men, super-inhabitants rounded up. vised by a third, were trying to

The practice is even more terrible batter down the door of one ofthan anything the words could sug- more than a hundred shuttered

"Punitive action" is something shops lining the road. The studdedthe Bengalis have come to teak wood door was beginning to

dread. give under the combined assault ofWe saw what this meant when two axes as Major Rathore brought

we were approaching Hajiganj, the Toyota to a halt.which straddles the road to Chand- "What the heIJ are you doing?"pur, on the morning of April 17. The tallest of the trio, who wasA few miles before "Hajiganj. a 15- supervising the break-in, turned andfoot bridge had been damaged the peered at us. "Mota," (Fatty) heprevious night by rebels who were shomed, "what the hell do youstiB active in the area. According to think we are doing?"Major Rathore (G·2 Ops.) an army Recognizing the voice, Rathoreunit had immediately been sent out grew a water-melon smile. It was,to take punitive action. Long spirals he informed me, his old friendof smoke could be seen on all sides "Uty"-Major Utikhar of the J2thup to a distance of a quarter of a Frontier Force Rifles.mile from the damaged bridge. And Rathore: "I thought someoneas we carefully drove over a bed of was looting."wooden boards. with which it had Iftikhar: "Looting? No. We arebeen hastily repaired, we could see on kill and burn."houses in the village on the right Waving his hand to take in thebeginning to catch fire. shops, he said he was going to

At the back of the village some destl'oy the lot.jawaJU were spreading the flames Rathore: "How many did youwith dried coconut fronds. They get?"make excellent kindling and are Iftikhar smiled bashftrlly.normally used for cooking. We Rathore: "Come. on. How manycould also see a body sprawled be- did you get?"tween the coconut trees at the en- Iftikhar: "Only twelve. And bytrance to the village. On the other God we were lucky to get them.side of the road another in We would have lost those, too, ifthe rice paddies showed evidence I hadn't .sent my men from theof the fire that had gutted more back:'than a dozen bamboo and mat huts. .Prodded .by Major Rathore, Ifti­Hundreds of villagers had escaped khar then went on to describebefore the army came. Others, like vividly how after much searchingthe man among the coconut trees, in Hajiganj he had "discoveredwere slow to get away. twelve Hindus hiding in a house on

As we drove on, Major Rathore the outskirts of the town. These hadsaid, 1'bey brought it on them- been "disposed of." Now Majorselves." I said it was surely too ter· Iftikhar was on the second part ofrible a vengeance on innocent peo- his mission: burn.pie for the acts of a handful of By this time the door hadrebels. He did not answer. been demolished we found

A FEW HOURS later when we ourselves looking into one of thosewere passing through Haji· tiny catch-all establishments which,

On the way back from Chand- in these parts, go under the titlepur. I had my fint to the "Medical & Stores." Under thesavagery of a "kill and mis- Bengali thesion." carried in the

We wem still up in the "Ashok Medical & Stores."

artil-officer had a stint

after the India-Pakistanwhen units of the Pakistan

were to ChineseHe was said to be a

family mao. He also lovedHe told me with uncon-

cealed pride that a nfe:Vl()lJS

at Comilla hethe scarlet water-

lilies that adorn pond oppositeheadquarters. Major Bashir adoredhim. Extolling one officer's decisive-ness, Bashir told me that once theyhad caught a rebel officer there wasa big fuss about what should bedone with him. "While the otherswere telephoning aU over for in­structions," he said, "he solved theproblem. Dilor Only theman's foot was sticking out ofthe ditch."

IT IS HARD to imagine so muchbrutality in the midst of so muchbeauty. Comilla was blooming whenI went there towards the end ofApril. The rich green carpet of ricepaddies spreading to the horizon onboth sides of the road was brokenhere and there by bright splashesof red. That was the Gal Mohor,

dubbed the "'Flame of the.. coming to full bloom.

Mango and coconut trees in thevillages dotting the countrysidewere heavy with fruit. Even the ter­rier-siud goats skipping across theroad gave evidence of the abun­dance of nature in Bengal. ""Theonly way you can teU the male fromthe female," they told me, "is thataU the she·goats are pregnant:'

In one of the most crowded areasof the entire worid-ComiUa dis­trict has a population density of1.900 to the square milc-<>nly manwas nowhere to be seen.

"Where are tbe Bengalis?" I hadasked my escorts in the strangelyempty streets of Dacca a few daysearlier. have to the vii·

.. was reply. Now,countryside, there were still

no Comilla likeDacca, was heavily Andin ten miles on the road to Lak­Iham, past silent the peu­ants I saw could have beeo countedon the fingers of both hands.

There were, of course, soldiers-hundreds of men in

officer found who couldfluently. By genera)

was also a self-bore who in the

of his ownA dhari walla

we were told, comeBashir that morning toabout his brother, a DfC)minellllAwamiilla who

somesaid told him: "he

" The old man couldn'trnITlnrptlPn,!fi how his brother couldhave escaped on a broken leg.Neither could I. So Major Bashir,with a broad wink, enlightened me.

The record would show Dhorgaya: "shot while escaping."

I NEVER DID find out whetherAzmat got his kill. The

forces who had dugmiles north of

highway toComilla, had tied down the 9thDivision by destroying aU thebridges and culverts in the area.General Raz.a was getting hell fromEastern Command at Dacca whichwas anxious to have the south­eastern border sealed against escap­ing rebels. It was also desperatelyurgent to open this only land routeto the north to much-needed sup­plies that had been piling up in theport at Chittagong.

So General Raza was understand-waspish. He flew over the area

almost daily. He also spent hounharanguing the brigade that wasbogged down at Feni. Captain Az­mat, as usual, was the General'ss.hadow. I did not see him again.But if experience is any pointer.Azmat probably had to sweat outhis "km"-and the ragging-foranother three weeks. It was onlyon 8 that the 9th Division wasable to dear Feni and the surround-

area. By then the Bengali rebels.out by relentless bombing

llnd artillery barrages. had escapedwith their weapons across the neigh­

border into India.of such large numbers

n~lrn...r-nr". regulars amongrebels was a matter of

concern to U.-CoJ. AslamG-l at 9th Division head­~e Indians," he ex-

wiU not allowthem to settle there. It would be toooaC12CJrouS. So will be allowed

on sufferance as as theymaking across the boi"-

we can them off, weto have serioustime."

Courtesy of MMR Jalal

old andchildren, alland at top of thevoices. Lt. Javed gave me a knowirwinle

Within minutes the "parade" h41into a "public con

with a make·shiftsystem and a

of Wr'IIlI,(1.r.....

- ur - Rahman W~

fon,,'ard to make the addrelwelcome to the He

himself as "N.F.fessor of and

also for and isIIIC:-LlIIIC member of the great 1'.fu~

Lea~ue Part\,."Introduction ~ver, Mahbub·ur

gave forth with gustoVilln."hu: and .. he said

united for and W~

our own traditions and culturewe were terrorised bv the Hinand the A",.·ami . anc

led astray. Now we thaithc Punhlbi soldiers have saved usThey are the best soldiers in theworld and heroes of humanit\'. Welove and respect them from th"c bot.tom of our hearts." And SO on, in­terminably. in the same vein.

Aftcr the "meeting" I asked the\fajor what he thought about thespeech. "Senes the purpose." hesaid. "but I don't Inlst that bastard.I'll put him on my lis!."

THE AGONY of East Bengal isnot over. Perhaps the worst is yet tocome. The army is determined togo on until the "c1ean-up" is com·plete. So far the job is onl\' halfdone. Two divisions of the P~;kislanArmy, the 9th and the 16th. wereflown out from West Pakistan to"sort out" the Bengali rebels and theHindus. This was a considerablelogistical feat for a country of Paki­stan's resources. More than 25,000men were moved from the west tothe east. On ,March 28 the two divi­sions were given 48 hours notice tomove. They were brought by Irainto Karachi from Kharian and l\lul­tan. Carrying only light bed rollsand battle packs (their equipmentwas to follow by sea) the troopswere flown out to Dacca by PIA,the national airline. Its fleet of sevenBoeings was taken off internationaland domestic routes and flew thelong haul via Ceylon continuouslyfor 14 days. A few Air Force trans­port 41ircraft helped.

The troops went into action im­mediately with equipment borrowedfrom the 14th Division which tillthen constituted the Eastern Com­mand. The 9th Division, operating

Laksham 'was an example of thereaction: cringing.

\\'hen I drove into the town themorning after it had been clearedof the rebels, all I could see wasthe army and literally thousands ofPakistani flags. The major in chargethere had camped in the police sta·tion, and it was there that MajorRathore took us. My colleague, aPakistani TV cameraman had tomake a propaganda film about the"return to normalcv" in Laksham­one of the endless' series broadcastdaily showing welcome parades and"peace meetings."

I wondered hnw he could manageit, but the Major s~lid it would beno sweat. "There arc enough ofthese baslards left to put on a~ goodshow. Give me :2,0 minutes."

Lieutenant Javed of the 39thBaluch was assigned the task ofrounding up a crowd. He called outto an elderly bearded man who hadapparently been brought in forquestioning. The man, who latergave his name as !\loulana SaidMohammad Saidul Hug, insisted hewas a "staunch Muslim Leaguerand not from the Awami League."(The l\fuslim League led the move­ment for an Independent Pakistanin 1947.) He was all loa eager toplease. "I \viII very definitely getyou at least 60 men in 20.minutes,"he told Javed. "But if you give metwo hours I will bring 200."

Moulana Saidul Huq was as goodas his word. We had hardly drunkour fill of the deliciously refreshingcoconut milk that had been thought·fully .supplied by the Major whenhe heard shouts in the distance."Pakistan zindabad!" "Pakistanarmy zindabad!" "Muslim Leaguezindabad!" they were chanting.(Zindabad is Urdu for "Long live!")Moments later they marched into

a motley crowd of about 50

down rebels had been clearedBose." with the freedom 10 corno-omIhe Hindus andand run. (the jargon for rebels)

In front of to bum down indisplay cabinet was crammed with areas from which armypalenl medicines, been fired at.some bottles of This lankytalion to talk about hiscotton Iftikhar to theer elastic. Iftikhar kicked it over, Camilla on another occasion hesmashing the light woodwork into told me aboul his latest exploit.kindling. Next he reached out for "We gal an old one," he said.

'some jute shopping bags on one "The bastard had grown a beardshelf. He look some plastic toys and was posing as a devout Muslim.from another. A bundle of hand- called himself Abdul Manan.kerchiefs and a small bolt of red But we him a medical inspec-cloth joined the on the floor. tion the game was "Iftikhar all together Iftikhar continued: wanted toand a box from one of finish him Ihere and then. but myIhe jawons in our Toyota. men told me such a bastard de·The jah'an had of his own. served three sholS. So I ga .... e himJumping from Ihe vehicle he ran to, one in the halls, then one in thethe shop and tried to pull down one stomach. Then I finished him offof the umbrellas hancing from the with a ~hot in the head,"low ceiling of the shop. {ftikhar or· \\'hen I left Major Iftikhar hedered him out. was headed north to Brahmanbaria.

Looting. he was sharply re- His mission: another kill and burn.minded, was against orders. OVERWHELMED \'lITH TER-

Iftikhar soon had a fire going. ROR. the Bengalis have one of twoHe thre\ll burning jute bags into reactions. Those who can n1n awavone corner of the shop. the bolt just seem to vanish. Whole town'sof cloth into another. The shop have been abandoned as the armvbegan to blaze. Within minutes we approached. Those who can'l n1~could hear the crackle of flames adopt a cringing servility whichbehind shuttered doors as the fire only ados humiliation to theirspread to the shop on the left, then plight.on to the next one. Chandpur was an example of the

At this point Rathore was begin- firs!.ning to get anxious about the gath· In the past this key river portering darkness, So we drove on. on the ~feghna was noted for its

When I chanced to meet Major thriving business houses and gayIftikhar the next day he ruefully life. At night thousands of smalltold me, "I burnt only sixty houses. country boats anchored on theIf it hadn't rained I would have got river's edge made it a fain'land ofthe whole bloody lot." lights. On~ April 18 Chand"pur was

Approaching a village a few miles deserted. No people, no boats.from 1\1udarfarganj we were forced Barely one per cent of the popu);].to a halt by what appeared to be a tion had remained. The rest, par·man crouching against a mud wall. ticularly the Hindus who consti·One of the jall'ans warned it might tuted nearly half the pouulation,be a jauji sniper, But after careful had fled.scouting it turned out to be a lovely Weirdly they had left behindyoung Hindu girl. She sat there with thousands of Pakistani flags flutter·the placidity of her people, waiting ing from every house, shop andfor God knows who. One of the rooftop. The effect was like ajall'ons had been ten years with the tional day celebration without theEast Pakistan Rifles and could crowds. It only served to emphasisespeak bazaar Bengali. He was told the haunted look.to order her into the village. She The flags were by way ofmumbled something in reply, but insurance.stayed where she was, but was or- Somehow the word had galdered a second time. She was still around that the army consideredsitting there as we drove away. "She any structure without a Pakistanihas," I was informed, "nowhere to flag to be hostile and consequentlygo-no family, no home." to be destroyed. It did not matter

Major Iftikhar was one of several how the Pakistani flags were made,officers assigned to kill and burn so long as they were adorned withmissions. They moved in after the the crescent and star. So they came

8

Courtesy of MMR Jalal

at Comilla on 16."You must absolutely sure,"

he said, "that we have not under­taken such a drastic and expensiveoperation-expensive both in menand money-for nothing. We'veundertaken a job. We are going tofinish it, not hand it over half done10 the politicians so that they canmess it up again. The army can'tkeep coming back like this everythree or four years. It has a moreimportant task. I assure you thatwhen we have got through withwhat we are doing there will neverbe need again for such an opera­tion."

Major-General Shaubt Raza isone of the three divisional com­manders in the field. He is in akey position. He is not given totalking through his hat.

Significantly, General ShaubtRaza's ideas were echoed by everymilitary ot1icer I l:llked to duringmy 10 days in East Bengal. AndPresident Tahya Khan kno ..l,s thatthe men who lead the troops on theground are the cit' facto arbitersof Pakistan's destiny.

The single-minded ness of thearmy is underscored by the mili­tary operation itself. By any stand­ard, it is a major venture. It is notsomething that can be switched onand off without the most grave con­sequences.

The army has already laken aterrible toll in dCJd and injured.It was privately said in Dacca thatmore officers have been killed thanmen and' that the casualty list inEast already exceeds thelosses in India-Pakistan war ofSeptember, 1965. The army will cer­tainly not write off these "sacrifices"for illusory political considerationsthat have proved to be so worthlessin the past.

Militarily-and it is soldiers whowiU be taking the decision-to calla halt to the operation at this stagewould be indefensible. It wouldonly mean more trouble with theBengali rebels. Implacable hatredhas been displayed on both sides.There can be no truce or negotiatedsettJement~ total victory or

answer total defeat. is on the sideRaa, of the Pakistan Army. not of the

of the 9th isolated, unco-ordinated and ill­first meeting I rebel groups. Other cir-

On the one hand, it is true thatthere is no let up in the reign ofterror. The policy of subjugation iscertainly being pursued with vigourin East Bengal. This is making thou­sands of new enemies for the Gov­ernment every day and making onlymore definitive the separation of thetwo wings of Pakistan.

On the other hand, no govern­ment could be unaware that thispolicy must fail (There are just notenough West Pakistanis to holddown the much greater numbers inEast Bengal indefinitely.) For hardadministrative and economic rea­sons, and because of the crucial con­sideration of external developmentassistance, especially from America,it will be necessary to achieve a poli­tical settlement as quickly as pos­sible. President Yahya Khan's Pressconference on May 25 suggests thathe acknowledges the force of thesefactors: And he said he would an­nounce his plan for representativegovernment in the middle of June.

All this would seem to indicatethat Pakistan's military Govern­ment is moving paradoxically, inopposite directions, to compoundthe gravest crisis in the country's24-year history.

This is a widely held view. Itsounds logical. But is it true?

My own view is that it is not. Ithas been my unhappy privilege tohave had the opportunity to observeat first hand both what Pak.istan'sleaders say in the West, and ",-'hatthey are doing in the East.

I think that in reality there is nocontradiction in the Government'sEast Bengal policy. East Bengal isbeing colonised.

This is not an arbitrary opinionof mine. The facts speak for them­selves.

The first consideration of thearmy has been and still is the ob­literation of every trace of separa­tism in East Bengal. This proposi­tion is upheld by the continuingslaughter and by everything elsethat the Government has done inboth East and West Pakistan sinceMarch 25. The decision was coldlytaken by the military leaders, andthey are going through with it-alltoo coldly.

No meaningful or viable politicalsolution is possible in East Bengalwhile the pogrom continues.

The crucial question is: will the

not be this year becauseof the war. Six major bridgesand thousands of smaller ones havebeen making the roadsimpassable many places. Therailway system has been similarlydisrupted, though the Governmentclaims it is "almost normal."- The road and ·rail tracks between

the port of Chittagong and the northhave been completely disrupted bythe rebels who held Feni, a key roadand rail junction, until May 7. Foodstocks cannot move because of thisdevastation. In normal times only15 per cent of food movements fromChittagong to upcountry areas weremade by boat. The remaining 85cent was moved by road andEven a 100 per cent increase in theeffectiveness of river movement willleave 70 per cent of the food stocksin the warehouses of Chittagong.

Two other factors must be added.One is large-scale hoarding of grainby people who have begun to antici­pate the famine. This makes a tightposition infinitely more difficult.The other is the Government ofPakistan's refusal to acknowledgethe danger of famine publicly. Lt.­Gen. TikkJ Khan. the .\filitary Gov­ernor of East Bengal, acknowledgedin a radio broadcast on April 18 thathe was gravely concerned aboutfood supplies. Since then the entireGovernment machinery has beenused to suppress the fact of the foodshortage. The reason is that a fam­ine, like the cyclone before it, couldresult in a massive outpouring offoreign aid-and with it the prospectof external inspection of distributionmethods. That would make it im­possible to conceal from the worldthe scale of the pogrom. So the hun­gry will be left to die until the clean­up is complete.

Discussing the problem in hisplush air-conditioned office in Kara­chi recently the chairman of theAgricultural Development Bank,Mr Qarni, said bluntly: "The fam­ine is the result of their acts of sabo-

So let them die. Perhaps thenBangalis will come to their

senses."THE MILITARY Government's

East policy is so apparentlycontradictory and self-defeatingthat it would seem to justify theassuIT1Ption that the men who rulePakistan cannot make up theirminds. committed the initialerror of to force, the Gov.emment, on-this view; is stubbornlyand stupidly through.

There logic inthis rea:son.mg.

from Comilla, was ordered to sealthe border in the east against themovement of rebels and theirplies. The 16th Division, withquarters at Jessore, had a similartask in the Western sector of the

They completed these as­the third week of May.

ret)el:i-[fi()Se who have notto India-boxed

in a ring of and fire, the twoarmy divisions are beginning to con­verge in a relentless comb-out op­eration. This will undoubtedly meanthat the terror experienced in theborder areas will now spread to themiddle. It could also be more pain­ful. The human targets will havenowhere to run to.

On April 20 Lt.-Col. Baig, theHower-loving G-! of the 9th Divi­sion. thought that the comb-out"vould take two months, to themiddle of June. But this planningseems to have misfired. The rebelforces, using guerrilla tactics, havenot been subdued as easily as thearmy expected. Isolated and appar­ently unco-ordinated, the rebelshave nonetheless bogged down thePakistan Army in many places bythe systematic destruction of roadsand raihvays, without which thearmy cannot move. The 9th Divi­sion for one was hopelessly behindschedule. Now the mOnsoon threat­ens to shut down the military opera­tion with three months of cloud­bursts.

For the rainy season, the PakistanGovernment obtained from Chinain the second week of May nineshallow-draught river gunboats.More are to come. These 80-tongunboats with massive fire-powerwill lake over some of the respon­sibilities hitherto allotted to the airforce and artillery, which will not

as effective when it rains. Theywill be supported by several hun­dred which have beenreCl1millllDnc~d and convened for mil.

use by the addition of out­moto~. The army intends to

take to the wat« in pursuit of therebels_

There is also the dear nN'Knol"rf

fami ne, because ofof the distribution system.

Seventeen of the 23 districts of EastPakistan are short of foodand have to be massive

of rice will

9

Courtesy of MMR Jalal

\,JYlau~ Cl1lau,dluuy andAzam, of Jamat Islami,

all of whom were soundly beaten inthe General Elections last Decem­ber.

Theto emergeMr. Nurul Amin, an Muslim

and former Chief MinisterProvince who was one of

two non-Awami Leaguers tobe to the National Assembly.He is now in his seventies. But evenNurul Armin has been careful notto be too effusive. His two publicstatements to date have been con­cerned only with the uIndian in­terference...

Bengalis look with scorn on thefew who "collaborate." Fll.ridAhmad and FazIul Quadeer Chad·hury are painfull}' aware of thisFarid Ahmad makes a point ofkeeping his windows shuttered andonly those who have been scruti­nised and recognised through apeephole in the front door are al·lowed into the house.

By singularly blunt methods theGovernment has been able toa grudging acquiescence from 1Awami Leaguers who had beenelected to the national and provin­cial assemblies. They are being kepton ice in Dacca, secluded from allbut their immediate families, forthe big occasion when "representa­tive government" is to be installed.But dearly th'ey now represent noone but themselves.

ABDUL BARI the tailor whowas lucky to survive, is 24 yearsold. That is the same age as Pakis­tan. The army can of course hold­the country together by force. Butthe meaning of what it has done inEast Bengal is that the dream of themen who hoped in 1947 that theywere founding a Muslim nation intwo equal parts has now faded.There is now little chance for along time to come that Punjabis inthe West and Bengalis in the Eastwill feel themselves equal fellow­citizens of one nation. For the Ben­galis, the future is now bleak: theunhappy submission of a colony toits con~uerors.

commaSSloners win inBiharis or civil of-

ficers from West Pakistan. Thecommissioners of the dis­

were said to be tooinvolved with the Awami Leaguesecessionist movement. In somecases, such as that of thecommissioner of Com illa ,

and shot. That of·incurred the wrath of the

on March 20 when he re­to requisition and food

supplies ''without a letter fromSheikh Mujibur Rahman."

The Government has also comedown hard on the universities and

of East werethe hot con-and they are

out"fled. Some havewill be replaced bymen! from West Pakistan.

Bengali officers are also beingweeded ou! of sensitive positions inthe Civil and Foreign Services. Allare currently being subjected to themost exhaustive screening.

This colonisation process, quiteobviously does not work even halfas efficiently as the administrationwishes. I was given vivid evidenceof this by Major Agha, martial lawadministrator of Com ilia, He hadbeen having a problem getting thelocal Bengali executive engineers togo out and repair the bridges androads that had been destroyed ordamaged by the rebels. This taskk.ept getting snarled in red tape, andthe bridges remained unrepaired.Agha of course, knew the reason."You can't expect them to work.,'·he told me, "when you have beenkilling them and destroying theircountry. That at least is their pointof view, and we are paying for it."

CAPTAIN DURRANT, of theBaluch Regiment, who was incharge of the company guarding theComilla airport, had his ownmethods of dealing with the prob­lem. "I have told them," he saidwith reference to the Bengalis main­taining the control tower, "that Iwill shoot anyone who even lookslike he is doing something suspi­cious." Ducanni had made good hisword. A Bengali who had ap­proached the airport a few nightsearlier was shot. "Could have beena rebel," T was told. Durrani hadanother claim to fame. He had per­sonally accounted for "more than60 men" while clearing the villagessurrounding the airport.

The .harsh of colonisationin the East is concealed by

I was told that aU the commis­ioners of East Bengal and the dis-

ll.,K;1115CU~ will have to bere~~dul:::aU~d Islamic:

of thethe official

jargon - is intended to eliminatesecessionist tendencies anda strong bondPakistan;

When the Hindus have beenby death and IDght,

property will be used as acarrot to win over the under­

Muslim middle..dass.provide the base for erect..

that the administrative andtaken a structures in the future.

has This is being pursued withas a the utmost hlalarH'~v

investment. It was not Because ofthat 25,000 soldiers beento East a dar.. will not for present be any fur-

ing and expensive These ther recruitment of Bengalis in thetwo divisions, the 9th and the 16th, defence forces. Senior Air Forceconstituted the military reserve in and Navy officers, who were not in'Vest Pakistan. They have now been anyway involved, have been movedreplaced there by new re- "as a precaution" to nonsensitivecruitmenl. positions. Bengali fighter pilots,

The Chinese have helped with among them some of the aces of theequipment, which is pouring down Air Force, had the humiliation ofthe Karakorum highway. There is being grounded and moved to non­some evidence that the flood is flying duties. Even PIA air crewsslowing down: perhaps the Chinese operating between the two wings ofare having second thoughts about the country have been strainedtheir commitments to the military clean of Bengalis.rulers of Pak.istan. But the Pakistan The East Pakistan Rilles, oncegovernment has not hesitated to Ialmost exclusively a Bengalipay cash from the bottom of the . para-military force, has ceased toforeign exchange barrel for more exist since the mutiny. A new force,than SI-million-worth of ammuni· the Civil Defence Force, has beention to European arms suppliers, raised by recruiting Biharis and vol-

Conversations with senior mili- unteers from West Pakistan.tary officers in Dacca, Rawalpindi Biharis, instead of Bengalis, are alsoand Karachi confirm that they see being used as the basic materia! forthe solution to this problem in the the police. They are supervised byspeedy completion of the East Ben- officers sent out from West Pakistangal operation, not in terms of a pull. and by secondment from the army.out. The money required for that The new superintendent of police atpurpose now takes precedence over Chandpur at the end of April wasal: other governmental expenditure. a military police major.Development has virtually come to Hundreds of West Pakistania halt. Government civil servants, doctors,

In one sentence, the government and technicians for the radio,1\',is too far committed militarily to telegraph and telephone servicesabandon the East Bengal operation, have already been sent out to Eastwhich it would have to do if it Pakistan. More are being en­sincerely wanted a political solu- couraged to go with the promise oftion. President Yahya Khan is rid- one and two-step promotions. Buting on the back of a tiger. But he the transfer, when made, is obliga­took a calculated decision to climb tory. President Yahya recently is­up there. sued an order making it possible to

SO THE ARMY is not going to transfe~ civil s~rvants .to ~ny partpull out. The Government's policy of Pakistan agamst their wIll.for East Bengal was spelled out tome in the Eastern Command head­quarters at Dacca. It has threeelements:-

( 1) The Bengalis havethemselves "unreliable" mustbe ruled by West Pakistanis;

10

Courtesy of MMR Jalal

THE l·/EW YORK Tl!'~lES (A'EW YORK), JUNE 16

through the innocent eyes of AnneFrank or Solzhenitsyn's famousIvan Denisovich.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki arevividly remembered by the mind'seye primarily because of the novelmeans that brought holocaust tothose cities. Statistically compar­able disasters in Hamburg andDresden are more easily forgotten;they were produced by what we al­ready then conceived of as "con­ventional" methods.

Against this background one mustview the appalling catastrophe ofEast Pakistan whose scale is so im­mense that it exceeds the dolori­meter capacity by which humansvrnnattllV is measured. No one can

to count the wounded,homeless or whosegrows each day...."

DisasterC. L. SULZBERGER

forced at gunpOintthe othersselves.

3) Professor C. C. Dev,head of the Departm,ent

of Phllo.sO[lhv was ..... "'...... t, ... t1

his home to anshot

4) The last names of other fac­members who were killed or

""",.'n""",, wounded: in theMunium, The

.1.1111<1:><'111. Ali. Dacca was5) Central government 10) On the

forced their way into Flat D forty soldiers aBuilding 34 at the university, seized named Barda, rounded up theProfessor Muniru Zaman, his son, population (approximately 6(0)his brother (employed by the East and marched them at toPakistan High Court). and his Gulshan Park, where werenephew, and marched the group to interrogated. Ten members of thethe first-floor foyer, where they were group were then taken off; theirmachine-gunned. fate is unknown.

6) A machine gun was installed The foregoing a smallon the roof of the terminal building fraction of the IlC·

at Sadarghat, the dod area of Old counts that in the aggregate tell ofDacca. On March 26, all civilians v.'ide-spread killings, especially ofwithin range were fired upon. After youth and educated people. It isthe massacre, the bodies were futile to attempt to estimate thedragged into buses. Some were number of dead or wounded. Eachdumped into the Buriganga River, city and village has its own talesadjacent to the terminal. of horror. It is significant that the

7) On the morning of I\larch 28, government at Islamabad, untilmachine guns were placed at OP-jl only last week, enforced vigorousposite ends of Shandari Bnnar, a Imeasures to keep au! reponers...."Hindu artisan center in old Dacca, -N.C.

NonlinJils

When the ancient Greeks said"multiple death is not death" theymeant that death's qualitative agonycould be drowned in quantitativeshock. The hecatomb loses poig­nancy compared to the single suc­cumbing marathon victor's pain.

Classical times could never com-A few documented episodes: prehend from the sheer absence of

1) Tanks and soldie,rs with sub- mass, the ultimate meaning ofmachine guns and grenades seized multiple death as it was to becomeDacca University early in the morn- known in a later era of instanting on March 26. All students communication. Yet even in recentresiding in Iqbal Hall, the dormitory times, dying is not acutely under­center, were put to death. The build- stood when its scope transcendsing was gutted by shells from tanks. certain limits.

2) One hundred and three Hindu The leaden horror of Hitleritestudents ,residing in Jagannath Hall and Stalinist concentrationof Dacca University were shot to recedes into a coma of humandeath. Six Hindu students were, comprehension unless regarded

'<The most fundamental of all and resources would have beenrights - the of a man to come Southern The resultto the aid of a human would have been an administrative,is now denied with a degree of and economic shambles.official arrogance seldom in Pakistanin recent roughly fits Fur-

The people East Pakistan, who ther compounding the areare still suffering from homeless- the severe cultural and historic dif­ness and hunger caused by the tidal ference! between (West)waves of Jess than a year are and ( East)now up in a' dis- For a time, the peoples of Eastaster. land has become a and West Pakistan were held to-locked-in arena of gether the spiritual andslaughter. Communications with the of a new nationalism.outside world have been reduced But the underlying difficulties grewalmost to the vanishing point. more pronounced and visible yearThose who have offered by year. The people of East Pakis-medical aid or other help have tan chafed under what they felttold to stay ~)ul. was West Pakistan's latter-day ver-

The present situation has its re- sian of British colonialism. Theymote origins in the division of the claimed the)' were not being repre­Indian subcontinent into two na- scnted in proportion to their num­tions in 1947. The movement for bers in either high posts or poli­independence from Great Britain cies of government. They chargedhad been complicated and imperiled Ithey were being exploited econom­by the existence of Hindu and Mas- ically, furnishing labor and re­lem blocs, Great Britain had fost- sources without sharing fairly in theered the concept of a partitioned profits from production. Theysubcontinent in which India would pointed to the sharp disparity inbe predominantly Hindu and Pak- wages and living conditions betweenistan would be predominantly ,Mas- East and West.!em. For a long time, Ga.n.dhi and It was inevitable that the disaffec­~e~ru ~a~ oppos~d partitIOn, be- tion should reach an eruptive stage.l~e~·tng It ImperatIve for both -re- There is no point here in detailingll~lO~s ord~rs to be acco~modated the facts attending the emergence of":'Ithm a SlI"I.fde large natlO~al de-, political movements seeking self.slg~. Gand~l. and Neh~ .Withdrew rule for East Pakistan. All that needtheIr oPPosl.tlOn to partltlon~ how- be said is that the central govern­eve,r, wh:n It appeared c~rtam that ment at Islamabad finally did agreen~tlOnal.mdepe.ndencemight other· to submit self-rule propositions towIse be m.definltely d,e~ayed. the East Pakistan electorate, The re-

The d~slgn for partition called for suI! of the general election was ant~'o nations. Actually, ~hree na- overwhelming vote in favor of self.tlOn~ .emerge~..Fo~ Pak.l~tan was rule.' The central government atpa11Jtloned wllhm Itself, mto East Islamabad not only failed to re­and West. The. Western part was spect this popular decision, but or­larger ~eographlcally and became dered in armed troops to forestallthe capItal. The Easte~n pa0 was implementation. The official slaugh­more populous ~nd ncher In re- ter began on March 26th.sources. The Units lay more than1,000 miles apart.

In order to comprehend the geo­graphical anomaly this physicalseparation represented, one has onlyto imagine what would have hap­pened if Maine and Georgia had de­cided to form a separate nation,Maorgia, with practically the wholeof the United States lying in be­tween. Let us further suppose thatthe capital of the new nation wouldhave been Augusta, Northern

while most of the peo-

11

Courtesy of MMR Jalal

"~"_II

Bengali \"ictim~ in Ea~t Pakii'tan: ·Ch·ilized me n cannot de:-cribe the horror that ha~ been done'

Bengal: The Murder of a Peoplel\TWSWEEK, AUGUST 2, 197/

It samed a routine t'f1O/I.!!}, re­qunt, AS,H'ml>ling tht' young men oftht' \'illage oj flaluaghat in EastPakistan. a Pakistani Army majorinjurnud thl'm that his woundedsoldias urgt'fltly nuded blood.Would they he donors:' The youngmen lay down on makeshift cots,llt'fdles wac inserted in their\'eins - alld thell slowly thl' bloodwas drained jrom their bodies umilthey dir(!.

GOl'indo Chandramandl jorgetswho told him first. but when heheard that an amnest\' had bcenpledged to all rejugecs: he immedi­ately set off on the long H'alk home.IVilh his two tecn-ar::e daur::hlcrs hvhis side, Chandra~nalldl' lrudgedIhrough monsooll-drellched swamp­lands and past bUrtled-ollt \'illages.Whcn he neared his scrap of land,soldiers stopped him. As he watchedin helpless anguish, his daughterswere raped - again and again andagain.

He was about 3 years old, andhis mother was still in her teens.The\' sat on ground made muddYby t)/e steady drizzle oj Ihe sunun~rrains. The baby's stomach wasgrotesquely distel~ded, his feet swol­len, his arm no thicker than a man'sfinger. His mother tried to coax himto eat some rice and dried fish.Finally, the baby mourhed the foodfeebly, wheezed - and died.

... With the passing of time, the

m:lgnitude of the slaughter hasdiminished, but there has been nolessening in the bmtality of the Pak·istani Army. Last week. NEWS­\VEH:'S Loren Jenkins. who was inDacca the night that Gen, TikkaKhan's troops launched their cam­paign of murder, cabled the follow.ing report on conditions in EastPakistan now:

Four months after the first flushof bloodletting. East Pakistan stilllives in fear. But instead of beingthe cowering. groveling feJr thatthe army sought to instill. it is asullen fear tinged with quiet de­fiance and hate. It is a fear basedon the appreci:1tion of a very harshreality, not a fear that marks peo­ple of broken spirit Walking alonga Dacca street recently, I met ajournalist I had known before. Oureyes met and he nodded, but he ap­peared embarrassed. Glancing nerv­ously all around. he muttered, "MyGod, my God. Civilized man can­not describe the horror that has beendone." An hour later anotherfriend explained: "We have beenorde·red not to talk to foreign jour­nalists. We are scared. We live interror of the midnight knock on thedoor. So many people have beenkilled. So many more have disap­peared. And more vanish everynight."

One who vanished in the nightwas Mujib, who is now reportedly

held in prison in the western gar­rison town of Mianwali. A hero be­fore, Mujib has now become amartyr. For all his conspicuousfaults, he has become the symbolof Bengali patriotism. Yet Yahya,almost boastfully, told a recentvisitor, "My generals are pushingfor a military trial for Mujib andfor his execution, I have agreed andthe trial will be held soon." Nopolicy could be more short-sightedor more likely to harden Bengalire­sistance. As one Western diplomattold me, "Yahya is simply out ofhis mind. He still doesn't even un­derstand what the army has done.He thinks they can kill off a coupleof hundred thousand people, tryMujib for treason, force a return toorder and all will be forgotten. Thisis utter nonsense. These people willnot forget. ,.

Guerrilla Resistance

Indeed, the minds of Bengalis areemblazoned with the memories ofthese months of terror. Despite theterror, signs of resistance to thearmy creep up everywhere. InDacca, street urchins hawking thelocal papers slip mimeographedcommuniques from the govern­ment-in-exile into the newspapers.On ferry boats in the countryside.where all passengers are under thewatchful eyes of the anny, strang-

ers sidle up and whisper of mas­sacres or point out areas in thedense Madhupur jungle where the"Mukti Bahini," or LiberationArmy, is hiding. All over the coun·try, the resistance is rapidly takingon the earmarks of a classic guer·rilla terrain reminiscent of SouthVietnam's Mekong Delta - a laby­rinth of sunken paddies, jute fieldsand banana groves.

That the Mukti Bahini are cap­italizing on their few assets isbrought home daily. They have cutthe key railroad to Dacca from theport of Chittagong and have alsosevered the parallel road. Morethan 60 per cent of the interior'sfood supplies moves over thoseroutes and there is virtually no pros­pect of restoring them until peaceis also restored. The rebels' recentcoup in blowing up three powerstations in Dacca has underscoredthe point that no city or village issafe from their campaign to bringthe economy to a halt. Most im­portant, however, is the fact thatthe rebels now seem to be winningwhat every guerrilla needs - thesupport of the populace. Twomonths ago, villagers in Noakhaliprovince pleaded with the MuktiBahini not to blow up a bridge be­cause it would bring army retalia­tion. Last week, those same villag­ers sought out the guerrillas andasked them to destroy the bridge ....

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22, 1971 THE DAILY NEWS, JUNE 1971

The strongest evidence is that 5million East Pakistanis have takenthe terrible decision to abandontheir homes and have fled on footacross the border into India. Thisstarving, choiera-ridden mass isbeing augmented by 100.000 terri­fied refugees each day.

If things are now "normal" inEast Pakistan, as Yahya Khan'sgauleiters claim, why are new refu­gees still inundating India and ear­lier ones refusing to go home ....?'

·'Eyewitness reports, one moreghastly than another. continue tofilter out of East Pakistan, tellingof the massacre of the Bengali peo­ple by the Pakistani army.

~aturally, the military regime ofPresident Yahya Khan denies it iscommitting selective genocide. Butevidence mounts that it is cold­bloodediy murdering minority Hin­dus. Bengali separatists, intellec­tuals, doctors. professors. students­in short, those who could lead aself-governing East Pakistan.

security reasons, I will men-no names) on the

organization of resistance in"Yes", he: said, "the libera-

tion of Desh is or-ganized; yes, it its visitorsin Bengali territory". I do not men·tion my doubts to him; it is not theday to do so. Anyway, when asituation is desperate, it appears thatit is known as the dawn. In themeantime, the long night is notover: a million who werepunished for misfortune byextermination of their vital forces.No, no, the Pakistanis do not wantto kill all of us. my interlocutorcorrects me; they have just a five­point programme: do withBengla Dcsh. the Awamithe students, the worlel' and pro­fessors.

" ... During these accounts ofwhich I havc made a summary, Iput only onc question:

"At the most, I can understandthat repression can be conceivedas a means to rule, but why this re­fined cruelty, why this systematicextermination? In any case the Pak­istanis cannot hope to wipe out theBengali people...."

"They wanted to terrorize us."the young girl said.

'They do not wish to kill the peo­ple," the man replied. "They wantbeggars to live".

By RICHARD LiSCIA

There are three of them. A man,in his forties with thenatural of the in-habitants of the sub-continent. Andtwo young girls, one sixteen, frailand slender whose darkflashes; the other: a child thir­teen. But her childhood ended onthe of March 25-26.

arc three among the oneand fifty Bengalis who

demonstrated silently infront of the World Bankv. here a loan to Pakistan is beingnegotiated at present. Pakistan haseconomic problem: the genocide iscosting it (tx) much ... :.

\Vc know of\ly too well what ishappening in Bengal, thanks to theaccounts that were published in thedaily press, and particularly in theAng()-Saxon newspapers which re-

strict professional tr~lditions

do not allow a genocide to passunder silence because it is takingplace 10.000 kilometres from theirfrontiers, or because the price ofcarrots has gone up.

The Flies and the Stench

~fy interlocutros did not come tosee me to talk politics. Through akind of inherent defect of which Iam now ashamed, I asked the man

THE NEH' YORK TIA1ES, THURSDAY, AUGUST 5. 1971

'ajrl:s~lan

shelter from the blistering' with immense personal sympathy,sun the torrential rain. I saw to cope with the human tidal wave­refugees still streaming along the and to do so on a budget of oneroads unable to find even a resting rupee a day - about 13 cents perplace. I saw miserable Indian vii· human.lagers sharing their meager food It is now clear that famine willwith the latest frightened and further devastate East Pakistanhungry arrivals. I saw thousands this fall, and that millions more willof men, women and babies lined up, seek refuge in an India alreadywaiting patiently under the sun for staggering under the burden....hours to get their rations. Thesepitiful few ounces of rice, wheatand dahl provide a level of nutri·tion so low that it will inevitablycreate protein breakdown, liver ill-ness, and a variety of other dis-eases in addition to the cholera,pneumonia, bronchitis that are al-ready rampant. I saw Indian reliefofficials struggling aod

culated campaign to decimatethem or to drive them out of theirvillages and over the border intoIndia.

Part of the time I traveled with aCanadian parliamentary delegation.We saw babies skin stretched tight,bones protruding, weeping womenwho told us they would rather dietoday in India than return to EastPakistan after the tragedies theyhad witnessed, total wretchednessof refugee camps, and the unbe·lievable magnitude of this forcedhuman migration - 6.7 millionrefugees pouring into India withina matter of four months.

I saw Indian villages deluged bymasses of destituteavailable inch crammed

BY Atvl1\' TOFFLER, Author

A planetary catastrophe is takingplace in Asia, a human disaster somassive that it could bathe the fu­ture in blood, not just for Asians,but for those of us in the West aswell. Yet the response of the globalcommunity has been minimal atbest.

I have just ·returned from Cal­cutta and the border of East Pakis­tan, where I conducted interviewswith refugees avalanching intoIndia as a result of the West Pakis­tani's genocidal attack on them.Since March 25, West Pakistanitroops have bombed, burned, lootedand murdered the citizens of EastPakistan in what can only be a cal-

13

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JUNE 1971

tions andtions.

The e!e.cuc~ns.which were honest and demoresul ted in the of Sheikh

Rahman and his There were two democratic altematives to take either to transfer Pakistan inua federal union in which the eastern section will bheaded Sheikh Mujib as Prime and itwestern section Mr. who won the electionJ

or Pakistan to remain in its fonner form and th.winner of of votes inSheikh to become the Prime l\1inister. Nonethe two alternatives was followed. Those who have powelin their in West have instead resorted tcthe force of arms instead of to the \\111 of the andthus there was catastrophe.

The was ilia t the army was to crush the seces·sionists. In East Pakistan did not incline towardssecession except when it was to her that the

in the country did not depend on the will of thebut on the will of the domineering group,

one thousand miles away. Who approves of v.ithinsuch a country? Whatever the case may it has beencertified that Pakistan's entity in the form wanted by itsfounders and supporters, is not fit to remain. It is anartificial construction and any artificial is doomedto vanish.

AKSAM (ANKARA). JUNE 1971

"Yahya Khan has claimed tha t the are pre-vented by India from returning to East Pakistan. It isa fact that Yahya Khan's claim is not true. India hastried its best to facilitate the return of the refugees totheir homeland. Now we are having the question:do not the refugees want to go back? The answer canbe the recent happenings in East All world newscoverage shows that there had been in theregion. The of journalists, whose impartiali tycannot be questioned, were horrifying. Perhaps YahyaKhan has secured order by killing the people whoclaimed their rights. But now East Bengal is beingabandoned. Khan's methods have come to aof no return....

"The and re-sulted in the insecurity of life and of the peo-ple and them of their freedom. thesepeople hunger, and cholera totheir own homeland."

Mohammed Nakkah

Had the late Mr. Mohammed Ali Jinnah come to lifeand see what is in Pakistan and in whatway his dream is true, would he beand or what he had done?

Five million Pakistanis from East have fledfrom Mohammed Ali Jinnah's heaven after if'cnanll2 into hell for them . . . have Bed to West

India. enemy totheirs. . . in tentsor in the open rather than in their homes.

even and cholera to death in thehands of their ... and the enemy opened itsarms to them in of space for its ownpeople....

This is some of the fruits Muslims out of aMuslim country improvised for them by Mohammed AliJinnah and his supporters. It is the embodiment of evi­dence that the element of religion cannot be the base for

foundation of a state. It is geography (land andneighbours), language and a suitable regime which arethe strongest foundations. Pakisumi Bengalis foundrefuge and shelter with Indian Bengalis, while theyfound fire and gunshots from their co-citizens - WestPunjabis....

As for religious emotions and traditions, are cap-able of development. How often dissensions (due to hu­man partiality) have taken place within one religion.There is not one evidence that religion was ever a divid­ing fence between peoples, such as the existence of twoor more religions in one country, region or area. TheIndian sub-continent itself is an example to that eversince ancient times.

The dispute, "",...""",,",01"

ent religions in one is not always moredangerous and more violent than disputes which some­times divide members of one religion.

In any case, we do not believe (according to our his­torical knowledge) that Hindus have killed in a fewweeks Muslims (or vice versa), as Pakistanis have killedtheir brother Pakistanis in the last few weeks. For, ac­""",..nlT1'''' to reports, civil war resulted in the death of300,000 This is apart from the caused tothe foundation of Pakistan which is hard (if notsible) to What is the fault of East Pakistan peo-

The President of Pakistan told them to have elec-

14

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SCIENCE 1971

In the meantime the influx of has anenormous burden on and added to the emotionaland volatile situation on the border...."

Muslim of East Pakistani md,e~mden(~andHindus who have been killed because

are Hindu.The cmTe,pcmdlent, ....... ""."'.,•.7

Pakistan for ..................,.. ,in order to his

little reason to doubt the of his ~lXl''-'';'.U.

" and that the of East Pakistan is com-oou,nde!d. by the ruthless methods of the West Pakistanisoldiers. President Khan must at all costs see thatsuch excesses as Mr. Mascarenhas are sto,ppOO.

The Pakistani President has offered to take backuine but very few are to want to go backat least until there are assurances that the has

awakened in recent to thethe influx of East

pf()mloted this mass exodus? Hithertoof information have been out of

tJa.ustan, and we guess what was

"The world hasof the n ......hl,"".......

Pakistani retuRl~

It is three months since the .....f'......"'..."

after the Pakistan cracked down on the East Ben-bid for autonomy. Instead of it has

swollen to Three weeks ago the num-ber of as Now it is

there.Now a COI're:ioondlent

himself a Westof whnt he saw in East and he makes these

that the Army has killed thousands of civiliansand burned dO\\Tl villages, that the toll includes both

BUENOS AIRES HERALDAPRIL 4, 1971

A.lRESJ THE EVENING NEWS (PORT OF16,1971

JUNE

JULY 6,1971THE EVENING STAR,

"In these times when fabulous sums areto explore the universe, it is indeed that the richnations should be doing so little to help relieve theling suffering which millions of human beings are under­going in East Pakistan and India.

Yesterday, India's Prime Minister Mrs. IndiraGandhi, told her parliament that India may have to passthrough hell because of the influx of millions of EastPakistani refugees but eventually the entire interna­tional communi ty would also suffer 'the consequences' ofdevelopments growing out of the three-month-old civilstrife in East Pakistan... ."

"It seems clear beyond any shade of doubt now thatthe Army has been guilty of the indiscriminate slaughterof women and children in East Pakistan, India's chargeof genocide may not be so exaggerated as it seemed atfirst. Correspondents who have seen events in EastPakistan for themselves report that hundreds of innocentcivilians have been slain by troops of the central govern­ment. Yet they have seen only a fraction of the hor-ror " .

" Yet President Yahya Khan's singlemind-edness in attempting to crush the people of East Pakis­tan to sustain the illusion of national unity will earnhim a place in the halls of infamy, next to GenghisKhan "

"New Zealand should quickly appeal to Pakistan tothe bloodshed. according to the strict letter

of diplomatic law, it is none of our business. Wedon't like being accused of poking into others' domesticaffairs. Yet in all conscience the scale of killing demandswe do sornel~hlJt1j'{.

"The reports out of East Pakistan suggestslaughter to an degree as President Yah-ya Khan's seeks to mend with savage indiscrimi-nate force the fracture that has sundered the nation...."

THE DOMINION APRIL 6, 1971"The arrival of 6 million East Pakistani with

thousands more coming daily, is a potential tragedy forIndia as well as for the unfortunates who have fled thedevastation of Pakistan's civil war.

For India, the cost of care of such St8lj'{j'{ennj'{numbers of refugees to be immense-severalhundreds of millions of dollars that an overburdenedeconomy can ill afford. The $50-million international aideffort for the refugees has been described by Prime Min­ister Gandhi as "pitiable and a tenth of what is re-

" and no one has refuted her... ."

15

Courtesy of MMR Jalal

NE~VS APRIL 5, 1971 DAGENS NYHETERJUNE 1971

" ... If the situation as it is now, thereare two courses. One is that the resistancemovement led the Awami will crumble be-fore the modern of the Central Governmentforces. The other is that the of the resistancemovement will shift from the moderate Awami Leagueto the radical National Awami Party, and that a long anddark internal confrontation will continue - through asort of people's war, with all of the people participating.

Even in the case of the former course, at least rHH~Cl'\.'(:)'

resistance East Pakistan probably will andin any case, the of distrust and hate have beenincreased. Although national unification was considerednecessary because Pakistan contains heterogeneous peo­ples and cultures, such unification becomes only

the agreement of the peoples.'

"The is now in its fourthmonth. The and hunted are still ",h·,o"rnn..

across the border into India. There is no limit to thebrutality of the Pakistani military dictatorship - veryfew of the terror victims belong to the group ofleaders whom the aggressors are trying to eradicate. Alsothe common man falls victim to the 'final sol u tion' whichthe Pakistani obsessed by power, is to forcethrough as the terrible climax to decades of systematicmisgovernment. Scenes which are a daily occurrencealong the border between East and India exposethe miserable lies about the 'return to normalcy' \"'ithwhich the dictatorship is trying to camouflage its crime

its fellow men...."

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE JULY 1-1, 1971

"We had hoped that President Yahya Khan's recentn''''"\n''\,e-o of a political settlement heralded the st.art of amove toward the reconciliation so urgently needed inEast Pakistan.

Unhappily the evidence continues to mount that thePakisi.<"ln Army's ruthless suppression of the East Ben­galis and harassment of the remaining Hindu populationis stilI not over. And refugees are still fleeing across theborder into India to join the 6,000.000 already there.GuerriHa resistance in East Bengal is so far on a limitedscale. But it is sufficient to give the \Vest Pakistani

a pretext for continuingSurely President Yahya and his milit.ary gOV£.'rnor in

East Pakistan, Gen. Tikka Khan. must S{'€ that no rec­onciliation is possible until the Arrny returns to bar­racks and the population c.an live (ree from (earof reprisals and persecution. \\'hat pros'Pe<-~t is there ofDeI"Suaa.ln2 the refugees to return until a climate of se­curity is assured?

The longer a political settlement is deferred. the lessthere is of the unity of the two

of Pakistan 'in the-term."

CHICAGO DAILY JULY 1971

attack on the rebellious Eastwhole d ties and

theircountry is almost be-

condi tion where their wasted bodies can absorb pro­teins. The Indian Red Cross will administ.er the pro­gram.

The savagery ofPakistanis - ""v\".V'-'V

7.5 millionbelief...."

"The United Nations t<:l'l'\PI"f1Pf'lrV Fund ismassively .......L" ......'''.. starvation among East Pakis-

tan's children.UNICEF to

young children and women - with 311'2 ouncesof high food a day. There will be centerslor the children who must be back to a

16

Courtesy of MMR Jalal

CHRIST WELT' APRIL 1971

Aside from financial the presence ofthe in such numbers poses a threat to India'sinternal Moslem face resentmentamong India's dominant Hindus. And the appearanceof Hindu refugees helps build up Indian feeling againstthe Pakistani talk of a possible newIndia-Pakistan war. Ominously, it is noted that the 1965war with Pakistan over Kashmir cost less than mil-

a fraction of the cost of therefugees.

For the need is two-fold: A massive increase ininternational aid for the and the creation ofconditions in East Pakistan to their early ..,.,""" ........''-ation...."

"Pakistan is of Cain andAbel to an What is inEast Pakistan now is a thousandfold fratricide.... The

.......UlU. ...lV.. of East Pakistan of theirmen, women and occurred first. Nobody whosaw the TV film out of East Pakistan last weekwill forget the body of the bathed in blood.One waits in vain for a denial. If what was shown on thescreen was true, then the military leaders in Pakistanshould react as as in the same way asdid the US in Lieut. CaUey and his crimesin Vietnam. This is not a moral but a

The drain on India's financial and administrative re-sources could put a serious in the vast nation's

efforts to its economy. The effective-ness of economic-aid programs sponsored by the United

States and other well-off countries could be

DAILY Jl,fA.IL (SIERRA LEONE), JUNE 16,1971 DAILY NATION (NAIROBI) JUNE 1971

" .... Pakistan has the first moral and respon-sibility to rehabilitate these people and the soonef allconcerned whether Pakistanis or foreigners, make itpossible to repatriate the refugees back to East Pakistan,the sooner will concrete rehabilitation work begin.

long-standing international disputes, thecurrent situation in the Indian sub-continent, high­lighted recent developments in East Pakistan, Uf­gently calls fOf a humanitarian to enable thoseEast Pakistanis who have abandoned their 'homes andcountry since the beginning of the civil war, to be ab­sorbed back into normal life as soon as .I-o'V'~A"I!C".

element of procrastination only adds more difficulties toan already comple"problem...."

"Fat vultures brood over the 'i"a\J'Qf7tr...n towns of Easttesjtim~:my to the which took

savage crackdown onngrlunlg has died down for the

time with the routed,but what may become known as the year of the vulturein East is not ended. Famine now stalks this

land of disaster... ,"

"In the stories of crucification is a portion about theof Jesus Christ of which I was reminded this

(June 15). The religious leaders had asked,Jesus a question and when he had given his answer, herewas the classic remark: what need we further witness?

do not think the world needs further witnesses for itbe convinced that something abnormal has been

in Pakistan. I have always had the feeling thatthere was more behind the policies and actions of

Pakistani authorities. I have had a sneaking feelingwhat last March had been coflteInpJlau!d

and that Sheikh Rahman and his Awami....-...."'b ........ were only an excuse. There has never been anydenial tha t there has been imbalance in Pakistani society

the disadvantage of East Pakistan. It cannot be deniedSheikh Mujib and his Awami enjoy over-

,.,10.."'1 "'................4> of the of East Pakistan. It is11 I to ,~"" to remember that the Government of Presi-

Khan has not once disputed the gerlUlllenlessthe elections or the validity of the resolution which ledthe crisis. I think that people have 1""' ....."'+-+""....

the elections were for the Constituent Assembly andit was Ali Bhutto of West Pakistan who refused to

in the AU this makes me believe that Westt"aJit!.SltmllS are in the of which

will cow East Pakistanis for all time... ,"

Courtesy of MMR Jalal

HONGJUNE 1971

THE JUNE

llnlr1lSPUlted leader of East Pakistan~;a5u,'C",has been the of tena-

the militarism of WestGeneral Khan who is not

oP[)()SE~ to the and to themation of the East Pakistan but who in prac-

has ordered the extermination of his adversaries ...On 25th March the forces of General Khanbegan ... the most horrible massive which

can remember in this of Asia."... In this Indira Gandhi's India has

an role. The havefled to the land of Maba tma Gandhi and their numbertouches five million. Daily, 8 hundred thousand personscross the frontier to their lives. The Governmentof \\'ithout in the internal affairs ofPakistan, has and continues to give to thepersecuted, within the of humanism. De-spite Khan's Nehru's successor con-tinues with her of to those whoare to escape massacre...."

ZAJ.IBIA DAILY lv/AILJUNE 14, 1971

"\\te feel the whole world must awaken to the realitiesof the conflict in regard to the wanton destruction ofhuman life by tanks and shells, famine and disease. TheGovernment of President Yahya Khan is try'ing to forcethe East Pakistanis to accept its authority by force Eastand West Pakistan are separated from each other athousand miles.... Since the conflict started a fewmonths ago, thousands of people have died fromhunger and disease. The exact number is not known andmay never be known. There have been accusations of

the Pakistan Government This bru-tality may in the end subdue the people of East Paki­stan. But one wonders whether this win unity...."

massa-

i\1A Y 30, 1971

, APRIL 8, 1971

ZEITUNG

ere...."

4tFor hundreds of years, the name of \Jt.:.IlAKU..ll:l

has echoed as a for

In the 20th it seems a Pakistani namesake ofthe killer is determined to out~do hiscesser.

Pakistani General Tikka Khan - with modernknown as the of rebellious East Pakistan - iscornmla.ndiI1I~ fierce and Pathan who are9""1"""""'11'I' wild in a fearsome blood bath.

There is evidence of ..........-iI,,,.less of of rape, of n ..".ct;h,t";",,,,

and for senior army V&U\;~&v.

4t... The fertile land on the Ganges is now a colonyof the 'master race' from the Over three and ahalf million Bengalis have already chosen to live as refu­gees rather than bear their lot as the enslaved. But noone in India knows how these millions are to be fed,housed and cared for. The refugee problem bids fair tolead to war ...

"The arrogance of the West Pakistani poli ticians, theexploitation of the country in the familiar colonial man­ner, had been engendering a pent up urge for freedomamong the Bengalis ...

"One thing is certain - there can be no question atall, at least for decades to come, of peaceful coexistenceon a footing of equality in what may pass for a demo­cratic state. The final split-with or without violence­is bu t a question of time...."

LA METROPOLE

" of diverse nationalities carried up to theWest more and more alarming news on the dramaticevolution of the rebellion in East Pakistan. Tens of thou­sand, hundred thousands even are to have beenkilled in the actions ordered by Karachi...."

18

Courtesy of MMR Jalal

JUNE»

Lewis

nnlnlr.n in the \Vest has been slow tonow is one to feel a sense of ur-

gency in the calls for action (rom relief andcharities. Yet the root elements in the the deathand destruction in East have been known formany weeks.. ,.

Civil and communal war has killed many thousandsof ch·Uians. No one will ever know how many.but disinterested observers have the as asseveral hundred thousand.

have killed each other because of animositiesof race. politics and no isfr~ of guilt. But the of death and hatredhas lx>tm the Pakistani Army. And its killing has beenselective: according to reliable from inside EastPakistan. the have been intel-leduals and leaders of stu·den ts, wri tel's....

of Newthe state and

Ne'w York and the '-""""A".'''''''some idea of the

now in Eas t tha t the ..... t .....,~

poorer and the area of India into whichis more than New York.

British sourc't'S estimate that between (our and fivemillion East Pakistanis have crossed into India and that100.000 more arc every Before the totalcould be seven or million.

The an' in a country that has diffi-culty feeding its{'lf. one afflicted overTXlPulatjon andlmernployn~ent. There arc no jobs for the refugees. andthen.' is no farm land. They are starting to filter into

a city ""here one million people regularly sleepon the pavement and more millions have no runningwater or se\\'age systems.

07T.-U\'A CITIZEN I OTT...HrA), JUi\'E 15, 1971

""'hat happens inside a country normally is regardedas an internal affair. But the Pakist.an civil \\'ar is nolong-PI' an internal affair. for two major reasons.

"One is that Pakistan is seeking economic aid fromoutside which. if given unconditionally, could be used bythe military go\'(~rnment to strengthen itself rather thanmeet the aspirations of the people.

"The second is that the flow of close to six millioninto India has placed an burden

on that country's economy."The world community should move to prevent an

explosion while there is time. Conditions must be cre­ated in Pakistan that permit the refugees to return homeand lead normal lives....

THE NEvV YORK TIJt;!ES, AUGUST 6, 1971

"The resignation of fourteen diplomats of Bengali ori­gin from the Pakistani embassy in Washington and theUnited Nations mission here offers further evidence ofthe depth and bi tterness of the division between the twoPakistans, East and West. The responsible positions thedefectors have held in the Pakistani

include the economic counselor of the and thenumber two man in the U.N. mission-refutes theof Pakistani President Khan that the ...., ....... """"', ....uprising is merely the work of "mischief mongers, sabo­teurs and infiltrators." It also casts doubt on his claimthat the resistance has been 'crushed.' . , ,"

19

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AUGUST 1, 1971

can press is a reminderman does not have to in order to

it. Most of the world remembers the silence whilemiHions of civilians at the hands of the Nazis.There was the excuse that no one knew what wason in the concentration camps. The and tor-ment of the East Pakistanis may not be tothe extermination of the but it is bad.... ...""......... And no one can say, 'I didntt know.' ...

"It is the most since theof the Nazis in a Uni ted

States official on the situation in East Pakistan. Thestatistics are At least andas many as 700,000 more than v",'vv.v~,v

wi th addi tiona! millions UA':'~A';H.C:U

more than 50,000 a stillthousands stiB dying, the victims of

ease and the of the West Pakistan army." ... The human chronicled in the Amed-

THE PALAVER (ACCRA), tJUNE 20.1971 SIA,U RATH ), JUNE 2,1971

"India is now being forced by humani tarian consid·eration to care for the refugees in East Pakistan althoughshe was not responsible for the massacre of the innocen tpeople of the BangIa Desh.

"The world must be shocked by the harrov,ing ac­counts of genocide perpetrated against the people of theBangia Desh ... and must raise its voice in anguish toexpress its sense of ou trage a t the crimes commi tted bythe increasingly unpopular military junta against thedefenceless people of East Bengal.

"In the name of the humanity \\'e appeal to all freedomloving peoples of the world to support India in cash andkind in the gigantic task of caring for the refugeE's whohave now become a burden and liability on India.

"But again and again, we warn the unpopular militaryregime of East Pakistan tha t genocide is not the end ofa people's legitimate aspiration for political freedom; itis not even the beginning of the end but rather the endof the beginning of more determined effort to fightagainst the forces that oppress.. , ."

", , , Pakistan's offer of the so-called amnesty to tilE'was like them as criminals and "' ....."Or...........

summons to them for their return rather than \'I.'plcY'lml

them back. This wiII result in their away and intheir being a continued burden on India.. Pakistan's offer\I,'as far from meeting the of East forpolitical identity and farther still from the solution ofthe problem, , . ,"

20

Courtesy of MMR Jalal

1971

Cordon of Fire

and diarrhea that ateom­disease, Now officials fear

andto exact

"Theany more.

because whatfrom is even worse. Eachown horror story ofor other cOlmrrlittl~d

Pakistanithe Bengaliment One couple how soldierstook their two grown sons outsidethe house. bayoneted them in thestomach and refused to allow any-one to near the bleeding boys,who hours later. Another wo-man that when the soldierscame to door, she hid her chil-dren in her bed; but thembeneath the blanket. the soldiersopened fire, killing two and wound­ing another. According to one re­port from the Press Trust of India(P.T.!.). 50 refugees recently fledinto a jute field near the Indian bor­der when they heard a Pakistaniarmy patrol approaching. "Sudden­ly a six-month-old child in itsmother's lap starting crying," saidthe P.TJ. report. "Failing to makethe child silent and apprehendingthat the refugees might be attacked,the woman throttled the infant todeath."

The evidence of the bloodbath isall over East Pakistan. Whole sec­tions of cities lie in ruins from shell­ing and aerial attacks. In Khalish­pur, the northern suburb of Khulna,naked children and haggard womenscavenge the rubble where theirhomes and shops once stood.Stretches of Chittagong's HazariLane and I\1aulana Showkat AliRoad have been wiped out. The cen­tral bazaar in Jessorc is reduced totwisted masses of corrugated tin andshattered walls. Kushtia, a city of40,000, now looks, as a World Bankteam reported, "like the morningafter a nuclear attack." In Dacca,where soldiers set sections of theOld City ablaze with flamethrowersand then machine-gunned thousandsas they tried to escape the cordon offire, nearly 25 blocks have been

arms. They could not lie down be­cause the water came up to theirknees in places. There was notenough shelter, and in the morningthere were always many sick anddying of pneumonia. We could notget our serious cholera cases to thehospital. And there was no one totake away the dead. They just layaround on the ground or in thewater," High-pressure syringes havespeeded vaccination and reducedthe cholera threat, but camp healthofficials have already counted about5,000 dead, and an estimated 35,000have been stricken by the convulsive

out between East and West Paki- No More Tearsstan, and the still pour in.No one can count them precisely. Ufe has been made even morebut Indian officials, miserable for the by thecamp registrations. monsoon rains. that turnedthey come at the rate of 50,000 a many camps into muddy lagoons.day, Last week the estimated total Reports Dr, Mathis Bromberger, apassed the 7,500.000 mark. Should German physician working at a

famine hit East Paki- camp outside Calcutta: "There werestan. as now seems likely, India thousands of outfears that the number may double Ii in the open all night thebefore the exodus ends. rain, Women with babies in their

Hundreds of thousands of theseare still wandering about the coun­tryside without food and shelter.Near the border, some have takenover schools to sleep in; others staywith villagers or sleep out in thefields and under the trees. Most areshepherded into refugee campswhere they are given ration cardsfor food and housed in makeshiftsheds of bamboo covered withthatched or plastic roofing. Thoughno o'ne is actually starving in thecamps, food is in short supply, par­ticularly powdered milk and babyfood,

into IndiaIt has beenwar broke

Over

stan continues toIndia: an endless ..... ,,, ..,........ ;.,,..,'"'of refugees with a few tin kettles,cardboard boxes and ragged clothes

on their heads, carrying theirchildren and their old.

pad along barefooted. with theat their heels in the wet

are silent, except for a

WEARY CHILD AT INDIAN CAMP NEAR CALCUTIA

Another million lives, if need be,

child whimpering now and then, buttheir faces tell the story. Many aresick and covered with sores. Othershave cholera, and when they die bythe roadside there is no one to burythem. The Hindus, when they can,put a hot coal in the mouths of theirdead or singe the body in lieu ofcremation. The dogs, the vulturesand the crows do the rest. As therefugees pass the rotting corpses,some put pieces of cloth over theirnoses.

The columnnever ends, day orfour months since

21

Courtesy of MMR Jalal

A Pakistani mother and her four small children wait for food and shelter.

area no larger than Florida.

Harsh ReprisalsThe Hindus, who account for

three·fourths of the refugees and amajority of the dead, have borne thebrunt of the Moslem military's hat­red. Even now, Moslem soldiers inEast Pakistan will snatch away aman's Iullgi (sarong) to see if he iscircumcised, obligatory for Mos­lems; if he is not, it usually meansdeath. Others are simply roundedup and shot. Commented one highU.S. official last week: "It is themost incredible, calculated thingsince the days of the Nazis in Po­land....

worse than Viet N am. But we willwin in the end."

Estimates of the death toll in thearmy crackdown range from 200,­000 all the way up to a million. Thelower figure is more widely accep­ted, but the number may never beknown. For one thing, countlesscorpses have been dumped in rivers,wells and mass graves. For another,statistics from East Pakistan areeven more unreliable than statisticsfrom most other places (see TIMEEssay). That is inevitable in a placewhere, before the exodus

78 million 80% of.... ""'. '~'''''' were into an

Fear and deep sullen hatred areeverywhere evident among Bengalis.Few will talk to reporters in public,but letters telling of atrocities anddestroyed villages are stuck in jour­nalists' mailboxes at Dacca's HotelIntercontinental. In the privacy ofhis horne one night, a senior Bengalibureaucrat declared: "This will bea bitter, protracted struggle, maybe

bulldozed clear, leaving open areas tea crop is salvageable. More thanset incongruously amid jam-packed 300,000 tons of imported grain sitsslums. For the benefit of foreign I in the clogged ports of Chittagongvisitors, the army has patched up: and Chalna. Food markets are stillmany shell holes in the walls of! operating in Dacca and other cities,Dacca University, where hundreds but rice prices have risen 20% inof students were killed. But many four months.signs remain. The tank-blasted Raja­bagh Police Barracks, where nearly1,000 surrounded Bengali copsfought to the last, is still in ruins.

Millions of acres have been aban­doned. Much of the vital jute ex­port crop, due for harvest now, liesrotting in the fields; little of that aI­

harvested is able to reach thea small part of this year'smills.

22Courtesy of MMR Jalal

In Sarch of Home and ShelterChristian SCience Monitor, May 14, 1971

Courtesy of MMR Jalal

THE EVENING STAR, D.C., WEDNESDAY, MAY 12, 1971

10 FlyVulluresPakistani Calamity Defies .JL.J''-'.l.I...... .I.

March 25. That night the armyreared out of its barracks, and EastPakistan was aflame.

By MORT ROSENBLUM

Associated Press

Dac.:ca, East Pakistan

Vultures too full to fly perchalong the Ganges River in grim con­tentment. They have fed on per­

. haps more than a half million bodiessince March.

Civil war flamed through Paki­stan's eastern wing on March 25,pushing the bankrupt nation to tneedge of ruin. The killing and devas­tation defy belief.

A tiny child gazes at a break inthe lavender carpet of water hya­cinths in a nearby,pond where hisparents' bodies were dumped.

Toll Could Be ~ lilIion

No one knows how many Bengalifamilies the army machine gunnedor how many migrant settlers Ben­gali secessionists slashed to death.But estimates of the total dead startat six figures and range to over amillion.

In the port city of Chittagong, ablood-spattered doll lies in a heap

of clothing and excrement in a jutemill recreation club where Bengalisbutchered 180 women and children.

Reporters were banned from EastPakistan from March 26, when 40newsmen were bundled out andstripped of their notes and film,until the government escorted in aparty of six on a conducted tourf\tay 6-11.

From visible evidence and eye­witnesses questioned out of officialearshot, the following accountemerged:

Throughout March. Sheikh Muji­bur Rahman's Bengali dominatedAwami League harrassed the mili­tary government with a noncoopera­tion campaign demanding autonomyand more benefits from \Vest Paki­stan.

Bengalis killed some West Paki­stanis in flurries of chauvinism.

Mujib's party had won a majorityin the National Assembl~ electionsand he was Pakistan's major politi­cal figure. But negotiations in Daccawith President Agha MohammedYahy'a Khan broke down. and Yah­ya flcw back to West Pakistan

rebellion planned for 3 o'clock thenext morning. They insisted that thearmy killed no one but those whofired at the soldiers,

Professors Executed But other officers said tbe rebel-lion plot was only an assumption_

Soldiers assaulted two dormitories Eyewitnesses said at least hun-at Dacca University where radical dreds of the victims were womenBengali students made their head- and thousands were unanned civil­quaners. They used recoilless rifles, ians, gunned down indiscriminately.then automatic weapons and bayo- "I took firm action to preventnets. heavy casualties later," said the

They broke into selected profes- martial law governor, Lt. Gen. Tik­sors' and students' quarters. They ka Khan.executed some 14 faculty members, Dacca was brought under armyat least one by mistake. Altogether, control quickly, but word of themore than 200 students were killed. army action flashed through the

Am1Y units shelled and set fire province of 58,000 square miles andto two neWS~'1per offices, then set 75 million inhabitants. one of theupon the Bengali population in gen- ""orld's most densely populatedera!. More than a dozen markets areas.were set afire. and at least 25 blocks Thousands of Bengalis in thewere devastated in Dacca. army, police, militia and border

Accounts, projected from body forces revolted. Under the bannercounts at mass graves indicate about of Bangl~ Desh, the independentlO,O()() persons were shot to death Bengali state, the deserters andor burned to death the first few armed volunteers fought back, seiz­nights in Dacca. ing wide areas of the provinces be-

Official spokesmen contended that fore the 11.000 West Pakistani regu·the army went into action to stop a • lars could occupy them.

CHICAGO TRIBUNE, SATURDAY, JUNE 12. 1971

New IIrnly Terror in E. Pakistan ToldBy DENNiS NEELD

Calcutta

The Pakistani armv is incitingneighbor against neigh-bar in a ne;wave of terror sweeping East Paki­stan, refugees escaping to India reoport.

Hindus are bearing the brunt ofthe widescale killing, burning andlooting, and the troops are encour­aging the local populace to do thedirty work for them, the refugeessay.

Foreign relief workers who haveinterviewed hundreds of refugees inborder areas are convinced the Pak­istani government is determined tomake East Pakistan exclusivelyMoslem.

5 Million Refugees

Official Indian figures show 5,-

441,683 refugees have fled fromPakistan since the civil war inMarch and are coming at the rate ofabout 100,000 a day. A big new in­flux is anticipated as the army ex­tends its area of control.

The Rev. John Hastings, a Britishrelief worker who has spent 19 yearsin Bengal, said the army's tacticseverywhere follow a similar pat­tern:

Troops more into an area. Thelocal people are called together andtold to declare their loyalty either toPresident Mohammed Agha YahyaKhan or to Sheikh Mujibur Rah­man, jailed leader of the outlawedAwami League.

Few Risk Death

The Awami League got 73 percent of the vote in East Pakistan inthe general election last December,

but few will risk death by admitting i the way to India, surrounded andto having supported it. systematically butchered, the Rev.

The Bengalis then are ordered Mr. Hastings said.to weed out the 'traitors' and are He estimates from interviews withpromised a share of the loot if they survivors that 400 died in the mas­take the law into their own hands. sacre.The eight million Hindu Bengalis in Indian intelligence officers reportEast Pakistan are a natural target the Pakistani army now has 100,000for the violence of Moslem mobs. troops in the eastern province.

Hindu refugees tell of entire vil- The army has not succeeded inlages being burned, their daughters crushing all resistance.raped and kidnapped, and hundreds Several thousand Mukhti Fauj·massacred. Bengali freedom fighters - are in

Relief workers are told of troops camps along the borders. Guerrilladecapitating their victims rather raids are slowly increasing_ India isthan shooting them in order to save supplying small arms and trainingammunition and of children being bases although the government de-used for bayonet practice. nies this.

Tell of Massacre

One large group of Hindus es­caping from the industrial city ofKhulna was stopped by villagers on

24

Courtesy of MMR Jalal

areas, a half dozen Russian and U.S.Air Force cargo planes are airlifting1,000 refugees a day to a atMana. some 500 miles west intral India.

Another 5,000 are put aboardtrains for the same destination. Anestimated one-third of theseoff the trains as they pass thn!cUtla.

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE A/ONITOR. JUNE 16, /971

Be/ugee Tidal Wave,Poor Crowd UponPoor in Bengal

By HEt'RY S. HA)wARD I Pakistan.Staff correspondent of I "One grows a little desperate," he

The ChrislIan Science l'.ionilOr. . says, "People are dying like flies."

Knshnanagar, West Bengal "Some of them," he adds sadly,He is 29 years old and 101" man in "died right outside the gate of this

charge of a district of 2.4 million residence-an old man of exham·people. tion and a little child of cholera."

Now he has 600,000 destituterefugees on his hands, as well, in More police aid soughtNadia district. Some of them a1- ?vfr. Ghosh has requested helpready are ill with cholera. Others from Calcutta. We sat in his officeface the threat of disease. and listened as he dictated a long

You drive 70 miles from Calcutta report to his superiors. He needsto see this man. His name is D. K. more men to work in refugee camps,Ghosh. He is district magistrate of to handle rations, to build housing,Nadia. to do medical work. He was prom-

It is impossible to witness at any ised 1,000 helpers. None has yetone place the full enormousness arrived.of problems raised by the intrusion He also asked for more pOlice.of more than 5 million refugees into No more have appeared in Nadia.a countryside already poor and The great surge of refugees acrosscrowded. the border, he says, started May 24.

But Nadia provides a microcosm From early April until that dateof crisis viewed through the eyes of flow has been five or six thousandone hard-pressed Indian offica!. per day.

Slim and soft-spoken, Mr Ghosh Reception points, vaccination fa-tells you the story of a district that I cilities, and camps were handlinghas a 135-mile border with East I this number adequately.

fewer than a dozen -deaths (romcholera-the most prevalent killer.He points to new \vells for drinkingwater. 60 feet deep and sealed at thetop against contamination.

But open-pit latrines are danger­ously close by. Monsoons soon willinundate the area.

Administrators of Jarger perma­nent camps are not SO fortunate.

They have no choice but to push on. They seem to be fighting a losing Sleep In StnetsEventually they'll make it to Go- battle, overwhelmed by sheer num-

I N f 'J It is a miserable decision. Alreadypanpa agar camp, a ew ml es bers. But for the moment at least,t._ dB' a.. a.. '11 more people sleep in the streets ofut:yon an,aon, wuere tuey WI epidemic perils appear lo be dimin.receive initial help. The camp is lit- ishinr>. Calcutta than in any other city in

fi t:> the world.tie more than a flat shadeless eld Mass Immunizationnext to a school compound. There For those who stay aboard theare eight block-long rows of tents Indian medicaltcams have worked trains, however, the scheduled 21-and seven more rows of bamboo to exhaustion immunizing eVefjlOne hour trip normally takes two daysframework already in place await- in sight. Medical supplies, however, and the prospects are perhapsing arrival of canvass covering. are running short. And replacement equally bleak.

The officer in ch'lrge. R. C. Das. shipments sometimes are madden- Even if they are allotted a plotS.lyS he has 'only' IO.,WO evacuees ingly delayed. of land - as were refugees comingregistered _ ~.OOO crowded into the At Calcutta's Dum Dum Airport to India at the time of the partitiontents and thc balance finding shelter' a planeload of 8.000 cartons of vac· in 1947-they find it a desolate andas best they can in the surrounding cine was held tip seven hours while dry region compared with the fer·woods. a local Red Cross representative tile river basin from which they

'Better Toda~' dutifully inventoried the lot with a came.pencil stub and scratch pad. Officials admit the Mana reloca-

"Things are !"letter today th:m The haunting problem is \.,.hat to tion operation is only a stopgapyesterday." he explains. "Last night do with the hordes of people once measure that soon will be choked.we moved 9.000 out of here to an- they pass thn! the initial reception What will happen after that no oneother camp." camps. To relieve pres.sure in border kno\\'s.

Around the clock ne w refugees . .__._._. . _move in to replace those who havemoved on. Obvious cases of cholera.lnd others requiring emergencymedical treatment are sent on trucksto a hospital nearer to Calcutta, 50miles away.

Each person receives 400 gramsof rice, 50 grams of spices and 100grams of potatoes per day. Mothersand babies receive canned milk. Thehead of the family also receivesthree cents cash for each adult and1.5 cents for each minor per daywith which to buy food outside thecamp.

Says Das: "With the food andcash we give them, a person cansurvive. That's about all."

Disease Claims 300,000For many, of course, it is not

enough. Weakened by the arduousjourney and subjected for prolongedperiods to subhuman sanitary con­ditions, disease was bound to takeits toll.

An accepted estimate here is thatin the past two months, since thegreat exodus from East Pakistan be­gan, perhaps 300,000 persons havedied of disease and another 300,000have died of malnutrition. Two ba­bies born recently in Gopanpal Na­gar camp both died within hours.

Das admits his camp has beenextremely lucky, having, he says,

By JAMES FOSTERScflPP'S-Ho~'ard Slaff Wmer

THE JVASlflNGTON DAILY NEWS,TUESDAY. JUNE 22, /97/

S lionave Died

Petrapol

Like the muddy waters of theGanges, which many have justcrossed, the flood of. East Paki­stan refugees pouring into Indiathru this and other border pointsmoves with .1 terrible ceoainty andforce.

The IOtal 10 date is about tivemillion - give or take a million.Some officials say it is the biggestevacuation in history. So great isthe refuge_sO momentum that whena checkpoint becomes clogged theysimply spill around it. Indi'ln borderguards, exhibiling unusual compas·sion. make little attempt to haltthem.

The people are driven by a fearof the \Vest Pakistan army. Theysay it is commiting wholesale butch·ery in an effort to put down EastPakistan's bid to separate itself fromWest Pakistani control.

Behind them now and then a mor­lar is heard. On the move for days.they are desperJtely tired and hun·gry. Their eyes are glazed. Theyplod mechanicallY. Many are ill.Many died along the way.

.\fothers and babies drape shawlsover themselves against the punish­ing noontime sun. Others have um­brellas for shade. Fathers lug bed­ding and bJskets. Older childrencarry younger brothers and sisters.

The human river moves at a tor­tuous]y slow pace. It parts as a truckhonks its way against the tide. Somefall to the side to rest. Others can·tinue the march.

'Pakistan Panic: History's Biggest

Moment of Excitement

Upon passing thru the checkpointthere is a babble of excitement. Butlater they are silent once more. Allthey see is more endless road, towhere they are not sure.

Eight miles ahead is the town ofBanjaon. Its narrow, bumpy mainstreet is clogged with people, live­stock, vehicles, bicycles and two­wheeled carts pulled by humans andbullocks. Street profiteers offer foodand trinkets. The temptation is greatbut the refugees have little money.

25

Courtesy of MMR Jalal

THE NEW YORK TIMES. JUNE 197/

Easl islanMoslTran 0

cononay BadlCrip led

Burl

Easl Pakistan: Jln IJllien JlrllJy'InJposes lIs Will

fort to crush the Bengali indepen­dence movement.

Most of the foreign residents­diplomats, missionaries, business­men-also talk the way this mandoes now. They are bursting withthree months of pent-up anger andoutrage. And they are very eagerto tell what they know to those for­eign newsmen who were permittedto re-enter East Pakistan in the pastfortnight and travel around unes­corted for the first time since March25, when the army began its sup­pression campaign.

BY SIDNEY H. ScHANBERG about two million tons a year; this Another unknown is the long-runSpecial to The New York Times year it will probably be around impact of the exodus of the six mil-

Dacca three million. lion Bengalis who have fled to India.Their departure. which has cut food

Food scarcities are becoming se- Dock Laborers Hne Fled output and industrial production,rious in parts of East Pakistan. cash Apart from the transport mess, has also reduced consumption.is short in rural areas, jute factories ports such as Chittagong and Chal- Even in areas where rice is inare badly crippled and key road and na are also severely hampered by a reasoncbly good supply. cash israil communications continue to be lack. of warehouse space and by short and many villagers cannot af­disrupted by guerrillas. labor shortages because much of ford to buy enough, even at the re-

Nonetheless, most foreign eco- the work force has fled to the inte- duced prices at which the fleeingnomic experts here are convinced rior or to India. Hindu farmers are selling it.that the Government is willing, at Because of the port congestion. The main reason for the shortageleast for the immediate future, to the United States. which normally of money is that the Government'spay the severe economic priC'C of supplies East Pakistan with up to a rural public-works program hassupporting its army's occupation of million tons of food grains a year. been almost halted. Laborers whothe eastern region, which has been has temporarily suspended ship· used to make 60 cents a day buildingbadly damaged during the effort to ments. roads. irrigation canals and dikessuppress the Bengali autonomy The other major food-scarce area are jobless.movement. is the delta region on the Bay of All development work has

Informed foreign sources report Bengal that was devastated by the stopped. Government agriculturalthat their field trips have turned up cyclone last November that killed technicians and private irrigation­food shortages in some areas that several hundred thousand people well contractors are afraid to gocould become grave unless the dis- and destroyed most of the rich rice into the interior. Foreign consul­rupted transportation system im- crop there. Food stocks are low on tants and engineers are killing timeproved markedly. the islands and in the coastal areas. in their Dacca offices. Government

One problem a:ea is the nor: h- I although conditions are not as criti- officers. though open, are short ofwest, nor~ally ~ nce-~urpl~s ~eglOn cal as was originally feared because staff and doing no planning work.that suppltes nelghbonng dlstncts. some relief food has been delivered. Jute factories are operating at a

The fore~gn economists .say the Nevertheless. the foreign sources fraction of their former levels. Thenorthwest. ~s desolatc, With few said, unless the distribution system eastern region's jute, one of thefarmers VISible .. Most have appar- improves, the region could become mainstays of the national economy.~ntly.tled to Indl? to escape the P~k- a famine area. is Pakistan's biggest export and1stam Army, which has been trymg The Khulna district in the Ganges earner of foreign exchange.to suppress the Bengalis since March Della also has a food problem, the This was the economic picture25. sources said, because many Hindu found by the World Bank team that

Destroyed, Looted. Removed farmers and farm laborers have fled. toured East Pakistan recently toFood stocks in the northwest The minority Hindus have been par- study the prospects of peace and

have been either destroyed, looted ticular targets of the army, which stability as a requisite to the re­or taken out of the country, the pictures them as agents of India and' sumption of full-scale aid.foreign sources said. The situation enemies of this Moslem nation. The team, described by the for-has not reached the starvation level,they added, but people do not have THE NEW YORK TIMES. SUNDAY. JULY 4, 1971enough to eat and the real problemwill arise in two or three months.

"Right now," an economist said,"there are more likely a lot of hun­gry people than a lot of deadpeople." Dacca

The experts said that East Paki- "Doesn't the world realize thatstan as a whole had a two-month they're nothing but butchers?" askedsupply of food grains and that the a foreigner who has lived in Eastproblem was distributing it to the Pakistan for many years. "That theydeficit areas. killed-and are still killing-Bengalis

The railroad from Chittagong, just to intimidate them, to makeEast Pakistan's major port, to Dac- slaves out of them? That they wipedca is still cut and guerrilla activity out whole villages, opening fire atin the area is reported to be fairly first light and stopping only whenpersistent. The line normally carries they got tired?"70 per cent of the food grains im-I The foreigner, normally a calmpo.rted by East Pakistan. Major road, man, was talking about the Paki­bndges have also been blown. stani Army and the bloodbath it has

The region's usual rice deficit is inflicted on East Pakistan in its ef-

economists here as shocked,disconsolate, was reported to

have recommended that aid be with­held until a viable political solutionwas found and a realistic develop­ment plan was prepared by the mar­tial-law government.

The World-Bank coordinates anII-nation consortium that has beensupplying about SS()()..miUion a yearin aid on which Pakistan is heavilydependent. The United States chan­nels most of its aid-about $200­million a year-through the con­sortium.

How long Pak.istan will continueto support army activities in EastPakistan without the foreign aid isa subject of widespread discussionin the foreign community here.

Although foreign-exchange re­serves are low, the situation is notquite as crippling as had been as­sumed. One reason is Pakistan's uni­lateral declaration of a moratoriumon payments on her huge interna­tional debt. Another is that since thefighting began almost no importshave entered East Pakistan, so thegovernment has saved foreign ex­change. Finally, by coincidence.high inventories of raw materialsfor manufacturing had been accu­mulated in West Pakistan before thetrouble started.

In sum. the foreign economistsfeel that though Pakistan's economicposition verges on the desperate, itdoes not necessarily presage anearly end of the occupation of theeast.

Pakistan's military regime con­siders the foreign press implacablyhostile, but it is desperate to proveto the world its claim that order hasbeen restored, that the army is incontrol and that normality is fastreturning to East Pakistan.

The army is, indeed, in control,except for a few areas near theborder with India, where the MuktiFouj, or "Liberation Army," is ac­tive and growing more so-with aidfrom India.

Yet, East Pakistan is anythingbut normal. For this is dearly and

26

Courtesy of MMR Jalal

-SYDNEY H. SCHANBERG

NEW YORK TfAIES, TUESDAY, JULY 6, 197/

The """ "f«t TIIMS .hItY 6. 1m

Power station at Dacca(1) was reported knockedout. Plant at Comllb (2)was damaged last week.

said the power plant's main trans­former had been either destroyed orbadly dam'lged.

Although the loss of electricitywill cause considerable disnlption inDacca, il will not bring the havocthat would be caused in a Westerncapital. There are few tall buildingsand therefore few elevators. ~

The airport - used mostly forbringing troops in from West Paki·stan. which is 1,000 miles awayacross India-has an auxilia!)' pow­er supply. This is also presumablytrue of the major hospitals, includ­ing the military hospital,which hasbeen handling army casualties fromall parts of East Pakistan.

Workers HaH~ Gone

Factories in the Dacca area willbe the hardest hit, but since the up­heaval in March, the factories havebeen operating at a fraction of capa­city because most of the workershave fled either to the countrysideor to India.

The foreign sources here did notknow how wide an area had beenaffected by the blackout or whetherthe army had taken reprisals againstcivilians....

accaCuI 011

Power inBeporle

Most Dramatic Mon~

Bengali insurgents have knockedout t,he electrical power station inDacca, the East Pakistani capital,authoritative foreign sources re­ported here today. These sources,who received the information fromcontacts in Dacca. said the city hadbeen blacked out since Salllrdaynight.

Several foreil:n newsmen are inEast Pakistan, hut no news of theatta:::k has come out of Dacca. Thesources here Specul;lted that reportswere being bloded by the authori­ties or that the c~lble office had beenshut hy the power failure.

Another major East Pakistanitown, Comilla, has been withoutpower for over a week, its powerplant reportedly also knocked outby insurgents. Comilla, a key railand road junction aboul 50 miles~outhe'lst of Dacca and close to theIndian border, has been a focus ofincreasing guerrilla activily ag;linstthe P,lkistani Anny.

Since March :!5, when the armybegan an offensive against the Ben­gali secession movement. it has beentrying to subdue Ihe Bengali popula­tion of 75 million. The army nowcontrols most of the province, butthere is resistance. particularly nearthe border with India. and this re­sistance appears to be widening andgrowing more effective.

By SYDNEY H. SCHANBERG

Special 10 The Nev. York Times

The crippling of the Dacca powerplant is the most dramatic actascribed to the insurgents since thearmy seized control of the city inlate March after killing severalthousand civilians.

Few details are known of theattack, which came sometime Satur­day night. The foreign sources here

Since cabling this article, Mr.Schanberg, South Asia correspon­dent of The Times, has been ex­pelled from Pakistan. On arril'illg if!New Delhi, he said the PakistanGovernment had ordered him toleave "in the interests of the securityof Pakistan."

a military an the cost of the occupation wouldalien army. prove prohibitive and compel Paki-

Bengali police have been replaced stan to pull the army out !airlyby police from West Pakistan, the quickly has been discarded. Evencountry's dominant wing that lies without the World Bank consor­more than 1.000 miles away. with tium's massive annual aid, whichIndia in between. West Pakistanis has been suspended in censure of thellre also being flown in to replace repression, the Islamabad regimeofficials in every Government de- seems determined to keep its grippartment, in some cases even down on East Pakistan.to the level of typists. President Yahya Khan's speech

Houses and shops of those Ben- to the nation last f\.fonday was sup.galis who were killed or fled to posed to have unveiled his long­villages in the countryside have been awaited plan for returning Pakistanturned over to Moslem non-Bengali _ East and West - to civilian rule.residents of East Pakistan, who are It turned out to be exactly the OPPO­collaborating with the army. The site-a declaration that the mililarytemp~es of t.he minority Hindus-~he dictatorship would continue, with aarmy s speCial scapegoats-are bemg hand-picked civilian l::overnment asdemolished for no other reason than camouflage. ~ "to demonstrate that those who are I I h' -h 'h' h W d'not part of the army's design of, n IS speec ~. ~\ . Ice~~~rn. Ip-"IsJ"'m'c' t'" 't to 1 t P k !omats here dC:"lnhed as <i dlsas-

".. 1 In .. gn yare no rue a' - to • . .'

istanis and will not be tolerated. le~. the PreSident.. \\ hl) IS also army. . chid, heaped pralsc on the army

Bengali youths. who Just over for rescuing the counm from "Ih~three months. ago were e~ultantly b' I f d' . 1 I" b h. . rlnp; 0 Ism cgra IOn .. " \ t emarchtng through the streets and fAil' h "Ll I' . d d~ . h' I f fi grace 0 ...,. a. ne;1 "0 exten e

SllOutlng t elr S ogans 0 de ance at h' "f II t Ih " t· th .h T . Ik' IS U es svmpa v a e Sl~

t ~. ml Ita!)I', re.glme. now tfa '. m million Beng;dis. m~llv minorityw ISpers, Sipping up to orcign H'ndu wh h' . tl d t "I d' ,,~newsmen for a few seconds to mur- I s, o.n e eon la- .

.. cause of false propas::anda by reb-mur some IOfl)rmatlon about a mas- 1-" h 'd H • I d t h

h d f f· e s, e sal. e appea e 0 t em

sacre. t e mur er o.•1 amlly.mem- to "return to their homes andber or the destruction of. a. Village. hearths" for "speedy rehabilitation."Anonymous letters contalOlng such .details find their way every day into Just the day before PreSidentnewsmen's mailbox~s at the 'Hotel Yahya's speech. an army platoonInter-Continental. stormed into several predominantly

The effluvia of fear is overwhelm- Hindu villages 30 miles from Dacca,ing. But there is also a new spirit. killing men and looti,ng. and burningManv of the Bengalis-a naive and homes. Reports of Similar pogromsrom;ntic peopJe'--:-realize now that ~ome from other parts of the prov­no other count!)' is going to save Ince. No on~ knows exactly. howthem. that they will have to do it many ~engalts t,he army has killed.all themselves and that it will take but reltable foreign sources here puta long time. Ihe figure somewhere over 100.000

Sig~ificant numbers of young men - and possibly much higher.are slipping off to join the Libera- The East Pakistani economy,tion Anny, which operates from which used to provide the nationalborder areas and from sanctuaries treasury not only with half its ex­just across the border in India. Ben- ports and foreign exchange but alsogali guerrilla terrorism is increasing. with a captive market for WestA number of army collaborators Pakistan's manufactured goods, hashave been executed. and more and been badly crippled by the upheaval.more homemade bombs explode in However, the milila!)' regime seemsDacca. The resistance is still spora- willing-at least for the present-todie, peripheral and disorganized, but pay the severe economic price ofit is growing. holding East Pakistan as a colony,

With each terrorist act, the army no matter how sullen or resistanttakes revenge, conducting reprisals the population.against the nearest Bengali civilians. "It's a medieval army operatingSeveral hundred civilians were re- as if against serfs," said one West­ported to have been rounded up and erner here. "It will use any methodmowed down by the Army in Noak- just to own East Pakistan and keephali District recently after the Mukti milking it dry. Even if the BengalisFouj executed a member of one of are serious about the resistance, itthe army's "Peace Committees" and will take five to 10 years to makehis wife and children. a dent."

The once widely held theory that

27

Courtesy of MMR Jalal

Courtesy of MMR Jalal

Courtesy of MMR Jalal

THE TIMES (LONDON), JUNE 29,1971

"President Yahya Khan's long-awaited proposals torestore civilian rule to Pakistan are well meaning butwill hardly meet the emotional needs of East Pakistan.For three months the province has been subjected tomilitary brutality, enough to carry resentment far be­yond the ranks of the politically conscious. What is nec­essary in the face of this despair and ha tred? Surelysome magnanimity rather than the carefully hedgedpromises made yesterday.

No plan fOf the future will succeed unless it can hopeto win over a large body of Bengali opinion. If thoseready to respond find themselves in a category of col­laborators they will be powerless. Yet the wording of the

ZAMBIA DAILY AfAIL (LUSAKA), JUl\lE 29.1971

President's prol~;als seems to call in East Pakistan forwhat most of its will still as collabora­tors...."

". . . What is needed now is surely some measure ofgoodwill towards the Bengali of East Paki-stan that will encourage them to think that a ~!'1"01~1I

compromise might be possible instead of clinging tohopes of guerrilla warfare, with all the added sufferingthat more fighting would bring. They win not be inspiredby a statement, however well intentioned, that reads asif it had been drafted by an Adjutant for Battalionorders."

Yahya Khan's Announced Measures: TotallyFor Lasting Peace in Pakistan

"President Yahya Khan of Pakistan has at last madE:'known to an anxious world, made-sick at the shockingreports of massacres carried out by the West PakisL.'1nArmy on their defenceless compatriots in the East, meas­ures he has decided to take which he thinks will bringthe political situation back to normal. ...

Much as the world is anxious to see tha t the a trod tiesin Pakistan come to an end, the measures that have beentaken by President Yahya Khan are far from bringingabout a stable Government in that country.

IRISH TllHES (DUBLIN), JUNE 29.1971

Dusty Answer"Yesterday's address to his sundered nation by Gen­

eral Yahya Khan will do nothing to encourage the returnof Bengali refugees - some six million. The formulawhich he described for the transfer of power to civilianhands is altogether too nebulous...."

"... There is nothing in the situation as it exists which

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, JUNE 30,1971

A Step Towards Conciliation"At this stage the extent of the physical and political

damage done by the Pakistan Army's repressive meas­ures in the unhappy province of East Bengal is still im­measurable.

President Yahya Khan's long overdue effort at con­ciliation announced in his speech to the nation June 28,will not be sufficient in itself to heal the wounds.

Much more will be needed in practical ways that the

30

East Bengal will continue to be a colony of the Pun­jabis in the \Vest as long as power is not transferred tothe people who truly represent East Bengal. And thetrue represent.."ltives of East Bengal are those elected inlast year's general elections and who came from theAwami League.

As long as the trusted leaders of the people of EastBengal are kept away from exercising their legal rightto rule after thpy had received a mandate from the pe0­

ple, there will never be lasting peace in Pakistan.

includes any inducement to the refugees to return whencethey came. Their presence on Indian territory is a heavyburden for that teeming country to carry and a visiblereproach and embarrassment to the military ofYahya Khan...."

bewildered people of East Bengal can understand. Thephysical damage must be repaired, relief allowed. to getthrough to where it is needed. And above all a sense ofsecurity must be achieved so that at least a substantialnumber of the six million refugees who fled across theborder to India will feel encouraged to return to theirhomes...."

Courtesy of MMR Jalal

THE GUARDIAN JUNE 29,1971

"Yahya Khan's nightmarish dreamworld shows noof crumbling. It is a 'matter of satisfaction" to this

'simple soldier' (in his latest broadcast) that in the diffi­cult situation his country has faced recently 'the reactionand response from an overwhelming number of countrieshas been of sympathy and understanding of the prob­lems we are facing and trying to resolve'. If Yahya be­lieves that, if Yahya can brush aside the nausea of allWestern reaction, then he may truly believe anything:even the field reports of his Generals in Bengal. Hisfaith in what his aides tell him is touching, but tragicallypathetic. He has no real plans now. The proposals heunveiled yesterday for a return to democratic govern­ment arE.' a pathetic sham. If the aid-givers of the worldrelent in t.heir shocked disdain towards Pakistan it willnot be because of an 'expert panel" conjuring up slick

formulae for subjugating Dacca once"And nowhere, in aU the intellectual wasteland of

Yahya's Master is the central questionDoes Pakistan exist any longer? Does unity matterand longer? What precisely have the Punjabi legionsachieved? In Islamabad's book the regime snipped abudding plot between Sheikh Mujib and Mrs. Gandhi- a plot to wreck the pure state of Jinnah and deliverhalf of it into the evil hands of New Delhi. That, seri­ously, is what Yahya claims - the same Yahya whoallowed Mujib to win an unrigged election: to bargainlong and hard over a Constitution: the same Mujib whowaited quietly at his home for the Army to take himaway, who - far from leading a premeditated coup­was patently stunned when the Generals attacked.... "

~VALL STREET JOUR:VAL, JULY 23. 1971

II Nation Divided

East Pakistan Conflict Is Complicated By Race. Religion and Poverty

tactics. West Pakistan officials sayeverything is rapidly returning tonormal. But the economy is woe­fully disrupted, factories are idle,schools are closed, roads are mostlyempty and towns are largely de­serted. ~fillions of Bengalis, particu­larly Hindus and middle-class Mos­lems, are still hiding in the country­side. About 50.000 refugees are stillfleeing to India each day. And armyrule is being challenged by Bengaliguerrilla forces (the Mukti Bahani,or Liberation Anny) that seem tohave massive support among theBengali population. The guerrillasare still lacking in training and or­ganization, but supplies and bordersanctuaries are being provided byIndia.

Ten days of traveling across EastPakistan and talks with scores ofdiverse people here indicate that thefourth stage eventually will be anindependent East Pakistan: BangiaDesh, or Bengal Nation. But clearlymuch more killing will take placebefore BangIa Desh comes to pass.

No solution, including indepen­dence, holds any bright hopes forEast Pakistan's predominantly peas­ant society, which, in accordancewith the Mohammed's Prophet in­struction to "go forth and multiply,"

Now the Third StageThe third and present stage is

army occupation-a terrorized Ben­gali population being ruled by mili·tary force and crude police-state

the truth are punished. and the onlypunishment is death," he says.

The doctor is an army veteran,which makcs him a specialtargct forhis former colleagucs. But his realcrime is being a Bengali in a landof Bengalis thaI also happens to bepart of the map of Pakistan. It isnow a land of death and of fear.

stan army (an almost entirely WestPakist:1ni institution), fcaring thatEast Pakistan was moving towardindependence. cracked down inDacca, the East Pakistan capital.Beng:1li students were massacred,politicians were arrested and theAwami League was outlawed.

The second stage was a fairy-talefew weeks in which the Bengalis pro­

Causes Washed Away by Blood claimed and celebrated their inde­It is less than four months since pendence. Some thousands of East

the civil fighting in East Pakistan Pakistan's non-Bengali minoritybegan, bm already the causes of the were killed during this period, inconflict seem almost academic. Its which the army, perhaps overlygeographical and historical roots, I cautious. remained in the capitalthe legalities and mortalities - all and in a number of military camps.seem to have been washed <nvay by But the illusion of independenceblood. No one really knows how ended in mid-April when the armymany people have been killed in emerged to crush the revolution.East Pakistan since March 25, but Tens of thousands of Bengalis wereWestern diplomats say the minimum slain as town after town was re­is 200.000. The maximum exceeds taken, burned and looted. Thereone million. was little military opposition. Some

The events fall into three stages. six million Bengalis, most of themThe first was a Bengali political from the Hndu minority group that

movement aimed at ending two dec- became a special army target, beganades of economic and political ex- fleeing into India.ploitation by the West Pakistanis. Itculminated, in March elections, innational political victory for theBengali Awami League and its plat­form of greater East Pakistan au·tonomy. But on March 25 the Paki-

Thc doctor sits behind a desk inhis strect-front otlice in an East Pak­istani town, occasionally glancingout at the road lined with thecharred debris and looted shells ofshops and homes.

A vehicle with UNICEF mark­ings on its doors but with armedWest Pakistani soldiers inside cruisesby. Otherwise, the street is all butdeserted.

The doctor sits in his office onlybecause he has been ordered to. Hisfamily is hiding in a village some­where outside of town. He speaks ina whisper because· any passerbycould be an informer. At night,""'hen the army goes knocking ondoors, he lives with the fear that hisname may be on one of its lists.

He whispers of recent events inthis town: the streets littered withbloated and decomposing bodies;the burning, looting and raping; andthe continuing terror. "We are afraidto speak the truth. Those who speak

~o Immediate Solution Seen;Residents Barely Subsist;

Police State Grips nen~ali.s

'Problems? There Are :"tone'

By PETER R. KANNSt;lff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

31

Courtesy of MMR Jalal

All night we hear the screams. Icannot sleep. We cannot stand tosee and hear these things,"

"Our army had a good reputa­tion," the profesor says. "We had agreat army. But look what it hasdone. How can an army be greatwhen it fights in an immoral cause?"

Two Mmy majors are standing ata ferry I~mding on the east bank ofthe Ganges River. One is a frogman,the other one served in the camelcorps. Both seem to be civilized andcharming men. They explain th3tthey are fighting a patriotic war todefend the integrity of their count~·

against Indian agents, miscreantsand misguided individuals. "\Ve s;w.atrocities that made Ollr blood boi!.Had you seen them. even you wouldhave wanted to kill," he says of atown where some Biharis \~ erebutchered by Bengalis. (The townW.iS later leveled by the ;lrmy and afar greater nurnher of Bengalis werekilled. )

tonment and beaten for severalhours by interrogators who don'tspeak their language. A Westernerhears of their arrest and protests. Sothe matter comes to the attention ofan army major, who summons thefour Christians and offers apolo­gies: "It is our policy not to beatChristians," he explains.

A shopkeeper, a thin Bengali withwirerimmed spectacles. glances outfrom his shop ~lt two strangers walk­ing down the desened street. Theyenter the shop and inquire about"the troubles" in this town. Theshopkeeper is visibly trembling."There is nothing I can say," hereplies. Then he glances again atthe flattened buildings lining themain street and whispers, "lookaround you." As the visitors leave,he adds. voice cracking, "I'mashamed I cannot. ..."

Further down the street a youthapproaches. 'The army destroyedour city. ~fany Bengalis a're being•lrrested. They arc being shot everynight and thrown into the river. We Food for the Crocodilesno longer cat the fish from the The majors are asked why sOriver." he whispers. many Bengalis have fled. partieu-

The youth guides the strangers lady Hindus. The answer is imagin­to the local hospital to talk to a ative. They say that in April. beforesurgeon. The surge(ln is a Bengali the ~lrmy restored order. Hindu,!--ur j, employed by the government, told ~Ioslcms that the "holy Koranwhich means he is particularly vul- is just an old book. So the Moslemsner:lble, He is asked about killing. came out of their homes to defendin the cit\'. "Killing? What killing?' the holv Koran and manv HindusKilling b'\ whom?" He is ask~d fled.' There has been muc"h killinc.about ~en~ral problem". "Prohlems? the camel·corps major grants, "TheWhat problems? There arc no prob- crocodiles have gotten fat." says thekm,." frogman. glancing out at the Ganf:cs.

But all i" returning to normal.they say, and the Bengali peoplearen't afraid of the army. A ferryis landing. and a group of Bengalilaborers. recruited hy the army toreopen a jute mill. edges past themajors in single file. Each of thembows his head in a subservient sa·lute as he passes the officers.

Not all army officers are as sym·pathetic as these majors. Westernresidents of one town tell of an armycaptain approaching a young Hindugirl and telling her to feel the barrelof his gun. "You feel it is stillwarm," he said. "From killing Hin­dus," he added, laughing-but notjoking.

An old Bihari who served as abearer in the British Indian armymany years ago is now a waiter ata roadside hostel on the outskirts ofa town more than half destroyed.He supports the army and thus isn'tafraid to talk. He explains that forseveral April days, after the Awamileague people fled but before thearmy arrived, things were bad for

HcJaborinj! thl' Ob"iousThe visitors take their leave. Out­

side the hospital the youth whispers:"You h;lve talked to the doctor, hutI think he has concc;lIed the truth.He is afraid." It is explaining theobvious.

A professor and his student aretalking about the prospects of stu·dents returning to classes in earlyAugust, when the university is sup­posed to reopen. They are pessi­mistic. Some students are hiding intheir homes, others have fled to out­lying villages or to India. Some havejoined the Mukti Bahani. The cam­pus has been turned into a militarycamp, and troops are quartered inthe dormitories, using books to fueltheir cooking fires. "Would youcome back?" the professor asks.

The student, a girl, has a roomin a house that overlooks an armyinterrogation center. "All day thestudents, young boys, are broughtin and beaten," she says. "Threesoldiers walk on them with boots.

For Christians, No BeatingsThey are taken to a military can-

All Bengalis arc miscreants now,"the lawyer's younger son says. He isa la\'.' student, but students arc aspecial army target, and most arc inhiding. The universities arc closed."What usc would there be learninglaw anyway now that there is n~law in our country?" the son asks.

It is evening, and the discussionis taking place in the lawyer's home.Before talking, he closes the woodenshutters on the windows. Then hehas second thoughts-"someone whopasses by may report a conspiracy"-and so the shutters are partly re­opened.

They talk of "the troubles," ofhow, when wnrd of the army'sMarch 15 att;)ck in Dacca reachedthis town. the :\wami Lea&,ue tookcontrol. There was orderly n.lle un­der the Ban!=1a Dc,h tll!,= until miJ·April, when air-force rlane, strafedthe town. People panicked. TheAwami Le;lgller~ and rheir milita~

force. the \fukti Bah:mi. began toflee along \~ ith thousand ... of others .But it was se\eral d;IYS before thearm\" reached the town. and durin$:;that" time ang~ Bcnpli mobs at.tacked and slauchtcred hundreds ofBiharis. •

Relative to its actions elsewhere.the army. when it arrived. showedrestraint. \fost of the rown remainsundam:1ged. :11though rT11Kh of itwas looted by the army and itsmobs, About h:df the rllru1ation hasreturned and many shors have re­opened. though not under formerm:1nagement. Hindu shopkeepersha\'e disappeared. and Biharis andother army b:lder", han? taken over.And. as eve~\\ here. the arrests con­tinue.

Four Christian Bengalis are ar·rested by the army at a roadblock.Not many buse, travel East Paki·stan's roads these da\'s. and thosethat do are frequently' stopped, andtheir passengers are lined up andsearched. Few of the soldiers atthese checkpoints speak any Bengali(Urdu is the language of West Paki·stan), and so a common way of find·ing "miscreants" is to lift men'ssarongs. I\10s1ems are circumcised;Hindus aren'!. Some West Pakistanisoldiers came to East Pakistanthinking all Bengalis were Hindu.More sophisticated soldiers simplythink that all Hindus are "miscre­ants," but then so are many BengaliMoslems. So it is all very confusingfor the soldiers, and the four Chris­tians are arrested.

is propagating itself into starvation.Its 75 million people already arebarely subsisting 1,600 to the squaremile. and this population \vill doublewithin 25 years. A half-million Ben­galis were killed by a cyclone lastfall. A half-million more were bornin 87 days. Perhaps only in EastPakistan could a disaster of the cy­clone's magnitude be overshadowedby a greater one-this civil war­only six months later.

Primith'e ConceptioM of GuiltPoverty, irmorance and frustra­

tion have turned this conflict into aCongo as well as an Algeria. ~fen

are killing each other not only in thename of politics hut also over raceand religion. The Moslem phlloso.phy of an eye for an eye and a toothfor a tooth i, made more terrible byprimitive conceptions of collectiveguilt.

The arm\' kiII~ Bencalis. The non­Bengali mi~oriry of ,~bout two mil·lion (commonly called Biharis)backs the amn', So Benc;tlis killBiharis. The ar'my and th~ Biharissee this as ample reason to butchermore Bencalis. The Hindu minorityof about to million becomes a can"·venient army scapegoat and evensome Bengali Moslems can be per­suaded to join in their slaughter.Amid this chaos. variollS \'illages.gangs and individuals have beenattacking each other for economicgain or to settIc private scores.

These arc the tales of some of thepeople encountered on a trip throughEast Pakistan. As with the doctor.the names of Bencalis and the townsin which they liv~ arc omitted. Ben­galis, in talking to a reporter, fearfor their lives. Most don't talk at all:in some towns not even beggars willapproacn a stranger. Normallyamong the world's most volublepeople, the Bengalis now talk mostlywith their eyes-eyes that look awayin fear or that stare down in shameor that try to express meanings infurtive glances.

A lawver and his sons have beenfortunat~. When one asks a Beng;alihow he is these days, he replies~ "Iam alive." The lawyer and his sonsnot only are alive but are living intheir own home. They are also hid­ing in their own home, for theyleave it only rarely. "It is too easy tobe arrested on the street," the law­yer says. "A seven·year-old canpoint a finger at me and call me amiscreant, and I will be takenaway."

Miscreant is the term the Pakistanarmy applies to all who oppose it.

Courtesy of MMR Jalal

the Biharis. Mobs of Bengalis ranthrough the streets shouting (andhe lapses into his old Indian-armyEnglish), "Kill the Bihari buggers.burn the Bihari buggers." Some Bi­haris were killed. he says. but mostweren't. Then the army arrived.'The army kill many Bengali bug­gers," he says. "And the Hindu bug­gers. they run away to India. It isvery bad days. Sahib."

A Hindu, one of the richest andmost respected men in his commun­ity before the fighting, was a phil­anthropist, who had built schools,hospitals and irrigation systems forthe predominantly ~foslem peasantsin his area. He considered himselffully P.skistani. Although a Bengali,he hadn't backed the Awamj League·but rather had supported the moreconservative and even anti-Hindu\foslcm League.

protected them. But, with the arrivalof the army, roles reversed. andBengalis - particularly Hindu Ben­galis - became the hunred.

Hindu villages were burned bythe army, and mobs were encour­aged to plunder Hindu homes. Underarmy orders the local Hindu templewas smashed to the ground by menwielding sledgehammers.

The Hindu and his family fled tothe village hut of a friend, wherethey have been hiding for morethan two months. His first daylightemergence from this hiding placewas for a rendezvous with two re­porters. He walked across the ricepaddies in the late afternoon,dressed as a peasant and shieldinghis face with a black umbrella.

He hadn't fled to India like somany other Hindus because hehoped the army would move on andlife might somehow return to what

The Hunter Becomes the Hunted it had been before. But the armyFor ncarly. a month after the civil remains, Hindus nre still being

war hegan but before the army searched out and shot. and now itarrivcd in his area (and thus during is too risky to try to reach the bor­the period Biharis were in danger. dcr from this area.from Bengalis), the Hindu sheltered I Only a few close friends knowtwo Biharis in his home. \Vhen' his hiding place. One of them is amobs came looking for them, he Moslem Leaguc official. an influ-

ential man these days since manyMoslem leaguers are supportingthe army. "He knows where I amhiding. but he dare not help me,"the Hindu says. He believes thatnearly all Moslem Bengalis sympa­thize with the Hindus. "But whatcan they do? They. too, are in dan­ger and they are afraid,"

All the Hindu's property is on anarmy list of "alien properties." Inother areas it is called "enemy prop­erties," but in either case it is sched­uled to be confiscated and put upfor auction. The Hindu talks muchabout losing his life.

"My Moslem friends tell me thatHindu bodies taken from the riverare so disfigured from tortures thatthe faces cannot be identified," theHindu says before picking up hisumbrella and hending back acrossthe fields to his hiding place.

A Headmaster Recites His LessonThe travelers visit a town neilr

the Indian border. One of the lasttowns to be retaken by the army, itis henvily damaged and is still large­Iy deserted. Here the local peacecommittee - a unit composed ofsome Biharis and conservative Ben-

gali Moslem who serve asthe local eyes ears of theassigns two youths to guide anddow the visitors. "Come to theschool and talk to the headmaster."they say.

The headmaster, a middle-agedBengali, sits behind his desk. Thereporters sit facing him. And stand­ing behind the reporters, also facingthe headmaster, are the young peacecommittee shadows. In a falteringvoice the headmaster begins to re­cite statistics of school enrollment,dates when schoolhouse cornerstoneswere laid-anything unconrroversial.At the end of each sentence heglances up. past the reporters, to theshadows, like a sch<.X)lboyhis lessons to a teacher with a

How was the school damaged:the reporters ask. "There was somestrafing." he mumbles. Then, look­ing up at the teen-age shadows. hehurriedl}' adds. "and maybe it wasdamaged by miscreants."

As the reporters and their sha­dows leave. thc professor mumbles."We arc trying to hold togethcr,"and then he stares down at theground.

WALL STREET JOUR.\'AL, JlJLY 27,1971

East Pakistan Is Seen Gaining Independence, But It \Vill Take YearsBengalis Increasingly ViewThe t:.S. as Their Enemy;Learning to Be Guerrillas

Well-Fed Ann~, III-Fed People

By PETER R. KJ,SNStaff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

An independent East Pakistanseems to be one of those ideas whosetime is cuming.

Travels across the ravaged landand talks with military participantsin the civil conflict, its innocent suf­fers and its diplomatic observersleave the distinct impression thatsomeday East Pakistan and WestPaskitan will be separate legally aswell as ideologically.

How soon BangIa Desh, or Ben­gal nation, comes to pass-and thediplomatic asseSS'nents tend to bein terms of years, not months-de­pends on many factors. These in­clude the degree of support India iswilling to give the liberation forces,the weight of economic pressureson West Pakistan, the severity offuture famine in East Pakistan andperhaps the policies or America andother world powers.

For the moment, both the Pakis­tan army and the Bengali indepen-

dence movement seem to be overlyoptimistic about their capabilitiesand prospects. The army. currentlyrunning East Pakistan as a kind ofrecunquered colony. says everythingis under control and is rapidly re­turning to normal. But all around isevidence of social chaos, economiccollapse. public hostility, and gradu­ally mounting guerrilla opposition.

Guerrilla Warfare and PatienceBengali liberation forces still talk

of massive offensives that will "lib­erate" the land as early as this fall,or of the Indian army coming totheir aid, or of the Pakistan armysimply tiring and going away. Butthe Pakistan army, tough and tena­cious, seems determined to holdon here at all costs. The Indians,while aiding the Bengali resistance,seem anxious to avoid full-scalewar. Many Bengalis don't seem tocomprehend that guerrilla war,which they are beginning to wagewith some effectiveness, is their onlyhope and that it requires much timeand patience.

The fighting began March 25 withattacks by the Pakistan army oncivilians in Dacca. The amount of

blood that has been spilled in East lead some Indian policy makers toPakistan since then appears to rule favor war with Pakistan. The oddsout any sort of political comprise. are still against a full-scale war, butDiplomats say that a minimum of artillery exchanges erupt daily along200.000 and perhaps as many as a the border. Presidential advisermillion people have been killed in ,Henry Kissinger, during recentfour months, most of them Bengali meetings with American officials incivilians slain by the Pakist:.m army. ' Islamhad, the national Pakistan cap­Six million refugees have fled to ital located in the West, is said toIndia, and milli<.;ns more are dis- have called the odds for an Indo­placed persons still hiding within Pakistan war better than one inEast Pakistan. three.

In the view of nearly all observers The scope of the Pakistan army'shere, much more blood will flow, military problem here can be seenmany more villages will be destroyed in a comparison with Vietnam.and many more people will be up- There, a million-man South Viet·rooted before the conflict ends. namese army plus American troops

If the war does result in BangIa and massive firepower must try toDesh, America may be in trouble. control a population of 17 million,By continuing to supply aid-and many basically sympathetic to theparticulary arms-to the central gov- government Here, only 60,000 Westernment of Pakistan, the U.S. is Pakistani troops are trying to con­increasingly coming to be viewed as trol a thoroughly hostile populationan emeny by the Bengali people. of 75 million. East Pakistan, more­Moreover, the longer the Pakistan over, is surrounded on three sidesarmy is able to maintain its hold by India, which is giving sanctuarieson East Pakistan, the more likely it and supplies to the guerrillas. Andis that the Bengali independence the Pakistan army's supply routesmovement will slip under Commu- from West Pakistan to the East mustnist influence. circumvent, by sea and air, 1,200

A Problem for India miles of India.This is one of the worries that Of course. the Mukti Bahani, or

33

Courtesy of MMR Jalal

He leads a group of 37 men,armed mostly with old Lee-Enfieldrifles. But they also have one ormore light machine guns, grenadesand dynamite. Some of the arms aswell as the ammunition are suppliedby India, to which this unit fled forseveral weeks in April. The unitisn't short of weapons or bullets,the leader says.

It doesn't receive any directorders but reports on its operationsby runner to higher Mutti Bahaniheadquarters near, or across, theIndian border. The unit depends forfood and lodging on local villagers,some of whom are paid and othersof whom make "voluntary contribu·tions."

The unit has launched two attacksin this area in the past few weeks,one a raid on a police station inwhich 11 weapons were captured.It also blew up a bridge along theroad. When Pakistan army troopsreached the site, they were am·bushed by another unit of l\iuktiBahani. The Pakistan army is saidto have suffered at least a dozencasualties. This 37-man unit hasn'thad any casualties to date, nor haveany of the men quit the unit.

The leader thinks the Mukti Ba­hani will soon win the war becausethe people are behind it and be­cause, he says, 300.000 Bengalisare getting military training in India.The statement about public supportis probably accurate. But the claimabout military training, accordingto more reliable sources, is probablya tenfold exaggeration. And believ­ing in quick victory is both naiveand dangerous.

liberation isn't the Vietcong.For one thing, guerrillas aren'tCommunist. For another, they arenot-or are not yet-very effectivefighters. They have been at it for lessthan four months, and organizationand discipline don't come naturallyto most Bengalis.

to Be GueniDas

But they are learning. In recentweeks they have been concentratingon disrupting the Pakistan army's

'\ lines of transportation; bridges arebeing dynamited and railroad trackssabotaged. The key railroad linefrom Chittagong, East Pakistan'smajor port, to Dacca, its capital,ha.s been put out of operation, andalmost all supplies must move in­land by riverboat. Electric powerfacilities in Dacca and elsewherehave been blasted. The guerrillasalso are concentrating on assassina­tions of local People who collabo­rate with the army.

The Mukti Bahani enjoys somebig advantages, though it is far fromready to benefit fully from them.Much of the land, outside the townsand off the main roads, is a vacuumthat 60,000 soldiers can never hopeto fill. At night the Pakistan armywithdraws into military camps, butif and when the guerrillas learn howto use mortars and rockets, thesecamps could become traps ratherthan refuges.

The Pakistan army's crude andbloody tactics, while cowing mostBengalis, have been solidifying pub­lic support behind the independencemovement and have left the MuktiBahani with a sea of sympathizersin which to swim. A severe faminethis fall or next, which Westerneconomists consider likely, couldpossibly produce from the peasantsympathizers great waves of desper­ate and angry activists. "A nationwith a well-fed army and an ill-fedpeople cannot survive," a Bengaliprofessor says.

A clandestine meeting with aMukti Bahani unit leader at aMoslem village deep inside EastPakistan provides some insight intoguerrilla operations. It is earlymorning, and the leader is sitting infront of a peasant hut where he hasbeen sleeping the past severalnights. He is a former noncommis­sioned officer in the Pakistan armywho, like almost all Bengali soldiersand policemen, joined the revolu­tionary movement in late March.(Some were subsequently killed,others fled to India.)

army. The flat, marshy riceland of the army was routed out of his bedEast Pakistan is misery to soldiers at night by Mukti Rahani. He wasfrom the dry hills of West Pakistan. given an hour to say good-bye toScattered reports say that some his mother. Then a "people's court"West Pakistani military officers- was convened in his front yard withincluding a senior navy commander neighbors summoned as jurymen.and air-force general-are opposing He was convicted and executed, andthe army's brutal tactics and slaugh- his body was left in the road as ater of the civilian population. warning to other collaborators.

The Pakistan army, however, Then there was this encounter bydoesn't appear to be cracking under two reporters with a small-townany present strain. To most of the peace committee. The Mukti Bahanimilitary men this is a kind of holy had made a small foray into thewar for the preservation of Pakistan town the previous night, firini aand the purity of the moslem reB- few stray bullets, destroying a tele­gion. And if Pakistan's president, phone at the railroad station andYahya Khan, comes under political robbing the station safe of aboutpressure in West Pakistan, it is more 53.00. The attack could hardly havelikely to come from hawks calling been less effectual.for even tougher measures than But to listen to the peace com­from doves. "West Pakistan will let minee it had been an epic assault.itself be drained before it gives East "Forty Mukti Bahani came armedPakistan up," a European diplomat with automatic weapons," the com­in Dacca says. I mittee chairman, an elderly Bihari,

To help control the Bengali pop- I says. A half·hour later the tale hadulation, the army has been setting escalated into an attack by 100 Mu­up a network of peace committees kti Bahani men carrying machinesuperimposed upon the normal civil guns. "What could we do?" he asks.administration, which the army can- 'The razikar have only four rifles.not fully rely on. Peace-committee The army is stationed 10 miles away,members are drawn from East Pak· maybe there will be more attacks."istan's non.Bengali minority (called IThe committeemen know that theyBiharis) and from the membership I themselves are targets. Deathof small, conservative religious- shrouds have been left at night onpolitical parties like the Moslem their doorsteps as a sign that theyLeague and the lamaat-I-Islami. are marked men.The peace committe~ ser:-e as Like the army, the peace com­agent~ .for th~ ~rmy,. mformlng on mittee blames all troubles on mis­the Civil administratIOn as well as creants and goodas (criminals).on the general populace. They are Indian infiltrators and a few mis­also in charge of confiscating and guided indi .... iduals _ all of whom~edistr~butingshops an~ l.ands .from are lumped together under the termenemies of the people, like J:!mdus "antielements". All townspeople

and pro-independence Bengal.ls. Th.e support the army and the peacepeace commlttee~ ~lso recruit rezl- committee. these committeemen

Little Realism on the Other Side kars, or armed vlgllan~es.. Many of say. As they talk to the two re­them are comn:on cr~mlnals who porters, se ....eral score townspeople

The Pakistan army, however, is ~a~e t~rown thel.r lot With ~he army. stand around, silently listening.hardly more realistic. A Pakistan Blhans, ~,engali.opportUnists, louts The reporters leave, turning ageneral in Dacca flatly states that and thugs -that s the capsule def- corner out of sight of the commit­all guerrillas in the area where the initio~ offered by one diplo~at. teemen. The townspeople followMukti Bahani leader leader and his While the general Bengali popu- and rush up to them.unit are operating have been eHmin- lation is terrified-and terrorized- .ated. The general says army casual- by these local army collaborators, "Th~ man talkmg was a n~n-ties in all East Pakistan are averag- the collaborators also live in fear. Bengah. . .. No one agrees Withing only five a day; diplomats esti- Dozens of peace committeemen w~at h~ says.... The peace com-mate them at more like 50. have been assassinated by Mukti mlttee IS a tr.ap for the people....

Army morale still seems to be Bahani or by Bengali neighbors. In The army kills many people. heregenerally high. But the conflict's in- one town a peace-committee official ...We cannot talk or ~e Will beitial stage, in which the army ruth- sleeps on the floor of his house with reported to the army....lessly recaptured rebel-held towns three razikars lying on each side of The civil fighting has had calam­in a spree of killing, lotting and rap- him. In another town the peace- itous economic effects. The immed·ing has been over for three months, committee chairman has paid $625 iate sufferers, of course, are theand the new stage ofguerrilla warfare protection money to the Mukti Bengalis, whose already desperatelywill be much more grueling. Many Bahani to prevent, or postpone, poor and overcrowded land hasPakistan soldiers came to East Pak- assassination. been rendered even poorer. Trans­istan thinking they would be here In one roadside village a peace portation is disrupted, commercefor only a month or two of combat, committeeman who two days before has collapsed, factories lie idle,not as a semipermanent occupation I had turned several Bengalis over to public-works programs are at a

34

Courtesy of MMR Jalal

standstill and crops go untended.One result, Western economistsbelieve, could well be a severe fam­ine late this year.

The rice crop will be affected be­cause farmers have fled their pad.dies or fear to go out of their homesto tend the crop. Last year the food·grain harvest was IL5 million tons;this year it will be no more than9.5 million. East Pakistan's food­grain requirement is 13 million tons,and the deficit traditionally has beenmade up by imports, much of itthrough purchases for local cur·rency of American surplus-foodstocks. But now, because of theconflict. the distribution systemcan't handle the import load whilethe reduced crop makes the' needgreater.

One economist estimates that thedistribution system would have tohandle 300.000 tons of imports amonth. wherea....;. even in normaltimes, it has never been able tocarry more than half that amount.AmeriC~t already has stopped newfood· grain shipments because riceis backed up on the docks of Chitta­gong. One reason. of course, is thatto the Pakist~1n army administra­tion. rice rates a lower priority thanmilitary supplies.

A Land of Uttle HopeEven if famine can be averted

both this fall and next, the ceo·nomic punishment of this conflictwill be felt for years. probably dec­ades, and will cripple the land evenif independence comes. In a senseit's like crippling a leukemia patient.for East Pakistan - with or without

war - is a land of little hope. AI·ready, 75 million people are packedwithin its frontiers, and the popula­tion will double in 25 years. Peoplewill then be living more than 3,000to the square mile, and no. oneknows what they will live on.

But the economic situation hereis also serious for West Pakistan.The West has always treated EastPakistan as a kind of economic fief·dom, pocketing foreign exchangefrom the export of East Pakistan'sraw materials like jute and tea whileusing Enst Pakistan as a captivemarket fro low-quality West Paid·stani finished goods.

The main East-Pakistan exportis jute. Last year the jute crop wasseven million bales. This year, West­ern economists say. the maximumwill be 51.1 million. But with thetrading and transportation systemsdisrupted, much of it may neverreach the mills. Even then. the millsare barely functioning: Only 36%of the jute-mill workers have reoturned to their jobs. and mill out­put in June was only 20% of nor­mal. Economists say if that situa­tion continues for several moremonths, ovcrseas jute buyers willbegin turning to other suppliers.

Commerce is almost at a stand·still in many areas. Most towns arcreduced to a fraction of their for·mer population; a majority of theirpeople are dead. have fled to Indiaor are hiding in the countryside. Re­tail trade in Dacca is only 35SC ofnormal and in other towns consid·erably less. Even where shops areopen, people have little money tospend and no inclination to spend it.

Western economists in Dacca two American ships are bringingsay the economic crisis already is ammunition to the army. But thestarting to spread to West Pakistan, Canadian people support our cause.where factory laborers are begin- We are grateful to the Canadianning to be laid off. West Pakistani people," n teacher says, trying togoods that were sold in the captive be as polite as possible. "We under·market of East Pakistan aren't very stand that you must make moneycompetitive in other countries. by selling guns to Pakistan, but

All this, plus the loss of East please sell us rifles, too," a lawyerPakistan tax revenues and the added pleads.costs of maintaining an army of A student says: "At Kent Stateoccupation in East Pakistan, will you lost four students and the wholehave reduced Pakistan's foreign- world protested. Here thousands ofexchange reserves to a critically low students have been killed by thelevel. by October, the economists army, but does the world care? YOll

here say. Whether foreign·aid do- supply guns to the army. It we wercnors will help bailout the Pakistan European, you would care."government remains to be seen. China, (or short-term natiomll

America's aid program to Paki· reasons rather than long·term ideo­stan is in a state of considerable logical ones, is the only othcr im·confusion, especially to the people portant power supporting Pah..tan.here. Onicials in Wash;ngton say "The cradle of democracy. America.economic aid is continuing to both and great revolutionary China ~m~

West and East Pakistan on a ca..c- allies giving aid to the Pakistanby·case o~lsis. But. in practice. this ~lrmy. which is suppressing ourmeans the East is getting little help. freedom and slaughtering our peo·The Nixon administration says it ple.\Vhy is this'?" a college instruc·isn't granting any ne"' military as- tor asks.sistance to the central government During his meetings in Islama­of Pakistan. But goods contr:lcted bad, Mr. Ki.ssinger was pressed byfor prior to March 25 are still being some Dacca·based diplomats criti­sent, although Ihe administration cal of America's friendly relationscontends that these are generally with the Pakistan government. Mr.sales of such things as wmmunica· Kissinger responded with a ques·tions equipment, not arms. tion. Would a change in American

All this has left the Bengalis con· policy make East Pakistan indepen­fused and angry. and it is aw~\\'ard dence li~cly in two years or fiveto he an American visitor in East years rather than 10 years? TherePakistan these days. Those few was no definitive answer. ButBengalis \\ ho ris~ arrest oy talking whether Bangia Desh come to passto a stranger invariably ask why' in two. five, or 10 years, is citizensAmerica continues to ship supplies are likely to have long - and not[0 the Pakistan army. very fond - memories of America's

"We hear on Pakistan radio that role in their revolutionary war.-----------_..

THE WASHINGTON POST, THURSDAY, JULY 29. 1971

10 Million Pakistan Exiles Predicted by End 01 YearBy MARILYN BERGER

Washington Post Staff Writer

Angier Biddle Duke. who headedan International Rescue Committeeteam studying the plight of Paki­stani refugees in India, predictedyesterday that the continuing ten·sion in the region would bring thenumber of refugees to 10 million bythe end of the year.

Duke, a former U.S. ambassador,was in Washington to seek U.S.government cooperation in a num­ber of programs the IRC has startedin India to aid the refugees. In areport that Duke gave yesterday toFrancis L Kellogg, special assistantto the Secretary of State for refu­gee affairs, the IRC reported on

"the desperate air of tension thePakistani army has tried to main­tain along the border by motar fireto which the mission can bear per·sonal witness."

The report stated: ''There is noindication that the exodus has beenhalted. If the present trend contin­ues, the figure is likely to go toseven million before July is out.Seven million is the total popula­tion of Cuba."

Indian sources indicated the pre­diction was correct. The movementof refugees from East Pakistanstarted on March 25 when theforces of the Pakistani central gov­ernment cracked down, allegedly toprevent the establishment of a se­cesionist state. Reports from the

scene told of rape, murder andother atrocities. and Bengalispoured into India to escape whatwas widely described as a blood­bath.

State Department officials saidyesterday that military activity inEast Pakistan has largely subsidedsince May although action againstguerrillas continues. These officialsalso note that the flow of refugeeshas dropped to "as low as 20,000a day.

Duke said that the continuingstate of tension rather than anyactual bloodshed is enough to keepthe refugees coming into India. Hesaid the IRe was setting up pro­grams to use refugee doctors andteachers to work with the Bengalis

who are filling camps in India. Hesaid the IRC hoped to raise $1 mil­lion and to get additional funds,partly from the U.S. government, torun a program that would cost $2million over the next six months.

But Duke said that any attemptto work with the refugees is noth­ing more that a palliative. "Politicalsolutions for the return of the Ben­gali refugees must be found," theIRe mission report said.

There is concern w.ithin the U.S.government that the continuingdrain on India caused by the pres­ence of the refugees could lead toan explosion.

Some officials are also worriedthat the end of the monSOon rainsin October could bring more blood-

35

Courtesy of MMR Jalal

shed. Intensified civil war with agreater flow of could createstill greater strains on India.

A possible Indo·Pakistani conflictcarries with it the potential for aSino-Soviet confrontation, U.S. of­ficials have noted. Pakistan is under­stood to feel confident of Peking'ssupport, while India has been

backed by the Soviet Union.The United States, meanwhile,

has sought to keep up a dialoguewith both sides. Assistant Secretaryof State Joseph J. Sisco saw boththe Indian and Pakistani ambassa­dors on Tuesday before he left forIsrael. The United States has wei·corned Pakistani President Yahya

Khan's willingness to accept aUnited Nations presence along theborder.

The Indians have turned downthe Secretary General's proposal,refusing to be "equated" with Paki­stan in this situation. Indian officialssay further that it is impossible toseal a 2,nO-mile frontier "vith no

natural barriers.The has officially

tuen a low-key stance, urging re­straint on both India and Pakistanand quietly nudging Yahya to reacha political accommodation with theBengalis that would allow the rdu­gees to return.

THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, AUGUST 1, 1971

East Pakistan: Shades 01 the VietnanJ War

THE WASHI.T\/GTON POST, THURSDAY, AUGUST 5, 1971

Bengali DiplonaalsRsk IIsylunJ

~

now control every aspect of life in the Bengalis rather than challenge.East Pakistan, apart from hinter· For many observers here, the Si1d·land zones they do not take the trou- dest and most significant fact is thatble to occupy. somewhere near seven million

And the prevaling impression reo pie have fled to India, and themains one of despair on the part of I gee flood continues.

By MALCOLM W. BROWNE

The Government's army is large·Iy confined to the towns and roads.The guerrilla rebels in the country·side get help from across the border.A clandestine radio transmitter re­ports "liberation army" successesand predicts eventual victory.

A visitor to East Pakistan candrove througp much of the regionwithout observing anything abnor·mal. Yet 'many foreign diplomaticobservers have been tempted tocompare the Bengali situation withthe opening phase of the Vietnam'war, and some of the parallels-suchas those listed above-are unmistak·able ....

Bu! if a guerrilla 'war in Eas! Pak­istan is undcr way. it has a long wayto go before reaching the Icvcl ofeffcctivcness seen in East Asia dur­ing the past few decadcs. Behind thevolume of propaganda on all sides,not very much seems to be happen­ing.

Some kind of war is unfoldingin Eas! Pakistan. At least a fewpeople are getting killed and manyothers are suffering. But in this pas·sionwrenched land it is as difficultto verify a fact as it is to find a dryplace to stand in the current mon­soon rains.

Along East Pakistan's easternborder. Pakistani and Indian artil.lery thunder away at each other,and both sides have augmented theirforces in the region during the pastweek. Military men and odinarypeople expect a surge in violenceduring the next few weeks, possiblytimed to concide with Pakistan's Na­tional Day Aug. 15.

The 60·mile road between Daccaand the important frontier garrisonof Comilla is open. There is little toshow that the Government is havingany difficulty maintaining this stra­tegic link. One mine was planted onthe road recently, and the rebelsdynamited a key bridge on the road,but traffic was detoured over arickety wooden bridge a few hun·

dred yards away.In Dacca, guerrillas have made

their presence felt during the pasttwo weeks by knocking out the citygas supply and damaging the elec­tricity supply badly enough SO thatthere are frequent blackouts. Thereare nightly sounds of explosions andgunfire. Neighborhoods that wereblasted and burned out in Marchare still flat. Bu! Dacca is againfull of people. rickshaws and com·merce and looks as though it isnearly back to nonnal.

In many populous areas in thecountryside crops are growing. andif there are serious food shortagesthey are not evident.

The political background to thisstrife is easy enough to trace. Eastand West Pakistan. separated fromeach other by 900 miles of Indianterritory, share a belief in the Mus­lim faith but little else. The Bengalisof the east speak a different lan­guage from the Urdu of the west;they have different cultural andsocial traditions and even look dif·ferent. The Bengalis have long reogarded the Punjabi of West Pakistanas economic exploiters of the easternregion.

Latent Bengali yearning for au­tonomy from West Pakistan cameto a head last l\1arch and someBengali leaders called for outrightsecession and creation of a newBengali nation, Bangala Desh. OnMarch 25, West Pakistan's army­East Pakistani miltary units hadjoined the rebels-moved into Ben­gal as an invasion force. They haveapplied an iron hand to the admin­istration of the region ever since.

Just how many persons were kiloled in the process remains one of themany persisting controversies. TheGovernment forces have never dis­closed their own estimates, sayingonly that "enemy dead are notcounted, they are thrown into theriver." Estimates range all the wayfrom 10,000 to several hundredthousand killed. In any case, WestPakistan's three regular divisions

By RONALD ,,"OVES

Washington Post Staff 'I,\'ritc:r

All the Bengali diplomats 3t thePakistani embassy in W.lshingtonand the Pakistani mission to theUnited Nations resigned yesterday,declared their allegiance to the pro­yisional Bangia Desh Governmentand sought political asylum in theUnited States.

"Our very presence was a dis­service to our cause at home," saidthe group's chief spokesman at apress conference here of 14 defec­tors.

Sayyid A. Karim, the No.2 manin Pakistan's U.N. mission. saidthat he and his colleagues hadthought it would be useful to tryinfluencing policy from within butthat they were completely isolatedby the West Pakistanis while theircontinued presence was exploitedin the central government's propa·ganda.

U.S. officials said privately thatWashington would follow the Amer­ican tradition of granting politicalasylum.

The Bengalis, who have alreadyopened a small BangIa Desh officeat the United Nations, said theywere considering what form theirpolitical representation in Washing­ton should take.

Bengali sources said the U.S. gov­ernment has indicated that it wouldbave no objection to the creationof an office here as long as its mem­bers register as foreign agents.

I Six of the 14 were accreditedIdiplomats at the embassy here. in·cluding the deputy chief of mission.Enayet Karim. and the political andeconomic counselors. S.A.M.S. Ki­bria and A.M.A. Muhith.

Their resignation left at the em­bassy 11 of the diplomats accreditedbefore the Pakistani civil war. in­cluding military and naval attaches.But the ambassador has brought inseveral loyal West Pakistani diplOemates from Canada and elsewhereand the embassy's work will not becrippled by the resignations.

"The working conditions here,"said the chief spokesman, "clearlyrevealed the grand design of theYahya regime to turn Eas! Pakistaninto a colony of West Pakistan."

Except for Karim from the U.K,the other seven defectors werenondiplomatic administratiive per­sonnel, most of whom had alreadybeen dismissed for their pro-Bengaijactivities.

Karim said U.N. Secretary Gen­eral U Thant had told him that heconsidered war between Pakistanand India to be inevitable.

There are still four or five Ben­galis at the embassy and four or fiveat the U.N. mission in minor admin-

istrative and secretarial positions.There was an unusually large pro­

portion of Bengalis at the Washing­ton embassy. In most posts theywere only represented by one or twopersons, even though East Pakistanis more populous than the dominantWest.

36

Courtesy of MMR Jalal

WEDNESDAY MORNING, JUNE 30,1971

The seven diplomats aliihave their wives children withthem, but they said they still have

THE SUN,

YahyaKhan

and other close relatives IlalYsaid that since the defectors had Ito thein Bengal. given political reasons for their res- made that some of

Pakistani Ambassador Agha Hi- ignations, "it is unnecesary for me timized in this mission:'

Forznula •••

they havewere vic-

By JOHN E. WOODRUFF

Hong Kong.President A. M. Yahya Khan's

announcement of new plans for gOv­erning troubled Pakistan constitutesa final repudiation of the m~jority

rule he said was his goal when heseiud power two years ago.

Instead, he has chosen to makeindefinite the 12-year-old rule ofboth wings by the West Pakistan·dominated army. The main new ele·ment will be an attempt to give thearmy some civilian camouflage andthus hand the ceuntry's frec·worldmoney donors an excuse to backaway from the de facIO aid suspen­sion they adopted in Paris last week,with the United States aside. Buteven without foreign aid, he warned,the army intends to work its will.

have the National Assembly draft in effect, a call for any collabora­the constitution that was to be its tionists among the Bengalis to stepfirst major task and assignment of forvr'iud, So far, the army claimsthat job to a committee of experts to have won over some two dozeninstead. This will effectively wipe of the more than 300 Awamiout the results of last December's leaguers elected to the national andelections, The Awami League had provincial assemblies.won its absolute majority in the 4. Use of by-elections to put menAssembly on a platform demanding acceptable to thc army in the seatsbroad constitutional autonomy that of the autonomists and any unca­would have enabled East Bengal to operative or dead Awami Leaguers.wrest control of its economy from Coupled with President "'ahya's reothe 22 industrialist families that ne\val of the treason accusationshare control of \Ves[ Pakistan with against Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.the army. head of the :\wami League. this

2. Advance warnin~ that the con./ means that the only man who hasstitutional experts must provide a led a majority p~lny in Pakistanstrong central government. This will since the Muslim League disinte­assure that East Bengal's economy grated nearly 20 years ago will beand government will remain under stricken from the assembly rostercontrol of West Pakistan, 1,000 in favor of someone yet to be ap-miles away. proved by the army.

111 3. Indefinite extension of the ban 1Il 111 .,.

His decision seems certain to set that was imposed on the Awami To the Bengalis who gave theup an intense behind-the·scenes de- league-Pakistan's majority politi· Awami leacue 167 of East Pak·bate among member countries of cal party-on f'.iarch 25; the night istan's 169 s;ats in the National As·the Pakistan-aid group during the the army shot and burned its way sembly last December, such a pro­four months he says it will take to into control of Dacca. But individ· gram can only reconfirm what be·put his plan into effect. ual Awami Leaguers who did not came obvious the night the army

President Yahya's new plan Willi partake of what the army calls "an· struck: their choice must be be·have these major effects: ti·state activities" may still take any tween total subservience and total

I. Abandonment of any effort to. offices to which they were elected- independence.

37

Several impartial observers whohave visited East Bengali recentlyhave privately given varying esti·mates of the carnage, but all guessthat the number killed by the armyalone runs into hundreds of thou·sands.

Their guesses may ultimatelyprove to be better indicators of thehorror of what they saw than of theactual numbers dead.

But when the thousands of non·Bengalis killed by the enraged EastPakistanis are added to the tensof thousands apparently killed bythe army, at least one prospectseems certain: The middle road at·tempted by the Awami League­economic freedom for East Bengalbut a loose political and defenseassociation under a united Pakistan-is no longer thinkable for eitherside.

In these circumstances; GeneralYahya's plan promises to become aformula for prolonged carnage onboth sides-and vcry likely for can·tinuing increases in the number ofBengali refugees in India. whichclaims it already has more than si.xmillion of them.

Courtesy of MMR Jalal

1,

Courtesy of MMR Jalal

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in custody at Karachi airport.

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Chief of the banned Awami League, was arrested fromhis residence, in Dacca, by the local authorities, ~t 0130 hours, on March 26, 197 I.

CHRlSTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, AUGUST 12, 1971

Mujib Trial Slirs ConcernFriends of Pakistan around the

world view with deep concern thedecision to bring the East Pakistanileader, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, totrial before a special military court.The Sheikh, who was arrested lastMarch at the time of the Army'scrackdown on his autonomy move­ment in East Pakistan, is accused of''waging war against Pakistan" and

. other offenses - charges that carry

the death penalty.Admittedly, whether or not the

Sheikh should be brought to trialis a matter solely within Pakistan'sjurisdiction. But there are factorsin the case which justify the world­wide concern.

In last December's national elec­tions, Sheikh Mujib's AwamiLeague won a majority of seats inthe National Assembly which was

to draft a new Constitution for Pak­istan. But talks on the formation ofa government broke down over theSheikh's demands for broad auton­omy for East Pakistan. It was thenthat the Army moved in.

Sheikh Mujib remains a popularhero in his home province. Manywould doubt whether his drive toobtain autonomy for the East Ben­galis could be considered treason-

able. A harsh sentenceafter a secret trialdeplorable impression. It wouldonly exacerbate the deep rift nowdividing West and East Pakistan-arift which has steadily worsened asa result of the Army's merciless re­pression of the Bengalis' aspira-tions .

38

Courtesy of MMR Jalal

for or humanitarian towardsa elected leader. A fair trial under the ordin-ary laws of the land a court .is the least thatwas due to the Sheikh and the least PresidentKhan in honour could have ordered.

It is difficult to think that the President of Pakistandoes not that the trial of the Sheikhcan serve to aggravate the situation in East """"""...1'\ ......

which can down for ever force of arms.to seek a' he has to

continue to his trust force....

1971

adds lustre to his mill-nW"""""rfulf'C> he has or

turnmlg a deaf ear to the

The secret a tribunala hundred miles from Ha'waJPUlldi,

Awami leader, Sheikh 1'I.A" •• ;;;a..•• ... l:'taJbman,is believed to have started a few ago, has Sh(JlCkE~

world Persons as diverse as the Prime Ministerof the World Council of and a '-""" ..·.nlA.II

Committee for the Defence of Human Rights in Easthave voiced their but to no

1971

of the head of the Awami whosewas the victor

Pakistan's first lateThe sheikh is now the de~

in a secret trial staged

Courtesy of MMR Jalal

1971

THE LATIN C1Il..lL1f..........lI.-..a..../C1Il.A.

·.·~lk....... into account the nl'()VUnOlm

Declaration of Human ... \.JlJIf,U".,.

poses of the Charter ofInternational Convention on uen~:::idle;

Conscious that human " traru;ceJldS

of race, reJ1g1on, UllDgll8g'e, g~eog:ral)hy

Condemns the brutal mnmressionthe deliberate of

CO!1I.SCIIOUS elements of intellectuals and theAJlUJ~I ..I.'W'U of a of terror in East Bengal thePakistan which has caused exodus of morethan 7~ millions of refugees to India-an exodus whichcontinues and which has Pr<JKlUlcea aw:u~e!r01.lS t€:nsilons

in the area;Calls upon the Government of Pakistan to desist from

committing further violation of human rights and of lawand stop mili tary repression, respect the life ofthe leader Rahman, under

and enter into immediate negotiations with thealready elected representatives ot the people with the

of achieving a political solution of the pro'ble;mac{~eDlt.ahJp. to East Bengal; in the faith that such a solu­tion cannot be achieved means and that it isa niinimum essential condition for the return of l"Ohlt'ro.OC

to their motherland, with sufficient guarantees of their

the international to extend di-as wen as through international organizations, to

the sheltered by India in a of humani­tarianism and to the of East Bengal andto exercise all their influence over the Government ofrWUSK;an, with the of asolution.

40

Courtesy of MMR Jalal