NEW YORK TIMES
IN THIS CASE WAR IS HELL’ FOR ONE SIDE ONLY
Agartala, East Pakistan-War is hell, everyone says, but it is usually hell for both sides.
Yet, in the three-week-old war between the Pakistani Army and the outgunned resistance fighters of East Pakistan, there has been only one hell so far-that of the tens of thousands of East Pakistani civilians who have been massacred by the army in its drive to terrorize, intimidate and crush the Bengali independence movement.
Having gained control of most of the major cities and towns, the army troops-all are West Pakistanis, many of whom harbor deep racial hatred for the Bengali population of East Pakistan-are now making forays into the countryside. They hope to extend their control before the monsoon rains become heavy in a few weeks and make movement for a regular army difficult.
“They flounder and die in knee-deep water,” said a Bengali officer. “We will use country boats. We will make misery for them.”
The prospect is for a long, sullen war. Most diplomats and foreign observers believe that the Bengalis, by hanging on, will eventually make life untenable for the West Pakistanis, who are more than 1,000 miles from their home and their supply bases.
But these observers also agree that, unless foreign powers put an economic squeeze on the Pakistani Government, it could be years before the 75 million Bengalis finally win their freedom and end West Pakistan’s exploitation of their province the exploitation that gave birth to the independence movement.
There are usually two sides to every story, every argument, every conflict. But it is difficult, after witnessing what is taking place in East Pakistan, to imagine some justification for the army’s action. This is because the army, from all the available evidence, has set out to kill the leaders and potential leaders of East Pakistan and to destroy the economic base of the region.
‘They want to drag us so far down that we will be reduced to eating grass,” said one Bengali soldier. “They want to make sure that no head will ever be raised against them again.”
The West Pakistani troops are killing Bengali students, intellectuals, professors, army officers, engineers, doctors and others of any leadership potential.
Using tanks, jet fighter-bombers, heavy artillery and gun-boats, all mostly by the United States, the Soviet Union and Communist China, the Pakistani Army is also destroying food-storage houses, tea factories, jute mills and natural gas fields-the economic infrastructure of East Pakistan.
The Pakistan Government, often through its official radio, is accusing its old enemy India of virtually everything in this war: of sending arms soldiers to the independence army, of harassing Pakistani ships, of setting up a clandestine radio station, of inspiring the Indian press to print exaggerated accounts of massacres and atrocities. These charges, all of which India has repeatedly denied, have received wide play in the world press, mainly because there is no Bangladesh radio to counter-balance them.
India is probably providing assistance to the independence movement, but there has been no evidence yet of any arms, ammunition or men.
Radio Pakistan and the controlled West Pakistan press, in addition to using India for a whipping boy, also continues to issue daily reports describing conditions in East Pakistan as “returning to normal.” It characterizes the popularly supported independence movement as “a handful of miscreants” and says that the East Pakistan economy is on the mend, with jute being exported again. All are bald fabrications.
Sydney H. Schanberg