THE NEW YORK TIMES, APRIL 14, 1971
WITH THE BANGLA FORCES
While the central government, which is dominated by West Pakistan, continues to announce that the situation is calm in the East and conditions are returning to normal, a far different picture emerges on the scene.
Daily battles are reliably reported in many sectors. Hordes of East Pakistanis have fled the cities to seek refuge or join the secessionist army, and thousands of refugees, carrying their meager belongings in cardboard suitcases and sacks, are crossing into India for temporary haven.
The correspondent saw Pakistani soldiers burning villages to deny the resistance forces-cover or hiding places. As the smoke from the thatch and bamboo huts billowed up on the outskirts of the city of Comilla, circling vultures descended and the bodies of peasants, already being picked apart by dogs and crows.
There is no way of knowing exactly how many of East Pakistan’s 75 million Bengalis the army has killed, but authoritative reports from army sources agree that the figure is at least in the tens of thousands; some reports put it much higher.
The central Government officially bars all foreign newsmen from East Pakistan. But from the evidence available in secessionist-held rural areas some of which are occasionally contested by the army-the Pakistani armed forces have killed leaders and potential leaders of East Pakistan and shattered the economic base of the region in their effort to crush the independence movement.
On orders, the army-now consisting entirely of West Pakistani troops-has killed students, intellectuals, professors, engineers, doctors and others leadership caliberwhether they were directly involved with the nationalist movement or not.
Both in military attacks and in executions, the central Government’s forces killed East Pakistani Army officers and soldiers who were unable to break out and join the guerrilla forces when the army offensive began on March 25. Most of the officers’ families have been killed; only a few escaped into hiding.
With the aid of air and naval bombardment, the army has destroyed food supplies, tea factories, jute mills and natural gas fields-the economic basis of East Pakistan.
“This has already set the country back 25 years,” said a Scottish tea-estate manager who fled to India from his plantation in the northeast. “The liberation army, trying to stop the army, is blowing the bridges, railroad lines and roads. Even if they eventually win independence, they’ll have to start completely from scratch again.
This man and two other estate managers who escaped with him asked that their names not be used because of their fear of reprisal against British families still in East Pakistan.
The three evacuees reported that a Convoy of nine trucks that the Pakistani radio contended had been carrying arms and ammunition from India and Had been destroyed by Pakistani planes was in fact a collection of empty trucks in the yard of a tea estate.
Authoritative reports indicate that perhaps 20 to 25 percent of the people are left in such towns as Dacca, the capital, and Chittagong and Comilla. Smaller centers are also largely deserted. Dacca had a population of about 1.5 million, Chittagong about 400,000 to 500,000 arid Camilla about 100,000.
In the eastern part of East Pakistan the thump of artillery fire can be heard every day in virtually every sector. After every guerrilla attack or harassment by the outnumbered and outgunned resistance troops, the Pakistani Army appears to be inflicting reprisals on the civilian population.
“The bloody cowards!” said a young Bengali lieutenant who escaped the army attempt to annihilate his battalion of the East Bengal Regiment at Comilla. “We give them fronts to shoot at. We are in uniform. But they attack civilians instead.”
The secessionist army is desperately short of trained officers, arms, ammunition, vehicles and basic supplies. Some of the men are barefoot.
The heaviest weapon the secessionists have in any numbers is the 3-inch mortar, although they have captured a few heavy guns. The Pakistani military are using jet fighter-bombers, heavy artillery and gunboats-mostly supplied by the United States, the Soviet Union and Communist China.
Pakistani charges that the Indian Government has been sending troops and weapons to East Pakistan are not borne out by, this reporter’s observations. No Indian troops were seen in the East Pakistani units.
The basic weapons are old Enfield and Garand rifles and some Chinese-made automatic rifles and machine guns-which the Bengalis have either captured or had brought with them when they escaped from their units.
Fewer than 10 percent of the 300,000 men in the Pakistani armed forces were Bengalis. Nearly all of those who were not killed by the West Pakistani troops in the first days have joined the secessionist army and constitute its only trained elements.
The best available figures indicate that the trained core consists of some 3,000 members of the East Bengal Regiment, which was a regular unit, and some 9,000 members of the East Pakistan Rifles, a paramilitary unit one of whose duties was to man the observation posts on the border with India.
The rest of the secessionist force is made up of armed policemen home guards, other poorly trained local militia and raw recruits.
Before the political crisis began to mount, the Pakistani Army had about 25,000 troops in East Pakistan. Large numbers of reinforcements have been flown over from West Pakistan, which is separated from the Eastern province by over a thousand miles of Indian territory.
Some estimates put the number of West Pakistani troops in East Pakistan at 60,000 to – 80,000, most of them Punjabis and Pathans. The Punjabis in particular have traditionally held the Bengalis in disdain though both are predominantly Moslem.
Though the average amount of ammunition kept by the guerrilla riflemen is 30 to 40 rounds, their determination seems high, fueled many cases by the fact that the Pakistani Army has killed members of their families-and sometimes all of them.
“They have made me an orphan,” said one soldier who, like many of his comrades, had glassy eyes and seemed unable to believe what had happened. “My life is unimportant now.”
Two days ago West Pakistani troops, as they had been for several says” were burning villages on the outskirts of Comilla less than a mile from the Indian border. Their apparent purpose was to remove all cover within a five-mile radius of the airstrip. Reports indicate they are doing the same all over East Pakistan.
Maj. Khaled Musharrof, the 32-year-old guerrilla commander in the area, sent out a 10-man patrol to harass the Pakistani troops. This correspondent accompanied the patrol, three of whose members had no shoes.
Using rice paddies to advantage, the patrol stalked to within 200 yards of the soldiers, who were throwing phosphorous grenades into thatch huts. The Bengalis, who had some Chinese made automatic weapons, opened fire, which the soldiers immediately returned. The shooting was nearly constant for about 20 minutes, after which the Bengalis came scrambling back to safety over an embankment.
The co-ordination of guerrilla units is poor and in some instances non-existent. The Bengalis are now devoting themselves to guerrilla tactics while the army has gained control of most of the major cities and towns, including the cantonments and airfields.
With their added strength, the troops arc launching forays into the countryside and sending out motorized columns to try to link up the cities they control. A few of the columns have been successful, but not many, because the guerrillas have been able to cut road, water and rail links with some regularity.
-Sydney H. Schanberg