THE ECONOMIST, LONDON, JULY 31, 1971
TIME IS RUNNING OUT IN BENGAL
A first small step to getting Bengal refugees back home has been achieved in Pakistan’s acceptance of United Nations observers in East Pakistan. India rejected this week the suggestion that there should be observers on its side of the bonJLr too. But the main obstacle to the refugees’ return remains the situation deep inside East Pakistan.
This is not helped by the fact that the Pakistani army has had nothing but praise from President Yahya, when it is obvious to anyone who travels around East Pakistan that it has used excessive force. The damage done throughout the province has been colossal, and there was a methodicalness about it that belies the official story that the soldiers only fired when fired upon. Worst hit are the bazaar areas, where they could wreak the maximum damage with the maximum of firepower.
The province’s main roads are lined with burnt-out huts, and most areas around crossroads and bridges have been more or less cleared of human habitation. The army’s claim that only eight soldiers, none of officers, have been punished for excesses is hardly reassuring. There are reports that at least one brigadier has been relieve of his command. It might impress foreign aid donors and the refugees if the authorities made this sort of disciplinary action police. But West Pakistanis are terribly touchy about any criticism of the army, which has played a central part in their lives since the creation of Pakistan.
Most of the refugees are Hindus-nearly 6 million out of a total of nearly 7 million. The reassurance which the president has offered the Hindus have been offset by his insistence that new constitution will be more Islamic than ever; and it still unclear how for the army has stopped the Hindu-bashing in which it clearly indulged earlier. On June 21st two days after one the president’s speeches of reassurance, Dacca’s most famous Hindu temple was pulled down. And since then the villages that have been sacked for “harboring miscreants” have been mainly Hindu ones.
Hindu refugees are still pouring out of East Pakistan. Those interviewed, on the border all say they are leaving because it is being make clear to them that they will have no place in the future Pakistan. Apart from the arm, the people they complain of are the Bengali members of the right-wing religious parties Jamaat Islami and the Moslem League, which were crushed in last December ‘elections’ and the Biharis who came as Moslem refugees from India.
It is these two groups that the new “peace committees have been formed. Until now these committees have been busy providing the army with information about Awami League members and Hindus. Hut now that so many people have fled then play an important in the forming of allotment committees that appoint “caretakers” for abandoned property. Officially, half of the income from this property should go into a relief fund and the property should be handed back intact to any refugees who return. Since so few have returned it is impossible to establish whether this will happen in practice. Returning refugees will probably have difficulty in recovering their property from the hands of Biharis and Moslem fanatics who are now high in the favor of the military authorities.
Under the peace committees come the razakars, Home Gurrd-type volunteers who are paid a small wage are armed to help the police in preventing sabotage by the Mukti Fauj. Many of them are simply local thugs. There are cases of criminal charges dropped if the accused men join the razakars, and one case of a man who, although legally disqualified for life from ever carrying a weapon, is low using a Lee Enfield.
It is the peace committees and razakars, a mixture of opportunist collaborators, bigots and toughs whom the Mukti Fauj guerrillas have chosen as their prime target. They have killed a fair number of them. The military authorities in Dacca are conscious of the need to attract more respectable civilian support. Indeed General Farman Ali, who is in charge of civil affairs in East Pakistan has publicly admitted that there are some bad characters on the peace committees.
But time is not on the military government’s side. The Mukti Fauj has shown that it can operate even in Dacca and it5 actions are already a powerful deterrent to those Bengalis who might be willing to play along with the authorities. And so long as the Mukti Fauj continues to operate however sporadically the government will find it difficult to treat any Bengali in any position of authority. Apart from the 60,0CX) troops and 5,000 West Pakistani police it has brought in, the governments seems to have tried to keep its “colonial profily” as low as possible. But West Pakistani civil servants have been brought in to head homes department and information ministry and as district commissioners for Dacca and Chittagong: there has been a purge of Pakistan International Airlines where some 850 flight and ground staff have been dismissed since March. Security is essential in PIA because it is the only link between the country’s two wings.
Nor is time on the president’s side if the Mukti Fauj continue to make the economy another of their price targets. Quite apart from their sabotaging of Bridges and communications, which is largely aimed at hamstringing army movements they have started a concerted campaign against East Pakistan main crops; jute and tea. Very Little- which is Pakistan’s main foreign exchange earner is reaching the mills, because growers and dealers have received anonymous letters from the Mukti Fauj telling them not to move it. Many of the letters bear smudged postmarks indicating that postal workers are helping the guerrillas in their own. And little of the jute that gets to the mills is being bated because of labor troubles between Bengalis and Biharis. Tea which is grown near Sylhet in the north-east, has been badly hit. Some estate have been shelled from across the Indian border and the Mukti Fauj has blown up eight processing factories.
But so far there seems to be little pressure on President Yahya from West Pakistan. News about East Pakistan is heavily censored, and the only West Pakistanis learn about army casualties is from Indian broadcast. And although the economic squeeze is already on, the business lobby is too timid to make representations to the President. Only Mr. Bhutto makes occasional complaints about continued martial law, and that simply because he wants to use his electoral majority in West Pakistan.