Death and victory in BanglaDesh
Martin Woollacott
In Chuadanga, Tuesday- the town held by East Pakistan Rifles and considered provisional capital of the state. Above, bayoneted women and children in Jessore earlier this week.
Lieutenant Attaula Shah, a Pathan from West Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province, is the prize exhibit in Chuadanga, the small Bengal town 20 miles east of the Indian frontier which some have now christened the provisional capital of Bangladesh. The lieutenant, who is lonely, frightened, and more than 1,000 miles from home, was captured after an attack on a Pakistan Army company in the town of Kushtia, 20 miles farther east last week.
He is probably the only survivor from a force of 150 men and the most successful battle the BanglaDesh liberation forces have so far fought in the western third of the country. The company was sent to occupy Kushtia on March 25, the day Bengal’s war began. The major in charge set up command headquarters for the company in a school and sent platoons out to a telephone exchange, a radio relay point and police station. Lieutenant Shah was in charge of the platoon at the police barracks.
A big, handsome young man of 20, now dressed in white shirt and blue trousers, his face disfigured by scars and bruises and his head bandaged, he says: “On March 29 all four places were simultaneously attacked. I asked the major on the radio what to do and he said don’t worry, keep on fighting. After two hours and losing five or six men I asked again and got the same answer. So I decided myself we should retreat back to HQ The major shouted at me and said why have you rur away?”
The fight at the school continued throughout the 30th and Attaulah claimed that 40 to 50 men deid as Bengalis kept up continuous fire. Then the major decided to break out with what remained of his company, but they had to abandon their jeeps when they found the road to Jessore, where their brigade is headquartered, blocked by felled trees. The column began to break up into fleeing individuals, including the lieutenant, who had thrown away his weapon.
He says : “I was captured by villagers. They started beating me with sticks and I told them I was only a new second lieutenant and I told them I was a Pathan not a Punjabi.” He was lucky. Most of the rest of the column were undoubtedly killed by villagers wielding sharpened bamboo spears.
Of the troops at Jessore, whom he identified as 107th Infantry Brigade, and the rest of his battalion, the 27th Baluchi, he said with a glance at the East Pakistan Rifles officer supervising the conversation: “Since they have no means to get out they have to hang on. They are not fighting with the heart. These people, the Bangalis, are winning because they are fighting for a cause.”
Chuadanga may or may not be the provisional capital of BanglaDesh. Nobody seems quite sure. But the little town with its tree-lined roads, market and hospital does have a functioning civil administration and its military command considers itself in charge of operations for South-west Bengal. A small perky major called Mohammed Abu Osman is a ranking officer. Of the Jessore garrison he says, “We will completely kill them.”
Proudly he showed me a Chinese AK47 Assault rifle captured at Kushtia along with anti-tank guns, machine guns and ammunition. “We don’t want any material aid from outside,” he boasted. “All we need is moral support. As for weapons, we will capture them from the enemy.” Along the road a blue Jeep moves slowly, its loudspeaker broadcasting a patriotic Bengali song from an ancient gramophone. Young men calling themselves liberation fighters hang around the street outside the major’s headquarters.
One group of three had a single Lee Enfield rifle between them and thought that the seven magazines they had for it represented a major supply. “Yes, we have been to the fighting place,” one said excitedly. The three apparently had acted as runners during the action at Kushtia. As for Jessore, reports today suggest that the army there has succeeded in pushing the liberation forces right out of the town.
The battle of Kushtia is clearly a famous victory to Bengalis in this district, and morale is far higher than it was between Jessore and the border when I visited it earlier this week. Seated in a parade ground at the East Pakistan Rifles barracks, Azizur Rahman Akkas, member of the National Assembly, general secretary of the Awami League in Kushtia District, is taking tea with officers and holding forth.
Asked about the whereabouts of the Awami League leader, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, he claimed to have received messages from him and declaimed loudly: “Oh God, I swear he is living. Inshallah, he is alive … I would be finished if he were dead. I love him.” Akkas claimed to have been at the sheik’s house in Dacca on the night of the 25th when many people believe he was arrested by West Pakistanis.
He said that the sheikh was in fact kidnapped by his own supporters because he had refused to leave his house. But West Pakistanis did raid the house later that night, Akkas said, killing Mujib’s 20 year-old son and 10 year-old daughter.
Asked about the fleeing soldiers from the Kushtia battle, he says with immense relish: “Villagers with spears surrounded them. And they were all killed.” The success at Kushtia, small though it was in conventional terms, is probably sustaining morale throughout south-west BanglaDesh.
With one brigade at Jessore and another at Khulna, father east Pakistani commanders can hold their cantonments, although supplies and morale problems are developing. But if they split up their forces into penny packets to try to hold small towns they risk more defeats like Kaushtia. The same will be true during the impending wet season, only more so.
What is also stiffening Bengali morale is detailed news now coming out of Dacca, and above all enragement at the news of the killing of students and intellectuals. “Tell him they are killing our intellectuals.” an officer suddenly interjected as I was talking to Major Osman. The hatred they feel is total. “They are worse than Nazis,” another said. Whether this can be translated into effective military terms immediately remains to be seen. But the alienation of Bengalis from Pakistan is now so complete it seems impossible they will not win in the long run.
Reference: The Guardian : 7 April 1971