Sheikh’s Supporters Failed To
Prepare For Armed Resistance
By Simon Dring
There seems little doubt that effective long-term Bengali resistance to the advancing Pakistan Army in East Pakistan will be over before it ever really has the chance to get under way. Despite reports of signi- ficant successes by the so-called “Bengal Liberation Army,” it is hardly possible that anything in that form exists.
What opposition there is appears to be mostly in areas where the Pakistan -Army has yet to make a co-ordinated advance, or where elements of the East Bengal Rifles and police are still holding Out.
But there is certainly no countrywide organized resistance movement which would even make much of a show against a determined army attack.
The supporters of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman talked a great deal before the army crackdown last month about how they would fight, but they did virtually nothing about preparing themselves. They led noisy and often violent demonstrations, but they had no organization, no training, no weapons and, as the army proved in Dacca, no real stomach for war.
Once the Pakistan Army has enough men and equipment to tackle the remaining pockets of resistance they will crush them as effectively and as ruthlessly as they crushed Dacca.
Guerrilla haven
However it is unlikely they will be able or really need to control the countryside. They will probably try to do no more than hold the centers of population.
The countryside is a maze of sunken rice fields, banana groves, jute fields, tea plantations, rivers and forest and is ideal for guerrilla warfare. And the Pakistan Army knows it.
But it is unlikely that the Bengalis will be able to do anything until either some one emerges to lead them or, more important, supply them with weapons.
In the three wild March weeks, when Bengali independence was taken for granted, Sheikh Mujib and his Awami League followers did begin to establish a network of village liberation units. I visited several outside Dacca only days before the East Pakistani dream came bloodily and dramatically to an end.
In one complex of villages only 300 people- out of over 100,000 had been recruited. Led by a gray-bearded ex-N.C.O. from the British India Army, they drank large amounts of tea in the village shops and talked enthusiastically of what they would do.
But it was sadly obvious that they could achieve little with their sharpened bamboo sticks and their ragged parades that paid more attention to looks than fighting skill.
“We will cut roads and bridges and get guns from our enemy,” said one. However there is no reason to believe that he would react any differently from his brothers in Dacca.
Dream world
In the capital the students, reckoned to be the militant hard core of the Awami League, lived a similar dream world. They talked endlessly about fighting to the death.
But they had nothing more than a few rifles from the 1939-45 war, equally ancient pistols, and some home-made bombs which, when the army moved in on March 25. were apparently not used.
Once the shooting started the jeering, the shouting, the open defiance of the military might of the Pakistan Government died a quick death. And this pattern is being repeated throughout the country.
When I toured the devastated areas of the city most people shrugged their shoulders and turned away when questioned about the possibility of resistance.
These were the students, the intellectuals and the businessmen who only days before had raised the flag of Bangladesh over their homes, and who, only the previous afternoon, had joined anti-Government demonstrations in the streets.
Now, with thousands of innocent people massacred, all they can say. and quite understandably, is; “what choice do we have in the face of guns?”
The only other people who might be able to put up a fight are the underground Left-wing and Communist movements. As yet there have been no reports of any of their leaders being rounded up
There are three main groups who could eventually be expected to put up some kind of armed resistance. All of them are peking orientated.
I met several of their members at secret meetings in Dacca early in March. They admitted their organizations were still small and had few arms.
Their only supplies came from the Naxalites in West Bengal India and possibly some from the Burmese rebels. They operate’ mainly in the industrial areas around Dacca and Chittagong and to a lesser extent in the rural areas of the north. Most of their support comes from the trade unions.
Their leaders are middle class dropouts aged from 25-60. They are dedicated to a cause but seem to spend a lot of their time squabbling over ideological differences
During March they capitalized on the chaos in East Pakistan by organizing demonstrations in both cities and scattering leaflets calling for a “bloody revolution to achieve independence.”
Seeds of resistance
“We are not fighters,” Said one Bengali intellectual to me the day after the army moved into Dacca. “We have more to talk about than anything else.
“But the President has now. given us a real cause. Even though they might rule us for another 10 years they will find out they have bitten off more than they can chew, The seeds of a very real resistance have been sown and eventually we will strike back.”
Perhaps this prophecy will come true. But it will be a long time before it does. And if it happens it will be more than likely in the hands of the Communists than a pipe-smoking moderate like Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
Reference: The Sunday Telegraph, April 16, 1971