EAST PAKISTAN ON EDGE OF COMPLETE ECONOMIC & POLITICAL RUIN
(Editor’s Note : This dispatch was brought out of East Pakistan after six correspondents toured the war-raked province, the first allowed in since newsmen were expelled March 26)
Dacca, East Pakistan, May 11 (delayed) (AP)
A civil war of staggering butchery and hatred has left the 23-year-old two- nation of Pakisan on the edge of complete economic and political ruin.
Pakistan, flat broke, is spending more than two million (US) dollars daily to support the army that shelled and machinegunned this province of 75 million into submissive inactivity.
It is responsibly estimated that deaths since the war started March 25 numbered more than the 400,000 killed by nature in last November’s cyclone. This time, each death means a familys lasting bitterness.
Killing was indiscriminate. Separatist-bent Bengalis slaughtered almost as many of the wing’s six million Non-Bengalis that they could find. When the army moved in, they settled the score, aided by Non-Bengalis seeking revenge.
The resultant fighting brought damage reminiscent of World War Two. Markets were razed and flattened, towns were devastated. Vital road and rail links were cut at a dozon major points, crippling communication.
Losses to industry and interwing commerce and effects of stalled developmentare incalculable. Damage from shelling, fire and sabotage must certainly reach deep into the hundreds of million of (US) dollars.
The 53 jute mills are working at 15-20 per cent capacity.
Reporters touring the province found that millions face starvation from famine and from halted relief distribution.
The army is believed to have taken over American boats and Japanese jeeps meant for relief, jeopardizing future aid, informed sources said.
Military rulers insist that while they welcome aid, it must come without foreigners to look after its distribution. Donor countries won’t accept that.
In many areas, food supply is a critical problem. The key port, Chittagong is choked with 400,000 tons of goods, 100,000 tons more than it handles normally in an entire month.
Before, river craft carried only 25 percent of Chittagong cargo into the interior. Now it must carry it all, perhaps for months. Even when roads and rail are open, shippers say, ten river craft food stocks. Now, they say, the army allots food supply only four boats.
Politically, the problems are as great. Bengalis voted 167 to 169 National Assembly Seats to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s Awami League in December. He is now jailed, the Party is banned and no one has any idea what happens next.
President Yahya Khan, who stormed back to the West after talks with Mujib on restoring civilian rule collapsed in Dacca, maintains he wants politicians to take back the Government.
But betting is heavy that Yahya won’t last the year as President and the army can’t find anyone who thinks their way and can still walk unescorted through the sullen streets of East Pakistan.
Confidence is shattered among Bengalis, West Pakistanis and Indian migrants who settled here at partition in 1947.
At a Chittagong jute mill where Bengalis systemically murdered 180 women and children, only 20 of 7,500 workers have dared to return.
Non-Bengali officers and officials refuse to even admit that those are Bengali widows and orphons in need, although vast numbers were shot dead by the army in apparent revenge for atrocities.
Hindu Bengalis made up 12 percent of the population. They chose to remain here though West Bengal in India is largely Hindu and East Bengal- East Pakistan- is mostly moslem.
Radical student rejected the Islam that bound them to West Pakistan, espousing instead Hinduism and “Calcutta Culture”. Hindus were widely blamed for formenting the conditions leading to war.
As a result, the army singled out Hindus for massacre. Hindu shops and homes were smashed and burned in towns all across East pakistan.
A temple in Chittagong was blown completely on its side.
Undamaged shops in otherwise devastated Hindu areas sometimes bear signs in English and Urdu (the Western Tongue) proclaiming the owner a moslem.
Often, being a moslem- or showing a Pakistani flag- didn’t help. The effects are felt hard 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) across India in West Pakistan.
“After all”, said one key businessman in Karachi, “we’ve lost a colony”.
Sixty per cent of West Pakistani-made goods were sold in East Pakistan. Not a single bale of West pakistan cotton has gone to the East since the crisis, stalling a normal trade of between 65. to 70 million (US) dollors a year.
West Pakistan’s total annual exports to the East are about 300 million (US) dollars.
East Pakistan normally contributes 45 percent to Pakistan’s foreign exchange.
The future looks as grim as the immediate past. Jute producers fear their market may switch to synthetic figures. With importers fed up with continued problems in supply.
Meanwhile, India has rushed to cash in on the disruption. One industrialist here estimated India already had earned an extra 100 million US dollars by added jute sales at a skyrocketed price.
The job of rebuilding what the army and rebels burned and battered down will take massive hunnan and financial resources.
Whole blocks of two-story brick buildings in several cities and towns lie in charred rubble. One man in the demolished marketplace at Rajshahi showed a reporter his shell of a store and plead :
“Here, take a snap of this, See what was done”. What hadn’t been burned or destroyed by fragments had been looted.
All over East Pakistan decimated families pick among the blackened remains of their homes and businesses, wondering where to start again. Local commerce was controlled largely by Hindus and West Pakistanis, and many are now gone for good.
“We will manage”, said military governor Lieutenant General Tikka Khan, in charge of queling the rebell on and rebuilding the province. “Nature has a way of putting things right and we are making good progress”.
Hollow-eyed Bengali jute mill workers, too scared to go to work and too hungry to survive unless they do, are not as optimistic.
Reference : Indonesian Observer, 15.05.1971