CRY FOR MERCY
Short of petrol, food and arms, the rebel army is forced to impose discipline…
By Donald Seaman …of the London Daily Express who crossed the border from India to East Pakistan and visited a camp of the ‘Bangla Desh’ rebel army. He cabled the following report :
GAUHATI (Assam). They put a boy of 18 up against a palm tree and read out the offence for which he was on trial for his life: misuse of petrol. Then they sentenced him to die by a one-man firing squad.
I watched as the boy pleaded for his life. I heard the click of the rifle bolt as the bearded executioner pushed a round into the breech of his Lee Enfleld.
The boy was weeping now. He put his hands protectively in front of his face and awaited the bullet.
Petrol is precious to the rebel army in whose ranks the boy prisoner was fighting for East Pakistan’s independence. So precious that they count it out by the drop.
As a driver the boy had “misused” the ration allotted to his truck by driving a party of women, infants, and old men to safety.
To use petrol even in wartime for such a mission might seem humane to you and me. But to this scarecrow army strugging to set up an independent nation it ranks as a capital crime.
The members of the rough and ready court martial showed not the slightest disposition to mercy. But the soldier who had brought me into the war zone suddenly asked. “What would you do?”
Every face turned towards me. I was now like a judge deciding on life or death in a final court of appeal.
‘I looked at the weeping boy. He was younger than my eldest son. I said to the rebel soldier who had asked for my opinion. “Anyone can seize command in a war. But to know when to show mercy is the test of leadership.”
Sobbing
The members of the court martial let the boy grovel while they talked it over among themselves. For 20 minutes he knelt in front of them, sobs shaking his body.
Then they said to me : “Well, it might look bad if we shot him in front of you.”
So they spared him, though for how long I do not know because it was time for me to move on out of that sector.
I was in one of the farthest corners of the war. To get there I travelled nearly 1,000 miles by air and road from Calcutta- through the hills of Assam and across the border into the jungles and tea gardens.
The rebels have a few sten guns, some old rifles, shotguns, bamboo spears and the dao- a two-foot long knife like a slimline butcher’s cleaver which is carried in a wicker basket at the hip. Some use bow and arrows.
Ammunition is so scarce that no one fires at planes. And the rebels fire at men only when they can see the proverbial whites of their eyes.
No uniforms
They possess one fuel dump and it has been hit by rocket fire. So petrol is worth more than gold.
They have no money, no medicine, no salt, no uniforms, no waterproof clothing (except umbrellas). The lucky ones have sandals on their feet. Food is so short that starvation among the women and children is not far off
What they do have in plenty is numbers and guts. And leaders to spur them on by friendly persuasion, political cajoling, ruthless orders, and even threats of death by firing squad should they flag.
I crossed the border from India to East Pakistan and met my guide a rebel leader wio identified himself only as “No, 2”.
“No. 2” is a firecracker of a man. He is second in command of the rebel forces in that area. Into the struggle to set up Bangla Desh- the free Bengal nation- he has brought the fanatical revolutionary philosonhy of China’s Mao Tse-tung.
When I met him, “No. 2” carried a sten gun and had a two-member body-guard. The hacks of all three were covered in weals caused, they said, by whippings received in the jails of the Pakistan government against which they are now fighting.
It was Easter Sunday when the four of us moved into the war.
Red orchids hung down from dripping green trees. We kept an eye open for snakes : This is cobra country.
On Sunday night we slept in thatched hut, with howling dogs and grunting hogs rooting in the rain-sodden earth under the raised bamboo floor. The only well-fed creatures were the mosquitoes.
Jungle track
At 5 a.m. on Easter Monday our jeep arrived. We drove the first 10 miles lurching and silthering along the track through jungle. It emerged from the trees, and crossed paddy fields and a tea estate on to the Sylhet tarmac road.
This road runs 20 miles more straight on to Sylhet town and everything that moves on it is a sitting duck for the Pakistani air force of president Yahya Khan.
We could see smoke rising from burning villages ahead. The ground shook from bombing.
Columns of smoke pillared into the sky as Punjabi troops of the Pakistan government set fire to palm-thatch huts housing 1,000 coolies who work in the tea gardens.
My guides introduced me to Captain “Dudu Mia,” the name by which the rebel army commander in Sylhet province is known.
He said: “Given the guns we could drive those Punjabis out of the province in one straight night.” I reckon he could too.
There are only 600 men left of the battalion of the 32nd Punjab Regiment which was stationed at Sylhet before the civil war began. About 200 have been killed.
Captain “Dudu Mia” said: ‘We are avoiding all frontal battle. We cannot afford to waste one bullet or a spoonful of petrol. We are using the ‘floating sea’ tactics of Vietnam to smother and surround them.”
“And when the rains bog down the movement of their supplies and reinforcements we will have them- and no mistakes.”
Reference : The Straits Times, 21.04.1971