Time April 5, 1971
PAKISTAN: TOPPLING OVER THE BRINK
With the awesome fury of a cyclone off the Bay of Bengal, civil war swept across East Pakistan last week. In city after crowded, dusty city the army turned its guns on mobs of rioting civilians, Casualties mounted into the thousands. Through the full toll remained uncertain because of censorship and disorganization in the world’s most densely populated corner (1,400 people per sq. mi.) at week’s end some estimates had 2,000 dead. Even if President Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan is prepared to accept casualties of geometrically greater magnitude, the outcome is likely to be the final breakup of East Pakistan and the painful birth of a new nation named Bangladesh (Bengal State).
