PAKISTAN: The Battle of Kushtia
Monday, 19 April 1971
Time Magazine
Fierce fighting raged last week in East Pakistan as Bengali townspeople and peasants resisted the “occupation army” of 80,000 West Pakistani soldiers. Reports have indicated that as many as 200,000 civilians have been killed by the heavily armed West Pakistani troopers. But soldiers have also suffered severe casualties at the hands of irate peasants. The army controlled the capital of Dacca, the vital ports of Chittagong and Khulna, and several other towns. But a ragtag resistance movement called the Bangla Desh Mukti Fauj (Bengal State Liberation Forces) was reportedly already in control of at least one-third of East Pakistan, including many cities and towns. West Pakistani authorities have almost completely succeeded in obscuring the actual details of the fighting from the outside world by expelling all foreign newsmen from East Pakistan. But last week TIME Correspondent Dan Coggins managed to cross the border from India into East Pakistan, where he visited the embattled town of Kushtia (pop. 35,000). After extensive interviews with townspeople and captured West Pakistani troopers, Coggins was able to reconstruct an account of brutality and bravery that took place in Kushtia during the first fortnight of the civil war. His report:
Kushtia, a quiet town in the rice-growing district near the broad Ganges, fell into a restless sleep on the night of March 25. Without warning, 13 Jeeps and trucks came to a halt outside Kushtia’s police station. It was 10:30 on the night the war broke out. Delta Company of the 27th Baluch Regiment had arrived from its base at Jessore cantonment 60 miles to the south. The 147 men of the company quickly disarmed some 500 Bengali policemen without meeting any resistance and then occupied four additional key points: the district police headquarters, the government office building, the VHP radio transmitter and the Zilla school for boys. Most of the sleeping townspeople did not realize what had happened until 5:30 a.m., when Jeeploads of soldiers with bullhorns drove through the empty streets announcing that a total curfew was to begin 30 minutes later.
Kushtia remained calm for 48 hours while the curfew was in effect, although seven persons—mostly peasants who arrived in town unaware of what had happened—were shot to death for being found in the streets. The curfew was lifted on the morning of March 28, and the townspeople began to organize a resistance immediately.
That night 53 East Pakistani policemen easily overpowered a handful of soldiers at the police station. Then, fanning out to nearby villages with all the .303 Enfield rifles and ammunition they could carry, the policemen joined forces with 100 college students who were already working for Bangla Desh. The students were teaching the rudiments of guerrilla warfare to local peasants, who were armed only with hatchets, farm tools and bamboo staves. Within two days, the police and students had organized several thousand volunteers and militiamen of the East Pakistan Rifles and laid plans for simultaneous attacks on the five army positions in Kushtia.
At 4:30 a.m. on March 31, a force of some 5,000 peasants and policemen launched a campaign to liberate Kushtia. Thousands of townspeople thronged the streets shouting “Joi Bangla [Victory to Bengal]!” The soldiers apparently panicked at the thought of being engulfed by so many thousands of furious Bengalis. “We were very surprised,” lamented Naik Subhedar (Senior Sergeant) Mohammed Ayub later, following his capture. “We thought the Bengali forces were about the size of one company like ourselves. We didn’t know everybody was against us.”
Instant Death. The Bengali fighters made no suicidal, human-wave assaults at Kushtia as they have in some places. But the steady drumfire of hundreds of rifles had a relentless effect on the soldiers of Delta Company. By noon, the government building and district headquarters all fell. Shortly before dawn the next day, about 75 soldiers made a dash for their Jeeps and trucks and roared away in a blaze of gunfire. Two Jeeps were halted almost immediately by surging mobs. The East Pakistanis pulled out the dozen soldiers and butchered them on the spot.
The other vehicles were blocked outside town by fallen-tree barricades and 4-ft. ditches dug across the blacktop road. The soldiers managed to shoot down about 50 Bengalis before they were overpowered and hacked to death by peasants. A few soldiers escaped but were later captured and killed.
Before dawn the next day, the last 13 soldiers in Kushtia stole out of the radio building and covered 14 miles on foot before two Bengali militiamen took them prisoner and brought them back to the Kushtia district jail. The 13 were the only known survivors of Delta Company’s 147 men. Among the West Pakistani dead was Nassim Waquer, a 29-year-old Punjabi who last January had been appointed assistant deputy commissioner at Kushtia. When an angry mob found his body, they dragged it through the streets of the town for half a mile.
Little Headway. Next day the Pakistan army dispatched another infantry company from Jessore to stage a counterattack on Kushtia. At Bishakali village, halfway to Kushtia, the new company fell into a booby trap set by Bangla Desh forces. Two Jeeps in the nine-vehicle army convoy plunged into a deep pit covered with bamboo and vines. Seventy-three soldiers were killed on the spot, and dozens of others were chased down and slain.
All last week, the green, red and gold flags of Bangla Desh fluttered from rooftops, trucks and even rickshas in Kushtia. Bengali administrators were running the region under the local party leader, Dr. Ashabul Haq, 50, a forceful physician who packs a Welby & Scott revolver and a Spanish Guernica automatic. At week’s end, two army battalions established an outpost a few miles from Kushtia. They were reported, however, to be making little headway against furious resistance. Even if the soldiers managed to reach Kushtia, the townspeople were more than ready to fight again.