NEW YORK TIMES, APRIL 14, 1971
BENGALIS FORM A CABINET AS THE BLOODSHED GOES ON
The following dispatch is by the New Delhi correspondent of The New York Times, who has just completed a four-day trip through, the border region of India and East Pakistan, as well as inside East Pakistan.
By Sydney H. Schanberg
Special To The New York Times
Agartala, India, April 13-Although large number of East Pakistani secessionist leaders have been reported killed and with wholesale bloodshed continuing, several members of the movement’s high command are alive and have formed a cabinet.
They include Tajuddin Ahmed second in command to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, whose Awami League took the steps for independence, that brought West Pakistan’s military crackdown.
In an East Pakistani border area visited by this correspondent, at least six secessionist leaders met to name Mr. Ahmed Prime Minister and Defense Minister of the state they call Bangladesh, or Bengal Nation. They proclaimed Sheikh Mujib their President, although privately the secessionist leaders acknowledged that he was in prison in West Pakistan.
While the central Government, which is dominated by West Pakistan continues to announce that the situation is calm in the East and conditions are returning to normal, a far different picture emerges on the scene.
Daily Battles Reported
Daily battles are reliably reported in many sectors. Hordes of East Pakistanis have fled the cities to seek refuge or join the secessionist army, and thousands of refugees, carrying their meager belongings in cardboard suitcases and sacks, are crossing into India for temporary haven.
This correspondent saw Pakistani soldiers burning villages to deny the resistance forces cover or hiding places. As the smoke from the thatch and bamboo huts billowed up on the outskirts of the city of Comilla, circling vultures descended on the bodies of peasants, already being picked apart by dogs and crows.
There is no way of knowing exactly how many of East Pakistan’s ’75 million Bengalis the army has killed, but authoritative reports from many sources agree that the figure is at least in the tens of thousands; some, reports put it much higher.
The central Government officially bars all foreign newsmen from East Pakistan. But from the evidence available in secessionist-held rural areas-some of which are occasionally contested by the army-the Pakistani armed forces have killed leaders and potential leaders of East Pakistan and shattered the economic base of the region, in their effort to crush the independence movement.
On orders, the army-now consisting entirely of West Pakistani troops-has killed students, intellectuals, professors, engineers, doctors and others of leadership caliberwhether, they were directly involved with the nationalist movement or not.
Both in military attacks and in executions, the central Government’s forces killed East Pakistani Army officers and soldiers who were unable to break out and join the guerrilla forces when the army offensive began on March 25. Most of the officers’ families have been killed, only a few escaped into hiding.
With the aid of air and naval bombardment, the army has destroyed food supplies, tea factories, jute mills and natural-gas fields the economic basis of East Pakistan.
“This has already set the country back 25 years,” said a Scottish tea-estate manager who fled to India from his plantation in the northeast. “The liberation army, trying to stop the army, is blowing the railroad lines and roads. Even if they eventually win independence, they’ll have to start completely from scratch again.”
This man and two other estate managers who escaped with him asked that their names not be used because of their fear of reprisals against British families still in East Pakistan.
Attack on ‘Empty’ Trucks
The three evacuees reported that a convoy of nine trucks that the Pakistani radio contended had been carrying arms and ammunition from India and had been destroyed by Pakistani planes was in fact a collection of empty trucks in the yard of a tea estate.
Authoritative reports indicate that perhaps 20 to 25 per cent of the people are left in such towns as Dacca, the capital, are Chittagong and Comilla. Smaller centers are also largely deserted. Dacca had a population of about 1.5 million, Chittagong about 400,000 to 500,000 and Comilla about 100,000.
In the eastern part of East Pakistan the thump of artillery fire can be heard every day in virtually every sector. After every guerrilla attack or harassment by the outnumbered and outgunned resistance troops, the Pakistani Army appears to be inflicting reprisals on the civilian population.
“The bloody cowards” said a young Bengali lieutenant who escaped the army attempt to annihilate his battalion of the East Bengal Regiment at Comilla. “We give them fronts to shoot at. We are in uniform. But they attack civilians instead.”
The secessionist army is desperately short of trained officers, arms, ammunition, vehicles and basic supplies. Some of the men are barefoot.
The heaviest weapon the secessionists have in any number is the 3-inch mortar, although they have captured a few heavy guns. The Pakistani military are using jet fighter-bombers, heavy artillery and gun boats-mostly supplied, by the United States, the Soviet Union and Communist China.
Pakistani charges that the Indian Government has been sending troops and weapons to East Pakistan are not borne out by this reporter’s observations. No Indian troops were seen in the East Pakistani units.
Before the political crises began to mount, the Pakistani Army had about 25,000 troops in East Pakistan. Large numbers of reinforcement have been flown over from West Pakistan, which is separated from the Eastern province by over a thousand miles of Indian Territory.
Some estimates put the number of West Pakistani troops in East Pakistan at 60,000 to 80,000, most of them Punjabis and Pathans. The Punjabis in particular have traditionally held the Bengalis in disdain though both are predominantly Moslem.
The Bengalis are bitter about the failure of the United States to take a strong stand against the Pakistani Government; most of the leaders of the independence movement are pro-Western and were hoping for support from Washington. They are even more bitter about the American weapons being used against them.
‘We Were Expecting Help’
“Do you know, they arc using your planes, your rockets, your tanks, to kin us?” a Bengali soldier, his voice tense and his eyes narrowed, asked the American correspondent. “We were expecting help, not this.” Similar remarks were made repeatedly by others.
The Bengalis are not so surprised by the Chinese weapons the army is using because they apparently expected Peking to support the Government. Some Bengali officers, contending that the army offensive was worked out in advance with the Chinese, insist that the army would never have embarked on such a venture without assurances of full support from Peking.
Even before the offensive, the Bengalis wondered why the Western powers and others did not support their cause. Now their disillusionment is complete.
“This is genocide, and people are just standing by and looking,” a Bengali student remarked. “Nobody has spoken out. Has the world no conscience?”
The bitterness does not include India, which has condemned the Pakistani military action and is trying to persuade other governments to put pressure on Pakistan to stop the killing.
Indian civilians and officials in border areas are providing assistance to refugees and others, but this correspondent saw no arms being transported across the border-as the Pakistani Government has charged and New Delhi has repeatedly denied.