NEWSWEEK, MAY 10, 1971
MAJOR HUQ’S REBELLION
By Milan J. Kubic
I first met Major Huq in the backyard of a small farmhouse about 2 miles inside the East Pakistan border. Dressed in sneakers and a farmer’s lungi (a long white shirt over a skirt), he seemed remarkably, untroubled by the inevitable military disaster that lay ahead. “In less than a week,” he said, nodding toward the muddy track over which I had sloshed my way into Bangladesh, ‘the Pakistan Army will reach this last escape hatch and my whole enclave will be overrun. Let them come “The first part of the war will end, and then phase two will begin.”
For the most part, the area we rode through in Huq’s battered Willis Jeep already looked like a conquered land. Most of the women and children had fled to refugee camps in India. And the month-long isolation from the rest of the country had caused shortages of oil, gasoline and manufactured goods. “I’m completely out of drugs against typhoid and endemic fever,” one pharmacist told me. “And before long I’ll be out of aspirins.”
Yet for all these troubles, the villagers still seemed to support the cause of Bengali independence. In Sahapar, for example, a crowd of several hundred peasants responded enthusiastically to Huq’s plea to bring in next month’s rice harvest. “If you all flee to India,” he implored, “Bangladesh will suffer a terrible famine. Harvest is right now the most important thing you can do, including fighting.” Waving their homemade Bengali flags, the peasants answered with frenzied shouts for “Joi Bangla! Joi Bangla! “-“Victory to Bengal! Victory to Bengal!”
More important, Huq and his chief recruiter, 24-year-old Shah Abdul Khaleque, seemed to have no trouble in lining up Bengali volunteers for guerrilla war against the federal army. In the village of Gaibanda, one high-school student said: “I don’t want to be a refugee. My country is in trouble. My duty is to fight, not flee.” In Madhil, another mango shaded hamlet, a father whose two sons—ages 17 and 23-had signed up to fight declared: “I am proud they’re going. It’s better to die with a rifle in your hand than to be slaughtered like sheep.”
Despite the popular enthusiasm and Huq’s boundless confidence, the Bengalis still face overwhelming odds. Their entire armoury consists of some 3,000 ancient Enfield rifles and about 100 small mortars. On top of that, the Bengalis have serious leadership problems. Except for inaugural ceremonies held just one timid mile from the Indian border, the six-man government of Bangladesh, has yet to venture out in the open. And even the military leadership necessary to sustain guerrilla activity appears woefully weak. As Huq himself told me. “I need to take a quick trip to India, but I can’t. The nearest Bengali officer is 20 miles away and these people derive all their hope from the presence of some one like myself.”
Nonetheless, the Bengalis do have certain advantages. New Delhi has already provided a haven for “liberation forces” as well as several guerrilla training camps and some trucks and equipment. Many diplomats, moreover, expect the Indian to begin the covert shipment of arms to the insurgents in the near future. Brit the Bengalis biggest advantage is the sheer inability of the 70,000-man federal occupation force to permanently police a nation of more than, 75 million. “If you come back four months from now,” Huq told me as I was leaving. “Then we’ll show you some action.” And on balance, he will do just that.