THE NEW YORK TIMES, THURSDAY, AUGUST 19, 1971
A FINAL SOLUTION IN BENGAL
The U.S. Proposal Would Strengthen The
Pakistan Army in Guise of Aid
By Alice Thorner
Paris-Are we to understand that the United States has been exercising quiet but unremitting pressure upon Pakistan for a “final solution” in East Bengal?
The proposal made by the Nixon Administration calls for the stationing in East Bengal of a 156-man international relief and rehabilitation team! Pakistan’s consent to this should not surprise us. The project to send in a United Nations group turns out to be a stratagem for salvaging the shaky regime of the West Pakistani generals under the guise of a humanitarian operation.
Let us look at the concrete nature of the relief proposed. The U.N. force would be charged with “helping the Pakistani authorities alleviates the threat of starvation and disease.” Who are the Pakistani authorities with whom experts from UNICEF, F.A.O.. the World Food Program and W.H.O are expected to cooperate? Precisely the martial law administration of General Tikka Khan, whose troops deliberately destroyed food stocks, burned down markets and drove away peasants from their villages, thereby ensuring that rice would not be sown.
The same soldiers, acting under the same military command, commandeered UNICEF jeeps for their own purposes and crippled the long-term field study on which the cholera research laboratory was engaged by seizing the riverboats the doctors used for visiting their villages.
Similarly, (he task set for the U.N. Group of “rehabilitating homes and shelter” is complicated by the policy followed from March 25 to the present day by the Pakistani Army. Not only have the soldiers razed thousands of village and town dwellings, but they have in numerous instances incited non-Bengalis or other collaborators to lake over the houses and belongings of Hindus, Christians, Awami Leaguers, and intellectuals driven from their homes. Yet another aim of the U.N. “technical assistance,” is lo “help restore confidence in the Hast Pakistani administration”!
But the most revealing of all the jobs assigned to the U.N. experts is their responsibility to “help Pakistan restore communications and remobilize the province’s private fleet of 40,000 river boats and 10,000 trucks.” It is precisely in the cutting of transport lines that the Bengali guerrillas have begun to score notable successes. Striking from their sanctuaries across the Indian border, from their tiny “liberated” enclaves, from the jangly fastnesses of the delta, they have disrupted rail traffic, blown up road bridges, sunk river boats, blocked off channels, destroyed boatrepair yards. Transport is the lifeblood of the Army’s occupation of East Bengal. If the Bangladesh Liberation Army can deny the West Pakistanis their lines of communication, they can eventually drive them out.
To the extent that the United States, acting in the name of a United Nations relief project, can restore the lines of communication, the grip of the Pakistan Army on East Bengal can be prolonged.
While the proposed rehabilitation team is carefully characterized as “international” and “under U.N. sponsorship,” the preeminent role of the United States Stands out clearly. The United States .has offered to contribute an initial $1 million to help the group organize and fly necessary equipment to Dacca. Radios and other items have been prepared for dispatch by air once the Pakistani Government’s formal approval is received by the United States Agency for International Development. The, agency had several hundreds of employees on its roster in East Bengal. A considerable number of the Americans were evacuated in March and April, on the ground that the United States Government could not guarantee their personal safety under the Pakistan Army occupation.
That the United States has been able to persuade President Yahya Khan to accept its proposal is explained by the circumstance that in recent years the U.S. has forked over almost half of the $450 million a year of economic aid pumped into Pakistan by the so-called “consortium” of loan giving countries. Here the argument comes full circle. American action to shore up the unpopular ruling junta in Pakistan by massive injections of economic and military assistance ever since 1951, is justified ex post facto.
The mission dreamed up by the United States Government may serve to strengthen temporarily the Pakistan Army. In this case, the chances for restoring genuine order in East Bengal would be set back. No real relief and rehabilitation activities can be undertaken until the West Pakistan army withdraws from East Bengal, and the Bengalis become masters of their own destiny.
[Alice Thorner is lecturer on India at the University Paris VII and author of many studies on the Indian subcontinent. She was at Dacca until March 19, 1971.]