BALTIMORE SUN, OCTOBER 19. 1971
TENSE IN ASIA
We may hope that the appearance of tragic inevitability in relations between India and Pakistan will turn out to have been appearance only, and that the two nations will not again find, themselves in a war neither wants and neither could profit from. But the signs do grow ominous, as New Delhi and Rawalpindi take measures of mounting military preparation they feel to be required by the circumstances.
India does not want war because war would add new costs and new human suffering to a burden of both already almost intolerable. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s statement (to visitor Tito of Yugoslavia) that Indira does not want war but still must be prepared to defend itself is not only the official but also the real position, though it must be noted that there are some in India who think war cannot be avoided, and since unavoidable should be sought. This view is hardly tempered by the remark of Jagjivan Ram, the Indian defense minister, that “if war is thrust upon us: by the Pakistan military junta, our forces will march forward and occupy those cities (Sialkot and Lahore, near the Western frontier) and this lime we will not withdraw from the occupied Pakistan territory, come what may.”
In any case, Mr. Ram said. Indian forces would remain, on the western and eastern borders so long as Bangladesh, or East Bengal, is threatened. This comes to the heart of the real cause of today’s tension, the brutal West Pakistani suppression of East Pakistan last March, and raises the, central present problem, the existence in India of some 9 million refugees, with others arriving at a reported rate of 40.000 a day.
India, insists that Pakistan is obligated to reach a political settlement under which the refugees could safely, return. Any such settlement is remote. For one thing only, the great majority of the refugees are Bengali Hindus and it is more than possible that the West Pakistan regime considers their departure good riddance. Nor does a tone of compromising very convincingly in. the offer, of President Yahya Khan of Pakistan to withdraw Pakistani forces from positions along, the borders if India withdraws its own forces and ceases infiltration and other hostile acts: the hostile acts obviously to be judged by West Pakistan.
For its pan Pakistan cannot want war. Even should war come before winter seals off the Himalayas, thus giving India the additional worry of frontiers with China, the leaders of Pakistan must know how superior militarily India is, and how good a chance its troops would actually have of seizing and even holding Lahore, the great city of West Pakistan, actual and symbolic. The fall of Lahore would be simple disaster. Only in desperation could West Pakistan be willing to invite that.
At a guess the prospects are that war win not come now; but the buildup of military postures, and the increasingly belligerent temper of too much talk on both sides, arc creating an atmosphere in which war by accident is impossible to rule out.