THE NEW YORK TIMES, NOVEMBER 22.1971
Editorial
BAND-AIDS FOR THE SUB-CONTINENT
The United Nations is drifting toward a disastrous failure on the Indian subcontinent because it is attempting to treat a potentially mortal wound with band-aids.
While India and Pakistan move closer to all-out war, the world organisation has been wrangling over relief measures for an estimated nine million refugees who have fled to India from East Bengal, and for the sixty-six odd million Bengalis left behind in that rebellious Pakistani province.
There is no question that the humanitarian needs of East Bengalis, both those who have fled arid those who have remained behind despite brutal military repression, have a heavy claim on the conscience of mankind.
But it is clear from the testimony of U. N. officials that relief assistance cannot, alone solve the acute humanitarian crisis created by the upheaval in Fast Pakistan. Assistant Secretary-General Paul Marc Henry warned the other day that humanitarian efforts in East Pakistan, already threatened by stepped-up military activities there, may have to cease altogether. Prince Sadruddin Agha Khan, the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Refugees, stated that the repatriation of refugees who have fled to India offers the only “viable and lasting solution” to the present crisis.
In order to deal effectively with the humanitarian needs of the Bengali, it will be necessary to attack the root of the problem-the political crisis in Pakistan. It is essential to press for a political solution in East. Pakistan that will put an end to the lighting there and permit the refugees to return to safety.
The United Nations so far has avoided this central issue, although SecretaryGeneral U Thant warned months ago that the situation on the sub-continent posed a threat to international peace-a prophecy that is now being borne out by a dangerously rising spiral of incidents along the Indian Pakistani borders. Thant’s efforts to mediate the conflict have been spurned so far by India on grounds that they tended to equate India and Pakistan and to divert attention from the source of the trouble the repression in Pakistan. But Prime Minister Indira Gandhi has indicated that India would welcome United Nations intervention if it focused on this basic problem.
If the United Nations is to play an effective role for peace and rehabilitation on the sub-continent, the world organisation must throw its weight behind mounting international pressures on Pakistan’s President Yahya Khan, to reach an accommodation with the elected leaders of East Pakistan, especially, the imprisoned Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Only in the context of a determined effort to promote a political settlement in Pakistan will the U.N. be able to move effectively to achieve a withdrawal of forces from the explosive Indo-Pak borders and to bring succour to the stricken Bengalis.