NEWS WEEK, NOVEMBER 1.1971
‘THE SMELL OF WAR’
Across the desolate Punjabi plains of West Pakistan, columns of rumbling tanks kicked up billowing dust clouds. And a thousand miles away, along the marshy India East Pakistan border, the night lime silence was shattered by the roar of artillery. In hundreds of India’s cities and villages, reservists were mobilized and air force pilots were put on a two-minute alert, while throughout Pakistan thousands of “Crush India” stickers were plastered onto cars and houses. Everywhere in the subcontinent last week, the machinery of war was being set in motion. And though alarmed diplomats in Moscow, London and Washington tried to find a formula for averting a pointless conflict between India and Pakistan, the two antagonistic governments kept playing their increasingly menacing game. “The smell of war is in the air,” said a high ranking Indian official, And indeed it was.
Almost daily the movements of troops, tanks and heavy weapons increased until the armies of the two countries were almost gun barrel to gun barrel. Along India’s border with West Pakistan, fifteen Indian divisions stood counterpoised against thirteen Pakistani divisions. Indian volunteer forces in border villages were quickly called on guard duty. In Kashmir, where Western intelligence sources said the Pakistanis were already infiltrating armed agents by the hundreds, two divisions were hurriedly dispatched to reinforce Indian positions. And in the east, an army of nearly 80,000′ Pakistanis lined up against an Indian force of equal size “All it would take.” said one diplomat in New Delhi, “is one phone call and there would be a war.”
The deliberate choice of war would be nothing new in the subcontinent. As recently as 1965, India and Pakistan fought a stalemated, 22-day battle for control of Kashmir. But while the two nations were of more or less equal military strength at that time, India now holds most of the trump cards. Although Pakistan’s fleet of 60 sophisticated Mirage jets has a greater range than India’s jets, India-due largely to a tremendous infusion of Soviet arms-has twice as many bombers and more than twice as many tanks Moreover, New Delhi canfield 900000 solders to Pakistan’s 450.000. This statistical imbalance has led Indian official to muse of quick victories and permanent conquest. Said Indian Defense Minister Jagjivan Ram: “if war is thrust upon us, our forces will march forward and occupy their cities. And this time we will not move from our occupied territory come what may.”
The biggest advantage to India, however, is that most Pakistani troops are already fled down fighting the so-called Mukti Bahini guerrillas in East Pakistan. Since President Mohammed Yahya Khan launched an extermination campaign last April against the insurgent Bangladesh state-eventually forcing more than 9 million refugees to flood into India-the Bengali guerrillas have built up a force of 50,000 men. Training largely in India, where sympathy for the rebels funs high, the guerrillas have been highly successful in harassing government troops. And many Western analysts feel that the rebels’ success is likely to continue. “Yahya does not have enough troops there now to curb the guerrillas.” said one observer. “And he can’t add more without perilously weakening the very frontiers where the Indians are massed.”
Escape
The fear in most capitals, however, is that both India and Pakistan may become so entrapped in belligerence that war will be the only way out. To head off that prospect, British diplomats approached Indian and Pakistani representatives at the. United Nations while the Soviet Union announced that a delegation led by Deputy Foreign Minister “Nikolai Firyubin would fly to India for special talks. And in Washington, the Nixon Administration endorsed Yahya Khan’s proposal that the two sides pull their forces back from the borders. India, however, was having none of that. Dismissing Yahya’s offer as nothing but a play. Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi insisted, “You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.”
Despite the lack of visible progress in quieting the tensions, many diplomats professed to sec some hopeful signs that war could be avoided – at least during the next few weeks. To begin with, Mrs. Gandhi did not change her plans to leave early this week on a six-nation tour. As one U.S. official noted, “It would seem unlikely the Indian Army would launch an attack in her absence.” That left, of course, the possibility that Pakistan might fire the opening salvo. But U.S. officials thought that too was unlikely. “It would be a. manifestation of madness,” said one Washington observer. “They have everything to lose.” Still relations between Hindu India and Moslem Pakistan have never been characterized by an excess of rationality. And for that reason, no one was willing to foreclose the possibility of fighting. “Logic tells you there shouldn’t be a war,” said one diplomat in New Delhi. “But you have to throw logic out the window when you talk about India and Pakistan.”