THE TIMES, LONDON, APRIL 10, 1971
THE LIMITS OF TOWER
Peter Hazelhurst
Jessore City, 9 April-This is a war that no one can win. On my left is an Army division, holed up in their barracks and surrounded by 2,000 nondescript freedom fighters and about 500 members of the East Pakistan Rifles.
As another shell is fired from the Army cantonment about half a mile away and another house crumbles.
A Bengali volunteer Fires off a round from his Second World War bolt action rifle. The freedom fighters are also equipped with light machineguns and captured mortars.
There has been heavy exchange of fire this morning, but both sides are attempting to conserve ammunition and the firing is now sporadic.
The Bengalis are worried. They know Jessore is a strategic garrison near the Indian border and that the West Pakistan Army is well equipped and well manned.
But although well equipped and well manned, the West Pakistanis are aware that they are surrounded by 75 million Bengalis and that if they attack, they will have to move in one direction and in force, for small groups of troops have been overwhelmed and hacked to death by angry mobs during the past week.
The liberation front’s ammunition is, however, running low and the worried freedom fighters believe that the Army will make a three-pronged attack when reinforcements are flown into Jessore airport which is under the control of the Army.
But what can the Army hope to achieve? And even if President Yahya Khan can pacify the biggest urban centers, how does he expect to rule the country.
After an extensive tour of the western regions of the province, I discovered that at best. West Pakistan can hope only to rule the eastern province as an extension of Burma in which the Government’s writ will not extend beyond the capital.
Apart from cantonments, there is not an Army man to be seen for hundreds of miles. Bengali nationalism has united every Bengali from the policeman to the civil servant and the border security staff.
With nearly 19,000 troops committed to fight the rebellion and the rebellion divisions committed to the borders of West Pakistan, one cannot see how or where the President will find the people to run the country.
The entire police for has joined the liberation front, the border security force have opened up the frontiers to Indian infiltration and civil servants and district magistrates are organizing guerilla warfare in villages in the countryside.
But if the Army continued to hold the biggest cities and ports, industry would falter, the economy would come to a standstill and the freedom fighters would be denied petrol and other vital commodities.
With the food distribution system in chaos, there is a trickle of refugees crossing the border into India.
At the Benapole border post, 22 miles west of the besieged city of Jessore, the Bengalis turn a blind eye as journalists move across the border towards Jessore.
As we cross the border, Indian troops at about battalion strength, have moved up to the frontier and are pitching camp. A short walk and we are in East Bengal.
Your correspondent is eventually offered a lift by East Bengal communist freedom fighters who are heading for Jessore. We have heard that heavy shelling has broken out again.
Two armed guards in makeshift uniform clamber aboard the station wagon, and with tyres screeching we head for Jessore. As we pass through the villages, the people and local police wave and greet the freedom fighters with shouts of “Hail, Bengal”.
The car stops at the village of Jhikargacha, seven mile west of Jessore. The National Awami Party men have heard that the Pakistan Army might move out of the cantonment at any foment and move up the road to this village to raid the food storage depot.
The villagers, who have no arms, look terrified. Scores of bicycle rickshaws with bags of rice are moving westward to hide the food in the countryside.
New transport is offered and a Jeep takes me on to Jessore.
The Army has been driven out and is at present entrenched in the military cantonment to our left. As we move into the back of the city. I am shown a communal grave of victims of the Army shooting last week. No one can estimate the death toll.
Mr. Kasi Abdul Shahid. organizer of the National Awamy Party, says that he saw 100 people shot when the Army moved in to the town last week. Many political leaders in Jessore were arrested and taken back of the military cantonment.
Mr. Shahid estimates that 1,500 people have been killed since the civil war erupted two weeks ago.
An Awami League worker points towards a collapsed house; “about 500 to 600 houses have been burnt and another 100 houses have been destroyed,” he says.
In the Kushtia district to the north, I am shown the decomposing bodies of Punjabi soldiers who were hacked to death by villagers last week when the three companies stationed in the region were overwhelmed by a mob of 40,000 people.
Mr. Samsul Alam Dudu. the organizing secretary of the Awami League in Kushtia district, describes how the liberation front of all political parties routed the Army.
‘There were about 300 Punjabi soldiers stationed in the town of Kushtia at about midnight on March 3” “They suddenly took up positions and captured the telephone exchange and all main installations. They imposed a curfew in the district without telling anyone and the next morning they started to shoot down people, men and women, like, dogs and cats.”
Mr. Dudu estimates that about 200 people were killed on that day. Ag in all other towns, the army’s first target was the East Pakistan Rifles. After capturing the men in Kushtia, they rounded up politicians and all potential leaders in the town.
Mr. Dudu said that they planned their counter-attack at about 4.30 on Monday morning. A huge crowd of about 30,000, armed with sticks and stones, surrounded (he 300 Army men who retreated to the district school house. “About 300 East Pakistan Rifles men and Ansars from (he district came in with their rifles. The Army men used cannon and mortars on the crowd, but after a 28-hours battle, their ammunition ran out”, he said.
Some of them were killed on the spot when the crowd advance on the school. Others who managed to escape in civilian clothes in the middle of the night, were later recognized by villagers as Punjabis and were beaten (to death .
But the situation is not as bright as the liberation front claims. Mr. Dudu admits that food is running short and the front is without medical supplies. But more seriously, he admits, the resistance is being carried out on an adhoc regional basis, and there does not appear to be any central leadership coordinating the fight.
“The West Pakistan Army controls all the communications links in (he major towns, so we have no communications system as such”, he adds.