THE GUARDIAN, LONDON, MAY 13, 1971
Editorial
THE SILENT CONSCIENCE
Tomorrow, framing in the wake of events. Parliament finally gets round to Bangladesh. No one should expect too much by way of enlightenment or action. Time has begun insidiously to silt the issues of Bengali freedom. Too many Indian alarms and diversions, too many damp little statements from Sir Alec Douglas-Home, tot) many angles for big power play have emerged since that first weekend, seven weeks ago. When West Pakistan’s Army started bathing Dacca University in blood. Tomorrow’s debaters want HMG to move quickly for peace: but peace has already broken out. at the end of 70.000 bayonets. By most normal diplomatic standards, the moment for vigorous lobbying and moral intervention-the moment when battle was still joined-is past. Nobody (bar the Chinese and Albanians) cares for the generals of Islamabad: but nobody in government can afford to he too cavalier about a ruthless regime with a pivotal place in Asian politicking. What docs a harassed Foreign Office do? Stay mum. Since public- bravery now loses credit in Rawalpindi without directly helping a soul in Chittagong? Forget about the whole thing and concentrate on aiding the millions of needy? Wander away down the side channels of refugee movements and relief flights?
Several of these options are necessary anyway; but they must be kept in a firm perspective, and they must be related to morality as well as expediency. Parliament can yet ram that message home. Seven weeks ago the elected leader of East Pakistan (and thus, man for man. the elected leader of all Pakistan) was locked in tough negotiations with an unelected soldier President. These negotiations were not going well. Mujib, cocky after election triumph and pushed from behind by an ideological gaggle, was chancing his arm a bit. Yahya, ostensibly, was continuing to talk with the man he had earlier hailed as the next Prime Minister of Pakistan.” Mr. Bhutto, from the West and despised in the East, was fouling discussion wherever he could. Then, abruptly, it was over. Troops poured off the boats and commenced a full assault. Mujib was arrested, many of his followers shot on their lawns. After a few weeks of straggling warfare- featuring jet bombers against bows and arrows, among other weaponry-resistance was largely quelled. Mow many died? Millions, say the Bangla propagandists. Perhaps 15,000 say Yahya’s spokesmen. But-crucially-even fifteen thousand corpses is an absurd price to pay for keeping the two distant giants of Pakistan in miserable liaison.
Arguably (and in the Guardian’s opinion) the East Bengalis had more to gain than to lose by remaining in some kind of unity with the West. That, on all published evidence, was certainly Mujib’s view. He never declared UDI. He invariably plumped for the autonomy his economists recommended to stop acknowledged exploitation: he had a clear mass mandate for his policy. As long as Yahya bargained on these terms he acted honorably; the moment the President stopped bargaining and started shooting he embarked upon criminal folly. He allowed elections. He now stamps on those men and those ideas the elections produced. One does not need mindless admiration for the Awami League to separate this chain of events, and this central decision, as the future guide to rights and wrongs, the ultimate arbiter of democratic attitudes.
Naturally a myriad of buzzing problems arise to obscure basic truths. Pakistan and India enmesh Bangladesh in the ancient webs of their enmity. Yahya announces openly (and covertly in lobbying with British Government representatives) that Mujib was a traitor about to lead East Bengal, via armed mutiny, into the arms of Mrs. Gandhi. Getting on for two million Bengalis flee to border camps and prepare to starve. Greater starvation and disaster threaten-according to aid officials — if flood relief work is delayed any longer. China muddies the waters. America and other horrified countries, thinking of choking off Pakistan aid, realize that the sufferers from such action will be illiterate peasants not smug generals.
How should a Government which believes in freedom act in these circumstances? It should not hide behind the diplomatic niceties of “internal matters.” It should have an open view. It should manifest the requisite nausea when Yahya’s emissaries malign Mujib (for when last did an “evil rebel leader” wait quietly at his home for the troops to take him away?). It should press for an early trial. It should mobilize and offer what relief it can (and it did plenty last November). It should simultaneously marshal the Aid for Pakistan consortium and World Bank and State Department to policies which stop aid for arms buying and defense (sixty per cent of the Pakistan budget) and start aid, all aid, for the millions who need it. It should not allow quasi-democratic exercises-like the impending transfer of negligible power to such stooge Eastern politicians as remain to accept it-to wipe clean Yahya’s state. Above everything, it should not let time and boredom condone the initial action.
Few pundits today agree on the eventual fate of Bangladesh: whether, through extremism it will become locked in the struggle for an independent Bengal: whether the Awami League is a broken force, an intellectual collection which must now give way to real guerrilla: whether the campaign will take months or years or decades. But no one in tomorrow’s debate-and no Government spokesman defending disgruntled inactivity- should pretend that in the long run Yahya and a united Pakistan can survive. Dissolution can, now, be only a matter of time. The process of dissolution will be better, and less bloody, if Mujib can be freed eventually to conduct it (for Mujib has shown himself, almost pathetically, to be a man of peace). Then the refugees will go home. Then the factories will work again, and the rice will be sown. Islamabad is not an impregnable fortress, simply a rocky redoubt of desperate men. They can be toppled, and already they are falling out with Mr. Bhutto and the businessmen who underpin their illusions. What Parliament decides may matter a bit. How many MPs turn up to debate may matter. How Britain reacts through the next six months will certainly have a profound effect on West Pakistani opinion-and it is this West Pakistani opinion which could yet see the sad doings of past two months undone.