Mukti Fauj wants defense agreement with India
NEW DELHI, MAY 20- The unified Command of the Mukti Fouj in Bangladesh would like India to recognise the Bangladesh Government and enter into a defense agreement, says a PTI Special Correspondent who has just returned after a tour of the Eastern borders.
The Command has made this recommendation to the newly formed Government of Bangladesh which is in touch with the Government of India at various levels.
India is known to have advised them any such move by India would not be to their advantage as Pakistani would use such an eventuality to turn a liberation struggle into an Indo-Pakistan conflict.
Meanwhile, the unabated influx of East Bengal refugees not only poses a tricky security problem for India but also carries with it the germs of an Indo-Pakistan confrontation and threat to peace in the subcontinent writes this Special Correspondent.
Nearly three million East Bengalis have already crossed and they continue to flood in at the rate of one hundred thousand a day through all possible routes along India’s three-thousand mile sprawling frontier with East Bengal.
Their unexpected flow in such staggering dimensions has already over-strained the law and order machinery in the Border States and has sparked off new tensions between India and Pakistan.
But for a handful, every evacuee that the Correspondent talked to wants to go back. Not one of them spoke of going back to East Pakistan. But they want to return
to “Bangladesh ”. After the West Pakistan Army’s earnage, a new East Bengali · irredentism is clearly manifest. They spoke of “liberating my country”, “liberating my people ”. By this, they left no doubt that what they meant was an independent State of Bangladesh.
Many of the refugees have already made up their minds to join the Mukti Fauj to fight the West Pakistan Army which they call “occupation force”. Some of them spoke of the Algerian parallel in which the Algerians used bases in Libya, Tunisia and Morocco to fight the French Army.
This is bound to create tremendous problems for India.
Any impression that the resistance movement in East Bengal has subsided would appear baseless from reports across the border of daily acts of harassment to the Pakistani Army carried out by commando groups of the Mukti Fauj.
In many parts of East Bengal under its control, the Fauj has set up extensive training centers for guerilla warfare, as they prepare themselves for a long-drawn out battle to “liberate” East Bengal.
All activities of the Fauj in different parts of East Bengal have now been coordinated under an over-all military command recently set up for the purpose.
Commanders of the Mukti Fauj, some of whom a group of correspondents met at Benapole in Bangladesh said that they hoped that the monsoons expected towards the end of this month would be to their advantage in their guerilla warfare and prove to be a Waterloo for the Pakistani Army.
During the monsoon when most of East Bengal would be water-logged the Fauj hopes to give a good account of itself to prevent any Pakistani troop movement through their familiar rivers.
Major Osman Chowdhury, Commander of the Mukti Fauj in the Jessore sector told us that there was no dearth of arms for the Fauj. In their operations they have captured enough Chinese and American arms from the Pakistani Army to carry on their fight. Their armory includes light guns, recoilless rifles and other equipment- all captured from the Pakistani Army.
Reference: Hindustan Standard, 21.05.1971