THE FIGHT FOR BANGLADESH
By Mort Rosenblum
Chuadanga, East Pakistan, April 8 (AP) :Along the rusty rails into this breakaway state at war, a grinning old man stands guard armed only with a crude woodcut portrait of the hero pinned his chest.
At the border post, a patch of ground under a huge mango tree, a local official greets visitors with a self-conscious pat of the pistol strapped to ‘Agent 007’ on the buckle.
Nearby, a man sits cross-legged on a mat writing meaningless receipt for tins of gasoline, bags of salt and handfuls of bullets brought over by Indian youths. He affixes an ornate seal with a dry rubber stamp.
Pakistani leaders still call this East Pakistan, Punjabi and Pathan troops occupy the major cities. But to the Bengali population, it’s an independent country, called Bangla Desh (Bengali Nation), And much of the 55,126 square milles are already “liberated’.
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, whose Awami League won 167 of 169 national assembly seats from the Eastern province in elections last December called for separation when President Yahya Khan declared martial law in a political deadlock March 26,
But his lieutenants are leading a fight under his name, his picture and his slogan of ‘Joi Bangla’ (Bengal Victory’).
In isolated villages, tiny children shout ‘Joi Bangla’ at an vehicles that can find gasoline to move and negotiate the sandpit roads torn up as a precaution against Pakistani advances.
Small towns talk to each other by crank telephones but large sections of the country are cut off from the others. Chuadanga, 10 miles (16 km) from India, is capital for about a third of the total 75 million population in are largely held by Bangladesh is in charge.
Political leaders and Major Zia Rahman are based near Chittagong, the main port, where they hold most of the countryside. The vital north is disputed, with reliable reports of heavy fighting.
CLEAR GOALS
The population is virtually all Bengali-ethnic brothers to those in India’s West Bengal, although largely Moslem rather than Hindu. Their ideology is as disorganized as their government, but their goal is clear.
“All West Pakistanis must get out”, insists, speaking in low clipped tones over a plate of papaya, “If not, we will butcher them all. If it takes 15 days, every last one.”
Reporters heard eyewitnesses accounts of brutality on both sides. West Pakistanis were said to make lighting patrols in jeeps, machine gunning civilians sometimes and abusing women. Their Saber jets strafe and bomb occasional postions.
Bengalis sometimes hack to death West Pakistan merchants and when they can get close enough soldiers. Only one army prisoner from the West is in prison here, with a head wound.
In most places, the two sides are deadlocked. The East Pakistanis stay in their camps expect for raids. The Bengalis lie in wait for an ambush and use the time to raid.
‘We are in control’, said Gazi Akramuddin, an official of the Darsana Government Cane Cooperate. ‘We all received our salaries from the Bangla Desh government this month. The banks are open they’re now open 24 hours’.
But life is at a crippled pace. Women and children have disappeared to bush villages or over the Indian border. Men are away from their jobs, training or arguing politics.
European refugees from Chittagong say that key port, with a normal population of near 400,000, has only a few thousand civilians left. The port is paralyzed. Diplomatic reports from Dacca say little activity is going on there.
Many peasants are neglecting their fields and the effect should be staggering on the Pakistan economy, which depends heavily on jute and sugar from the east. Food is still plentiful, so life should grow harder but bearable as the war drags on.
HINDUS MOWED DOWN
Americans fleeing the East Pakistan provincial capital said in Karachi Pakistani troops still were systematically mowing down densely populated Hindu areas of the city in the belief that Hindus were behind the separatist movement of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s banned Awami League.
Eyewitneses who asked not to be identified to avoid reprisals against official and non government Americans remaining in Dacca, said bodies still were in narrow lanes of Dacca’s old city where Hindus congregated.
An eyewitness who arrived here Wednesday said between March 28 and Tuesday April 6- when he last visited the location- the main Hindu Shankari Pati Bazaar was ‘chopped up in pieces’ and demolished.
“I saw a Moslem name in Urdu and English on every door”, said the eyewitness. “I assumed they were making claims on houses. I had often gone to the bazar and before never had seen a Moslem there”.
Although Moslems predominate among the 70 million Bengali speakers in the East, about ten million Hindus still lived in the province.
He added, “There are no more Hindus in Ramna Kali Bari”. These were two small Hindu villages built around temple spires in the middle of Dacca racetrack.
“I went to see it”, said the eyewitness. “Houses still were a flame and bodies were stacked at grotesque angles. Estimates of the dead were from 80 to 200. There were two people left, one man, crying.”
“The sight staggered foreigners allowed to see it. David Gordon, head of the World Bank in Pakistan, saw it”.
Other returnees told tales of the countryside still loyal to “Bangla Desh”, or the free Bangali concept of Sheikh Mujib, and the growing fear among the Pakistan army.
“The plane which left Dacca before ours was packed with Pakistan army defendents”, said an eyewitness who said her husband remained behind to work in Dacca.
About 160 more Americans flew out of Dacca early Wednesday to, end a three day airlift of 450 Americans, mostly wives and children from the eastern.
One American doctor said he saw one man shot dead before his eyes by soldier who demanded he open his closed shop in the old city.
ESTIMATE OF DEAD
Americans believed troops, most of them Urdu speakers from West Pakistan, had been told Hindus were behind the separatist movement in East Pakistan, where most people speak Bengali.
Few returness wanted to estimate the casualties. “Perhaps five to twenty thousand dead”, said one. “But no one realy can say”. .
They said Bangla Desh flags still flew in Sheikh Mujib strongholds such as Faridpur, Chandpur, 40 miles (64 km) from Dacca.
A number of Americans said they were angry [because) airlift arrangements under which they flew six and a half hours to Karachi on Pakistan Internatinal Airlines instead of being permitted to use American aircraft from Thailand to fly to Bangkok two hours away.
Said one passenger:, “I am getting out of the country because it is dangerous and yet here I am flying that country’s airlines. Paying full fare and not getting service”.
According to American Embassy sources. Pakistan to permit American millitary planes landing permission at Dacca and offered priority of P.I.A. planes as a “reasonable alternative”.
Another American said the month of Sheikh Mujib’s defacto rule against the milltary regime in March had markedly changed the attitude of Bengalis in Dacca.
He said “Thursday (two weeks ago) before the shooting started, a man came up to me and thanked me on the street for being there- and thank you is not in the Bengali vocabulary.”
ref. Indonesian Observer, 12.4.1971