THE AGONY OF BANGLADESH
By Martin Woollacott
The situation of the Bangladesh rebel in East Pakistan is worsening day by day and it is a pathetic and heart-rending spectacle.
There is hardly a liberation movement of the 20th century that can claim such unanimous support from people of all classes, nor one that was ever so ill prepared and ill-equipped to fight for its rights.
After a 200-mile journey into East Bengal reaching to Faridpur on the banks of the Ganges, some 90 miles from the Indian border, the main impression is of a people who, with every justification but, sadly, with limited chances of success, are crying out for international help before it is too late. And that, at least as far as the short-term prospects of the liberation movement are concerned, could be very soon indeed.
Everywhere I went in Bangladesh during a three-day trip, I heard the same appeal in the squares of the towns, in the offices of administrators, in barracks, in roadside pharmacies and shops: “Why doesn’t the world help us?”
In Magura, between Jessore and Faridpur, a middle-aged lawyer, Mr. Nasir-ul Islam, who has become effective chief civil administrator, insisted on writing out a lengthy “appeal to the freedom-loving humanity” in fine copperplate hand which began: “We appeal to huminity to come to our help in this period of greatest calamity when we, the entire nation of Bangladesh, are forced to take up arms against the occupation army of the Punjabis who are up to anything to destroy the last point of civilisation.”
Watched by a crowd of several hundred people and feeling some thing of a charlatan, I placed this ceremoniously in my bag.
One soon forgets one’s initial amusement at the flowery Indian English of educated Bengalis when one sees the tragic situation they are in.
Food, petrol and other essential commodities are in the shortest of supply, and the disruption of water and power services has brought a public health risk.
At least at Magura they have enough rifles for a half company or so. Further on at one river crossing town, the former Pakistani airman in charge of defences tells me they have four Lee-Enfield rifles and two dummy rifles.
At Jhenida and Jessore is a force probably as large as any in the liberation “army.” It consists of perhaps 750 men, of whom only about 200 are trained soldiers from the East Pakistan Rifles and the East Bengal Regiment. The rest are military and freedom fighters.
The patchwork administration of Bangladesh shows endless variety. Everywhere, the existing administrative cadre went over as one man to the liberation movement, and in some towns they are still running affairs.
In the cool of evening, a paper duplicating machine thumps on, turning out directives, banning hoarding, ordering government and other officials to return to their posts, asking all students to report to the command headquarters for millitary training and other tasks.
Grouped round a lantern on the lawn, Captain Mahbuddin Ahmed and his aides talk of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh: “We must have freedom, even socialist freedom but not the Chinese type of freedom where everybody cannot speak and is regimented.”
Atrocity stories circulate continually and some of them are undoubtedly true. In Faridpur district sports club, which has become the town’s millitary headquarters, a young magistrate from Khulna told me he witnessed the machine gunning of a protest procession “without any provocation.” Thinking it a dreadful case of some army officer losing his head, he rushed to military headquarters in his jeep and confronted the Punjabi colonel.
“The colonel said my complaint was nonsense, and that the next time people were shot, I, the magistrate, would be one of the first to die”.
A young man is led in to recount the story of the death of a Catholic missionary in Jessore because Bengalis have a sad conviction that such a death counts higher in our scales than the deaths of many Muslims.
Excitedly, he explains that the priest was shot down in his mission together with some native christians, and that afterwards a Punjabi brigadier came and apologised saying it was an accident.
The other priest told him how could such a thing be an accident when there is a Red Cross flag on the roof of the mission. The story has a ring of truth.
The more realistic among the leaders of liberation zones put their main hopes in the collapse of the West Pakistani economy.
A young accountant in Faridpur who has achieved recent renown for devising a planting to stop planting jute and replace it with rice, told me:
“Their economy cannot sustain this scale of effort for more than six months or a year. They have forgotten that 17 days of fighting in the Indo-Pakistan war shattered the economy.”
Most widespread of all is the feeling that Bengal made a tragic mistake in 1947 when it decided to cast its lot with Pakistan.
“We were swept by the passion of communalism,” says Mr. Nasirul Islam in Magura. “I too, made that mistake… we all made it. Now we are paying the price.”
ref. The Australian, 14.4.1971