SEARCH FOR TRUTH
It is still uncommonly difficult to be sure of the facts in Ceylon and East Pakistan, two totally unrelated crises which are not going to be resolved for months to come. Colombo has survived two days of special precautions which suggested fear of fresh attacks on vital points in the capital, while Delhi and Islamabad have scraped each other’s nerves so raw that relations between them over East Pakistan are almost as close as they can get to breaking point. The worst of several serious complications is the flight of refugees into Bengal. Over half a million are known to have crossed the frontier. The real number may be double that, more than an embarrassment-a burden which Bengal cannot shoulder and which the Central Government can ill afford.
Relief ought to be on an intemational scale, and the pretence that the East Pakistan crisis is an internal Pakistani problem sweeps away the difficulties which otherwise would arise. But it isn’t in fact completely and exclusively an internal matter, and the complications are formidable. The attempt by East Pakistanis to create their own republic has failed. At least it has not succeeded, The rebellion was crushed without mercy, and although the stories of massacre and destruction were exaggerated, as they usually ure, there is too much independent evidence of the laughter and in particular the army’s attack on Dacca University, for protestations that there was nothing to exaggerate in the first place. But only the first phase of revolt has failed. East Pakistan is in military occupation, and will go on resisting whether they get help or not.
Strong Indian sympathy for Bangla Desh will continue. The East Pakistanis may continue to get surreptitious aid and Indian Bengalis are certainly going to slip across the frontier and join Bangla Desh terrorists. Unless the Pakistan Government is willing to let Esst Pakistan secede, and there is not the slightest sign of a change of heart or mind, the situation can only worsen again as guerilla activities develop. The crisis will then begin to assume a differert shape, remoulded by international interest and alarm in the fate of the 75 million people of East Pakistan.
Mrs. Bandaranaike’s Government in ceylon is finding the going this week harder than the gradual reduction of insurrectionist strength led observers to believe would be the case, Colombo has heard machinegun fire again, and eight road blocks had to be cleared between Colombo and Trincomalee on Monday. The danger of prolonged guerilla activity is unmistakable, although less alarming now it is clear that the Guevarists have no hold whatever on urban workers. More disconcerting perhaps for Mrs. Bandaranaike than the necessity of special security precautions again in Colombo is the apparent inability of Ceylon’s intelligence services to discover the leaders of the revolt, not only where they are, but who.
ref. The Straits Times, 28.4.1971