Communists’ to take Over Resistance in Bangla Desh
CALCUTTA, April 21 (AP)
A COMMUNIST take over the resistance movement in East Pakistan may already be under way, reports reaching here Wednesday from across the fronts suggest.
As President Yahya Khan’s army continues to mop up the secessionist forces, communists and Maoists in the province are laying the ground for a lengthy guerrilla campaign, these reports say.
Indian intelligence sources belive Pakistan troops, tanks and planes will have crushed all open resistance within about a week, but they may find it harder to hold the country than to capture it.
The resistance forces made the mistake of trying to beat the army in open battle and trying to hold are beginning to learn form their mistakes and to revise their tacties.’
But there is a growing conviction among the Bengalis of East Pakistan that guerilla leaders will not be found from among the moderate politicians of Awami League, the party which won an overwhelming election victory last December.
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s Awami League is essentially a middle class movement led by doctors, attorneys and academics title suited to the rigors of guerilla war in the paddy fields of East Pakistan, renamed ‘Bangla Desh’ by local partisans.
Sheikh Mujib himself has been arrested by the Pakistan army and has not been heard of since March 25. Many local leaders have also been eliminated in the army purge.
Members of the so-called provisional government of Bangla Desh-who introduced themselves last Saturday in the shade of a mango grove a few safe meters from the frontier- have sought refuge in India, leaving the field to the political extremists.
By so doing, they have caused much resentment among troops of the East Pakistan Rifles- EPR- and East Bengal Regiment- EBR- who have borne the brunt of what fighting there has been with the Pakistan army.
‘We are being butchered because everyone wants to be important’, commented Cap, Gyasuddin Choudhury, who led the Bangla Dest defense of the border town of Rajshahi.
“The political leaders promised me everything I wanted, but got nothing.”
“I find it hard to trust any of the local leaders. I know they are sitting around in Agartala and Calcutta. I know they are trying to do something, but their place is here at the front, not in meetings that produce no results.’
Such remarks by East Bengalis about the acting leaders of the Awami League are common today.
COMMUNIST LEADERS
Communist leaders who stayed behind to fight are making political capital out of the situation and enjoying an upsurge of popularity.
Most prominent of them is Mohammad Toaha, milltant boss of the East Bengal communist party, who has been commanding several thousand of his own followers in the fight against Yahya Khan’s troops in the Mymensingh area of Dacca.
Toaha, a labor union activist, broke with the pro-communist national Awami party of Maulanna Bhasanl- the red Mullah because he regarded its policies as to moderate.
He build up a force of some 12,000 bullyboy volunteers, some of whom today form the hard core of a guerrilla group figting independently of other Bangla Desh partisans.
Many EPR and EBR troops are believed to have joined him since the army swung into action last month.
Two other militant communist and Maoist units- the so-called Menon and main groups- are active in the Chittagong area, which has seen some of the bloodiest violence.
Indian authorities have information that several pro-Peking Naxalites who have been waging a terrorist campaign in Calcutta in East Pakistan.
As a result, there has been marked decrease in terrorist activity in Calcutta, police report.
Whille deeply sympathizing with the Bangla Desh struggle for independence from the western wing of Pakistan, Indian authorities are seriously concerned by the leftists trend of the resistance movement.
ref. Indonesian Observer, 22.4.1971