Bengalis Fight for ports to starve Army into Defeat
Peter Hazelhurst
Calcutta, March 29, As the civil war in East Pakistan entered its fourth day today, Free Bengal Radio, a clandestine station, announced that the “Liberation Army” and West Pakistan troops were locked in a bitter struggle for the province’s three most important ports of Chalna. Khulna and Chittagong. According to the radio, the West Pakistan troops have been denied food and water by the 75 million Bengalis and it would seem that the Liberation Army’s main objective is to capture and hold the three ports before shiploads of food and supplies arrive from the distant western wing. The picture remained blurred however.
The official radio station. Radio Dacca, announced that the situation in Chittagong, Khulna and Rangpur was under control, while Free Bengal Radio claimed that heavy fighting was continuing in all the three cities as well as in Dacca. Later today. Radio Dacca suddenly went off the air, giving rise to speculation that Awarni League volunteers had recaptured the heavily guarded building. If one is to judge the situation by the clandestine broadcasts, bitter fighting has spread to all corners of the eastern province and it is likely that thousands of lives have already been lost since the Army moved in to quash the uprising.
Free Bengal Radio said that the West Pakistan Army was using artillery and aircraft to stop the revolt. It added that more troops were being rushed to Dacca and Chittagong. Unconfirmed reports from across the border suggest that the East Pakistan Rifles and the Bengal Regiment have joined the front of Awami League volunteers and the leftist National Awami Party. An East Bengal police radio broadcast which was monitored in India today implied that the Army cantonment in Jessore, near the West Bengal border, had been overrun.
A West Bengal journalist from the Indian newspaper Ananda Bazar Patrika who visited the Khulna district reported that all the villages were under the instructions of the police and other Bengali officials had constructed barricades to cut the Army off from Khulna and other major towns. In the port district of Khulna, villagers were said to have dug deep pits in the roads. These were covered with black cloth to trap unsuspecting military envoys. A correspondent of the Press Trust of India who managed to telephone the commander of “Liberation Army” in the Kushtia district ordering India reported that waves of Bengalis were advancing on the Army with sticks and stones. The commander told the journalist that thousands of men, women and children had been shot.
It is estimated that the West Pakistan Army has 80,000 men in East Bengal. Other reports suggest that the Awami League has at its disposal about 70,000 volunteers, including the East Pakistan Rifles, and the Bengal Regiment. If the reports of the widespread nature of the uprising are correct, the Army may well have to retreat to the most important towns. Should the Army fail to put down the revolt before the monsoon arrives in a few week’s time, it will find itself isolated in the 1,000 square miles surrounding Dacea. The mighty Brahmaputra and the Jamuna and their tributaries Surround Dacca and when the rains rush down from the Himalayas to flood the Delta, the Army will find communications will become impossible.
Meanwhile it is learnt that the Awami League has distributed leaflets near western embassies in Dacca, asking the Pakistan aid consortium to stop all aid to the western wing. The consortium will meet in Paris in May to consider Pakistan’s request for an increase in its usual quota of aid of S500m. Without quoting its sources, the United News of India said tonight that 300.000 people had been killed in the fighting during the past four days. Other estimates have put the figure at 5.000.
Thousands of Indian Bengali communists paraded through Calcutta, the provincial capital of West Bengal today. to protest against the repression of their Bengali brethren on the eastern side of the border. In a rare show of Hindu-Muslim unity, demonstrators from both sections of the community marched through the streets shouting “Long live Mujibur”.
Our Diplomatic Correspondent writes: There is now good reason to believe. In the light of reports from a number of Pakistan Army sources, Thai Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was in fact arrested at the outset of the crisis. According to these sources, he was much shaken by the suddenness and violence of the events. Although communications in the eastern wing are still much disrupted, all the signs indicate that although the Army is fully in control in Dacca and Chittagong and will be able to retain control there, it will be able to do little more than let the situation outside its immediate cantonment area look after itself.
Some reinforcements reached the Army by sea. It will not be possible, however, for such a force – believed to number about 70,000 or little more than two divisions – to hold down the East Pakistan population of 75 million people and the danger now, clearly, is that there will be a breakdown of law and order in the rest of East Pakistan and a seizure of power locally by extremists or even by gangs of dacoits. Reports that the Pakistan Army has been reinforced via the British staging post at Gan Island, in the Maldives, are not true. No request for the use of Gan has been received.
Reference: The Times, 30 March, 1971