Pakistan Military Action Crippling The Country
Dacca, East Pakistan, June 26 (AP)
Behind the facade of normality hastily erected by the military in the Eastern province, Moslem Pakistan is fighting for its existance.
Its economy has been sucked dry by the four-month civil war and the deadly cyclone that raked the east last November taking an estimated 400,000 lives. Diplomats say 200,000 persons have died in civil strife.
These disasters have widened the gap between the people of West and East Pakistan to what probably are unbridgeable lengths, leaving politics in disarray.
The Pakistan Army from the West is waging an undeclared war against Bengali secessionists along the border with India.
The outside world meanwhile is mobilising to combat problems of millions of refugees who are seen as the tinder on which one spark could ignite war between the two subcontinent nations.
India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhy, has declared that the nearly six million Pakistani refugees in India created a “threat to peace” in the region.
Bengalis in Dacca are part of the 70 million in the East who constitute the majority in a country of at least 130 million population. Bengalis speak openly of “waiting for our time to come again.” while quietly avoiding the army and west Pakistan police imported to keep order.
Ninety days after the Awami Legue was outlawed Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, its leader, arrested and the army embarked on crushing the secessionists, resistance continues with border incursions, bombings and sabotage.
Against this background, the military president, Gen. Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan, scheduled a broadcast in an sttempt to promote political reconciliation and outline a program for the transfer of power to civilians.
BHUTO’S DEMAND
In West Pakistan, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, whose Pakistan People’s Party won the majority of National Assembly seats for the West in last December’s general election, has demanded a quick transfer of power and association of civilians in the regime. But in the East, the majority of politicians have remained underground since the army banned the Awami League.
A five-week campaign to bring out Assembly members produced only 12 of 167 Awami League provincial assembly members.
Alternative leaders have emerged and many lower level officials have been killed or are threatened with death for collaborating with the milltary regime.
“Civil intelligence is not cooperating with the military”, said one Awami Lengue member “who was arrested twice by the army three weeks after the crackdown.
“The Army does not know who the people are, they do not speak our language”, he said.
The army speaks Urdu, the language of the West, and a tongue Bengalis call a “royal tongue”, referring to its origin as a court language of the Moghul emperor of four centure ago.
SMASHING THE ECONOMY Members of the Bangla Desh the East’s liberation army walk the streets of Dacca and visit friends before returning to border sanctuaries. From these they have dynamited bridges, crippling East pakistan’s major railway, shutting up tea factories in Sylhet, halting production in the province’s second major industry.
Many tea planters believe jute gorwing and manufacturing a major industry herewill become targets in the campaign to smash the economy.
Much of the economy already has been seriously damaged. World reaction against the army offensive here has resulted in postponement of a world bank consortium’s annual pledging meeting on aid to Pakistan.
This may mean the country will go without 4000 million dollars in economic assistance.
A 300 million market in the East for West Pakistan goods also has disappeared.
An expected decline in East Pakistan jute exports of 25 percent will cut foreign exchange earnirgs. And Pakistan is so hard pressed it has imposed a moratorium against paying debts.
According to a government statement, Pakistan already has lost the equivalent of 80 million in reservres. World Bank sources believe Pakistan will use all its state bank’s foreion exchange assets by August, creating problems in paying for imported raw materials which keep factories in West Pakistan operating.
The Finance ministry says growth has slowed 400 per cent representing a decline in per capita income at a time when prices are rising.
Pakistan has asked help in providing two million tons of food grains for the East and at the same time, announced a decline of 700, 600 tons in the West Pakistan wheat crop. The West will have to import wheat… …
Reference : Indonesian Observer, 29.06.1971