BANGLA DESH RESISTANCE WITH WORDS NOT BULLETS
Banapole, East Pakistan, May 17 (AP). In this deserted customs checkpost, 100 yards from sanctuary in India, the Bengali dream of an independent Bangla Desh (Bengal nation) still exists.
The green, red and gold flag of Bangla Desh- breakaway East Pakistan – flutters symbolically from the checkpost, which the Pakistan army tried unsuccessfully to recapture four days ago.
But the army is in control of virtually the rest of the province, and the remnants of the Mukti Fauz, the East Pakistan resistance, at the moment are fighting with words instead of bullets in this sector.
“Our fight may be long and bitter but the ultimate victory wil be ours, inshaallah (God willing),” Mukti Fauz Major Osman Chaudhury told 20 Indian and foreign newsmen here Sunday.
The newsmen had gone to hear Prime Minister Indira Gandhi speak to east Pakistan refugees at a relief camp on the Indian side of the border and then crossed into East Pakistan to see if they could find any Mukti Fauz.
Major Osman and his colleague. Captain Hafizud-Din, were the only East Pakistan refugees at sight. Both wore olive green uniforms without markings and each carried A Chinese AK-47 submachine gun they said were captured from the Pakistan army.
Osman, who said he controlled the resistance forces in Jessore district, acknowledge that the local partisans had not done well trying to fight pitched battles with the Pakistan Army in the first month of the civil war that began March 25.
“The days of open confrontation are gone and there will be no more frontal attacks,” he said, “The future strategy is to make army control of the 76 million people of Bangla Desh impossible and too costly in terms of men and money.”
Osman said hundreds of students were being trained by his men in guerrilla warfare and “already they are blowing up bridges, destroying army ammuntion dumps and carrying out ambushes in selected areas.”
The major expressed confidence that the summer monson, which normally turns much of East Pakistan into a swamp, will benefit the resistance forces.
“We can bottle up the Pakistan army during the monsoon because the West Pakistanis (in the army) cannot swim and we, Bengalis, take to water like fish,’ he said.
“Even if we don’t get foreign aid, we will continue to fight,” he added.
Osman said his troops only weapons were either captured from the Pakistan Army or were received from East Pakistanis who deserted the army units when the civil war broke out.
A half hour after the Major began his news conference, a few Pakistan Army soldiers were noticed in the rice fields about a half mile away.
Perhaps they may come in greater force sometime later, in which case we will shift our ground, the Major said. The newsmen did not wait- and headed back into India, 100 yeards away.
Reference : The Indonesian Observer, 17.05.1971