THINGS WILL NEVER BE THE SAME IN PAKISTAN
Editor’s Note : The writer was in a group of crrespondents admitted to East Pakistan after a five-week period in which foreign correspondents were officially barred. He wrote this sum up free of the censorship that prevails in Pakistan.
Singapore, May 17 (AP)
For 23 years a common faith in the Moslem religion linked the disparate halves of Pakistan. Now the nation’s leaders know it needs stronger cement if it is to stay united.
A brutal Civil War that began sweeping East Pakistan March 26 has killed perhaps 500,000 persons, with many tortured and slaughtered simply because they spoke the wrong language and traced roots to the wrong place.
Non-Bengalis won’t easily forget how husbands, mothers and grandchildren were killed by Bengalis espousing an independent East Bengal. Bengalis will long recall army terror and destruction.
The economy of the eastern wing of Pakistan lies shattered. Reconstruction must come from the West, 1,000 miles (7,600 kms) across India but six hours away by jet because India refuses overflights.
East Pakistan’s economic infrastructure depended heavily on a 12 per cent minority of Hindu Bengalis who stayed on when India and Pakistan were formed from British India.
There are also six millions Biharis, Moslem migrants who came to Pakistan at partition from several parts of India, mostly Bihar. And there were key West Pakistani • businessmen and managers.
The Hindus suffered many dead in army reprisals. Thousands have fled to India or remote parts of the province. Dacca’s once picturesque Hindu sections elsewhere were razed.
Biharis and West Pakistanis were massacred by Bengalis across East Pakistan, and many survivors left in panic.
Significantly much of the killing took no heed of religious lines. Eyewitnesses say. Moslem Biharis were slaughtered in Mosques by Moslem Bengalis, despite the teachings of the prophet Mohammed.
As Moslem Punjabi and Pathan soldiers moved to settle the score, they took no time to determine a man’s faith.
The founder of Pakistan, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, advocated the theory that Pakistan would stand as a nation, despite its geography and wide ethnic differences, because of its faith in Islam.
Portraits of Jinnah still gaze down from every official wall in West and East Pakistan, but dispassionate leaders now find that his idea needs reinforcing. The problem is that no one knows how. ! “For 23 years the West has enriched itself at our expense”, thundered Major M.A. Osman of the Bengali Liberation Forces when Bangla Desh or Bengal State was in its brief heydey.
Foreign economists add that 60-70 per cent of foreign aid went to West Pakistan while the East provided 45 per cent and more of the country’s foreign exchange.
Tariffs and policies tended to favor the West, which depend heavily on the Eastern inhabitants- two-thirds of the total population- to consume its industrial and agricultural products.
Some Westerners want to gradually ease away from the East and cut all ties. This is considered unlikely, though, with a military government apparently determined to enforce a single Pakistan at any cost.
The cost, so far immense in economic and human terms, is likely to remain crushing. Bengalis now pin Pakistani flags to their clothing and fly them from their homes, but that is for safety.
“Look what the Army did”, whispered a Bengali student to a reporter in the town. His eyes showed a fierce bitterness. Then, as an officer approached he smiled brightly and offered a patriotic remark.
His reaction was common all over the sullen, defeated province. Bengalis must eventually return to work, to feed their families. They lost badly and there seems little serious prospect of armed resistance.
But it will take more than impassive compliance to rebuild Pakistan even at its pre war level it was badly hurt by economic woes and natural disasters.
The question of tolerance is touchy. Military rulers have used their censorship net to black out in West Pakistan any reports of atrocities by Bengalis living there.
Eventually the facts will slip across to the other side.
One immediate threat is the crippled food crop and the disrupted relief program. Some foreign observers fear these may cause a calamitous famine this summer.
Another fear is that buyers of jute will switch to other fibers from more stable parts of the world. east Pakistan grows 80 per cent of the world’s jute but exporters are concerned that the halted supply won’t be missed.
That would stagger the East’s economy and make it less attractive to the West. “It’s still far to early to tell what happens next”. said one foreigner close to both
between the West and the East”.
Reference : The Indonesian Observer, 19.05.1971