Bangladesh Newsletter
No. 15
December 25, 1971
WORLD MUST RECOGINZE
REALITY OF BANGLADESH IS WITH US
Editorial
REALITY OF BANGLADESH
On March 25, 1971 the Pakistan Army unleashded a brutal campaign of terror against the people of Bangladesh. The savagery of this occupation has been grim : over a million and a half have been killed, ten million have fled to India, many million remain homeless and hungry within Bangladesh. In recent days it has become clear that the Pakistan occupation is at an end.
Eight months of leverage-by-arms over Yahay Khan led to nothing but death and destruction in Bangladesh, but the U.S. continues to join China in ardent support of Pakistan. We are told that the U.S. remains interested in avoiding further bloodshed on the subcontinent. Despite the deliberate indifference that it revealed toward the massacre of the Bengali populace we are told that the U.S. remains interested in minimizing further blockshed on the subcontinent.
The position of the Pakistan Army has become untenable in Bangladesh. The longer Pakistan takes to recognize the reality in Bangladesh the greater the loss of life will be while the fighting continues. What chances there are of avoiding large-scale reprisals against army collaborators will gradually tend to disappear. Notwithstanding recent loans from Arab countries, West Pakistani’s economy is tectering on theedge of total collapse. Yahya and his generals may prefer to die fighting and to sink West Pakistan in the process. If the U.S. retains any leverage with Yahya, we suggest that it be used to force reality on him.
There has been enormous devastation in Bangladesh. The problem of famine becomes once again one of immediate urgency. Recent fighting has led to the evacuation of the UNEPRO team. Millions of refugees will be returning to Bangladesh. Their rehabilitation requires immense resources given the destruction during the Pakistan occupation. The entire road and rail transport network needs urgent repair so that Bangladesh can even begin to sustain, let alone improve, the life of its people. We urge the U.N. team to resume operations for distribution of food and other relief supplies. All governments are urged to aid the reconstruction of Bangladesh ; at the very least by fulfilling the commitments they have made in the past eight months.
IN LIBERATED JESSORE
The following is extracted from a dispatch by Sydney Schanberg in New York Times, December 9.
Jessore, December 8 : The Bengalis danced on the roofs of buses. They shouted independence slogans in the streets. They embraced, they cheered, they reached out in spontaneous emotion to clasp the hands of visitors from other lands.
For Bengalis, today was “liberation day” in Jessore—the stratgic city in East Pakistan that for eight months, until yesterday, had been under the control of West Pakistani troops, who had come last spring to put down the Bengali rebellion…
Joyous reunions were taking place in the town of Jhinergacha between friends and relatives who had fled at different times and in different directions to escape the Pakistani Army and are now slowly returning. Some had gone to refugee camps in India, others into hiding in villages in the interior of East Pakistan.
This correspondent also had a reunion, standing on the one intact span of the old bridge. “You remember me?” a voice asked in English. I did. He was Lieut. Akhtar Uzzaman, a 25-year-old commander of a company of the Mukti Bahini (Liberation Forces)—thd Bengali insurgents. Lieut Akhtar had first turned up in an enclave held by the guerrillas southwest of Jessore a month ago.
As a jeep carrying foreign newsmen rode from Jhinergacha to Jessore “Joy Bangla!” (“Victory for
Bengal!”) and reached out to try to touch the hands of the foreigners. The atmosphere in Jessore was even more exuberant, Buses filled from seats to roofs exploded in shouts of “Shadhin Bangla!” (“Independent Bengal!”) and “Sheikh Mujibur Rahman”, the leader of East Pakistan who is imprisoned in West Pakistan. The green, red and gold flag of Bangladesh was fluttering on many buildings and houses.
AT A GLANCE
The Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh has set up its temporary headquarters at Mujibnagar, Jessore District. In a public ceremony, amidst thunderous roars of “Joi Bangla”, the acting President of Bangladesh, Syed Nazrul Islma, appealed to the nations of the world to recognize the reality of Bangladesh and extend full suppoprt and coordination in the enormous task of reconstruction of the war-ravaged Bangladesh. Prime Minister Tajuddin Ahmed declared amnesty for the collaborators of the Pakistani occupation army.
A Joint Defense Pact has been signed between the Government of Bangladesh and the Government of India. Under the pact, a joint allied command has been established to direct the allied forces.
According to the reports reaching here, the Commander of Pakistani occupation army in Bangladesh, Lt. General Niazi, left Dacca for West Pakistan at the initial stage of the allied march on Dacca.
Major-General Forman Ali, ‘military advisor’ to the ‘Governor’ of occupied Bangladesh sent an urgent appeal to the Secretary General of the United Nations to arrange repatriation of the Pakistani troops in Bangladesh While the Secretary General was about to move the appropriate U.N. body to discuss the appeal, a message from General Yahya Khan reached the Secretary General, instructing him to disregard the appeal from Major-General Farman Ali.
Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto, with an assignment from General Yahya, arrived in New York on Dceember 11. Confused by the appeals and counter appeals of Major-General Farman Ali and General Yahya he cancelled all his appointments (one with the Chinese delegation to the United Nations and another with the Secretary General U Thant) under the pretext of sudden illness.
On December 10, Pakistan blamed India for bombing an orphanage in Dacca and killing about 300 children. Later foreign sources in Dacca reported that it was a Pakistani plane which bombed the orphanage to embarrass India putting the blame on her.
Senator Church of Ideho disclosed on December 11 that he had information that the Pakistani military regime sent an urgent request to President Nixon to send substantial amount of military supplies to Pakistan and the State Department is considering the request. He warned the administration against any kind of military involvement in this crisis.
Resolutions have been introduced in both the houses of Congress to extend U.S. recognition to the People’s Republic of Bangladesh. (Write to your congressment and senators to support the resolutions)
BRITAIN MOVING TOWARD RECOGNITION OF BANGLADESH
Britain Labour Party came within a hairsbreath of recognizing an independent state of Bangladesh when the Party’s international committee unanimously passed an emergency resolution strongly critical of Pakistan on December 7. There was support for recognition at the meeting, but in the end it was decided that the wisest course would be to exercise caution at this stage so as not to make the British Government’s move on the war more difficult.
Some members, including Mr. Walter Padley and Mrs. Judith Hart, expressed strong views that the political reality of the situation had to be recognized. This was that the state of Pakistan, as it had existed was now finished. The Committee’s view is that its resolution went at least half-way towards recognition of Bangladesh and that a decision may well be taken at the next meeting of the party’s national executive committee later this month.
John Stonehouse, the leading advocate in Britain for Bangladesh, has taken the initiative in setting up a parliamentary group to press for formal recognition of Bangladesh by the U.K. Hugh Fraser, Tory MP, Reg Prentice, former Labor Minister of Overseas Development, and John Pardoe, Liberal MP, are among the prime movers.
Stonehouse hopes that the group will gain the immediate backing of at least 210 MPs—those who signed his motion in June condemning the widespread muder of massive scale” in East Bengal and calling for temporary recognition of the provinsional Government of Bangladesh. In August 350 MPs, among them many former Labor and Tory ministers, signed a supplementary motion calling for the release of Sheikh Mujib.
Stonehouse did not ask Tory MPs to sign his first motion—he did not want to embarrass them—and he expects to pick up additional conservative support for the parliamentary group.
SENATOR KENNEDY CONDEMNS US BACKING OF PAKISTAN
Senator Edwar Kennedy denounced the Nixon Administration for faveuring Pakistan in the war with India.
The Senator, recently visited refugee camps in India, criticized the Administration for condemning military action by India while failing to condemn atrocities by West Pakistan troops in East Bengal.
Mr. Kennedy, Democratic Senator forMass., said in a speech to the Senate that “war did not begin last week with military border crossings or last month with the escalation of artillery crossfire.
“This war began on the bloody night of March 25 with the brutal suppression by the Pakistan Army of the results of a free election”.
Senator Kennedy claimed that “throughout this period our national leadership watched the tragedyin silence. At no time has any official of our Government, including the President, condemned the brutal and systematic repression, a repression carried out in part with American guns and bullets and aircraft”.
He added : “Now the Administration tells us, eight months after March 25, that we should condemn not the repression of the Pakistan Army, but the response of India towards and increasingly desperate situation on its eastern border situation which our nation calculatedly ignored.
“Certainly condemnation is justified, but…we should condemn the silence of our leaders. We should condemn the world silence and apathy toward the mass of human suffering caused by refugee flow into India”.
Mr. Kennedy said that the Administration had justified its refusal to condemn Pakistan on the grounds that it wanted to “maintain loverage” with the Yahya Khan regime. There is little record that many lovers were pulled he said. “I urge the Administration to turn its policy around”….
THIS TIME IT IS THE PATHANS!
In a move evidently aimed at crushing a potentially dangerous source of opposition to his regime, General Yahya Khan banned the National Awami Party on November 26. He said that the NAP has “for a long time been acting against the interests and security of Pakistan”. Leaders of the NAP have been arrested. Wali Khan’s NAP, popular among the Pathans, is basically a Pathan nationalist group. Pathans have been campaigning off and on in recent years for creation of an independent Pathan state to be known as Pushtoonistan. The NAP won 6 seats in the National Assembly in last year’s national election and 12 seats in the 40 seat provincial assembly ot the North-West Frontier Province, 8 seats in Baluchistan’s 20 seats assembly.
In recent weeks several Pathans have been arrested on charges of spying for India and bringing their information to the autonomous tribal territory along Pakistani’s westernmost flank to convey to Indian Agents.
COMMENTS
(In this column we are reproducing excerpts of editorial and other comments published recently on the situation in Bangladesh.)
December 5 :
N.Y. (Editorial)
…For months the United States resorted to ineffectual secret diplomacy that bypassed and served to paralyze the world organization. The Nixon Administration adopted a public posture of mock even-handedness which had the effect of exacerbating the India-Pakistan conflict. It ignored the fundamental threat to India posed by Yahya Khan’s harsh repression in East Pakistan.
The United States Government is still sidesteping this central issue and is responding with flagrant injustice in attempting to pin the “major responsibility” for the present conflict on India. If Security Council intervention is to have any chance of restoring peace between India and Pakistan, the United States and the United Nations must recogize and deal with the basic problem in East Pakistan…
Wast Post (Joseph Kraft)
…The PRICE of doing so much business so secretively in the White House becomes apparent when the going gets serious in areas that are not high on the agenda of Kissinger and the President. For example, it has been clear for months that India and Pakistan were heading toward war. It has also been that trouble could be averted if President Yahya Khan of Pakistan opened negotiations with the insurgent leader, Mujibur Rahman. But nothing was done because the White House was not disposed to put pressure on President Yahya…
Chicago Tribune (Clayton Fritchey)
…At the moment, the biggest and most dangerous threat to peace centers on Pakistan, for religion no only aggravates the struggle with India, but also plays a deadly part in the civil strife between East and West Pakistan.
As everyone konws, over 9 million refugees have fled to India since the West Pakistani army set out to crush the democratic rebellion in East Pakistan. But what is not widely known is that nearly all of the refugees are Hindus who, until they had to flee for their lives, were an important minority in Moslem Pakistan.
Thus, the Moslem army leaders have not only imposed a crushing burden on India, but at the same time got rid of a Hindu minority that might have become a “fifth column” if they had been allowed to stay in East Pakistan. What is India, one of the poorest of nations, to do in the circumstances?
Important voices are being raised in America for U.N. intervention and a cease-fire based on the status quo. That, in effect, would be to intervene on the side of the West Pakistani military junta against the people of East Pakistan, who were militarily overpowered as they voted overwhelmingly for autonomy.
General Yahya Khan, the head of the junta, now has his back against the wall because East Pakistani guerrillas, aided by India, are chewing up the West Pakistani army. His only recourse is to attack India, and that would be military suicide.
The only viable solution is independence or autonomy for East Pakistan, along with the safe return of the millions of refugees who have had to crowd into an already overcroweded, hungry India. Any intervention by the great powers, must not perpetuate General Khan’s vicious, genocidal domination of East Pakistan…
December 6 :
N.Y. Times (Anthony Lewis)
…London, December 5 Suppose that Britain, in the 1930’s, had responded to Hitler’s savagery by the early threat or use of military force instead of appeasement. If the Nixon Administration had been is power in Washington at that time, it would presumably have sent some official out to writing his hands in public and charge Britain with “major responsibility for the broader hostilities which have ensued”.
So one must think after the American statement over the weekend blaming India for the hostilities with Pakistan. Few things said in the name of the United States lately have been quite so indecent. The anonymous state department official who made the comment matched Uriah Heep in sheer oleaginous cynicism about our own moral position.
Consider first the immediate origins of this dispute. They are exceptionally clear as international relations go.
The military junta that rules Pakistan under President Yahya Khan held an election. The largest number of seats was won, democratically, by a Bengali party that favored effective self-govrnment for East Pakistan. Yahya thereupon decided to wipe out the result of the election by force.
Last March West Pakistan troops flew into the East in large numbers and began a policy of slaughter. They murdered selected politicians intellectuals and professionals, then indicriminate masses. They burned villages. They held public castrations.
To compare Yahya Khan with Hitler is of course inexact. Yahya is not a man with a recist mission but a spokesman for xenophobic forces in West Pakistan. But in terms of results—in terms of human beings killed, brutalized or made refugees—Yahya’s record compares quite favorably with Hitler’s early years.
The West Pakistanis have killed several hundred thousand civilians in the East, and an estimated ten million have fled to India. The oppression has been specifically on lines of race or religion. The victims are Bengalis or Hindus. not Czechs or Poles or Jews, and perhaps therefore less meaningful to us in the West. But to the victims the crime is the same.
This record has been no secret to the world. First-hand accounts of the horror inside East Pakistan were published months ago. The refugees were there in India to be photographed in all their pitiful misery.
But President Nixon and his foreign policy aids seemed to close their eyes to what everyone else could see. Month after month the President said not a word about the most appalling refugee situation of modern times. Private diplomacy was doubtless going on, but there was no visible sign of American pressure on Yahya Khan for the only setup that could conceivably bring the refugees back—a political accommodation with the Bengalis.
Pakistani’s argument was that it was all an internal affair. Yes, like the Nazi’s treatment of German Jews. But even if one accepts as one must that Pakistan was bound to defend its territorial integrity, this issue had spilled beyond its borders. The refugee impact on India very soon made it clear that the peace of the whole subcontinent was threatened.
It was as if the entire population of New York City had suddenly been dumped on New Jersey to feed and clothe—only infinitely worse in terms of resources available. Yet when Indira Gandhi went to the capitals of the West for help in arranging a political solution in East Pakistan, she got nothing…
December 7 :
Wash Post (Joseph Kraft)
…A bizarre combination of moral blindness and political unrealism has characterized the handling of the Indo-Pak crisis by the Nixon administration. Even so, the United States is relatively immune from the consequences of this folly.
For with the Communist world divided, almost nothing that happens in South Asis can adversely affect American security in a serious way. But similar folly in other areas could well blow the President’s hopes for a generation of peace. The present round of trouble in the subcontinent goes back to the decision made by the Pakistan government in mid-March to suppress by force the separatist movement in East Bengal. The result of that decision was moral crime on the grand scale. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people were murdered by Pakistani troops, and millons were froced across the border into India as refugees. Moreover, the decision was not only crime, it was a blunder. With its government and forces centered in the western part of the country, Pakistan was unable to sustain repression a thousand miles away in East Bengal. Among the refugee in India, there began to grow up an insurgency force—the Mukti Bahini—determined to separate East Bengal from Pakistan in a new nation to be called Bangla Desh. This country is the mainstay of the international groups that provide foreign aid critical to the development of both India and Pakistan, and there was a way to avert the developing trouble. That was to have President Yahya Khan of Pakistan open negotiations with the West Bengali leader, Mujib Rahman, who had been jailed back in March.
But Washington was never sensitive to the moral enormity of Pakistan’s behavior. Hence, the willingness to let military spare parts go there for months after the massacres of East Bengal got under way. Neither was the administration alert to the coldblooded logic driving the Indians towards war. Thus the administration did not apply truly heavy pressrue on Pakistan for an opening of negotiations between President Yahya and Sheikh Mujib—not even after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of India visited Washington and named that as a price for peace.
With Washington going less than all-out on the negotiating front, Mrs. Gandhi had little reason to control the Indian hawks. Slowly and deliberately, they applied pressure around Pakistan’ borders. In the end, Pakistan felt obliged to respond with what is now open warfare. There are some hard questions the Nixon administration should be asking itself. Wasn’t the administration blind and deaf to the moral crimes committed by Pakistan? Didn’t the administration miscalculate what India would do? Weren’t both these judgements an expression of President Nixon’s personal prejudices and preferences? Weren’t these personal inclinations enormously weighted because of the emasculation of the State Department? More important still are some long-range questions. Couldn’t such a woeful performance yield serious trouble in coming encounters with the Communist giants? Even if the United States is insulated from the worst difficulties by the division in the Communist world, what role should this country be playing in the southern continents of the Third World? Does this country want forever to be the patron of regime in Asia, Africa and Latin American that make up the pillars of the unfree world?
Wash Post (Editorial)
Suppose President Nixon had deliberately set out : to aggravate tensions in South Asia ; to identify the United States with a military regime almost universally condemned for its abuse of its own people ; to shared American ties with the most populous and powerful nation of that region, a demcracy and a traditional friend ; to help drive that dominant state into a waiting Soviet embrace ; and, once war had erupted, to diminish possibilities of political compromise and undermine what moderate might remain. What would he have done differently with respect to the developing conflict between India and Pakistan over the last eight months? In our view not much.
The whole rationale of American policy eludesus. Some payment was owed Pakistan for helping arrange Henry Kissinger’s first trip to Peking. And Mr. Nixon evidently has long had a soft sopt in his heart for Pakistan, at one time a model military anti-Communist regime. But at some point as the tragedy grew, cold calculations of power politics should have overtaken these largely sentimental considerations. Sound policy dictated and effort to maintain friendship with both India and Pakistan ; if that were not possible, why put all the American chips on a discredited failing regime in much the smaller and more trouble-ridden of the two nations involved? If the answer lies somewhere in the political geometry of the Moscow-Peking-Washington triangle, we fail to perceive it. The source of the present crisis is Pakistani policy in East Pakistan. Only there can a solution be found That the United States should not only be failing to contribute to such a solution but could be making on more difficult to attain is a measure of how far we in fact have traveled under the much trumpeted Nixon Doctrine toward a new foreign policy. In South Asia, we have moved backward—if we have moved at all—toward those early postwar cold war attitude that gave us CENTO and SEATO and the heavy-handed employment of foreign aid a bludgeon or a bribe.
December 8 :
Wash Post (Editorial)
Within the confines of its open and full political support for Pakistan, what constructive steps might the Nixon administration take to actually help Pakistan and case the crisis in South Asia? We say “actually” help because so far Mr. Nixon’s support has merely made it easier for the government in Islamabad to get into terrible trouble : in the East its sway is shrinking and in the West it is under siege from what seems superior Indian force. Whether Yahya Khan would have powerfull Pakistan into this fix wihout American support is a fair question.
But what can the U.S. do now? Any answer must start here with the assumption that the Nixon administration, by its faithfulness to Islamabad especially in the latest stage of its travail, should have earned much influence. If in earlier stages American influence was not wisely applied or heeded, whichever obtains, it is not too late to try to recoup. In public statements and United Nations resolutions, Mr. Nixon may wish to stay in a tough anti-India posture but it should be possible at the same time to help Pakistan. On his part, President Yahya can hardly remain impervious much longer to a friend’s good advice : he has all but lost half his country and the other half is far from completely secure.
Though doubtless directed first of all at Americans, Mr. Nixon’s pledge not to get “physically involved in any way” in the war surely was an important contribution to President Yahya’s political education. Mr. Nixon should now go on to say that Pakistan’s cause in the East is lost, that the beleaguered Pakistani garrison there cannot possibly endure, that Islamabad should use the Indian invasion as a facesaver to avoid the humiliation of defeat at the hands of Bengali insurgents, and that Pakistani soldiers should surrender to the Indians while they can rather than face slaughter by vengeful Bengalis.
Mr. Nixon could also tell President Yahya that, just conceivably, if he produced the Bengali leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, he could win back much world favor. More important, the political authority to be set up in former East Pakistan would be freindlier to Islamabad than if other Bengalis take over.
If Pakistan heeded this advice, then Mr. Nixon would be in a better position at the Security Council to work for a cease-fire resolution that would at once prevent the further spilling of Pakistani blood and ensure that Pakistan would suffer territorial losses in the West. For it is plain enough that Moscow would not veto a resolution which acknowledged a Bengali political authority as well as called for a cease-fire. The divisions which have reduced the United Nations to importence in the past week would be removed. This approach would not give Pakistan the grim emotional satisfaction it received from the American resolution that failed, but it would be a real political boon all the same. Incidentally, it would allow President Nixon to appear before the world as an effective peace-maker.
We continue to have serious reservations about Mr. Nixon’s pro-Pakistan policy. But if he is determined to pursue it, let him do so in a way that is more likely to help Pakistan and the cause of Asian peace.
December 8 :
N.Y. Times (Editorial)
President Nixon’s declaration of “absolute neutrality” in the Indian-Pakistani conflict fail to conceal Administration policies, which have, in fact, been obviously biased in favor of the Government of President Yahya Khan in Islamabad.
During the eigth months of repression in East Pakistan which led to the present international conflict on the subcontinent, Wahsington’s “neutrality” consisted of maintaining silence while Yahya’s troops suppressed a freely elected autonomy movement in East Pakistan, were responsible for the death of thousands of Bengalis and forced millions more, mostly Hindus, to flee to India where their presence has posed a growing threat to Indian political, economic and social stability. For many months the Administration actually gave material support to this unconscionable repression by continuing to ship small amounts of military supplies to Islamabad.
Administration officials argured that their public silence and the continuance of aid were designed to strengthen quite efforts to promote a political settlement in East Pakistan that would bring peace and the return of the refugees. But there is no evidence that President Yahya has tried to reach any accommodation with the imprisoned Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the other elected representatives who command the confidence of the overwhelming majority of Pakistan Bengalis. Having failed to condemn the repression in East Pakistan or to press for a genuine political solution, the United States has now faltly charged India with “major responsibility” for the resulting international conflict ; having waited months to suspend arms aid to Pakistan, the Administration has promptly suspended military and economic aid to India…United States efforts at the United Nations, first in the Security Council and now in the General Assembly, have been aimed at bringing about a simple cease-fire and withdrawal of forces. Urgent and desirable as such action surely is, it can not be practically effective unless the United Nations and its leading—areprpared at the same time to recognize and attempt to deal with the root cause of the problem in Pakistan.
December 9 :
New Statesman (Editorial)
London—On the Indian subcontinent a state is dying and a new nation has been born.
The theorcratic state of Pakistan is struggling to avoid dismenberment, though it has but one unifying force within its boundaries : the Islamic faith of the majority of its citizens. Now thenationalism of the Bengalis has shattered Muslim unity, set an example for the disaffected Pathans and reduced the loyal area of Pakistan to the two provinces of Punjab and Sind. The supply lines of the Pakistan Army are hopelessly stretched and they are being harassed by the Mukti Bahini in East Bengal. Since the Pakistanis also face trouble in the North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistan, they cannot long sustain Indian military pressure. At the chances of Chinese help recede their plight is desperate. Pakistan has little claim upon our sympathy. From its foundation this artificial state has been militaristic and bellicose and for two decades has spent 80 per cent of its budget on defense. Its present rulers are as stupid as they are brutal. Instead of working for a compromise with Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his Bengali Awami League, President Yahya Khan unleashed General Tikka Khan and the Pakistan Army upon the hapless Bengalis in a campaign of indiscriminate slaughter. Last week, as if to confirm the fact that he has very little political judgement, he banned the West Pakistan National Awami party and arrested some of its leaders. In so doing he has disfranchised the North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistan, which are now diaffected and may require watching by the already very much over-committed Pakistan Army. Perhaps the Pakistanis calculated that all internal risks were manageable because of the assured support of China. If so, they have been outmaneuvered by India and badly served by the U.N. vote that administed China to membership…
Not that it is very likely that the Chinese have considered sending help. It would be a bad start to China’s U.N. membership for her to become involved in an Asian land war that might well involve not only India but also the USSR The Chinese have more important aims than the maintenance in power of Yahya Khan. The Sind-Pakistan alliance has always been an opportunistic deal between utterly dissimilar societies who believe they have common enenmies. China will not wish to be saddled with an ally who cannot maintain internal peace and so threatens to embroil the Chinese in conflicts which do not affect their national interests…
N.Y. Times (Editorial)
India’s support for full Bengali independence may have been made inescapable by the incredibly shortsighted and brutal policies of the Pakistani Government. But no one—especially the Indians—can ignore the new dangers and problems that will be posed by the emergence of Bangladesh…
To avert further impoverishement, fragmentation and conflict throughout the subcontinent it is essential that leaders in Delhi, Dacca and Islamabad thrust aside present divisions anf acrimony and join in a search for newties and institutions that will enable them to attack overriding common problems in dignity and peace. As the emerging dominant power, India has a special responsibility to assert the moral leadership for reconciliation that has been so sadly lacking in the present conflict…
N.Y. Times (John P. Lewis)
The Nixon Administration’s South Asia policy, which had been edging toward disaster for the last eight
months, finally, in a cloud of pious inanities, plunged over the brink this last weekend. Presumably for the time being the policy is beyond redemption…For eight months he has remained officially blind to the most massive calculated savagery that has been visited on a civil population in recent times. He has been faithful to his good friend, the chairman of the savagery, Yahya Khan. Neither his hand-holding of nor any hidden leverage on the Pakistan regime has had evident effect in advancing a political solution in East Bengal.
Historians are bound to boggle at the cumulative ineptitude of this performance. In one series of strokes we have managed to align ouselves with the wrong side of about as big and simple a moral issue as the world has seen lately ; we have sided with a minor military dictatorship against the world’s second largest nation which happens also to be the stanchest of all developing countries in its adherence to our own deepest political values ; we have joined the sure-fire loser in a subcontinental confrontation ;…
I would like to emphasize one point that tends to be skirted, because on one wants to be caught these days suggesting that any good—even relative good, wighed against the alternative—can come of a war. The point, and it is pivotal, is that the only possible basis for a stable, peaceful East Bengal to which a large protion of the ten million refugees can return and help rebuild their nation is an independent East Bengal. Such is the effect of the program of terror since March 25 ; the senario cannot be wound backwards. Hence (1) the promise of undivided Pakistan’s sovereign integrity upon which American policy has rested, for at least five months, has been a nonstarter, and (2) India’s support of the insurgency by the previously elected Bangladesh regime has not been merely human and understandable ; lacking alternatives, it has been the only constructive policy available…
December 10 :
Wash Post (Stephen S. Rosenfeld)
The crisis in South Asia has revealed a measure of ineffectiveness in Congress that must thoroughly dishearten anybody who had hoped that out of the last four or five years of Executive-Congressional jousting over the making of foreign policy some change in the old ways of doing business would have come.
Unlike Vietnam, South Asia is not a situation where the Congress came to consciousness late, after the Executive had already established a policy line it felt committed to. Nor is it a situation where serious opposition to the President was limited to a minority or a flabby majority. Nor is it a situation where the Executive had a monopoly on background understanding or current informantion. Nor is it a situation where the President could justify his policy by appeal to any of the great principles or great stakes or great publics (“the silent majority”) that have been invoked in respect to Vietnam.
On the contrary, Congress awoke early to the significance of the South Asian tragedy. A majority in both Houses formed and expressed opposition. The Congress could fairly claim to have as good an understanding of the scene as the Executive bureaucracy. And the President lacked gaudy bannaers to take above his chosen course.
Yet Mr. Nixon has dominated South Asia policy all the way. In the subcontinent a crisis unfolded that is bound to have major consequences for the American world position, and the Congress never got significantly into the act…
KENNEDY RIPS US ‘SILENCE’ ON PAKISTAN ‘REPRESSION’
December 4. The staff of the Senate refugee subcommittee estimated that war and famine in East Bengal may cost as many as 25 million lives, which Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) termed “the greatest human disaster of modern times”.
In an interview, Kennedy charged that the U.S. has been “unconscionably silent” in “refusing to condemn the repression that the Pakistani army is perpetrating in East Bengal”.
The Subcommittee projection of deaths does not include potential casualties from a war between India and Pakistan. It refers strictly to victims of Pakistani repression.
Chairman of the refugee subcommittee, Kennedy said he has received information that West Pakistani atrocities in East Bengal continued unabated following the initial bloodbath of March 25.
Kennedy’s staff said estimates are that 200,000 persons were killed initially when the West Pakistani military government of President Agha Muhmmad Yahya Khan moved to suppress the newly elected Bengali government.
Since then, according to staff estimates the toll in East Bengal has risen to at least a million, and information from the former head of the Pakistani mission in Geneva, who defected, is that 1.5 million have died. In addition, 10 million persons fled East Bengal camps where children along to residents—that a guerrilla group was here, the army attacked without warning in motor launches. Toward the end of the 20-mile trip from Dacca the launches engines alerted the population, most of which fled into nearby ponds, cannals and paddy fields.
“Shooting into houses and huts as they advanced, the troops set fire to nearly every building. Surviving residents pointed to the fresh graves where 19 villagers were buried. The concrete schoolhouse was stripped of its furniture and doors, which the troops burned to cook their evening meal, and a rice mill was destroyed. The villager’s stock of freshly harvested rice was burned for the most part, and some 300 cows and sheep were slaughtred. “A large quantity of wheat that villagers said had been sent under a U.S. aid progrm was reportedly loaded into the boats by the troops”.
“A warehouse filled with bags of phosphate fertilizer was burned and most of the bags were destroyed. Several buildings belonging to the mosque were burned down, and the Hindu temple was burned and sacked, and its idols were smashed by gunfire…”
“It is widely charged that the army is used relief aid more as a political lover than for genuinely humanitarian purposes, withholding it from rebel areas…”
“According to officials, the guerrillas control only about a fourth of the land area of East Pakistan. On the other hand, it appears to many people who regularly travel in the interior of the country that the guerrillas in fact control a much larger proportion of the land area and most of the Bengali population”.
Novemeber 19 :
C.S. Monitor (Dacca)
East Bengal’s need for food is genuine, but supplying it 20 million destitutes is a problem. Whenever the objectives of the military machine and the humanitarian operation happen to conflict, the military needs threaten to take precedence. There is the obvious probability that the Army will take over U.N. trucks along with any others it needs. With the present trucks regarded as a writeoff, the difficult decision for U.N. officials is whether or not to bring in more vehicles to do the job, knowing they also may be confiscated. In addition, officials worry that U.N. food itself might be diverted for govt., political or military use. As yet there is no indication of this on a massive scale, but recent interference by Razakars with food distribution causes concern. The Razakars, meanwhile, regard looting as one of their main functions. They are known to operate as gangs in some areas. Some suspect they have instructions from the Pakistan Army to prevent fooe distribution in sectors where anti-govt. activities has been reported.
November 19 :
Boston Globe (Dacca)
This usually bustling city of three million persons turns into a ghost town at sundown—the streets empty as if by magic and an uneasy quiet settles over the city. In an attempt to cut down on the bombings, West Pakistan officials started a house-to-house search through the metropolitan area of the city today, looking for Bengalis. Officials said 138 suspects were arrested and four armed rebels were killed trying to escape.
Guerrillas swim in a vast, warm, hospitable sea of people…They are winning and they know it. They are being careful not to destroy too much of what they hope to inherit shortly. They have only to keep on gently shaking the tree and the fruit will fall without breaking the branches one Western diplomat said.
November 20 :
Wash Post (Calcutta)
Mukti Bahini are gaining in their guerrilla war, and it has become less likely that they could be reined in even if any political leader wanted their fight for independence curtailed. Thousands of Mukti Bahini guerrillas finished their training and entered East Bengali in combat units. It appears that the Mukti Bahini are now preparing for a major military push in an attempt to accelerate their success by a series of coordinated attacks with Dacca as a main target.
November 21 :
Daily Telegraph (New Delhi)
Bengali leader Maulana Bhashani, 89, is in New Delhi for talks with the Indian government. It is impossible at this stage to assess the significance of Bhashani’s presence in Delhi. It is almost certain that Mrs. Gandhi will continue to resist pressure to recognize Bangladesh or go beyond strictly limited support for the Bangladesh guerrillas.
N.Y. Times (Washington)
Officials at the Agency for International Dev are weighing a multi-million-dollar program to try to woo the Bengali refugees to go back in return for material benefits. Congressional sources said that a program involving U.S. funds to induce Bengali refugees to return home might be approved, but only after close scrutiny. The sources said the Pakistan government might be expected to welcome any such program as an indirect form of economic aid that would relieve the heavy drain on its own resources. Aid officials conceded that no final plans could be formulated until the Senate and House agreed on the foreign aid authorization bill.
(Karachi)
It is clear that the Pakistan Army in the Eastern province is being led by officers who have learned nothing from Vietnam. Perhaps political warfare is just too difficult and untidy for the world’s regular military, who prefer to believe that politics is bunk and God is with the big battalions. In East Bengal the big battalions are fighting a desperate battle of survival. There is an overwhelming impression in the cities and the hamlets that the Bengali people want independence and are prepared to fight the Pakistan Army to the death for it.
November 22 :
London Times (Karachi)
Pakistan radio reported a major clash with Indian troops northwest of Jessore. It said that Indian forces and their “agents” had attacked Pakistan positions. It also said that information had been received of similar attacks from Comilla, Chittagong Hill tracts, Sylhet, Mymensingh and Rangpur districts.
(Dacca)
The police said that Dacca and Narayanganj had come in for heavy strafing from guerriallas last night. Shelling over the city was reported, apparently from the Buriganga and Sitalakaya rivers.
November 23 :
London Times (Dacca)
Pakistan claimed that India had launched an allout offensive, concentrating on the Jessore sector. Fierce fighting was reported continuing.
(Rawalpindi)
Pakistan admitted that Indian forces were making “dents” in Pakistan territory. Fighting in Sylhet and Chittagong hill areas was continuing. The areas east and north of Chittagong port were also reported under attack.
(Delhi)
India denied any incursions into Pakistan territory. It acknowledged that border clashes were increasing and the situation was tense and dangerous. According to Indian reports, border clashes are spreading from Agartala to the Assam border, Cooch Behar in North Bengal, and Dinajpur in West Bengal.
N.Y. Times (Calcutta)
According to reports here, a major offensive by Bengali guerrillas is apparently under way on the western side of East Bengal. Capture of Jessore seems to be a key initial objective First hand details are non-existent because of tightening security here. One newsman who did make it to a Mukti Bahini headquarters near Taki reported that the commander there said that most of the railroad and road to Jessore were under his control. According to other reports guerrillas had pushed 20 miles into East Bengal on the northwest corner.
November 24 :
London Times (Rawalpindi)
Claiming threat of external aggression, Yahya declared a national emergency yesterday. According to Western sources, the fiercest fighting has been in the Jessore area and in the Belonia bulge in the Noakhali district. Parts of the bulge and of the Chittagong hills were thought to be held by the guerrillas. The guerrillas were also thought to be pushing toward the Jessore railway line which is the main connecting link from Khulna to the north.
(Debhata)
Mukti Bahini guerrillas in this area described the fighting as a “do or die” battle to liberate their country and establish an independent Bangladesh. M.A. Jalil, a guerrilla leader, told the correspondent that the most immediate objective was to capture strategic towns in S.E. Bangladesh, eventually giving them control of the area on the Bay of Bengal, which hinder the Pakistan Army supply link from West Pakistan.
(Delhi)
In spite of allegations and counter allegations it is now obvious that Indian and Pakistan armour units have been locked in a serious and fierce tank battle north-west of Jessore during the past few days. It would appear that the Indian government has several objectives in mind. India certainly does not want to make a formal declaration of war and it would seem as though troops disguised as guerrillas have been sent across the border to provoke Pakistan into war. If Pakistan strikes on the western frontier India will recognize Bangladesh, and then on the invitation of the Bengalis would formally enter East Bengal.
Wash Post (Dacca)
Over half of the U.N. force has been ordered to leave for Bankok on Wed by U.N. officials because of the Jessore fighting, the state of emergency, and the sinking of two U.N. ships by guerrillas early today. 6 U.N. trucks were taken over by the Army yesterday.
Chicago Tribune (Rawalpindi)
Senior Army officers said that Pakistan has lost 8 planes in the fighting and has suffered heavy casualties on the ground, military attaches reported.
(Washington)
Pakistan Ambassador A.M. Raza told newsmen that “the war is on”. He added that he did not know whether a formal declaration of war was imminent. Raza said that there were “certain bilateral agreements” between the U.S. and Pakistan but that he was not certain what they were. Pakistan had “no agreement of a any kind with China”, he said. He also asserted that there were no refugees flowing into India and that the totao number was only 2 million.
New York Times (Washington)
U.S. officials said that information available indicated that Indian regular forces had crossed into East Bengal and were closely collaborating or spearheading the guerrilla attacks against the Pakistan army there. U.S. officials disputed Pakistan charges of an Indian full-scale invasion as having occurred. Charles Bray of SD conceded that the U.S. had little independent information from the area. He said the U.S. was in touch with Soviet Union and other powers, but not China as yet.
(Bagda)
Large numbers of Indian troops pushed near by toward the East Bengal border yesterday and, according to officers, crossed into East Bengal. None of the officers attempted to deny that their troops were headed to support the Bengali guerrillas who had opened and offensive.
November 25 :
N.Y. Times (Calcutta)
Mrs. Gandhi acknowledged that Indian troops had crossed into East Bengal to battle Pakistan forces, but that they had done os only on Sunday and “in self-defense”. There were now no troops in East Bengal, a spokesman leter said. Reliable reports indicated that heavy fighting was continuing in the district of Jessore, Dinajpur, Rangpur, Mymensingh and Sylhel. Sources in the Bangladesh government said that Indian tanks were supporting a big battle around Meherpur. Details of the fighting remain sketchy with foreign correspondents being barred from border areas.
(Islamabad)
Military reserves are being called up. Pakistan reported that Chanderpur had been retaken by Pakistan but that Chuagacha (Jessore) and Atgram (Sylhet) were still in Indian hands. Accredited diplomats seem, for the most part, uncertain as to the seriousness of the situation in the absence of first hand reports from foreign observers on the border.
A 12-member delegation from China arrived, partly to inaugurate a large industrial comples built with Chinese aid and also due to discuss Pakistan’s needs during the current emergency.
(Washington)
President Nixon was reported to be contemplating a personal appeal to Yahya to release Sheikh Mujib and to seek by personal negotiations a peaceful solution of the East Bengal crisis. Informants also said that a request to the Security Council was also under consideration. Charles Bray of SD declined comment on whether there were any secret commitments binding Pakistan and U.S.
(United Nations)
Pakistan, uncertain whether she would get the necessary support from big powers, was still reluctant to call for a meeting of the Security Council.
FOURTEEN YEAR’S RIGOROUS IMPRISONMENT FOR PROFESSORS
According to a press release issued in Dacca on November 9 four professors of Dacca University and 55 civil servants have been sentenced to 14 year’s rigorous imprisonment by the martial court. The sentences were passed in absentia.
The four professors are : Prof. Mozaffar Ahmed Choudhury, Prof. Abdur Razzak, Prof. Sarwar Murshed and Prof. Mazharul Islam. Among the civil servants are : Khondkar Asaduzzaman, Hasan Taufiq, Abdus Samad, Nurul Kader Khan, Syed Abdus Samad, Qndrate-e-Ilahi, Khashruzzaman Choudhury, Rakibuddin Ahmed, Waliul Islam, Akbar Ali Khan, Kamal Siddiqui, Taufiq Ilahi and Sadat Hossain.
HOLIDAY CARD
A painting by the well-known Bengali artist Qamrul Hasan, called Composition I, has been selected as the design for Bangladesh holiday card. The painting depicts three women wearing saris. The inside of the card bears a verse from the Gitanjali by Tagore. The cards are available at the Bangladesh Information Center, Washington D.C. at a price of $1.50 for a box of ten.
PLEASE NOTE
“Do you support the proposition that the United States should support the independence of Bangladesh?” That was the question asked in the Public Broadcasting system TV-network program called “Advocate”. Send them a card today stating that you do support the proposition. Address : Advocate, P.B. NO. 1971, Boston, Mass.
Issued by
BANGLADESH DEFENSE LEAGUE
5245 South Kenwood Avenue,
Chicago, Illinois. 60615
Editorial Office : 500 Paragon Mills #B-7, Nashville, TN 37211 (615)833-2064