BY A CORRESPONDENT

Calcutta: Some seven weeks after General Yahya Khan struck at East Pakistan, in a military operation supposed to end within 72 hours, neither side is anywhere near the kind of victory that makes sense to the outside world. And it is almost impossible even to speculate what lies ahead, both for Bangla Desh and for West Pakistan's military regime.

At this stage, what matters most to Islamabad is a clear military victory over the liberation forces of the self- proclaimed Bangla Desh government. Without such a victory, there can be no attempt to restore any form of civil administration to the province, never mind establish the kind of puppet government which was attempted early in April with the help of some rightwing Dacca politicians, including former chief minister Nurul Amin and former foreign minister Hamidul Huq Chowdhury.

It is said that when Yahya launched his offensive, hoping to get the situation well under control in a matter of days, he still had a vague tentative political time table in mind. The formation of an interim government in East Pakistan headed by one of these rightwing leaders figured prominently in this schedule, which envisaged organising a fresh election in the province. A similar government would have been formed in West Pakistan, headed by PPP (Pakistan People's Party) leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto or his nominee. Bhutto supported the plan because it offered him certain clear political advantages. Without the participation of the banned Awami League and National Awami Party in the election, the representatives elected from East Pakistan would probably be split into small factions. This would offer him an opportunity to form the government on the basis of a coalition with one or two East Pakistan groups.

For all practical purposes, this plan (disclosed by a non- Awami politician who has escaped to Calcutta) is now as good as dead. There can be no move in the political field prior to a military "solution".

The government troops have undeniably gained the upper hand, but it is anything but a victory. They have captured all the district headquarters and the majority of sub-divisional towns and have successfully sealed much of the border with the Indian state of West Bengal. But they have not yet established their authority on the border with the Indian province of Assam, where the frontier lies partly through the Khasi Jainta hills and partly along the river Kushiara.

The extremist Naxalites, Maulana Bashani's organised peasantry and the militant Awami League workers are now consolidating their position in the countryside, organising the pockets of resistance, something they should have done right from the beginning, instead of fighting pitched battles against the federal troops in such big towns as Rajshahi, Jessore, Pabna and Sylhet and losing precious men and ammunition. Again, the border with Assam is essentially rural. The nearest towns are Sylhet and Maulvi Bazar, both some 30 miles from the frontier. In other words, if the Pakistani army wants to seal off the border with Assam, it must move into the villages.

This is easier said than done. The army can carry out a few raids on scattered villages as long as it does not go very far from its urban bases. The monsoon will affect road communications and the Pakistani army has few motorised patrol boats. In monsoon conditions, government troops may only control areas within five or 10 miles of each major town. The rainy season will hamper troop movements, aerial bombardment and fire-power.

Another major problem is the usefulness of army raids. At this stage, pacification can hardly be the aim of an army which has already killed far too many people to inspire any kind of trust and confidence anywhere in East Bengal. Obviously it can hunt out pockets of resistance, hidden arms and rebel leaders. But civil intelligence and co-operation from the local population, both non-existent, would be essential for the troops to lay their hands on Maoist leaders - Toha or Abdul Huq, Rashid Menon or Sikdar, or countless others - who may well be hiding in the villages.

The villagers can shelter members of the liberation forces, hide arms and weapons in the paddyfields and, when necessary, transport them from place to place by river. In this respect, among others, Yahya Khan's troops operating in East Bengal are in an infinitely more difficult situation than the Saigon government troops which are out to destroy all the NLF (National Liberation Front) strongholds in South Vietnam.

The hazards government troops face in the second phase of their operation are pretty clear; the position of the Bangla Desh Mukti Fauj (liberation army) is vague. So far the Mukti Fauj is made up of scattered guerilla groups rather than an army taking its orders from a well-knit military command. "General" Usmani, named by the provisional government of Bangla Desh as the military commander, is operating without any communication facilities. He has developed a courier service of his own, but it may still be too slow-moving to help him maintain effective coordination with his "troops". Even when supplies are organised from outside, how can he ensure their use and distribution inside the country?

The liberation forces cannot yet work on the basis of a province-wide coordinated plan. The most they can do- and this would be worth while - is to develop local plans of action and carry out commando operations against government troops: ambushes, harassment and disruption of the army's communication lines. Success in these fields could mean the resistance fighters came to exercise control over hundreds of villages within a defined territory, perhaps in the district of Sylhet along the border of Assam, consolidating the position of the Bangla Desh government. At the moment, this is the best chance for Usmani's under-fed barefooted soldiers.

The supporters of Bangla Desh face more serious problems elsewhere - in the field of policy direction, and the ideological approach to the struggle. It was a tactical mistake on the part of the Awami League to exclude Maulana Bashani and Mohammad Toha from their provisional government set up in Mujibnagar early last month (in all probability, these two leaders were not then contactable); but at the local level all the groups appear to be working together. There may be some differences at the top, but probably not serious enough to cause serious concern to the leadership.

Despite their ideological differences, they obviously accept that the present struggle has all the characteristics of a national liberation movement calling for a unified national leadership. Toha, a highly educated, intelligent person, is unlikely to regard it as a socialist revolution (which it is not) just as Awami League leaders who have proclaimed the "independent republic of Bangla Desh" are no longer in a position to return to a moderate approach.

However, it may prove hard to thrash out possible differences among these groups on the issues of military tactics, obtaining help from outside, relations with the big powers or even the kind of arms the liberation forces should use. The tactics of General Usmani, a retired trained military officer from the Pakistan army, may not always fit in within the framework of what could be loosely termed Maoist guerilla strategy - and vice versa.

Again, extreme leftist elements like Toha, Abdul Huq, Rashid Menon and Sikdar may oppose attempts by the provisional government (and Maulana Bashani) to gain sympathy for the struggle from Delhi, Washington and Moscow. Their strong fear of big power intervention provides a psychological barrier between the militant left and the leadership of the provisional government.

With time, the militant millions in East Bengal may well develop a strategy of their own which can accommodate differences about tactics, political divergences and even the ideological clashes. The struggle is unlikely to follow any established pattern. In this sense, the extreme leftists may be totally mistaken in assuming that it will eventually develop into an out-and-out guerilla war, Vietnam style. To their dismay, they might discover many of the ingredients are absent. One thing is certain. The struggle will be long and bitter. Having raised a new flag over a devastated land, no one in East Bengal dares lower it.