Dacca. July 9
The Pakistan Army, although in effective control of East Pakistan, faces a continuing threat to security that promises to get worse rather than better. The main trouble area at the moment is along the hilly border with Tripura and Assam, which affords suitable terrain for guerrilla activity.

The railway, running along the frontier from the port of Chittagong through Comilla to Sylhet and serving Dacca en route, has been cut for more than two months. The main span of a bridge at Feni, south of Comilla, was dynamited expertly and has yet to be repaired.

Other road and rail bridges in the area have been put out of use temporarily. Savage reprisals are usually taken by the army against the nearest villages irrespective of whether their inhabitants were responsible for the damage, although this is claimed not to be official policy.

Farther north an electric power pylon was sabotaged so that Comilla was without electricity for some days. The supply has now been restored.

Cars on the Comilla-Brahmanbaria road are fired on sometimes. Residents in Comilla report considerable noise of firing most nights, some of it possibly from across the border which is only a few miles away.

The Army recently ordered the evacuation of a swathe of territory along the frontier at this point to be able to deal more effectively with guerrilla raids.

In the Sylhet sector, road and rail bridges have again been the targets of sabotage. The roads have been mined and there has been some shelling of the gardens lying along the frontier in the north and south of the district. Planters no longer dare to live on their estates and have moved into the interior.

There is still no news of the fate of two British planters who were said to have been kidnapped by the Mukti Fauj (Liberation Army) and taken across the border.

Pakistan Army officers say that the damage to bridges and other installations shows evidence of considerable sapper skill. They suggest that this can mean only that Indian Army engineers are actively engaged. Most observers, however, think it unlikely that the Indians would risk the capture of their own men in operations across the border.

Bengali infantry units, which mutinied in March, clearly enjoy sanctuary on Indian soil. They are certainly being trained in sabotage techniques and are being supplied with arms.

In the interior, the Army is in control with the exception of a few pockets. The Madhupur forest preserve in Mymensingh district has been the scene of Army operations for some weeks.

The Army is also active in the Noakhali district, situated in the south-east above Chittagong. Here, according to the Army, in a mesh of delta waterways, inaccessible by road at this time of year, supporters of the Communist Party of East Pakistan (Marxist-Leninist) are holding out.

This group, of undetermined strength, has preached the use of armed guerrilla tactics and subversion for some years and shares, or at least used to share, the slogan “Chairman Mao is our chairman” with the Naxalites (Maoists) in West Bengal. Hitherto it has never had much popular support.

In Dacca, as in other towns, there has been a marked increase in guerrilla incidents in recent weeks, mainly bomb throwing.

Members of “peace committees”—groups of civilians in the towns and countryside who have agreed to cooperate with the Army in restoring “normalcy”— are threatened and quite frequently assassinated.

An attempt is being made to establish a locally based militia of Razakars, or volunteers—an experiment that has some not very encouraging parallels in South Vietnam. They wear no uniforms, carry .303 rifles and are paid three rupees a day.

Many of them are little more than thugs glad of an opportunity to settle old scores.