Time

We first heard the news of the fighting between India and Pakistan
when both capitals began issuing a series of sharply conflicting
claims. Radio Pakistan announced that India "has launched an all-out
offensive against East Pakistan." while India's Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi said it was "Pakistani propaganda" and "wholly untrue."

To sort out all the contradictory reports, TIME immediately assigned
six correspondents to the story. Bill Stewart and Jim Shepherd
covered the Indian side from their base in New Delhi. Two former New
Delhi correspondents, Dan Coggin and Lou Kraar, flew into Pakistan
from their regular posts in Beirut and Singapore. Bill Mader and
Friedel Ungeheuer provided back-up coverage from the State Department
and the United Nations. In the combat zone, however, most local
officials did their best to confine foreign correspondents to the
rear areas and to harass them with red tape. The results were
sometimes frustrating.

"I came to Pakistan prepared to see the kind of tank batteles I had
witnessed during the war over Kashmir in 1965," Correspondent Kraar
cabled from Rawalpindi, "but I found this town completely quiet. It
made me feel like that correspondent in Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, who
cabled his home office, ADEN UNWARWISE, while a competitor reported,
ADEN WARWISE. The main event that evening was a dinner that President
Yaya Khan was giving for the Chinese Communist First Minister of
Machine Building, Li Shui-Ching, who was here to dedicate a factory.
President Yaya talked informally with reporters and expressed some
unusually tough warning to India. But the only evidence of war that
night was the blackout which was quite unnecessary."

From the correspondents' files, and from background research
assembled by Reporter-Researcher Susan Altcheck, Contributing Editor
Marguerite Johnson wrote the cover story. Aveteran of TIME's Art
section, Margyerite shifted to World last winter after taking a
five-month long excursion around the globe by freighter, Jetliner and
Trans Siberian Railroad. Upon her return, she was assigned to what
seemed at the time a relatively tranquil part of the world: India.
This is her second cover story since then on the tragic subcontinent.
"The conflict," she says, "is so suffused with ancient religious,
cultural and racial hatreds that it is difficult for any Western
jopurnalist to comprehend it fully. There are times when the Indians
and Pakistanis do not seem to understand it either."