Wall Street Journal

NEAR MEHERPUR, East Pakistan—By ox-cart and by rickshaw, on bicycles and an occasional truck, but mostly by foot, people and soldiers of Bangla Desh—the Bengal Nation are retreating towards the Indian border.

From Meherpur, half a mile further back, come the thump of the West Pakistan army’s mortars and the crackle of its small-arms fire.

“Punjabis (West Pakistanis). Bombs, cannon at Meherpur,” shouts a group of Bengalis clinging to an India-bound truck that stops only long enough to let the last armed man at this village crossroad climb abroad.

The four-mile trip back to the Indian border is a tour of largely deserted villages. The richer residents of Meherpur had evacuated their town a day before. This day it is mostly villagers who are fleeing; a barefoot, ragged woman leading six children, all with bundles of belongings balanced atop their heads; two men carrying a dismantled bed; an old blind man being led along by what seems to be a seeing-eye-cow.

WAGING A WEAK WAR

Back at the Indian border, in and around an Indian military compound, sit 100 or more sullen members of the Bangla Desh army, their insignia ripped off. Also on the Indian side are more than a dozen Bangla Desh jeeps and two recoilless rifles, perhaps the only ones in the Bangla Desh army. A few miles further to the rear in the nearest Indian border town, are clusters of babbling politicians, civil servants and professional men who talk about fighting and dying to the very last man.

Many Bengalis, of course, have been dying since the Pakistan civil war began in March. But, for a variety of reasons not nearly enough have been fighting. As a result, Bangla Desh appears, at this stage, to have waged one of the weakest — and perhaps shortest — revolutionary wars on record.

In less than one month, with fewer than 50,000 men and limited firepower and air support, the army has been able largely to subdue, for the time being, 75 million hostile Bengali people.

THE LONG ROAD TO LIBERATION

This isn't to say the cause of Bangla Desh is finished. But if East Pakistan is ever to be independent, it won't happen through the kind of spontaneous-combustion revolution of the past four weeks. Liberation will be won over years, not weeks; by more action and less rhetoric ; with guerrilla tactics, not conventional combat; and perhaps by militant leftists rather than idealistic moderates.

Much will also depend on India—whether it will provide arms and border sanctuaries for a protracted liberation war.

In any case, West Pakistan faces serious problems. How to deploy its army of occupation across a large, predominantly rural area, particularly with monsoons coming. How to administer what amounts to a bitter reconquered colony. How to piece together East Pakistan's shattered economy and how to keep East Pakistan from becoming a crippling drain on limited West Pakistani resources. How to deal with India should it decide to become more heavily involved in supporting Bengali resistance.

Pakistan's problems will be compounded if unrest develops among ethnic minorities within West Pakistan or if rival generals and politicians in the West cannot stand together in this crisis.

A CLEAR-CUT STRUGGLE

In an age of confusing liberation struggles and fuzzy moral causes, the issues at stake in this war seem relatively clear-cut. When England granted its Indian empire independence in 1947, the subcontinent was divided along religious lines rather than by any ethnic or geographic logic. The new Moslem nation of Pakistan was split into two halves, separated by 1,200 miles of Hindu India. The Pakistani nation came to be dominated—politically, economically and militarily—by the Punjabis of West Pakistan, and the more populous Bengalis have felt exploited.

In elections last December for a National Assembly the East Pakistanis bloc-voted overwhelmingly for the Bengali nationalist Awami League of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The League won an absolute majority in the Assembly, meaning power would have swung to Bengali East Pakistan under a democratic regime. Sheikh Mujibur, a somewhat pro- Western moderate socialist, demanded autonomy for the East except in defence and foreign affairs. The politicians and generals of West Pakistan balked, for economic and other- reasons.

Under cover of negotiation, West Pakistani troops and military supplies were slipped into East Pakistan. The night of March 25 these troops struck swiftly and savagely in Dacca, the East Pakistan capital, brutally suppressing Bengali demonstrators. The army took over in Dacca and the port of Chittagong, and the war was on.

In other towns the Bengalis rose in defiance and proclaimed independence. It was a story-book sort of revolution, with thousands of Patrick Henrys issuing courageous calls to arms and thousands of Betsy Rosses sewing little red, green and yellow Bangla Desh flags. The civil service, and East Pakistan EPR (a Bengali military attached to the Pakistan army) joined the liberation, as indeed did Bengalis of every social class and political persuasion. The Bangla Desh flag flew from primitive mud huts as well as from city offices, from ox-carts as well as from jeep. The revolutionary slogan, “Joi Bangla” (“Victory to Bengal”), was shouted by peasant children as well as portly politicians.

AN ARMY WITHOUT ARMS

But there were things the Bengalis didn’t have and didn’t do. Except for the militia-men of the East Pakistan Rifles, the liberation army was almost entirely lacking in arms and training. Even the Rifles had only light, old-fashioned weapons. In many areas the Bengalis did little to supplement these arms with homemade weapons like Molotov cocktails or primitive mines.

The Bengalis were surprisingly unprepared for a war that many of them had deemed possible, even likely, for years. They had no effective communication and liaison system—not even by runners—and thus Bangla Desh fortunes differed, and suffered, district by district, village by village. The leadership has been composed largely of Awami League functionaries and civil servants. They have tended to sit in the towns, first emotionally celebrating the liberation of their people and later emotionally bewailing their lack of airplanes, artillery and foreign support. Sheikh Mujibur, now believed to be a captive of the Pakistani army, is typically Bengali. Says one critic, who is also Bengali: “An impossible man. Whenever you ask him a question, he answers with a quotation from Tagore.” Tagore was Bengali’s greatest writer.

The West Pakistan army, perhaps cowed by the thought of 75 million hostile Bengalis spread across 55,000 square miles (East Pakistan is roughly the size of Arkansas), spent most of the first two weeks of the war holed up in urban military cantonments. But when the army finally began to move, behind air and artillery cover, Bangla Desh offered little opposition.

AN UNOPPOSED ARMY

By late last week Bangla Desh forces were evacuating the -towns, and the Pakistani army was rolling down the roads generally unopposed. In some areas there were reports of Bangla Desh leaders and soldiers moving out into the villages to prepare for guerrilla war. But in other places—like Meherpur and additional towns near the border with Indian West Bengal—Bangla Desh forces were simply fleeing into India.

At the Indian border town of Gede, a Bengali school principal, who a week before had been welcoming journalists to the Bangla Desh provisional capital, is taking up residence in an Indian guesthouse. “We will fight to the last of our 75 million people, to the last man,” he says.

Another refugee at Gede is perhaps over defeatist but sincere: “The Punjabis are trigger-happy men bent to rule us at whatever the cost. They are killing thousands of our people, but what can we do? We have no arms. The Indians gave, us a few guns—duck guns. But the Punjabis aren’t sitting ducks. Yesterday we were tilling our land, and today we must be a guerrilla army. How can it be? Some say the monsoon will help us. But how? We have penknives and staves, and we will go through the water—splash, splash, splash. They have planes and cannons and carbines. What can we do? ”

Three miles across the border, at the East Pakistan town of Darsana, several score Bangla Desh supporters are sitting in a former police post, worrying each other with conflicting reports about the imminent fall of the provisional capital, Chuadanga, which lies another 10 miles down the road. “Two Pakistani planes have bombed Chuadanga.... More than one ???? Bengali has been killed... .Punjabi troops are only three miles from the city... .There are no Bangla Desh troops near the town, they have all left already.”

“WE WILL DIE”

One politician gives a solemn and sincere speech about the failure of the outside world to come to the aid of Bangla Desh. A small knot of men is watching a medic operate on a pudgy compatriot—a dab of iodine is being applied to a small cut oii his left palm. Another local leader is asked what the Bangla Desh forces plan as the opposing army advances. “We will die,” he says, and the others grimly nod. But the next day the Pakistan army walked into Chuadanga unopposed.

A constant sad refrain these days from Bangla Desh people is the failure of the outside world to aid them. The expectations of Bangla Desh may have been naive, but even far more practical-minded men would have been disappointed at the world response. No great power has helped the Bengalis, who represent a majority of the Pakistani population and are fighting for independence after having been attacked.

Russia has given Bangla Desh a bit of verbal support—in the form of a call to West Pakistan to stop the killing. On the other hand, Red China, a proponent of civil wars, has given strong verbal backing to West Pakistan.

Only India, Pakistan’s neighbour and enemy, has given Bangla Desh firm verbal support. India has permitted limited unofficial aid to flow across its borders into East Pakistan and has let Bangla Desh forces and followers take refuge, at least temporarily. But even India has stopped well short of diplomatic recognition or organized military assistance.

THE THREAT OF CHAOS

So far, both India and Pakistan, despite bitter charges and countercharges, seem anxious to avoid a real confrontation. But if either drops its current caution, the chaos of East Pakistan could engulf the whole subcontinent.

Only yards from the Indian border, Bangla Desh held a ceremony in a mango grove at a village called Mujibnagar last Saturday. The provisional government of Bangla Desh was officially presented to the press, a proclamation of independence, was read, and speakers made patriotic addresses.

But glory fades quickly for Bangla Desh. The day after the ceremony, the village is deserted except for a few dozen residents. The reviewing stand still sits under a spreading mango tree, but only several ducks and a goose strut around it.

The memory of glory lives on, however. Back on the Indian side of the border, a Bangla Desh official is still dreaming about the previous day. “It was a wonderful day,” he declares. “Seven ministers and 27 eminences. Very good speeches. A fine ceremony.”