Newsweek

Almost from the moment President Md. Yahya Khan unleashed his army on Pakistan’s eastern region three months ago, he has been under mounting pressure both at home and from abroad to seek a political rather than a military solution to the crisis. Thus, when Yahya announced that he would address the nation last week on his plans for the future of Pakistan, there was a ripple of hope that he would finally offer an olive branch to the battered but still defiant Bengalis of East Pakistan. The speech, however, proved a stunning disappointment to those who longed for an end to the strife that has cost more than 200,000 Bengali lives and driven 6 million refugees into India. “That wasn’t a speech” quipped one foreign diplomat, “it was a regimental order”.

There was good reason for this view, for instead of seeking to convince the Bengalis that they still had a future within united Pakistan, Yahya seemed bent on antagonising them even further. He blamed the civil war on Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the imprisoned political leader of the East claiming that the Mujib had plotted from the beginning to divide the nation “through physical violence”. Banning the East Pakistan based Awami League, which won control of the National Assembly in last December elections, the President promised to revive National and Provincial Legislatures as soon as “Law and Order” is restored. But above all Yahya made it clear that even if such a “Transfer of Power” to civilians is achieved at a still unspecified date martial law would continue for sometime.

HOSTILITY

Small wonder, then, that Yahya’s words, were received coolly in West Pakistan and with open hostility in the East. “Said one high Bengali Civil Servant “Yahya has offered us nothing but the back of his hand, of course this is a boon to the liberation movement. If he had offered us something, there might have been some who would have given it a try. This way he has assured the undying opposition of Bengal.”

The evidence last week was that such opposition was not to be taken lightly. For despite the fact that the West Pakistani army still controls East Pakistan, there are numerous indications, that the rebellion is far from over. The once disorganised Mukti Fouj liberation fighters have recently shown impressive progress in guerrilla warfare. They have blown up dozens of bridges cutting major rail lines and highways. They have destroyed Electric Power Plants, and assassinated members of non-Bengali “Peace Committee” appointed by the military to provide local Government. As a result, Yahya’s army is growing nervous, and two additional divisions have been requested to reinforce the four already, in the Eastern region. “This is the way it started in Vietnam”, one foreign diplomat in the East Pakistan capital, Dacca, told Newsweek’s Lawrence Jenkins last week. The army can hold on as long as it is willing to pay the price. But the Government cannot afford to fight a protracted guerrilla war.

A similar conclusion was reached last week by a team, from the World Bank, which co-ordinates an eleven-nation consortium that supplies about $500 million a year in aid to Pakistan. After touring the devastated Eastern region, the team recommended that aid be withheld in an effort to force Yahya to seek a political solution to the strife. The only opposition came from U.S., which announced that it would continue its aid to Islamabad in order to maintain its influence with Yahya, and presumably to enhance the possibility of persuading him to move toward peace. The fallacy in such thinking, of course, is that neither side in the conflict has shown any inclination to negotiate. Indeed it may well be, as one diplomat in Dacca noted last week, that there can be no reconciliation. “Pakistan died the day the army entered in the Eastern Region.”