Newsweek

"I am glad to be able to tell you," declared Pakistan President Mohammad Yahya Khan in a recent address to his nation "that the army is in full control of the situation in East Pakistan. It has crushed the mischief-mongers, saboteurs and infiltrators." Alas for Yahya, the facts told a different story. Throughout East Pakistan, the embattled Bengali resistance movement seemed more determined than ever to prove, that it was alive and well — and capable of making life extremely difficult for the heavily armed but thinly spread occupation forces of the Pakistani Army.

All across Pakistan's ravaged eastern province, revitalized rebel units made their presence felt last week in no uncertain terms. Taking advantage of a crash training program and of weapons, and ammunition supplied by India, Mukti Bahinl (Liberation Army) went on the offensive. Factories were sabotaged. Key bridges were toppled by well-placed dynamic blasts. Vital barge traffic was attacked from concealed machine gun emplacements. And railroad locomotives operating on the relatively few remaining open routes were blown off the tracks by mines.

THREAT

Though the heaviest attacks were concentrated near the Indian border, even the East Pakistani capital of Dacca, 90 miles away, came under rebel fire. Exchanges of gunshots and occasional explosions reverberated through the city's streets. And in one daring, late night attack earlier this month, Bengali insurgents knocked out the Dacca Power Plants main transformer, plunging the capital into total darkness for more than six hours. "It may be too early to view the Mukti Bahini as a serious military threat," said one Western diplomat in Dacca last week. "But there is no doubt that what we are witnessing is the first stage of bloody, long-lasting guerrilla warfare".

Fuelling this mounting struggle was the Bengali rebels* outrage at the Pakistani Army's continued indiscriminate violence in dealing with their uprising. In retaliation, the rebels have escalated their guerrilla attacks to include random terrorism of their own. In a warning to the population, not to attend performances where a state tax is collected, a rebel grenade was tossed into the crowded Gulistan Cinema in Dacca, killing one person and injuring fourteen. Similarly a small bomb exploded outside the suburban Dhanmondi residence of the U.S. Consul-General in an apparent protest against American shipments of arms and supplies to the Pakistani Government.

"In the countryside," cabled Newsweek's Loren Jenkins, who toured the eastern region last week, "things have gone much further. In the Ganges Delta town of Khulna, two proarmy officials — Ghulam Sarwar Mullah and Abdul Hamid Khalna —recently received ‘red letters' from rebel groups marking them for assassination. Despite the fact that both men surrounded themselves with bodyguards of razakars (pro-government vigilantes), both were dead within a week. Bengali rebels gunned down Hamid in broad daylight. And a fierce band of black-masked guerrillas stormed Sarwar's home, routed the corps of razakars, then lopped off Sarwar's head and took it with them."

MESSAGE

The Pakistani Army under Lt.Gen. Tikka Khan, the military governor of East Pakistan, has responded in kind. After guerrillas blew up a bridge north of Dacca, Punjabi soldiers put several neighbouring villages to the torch, killing scores of residents and taking others into custody. In the case of the Khulna assassinations, Jenkins reported that the army's response was even more terrifying: "The morning after Sarwar was beheaded, workers travelling to Khulna's jute mills found seventeen dead bodies lined up neatly in front of the railroad station. Their hands had been tied behind their backs and each man had been shot. The army left the bodies in view for a full 24 hours to make sure the population got the message."

But just how successful the Pakistani Army's tactics would be in keeping an estimated 30,000 guerrillas in check remained very much in doubt. True, wherever Tikka Khan chose to concentrate his troops, the army seemed likely to maintain the upperhand. But elsewhere the outlook was bleak. The Mukti Bahini can draw on the teeming East Pakistan population of more than 70 million. And far from cowing that population into submission each new army atrocity has seemed to strengthen the Bengali resolve. "Yahya Khan and the military high command thought they could terrorise the Bengalis", a Western diplomat in Dacca told Jenkins last week. The result has been just the opposite. Sure the Bengali has been frightened. But he has also been made to hate as he never did before—and he realizes that it is only through violence that he has a chance to free himself."