Chuadanga: In this dusty sunbeaten town west of Dacca the People's Republic of Bangla Desh is very much a reality. There is some kind of local administration in the hands of the liberation forces and no government troops are anywhere around. Two groups of West Pakistani soldiers who had tried to reach the town by road had been ambushed and wiped out. The claim can ~e believed because the East Pakistan Rifles units in the town show off Chinese-made light machine guns and heaps of ammunition which could only have been captured from government troops.

Early in the fighting Chuadanga was declared the provisional capital of Bangla Desh. This week the liberation forces announced a six-man government with Sheikh Mujib as the titular head. (The Pakistan government also released this week a photograph of the Sheikh purporting to show him in captivity.) Immediate leadership of the movement is in the hands of three majors of the East Bengal Regiment and Dr. Huq of Chuadanga, a medical practitioner who has been accepted by the men in uniform as their chief adviser. Awami League stalwart Tajuddin Ahmed has been named prime minister though an earlier report had said he was killed.

The message of Chuadanga is that government troops will be unable to hold their own against guerilla tactics by the local people. The road we took to the town was so elaborately blocked that only an expert local driver would know where the detours were and which turns had to be avoided lest he end up in a ditch. This was a Bangla edition of the Ho Chi Minh trail. And it will be an even more vicious death trap for the strangers from West Pakistan once the rains set in.

For all their lack of preparedness and inadequate arms, therefore, the Bengali patriots have a strategy open to them. As liberation leaders in Chuadanga explained, this strategy is to avoid direct confrontation with government troops, waylay small groups of them whenever possible and generally adopt a policy of denying them food and water.

Even allowing a margin for an element of wishful thinking here, there can be little doubt about the ultimate outcome of the fighting in East Pakistan. The Bengali desire for independence is so powerful and unanimous, and the practical problems of cost, logistics and supplies faced by government troops so serious, that eventual Bengali success seems inevitable.

The real question now is the political complexion of the future government of Bangla Desh. If the fighting continues in its present form for some months and if the outside powers maintain their present postures, the answer could well be: a distinct shade of Chinese red. Alternatively, Bengal could become a Vietnam with outside powers backing contending political factions for power.

Consider the method in the government troops' madness. Eyewitnesses from Dacca and Chittagong-not subcontinentals but Europeans and Americans-have confirmed that not only were the killings sadistic but that certain groups of people were carefully picked out for total annihilation. Heading this list were Awami League leaders and the university community.

The target of destruction seems to have been largely fulfilled -with the result that, should East Pakistan be handed over to local political parties tomorrow, there simply will not be many leaders or intellectuals of the Awami League brand to take over responsibility. In one murderous week the army wrought a vacuum which it will take a generation or more to fill.

As it happened the Awami League represented the moderate line in East Pakistani politics. Sheikh Mujib was in fact considered right of centre. While the moderate elements have been quickly decimated, others have been growing in strength.

They comprise two distinct strands. Maulana Bashani is not a fiery Maoist now but remains a militant leader of some 55,000 reasonably well organised peasants under the banner of the NAP (National Awami Party). His political line is similar to that of the CPM (Communist Party of India-Marxist) which until about 1967 was decidedly "proPeking" but drifted apart thereafter on the ground that the objective situation was not ripe for armed revolution.

Further to the left of the Bashani group, and known as real extremists here, are the EPCP-ML (East Pakistan Communist Party -Marxist Leninist), blood brothers of the Naxalites of India. Their leader is Mohammed Toha, an educated man in his early forties who was Bashani's righthand man and secretary of the NAP until around 1968. His second in command now is Abdul Huq and together they follow the strict Maoist line by the book.

Nobody knows the numerical strength of the EPCPML except that it is rather small. But they are believed to be extremely well organised with the only underground network known to exist in the country. Since the fighting started, they have been joined by Naxalites from India who presumably brought in some arms as well.

The Naxalites look upon Sheikh Mujib as an American agent. Handwritten posters discovered in Calcutta last week said: "Imperialism bums and will bum in the fire of people's war in the villages of East Bengal under the leadership of Comrade Toha". The EPCP-ML also is against Mujib's leadership. But they support the liberation movement. They are confident that, now that armed revolution has begun, the leadership of the movement is bound to pass into their hands. The people at large may not care one way or another; they are so desperately anxious to get rid of the "Punjabis" that they are unlikely to bother about how it is brought about and by whom.

In fact, the EPCP-ML can alienate popular support for the Sheikh and the Awami League. Already there are criticisms of Mujib among the people - that he should have "wasted" his time conferring with President Yahya Khan and not drawn up any contingency plan for the kind of armed conflict that has now developed. The longer the fighting lasts the greater will be popular willingness to rely on a truly militant leadership fully conversant with the intricacies of armed revolution.

Mujib himself had seen this coming. As the Dacca talks with President Yahya Khan were beginning, he told a journalist: "These people must come to their senses. Can't they see that I alone can save East Pakistan from communism? If they make a fight of it, I shall lose the leadership within a few years. Naxalites will take action in my name. They will even carry my picture at first, to gain the confidence of the people. Then they will take over."

In normal circumstances Pakistan's army junta itself might be expected to see this possibility and set out to liquidate the extremists as it has sought to wipe out the Awami League. But then, Islamabad could also decide that it stands to gain some substantial if vicarious advantages by deliberately encouraging extremist growth.

This could be the case if the Pakistan government wants to devise some facesaving formula and get out of the Bangla mess. Reasons abound: the impossibility of a decisive military victory, the near hopelessness of setting up any kind of administration, epidemics which have already started in the eastern wing, the coming monsoon which will paralyse the landlubbers from the West, the famine that is sure to set in soon, above all the economic ruin a prolonged campaign in Bengal will bring about in West Pakistan itself.

Should any of these factors force West Pakistan to call it a day in Bengal, the military men might want to take one last vengeful fling and do their worst not only to the Bengalis but also to India. And what would be better than ensuring the assumption of power by a blood and guts Naxalite group in Dacca? It could cement Islamabad's friendship with China and, more importantly, permanently embed a thorn in India's side.

In the meantime, it would be clever for the Pakistan government to go for a diversionary manoeuvre by organising a major skirmish or two with Indian regular troops along the border. Accusations already made about Indian trespasses across the border may be intended to prepare the ground for this.

China this week abandoned its fencesitting and openly took the side of the West Pakistan government authorities, accusing India of interference in Pakistan's internal affairs. Islamabad has since claimed that Peking has pledged support against any attack by India. China's understandable reluctance to be seen to be supporting a secessionist movement may be one reason for this development. A weightier factor could be Soviet President Podgorny's criticism of the Pakistani government's repression in Bengal.

But there is also a valid ideological argument. There is no reason whatever China should back a movement led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman or the Awami League. By the same token, it cannot abandon parties like the EPCP-ML. The possibility of publicly supporting the Islamabad government and privately rendering aid to the EPCP-ML cannot be ruled out. One of the hand-written Naxalite posters found in Calcutta last week said: "Foil the imperialist conspiracy to launch a war against socialist China by using Pakistan as a base". When the leadership of the liberation movement passes from the Awami League to the EPCP-ML the fighting in Bengal will have become officially a people's war, and China will have to rethink its position.

As we got into a jeep for a ride into this town, two young men joined us. We thought they were local people who would act as our guides. But they turned out to be Calcutta boys and their remarks - in excellent English - showed they were hardcore Naxalites.

"What is going on here is a great lesson for us," they said. "How are these poor people, unarmed and friendless, standing up to such a brutal army? We must learn from these people. We are going into the interior and will join the fighting if necessary-and learn." Later they said: "If the struggle here is successful, I can tell you we shall succeed in West Bengal also within a few months."

There in a nutshell we had the whole complexity of the Bangla Desh struggle explained for us - and the reasons for India's concern and for growing international interest.