PAKISTAN THE BATTLE OF KTJSHTIA
TIME Magazine April 19, 1971
Fierce fighting raged last week in East Pakistan as Bengali
townspeople and peasants resisted the “occupation army” of 80,000 West
Pakistani soldiers. Reports have indicated that as many as 200,000 civilians
have been killed by the heavily armed West Pakistani troopers. But soldiers
have also suffered severe casualties at the hands of irate peasants. This army
controlled the capital of Dacca, the vital ports of Chittagong and Khulna, and
several other towns. But a ragtag resistance movement called the Bangla Desh
Mukti Fouj (Bengal State Liberation Forces) was reportedly already in control
of at least
cine-third of East Pakistan, including many cities and towns. West
Pakistan authorities have almost completely succeeded in obscuring the actual
details of the fighting from the outside world by expelling all foreign newsmen
from East Pakistan. But last week TIME Correspondent Dan Coggins managed to
cross the border from India into East Pakistan, where he visited the embattled
town of Kushtia (pop. 35,000). After extensive interviews with townspeople and
captured West Pakistani troopers, Coggins was able to reconstruct an account of
brutality and bravery that took place in Kushtia during the first fortnight of
the civil war.
His Report:
Kushtia, n quiet town in the rice-growing district near the broad Ganges, fell into a restless
sleep on the night of March IS. Without
warning, 13 jeeps and trucks
came to a halt outside Kushtla’s police station. It was
10.30 on the night the war broke out. Delta Company of the 27th
Baluch Regiment had arrived from its base at Jessore cantonment 60
mile to the south. The 147
men of the company quickly dis-armed some 500
Bengali policemen without meeting any resistance and then occupied four
additional key points: the district police headquarters, the government office
building, the VHF radio transmitter and the Zilla School for boys. Most of the sleeping townspeople did
not realize what had happened until 5.30 a.m., when planeloads of soldiers with
bullhorns drove through the empty streets announcing that a total curfew was
to begin 30 minutes later.
Kushtia remained calm for 48 hours while the curfew was in effect,
although seven persons—mostly peasants who arrived in town unaware of what had
happened—were shot to death for being found in the streets. The curfew was lifted
on the morning of March 28, and the townspeople began to organize a resistance
immediately.
That night 53 East Pakistani policemen easily overpowered a
handful of soldiers at the police station. Then, fanning out to nearby villages
with all the 303 Infield rifles and ammunition they could carry, the policemen
joined forces with 100 college students who were already working for Bangladesh. The students were teaching the rudiments of guerrilla warfare to local
peasants, who were armed only with hatchets, farm tools and bamboo staves.
Within two days, the police and students had organized several thousand volunteers
and militiamen of the East Pakistan Rifles and laid plans for simultaneous
attacks on the five army positions in Kushtia.
At 4.30 a.m. on March 31, a force of some 5,000 peasants and
policemen launched a campaign to liberate Kushtia. Thousands of townspeople
thronged the streets shouting “Joi Bangla (Victory to Bengal) ”! The soldiers
apparently panicked at the thought. Of being engulfed by so many thousands of
furious Bengalis. “We were very surprised,” lamented Naik Subedar (Senior
Sergeant) Mohammad Ayub later, following his capture. “We thought the Bengali
forces were about the size of one company like
ourselves. We didn’t know everybody was against us.”
Instant
Death
The Bengali fighters made no suicidal, human-wave assaults at
Kushtia as they have done in some places. But the steady drumfire of hundreds
of rifles had a relentless effect on the soldiers of Delta Company. By noon,
the government building and district headquarters all fell. Shortly before
dawn the next day, about 75 soldiers made a dash for their jeeps and trucks and
roared away in a blaze of gunfire. Two jeeps were halted almost immediately by
surging mobs. The East Pakistanis pulled out the dozen soldiers and butchered
them on the spot.
The other vehicles were blocked outside town by fallen- tree
barricades and 4-ft. ditches dug across the black ton road. The soldiers
managed to shoot down about 50 Bengalis before they were overpowered and
hacked to death by peasants. A few soldiers escaped but were later captured
and killed.
Before dawn the next day, the last 13 soldiers in Kushtia stole
out of the radio building and covered 14 miles on foot before two Bengali
militiamen took them prisoner and brought them back to the Kushtia district
jail. The 13 were the only known survivors of Delta Company’s 147 men. Among the
West Pakistani dead was Nassim Waquer, a 29 years old Punjabi who last January
had been appointed Assistant Deputy Commissioner at Kushtia. When an angry mob
found his body, they dragged it through the streets of the town for half a
mile.
Little Headway
Next
day the Pakistan army dispatched another infantry company from Jessore to stage
a counter attack on Kushtia. At Bishakali village, halfway to Kushtia, the new
company fell into a booby trap set by Bangladesh forces. Two jeeps in the
nine-vehicle army convoy plunged into a deep pit covered with bamboo and vines.
Seventy-three soldiers were killed on the spot, and
dozens of others were chased down and slain.
All last week, the green, red and golden flags of Bangla Desh
fluttered from rooftops, trucks and even rickshaws in Kushtia. Bengali
administrators were running the region under the local party leader, Dr.
Ashabul Haq, 50, a forceful physician who packs a Webly & Scott revolver
and Spanish. Guernica automatic. At week’s end, two army battalions established
an outpost a few miles from Kushtia. They were reported, however, to be making
little headway against furious resistance. Even if the soldiers managed to
reach Kushtia, the townspeople were more than ready to fight again
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