TIME Magazine May 10, 1971
While East Pakistan continues to suffer from the bloody civil war and the growing threat of food shortages, the other half of the divided country is bearing burdens of another sort. The army backed federal Government of President Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan remains totally committed to keeping the Eastern wing from breaking away to establish Bangladesh, as independent Bangla State. But the strain of the undertaking is overtaxing West Pakistan’s resources and nerves. “This regime has stuck East Pakistan in its throats”; says one American diplomat in the federal capital of Islamabad, “The army must either swallow it or cough it up.”
By last week open fighting had almost completely ceased in East Pakistan. Nonetheless, West Pakistan must continue for the foreseeable future to lay out huge sums to support an army of occupation in East Pakistan. Moreover, the army is raising two additional divisions to bolster its defenses against India.
Ancient Hatred
Meanwhile, West Pakistani industry is operating at only one-third of capacity because of the loss of sales to the markets in the more populous Eastern half of the country—and because of a general economic slump. West Pakistan is hurt in other ways, too, by East Pakistan’s economic collapse. In normal times East Pakistan’s jute industry earns nearly half the whole country’s foreign exchange, now it lies idle, and the rest of the East’s meager industry and transportation facilities sustained almost complete disruption. West Pakistan will need to find funds to help the Eastern half get started again. That will be difficult. ‘‘We are on the brink of economic Bengali settlements left by Tikka Khan’s jets and tanks. On the other hand, the Pakistanis lost no opportunity to show off; evidence of brutality by the Bengalis. At Natore, a town north-west of Dacca, the reporters were greeted by a “peace committee”, as the army-organized pacification teams are known. The committee led the way to a nearby village where, they said, 700 of the 1,300 residents had been slaughtered by rampaging Bengalis. The feature attraction was a well that was choked with human skeletons and wreaked of decomposing flesh. Said one peace committee man “You have never seen such atrocities.”
The army was not at all eager, however, to let the journalists look around on their own. While walking through. Natore, TIME correspondent Louis Kraar reported last week, . “a bearded peace committee-man kept interrupting every time anyone spoke to me. Finally, I escaped him—and found myself in the Hindu Section of the town. It was totally destroyed, a pile of rubble and ashes. As I walked, a young Bengali pressed close and explained that he was a student. ‘We are living in terror of the army’, he told me. ‘Until today,, when you came, they have been killing people”.
Perfect Order
Just about everywhere, Kraar found, the killing had followed a typical pattern: government troops would try to “liberate” a rebel-held town in a deliberately provoking manner. The Bengali townspeople would wreak revenge on the Non-Bengali in the process killing perhaps 20,000 or about 10% of the total dead, and then the army would pounce with everything it had. At Mymensingh, a town north of Dacca, that meant an air strike by Pakistani jets and a five-hour shelling by two American-made M-34 tanks. Many of Mymensingh’s Bengali sectors are in ruins, and about 90% of its pre-civil war population has fled or been killed. That is evidently the kind of record that pleases Tikka Khan, who likes to say : “We want perfect law and order”.
While East Pakistan continues to suffer from the bloody civil war and the growing threat of food shortages, the other half of the divided country is bearing burdens of another sort. The army backed federal Government of President Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan remains totally committed to keeping the Eastern wing from breaking away to establish Bangladesh, as independent Bangla State. But the strain of the undertaking is overtaxing West Pakistan’s resources and nerves. “This regime has stuck East Pakistan in its throats”; says one American diplomat in the federal capital of Islamabad, “The army must either swallow it or cough it up.”
By last week open fighting had almost completely ceased in East Pakistan. Nonetheless, West Pakistan must continue for the foreseeable future to lay out huge sums to support an army of occupation in East Pakistan. Moreover, the army is raising two additional divisions to bolster its defenses against India.
Ancient Hatred
Meanwhile, West Pakistani industry is operating at only one-third of capacity because of the loss of sales to the markets in the more populous Eastern half of the country—and because of a general economic slump. West Pakistan is hurt in other ways, too, by East Pakistan’s economic collapse. In normal times East Pakistan’s jute industry earns nearly half the whole country’s foreign exchange, now it lies idle, and the rest of the East’s meager industry and transportation facilities sustained almost complete disruption. West Pakistan will need to find funds to help the Eastern half get started again. That will be difficult. ‘‘We are on the brink of economic Bengali settlements left by Tikka Khan’s jets and tanks. On the other hand, the Pakistanis lost no opportunity to show off; evidence of brutality by the Bengalis. At Natore, a town north-west of Dacca, the reporters were greeted by a “peace committee”, as the army-organized pacification teams are known. The committee led the way to a nearby village where, they said, 700 of the 1,300 residents had been slaughtered by rampaging Bengalis. The feature attraction was a well that was choked with human skeletons and wreaked of decomposing flesh. Said one peace committee man “You have never seen such atrocities.”
The army was not at all eager, however, to let the journalists look around on their own. While walking through. Natore, TIME correspondent Louis Kraar reported last week, . “a bearded peace committee-man kept interrupting every time anyone spoke to me. Finally, I escaped him—and found myself in the Hindu Section of the town. It was totally destroyed, a pile of rubble and ashes. As I walked, a young Bengali pressed close and explained that he was a student. ‘We are living in terror of the army’, he told me. ‘Until today,, when you came, they have been killing people”.
Perfect Order
Just about everywhere, Kraar found, the killing had followed a typical pattern: government troops would try to “liberate” a rebel-held town in a deliberately provoking manner. The Bengali townspeople would wreak revenge on the Non-Bengali in the process killing perhaps 20,000 or about 10% of the total dead, and then the army would pounce with everything it had. At Mymensingh, a town north of Dacca, that meant an air strike by Pakistani jets and a five-hour shelling by two American-made M-34 tanks. Many of Mymensingh’s Bengali sectors are in ruins, and about 90% of its pre-civil war population has fled or been killed. That is evidently the kind of record that pleases Tikka Khan, who likes to say : “We want perfect law and order”.
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