NEWSWEEK January 17, 1972
All last week, Pakistan’s new President, the fiery Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, acted as if he were a one-man information bureau on the welfare and whereabouts of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Yes, Bhutto allowed, Mujib had been treated severely during his imprisonment! by the previous Pakistani regime. “He could do with a rest,” Bhutto said solicitously of the Bengali leader, “but I doubt that he will find much time for one.” Late in the week, after a series of private talks with Mujib, Bhutto at last made good his earlier pledge to release Mujib “unconditionally.” Amidst tight secrecy, the Pakistani President escorted Mujib to Rawalpindi Airport in the middle of the night and put him aboard a chartered plane. “The bird has flown,” reported the Pakistani President in a final, cryptic ^bulletin of a week of mysterious doings.

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
By Nicholas Carroll

IN THE FIRST exclusive interview she has given since the Indo-Pakistan war began, Mrs. Gandhi told me yesterday that she has no doubt that India and Pakistan will establish a friendly relationship. She is convinced that there can be stability in the Indian sub-continent “if outsiders didn’t interfere.”
These were my questions and her replies:—
CARROLL :You have carried out your declared objectives regarding Bangladesh. You have made it clear that India has no territorial ambitions. How long will it be before the last Indian Army unit will be withdrawn from Bangladesh ?
Mrs. Gandhi: It is very difficult to say at this stage. It depends largely on the Bangladesh Government. We certainly hope it will be very soon.
You are thinking in terms of weeks or months ?

NEWSWEEK December 6, 1971

When nations go to war, they almost invariably claim to be acting out of the purest motives. Last week, as India’s leaders met in the high-domed central hall of the New Delhi Parliament, there was much pious table-thumping and  jingoistic rhetoric to justify an attack against Pakistan. “If we have to silence the Pak guns,” vowed Defence Minister Jagjivan Ram' “we are not going to stop at the border but go inside Pakistan. We do not care how far inside we have to go if it becomes a matter of our self defense.” With that moral mandate thousands of Indian troops swarmed across the border into East Pakistan and the stage was set for a third round in the seemingly endless strife between the sub-continent’s two arch-enemies.

NEWSWEEK November 22, 1971
The Washington consensus on whether the border fighting between India and Pakistan will explode into war puts the odds at “better than 50-50” for all-out conflict.
Even the calendar looks ominous. The monsoons have ended and snow (which could keep Pakistan’s Chinese allies from lending a hand) starts in mid-December. The timetable, U.S. experts say, is right for fighting in West Pakistan where most of the Pakistani Army is based.

NEWSWEEK November 15, 1971

 State occasions are usually made up of platitudes and pleasantries. And when President Nixon greeted India’s Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi on the south lawn of the White House last week, he tiled to follow the formula, even to the point of expounding on Washington’s balmy weather. But Mrs. Gandhi was having none of it. Alluding to Pakistan’s repression of its Bengali minority  and the resultant flood of 9 million refugees into India — she told Mr. Nixon that her country was facing “a man-made tragedy of vast proportions. And with India and Pakistan poised on the edge of war, she added, “I have come here looking for a deeper understanding of the situation in our part of the world.” But Mrs. Gandhi’s search apparently proved fruitless. For the President and the Prime Minister failed to agree on a way to end the crisis between India and Pakistan — or even how to repair the strained relations between Washington and New Delhi. From the beginning, Mrs. Gandhi hoped to persuade Mr. Nixon to put pressure on Pakistan to step its campaign to crush the Bengali independence movement.

NEWSWEEK November 8, 1971
In their 24 years as independent nations, India and1 Pakistan has shown a boundless capacity for squabbling with each other. They have argued endlessly over Kashmir and bit of West land called the Rann of Katch, and six years ago they plunged into a brief but bloody war. “These two countries” remarked one Western diplomat, “have hardly ever been genuinely at peace”. And certainly they were not last week. Along 3,000 miles of border, Indian and Pakistani troops massed in menacing formations. Most observers felt that the current travels of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who is due in the U.S. this week ruled out the likelihood that India would go to war for the moment. But there remained the ominous feeling in both nations that, sooner or later, they would stumble into conflict.

NEWSWEEK October 25,1971
By William P. Bundy

The sheer horror of the Pakistan reign of terror in East Bengal and of the resulting refugee situation in India has been almost obsessive in recent months. It has, perhaps for others besides myself, drowned out real efforts to think through the future there. But such efforts are vital. For the next three months are absolutely critical; they are, in fact, likely to decide whether the horror can be brought under control and whether the even worse horror of outright war between India and Pakistan can be averted.
But critical in what ways ? And what do we do—“we” being the nations of the world, but, above all, the U.S. ?

NEWSWEEK July 19, 1971
 
“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.

NEWSWEEK July 12, 1971
 
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”.

NEWSWEEK August 16, 1971

In an opening statement at his press conference last week. President Nixon argued for continued U.S. support of the* Pakistani Government, despite its harsh attempts to suppress the Bangladesh Independence movement in the eastern portion of the country. “We feel”, explained the President, “that the most constructive role we can play is to continue our economic assistance to West Pakistan and, thereby, to be able- to influence the course of events.... ” But even as Mr. Nixon spoke, fourteen Bengali diplomats were coming to a far different conclusion.

NEWSWEEK, August 2, 1972

It seemed a routine enough request. Assembling , the young men of the village of Haluaghat in East Pakistan, a Pakistan Army major informed them that his wounded soldiers urgently needed blood. Would they be donors? The young men lay down on makeshift cots, needles were inserted in their veins—and then slowly the blood was drained from their bodies until they died.
Govinda Chandra Mandal forgets who told him first, but when he heard that an amnesty had been pledged to all refugees, he immediately set off on the long walk home. With his two teenage daughters by his side, Chandra Mandal trudged through monsoon-drenched swamp lands and past burned-out villages. When he neared his scrap of land, soldiers stopped him. As he watched in helpless anguish, his daughters were raped—again and again and again.

NEWSWEEK, June 28, 1971

Ever since the Pakistani civil war broke out last March, President Mohammad Yahya Khan has done his utmost to prevent reports on the ruthless behavior of the Pakistani Army in putting down the Bengali fight for independence from reaching the outside world. Most foreign journalists

NEWSWEEK April 26, 1971

For more than two weeks, the Pakistani Army of President Mohammad Yahya Khan had played a curious waiting game. Sitting tight in their well-fortified canton­ments in the rebellious eastern wing of their divided country, the federal troops virtually ignored the taunts of the secessionist “liberation forces.” But then early last week, the lull came to a sudden end. Springing from their strong-holds the Punjabi regulars simultaneously staged more than a dozen devastating attacks from one end of beleaguered East Pakistan to the other. And when the blitzkrieg was over, it was clear that the less-than-one-month-old Republic of Bangladesh (Bengal Nation) had been delivered a stunning blow.

NEWSWEEK April 12, 1971

They were long on defiance and short on firepower, a scraggly band of impoverished Bengali peasants armed mainly with picks, clubs and bamboo sticks. But they claimed that they had trapped a force of more than 1,000 government troops in a cantonment 2 miles north-west of the East Pakistani city of Jessore. And now, the Bengalis swore that they would continue to besiege the encircled federal garrison until the Punjabi soldiers from West Pakistan died from starva­tion. “We have the soldiers surrounded, and they cannot get out getting food,” one rebel told NEWSWEEK’S Tony Clifton excitedly. “Those bloody buggers are starving and will surely die. They must die:”

NEWSWEEK, April 5, 1971

The man and his party are enemies of Pakistan. This crime will not go unpunished. We will not^ allow some power-hungry and unpatriotic people to destroy this country and play yoith the destiny of 120 million people. — President Mohammed Yahya Khan.

Come out of your houses with whatever weapons you have. Resist the enemy forces at any cost... .until the last enemy soldier is vanquished, and save the country from the ruthless dictatorship of West Pakistanis. — Sheikh Mujibur Rahman,