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EAST PAKISTANIS UNVEIL NEW FLAG
By SYDNEY A. SCHANDERG
MARCH 24, 1971
DACCA, Pakistan, March 23 : The President of Pakistan, who has spent eight days in the eastern wing of his country under heavy protection, came out of his walled compound for the first time today for heavily protected drive to the military cantonment on the edge of the city.
Elsewhere in Dacca and throughout the province of East Pakistan the Bengali population celebreted “resistance day“— resistance to the martial‐law regime imposed by the West Pakistan‐dominated central Government—and unveiled the new flag of “Bangla Desh,” the so called Bengal nation.
Those scenes — a President unable to travel in what is supposed to be his own country without a cordon of weapons, 70 million of his people virtually declaring secession on their own—put into focus the strangeness of the crisis that has threatened to split this Moslem country in two.
The mood, the slogans and the talk in the streets are all for independence, while at the bargaining table the three participants are still talking about trying to hold the two wings together, by however tenuous a link.
No Signs of Real Progress
The tortuous negotiations over East Pakistan's demands for self‐rule continued, and all sides kept repeating that some progress was being made. What is going on outside the talks makes it difficult to believe, however, that any compromise agreement will alter what has already happened — the take over of the province, in effect, by the Bengali people, led by Sheik Mujibur Rahman and his Awami League party.
Awami League sources said the talks were at a delicate stage. The party will wait a few days more, they added, and if an agreement cannot be reached by then on its demands for ending the western wing's long domination of the East, they will go their own way. The phrase was not further explained.
The other participants in the talks are the President, Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan, representing the army, which has ruled under martial law for two years, and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, dominant political leader in West Pakistan, who heads the Pakistan People's party.
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ARTILLERY USED; Civilians Fired Upon, Sections of Dacca Are Set Ablaze
By SYDNEY H. SCHANBERG
MARCH 28, 1971
DACCA, Pakistan, March 27 —The Pakistani Army is using artillery and heavy machine guns against unarmed East Pakistani civilians to crush the movement for autonomy in this province of 75 million people.
The attack began late Thursday night without warning. West Pakistani soldiers, who predominate in the army, moved into the streets of Dacca, the provincial capital, to besiege the strongholds of the independence movement, such as the university.
There was no way of knowing how many civilians had been killed or wounded. Neither was any Information available on what was happening in the rest of the province, although there had been reports before the Dacca attack of clashes between civilians and West Pakistani soldiers in the interior.
Mr. Schanberg was one of 35 foreign newsmen expelled Saturday morning from East Pakistan. He cabled this dispatch from Bombay, India.
The firing here was at first sporadic, but by 1 A.M. yesterday it had become heavy and nearly continuous, and it remained that way for three hours. Scores of artillery bursts were seen and heard by foreign newsmen confined to the Intercontinental Hotel on threat of death.
From the hotel, which is in North Dacca, bilge fires could be seen in various parts of the city, including the University Dacca.
In a broadcast, Sheik Mujib was said to have denied a West Pakistani radio report that he had been arrested. “I'm free and all right,” he was quoted as having said. “Comrades, go ahead with your program to achieve the goal of freedom. Do not be misguided by enemy propaganda.”
The fighting between the troops of the central Government in West Pakistan and the East Pakistanis was reported to have erupted yesterday. A proclamation of the East's independence, attributed to Sheik Mujib, was also reported then.
Sheik Mujib has been campaigning for autonomy for East Pakistan, which his followers now call Bangla Desh—Bengali for Bengal Nation. The autonomy movement in the eastern wing of Pakistan, which is separated from the western wing by 1,000 miles of India, is based on the two sections' completely different cultures, languages and physical features as well as on the fact that the western wing has dominated the eastern since the Moslem country was carved from the Indian subcontinent in 1947.
Assembly Postponed
Pakistan's President, Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan, in nationwide radio broadcast last night, charged Sheik Mujib and his followers with treason and outlawed the Awami League. In three weeks of strikes and other protests against the central Government, it had in effect gained control of the region from the martial‐law authorities.
The Awami League's protest had been directed against President Yahya's decision to postpone the March 3 opening of the National Assembly, which the league would have dominated, to start drafting a constitution to return Pakistan to civilian rule.
President Yahya said in his speech that he was ordering the army to restore the Government's authority to save Pakistan's integrity. President Yahya had been in Dacca for 10 days, discussing the political crisis with Sheik Mujib and political leaders from West Pakistan. He slipped out of Dacca unannounced on Thursday and flew back to West Pakistan.
The negotiations over East Pakistan's demands for self‐rule had broken down on Thursday afternoon, although this was not known until the Army went into action.
The President said that It had been his “keenness to arrive at a peaceful solution” that kept him from taking action against Sheik Mujib “weeks ago.”
For 17 days, ever since the Army killed scores of demonstrators, the Bengali population had supported Sheik Mujib in refusing to cooperate with the martial‐law regime.
In his speech, President Yahya said the Army had been “subjected to taunts and insults of all kinds.”
“I compliment them on their great restraint and sense of discipline,” he continued. “I am proud of them.”
Indian news agencies remained the major source of news from East Pakistan. After the martial‐law administration imposed strict censorship on reporters in Dacca, news began to come out from many Indian towns bordering East Pakistan.
Sheik Mujib's forces were said to have effectively obstructed the movement of Pakistani troops by blowing up bridges and railroads; even in normal times, East Pakistan, crisscrossed by many rivers, is difficult terrain in which to move fast. Central Pakistani forces were also said to be handicapped by inadequate stocks of gasoline. The supplies must be brought in by air from West Pakistan.
Reports of More Troops
News reports quoting East Pakistani sources said that West Pakistan was flying more troops into Dacca's airport to reinforce the 70,000 men already in the East. Meanwhile new martial‐law regulations were broadcast to warn people against putting up barricades on roads and on airport run ways.
According to one report of the fighting, Pakistani Government troops were forced to withdraw with heavy casualties after attacking a center of the East Pakistan Rifles in Khulna.
In Daulatpur, near Khulna, West Pakistani troops were re ported to have fired into a crowd, killing 90 civilians. Re ports also said that West Pakistani soldiers were shelling and burning houses and factories as Awami League volunteers poured into towns from their villages and attacked the troops.
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Heavy Killing Reported
By SYDNEY H. SCHANBERG
MARCH 30, 1971
NEW DELHI, March 29—In its battle to put down the independence movement in East Pakistan, the Pakistani army has resorted to widespread killings of civilians, according to reports reaching here today from unimpeachable foreign diplomatic sources in Dacca.
These reports were confined to Dacca, a city of 1,500,000 people, and all the reports were confined to events up to Saturday night. The army attack began on Thursday night.
The following is a verbatim report relayed to New Delhi from these sources:
“Tanti Bazaar and Sankhari Bazaar areas of Dacca, inhabited by more than 10,000 people, were surrounded by the army. Houses were set on fire and people were being butchered. Even residents fleeing the area have not been spared.”
Another report from other highly reliable foreign diplomatic source in Dacca said the office of Ittefaq, a Bengali‐language daily newspaper, was burned with 40 persons inside.
There have been reports from the interior telling of killings of civilians, some later than Saturday, but these reports do not come from diplomatic sources and are impossible to evaluate.
Diplomatic sources in Dacca report they have received what they consider reliable reports from the interior that heavy fighting is going on in some areas between the army and civilian resistance forces, with the army strafing from the air and using tanks and heavy artillery on the ground.
The over‐all death toll is not known. The Clandestine Radio of the Resistance Movement said that 300,000 East Pakistanis were killed by West Pakistani troops in the first 48 hours of the army's attack.
Widely conflicting reports about who is winning in East Pakistan continue to flow into New Delhi. Because of a black out of all normal news channels and communications from East Pakistan, it is impossible to tell from these unverifiable reports whether the Pakistani Army is in control and the province relatively calm, as it asserts, or whether the civilian resistance has made the army's position desperate, as the resistance has said in its clandestine broadcasts.
The fighting in East Pakistan began last Thursday night when the Pakistani army, without warning, attacked civilian population centers in an effort to crush the province's nonviolent movement for autonomy. The army units—all West Pakistani troops—opened fire with artillery, rockets and machine guns.
Since then, a resistance effort has been launched, with East Pakistani policemen and a militia called the East Pakistan Rifles fighting the army with the aid of civilians armed with knives, sticks and homemade guns.
The current crisis goes back to a decision by President Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan to postpone the meeting of the National Assembly that was to have begun to draft a constitution ending military rule.
That meeting would have been dominated by East Pakistan's principal party, the Awami League of Sheik Mujibur Rahman, which had won a clear majority in elections in December with its demands for regional autonomy.
The decision to postpone the session touched off protest demonstrations, strikes and rioting in East Pakistan, and I the army was reported to have killed scores of Bengalis. The Awami League gradually took control in East Pakistan.
Negotiations were then begun involving the President, Sheik Mujib, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the dominant political leader of West Pakistan. Despite public reports of progress as late as last Tuesday, authoritative sources now say that West Pakistani interests had decided from the start not to yield their hold on East Pakistan.
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CONSUL URGES U.S. START EVACUATION IN EAST PAKISTAN
By SYDNEY H. SCHANBERG
MARCH 31, 1971
NEW DELHI, March 30—The United States consul general in East Pakistan has asked Washington to evacuate all American women and children and some of the men from the province, where the Pakistani armed forces are fighting an independence movement.
Reports from the highest authority said that the consul general, Archer K. Blood, made the recommendation to Washington yesterday or today on the ground that foreigners are no longer safe in East Pakistan. There are about 1,000 Americans in East Pakistan.
[United States officials in Washington said the Administration had not yet made a, final decision and that therefore the Pakistani Government had not been asked for official permission for evacuation planes to land at Dacca. They said that the State Department was in continuing communication with the Consulate General in the East Pakistani capital and that the city was reported to be, quiet.]
Action Began Last Week
Some officials at the United States Embassy in New Delhi were reportedly characterizing the events in East Pakistan, as “a massacre” of civilians there by West Pakistani troops. The embassy is believed to have official information on events there.
The military action in East Pakistan began last Thursday night. However, some foreign missions in Dacca evacuated their women, children and nonessential men early this month when the first fears of widespread violence in the province arose.
The British, are reportedly coordinating their evacuation plans with the Americans. In London, the Foreign Office said that no steps had yet been taken to carry out the planning but that the situation was being kept under constant review.
Meanwhile, the reports on what is happening in East Pakistan continued to be wildly conflicting.
The Government, through the Pakistan radio in West Pakistan, said the situation in all the major towns and the entire countryside of East Pakistan was normal, with the military in control. Broadcasts by the resistance movement said the troops from West Pakistan were retreating everywhere, with the resistance troops in control of most parts of the province, including Dacca.
However, most independent reports reaching New Delhi indicate that in Dacca at least the army is in fairly firm control. A group of Yugoslav evacuees whose plane stopped in New Delhi on its way to Belgrade said the situation in Dacca was generally quiet, but tense.
Curfew Ends in Daytime
They said that large numbers of West Pakistani soldiers were patrolling the city but that the curfew had been lifted during daytime hours. They said they had seen shops open on their way to the airport.
Making it difficult to evaluate many of the reports on events in East Pakistan is the fact that all foreign newsmen were expelled from there last weekend and that there has been a total blackout there of all normal news channels. In addition, all dispatches from West Pakistan are subject to strict censorship.
The Pakistan radio reported that the Pakistani Government had lodged its second protest in three days with India, accusing the New Delhi Government of “continued interference in Pakistan's internal affairs.” The protest objected especially to the Indian press reports coming from points near the East Pakistani border that are continuing to report heavy fighting by resistance groups against the army.
Shootings Reported
Unimpeachable independent sources in New Delhi said that in the early stages of the fighting the army had dragged high, officials of the nationalist movement out of their houses and shot them dead. These sources described the officials as leaders of the Awami League, East Pakistan's dominant political party, but said they had not included Shiek Mujibur Rahman, the party chief and political leader of East Pakistan.
The army says it arrested Sheik Mujib last Friday morning at his Dacca residence, but a radio station that says it is the voice of the resistance movement says he is alive and free.
Also according to the independent sources, three British subjects were lined up by the army against a wall in Dacca for execution when diplomats from the British mission arrived in time to save them. The three men were not members of the mission.
The sources also reported “eyewitness accounts” of “massacres of civilians” by West Pakistani troops in areas throughout East Pakistan. These killings are still going on, the sources said.
Broadcasts attributed to the resistance movement said that the Pakistani Army's “invading forces” had virtually destroyed the port city of Chittagong by a concentrated sea, air and artillery bombardment but that the “freedom fighters”, were still holding out there.
A Differing Account
The. Pakistan radio, on the other hand, said the situation in Chittagong, like that in, the rest of the province, was normal.
“Some miscreants who created disturbances have been effectively put down,” it added.
While the military action in East Pakistan began last Thursday night with an attack by West Pakistani troops on civilian population centers, the current crisis dates from March 1.
On that date, President Agha, Mohammad Yahya Khan postponed a session of the National Assembly that was to have met two, days later to begin drafting a constitution returning the nation to civilian rule. That assembly, elected in December, was dominated by Sheik Mujib's Awami League, which wanted regional autonomy.
During three weeks of strikes and other protest action, Sheik Mujib's party in effect assumed control of East Pakistan. The army struck Thursday night to reassert the central military Government's authority.
Two Wings Separated
The army's biggest problem, it appears, will be the hostility, widespread among the 75 million East Pakistanis, who have long been dominated by the vested interests of the western wing, with its minority population of 55 million people. The, two parts of the country are separated by 1,000 miles of Indian territory.
Refugees fleeing the West Pakistani Army are beginning to cross into India in large numbers, and the Indian Government is mobilizing a relief effort in concert with international agencies.
Sympathy for the Bengalis, as the East Pakistanis are called, is widespread in India. Many politicians, are pressing the Government to recognize the government of Bangla Desh — Bengali for Bengal Nation. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is expected to move a resolution of solidarity with the Bengalis in Parliament tomorrow.
All Part Of a Game – a Grim and Deadly One
— SYDNEY H. SCHANBERG
APRIL 4, 1971
NEW DELHI—“All of it's necessary, absolutely necessary,” a West Pakistani stewardess lectured some expelled foreign newsmen about the Pakistani Army's offensive to crush the independence movement in East Pakistan. “If this happened in your country, you'd do the same thing. It's all part of the game.”
Pakistan: ‘All Part Of a Game’— a Grim and Deadly One
A game? To foreign newsmen in Dacca, it looked like a surprise attack with tanks, artillery and heavy machine guns against a virtually unarmed population —a population using tactics of nonviolence, mostly strikes and other forms of noncooperation, to claim the political majority it had won in last December's elections. And by this weekend enough credible reports of in discriminate killings had filtered out to leave little doubt, even in the minds of many dispassionate Indian officials and Western diplomats, that the Army of West Pakistan was under few restraints in putting down East Pakistani thoughts of autonomy.
The attack began on the night of March 25, after 10 days of political negotiations in which the army and the rest of the West Pakistani power establishment had lulled the East Pakistani nationalists into thinking their demands for greater self‐rule would be granted.
It is clear now that the West Pakistanis never meant the talks to succeed, that they dragged them out only to buy time to get enough troop reinforcements over from West Pakistan to launch the attack. But while the talks went on, nearly every observer, from newsmen to diplomats, resisted the ugly thought that this might be true. The signs were all there—troops coming in by air and sea, the dismissal of a martial‐law administrator who was too lenient and the uncharacteristic silence of the army while the East Pakistanis boycotted the military regime and followed instead the directives of their leader, Sheik Mujibur Rahman.
The newsmen reported these signs but when talk of “some progress” came out of the negotiations, they grasped upon that, because it was what should happen. They were wrong. Instead, the military mind prevailed.
Governments Silent
But in turning to force, the West Pakistani leaders apparently misjudged both its limitations and the depth of feeling of 75 million East Pakistanis. “They thought that a few bullets would scare the people off,” said Ranjit Gupta, the police commissioner in Calcutta, just across the border in India. “It is silly—it shows you how little the West Pakistanis know about East Pakistanis.”
Instead of the first shooting spree terrorizing the population into submission, it now seems apparent that while the army may be able initially to establish a hold on the cities and major towns, it will face wide spread guerrilla activity in the primitive riverine countryside. This could so undermine the supply lines and mobility of the West Pakistani troops that the independence movement would succeed.
In India, many sympathizers with the East Pakistani cause were quick to compare West Pakistan's military actions in East Pakistan with those of Hitler. “Pak Army's Inhuman Torture,” was the headline in one Calcutta newspaper. “Butchery,” said another, adding: “The vandalism unleashed by the occupying Pakistani army in Bangla Desh (Bengal Nation) is darker than even the darkest chapter of Nazi terror.” The Indian Parliament has called it “a massacre of defenseless people which amounts to genocide.”
Most of the other governments or the world have remained silent.
“Why doesn't your country condemn this outrage?”’ one official in Calcutta asked an American. “This is no tidal wave, this is no act of nature—it is people slaughtering people.”
The United States, which supplied the Pakistani military with its basic weapons and training from 1955 to 1965, has refused to release to the press accounts of army killings it has received from its consulate in Dacca, the East Pakistani Capital.
Britain has said she regrets the situation, but considers it an internal matter.
The Soviet Union has remained officially silent, although segments of the Soviet press have called the army's action “crude arbitrariness and violence.”
Communist China, Which has also been supplying Pakistan with arms in recent years, and has been wooing Pakistan hard, has said nothing.
U Thant, Secretary General of the United Nations, said after several days, of trouble in East Pakistan that he was “very much concerned about the loss of life and human suffering” and would help if the Pakistani Government asked him to assist “in humanitarian efforts,” Such a request seemed highly unlikely.
One country, Ceylon, has helped the West Pakistani military offensive by granting refueling rights to planes flying to and from East Pakistan. The two wings of Pakistan are divided by over 1,000 miles of India, which banned Pakistani overflights in February. Without this assistance from Ceylon, military reinforcements and supplies for East Pakistan would have to be brought in by sea, and Indian officials and Western diplomats here believe this would severely hamper, if not cripple, the West Pakistani Army's campaign.
Regardless of Ceylon's help to West Pakistan and the lack of help thus far to East Pakistan, there seems to be agreement here on two points—that the chances of East and West Pakistan remaining united appear nil, and that in the long run the West Pakistani Army, attempting to impose its government's will on the East Pakistanis, has little chance of success.
The Bengalis, as the people of East Pakistan are called, have stepped across a crucial line—a line that separated grumbling about their exploitation to fighting against the exploiters. The line may have been crossed on March 25, the night of the attack. Or perhaps it was crossed earlier, on March 1, when President Yahya Khan, Army Commander in Chief, postponed a session of the National Assembly that was to have convened two days later to begin drafting a Constitution returning the nation to civilian rule.
That Assembly, elected in December, was dominated by Sheik Mujib's Awami League party, which wanted a large measure of provincial autonomy — leaving the Central Government with power only over defense and foreign policy, but not foreign trade and aid.
These terms were anathema to the West Pakistani power establishment—the army, the big business interests and the Politicians. In the political negotiations over the crisis, they started off by making conciliatory sounds and then brought in the Monkey wrench, Zulfikar All Bhutto, the dominant political leader of West Pakistan. When he objected that the Awami League wanted too much autonomy—“bordering on Sovereignty”—the talks began to stall. Then, suddenly, came the army attack.
The morning after the attack, Mr. Bhutto, and his aides, under heavy military protection, were flown back to friendly territory in West Pakistan, where the political leader promptly announced: “Pakistan has been saved by the grace of the Almighty.”
But it will take more than religious oratory to save Pakistan as a united Moslem country, Religion was the social glue that was supposed to have held the two wings together, but it was never enough.
1947 Partition
Pakistan, carved out of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 as the child of Hindu‐Moslem hostility, was intended as a home land for the Moslem Bengalis of East Pakistan and the Moslem Punjabis, Sindhis and Pathans of West Pakistan. But the 55 million West Pakistanis held all the political, economic and military power, and East Pakistan, although the majority wing, quickly became what amounted almost to an exploited colony, a golden market for the manufactured products of the western wing. Prices were higher in the east, income lower.
A severe racial and cultural gap also festered. The two wings of Pakistan have always been further apart in most important respects than most independent countries. In that sense, the Bengalis are fighting to dislodge from their soil a foreign occupation army.
It may take a long time, but none of the witnesses to the recent upsurge of Bengali nationalism and to the barbarism of the army attack doubts that it will happen. In the meantime, as Sheik Mujib was fond of chanting with the adoring crowds that thronged to his now razed house: “Sangram, sangram. Cholbey, cholbey.” “The fight will go on, The fight will go on.”
