Asia: Ending the Suspense

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At dawn one morning last week, war came to the dusty Pakistan village of Dhankeal, near Lahore. Mystère jets of the Indian air force slammed rockets into a train at the station, killing three passengers and wounding eleven. Wakened by the explosions, a young peasant named Zakaullah clambered to the roof of his mud hut. "I saw planes in the sky," he said. "And suddenly they started throwing things with fire coming from them. Then one plane started to fall. It came down with a big noise."

Near by bearded Mohammed Sharif was leaving the village mosque after morning prayer when he looked up and saw the French-built Mystères in a dogfight with U.S.-made F-86 jets of the Pakistan air force. With peasant wisdom Sharif decided, "The Indians must be losing in Kashmir. Now they are trying to bother us down here." He urged the young men of the village to arm themselves with clubs and search through the cane and cornfields for downed Indian pilots.

Smeared Dung. To the hundreds of millions of illiterate Indian and Pakistani peasants in the villages, the war may be just another disaster to add to the constant plagues of drought, flood, tornado and poverty. Not so in the cities. New Delhi crowds danced in the streets at the rumor of Indian victories. As antiaircraft guns in Amritsar opened up on Pakistani planes, citizens cheered each white puff in the blue sky, shouting "Shoot him down! Kill him! Kill, kill, kill!" Workmen put up baffle walls in offices as protection against bomb blast, shopkeepers pasted strips of paper to window panes, husbands and fathers dug slit trenches outside their homes. As hospitals were hurriedly emptied to provide beds for expected wounded, Indians queued up to donate blood. The capital's mood was reflected by a businessman who said, "We've been kicked around too often. Let us lose 200 million people if we have to, and have done with it. Our national honor is at stake."

The same air of stern determination spread through Rawalpindi. Civil servants worked round the clock, and on the desks of key officials lay a blue volume of contingency papers labeled "War Book." Auto headlights were dimmed with smears of mud and cow dung, and trucks were camouflaged with leafy branches. For three successive nights, Indian bombers struck at Karachi's harbor installations, and the wail of air-raid sirens blended with the sobbing call to prayer of muezzins atop minarets. A bitter Pakistani official said, "Let's fight it out and get it over with. Either we become slaves of India, or India accepts us as an independent state. This suspense must end."

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