The World: East Pakistan: Even the Skies Weep

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IN New Delhi last week, one member of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's Cabinet was heard to remark: "War is inevitable." In Islamabad, President Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan spent the better part of a 40-minute television speech railing against the Indians, whom he accused of "whipping up a war frenzy." Along their borders, east and west, both India and Pakistan massed troops. Both defended the action as precautionary, but there was a real danger that a minor border incident could suddenly engulf the subcontinent in all-out war.

Several factors are at work to reduce the likelihood of such an explosion. The Indian-Soviet friendship treaty, signed early in August, deters India from waging war without consulting the Soviets. At the same time, rising discontent and political and economic pressures within West Pakistan have also placed restraints on Strongman Yahya Khan and his military regime. Nonetheless, war remains a distinct possibility. As Mrs. Gandhi said last week at a public meeting in South India: "We must be prepared for any eventuality."

Intolerable Strain. The current dispute has grown out of the Pakistani army's harsh repression of a Bengali movement demanding greater autonomy for the much-exploited eastern sector of the divided nation. The resulting flood of impoverished East Pakistani refugees has placed an intolerable strain on India's already overburdened economy. New Delhi has insisted from the first that the refugees, who now number well over 9,000,000 by official estimates, must be allowed to return safely to their homes in East Pakistan.

Before that is possible, however, a political solution must be found that would end the Pakistani army's reign of terror, wanton destruction and pogroms aimed particularly at the 10 million members of the Hindu minority in predominantly Moslem East Pakistan (pop. 78 million at the start of the civil war).

Once, Sheik Mujibur ("Mujib") Rahman, leader of the Awami League, the East's majority party, might have held the key to that solution. As the overwhelming winner of the country's first national elections last December Mujib stood to become Prime Minister of Pakistan; now he is on trial for his life before a secret military tribunal in the West on charges of treason.

Though Islamabad has ordered the military command to ease off on its repressive tactics, refugees are still trekking into India at the rate of about 30,000 a day, telling of villages burned, residents shot, and prominent figures carried off and never heard from again. One of the more horrible revelations concerns 563 young Bengali women, some only 18, who have been held captive inside Dacca's dingy military cantonment since the first days of the fighting. Seized from Dacca University and private homes and forced into military brothels, the girls are all three to five months pregnant. The army is reported to have enlisted Bengali gynecologists to abort girls held at military installations. But for those at the Dacca cantonment it is too late for abortion. The military has begun freeing the girls a few at a time, still carrying the babies of Pakistani soldiers.

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