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Even while Mrs. Gandhi was speaking to Parliament, India was launching an invasion of East Pakistan. In Rawalpindi, former Foreign Minister Zulfikar AH Bhutto, who is slated to be deputy premier in a civilian government that Yahya is said to be planning, declared: "I don't see the Indian army just sweeping through East and West Pakistan in a matter of weeks. Either there will be a stalemate, or each side will take some territory from the other and then negotiate."
That may prove an optimistic appraisal, in view of India's numerical superiority. As far as troop strength goes, the Pakistanis are outnumbered by more than two to one in the east. In the west, both countries are reported to have about 250,000 men deployed along the border for an almost even balance. India's overall troop strength is about 980,000 compared with Pakistan's 392,000, but an estimated eight mountain divisions are on guard along India's borders with China.
In matériel, India also has the edge: of its 1,450 tanks, about 450 are Russian medium tanks, and about 300 Indian-made Vijayanta tanks. India has 625 combat aircraft, including some 120 MIG-21 supersonic fighters and eight squadrons of Indian-made Gnats. For its part, Pakistan has about 1,100 tanks, including 200 American Patton tanks, 225 Chinese T-59s, and numerous old American Shermans and Chaffees of limited utility. Pakistan's 285 combat aircraft include two squadrons of Mirage 111 fighters and eight squadrons of American F-86 Sabres.
There were no estimates of casualties at week's end. But India claimed to have destroyed a total of 33 Pakistani aircraft. The Indian Defense Ministry admitted to the loss of eleven of its own fighters. As India seemed to be engaged primarily in a holding action in the west while aiming for a quick knockout in the east, Pakistani ground forces claimed to have seized "significant territory" on India's western border. One of the Pakistani advances was in the Sialkot sector near Kashmir; India admitted losing "some ground" on the Punjab border near Ferozepore.
Stray Cattle. Outmanned and likely to be outgunned, Pakistan's Yahya Khan may well have realized that he had only two options: negotiations or war, both with the probable result of independence for Bangla Desh. Since negotiations without a war would mean going down without a fight, the generals might have decided to choose war; such a course would enable them to say that the breakup of Pakistan was caused not by faintheartedness but by superior forces.
Islamabad also figured that timely intervention on the part of the United Nations, which might be expected if war were declared, would enable West Pakistan to extricate its troops as part of a ceasefire. At U.N. headquarters in Manhattan, however, the big powers seemed paralyzed. With the subcontinent about to burn, the Security Council spent most of the week fiddling around with a debate over an obscure border dispute between Senegal and Portuguese Guinea involving some stray cattle. As one oldtimer quipped: "India-Pakistan is too important to get into the U.N."