GENOCIDE
An account by Anthony Mascarenhas,
former Assistant Editor, Morning News,
ABDUL BARI had run out of luck.
Like thousands of other people in
He was 24 years old, a slight man
surrounded by soldiers. He was trembling, because he was about to be shot.
"Normally
we would have killed him as he ran," I was informed chattily by Major Rathore, the G-2
Ops. of the 9th Division, as we stood on the outskirts of a tiny village near Mudafarganj,
about 20 miles south of Comilla. "But
we are checking him out for your sake. You
are new here and I see you have a squeamish stomach."
"Why kill him?" I asked with mounting concern.
"Because
he might be a Hindu or he might be a rebel, perhaps a student or an Awami
Leaguer. They know we are sorting them out
and they betray themselves by
running."
"But why are you killing them? And why pick on the
Hindus?" I persisted.
"Must I remind you," Rathore said
severely, "how they have tried to destroy
First Glimpse of Blood stains
"Of course,"
he added hastily,
"we are only killing the Hindu men. We are soldiers, not cowards like the rebels. They
kill our women and children."
I WAS GETTING my first glimpse of the stain of blood which has
spread over the otherwise verdant
The pogrom's victims are not only the
Hindus of East Bengal-who constitute about 10 per cent of the 75 million population-but also many thousands of Bengali Muslims. These include
university and college students, teachers, Awami League and Left-Wing political
cadres and every one thee army can catch of the
176,000 Bengali military men and police who mutinied on
March 26 in a spectacular, though untimely and ill-starred bid, to create an
independent
What I saw and heard with unbelieving eyes and ears during my 10 days in
The West Pakistani soldiers are not the only ones who have
been killing in
Pakistani censor-the Bengali troops and paramilitary units stationed in East
Thousands of families of unfortunate Muslims, many of them refugees from
The Government of Pakistan has let the world know about that first horror. What it has
suppressed is the second and worse horror which followed when its own army took
over the killing. West Pakistani officials privately calculate that ; altogether both sides have killed
250,000 people-not counting those who have died
of famine and disease.
Reacting to the
almost successful breakaway of the province, which
has more than half the country's
population, General Yahya Khan's military Government is pushing through
its own "final solution" of the East Bengal problem.
"We are
determined to cleanse
The
WE HAD BEEN
racing against the setting sun after a visit to Chandpur
(the
Major Rathore brought the vehicle to an abrupt halt,
simultaneously reaching for the Chinese
made light machine-gun propped against the door. Less than 200 yards away a man
could be seen loping through the knee-high paddy.
"For God's sake don't shoot," I
cried. "He's unarmed. He's only a villager." Rathore
gave me a dirty look and fired a warning burst.
As the man sank to a crouch in the lush
carpet of green, two jawarns were already on their way to drag him in.
The thud of a rifle butt across the
shoulders preceded the questioning.
"Who are you?"
"Mercy, Sahib! My name is Abdul Bari.
I'm a tailor from the New Market in
"Don't lie to me You're
a Hindu. Why were you running?"
"'It's almost curfew time, Sahib,
and I was going to my village."
"Tell me the truth. Why were you running?"
Before the man could answer he was
quickly frisked for weapons by a jawan while another
quickly snatched away his lunghi. The skinny body that was bared revealed
the distinctive traces of circumcision, which is obligatory for Muslims.
The truckloads of human targets
At least it could be plainly seen that
The interrogation proceeded.
"Tell me,
why were you running?"
By this time
"He looks like a fauji, sir," volunteered one jawan as
"Could be," I heard Rathore mutter grimly.
Abdul Bari was
clouted several times with the butt end of a rifle, then
ominously
pushed against a wall. Mercifully his screams brought a young head peeping from the
shadows of a nearby hut.
"Do you know
this man?"
"Yes, Sahib. He is Abdul Bari." "Is he a fauji?"
"No Sahib, he
is a tailor from
"Tell me the
truth."
"Khuda Kassam (God's oath), Sahib,
he is a tailor."
There was a sudden silence. Rathore looked abashed as I told him "For God's sake let
him go. What more proof do you want of his innocence?"
But the jawans were apparently unconvinced and kept milling around
Others have not been as fortunate.
For six days as I travelled
with the officers of the 9th Division headquarters at Comilla I witnessed at
close quarters the extent of the killing. I saw Hindus, hunted from village to village and
door to door, shot off-hand after a cursory "short-arm
inspection" showed they were uncircumcised. I have heard the
screams of men bludgeoned to death in the
compound of the Circuit House (civil administrative headquarters) in Comilla.
I have seen truck loads of other human
targets and those
who had the humanity to try to help them hauled
off "for under the cover of
darkness and curfew. I have
witnessed the brutality of "kill
and burn missions" as the army
units, after clearing out the rebels, pursued
the pogrom in the towns and the villages.
I have seen whole
villages devastated by "punitive action."
And in the officers
mess at night I have listened incredulously as otherwise brave and honourable
men proudly chewed over the day's kill.
"How many
did you get?"
The answers are seared in my memory.
All this is being done, as any West Pakistani officer will tell you, for
the "preservation of the unity, the integrity and the ideology of
The break is so complete today
that few Bengalis will willingly be seen in the company of a West Pakistani. I had a distressing experience of this kind
during my visit to
Hours later a Punjabi army officer, talking about the massacre of the non Bengalis before
the army moved in, told me: "They have treated us more brutally than the
Sikhs did in the partition riots in 1947. How can we ever forgive or forget this?"
Annihilation of Hindus
The bone-crushing military operation has two distinctive features. One is
what the authorities like to call the "cleansing process"; a
euphemism for massacre. The other is the
"rehabilitation effort." This is a way of describing the moves to turn
The justification for the annihilation of the Hindus was paraphrased by Lt.
Gen.
Tikka Khan, the Military Governor of
Others, speaking
privately, were more blunt in seeking justification.
"The Hindus had completely
undermined the Muslim masses with their money," Col. Naim,
of 9th Division headquarters, told me in the officers
mess at Comilla. They bled the province white. Money, food and produce flowed
across the borders to
Or take Major Bashir. He came up from
the ranks. He is SSO of the 9th Division at Comilla and he boasts of a personal bodycount of 28. He
had his own reasons for what has
happened. "This is a war between the pure and the impure," he
informed me over a cup of green tea. "The
people here may have Muslim names and call themselves Muslims. But they are Hindus at heart. You won't believe that the maulvi (mulla) of the Cantonment mosque here issued a fathwa (edict) during Friday prayers that the people would
attain ,janat (paradise)
if they killed West Pakistanis. We sorted the bastard out and we are now sorting out the others. Those who are left will be real Muslims. We will even teach them Urdu."
Everywhere I found officers and men fashioning imaginative garments of justification from the fabric
of their own prejudices. Scapegoats had to be found to legitimise, even for
their own consciences, the dreadful "solution" to what in essence was a political problem: the Bengalis won
the election and wanted to rule. The
Punjabis, whose ambitions and interests have dominated government policies since the founding of
Officials privately justify what has been done as a
retaliation for the massacre of the non-Bengalis before the army
moved in. But events suggest that the pogrom was not the result of a spontaneous or undisciplined reaction. It was planned.
General Tikka Khan takes over
It seems clear that the "sorting-out" began to be planned about
the time that Lt-Gen. Tikka Khan took over the governorship of
When the army units fanned out in
Touring
THIS IS GENOCIDE conducted with amazing casualness. Sitting in the
office of Major Agha, Martial Law Administrator of
Comilla city, on the morning of' April 19, I saw the off-hand manner in
which sentences were meted out. A Bihari sub-inspector of police had walked in with a list
of prisoners being held' in the police lock-up. Agha looked it over. Then, with a
flick of his pencil, he casually ticked off four names on the list.
"Bring
these four to me this evening for disposal," he said. He looked at the list again. The pencil
flicked once more. "... and bring
this thief along with, them."
Death sentence
over Cold Drink
The death sentence had been pronounced over a glass of coconut
milk. I was informed that two of the prisoners were Hindus,
the third a "student," and
the fourth an Awami League organiser. The "thief," it transpired, was a lad named Sebastian who had been caught moving
the household effects of a Hindu
friend to his own house.
Later that evening I saw these men, their hands and legs tied loosely with, a single rope,
being led down the road to the Circuit House compound. A little after curfew, which was at 6 o'clock, a
flock of squawking mynah birds were disturbed in their play by the
thwacking sound of wooden clubs meeting bone and flesh.
Captain Azmat of the Baluch
Regiment had two claims to fame according to the mess banter. One was his job as ADC to Maj.-Gen. Shaukat Raza. Commanding
officer of the 9th Division. The
other was thrust on him by his colleagues' ragging.
Azmat, it transpired, was the only officer
in the group who had not made a" kill" Major Bashir needled him mercilessly.
" Come on Azmat,
" Bashir told him one night, " we are going to make a man of you. Tomorrow
we will see how you can make them run. It's
so easy."
To underscore the point Bashir went into one of
his long spiels. Apart from his duties as SSO, Bashir
was also " education officer "' at Headquarters. He was the only Punjabi officer I found who could speak Bengali fluently. B% general agreement Bashir was also a self-taught bore who gloried in the
sound of his own voice.
A dhari walla (bearded man) we were told, had
come to see Bashir that morning to inquire about
his brother, a prominent Awami League organiser of Commilla who had been netted by the army some days earlier. Dhor
The record would show dhor
I Never did find out whether Captain Azmat got his kill. The rebel Bengali forces who had
dug in at Feni, seventy miles north of
So General Raza was understandably waspish. He flew over the
area almost -daily. He also spent hours haranguing the brigade that,
was bogged down at Feni. Captain Azmat, as usual, was the General's
shadow. I did not see him again. But if experience is any pointer, Azmat
probably had to sweat out his " kill " .and the ragging-for
another three weeks. It was only on
May 8 that the 9th Division was able to clear Feni
and the surrounding area. By then the
Bengali rebels, forced out by relentless bombing and artillery barrages, had
escaped with their weapons across the neighbouring border into
The escape of such large numbers of armed, hard-core regulars
among the Bengali ,rebels was a matter of grave concern to Lt.-Col. Aslam Baig, G-1 at 9th
Division headquarters. " The Indians, " he explained, will " obviously not allow them to settle there. It
would be too dangerous. So they will
be allowed in on sufferance as long as they keep making sorties across
the border. Unless we can kill them off, we
are going ,to have serious trouble for a long time. "
Lt: Col. Baig was a popular artillery officer who
had done a stint in
It is hard to imagine so much brutality in the midst of so much beauty
Comilla was blooming when I went there towards the end of April. The rich green ,carpet of rice paddies
spreading to the horison on both sides of the road
was broken here and there by bright splashes of red. That was the Gol Mohor, aptly dubbed the " Flame ,of the
Fire and Murder
their vengeance
In one of the most crowded areas of the entire world-Comilla
district has a population density of 1,900 to
the square mile-only man was nowhere to be seen.
" Where are the Bengalis
?" I had asked my escorts in the strangely empty streets of
There were, of
course, soldiers-hundreds of unsmiling men in khaki, each with an automatic rifle. According to orders, the rifles never left their
hands. The roads are constantly patrolled by
tough, trigger-happy men. Wherever the army is, you won't find Bengalis.
Martial law orders, constantly repeated on the radio and in the
Press, proclaim the death penalty for any one caught in the act of sabotage. If a road is
obstructed or a bridge damaged or destroyed, all houses within 10 yards of the spot are
liable to be demolished and their inhabitants rounded up.
The practice is
even more terrible than anything the words could suggest. " Punitive action " is something that the Bengalis
have come to dread.
We saw what this meant when we were approaching Hajiganj,
which straddles the road to Chandpur, on the morning of
April 17. A few miles before Hajiganj, a 15-foot bridge had been damaged the previous night by rebels who were still active
in the area. According to Major Rathore (G-2
Ops.) an army unit had immediately been sent out to take punitive
action. Long spirals of smoke could be seen on all sides up to a distance of a quarter of a
mile from the damaged bridge. And as we carefully drove over a bed of wooden boards,
with which it had been hastily repaired, we could see houses in the village on the
right beginning to catch fire.
At the back of the village some jawans were spreading the flames with
dried coconut fronds. They make excellent kindling and are normally used for
cooking. We could also see a body sprawled between the coconut trees at the
entrance to the village. On other side of the
road another village in the rice paddies showed evidence of the fire that had gutted more than a dozen
bamboo and mat huts. Hundreds of villagers had
escaped before the army came. Others,
like the man among the coconut trees,
were slow to get away.
As we drove on, Major Rathore said, " They brought it on themselves. " I
said it was surely too terrible a
vengeance on innocent people for the acts of a handful of rebels. He did not answer.
A few hours later
when we were again passing through Hajiganj on the
way back from Chandpur, I had my first exposure to
the savagery of a" kill and burn mission ".
We were still caught up in the aftermath of a tropical storm which had hit
the area
that afternoon. A heavy overcast made ghostly shadows on the mosque towering: above the town.
Light drizzle was beginning to wet the uniforms of Captain Azhar
and the
four jawans riding in the exposed escort jeep behind us.
We turned a corner and found a convoy of trucks parked outside the mosque.
I counted
seven, all filled with jawans in battle dress. At the head of the column was& a jeep. Across the road
two men, supervised by a third, were trying to batter down the door of one of
more than a hundred shuttered shops lining the road. The studded teak wood door
was beginning to give under the combined assault of two axes as Major Rathore brought the
" What the hell are you
doing ?"
The tallest of the
trio, who was supervising the break-in, turned and peered at us. " Mota, " (Fatty) he shouted, "
what
the hell do you think we are doing ?"
Recognising the voice, Rathore drew a water-melon smile. It was, he informed me, his old
friend " Ifty "-Major Iftikhar of the 12th Frontier Force Rifles.
Rathore :" I thought someone
was looting. "
Iftikhar :" Looting ? No. We are on kill
and burn. "
Waving his Land to take in the shops, he
said he was going to destroy the '.ct.
Rathore :" How many did you get ?"
Iftikhar smiled
bashfully.
Rathore :" Come on. How many did you get ?"
Iftikhar :" Only twelve. And by God we were lucky to get them. We would have
lost those, too, if I hadn't sent my men from the back."
Prodded by Major Rathore, Iftikhar
then went on to describe vividly how after much searching in Hajiganj he had discovered twelve Hindus hiding in a house
on the outskirts of the town. These had been " disposed of ". Now Major Iftikhar
was on the second part of his mission : burn.
By this time the shop's door had been demobilised
and we found ourselves looking into one of those tiny catch-all
establishments which, in these parts, go under the title " Medical & Stores. " Under the Bengali lettering the signboard carried in English the legend " Ashok Medical & Stores. " Lower down was painted "
Prop. A. M. Bose. " Mr. Bose, like the rest
of the people of Hajiganj, had locked and run away.
In front of the shop a small display cabinet was crammed with patent
medicines, cough syrups, some bottles of mango
squash, imitation jewellery, reels of coloured cotton, thread and packets of knicker
elastic. Iftikhar kicked it over, smashing the light
wood-work into kindling. Next he reached out for some jute shopping bags on one shelf. He took some plastic toys
from another. A bundle of handkerchiefs and a small bolt of red cloth joined the pile
on the floor. Iftikhar heaped them all together and
borrowed a matchbox from one of the jawans sitting in our
Looting, he was
sharply reminded, was against orders.
Iftikhar soon had a fire going. He threw burning
jute bags into one corner of the shop, the bolt of cloth into another. The shop began to
blaze. Within minutes we could hear the crackle of flames behind shuttered doors as the
fire spread to the shop on the left, then on to the next one.
At this point Rathore
was beginning to get anxious about the gathering darkness. So we drove on.
When I chanced to meet Major Iftikhar the next day he ruefully told me, " I burnt only sixty houses. If it
hadn't rained I would have got the whole bloody lot. "
Approaching a village a few miles from Mudarfarganj
we were forced to a halt by what appeared to be a man crouching againts
a mud wall. One of the jawans warned it might be a fauji sniper.
But after careful scouting it turned out to
be a lovely young Hindu girl. She sat there with the placidity of her people,
waiting for God knows who. One of the jawans had been ten years with the East Pakistan Rifles
and could speak bazaar Bengali. He was told to order her into the village. She
mumbled something in reply, but stayed where she was, but was ordered a
second time. She was still sitting
there as we drove away. " She has, "
I was informed, " nowhere to
go-no family, no home. "
Major Iftikhar was one of several
officers assigned to kill and burn missions. They moved in after
the rebels had been cleared by the army with the freedom to comb-out and destroy
Hindus and " miscreants " (the official jargon for rebels) and to burn down everything in the areas from which the army
had been fired at.
Three shots to
kill a man
This lanky Punjabi officer liked to talk
about his job. Riding
with Iftikhar to the
Circuit House in Comilla on another occasion he told me about his latest
exploit.
“We got an old one." he said. " The bastard had grown a beard and was
posing
as a devout Muslim even called himself Abdul Manan.
But we gave him a medical inspection and the game was up. "
Iftikhar continued :" I wanted to finish him there and then,
but my men told me such a bastard deserved three shots. So I gave him one in
the balls, then one in the stomach. Then I finished him off with a shot in
the head. "
When I left Major Iftikhar
he was headed north to Bramanbaria. His mission : Another kill and burn.
Overwhelmed with terror the Bengalis have one of two reactions. Those who can run away
just seem to vanish. Whole towns have been abandoned as the army approached.
Those who can't run away adopt a cringing servility which only adds humiliation
to their plight.
Chandpur was an example of the first.
In the past this key river port on the Meghna was noted for its thriving
business houses and gay life. At night thousands of small country boats anchored on
the river's
edge made it a fairy land of lights. On April 18 Chandpur
was deserted. No people, no boats. Barely one per cent of the population had
remained. The rest, particularly the Hindus who constituted nearly half the
population, had fled.
Weirdly they had left behind thousands of Pakistani flags fluttering from
every house, shop and rooftop. The effect was like a national day celebration without
the crowds. It only served to emphasise the
haunted look.
The flags were by way of insurance.
Somehow the word had got around that the army considered any structure without a Pakistani
flag to be hostile and consequently to be destroyed. It did not matter how the Pakistani
flags were made, so long as they were adorned with the crescent and star.
So they came in all sizes, shapes and colours. Some
flaunted blue flelds, instead of the regulation
green. Obviously they had been hastily put together with the same
material that had been used for the blue Bangla Desh flag. Indeed blue Pakistani
flags were more common than the green. The scene in Chandpur
was repeated in Hajiganj, Madarfarganj,
Kasba, Brahmanbaria; all
ghost towns gay, with flags.
Laksham was an example of the other reaction; cringing.
When I drove into the town the morning after it had been cleared of the
rebels, all I could see was the army and literally thousands of Pakistani flags.
The major in charge there had camped in the police station, and it was there that
Major Rathore took us. My colleague, a Pakistani TV
cameraman, had to make a propaganda film about the "return to normalcy" in Laksham-one of the endless series broadcast daily
showing welcome parades and "peace meetings."
A 'Parade' and a Knowing Wink
I wondered how he could manage it but the
Major said it would be no sweat. "There are enough of these bastards
left to put on a good show. Give me 20 minutes.”
Lieutenant Javed of the 39 Baluch
was assigned the task of rounding up a crowd.
He called out to an elderly
bearded man who had apparently been brought in for questioning. The man, who later gave his name as Moulana Said Mohammad
Saidul Huq, insisted he was a "staunch
Muslim Leaguer and not from the Awami League" (The Muslim League
led the movement for an independent
Moulana Saidul Huq was as good as his word. We had hardly drunk our flit of the deliciouly refreshing coconut milk that had been thought
fully supplied by the Major when we heard shouts in the distance. "
Within minutes the parade had grown into a
"public meeting" complete with a make-shift public
address system and a rapidly multiplying group of would-be speakers.
Mr. Mahbub-ur-Rahman was
pushed forward to make the address of welcome to the army. He introduced
himself as "N.F. College Professor of English and Arabic who had
also tried for History and is a life-time member of the great Muslim, League
Party."
Introduction over, Mahbub-ur-Rahman
gave
forth with gusto. " Punjabis and Bengalis,"
he said, " had united for
After the "meeting" I asked the Major what he
thought about the speech, "Serves
the purposes," he said, "but I
don't trust that bastard. I'll put him on my list."
The agony of
The troops went into action immediately with equipment
borrowed from the 14th Division which till then constituted the Eastern Command.
The 9th Division,. operating from Comilla, was ordered to seal the border in the east
against movement of rebels and their supplies. The 16th Division, with headquarters at Jessore, had a
similar task in the western sector of the province. They completed these assignments
by the third week of May. With the rebels-those who have not been able to escape to
India-boxed in a ring of steel and fire, the two army divisions are
beginning to converge in a relentless comb-out operation. Ibis will, undoubtedly
mean that the terror experienced in
the border areas will now spread to the middle point. It could also be more
painful. The human targets will have
nowhere to run to.
On April 20 Lt.-
For the rainy season, the Pakistan Government obtained from
There is also the clear prospect of famine, because of the breakdown of the
distribution system. Seventeen of the 23 districts of
The road and rail tracks between the
Two other factors must be added. One is large-scale boarding of grain by people who have
begun to anticipate the famine. This makes a tight position infinitely more
difficult. The other is the Government of Pakistan's refusal to acknowledge
the danger of famine publicity. Lt. Gen. Tikka Khan , the Military Governor of
Let Them Die of Starvation
Discussing the problem in his plush air-conditioned office in
THE MILITARY Government's
There is, superficially, logic in this
reasoning.
On the one hand, it is true that there
is no let up in the reign of terror. The policy of subjugation is certainly
being pursued with vigour in
On the other hand, no government could be unaware that this policy must
fail (There are just not enough West Pakistanis to hold down the much greater
numbers in
All this would seem to indicate that
This is widely
held view. It sounds
logical, But is it true?
My own view is that it is not. It has been my unhappy privilege to have had the
opportunity to observe at first hand both what
I think that in
reality there is no contradiction in the Government's
This is not an
arbitrary opinion of mine. The facts speak for themselves.
The first consideration of the army has been and still is the obliteration
of every trace of separatism in
Will The Killing
Stop ?
No meaningful or
viable political solution is possible in
The crucial question is: Will the killing stop?
I was given the
army's answer by Major-General Shaukat Raza, Commanding Officer of the 9th Division, during our
first meeting at Comilla on April 16.
"You must
be absolutely sure," he said, "that we have not undertaken such a drastic and expensive operation-expensive both in
men and money-for nothing. We've undertaken a
job. We are going to finish it, not hand it
over half done to the politicians so that they can mess it up
again. The army can't keep coming back like this every three or four years. It has a more important task. I assure you that when we have got through with what we are
doing there will never be need again for such an operations".
Major-General Shaukat Raza is one of the three
divisional commanders in the field. He is in a key position. He is not given to talking
through his hat.
Significantly, General Shaukat Raza's ideas were echoed by every military officer I talked
to during my 10 days in
The single-mindedness of the army is underscored by the military operation itself. By any standard, it is a major venture. 1t is not something that can be switched on and off without the most grave consequences.
The army has already taken a terrible toll in dead and injured. It was privately
said in
Militarily-and it is soldiers who will be taking the decision-to call a
halt to the operation at this stage would be indefensible. It would only mean more trouble with the Bengali
rebels. Implacable hatred has been displayed on both sides. There can
be no truce or negotiated settlement; only total victory or total defeat. Time is on
the side of the Pakistan Army, not of the isolated, uncoordinated and
ill-equipped rebel groups. Other circumstances, such as an expanded conflict which
takes in other powers, could of course alter the picture. But as it stands today the
Pakistan Army has no reason to doubt that it will eventually achieve its
objective. That is why the casualites are stolidly
accepted.
The enormous financial outlay already made on the
The Chinese have helped with equipment, which is pouring down the
Conversations with senior military officers in
In one sentence, the Government is too far committed militarily to abandon the
(I) The Bengalis have
proved themselves "unreliable" and must be ruled by West Pakistanis;
(2) The Bengalis will have to be re-educated along proper Islamic lines. The " Islamisation of the masses "-this is the
official jargon-is intended to eliminate secessionist tendencies and provide a
strong religious bond with
(3) When the Hindus
have been eliminated by death and flight, their property will be used as a golden carrot to win over the
under-privileged Muslim middleclass. This
will provide the base for erecting administrative and political structure--, in
the future.
This policy is being pursued with the
utmost blatancy.
Because of
the mutiny, it has been officially decreed that there will not for the present be any further recruitment of Bengalis in
the defence forces. Senior air force and navy officers, who were not in anyway
involved, have been moved " as a precaution " to non-sensitive
positions. Bengali fighter pilots, among them some of the aces of the Air Force, had the humiliation of being grounded
and moved to non-flying duties. Even
PIA air crews operating between the two wings of the country have been
strained clean of Bengalis.
The East Pakistan Rifles, once almost exclusively a Bengali para-military force, has ceased to exist since the mutiny.
A new force, the Civil Defence Force, has been raised
by recruiting Biharis and volunteers from
Hundreds of West Pakistani Government civil servants, doctors, and
technicians for the radio, TV, telegraph and telephone services have already
been sent out to East Pakistan; More are being encouraged to go with the
promise of one and two-step promotions. But the transfer, when made, is
obligatory. President Yahya recently issued an order making it possible to transfer
civil servants to any part of
I was told that all the commissioners of
The Government has also come down hard on the universities and colleges of
Bengali officers are also being weeded out of sensitive positions in the
Civil and Foreign Services. All are currently being subjected to the most
exhaustive screening.
This colonisation process quite obviously does
not work even half as efficiently as the administration wishes. I was given
vivid evidence of this by Major Agha, Martial Law
Administrator of Comilla. He had been having a problem getting the local Bengali
executive engineers to go out and repair the bridges and roads that had been destroyed
or damaged by the rebels. This task kept getting snarled in red tape, and the
bridges remained unrepaired. Agha,
of course, knew the reason. "You can't expect them to work," he told me, "when you have
been killing them and destroying their
country. That at least is their point of view, and we are paying for it."
CAPTAIN DURRANI, of the Baluch Regiment, who was in charge of the company guarding
the Comilla airport, had his own methods of dealing with the problem. " I have told them," he said with reference to the Bengalis
maintaining the control tower, " that I will shoot anyone who even looks
like he is doing something suspicious." Durranni
had made good his word. A Bengali who had approached the airport a few nights
earlier was shot, " Could have been a
rebel,"
I was told.
Durrani had
another claim to fame. He
had personally accounted -more than 60 men" while clearing the villages
surrounding the airport.
The
harsh reality of colonisation in the East is being concealed by shameless window
dressing. For several weeks President Yahya
Khan and Lt-Gen. Tikka Khan have been trying to get political support in East
Pakistan for what they are _.:.-.e. The
results have not exactly been satisfying. The support forthcoming so far
has
been from people like Moulvi Farid
Ahmad, a Bengali lawyer in
The only prominent personality to emerge for this purpose has been Mr. Nurul Amin, an old Muslim Leaguer
and former Chief Minister of the Province who was one of only two
non-Awami Leaguers to be elected to the National Assembly. He is now in his
seventies. But even Nurul Amin has
been careful not to be too effusive. His two public statements to date have been concerned only
with the "Indian interference".
Bengalis look with scorn on the few who
"collaborate". Farid Ahmad and Fazlul Quadeer Chaudhury are painfully aware of this. Farid Ahmad makes a point of keeping his windows shuttered and only
those who have been scrutinised and recognised through a peephole in the front door are allowed into the
house.
By singularly blunt methods the Government has been able to
get a grudging acquiescence from 31 Awami Leaguers who had been elected to
the national and provincial
assemblies. They are being kept on ice in
ABDUL BARI the tailor who was lucky to survive is 24 years old. That is the same age as
-Anthony
Mascarenhas, Former Assistant Editor, Morning News,
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