AT A GUERRILLA HAMLET, in East Pakistan, Nov. 6—“If you foreigners would send us the arms and ammunition we need, could throw out the Pakistan Army in seven days,” the guerrilla officer said. “As it is it will take a bit longer.”

There was a murmur of assent from the half‐dozen East Pakistani separatist guerrillas seated around a flickering hurricane lantern in a small house. A cyclone sideswiping the eastern region was driving monsoon rains through cracks in the straw thatching and everyone was covered with the thick clay that accompanies foul weather in Bengal.

In the face of a fairly well-equipped army of 70,000 men supported by armor, artillery and planes, such claims are clearly overoptimistic.

It is equally apparent that, despite the Pakistani Army's firepower, it is fighting a long and increasingly bloody war of attrition against the movement that calls its homeland Bangla Desh (Bengal Nation).

Under the precepts of warfare laid down by such Asian strategists as Mao Tse‐tung, East Pakistan is a guerrillas heaven, with the terrain mostly on the side of the fighters of the Mukti Bahini or Liberation Force.

East Pakistan is almost completely bounded by India, which is bitterly hostile to the Pakistani Army and which not only provides bases, arms and training for the guerrillas but also pins down most of the army along the border by pounding the Pakistanis with daily artillery barrages.

This guerrilla hamlet, in common with many rural communities in the deltaic flood plain of East Pakistan, is a good 20 miles from the nearest road or footpath. It is accessible only through a maze of shallow canals clogged with water plants and offering innumerable positions for ambushing intruders.

This correspondent, traveling on a motor launch and a sampan, was escorted to the hamlet by a guerrilla guide. At the request of the residents, the location of the hamlet, which is south of Dacca, is not being specified.

Guerrillas in “liberated zones” like this one feel completely secure from army operations and their houses display Bangla Desh posters and portraits of the imprisoned Bengali leader, Sheik Mujibur Rahman.

Strategy With the Flag

Rickety river launches connecting the outskirts of this zone with the regional capital at Dacca are careful to lower the Pakistani flag soon after leaving the docks there. Failure to fly the flag in Government-controlled areas can result in death or the destruction of property at the hands of the army, but flying it in guerrilla-controlled zones can be equally dangerous.

An exact knowledge of where one zone ends and the other begins is important to everyone in East Pakistan. As a rule of thumb, foreign diplomats and military observers consider that about a quarter of the region is controlled by the guerrillas, who claim a force of at least 100,000 men. But even in the heart of army‐occupied territory Pakistan control is tenuous.

When traveling with guerrilla agents in Dacca or elsewhere, an elaborate system of signals and clandestine arrangements smoothes the way past any potential military obstacle. Seemingly, the entire population other than the troops from West Pakistan are in on the conspiracy.

“Operating this far from the Indian border we suffer from some obvious disadvantages,” said a guerrilla captain who had once been a university chemistry instructor. “In the border areas most of our fighters are able to go to India for training and to bring back weapons. But here very few of our guerrillas have been to India and we have a chronic shortage of arms.”

“In common with all guerrilla movements,” he continued, “we capture our arms from the enemy. But the enemy rarely ventures into our territory and he has no outposts we can overrun “

Severe Shortage of Arms

Another guerrilla officer explained that local units were organized in 40‐man platoons comprising 4 squads of 10 men each.

“We have arms enough for only one guerrilla in four at the moment,” he said, “so we rotate squads on operations, transferring guns. We have explosives, but our biggest lacks are automatic weapons, machine guns and heavy weapons such as recoilless rifles.”

Questions on how the chain of command works are evaded. An officer, asked about the location of Mujibnagar, the proclaimed capital of “the People's Republic of Bangla Desh,” replied with a smile, “It is a mobile capital.”

Communications between guerrilla districts are said to be rapid and reliable. During this correspondent's visit a courier arrived from a distant zone carrying a plastic case sealed against the mud and rain and containing battle directives, propaganda posters and copies of the mimeographed Mukti Bahini newspaper.

Three Levels of Organization

“Broadly speaking,” a guerrilla surgeon said, “we are organized in three levels.

“We have a sabotage unit which mainly works against power lines, bridges, railroads, vital services in cities and, of course, all military and police organizations..

“Second, we have the guerrillas, who ordinarily confine themselves to small‐unit actions. Each liberated village trains its own guerrilla force, and usually we have instructors from the former East Pakistan police, the East Bengal Regiment or the East Pakistan Rifles.

“Third, we have the front fighters—our divisional units, which will fight the final battles with large units of the Pak Army.”

“So far.” he added, “the guerrillas have done most of the work.”

The army, which has been trying since March 25 to subdue the Bengali nationalist movement, carries out constant punitive raids into the many rebel zones but rarely seeks to occupy them.

“They can't get at us here,” a guerrilla said, “but along the banks of deep rivers villages are exposed to army launches. One such village near here was destroyed recently. But we make them pay for it.”

The insurgents told how an untrained unit annihilated an amphibious army raiding party several weeks ago.

“We were all green at the time, but common sense and the reading of textbooks helped us considerably,” a former student related. “There's a sharp bend in the river near here, where we had been waiting in ambush for days. Eventually the enemy launches came and we caught them in heavy cross fire from both banks.”

“Some brave boys in the sapper group had made bombs,” he said, “by tying together quarter‐pound blocks of PK [high explosive]. While the troops were pinned down by our fire from the banks, the sappers swam out with charges in their hands, throwing them into the launches only after the fuses were almost entirely burned, and quickly diving under water.

“We sank the launches and killed the troops.”

He said that the army at tacked again and there was “constant fighting” for three days, but that by Oct. 28 the guerrillas had killed nearly 150 soldiers. “We lost some people, but on balance we won that fight,” he added.

There is confusion on policy and ideology as orders are passed down the guerrilla ranks.

‘Sheik Mujib Is Dead’

The Government forces, which occasionally use helicopters effectively in assaults on guerrilla strongpoints, rely a great deal on a civilian volunteer militia called razakars—young men aged 14 and up who are willing to fight the guerrillas. The razakars, who are not entirely trusted by the Government—they are said to be surrendering in substantial numbers—are armed only with old bolt ‐ action rifles and a few cartridges each.

A senior guerrilla officer, asked about policy toward the razakars, said: “We welcome them all. We need all the fighters we can get regardless of what they have done in the past, and if they have committed civil crimes, they can be settled by civil courts once we have an independent Bangla Desh.”

But a guerrilla of the line replied: “If a razakar comes to us with his weapon we welcome him. If he comes to us unarmed, he is probably an enemy spy and we kill him.”

Generally speaking the officers and men show little interest in politics and reply vaguely when asked about their objectives. A captain gave a typical response, saying:

“Bangla Desh will be a democracy. We hear talk about Maoist leaders taking over the movement, but as far as we are concerned that is nonsense. For all of us the idea is to create an independent, democratic Bengali state. The details we can work out after victory.”

The guerrillas indifference to specific political goals appears to extend to Shiek Mujib, the elected leader of the Bengali (nationalist movement, who is on trial for treason and in a West Pakistani jail.

“As far as we are concerned Sheik Mujib is dead,” a guerrilla explained. “Once he fell into the hands of the enemy he died as leader of Bengali independence. If he were released as the result of some deal with the Islamabad Government, he would want us to kill him and we would kill him.”

“Sheik Mujib lives in all of us, and whether he lives or dies, his fighting spirit will never be extinguished,” the guerrilla said.

The Mukti Bahini acknowledges that it lacks arms but says shortages are more than offset by mass Bengali support.

The leaders, showing marked aversion to efforts by the United Nations and other organizations to provide humanitarian relief to East Pakistan, say that everything sent is used by the Government as a political tool, with the East Pakistanis getting none of it.

“Don't blame us if you foreigners get killed,” a guerrilla said.