Dacca

AN American diplomat, recently assigned to Dacca after a
long spell in Saigon, looks around this ravaged land and
says: "Exactly like Vietnam." Not very far from his
house guerillas have just destroyed a steam turbine.
Yesterday it was a bank building, tomorrow it will
perhaps be a river boat.

Cities like Dacca and Chittagong are technically under
army control. But, as in Vietnam, the "enemy" is
everywhere as the bomb attacks and nightly shootings
demonstrate. Like the Americans, the West Pakistani
troops confront an enemy speaking a foreign language,
for the Sanskritised Bengali is alien to the Persian-
influenced Urdu of the West Pakistanis. Above all, the
military government attributes the guerillas' growing
strength to the Indians. This completes the Vietnam
syndrome, with India being to the West Pakistanis what
North Vietnam is to the Americans.

The one big difference between Vietnam and East Bengal
is that there still is a segment of Vietnamese opinion
which is strongly pro-American. Such pro-West Pakistan
sentiment as one finds in this province, however,
appears to be the result of the military government's
methods. "Come with me to the villages and you won't
find one Bengali who does not believe in the unity of
Pakistan," said a brigade commander in Sylhet. This was
true. But later, when we went out by ourselves, we found
exactly the opposite. Even in areas near Dacca,
villagers saluted us with folded arms, whispering behind
their hands "Joi Bangla" (victory to Bengal). Had we
been accompanied by army officers, they certainly would
have said "Joi Pakistan."

The brigade commander in Sylhet had just been involved
in another shelling incident. Three of his men had been
wounded. He said the shelling from the Indian side was
the usual operational tactic to provide cover for
guerillas entering East Bengal. As the Indians engage
the small number of Pakistani troops guarding a border
point, the guerillas penetrate into Bengal, blow up
bridges or some other facilities and disappear. Since
the beginning of October such border incidents have been
steadily increasing and have now reached proportions of
a regular but undeclared war. The expertise the
guerillas show and the arms and ammunition they have
indicate Indian active support for the Mukti Bahini. The
army officers argue that the guerilla movement will
collapse within a matter of days if India stops
supporting it. This is doubtful. For one thing, the core
of the guerilla organisation consists of former East
Bengali soldiers, para-military forces and policemen;
some 50,000 of these experienced men were believed to
have defected in March. For another, the support the
local population gives Bengali guerillas is more
committed than that the Vietcong have experienced in
Vietnam. The way the army wreaks total destruction on
suspected villages seems to confirm this.

With India tying up some 78,000 West Pakistani soldiers
along the border, the Mukti Bahini (liberation army) has
been able to strike effectively at government forces,
destroying coastal ships, damaging electric
installations, disrupting communications. It is
doubtful, however, whether there is competent central
guidance of the different guerilla units operating in
different parts of the country. The collapse of
communications, for example, affects the guerillas more
than the army which has its own radio network. Also
disadvantageous to the guerillas is the fact that
bandits have started operating in the name of the Mukti
Bahini.

But the biggest anxiety the Mukti Bahini fighters have
is caused by the attempts of local Maoist extremists to
assume the leadership of the liberation movement. Such a
struggle within the struggle had been forecast by many
observers even in the early stages of the crisis. Now it
appears that the "Naxalites" have become influential in
some districts; in Noakhali near Chittagong they are
said to be in command.

Eyewitnesses say the fight between the Naxalites and the
Awami League elements in the Mukti Bahini is even more
fierce than that between the Bengalis and the West
Pakistanis. The Naxalites denounce the Awami League in
ideological terms. While the Awami League is bent simply
on driving the West Pakistanis out of Bangla Desh, the
Naxalites seem to be looking further ahead to an
ideological dawn over East Bengal.

Meanwhile, morale is a nagging problem for the troops
from West Pakistan. As they concentrate on border
defence, internal civil defence and general policing
duties have been handed over to "Razakars" or
volunteers. Their job is defined as "to protect the
peace-loving and patriotic people from Indian agents."
They have been recruited hastily and mostly consist of
very young boys no taller than the guns they carry.
Naturally, the sense of security they spread around them
is dubious. But they can, and often do, aggravate the
sense of insecurity among the local population they are
supposed to protect-by, for example, forcing people now
and again to buy their "innocence" with small sums of
money. There are about 55,000 men in the Razakar force.
Each receives about US$0.50 a day - quite attractive pay
by local standards.

But the inexperienced Razakar boys cannot be giving much
solace to around 1,000 West Pakistani policemen who are
supposed to back them up. These men are far from home
and increasingly suffering from demoralisation. The
regular troops also are showing signs of the same
affliction. They left home many months ago and there is
no sign yet of their combat assignment being over. The
brigade commander in Sylhet said: "If nothing happens by
November - be it negotiation or war - I do not know how
the situation will develop." A young Pathan captain of
the Frontier Corps was much more vehement when he said:
"We are hungry for peace, but this hunger can only be
satisfied by destroying India."