RAWALPINDI, Pakistan, Dec. 7—Sirens howl day and night over most of West Pakistan and people never know whether there will really be a raid.

During daylight alerts all traffic stops in the cities. In the countryside cars are forced to pull over for hours at a time by policemen or by young militiamen who seem to enjoy the new authority they have acquired.

The Government has repeatedly told the people that driving at night without lights is dangerous and that lights should be extinguished only during air raids.

The people are not convinced, especially the young militiamen and military police privates manning checkpoints. There seems to be virtual unanimity among common folk not only that total blackout is vital to survival in air raids but also that anything short of it is unpatriotic.

Cars showing lights during all‐clear periods are stoned and some vehicles try to ram them head on. As a result the roads, some of which are jammed with refugees competing with military convoys, have become scenes of carnage.

This is the first war in which Pakistanis have had to worry most of the time about aerial attack. But the Indian raids have not been heavy, never involving more than half a dozen planes.

On the other hand, bombs, rockets and cannon shells are coming down, making a fearful racket around airports and other installations. They kill a few people and scare most of the rest.

Survivors Still Standing There

In the interval since the 1965 conflict both the Indian and the Pakistani Air Forces have become far more dangerous, with combat aircraft supplied by the Soviet Union, France and other nations, as well as spare parts from the United States for F‐104 and F‐86 jet fighters.

On the highways, the bodies of donkeys, dogs, horses and occasional camels are strewn about and wrecks involving four or five buses and trucks at a time are encountered every few miles.

Driving at night is particularly hazardous because of wreckage. In one case what had been several buses, cars and trucks lay amid pools of blood. The survivors were standing passively in total darkness, seemingly waiting for the next blacked‐out vehicle to crush them, too.

Other Pakistanis, trying to get away from the war were trudging silently along the blackened roads, wrapped in blankets against the clear chill of the winter nights.

Sometimes a lonely policeman or soldier will practice his English with a passing foreigner, speaking proudly of Pakistan's thrusts into India, of her air victories and of the new jihad, or holy war.

Talk of Martyred Heroes

Sometimes one will speak of a relative fighting in East Pakistan who has become a martyred hero and whose body may be brought home to West Pakistan for full honors after the war.

But then, in a tone seeming to elicit reassurance, Pakistanis have a way of asking foreigners how long the conflict will last. If they receive no answer they nearly always say: “A couple weeks, three at most, God willing.”

The two previous wars with India were brief, but this time things seem different in ominous ways.

The Government has told of smashing a hundred or so enemy aircraft in the first three days, and yet the raids go on and seem to get worse. The Government tells the people that Pakistani columns are plunging deep into Kashmir and all along the Punjab frontier into India, but the rumble of artillery does not recede into the distance.

The president, Gen. Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan, has told his people that the Indian Army is five times larger. Only some 8 per cent of the people can read, but most know that the Soviet Union, which mediated between India and Pakistan to end the 1965 conflict, is pouring military aid into India this time.

An unspoken martial creed dominates the lives of Pakistanis. Conscription has rarely been needed for it is a holy duty to fight for the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The army dominates life everywhere. The leading daily newspaper is named Jang, which means “war” in Urdu.

Foreigners Are Frightened

Thousands of foreigners living in Pakistan, including many Americans working to help develop her backward economy, have been frightened to the point of leaving. Some do not intend to return, convinced that the subcontinent is doomed and that no outside assistance will do any good.

The evacuees include hundreds of French and Italian engineers and technicians who were working on the enormous Tarbela Dam, relief workers from all over the world and even Britons who had spent most of their lives here.

Apart from fear of raids and Indian victories, disillusionment is helping to speed foreigners away from the subcontinent. Many came hoping to add something to the development of one of the poorest, sickest, least educated peoples in the world.

“I've done my best for two years,” an American contractor said. “It's been like sweeping away the ocean with a broom, and now with this war, I've had it.”

The real causes of the conflict, never fully understood by most West Pakistanis in the first place, have been forgotten in a welter of “crush India” slogans.

People rarely speak of the free elections held throughout Pakistan a year ago today—the first in her quarter‐century history—in which the people of East Pakistan voted for a man and party advocating autonomy for the East Bengalis.

On March 25 the army nullified that vote, outlawing the victorious Awami League, jailing its leader, Sheik Mujibur Rahman, and slaughtering tens of thousands of Bengalis, especially those of the Hindu faith.

For some months East Pakistan lay subdued under draconian military rule, but a guerrilla movement rapidly came to flower. Apparently it is backed by most of the people of East Pakistan, not to mention the Indians, who had generally sought to create the most difficulty possible for their bifurcated Moslem neighbor.

India's most frequently voiced complaint with regard to East Pakistan has been the economic burden posed by the millions who poured across the border after the Pakistani Army began its bloody repression. New Delhi has insisted that the major problems would disappear if East Pakistan were cut loose from the Western region, which has always given it short shrift, and if Sheik Mujib were freed to assume leadership of the new state.

Mere Professions on Peace

As the war blazed the army postponed the creation of a civilian government, which in any case would have been a figurehead for the generals, who have governed since 1958.

Both India and Pakistan expected war and some of their leaders seemed to diplomats to have wanted war despite both sides' professions of devotion to peace.

The question for outsiders as to who committed aggression is enormously complicated by the fact that no foreign observers have witnessed the main events and each side has repeatedly tarnished its credibility with local observers.