No one can toll just how despairing life is in East Pakistan. The violent assault of the Pakistan army against a resentful people has been involved with and may on occasion have inflated the worst kind of communal rioting. Bengali Muslims, Bihari Muslims and Hindus have all been killing each other. From the stories told by refugees the hatred may now be abating.

The tragedy is that fear leads to flight and flight engenders fear and so the appalling total mounts up. Most of the two millions now in India might have done better to stay put. Now that they have crossed the border the inescapable task of feeding and caring for them has to be undertaken. The Indian Government is doing its best and is getting assistance from many international organizations including the United Nations. By contrast the Pakistan Government has stood stiffly on its sovereignty in rejecting U Thant's offer of help in East Pakistan. Such international aid as it may draw upon must be administered by Pakistan agencies, says President Yahya Khan in his reply.

While half of the country goes on bleeding no plans for bringing East Pakistan to political life again have emerged from the capital in the west. A month ago a half-hearted attempt to rally public opinion over the signatures of some old guard politicians in East Pakistan—most of them ousted by the Awami League's overwhelming victory last year—came to nothing.

Since then the only official statement from the Pakistan Government has been a pained defence of their action and a denial of most reports about East Bengal — many of them exaggerated no doubt. From President Yahya Khan, whose honest intentions need not be doubted, there has been silence. Perhaps he more than half shares the common opinion that a tragic and seemingly irrevocable blunder was made two months ago when the violent suppression of opposition in East Pakistan was ordered.

Pressed over their immobility in taking those generous stops that might put East Pakistan back on some hopeful path after all the brutality, the reply of Pakistan spokesmen tends to be that their anxieties over India are still too urgent to allow of fresh moves to rescue the wounded eastern wing. Only-when the border has been stabilized can that task begin. Yet the border now is more tense than it was a month ago.

In part the tension follows on the enormous flow of refugees. The unmuffled Indian sympathy for the cause of East Bengal and the obvious aid from the Indian side given to the Bangla Desh resistance movement must also excite Pakistani anger. But these are temporary and localized issues which both Governments can keep in their right place with care. What is much worse are the deep emotions, unresolved since the days of partition, all of which have now been stoked up by the cry for secession in East Pakistan. The Pakistan Government's statement says that the root cause of the trouble is that India has never really accepted the fact of Pakistan. To most Indians the potential secession of East Pakistan plainly does negate some of the assumptions on which Pakistan is founded.

But such arguments and the fears they arouse no longer have any meaning in face of the urgencies of suffering. Or they should not but for the fact that suffering is so common that it is rarely catastrophic enough to take anyone's political breath away. Of the two Governments Pakistan's is the most anxious. It is in much the weaker position, torn by a good deal of division in the western wing as well as the secessionist impulses in the east. Its financial position is serious and the future economic prospect extremely gloomy. These are conditions in which neither Government can afford even to sound belligerent along a border packed with tension as well as suffering.