Wall Street Journal

MUNSHIGANJ SUBDIVISION, EAST PAKISTAN. - As Indian
Forces intensify their pressure against East Pakistan,
it appears certain that an independent Bengal Nation
will emerge. Yesterday the battle for Dacca began, and
some top civilian officials of the East Pakistan
government resigned.

What would Bangla Desh, as the Bengalis call it, be
like? It's impossible to tell for sure. But the Mukti
Bahini, or liberation fighters, have taken control of
much of the rural East Pakistan as well as a lengthening
list of larger towns. Thus, a recounting of a trip to
one of these areas taken just before the general Indian-
Pakistani war broke out may offer something of a
microcosmic view of a future Bangla Desh, its army, its
administrators and its people.

The area chosen was Munshiganj Subdivision, a village 22
miles south of Dacca. The trip was taken in what is
called a "country boat"-a 60-foot rivercraft of advanced
age that chugs down one of the many broad and meandering
branches of the Ganges. The boat trip takes about eight
hours, for rivers don't flow 22 miles as the crow flies.

Such a visit tends to try one's tolerance for inflated
rhetoric and exaggerated claims as well as for the
lukewarm tea that is hospitably (but constantly and
insistently) served to foreigners by every Bengali with-
in walking distance of a tea leaf, There are large
quantities of both naivete and over-confidence to be
found among the Muktis, And much of what one sees and
hears appears to be a false front: Bangla Desh flags
hoisted for visitors and later tucked away, the
orchestrated cheers and rehearsed military exercises.
There are also signs of lack of forceful leadership as
well as some indications of indiscipline.

TEA AND RHETORIC

Whatever their weaknesses, however, the Muktis were in
control of Munshiganj Sub-division. A Bangla Desh civil
administration was functioning, probably as efficiently
as any other administration ever functioned here. Its
local courts could be seen dealing with local land
disputes squabbles over trees and fishponds, and marital
problems. Bangla Desh administrators were collecting
revenue. The Muktis were armed and some of them trained.
And there was no doubting the massive popular support
they had from the local people.

Within minutes after arrival, our small party is having
tea in a Bengali house, surrounded by generally friendly
an uniformly vocal Bangla Desh partisans. The rhetoric
is dramatic, Bengalis are born orators. Speaking of the
Punjabis West Pakistan's dominant ethnic group, a 60-
year-old member of the local Bangla Desh civil
administration says: "The Punjabi brutes have tortured
our people as no other people have been tortured. A
burning fire is in our hearts. How can we tolerate the
brutes? All ways are now closed to them."

A young Mukti says, "Last week we operated on (killed)
36 Punjabis." How many prisoners did the Muktis take? he
is asked.

"None," he replies. "That's remarkable," a visitor says.

Remarkable and gallant," the old man interjects. He
pulls up his shirt to display a black band tucked in the
waist of his sarong. "When I find a Punjabi, I put my
black band over his eyes and then I stab him."

Explains a young man with a Sten gun: "Before, we were
soft-minded, but now we are cruel. We are making Bangla
Desh a free nation on the map and Inshallah (God
willing) we are succeeding." Another local leader
explains that after the Pakistani army is defeated, it
will be only a matter of time before Indian West Bengal
is incorporated into a "Greater Bangla Desh." The Indian
state of Assam will have to be added also, he says. What
about Tripura, another Indian state bordering on East
Pakistan? "Yes, that too."

TROUBLE WITH THE SCENARIO

It is a scenario that isn't completely improbable for
the more distant future-and some of the Muktis' Indian
sponsors privately worry about the loss of several
Indian states to the new nation.

Piecing together an accurate history of events in this
area isn't easy. But it appears that as in most parts of
East Pakistan, the Bangla Desh flag was hoisted here
briefly last March. In April and May the Pakistani army
swept through this area but less devastatingly than in
many other places. Most of the local Hindus, special
targets of the Pakistani army, fled to India.

Some nearby villages apparently were razed, but we see
none of these on this trip. As the Pakistani army moved
through the area, the villagers fled deeper and deeper
into the countryside. When the army left, the villagers
returned. There followed some months of a military and
political vacuum. The presence of the West Pakistani
government barely reached these villages in any form,
but the Muktis themselves were a weak and largely covert
presence. Within the past month, however, the Muktis
filled the vacuum. This coincided with Indian pressure
along the borders and also apparently with the return of
better-armed and better-trained Muktis from Indian
border training camps. Gradually a ring of Mukti-
controlled countryside has been closing in around Dacca.
Munshiganj Subdivision is part of that ring.

On the second day of our trip, we get a better look at
the Muktis. We are guided several miles downriver to
another village and welcomed ashore with the fanfare of
flags, cheers and even a Bangla Desh photographer in a
natty woolen suit who stands on the river-bank to snap
our pictures as we step ashore. A crowd of perhaps 500
villagers was assembled on two hours' notice, an
official explains. "With two days' notice," he adds, "we
could have gotten two million."

As a green, red and yellow Bangla Desh flag flutters
from the tallest one-story building, the 500 "citizens
of Bangla Desh" respond in well-cadenced chorus to a
cheer-leader's calls.

"Free our leader, Sheikh Mujib (who is imprisoned) ,"
the cheerleader yells.

"Sheikh Mujib, Sheikh Mujib!" the crowd responds.

"My country, your country!" the leader screams .

Then, like 500 Ed McMahons introducing Johnny Carson
comes the crowd response: "Joi Bangla (Victory to
Bengal) !"

Lined up nearby are 60 or so Mukti Bahini. They are
dressed in sarongs or loincloths and armed with a
smorgasbord of weaponry: old Lee-Enfield .303 rifles,
snub-barreled Sten gun, AK47 automatics, shotguns and
grenades .

The guests are treated to a display of ambush tactics by
the Muktis. The men crawl through some low underbrush,
gripping their weapons, one man with a grenade between
his teeth, while an officer with a brass whistle
whistles directions. The Bangla Desh photographer
photographs an ABC camera crew photographing the ambush
display.

THE TALE OF BENGALI

The Muktis here seem to run the gamut from very
professional to totally amateur. The professionals
include a few former members of the regular Pakistani
army and some veterans of paramilitary and police
forces. The local unit commander was a sergeant in the
regular army and tells his bitter story:

"In March the bastard Punjabi sepoys (soldiers) stopped
saluting me.... Later, one of the bastard sepoys blowed
me on the face with a gun.... The bastard sepoys struck
my wife.... Later, I saw the bastard Punjabis forcibly
rape young Bengali girls in the open filed.... I escaped
and determined to take my revenge at all costs and all
circumstances.... Inshallah I have so far killed 40
Punjabi soldiers.... I take my revenge."

Most of the Muktis in the area seem to be students, and
many appear to have made the trek to training camps just
over the border in India and then to have infiltrated
back here. The Bangla Desh officials don't admit that
this is so, indeed they deny any links with India. But
several young Muktis proudly begin to relate their
experiences in India before being hushed up by more
politically attuned colleagues. And some of the Muktis
carry Indian-made arms.

Many Muktis throughout East Pakistan probably aren't
entirely pleased that the full-scale war between India
and Pakistan is on. Presumably they would have won their
independence with limited Indian help. But now, if
Bangla Desh is created, it may appear all too much an
Indian-produced product.

While some of the Muktis in this village seem to have
been well-trained at various camps, others probably have
received no training at all. But every young man here
calls himself a "freedom fighter." And most claim to
have personally killed at least one Punjabi squad.

"We are all shaeed," one youth says. "That means men who
die for the sake of their country," a buddy explains.
"He killed more than 10 Punjabis," they say, pointing to
a third youth. I scribble the number "10" in my
notebook, "No, more than 10," says the first youth,
genuinely offended. Weapons are handled almost
reverently by the Muktis. "This is my very life and good
friend," says a pudgy young soldier in dark glasses,
caressing his vintage Lee-Enfield rifle.

In another village a court is in session. Ten mostly
elderly members of a local Bangla Desh council sit
behind a low wooden table and busy themselves scribbling
notes on the cases they are hearing. This day the cases
involve (1) a dispute over a 30-square-yard plot of
land, (2) a marital squabble, (3) a quarrel between two
fishermen over rights to a pond, (4) a creditor's demand
for payment of a $5 debt and (5) a dispute between two
neighbors over who has the right to chop down a tree.
No cases are decided, and all are recessed for further
hearings. But the court proceedings appear genuine and
in their modest way impressive. These are the kinds of
day-to-day issues that concern Bengali, or any other
Asian, villagers, and Bangla Desh is dealing with them.

VOLUNTARY CONTRIBUTIONS

The council also handles revenue collection, encouraging
"voluntary contributions" from the public for support of
the war. The members of the council are a solidly
bourgeois lot (two schoolteachers, two businessmen, a
doctor and two "cultivators" among them)- the normal
sort of respected elders of any small Asian community.

The council members say they were "elected" by local
people, but it appears they were appointed by higher
Bangla Desh echelons with the apparent approval of the
local populace. In principle, at least, the local Muktis
are under command of civil administrators. In practice,
however, it seems that the Muktis report and respond to
their own military chain of command.

In any case, both the Muktis and the administrators have
regular contact with higher headquarters and thus with
national Bangla Desh headquarters, still located in
Indian West Bengal. An indication of the effectiveness
of the lines of Communication is that by the third day
of our visit here, Bangla Desh radio, from its
transmitters in India, was announcing our presence by
name.

HOW MUCH COMMUNIST INFLUENCE?

In this area, there doesn't appear to be any Communist
influence among the Muktis. In certain other areas, that
isn't the case. Reports from reliable sources in the
remoter southern sectors of East Pakistan say large
areas already are under control of "Naxalite" Maoist
guerrilla groups, some of them in temporary alliance
with the Bangla Desh cause, while others are at war with
both the Pakistani.

But the non-Communist Bangla Desh elements certainly
outnumber the Communist ones. And in Sheikh Mujib, now a
prisoner in West Pakistan, the "bourgeois" Bangla Desh
have the sole Bengali national hero.

There are some exasperating, if not particularly
significant, experiences with the Munshiganj Muktis.
Although welcomed as "honored guests" by the local
liberation forces, our group, sleeping on our boat, is
subjected to constant liberation raids on our food
supplies by conspicuously armed young Muktis, It is a
small thing in a land where one can legitimately ask why
foreigners should eat better than the natives.

But foreigners certainly don't sleep better. Besides the
food raids, there are post-midnight visits by Muktis who
poke their heads though the boat's cabin windows and ask
the snoring foreigners, "Are you asleep?"