Pakistan continues to act badly towards the citizens of its eastern wing, whose movement for political autonomy-carried on through legal and democratic channels-was cruelly crushed by the Pakistani army during the spring. The Yahya Khan military government still does not international relief flow to the suffering Bengalis of East Pakistan; they are being forced to flee into India to benefit from such relief.

The western-controlled army has found the resources to stamp out the remnants of Bengali military resistance but not to expedite the movement of American wheat through the port of Chittagong. The relatively few Bengalis in the Pakistani army and civil services- Bengalis are a large majority in Pakistan overall- reported are being weeded out, and the government is treating the whole Bengali movement as a seditious faction of "miscreants" rather than as the legitimate popular cause it unquestionably is. Reconciliation seems to be the last thing on the Khan governments mind, vengeance the first.

All this would be, for Americans, a matter of regret at remote distance were not the United States government so heavily involved in support of the Pakistani government. But it is American arms, given in the name of anti-communism, that were used to suppress the Bengalis. It is American loans which undergird the Pakistani economy and civil-war effort. It is American wheat which is being denied to hungry Pakistanis. The American role is painfully pointed up by General Khan-s dispatch to Washington of his chief economic adviser to ask the United States (plus the World Bank and International Monetary Fund) to help cushion the large financial impact of its actions in East Pakistan.

It is out of the question for the United States to take further steps whose effect would be merely to aid a military government to suppress a democratic majority of its own citizens. The relief channels must be opened, and the Khan government must demonstrate it is in a position to serve fairly both of its wings, before the United States can resume its contributions to the welfare and stability of Pakistan.