Baltimore Sun

(NOTE.-The writer was one of six correspondents admitted to East Pakistan after a five-week period during which foreign correspondents were officially barred from the area, This dispatch was brought out of Dacca and filed free of censorship.)

A civil war of staggering butchery and hatred has left the 23-year-old nation of Pakistan on the brink of economic and political ruin.

Pakistan, though broke, is spending more than 82 million daily to support the Army that shelled and machine- gunned this province of 75 million into submissive inactivity.

It is responsibly estimated that deaths since the war started March 25 number more than the 400,000 killed by nature in last November's cyclone. This time, each death means a family's lasting bitterness,

INDISCRIMINATE KILLING

The killing was indiscriminate. Bengalis bent on a separate Bengal nation slaughtered many of the province's 6 million non-Bengalis. When the Army moved in, it settled the score, aided by non-Bengalis seeking revenge.

The resultant fighting brought damage reminiscent of World War II, Markets were razed and flattened, towns were devastated. Road and rail links were cut at a dozen major points crippling communication.

Losses to industry and to commerce between the two wings of Pakistan are incalculable, 80 are the effects of stalled development. The 55 mills that turn out Jute, East Pakistan's chief money-maker, are working at 15 to 20 percent of capacity.

MILLIONS FACE FAMINE

Reporters touring East Pakistan found that millions face starvation from famine and from halted relief distribution.

The Army is believed by some to have taken over American boats and Japanese jeeps meant for relief, jeopardizing, future aid. The country's military rulers insist that while they welcome aid, it must come without foreigners to look after its distribution.

In many areas, food supply is a critical problem. The key port, Chittagong, is choked with 400,000 tons of goods, 100,000 tons more than it handles normally in a month.

Before, river craft carried only n fourth of the cargo from Chittagong into the interior, Now they must carry it all, perhaps for months. Even when roads and rail arc open, shippers say, 10 river craft carry food stocks, Now, they say, the Army allots only four boats for food supply.

POLITICAL PROBLEMS

Politically, the .problems are as great. Bengalis elected 167 to 169 members of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's Awami League to the National Assembly in December. He is now jailed, the party is banned and no one has any Idea what will happen next.

President A. M. Yahya Khan, who went back to the West after talks with Sheikh Mujib on restoring civilian rule collapsed in Dacca, maintains he wants politicians to take back control of the government.

But betting is heavy that General Yahya will not last the year as president and the Army will not find anyone who thinks the soldiers' way and can still walk unescorted through the streets of East Pakistan.

Confidence is shattered among Bengalis, West Pakistanis and Muslim migrants from India who fled here at partition in 1947.

At a Chittagong jute mill, where Bengalis evidently killed 180 women and children, only 20 of 7,500 workers have dared to return.

Non-Bengali officers and officials refuse to even admit that there are Bengali widows and orphans in need.

Hindu Bengalis made up 12 per cent of the population. They chose to remain here though West Bengal in India is largely Hindu and East Bengal-East Pakistan-is mostly Muslim.

Radical Muslim students rejected the religion that bound them to West Pakistan, espousing instead Hinduism and "Calcutta culture." Hindus were widely blamed for fomenting the rebellion.

HINDUS SINGLED OUT

As a result, the Army singled out Hindus. Their shops and homes were smashed and burned. A temple in Chittagong was blown completely on its side. Undamaged shops in otherwise devastated Hindu areas sometimes bear signs in English and Urdu, the Western Pakistani tongue, proclaiming the owner a Muslim.

Often being a Muslim-or showing a Pakistani flag-did not help,

The job of rebuilding what the Army and rebels burned and battered down will take massive human and financial resources.

Whole blocks of two-story brick buildings in several cities and towns lie in rubble. What was not burned or destroyed in fragments was looted.

"We will manage," said Lt.. Gen. Tikka Khan the military governor in charge of quelling the rebellion and rebuilding the province.

"Nature has a way of putting things right and we are making good progress."