By the time these words are in print the town of Dinajpur in “Free Bangladesh” will almost certainly be overwhelmed by West Pakistani troops and Sgt-Major Abdur Rab, its chief defender, will probably be dead. Only 350 lightly-armed soldiers were dug in around the town, the centre of Bangladesh resistance is the remote north-western province of East Pakistan, when I left it on Friday. Most were untried in battle and their supplies of ammunition from the East Pakistan Rifles armoury in Dinajpur were down to half-a-dozen crates of mortar shells, rockets, and machine-gun bullets.

Several hundred troops of the West Pakistan Frontier Force Regiment were at Saidpur nearby and there were hundreds more at the garrison town of Rangpur. They were heavily armed, veterans of the Indo-Pak war, and had Chinese-made light tanks. These tanks were moving forward. One determined breakthrough and they could be in Dinajpur within an hour. Sgt.-Major Rab and his forces have no illusions about what will happen when the enemy do attack. They have overheard on their captured military radio official orders from President Yahya Khan’s high command that opposition be crushed by slaughtering indiscriminately, destroying indiscriminately and above all, by killing all military, civil and intellectual leaders. “It will be a massacre”, says the sergeant-major. “It is worse than anything Hitler did. It is deliberate genocide.”

Genocide is an over-used word. But, in the light of these explicit military orders to West Pakistan troops - which I have independent reasons to think Sgt.-Major Rab has accurately reported - it seems justified. In the light, also, of my three visits to East Pakistan in the past few days it seems justified. From there it was difficult to see Yahya Khan’s policy as anything other than an effort to kill swiftly so many Bangladesh supporters that resistance will vanish for the next 15 years. The killing is taking place. We have seen the massacres with our own eyes and that radio message appears to prove the deliberate intention. The only mystery is why the West Pakistani troops did not advance during our two-day stay in Dinajpur. Twice they attacked Sgt.-Major Rab’s forward positions and could have easily smashed through his entire defence. But then they held back.

Perhaps they believed their own propaganda that Indian troops and ammunition were supporting the Bengali defenders of Dinajpur, which is only 10 miles from the Indian border. If so we can testify they are wrong. The rutted dorsal trail is virtually deserted. The odd Bangladesh jeep drives into India to collect a drum of petrol - and may be a pistol or two - from sympathisers at the border town of Gangarampur. It is after all a traditional smugglers trail, scarcely guarded in normal times. But Indian police and troops, mindful of the propaganda attacks, have now manned a post there to prevent any movement. The BBC Panorama team and I were temporarily arrested by Indian police as we came out.

The Bengali volunteers sing a freshly-composed Bangladesh national anthem to bolster their spirits and even hold large, orderly political meetings at which politicians and administrators from the entire north-western area tell them what they are to fight for. This part of East Pakistan was traditionally dominated by supporters of the Left-wing radical Maulana Bhasani, whose virtually Communist policies kept them at odds with Sheikh Mujib, the main East Pakistan leader. But today the political unity, not surprisingly, is complete.

Two weeks ago when the Pakistan civil war began, Dinajpur was in a very different situation. The town was garrisoned and controlled by a company of the West Pakistani Frontier Force Regiment, reinforced by the Punjabi officers of the East Pakistan Rifles. On the day Yahya’s troops struck in Dacca - Thursday, March 25 - the local Punjabi troops began moves to dominate police force, contained three old British Indian Army men. Abdur Rab is one of these; the other two are highly skilled with mortars. For two days their fire was landing solidly on the Circuit House. Finally, the Punjabi’s nerve broke. They fled first to the neighbouring Bengali deputy commissioner’s house - “so that your friends if they fire on us, will also be killing Bengalis.”

Then, in their panic, they suddenly decided that such accurate fire could not be coming from mere Bengali policemen. Deputy Commissioner Ahmed says: “They told me they knew they must be surrounded by the Indian Army, which they thought had crossed the border to intervene. They therefore shot their own batmen, who were Bengalis, and retreated from the town to Saidpur.” So a force of 35 Bengali East Pakistani Rifles routed the Punjabis in Dinajpur and the town for the past 10 days has been solidly under Bangladesh control. Acting on information that it was in Bengali hands, we crossed the unguarded border for a visit last Wednesday. Even then it had the mixed atmosphere of a town celebrating freedom but expecting disaster.

Sgt.-Major Rab, now officially in command of all defence forces, has thrown out a perimeter guard on classic Sandhurst lines. But he has no illusions. The local Punjabi troops may have acted cravenly so far; but last week they were moving their tanks forward, they must be returning to destroy the town. We watched half-a-dozen of Rab’s troops redeploying to “Ten Mile Junction” where the Saidpur road meets the road northwards from Dinajpur, five miles from the town. As for Pakistani reports that six Indian divisions are threatening the border, these are nonsense. And West Pakistani troops are moving to close the border; there will be scarcely any more movements across it, of troops or journalists.

Meanwhile, “Free Dinajpur” is - whatever one’s views on the Pakistani civil war - an inspiring place to visit. The local Bengali population is 100 per cent for Bangladesh. Those who were not - Punjabis and other non-Bengalis - have either fled or been butchered. And, unlike Jessore in the south, which we visited 10 days ago, Dinajpur is organized highly efficiently. The new¬found patriotism and martial spirit, spiced with the characteristic Bengali histrionics, is most impressive. The 600,000 inhabitants - those who have not left for surrounding villages - are calm. All the banks and about half the shops are functioning normally. The people queue in long, disciplined lines for ration books (although Dinajpur is the area distribution centre for rice and is not yet short of food). Stringent blackout regulations are observed. The young men train daily in the local stadium under Sgt.-Major Rab and other military leaders, learning the proper Sandhurst drill for Lee-Enfield rifles and Chinese-made sten-guns, marching to-and-fro as martial voices exhort to look like soldiers - head up, chin in, chest forward, the town moves clearly long-planned to co-ordinate with a country wide military coup.

The first move, comically enough was an invitation to a party. The Punjabi Commanding Officer courteously asked all Bengali troops in Dinajpur to watch his Punjabis dance their traditional Khatak and Luddi dances. Come in civvies, unarmed, he said. But Sgt.-Major Rab, the senior Bengali in the force, suddenly noticed his Punjabi fellow guests were arriving armed. This was clearly a plot to kill or capture all local Bengali troops. The invitation was thus courteously declined; the Punjabi troops danced without an audience. That night Punjabi troops drove through the streets of Dinajpur.

They carefully destroyed crucial installations at the telephone exchange so the town would be isolated, except for their military communications. They visited various important local Bengali political leaders and I was told, shot or imprisoned them.

For two days there was a nervous truce, both sides manoeuvring for advantage, the Punjabi officers and troops still protesting their friendliness. “If I do not stand up for the East Pakistani Rifles, you may kill me.” Said Lieut. Col. Taraq Rasul Qureshi, the commanding officer. And later did, indeed, try to kill him. On Saturday, March 27, things got worse. As rumours of the Dacca massacre filtered through all the Punjabi soldiers nervously left the East Pakistani Rifles barracks and mustered at the Commanding Officer’s residence, the Circuit House, where in olden days the Raj judges would lodge. They dug trenches and aligned their guns on the Rifle’s barracks. As it happened, the Bengalis fired first and for three days a fierce battle raged, shells from both sides falling in the town and causing many casualties. Sgt.-Major Rab could not command his forces because he was caught in his house between fires. On Sunday six Rifles men forayed out from the barracks and under protective fire, he ran back with them. By great good luck it happened that this Rifles unit, had officially only a one anti-tank gun (their last remaining artillery), two rocket-propelled grenade launchers and four riflemen.

Refugees with goats and calves trotting behind them, and other meagre possessions balanced on their heads, streamed past. They told of Punjabis burning their villages to the ground, killing all they saw, of wholesale looting and rapes. Although in this civil war, as in all wars, there is perpetual exaggeration, their accounts carried conviction. The soldiers were calm, muted, and sad. They knew they were only there to win a few minutes’ time. Then we visited another defensive position, deep in a bamboo grove. Here the troops were brighter and more optimistic. The local people came with large buckets of rice, “Dal” and papadums to provide lunch for the troops. Possibly no soldiers in history have been so whole heartedly supported by the local civilian population, inspired both by Bangladesh nationalism and by terror of a massacre.

It was a classic guerrilla war deployment, a dozen men hidden in near ¬jungle ready to inflict maximum damage then flee. This is Sgt.-Major Rab’s basic strategy. First conventional defence to win time. Then a general dispersal into the surrounding countryside to lure the West Pakistanis into a complacent re-occupation of Dinajpur. Then a long period of stealthy killing.

We talked at length with local politicians who grandly sketched out the future of an independent, non-aligned Bangladesh. But no one seriously pretends the major towns of the country can survive in their control for long. Jessore has already fallen; Dinajpur is even now under assault. The crucial question about the future of the struggle is whether Sgt.-Major Rab’s guerrilla tactics can be properly put into practice. In their favour is the overwhelming support of the local population and the pressure of world opinion on Yahya Khan. Against them is the un-military character of the Bengalis and their desperate shortage of ammunition and general supplies.

Dinajpur has escaped relatively unscrached so far. But now it must suffer the fate of Dacca, Chittagong and other major centres. Meanwhile, Sgt.- Major Rab, if he has not been killed at the front, will have escaped to the bamboo groves and small villages to try to continue the fight. With his crisp police uniform and his manner inherited from the British Raj, he makes an improbable Che Guevara of Bangladesh. But if there are many like him in East Pakistan the civil war is going to continue for a long time.