Daily Express

Gauhati, Assam, Wednesday: Amid the misery of death and starvation created by the Pakistan civil war I watched a boy begging for his life from his fellow freedom fighters. His crime: Using petrol to take women and children, the old and the helpless to safety in an old jeep. It ranked as a capital crime, for the Bangladesh (Bengali nation) count petrol by the drop. The instant field court martial was held in the battered tea garden down the road from Sylhet, retaken from the Punjabis days back.

SENTENCED TO DEATH

The boy, 18 was put up against a palm tree. The “court” read out the charge “misuse of petrol” - and out of hand sentenced him to death. The lad thrust his hands protectively over his face and wept as the bearded, one-man firing squad rammed a single precious round into the breech of his Lee Enfield. The nameless man in charge - known as Number Two in command of the local Bangladesh forces - turned to me and asked: “What would you do in such a case?” Every brown face turned. I was the final appeal court judge. I looked at the weeping boy who was younger than my eldest son and said carefully to Number Two: “Anyone can seize command in a war. But to know when to show mercy is the test of leadership. ” They let the boy grovel for a further 20 minutes. Then said to me: “well, you’re a European and it might look bad if we shot him in front of you.” So they spared him for how long I do not know. I felt every bit as dirty as the war itself when we left to start the long haul back to Calcutta.

Earlier, when I had reached the area, columns of smoke pillared into the sky as President Yahya’s Punjabi troops set fire to the palm thatch huts housing a thousand coolies in the tea gardens. At intervals Sabre jets swooped down to rocket and bomb the vital King’s Bridge over the Surma River that form the only link between the two halves of Sylhet town, currently in guerrilla hands. As I neared Sylhet both sides were fighting for control of the town before the monsoon comes in two weeks.

ONLY LINK

Three-inch mortars from Punjabis inside the airport cantonment - their only link with Dacca and through it, their homeland 1,200 miles away - pounded the road to stop rebel reinforcements moving up. Heavy rain was already lashing down. A trickle of refugees, soaked and near starving, began their trek to the Indian frontier 40 miles back. The first 14 cases of smallpox and cholera among them were confirmed by a doctor as they filed past.

I stood on the roadside with the man known as “Number Two”. He had a sten-gun. He was a fanatical Maoist and former political prisoner who had escaped from Sylhet jail only six days earlier. Like his two-man bodyguard, his back was covered in weals from whippings in jail before they made their escape. To reach him I journeyed nearly 1,000 miles by air and road from Calcutta, through the mountains of Assam, into East Pakistan’s northern front to report first-hand on its jungle and tea garden war. This is wild country, and a different war from the fight in open country I saw round Jessore and Chuadanga fronts.

CUT OFF

The monsoon will flood all roads, wash away bridges and whole villages. The floods will restrict - if not halt entirely - incoming supplies by air to leave Yahya’s Sylhet garrison completely cut off. “Then we will strike to massacre every one,” said the little guerrilla. I lived with the freedom fighters over Easter. They have a few Sten-guns, some old Lee Enfield rifles, shotguns, bamboo spears, and the “dao,” the murderous looking 2 ft.- long knife, like a slim-line butcher’s cleaver they carry in wicker baskets over the hip. Some even use bow and arrow. Ammunition is so scarce no one fires at planes. And at men only when they can see the proverbial whites of their eyes. They possess one fuel dump which has already been hit by rocket fire.

They have no money, no medicine, no salt, no uniform, no waterproof clothing (except umbrella). The lucky ones have sandals and food is so short starvation among the women and children is not far off. What they do have a plenty is numbers, and guts. And No. 2 to drive them by friendly persuasion, political cajoling, and ruthless orders.

I carry my passport, the only identification Bangladesh will accept, a vacuum flask of chlorinated water, cigarettes and salt tablets galore for the rebels and a bottle of scotch. I shook hands with Captain “Dudu Mia”, pseudonym for the official army commander in Sylhet province and apparently the only ex-regular army officer left alive (on the Bangladesh side) in a province of 4,500,000 people.

He said: “Given the guns we could drive these Punjabis right out of Sylhet province in one straight fight.”

BUTCHERING

The war started here as it did in Dacca and elsewhere with a systematic, round-up and butchering of every intellectual Bengali, every potential leader, doctors, teachers, lawyers, police officers, East Pakistan Rifles - and their entire families. An orgy of looting followed. “I estimate,” said Captain Dudu, “the Bengali death roll in Sylhet town was not less than 1,000. Every shop was looted.”

When this failed to subdue the local people, the troops withdrew under fire to a five-mile square cantonment round the airport and there they have stayed since, like knights in a medieval castle sallying out now and again to burn and destroy. “We are avoiding all frontal battles,” said the captain. “This is not cowardly. We cannot afford to waste one bullet or a spoonful of petrol. We will have them butchered (and no mistake) when the rains come.”