New Statesman

He was a sharecropper from Noakhali. The night before he had been out on an operation in the Jessore sector which had accounted for 11 Pakistani casualties, including an officer. He and other peasants like him make up the hard core of the Bangladesh Mukti Fouj (liberation forces). They have shed their khaki and many wear the traditional lungi which underlines their village origins. It is their look of confidence and toughness of mind and body which stands them apart. But no Pakistani major can make this fine distinction so that the Mukti Fouj merge into the local landscape to strike at the time and place of their choice.

Until recently commando tactics were used to hit the Pakistan army through ambush and sorties. Sabotage action against communications links was aimed to disrupt the mobility of the Pakistani army and deny them access to economic resources. Collaborators in the villages were singled out for attention. Actions, however, were scattered and on a small scale so that they did not earn any headlines. More recently, the occasional set-piece battle, as at Belonia on the east or near Satkhira in the west, has shown the Pakistani army that the Mukti Fouj can, when they choose, stand and fight. At Belonia they killed 450 Pakistani soldiers at a cost of 70 dead and it took two brigades of the Pakistani army to overrun the area. The action went on for nearly three weeks during June, and towards the end the Chief of Staff of the Pakistani army had to go down to review the action. Again near Satkhira the Pakistani army left 300 dead against a toll of about 20 Mukti Fouj. But such actions are as yet limited and the tactic remains to keep the army off balance.

Faced with this invisible enemy the Pakistani army operates only during daylight hours. They move in heavily fortified concentrations on the hard- topped roads. Heavy machine guns cover the main convoy from a distance of three to four hundred yards, to be used in the event of ambush. Mobile fire control units follow the heavy machine guns to call in artillery fire on the point of ambush. This imposes both speed and mobility on the Mukti Fouj during an action. Shortage of machine guns and even mortars restricts their capacity to make a fight of it and whenever one goes one meets the common refrain that more automatic weapons and heavier firepower in the shape of mortars and the Katyushka rockets used by the Vietcong would be enough to make the Pakistani army position untenable within six months.

There is no shortage of recruits. The flow of young men into the training camps is well beyond their absorptive capacity. Training is in two tiers. The initial base camp provides the rudiments of military training but is more in the form of a physical fitness camp. Students of biochemistry, and Hobbes, talk in a new idiom punctuated with military jargon complete with references to ‘Sitreps’ and the merits of Chinese automatic weapons. They are a trifle contemptuous of diplomatic initiatives from the big powers and feel that their combat skills will be the final arbiter of the struggle. Power comes from the barrel of the gun. This is the harsh lesson they have learnt at first hand and at heavy cost. These young men are now convinced that big powers, whether paying lip service to the ballot box or the ideology of revolution, only recognize the reality of force. It is a lesson of profound significance for the independent Bangladesh of tomorrow.

The base camps can only graduate a small fraction of their inmates into Mukti Fouj training camps. The main constraint is provided by the shortage of weapons. Sector commanders realize this, the demoralising influence on a trained soldier of being without a gun, and prefer to regulate the intake until adequate arms are available. Recruits are restricted to the 18-25 age group, which has aroused some irritation amongst able-bodied over-25s and encourage deception by the large number of under-18 high school dropouts who are running away from home to join the camps.

There is some suggestion that students from left-wing student groups are not being recruited. This flatters the intelligence network available to the Awami League MPs who sit in on the draft boards in each camp. With the large number of camps now recruiting for the Fouj from at least 100,000 available candidates any young man of initiative who fulfills the basic physical requirements is making the grade. Indeed in some camps Awami Leaguers complain that their boys are being excluded in preference for the Left but this is about as fanciful as the complaint against them. In practice inter-party camaraderie at the front is greater than appears at this distance. If there is any selectivity it is operating in favour of the educated.

Unlike the US draft, it is the college educated young man who is being recruited and will probably make the Bangladesh army one of the most highly educated in the field. This makes them much easier to train and commanders reckon that a month’s basic training reinforced by the high degree of motivation make them excellent combat material. Their class origins however do not prejudice their relations with the peasant-based professional soldiers of the East Bengal Regiment and East Pakistan Rifles and they readily share the hardships of camp life and the hazards of the ambush with their less educated commanders.

The increment of confidence and numbers has now encouraged the sector commanders to inject their men into the villages and towns in increasing numbers. Instead of doing an operation and returning to base they now base themselves in the area and surface to detonate an explosion, blow a bridge or eliminate a collaborator. The Pakistanis’ use of collective punishment against villages adjacent to an action has not discouraged villagers from concealing and feeding the Fouj. Indeed once-demoralised villagers have been considerably fortified by the presence of the Fouj. But they pay a heavy price. The unending stream of refugees across the borders of India is a direct result of army terror as they hit out blindly against their elusive enemy. As guerrilla action intensifies it is expected that the Pakistani army will escalate their terror tactics, greatly increasing the flood of displaced villagers.

Each action of the Mukti Fouj converts a segment of the local population from passive enemies of the Pakistani army to active collaborators of the Mukti Fouj. Already the Pakistanis have taken a disturbingly high casualty rate - one estimate reckons as many as 18,000, with a high proportion of officers - against a modest toll of Mukti Fouj. It is estimated that it costs 10 Pakistani soldiers to kill an armed Bengali. As a result they are now using mixed units of Razakars, an admixture of Biharis and local hoodlums who have been armed by the army with 303s and paramilitary units from West wing with regular army to plug gaps in the ranks left by Mukti Fouj actions. The non-army units are poor materials and the Fouj are taking a heavy toll of them. They tend to run, leaving their weapons, when under pressure and provide a fertile source of supply of the Mukti Fouj. As Mukti Fouj action intensifies, the Pakistani army will be hard put to use this poor material to reinforce their ranks and already they are trying to raise new divisions in the West.

But these are needed to plug the gaps in the West wing defences created by the despatch of two divisions to the East. Faced with the growing tensions with India there are limits beyond which they cannot divert regular units from their natural role of containing India on the perimeters of West Pakistan. This awareness, coupled with an accentuating economic crisis, with its attendant political tensions, may be driving West Pakistan towards war with India. Yahya’s recent bellicosity indicates that the junta may seek escape in the internationalization of the crisis. If UN put observers on the borders to monitor Mukti Fouj activity this might provide him with the breather he so desperately needs. The Indians are not buying this and argue that UN observers should be put into the villages being terrorised by the Pakistan army, which is the prime cause of the refuge problem. Nor are the Mukti Fouj likely to be impressed by a UN presence at a time when they are taking the offensive, particularly when the UN was so conspicuously silent over Yahya’s genocide in Bengal. Nothing short of a combined big- power action will in fact impose such a solution. Much will depend on whether the Russians will go along with Nixon in rescuing Yahya.

Yahya is in fact a captive of his own policies. He now knows he cannot pacify Bangladesh. His attempt to manufacture a satellite civilian government in the East failed when only 15 Awami Leaguers were in hand to play quisling, and this, too at gun-point. The conclave in mid-June of 137 out of 167 Awami League members of the National Assembly plus three-fourths of the provincial assembly, assembled in spite of the dislocation of war, provided concrete proof that the party ranks were holding firm. Other flotsam from the Ayub era are so devoid of political credibility as to appear an embarrassment even to Yahya, so the Awami League remains integral to a solution. He, therefore, is denied even the option of a Nazi-style occupation by the Pakistani army to keep Bangladesh under heel. This task becomes more untenable with each action of the Mukti Fouj.

Yahya’s use of terror as a response only adds to the recruits of the Fouj. Faced with this fatal contradiction in his policy Yahya may be looking to a wider war. Yahya may paradoxically prefer Bangladesh breaking away within the context of an Indo-Pakistan war rather than by its own efforts. This is likely to be more tolerable to him and his generals, who may fear for the unity of what will be left of a Pakistan consumed by regional and social tensions after 75 million Bengalis opt out of the union. They see the army as the guarantor of this unity and would need a war to justify their role to a people grown weary of military rule.