International Herald Tribune

Whether seen from London, Paris, Washington, Moscow or Peking, the revolt in East Bengal has now acquired the magnitude of an international issue that has seized the attention of the world powers.

Having just invited a delegation of the World Islamic Secretariate to visit Dacca on a government-conducted tour, even the government of Pakistan finds it difficult to pretend that it is an internal matter that can be settled in the way similar to the post-Sukarno regime in Indonesia dealt with the so-called Communist threat through the massacre of unarmed civilians.

The danger of a war between India and Pakistan, Islama-bad’s threat to quit the British Commonwealth, the World Bank’s decision to suspend economic aid to the regime of President Mohammad Yahya Khan and the rumblings in the U.S. Senate are only some of the ramifications of the growing internationalisation of what was once conveniently dubbed by West Pakistan as “our internal problem” or, to quote a British newspaper report, “as an untidy situation that our generals will take care of’’

Gen. Yahya has thus lost the first round in the diplomatic battle over Bangla Desh. But as Islamabad’s predicament becomes more and more serious, a handful of apologists and defenders of the Pakistan authorities are obliged to become more active in performing the unenviable task of rationalising and even justifying their government’s policy toward East Bengal.

SURE OF ATTITUDE

Writing in the Herald Tribune of July 19, one such
apologist, I. Gondal, has given his own version of the events leading to the army crackdown on March 25, before offering his conclusion that “the people of East Pakistan were never and are not now for an independent Bangla Desh.”

Mr. Gondal’s verdict must have come as a kind of revelation to many Bengali residents in Paris, one of whom was good enough to send the clipping of the article to me in Saigon, where I have been reporting on another war of national liberation for a Japanese newspaper. Hence the delay in replying to Mr. Gondal.

It seems that this part-time writer and a full-time member of the Pakistan Foreign Service is more certain of what the people of East Bengal want than even his president who is still forced to keep as many as five divisions of his army to maintain law and order in the war-torn province, station West Pakistani civil servants to operate some kind of an administration, bring in even labourers and porters from the Western wing to clear the cargo in the port of Chittagong and fail to run the train service between Dacca and Chittagong for fear of sabotage.

If the people of East Bengal reject the concept of Bangla Desh, the situation would have been surely entirely different, even if there are a few miscreants and anti-state elements around.

There is, of course, a simple way of putting Mr. Gondal’s claim to a test. Let Yahya Khan release Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and other Awami League Leaders, withdraw his troops from East Bengal and permit an internationally supervised referendum on the question of independence to be held in the province.

And let him, for God’s sake, accept the verdict. I know for certain that the provisional government of Bangla Desh can be persuaded to accept this solution. But will Yahya Khan do the same? Or will he try to resurrect the myth that the East Bengal crisis is only an internal matter?

So much for the conclusion with which Mr. Gondal ends his article.

TEST FAVOURED

For the sake of arguments, one can concede that the conclusion is debatable and that we should put it to a test The same, however, cannot be said about the “facts” that have been incorporated in Mr. Gondal’s version of the events leading to the army crackdown and Yahya Khan’s midnight flight to Islamabad.

By now, all your enlightened readers should know the obvious difference between facts that are gathered by “internationally known impartial observers through eyewitness accounts on the scene and “facts”—the so-called facts which are carefully selected from government files to fit certain preconceived conclusions and judgments.

The latter, the category to which Mr. Gondal’s “facts” belong, can only help Gen. Yahya carry on with his disastrous policy towards East Bengal without perhaps even realising why it has evoked so much of outright condemnation from the outside world. But such “facts” cannot serve any other purpose.

Broadly speaking Mr. Gondal’s analysis of the crisis in East Bengal covers the history of the relations between the two parts of the country, in political and economic fields, and then goes on to discuss the more recent developments which finally led to the breakup of Pakistan. He has touched on Pakistan’s five-year plans, the allocation of development funds for the eastern wing and Islamabad’s “efforts” to bridge the gap between two wings of the country.

So much has been already written and published on the causes of economic disparity that exists between the two wings of Pakistan that, in a newspaper article of this kind one may just reproduce the most essential facts about the kind of “economic progress” that has been brought about in East Bengal during the last 23 years of West Pakistan’s “benevolent rule.”

To quote from a recent article in Time magazine; “The East contains well over half the population and in early years contributed as much as 70 per cent of the foreign-exchange earnings. But West Pakistan regularly devours three quarters of all foreign aid and 60 per cent of export earnings.”

“With the Punjabi-Pathan power elite in control for two decades, East Pakistan has been left a deprived, agricultural backwater. Before the civil war, Bengalis held only 15 per cent of government jobs and accounted for only 5 per cent of the 275,000 man army, per capita income is miserably low throughout Pakistan, but in the West ($48), it is more than half against that in the East ($30)

REGIME PRAISED

Instead of reporting these statistics that have been well publicized in an authoritative study of Pakistan’s economic scene by a group of six top economists of Dacca—at least three of whom, including Prof. Rahman Sobhan, are now working for the government of Bangla Desh—long before Sheikh Mujibur Rahman presented his six-point plan, Mr. Gondal glibly talks about the “maturity” of the people of “this sound nation” and pays his tribute to his government which according to him, has taken “every possible step to restore parity between the two wings in the services of the Central Government and the armed forces.”

With the help of distinguished economists of his province, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was quick to realise that there was something basically wrong with the structure of Pakistan’s economy which being tightly controlled by the vested interests of the Punjab could not be too drastically changed, even by a Bengali Prime Minister at the centre, to accelerate the long overdue development of East Bengal.

In this sense as the Sheikh personally told me during an interview in Dacca in December, the present economic frame-work was almost totally unworkable. Eventually, the answer was found in the Awami League’s much-discussed six-point program that, through a major re-organisation of powers and responsibilities between the centre and the provinces, was presented to the people as a genuine attempt to save Pakistan.

Mr. Gondal and other apologists for Yahya Khan may now accuse the Awami League leader of refusing to play the role of all-Pakistan leader. What they overlook is that Sheikh Mujibur was more concerned about saving Pakistan through his six-point program, than in playing the role of a Prime Minister in Islamabad. Herein lies the difference between Sheikh Mujibur and Zulfiqar Ali, West Pakistani political leader.

As we all know, the kind of criticisms that are now being made against the six-point program by Islamabad were never heard during the election campaign nor even during Yahya Khan’s abortive talks with Sheikh Mujibur in March. Now with Sheikh Mujibur safely shut up inside an army barrack in West Pakistan, government propagandists feel free to accuse the Awami League leader of all conceivable crimes and to interpret his program in the most sinister light.

My own feeling is that President Yahya was a little slow in realising that the economic autonomy of East Pakistan — and this is what the six-point program really meant — would put an end to the exploitation of East Bengal by the vested interests of the West Wing, making it impossible for the army-backed Punjabi power clique to retain its control over the resources of the whole of Pakistan.

Whether President Yahya was pressured by the army to rescue the vested interests of West Pakistan from this predicament or he, on his own, identified himself with the power clique is now beside the point. But once he made up his mind to undo the result of the December election, he would stop at nothing to achieve his goal.

Even Mr. Gondal finds it “very difficult to decide at this moment whether President Yahya was right in coming to the painful decision of postponing the session of the assembly which was scheduled for March 3”.

Of course, it was a terrible blunder, an inexcusable action, a move that was so clearly designed to prevent the majority party the Awami League — from taking the six-point program to the floor of the National Assembly. Mr. Bhutto’s decision to boycott the opening of the assembly was taken by President Yahya as the excuse for interfering with the legislative process.

But what would have happened if the assembly had met on March 3 without Mr. Bhutto? Under the Legal Framework Order, it had a time limit of 90 days to prepare and approve the draft of the constitution. There was time for the West Pakistan contingent to join the assembly. But even if the Sheikh’s party had approved the constitution, the legal framework order still, gave the President the final right to approve or reject the draft before it was put into effect.

MUJIBUR’S RESPONSE

Sheikh Mujibur’s answer to the postponement was the launching of the civil disobedience movement that was primarily aimed at proving to the world that the people of East Bengal were capable of running their own affairs, Or was Sheikh Mujibur supposed to take President Yahya’s action lying down and wait patiently for the President to change his mind?

To demonstrate his interest in a peaceful settlement, the Awami League leader was still willing to talk to President Yahya when he came to Dacca in his last attempt to hoodwink the people of East Bengal. Since the president’s own bonafides were now seriously in doubt, Sheikh Mujibur sought further and stronger safeguards against any further move on the part of Islamabad to sabotage the December election results.

President Yahya Khan discussed them for days, apparently giving enough time to Tikka Khan, now military governor of East Pakistan, to bring in the troops from West Pakistan, and seemingly came very close to accepting them.

On March 22, just two days before the army crackdown, the entire Pakistani Press reported that agreement had been nearly reached. The Pakistan Times of Lahore published a front page report naming Tajuddin Ahmed now the Prime Minister of the provisional government of Bangla Desh, as the man most likely to become the chief minister of East Pakistan during the transitional period.

The talks in Dacca did not break down. President Yahya simply broke them off, without even spelling out what it was in Sheikh Mujibur’s demand that was so unacceptable to him and his government. Later, after the Sheikh had been silenced, there were statements after statements by both President Yahya and Mr. Bhutto and even a white paper issued by the Pakistani government —attributing all kinds of demands to the Awami League leader. Fresh accusations were made every day. The entire propaganda machinery of West Pakistan went into action to vilify Sheikh Mujibur and his party, which had won an overwhelming mandate from the 78 million people of East Bengal.

INEVITABLE RESULT

East Bengal’s unilateral declaration of independence was the inevitable result of the policy adopted by the military junta of Pakistan, led by Gen. Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan, Once the Pakistani leader had outlawed the Awami League, arrested its leader and virtually declared a war on our province, there was no choice for the people of East Bengal but to find their own destiny in their independence.

Once we were convinced that the Pakistani Army was out to destroy whatever chances we had to be an equal partner in an all-Pakistan political framework, we had to look for our own survival in some other kind of framework. The creation of the independent Republic of Bangla Desh provided the only answer.

Let any head of state in any other country follow the example set by President Yahya, the result may well be the same.

Having thrown away all other options, West Pakistani authorities are now left with no choice but to accept the independence of East Bengal and come to terms with the realities of the situation. Whether they do so now before the innocent people of West Pakistan pay a bigger price for their government’s war on East Bengal or they do so six months or a year later is something they alone can decide.

But we all know that the guerrilla war inside Bangla Desh is going to get more and more fierce and more and more people — perhaps even other nations are going to get involved in what is already being talked about as another potential Vietnam. Let President Yahya make the choice, the only choice he is left with, before it is too late.