Toronto Telegram (Canada)

East Pakistan needs imports of about three million tons of food grains to prevent famine, according to an American doctor who recently attended a Toronto conference that discussed the tragedy on the subcontinent. Dr. John Rhode, of the Harvard University medical school, writing in the British medical magazine Lancet, estimates that 25 million of East Pakistan’s poorer people are facing starvation. Dr. Rhode spoke at the South Asia conference in Toronto last month after touring refugees camps in West Bengal and other Indian border states. He is among thousands of prominent Americans who have condemned the United States Government for continuing to deliver arms to Pakistan, arguing that this can lead only to continued civil strife in the country. It is difficult to say whether or not the figure of 25 million represents an exaggeration by a concerned U.S. citizen and doctor. But the possibility certainly exists, because within a period of less than a year, East Pakistan has been hit by the country’s worst cyclone, by floods and by one of the most grisly military campaigns in the history of the subcontinent. The situation has become so critical that of East Pakistan’s population of 75 million, eight million have already fled into India. It has been the greatest migration in history within a period of a mere five months. Ever since March 25, civil war has raged in the country. Crops have been neglected, roads, railways and communications cut, houses, shops and villages looted and burned. It is therefore quite obvious that dozens of millions face severe food shortages. The irony of the situation is that world surpluses of food grains, particularly rice, are growing. Japan alone has a surplus stock of rice of around 6.4 million tons, 64 per cent of which is held by the Government. Record rice crops were harvested last year in India, Indonesia, Ceylon, Cambodia, South Korea, Malaysia and South Vietnam— all nations comparatively near to East Pakistan.

The fundamental problem will be how to distribute food aid if and when it arrives in the stricken country. Even at the best of times, roads and other communications are poor. Yet clearly the need for action in East Pakistan is urgent if the world community is to prevent yet another major disaster in this unhappy, convulsed land. The United Nations is one organisation that must involve itself more deeply in the tragedy of Pakistan in the months ahead.