ISLAMABAD is still insisting that calm has returned to East Pakistan and that Sheikh Mujib is once again in prison. But the foreign press has been thrown out of Dacca, and all reports indicate that the army of West Pakistan has brutally imposed its will on the people of the East in a cynical operation tragically reminiscent of the Soviet Red Army's crushing of Czechoslovakia. Yahya Khan has accused the Sheikh of being a traitor. But the attempts to prevent the outside world from learning the truth of what has happened in Dacca tend to support the conclusion that the charge of treachery could be more accurately levelled at the army.

West Pakistan newspapers, including Dawn and the Pakistan Times, all agreed that Yahya, the Sheikh and Ali Bhutto had reached agreement during their talks in Dacca. It was reported (by Islamabad) that Yahya had bowed to the four (very reasonable) conditions demanded by Mujib the ending of martial law, the withdrawal of army units to their barracks, the handing over of power to the elected civil government and an enquiry into the slaughter of civilians by the armed forces.

Immediately on reaching this agreement, Yahya flew back to Karachi. There he made his accusations of treachery, banned the Sheikh's Awami League; and the army moved in. He offered no explanation of what had happened between his acknowledgement that mutual understanding about the future development of a more autonomous East Pakistan on federalist lines had been reached and his accusation of treason. The suspicion therefore must remain, unless Yahya can produce solid evidence to the contrary, either that he has since had to bow to his army "hawks", or that his trip to Dacca was made purely to gain time while his troops moved in to the East.

Suspicion must also surround the role played by Ali Bhutto in the prelude to the bloodbath. Bhutto's actions had shown that he feared and resented the enormous electoral support commanded by the Sheikh. He was reluctant to co-operate with an Assembly in which he was likely to command a less-than-dominant position. He went unhappily to Dacca and cannot have been enthusiastic about Yahya's concessions to the Sheikh. If he has lent his support to the army "hawks" in their crushing of Bangla Desh, he has provided proof (even more damning than his resignation after the Indo-Pakistan agreement at Tashkent) that he is willing to place his personal ambitions before the national interest.

These developments must be acutely embarrassing for China's foreign policy makers. For many years they have cultivated friendship with the military rulers of Pakistan who, although hardly progressive at home, have adopted welcome policies of non-alignment abroad. Now, unfortunately, the tigers have shown their true stripes. Against the advantages of friendship with Islamabad (the balance it provides against Soviet influence in India and the opening of the strategic silk route), Peking must now weigh the fact that it is in danger of condoning the militarist crushing of a popular, progressive movement which has always regarded the Chinese and Chairman Mao with warm admiration. To compound the embarrassment, Peking is already giving its support to the Naxalites just across the frontier in India, a revolt which has much in common with nationalist movements in East Pakistan. Peking can ill afford reports that Chinese-made tanks were used in the streets of Dacca by Yahya's troops, or that those troops were flown in by courtesy of China's air space.

In the short term, the tanks and the guns will probably win and, after a totally unnecessary bloodbath, East Pakistan will become an occupied territory, with Mujib in prison and the economic and political domination of the West re-established. In the longer run, however, Islamabad has probably wiped out the possibility of an eventual federalist compromise. Sooner or later Bangla Desh will reassert itself‹just as eventually Czech nationalism must triumph. But Dacca will have learned a bloody lesson from its willingness to listen to the promises of the West. When the day comes, the Sheikh, or his successors, will settle for nothing less than full independence. In that sense, West Pakistan last week created Bangla Desh.