 |
* International Herald Tribune, July 1, 1971
WHY AID PAKISTAN?
After months of equivocation and evasion, the State Department has finally made it clear that the administration intends to keep on furnishing military and economic assistance to the government of Pakistan despite continuing acts of repression in East Pakistan that have shocked the world. This incredible policy decision defies understanding.
* The Observer, July 4, 1971
BENGAL GUERRILLAS STEP UP BOMBING
Dacca, 3 July: As Secretary of Dacca’s Council Muslim League, Mr. Abdul Matin, a Bengali and a lawyer, is a firm believer in the unity of the two Pakistans. He is also a lucky man.
At 1.55 one morning this week, he escaped unhurt when a bomb went off in his home. It woke the city and blew a hole the size of a football in a thick brick wall. The bomb was the Mukti Fouj’s (Freedom Fighters) way of reminding people that nowadays it pays to be a Begali first and a Muslim second.
* The Observer, July 4, 1971
EDITORIAL: BENGAL CHAOS COULD LEAD TO WAR
The Enormous and increasing scale of the refugee exodus from East Pakistan to India confronts the world not only with the greatest humanitarian relief task since World War Two but also with a political crisis of growing magnitude. Already five or six million people – more than the entire population of one of the smaller European States- have fled from their homes through fear or hunger. Millions more may move by the autumn if famine occurs through a breakdown of minimal food distribution.
There is a growing danger that if the exodus continues, the whole of the Indian sub-continent may be dragged into war and unpredictable social convulsions.
* International Herald Tribune, July 6, 1971
REPRESSION, TERRORISM FOUND GROWING IN EAST PAKISTAN
The army is, indeed, in control, except for a few areas near the active and growing more so-with aid from India.
* The Economist, July 10, 1971
THE MUKTI FOUJ IS STILL FIGHTING
But even when the list is out, the continued activities of the Mukti Fouj may deter people from collaborating with the Martial Law regime. At the moment the main activity of the Bengali resistance is confined to the border areas, where India provides sanctuary and a certain amount of assistance from Indian regular troops in the form of coverage fire. Even Rajshahi-separated from India by the Ganges, which is some five miles wide during the monsoon I heard noises of skirmishing in the night. Most of the Mukti Fouj’s work is sabotage and in one district alone, Comilla, it is officially admitted that eight rail bridges and 15 road bridges have been down. This is enough to keep the 60,000 men of the Pakistani army in the east busy.
In the interior, the army has more or less had to limit its operations to the Madhupur Forest area north of Dacca, where, there are still more than 100 deserters from the East Pakistan Rifles and the East Bengal Regiment with a few machine-guns and mortars; the Noakhali area, where the Bengali communist leader, Mohammad Toaha, is operating the Barisal area, where those members of the large community of Hindus who have not made it to India have apparently armed themselves; and the Khulna district, where there is evidence that Naxalites slipped over the border from West Bengal. Otherwise guarding the interior has had to be pretty well a police job.
WHY AID PAKISTAN?
After months of equivocation and evasion, the State Department has finally made it clear that the administration intends to keep on furnishing military and economic assistance to the government of Pakistan despite continuing acts of repression in East Pakistan that have shocked the world. This incredible policy decision defies understanding.
* The Observer, July 4, 1971
BENGAL GUERRILLAS STEP UP BOMBING
Dacca, 3 July: As Secretary of Dacca’s Council Muslim League, Mr. Abdul Matin, a Bengali and a lawyer, is a firm believer in the unity of the two Pakistans. He is also a lucky man.
At 1.55 one morning this week, he escaped unhurt when a bomb went off in his home. It woke the city and blew a hole the size of a football in a thick brick wall. The bomb was the Mukti Fouj’s (Freedom Fighters) way of reminding people that nowadays it pays to be a Begali first and a Muslim second.
* The Observer, July 4, 1971
EDITORIAL: BENGAL CHAOS COULD LEAD TO WAR
The Enormous and increasing scale of the refugee exodus from East Pakistan to India confronts the world not only with the greatest humanitarian relief task since World War Two but also with a political crisis of growing magnitude. Already five or six million people – more than the entire population of one of the smaller European States- have fled from their homes through fear or hunger. Millions more may move by the autumn if famine occurs through a breakdown of minimal food distribution.
There is a growing danger that if the exodus continues, the whole of the Indian sub-continent may be dragged into war and unpredictable social convulsions.
* International Herald Tribune, July 6, 1971
REPRESSION, TERRORISM FOUND GROWING IN EAST PAKISTAN
The army is, indeed, in control, except for a few areas near the active and growing more so-with aid from India.
* The Economist, July 10, 1971
THE MUKTI FOUJ IS STILL FIGHTING
But even when the list is out, the continued activities of the Mukti Fouj may deter people from collaborating with the Martial Law regime. At the moment the main activity of the Bengali resistance is confined to the border areas, where India provides sanctuary and a certain amount of assistance from Indian regular troops in the form of coverage fire. Even Rajshahi-separated from India by the Ganges, which is some five miles wide during the monsoon I heard noises of skirmishing in the night. Most of the Mukti Fouj’s work is sabotage and in one district alone, Comilla, it is officially admitted that eight rail bridges and 15 road bridges have been down. This is enough to keep the 60,000 men of the Pakistani army in the east busy.
In the interior, the army has more or less had to limit its operations to the Madhupur Forest area north of Dacca, where, there are still more than 100 deserters from the East Pakistan Rifles and the East Bengal Regiment with a few machine-guns and mortars; the Noakhali area, where the Bengali communist leader, Mohammad Toaha, is operating the Barisal area, where those members of the large community of Hindus who have not made it to India have apparently armed themselves; and the Khulna district, where there is evidence that Naxalites slipped over the border from West Bengal. Otherwise guarding the interior has had to be pretty well a police job.
* International Herald Tribune, July 16, 1971
FIGHT FOR BENGALI AUTONOMY MAY BE GAINING MOMENTUM
New Delhi, July 15 (NYT)- The resistance fighters in East Pakistan have been increasing their hit-and-run attacks on small West Pakistani Army units and police stations.
As the still disorganized Bengali autonomy movement appears to be gaining momentum, the guerrillas have been avoiding frontal battles but have inflicted a sizeable number of casualties.
They have also stepped up executions, sometimes by beheading of those collaborating with the army.
In many areas the army pulls back to the relative safety of its cantonments at night, leaving the rebels free to move through the countryside.
With the growing resistance, the army has had to reimpose curfews in an increasing number of towns. Foreign observers are beginning to draw parallels to Vietnam.
* International Herald Tribune, July 16, 1971
BAN URGED ON U.S. AID TO PAKISTAN
Washington, July 15 (NYT)- The House Foreign Affairs Committee voted today to withhold all military and economic assistance for Pakistan and Greece.
The action on Pakistan proposes to cut off United States funds until East Pakistani refugees have been returned to their homes and “reasonable stability” has been achieved in the country where the army crushed an East Pakistani movement for political autonomy.
* The Weekly Economist, July 17, 1971
THE BENGAL PRESSURE BUILDS UP ON MRS. GANDHI
India is known to be giving the Mukti Fouj-the guerrillas in East Pakistan, some help. But how much help, niether party is eager to reveal. Sanctuary, invaluable to all guerrillas, is certainly being granted, and perhaps covering fire from the Indian border security forces. Training may still be in the hands of guerrillas themselves. But since even those of them who were previously a regular part of the Pakistan army had no training with explosives, and since they have recently pulled off some spectacular bridge bowling, it is likely that Indian sappers haves been providing the explosives and know-how. Certainly the Mukti Fouj needs training. The East Pakistan Rifles and the East Bengal Regiments, which have now been merged into it, have dropped their previous tacties of fighting in battlle order and now operate in small groups. But it will be harder to persuade them to swallow their regimental pride and wear civilian clothes.
* Newsweek, July 19, 1971
PAKISTAN: THE BENGALIS STRIKE BACK
“I am glad to be able to tell you”, declared Pakistan President Mohammad Yahya Khan in a recent address to his nation “that the army is in full control of the situation in East Pakistan. It has crushed the mischief-mongers, saboteurs and infiltrators”. Alas for Yahya, the facts told a different story. Throughout East Pakistan, the embattled Bengali resistance movement seemed more determined than ever to prove, that it was alive and well-and capable of making life extremely difficult for the heavily armed but thinly spread occupation forces of the Pakistani Army.
* The Telegraph, July 23, 1971
GUERRILLAS REGAIN MARKET TOWN IN EAST PAKISTAN
Bangladesh guerrillas have reoccupied an area of 150 square miles in the Jessore district of East Pakistan near the frontier with India.
They were carlier driven from these positions to take refuge in India when Pakistani Army reinforcements move form Jessore cantonment in April to obliterate Pockets of Bengali resistance in the border regions.
* International Herald Tribune, July 31-August 1, 1971
‘THANT IS REPORTED TO WARN OF INDIA-PAKISTAN’ DISASTER
United Nations, July 30 (UPI)- Secretary General U Thant has warned the Security Council in a secret memorandum that humanitarian aid will not suffice to avert “Potential disaster” in the Inadia-Pakistan crisis, it was reliably learned yesterday. He expressed his deep concern about the situation and described it as a “potential threat to peace and security which could no longer be ignored by the international community.
| July 1971 | ||
|---|---|---|
| 7/1/1971 | New York Times | Correspondent of the Times ousted from East Pakistan |
| 7/3/1971 | New Yorker | The talk of the town; Notes and Comments |
| 7/4/1971 | New York Times | An alien army imposes its will |
| 7/4/1971 | New York Times | Hindus are targets of army terror in an East Pakistani town |
| 7/11/1971 | The Sunday Times | A regime of thugs and bigots |
| 7/11/1971 | The Sunday Times | The Repression of Bengal |
| 7/13/1971 | New York Times | World Bank unit says Pakistan aid is pointless now |
| 7/13/1971 | New York Times | Excerpts from World Bank group’s report on East Pakistan |
| 7/14/1971 | New York Times | EDITORIAL: Pakistan condemned |
| 7/14/1971 | New York Times | West Pakistan pursues subjugation of Bengalis |
| 7/14/1971 | The Boston Globe | Plea from CARE |
| 7/16/1971 | New Statesman, London | West Both Sides of Disaster : On refugees |
| 7/17/1971 | New York Times | A Pakistani terms Bengalis ‘chicken hearted’ |
| 7/23/1971 | Wall Street Journal | A Nation Divided |
| 7/31/1971 | The Economist, London | Time is running out in Bengal |
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