two-thirds of the nation's industry and four-fifths of its banking and insurance assets). Per capita income is miserably low throughout Pakistan, but in the West ($ 48) it is more than half against that in the East (S 30).
To cap this long line of grievances came the devastating cyclone that roared in off the Bay of Bengal last November, claiming some 500,000 lives. The callousness of West toward East was never more shockingly apparent. Yahya waited 13 days before visiting the disaster scene, which some observers described as “a second Hiroshima". The Pakistani navy never bothered to search for victims. Aid distribution was lethargic where it existed at all, tons of grain remained on stockpiled in warehouses while Pakistani army helicopters sat on their pads in the West.
Supreme Sacrifice
Three weeks later, Pakistan held its first national elections since becoming a nation 23 years before, the object was to choose a constituent assembly that would draft a new charter for the nation, and the would continue to sit as a national assembly. The East Pakistanis thronged the polls and gave an overwhelming endorsement to Sheikh Mujibur ("Mujib") Rahman, 51, the fiery head of the party known as the Awami League and a longtime spokesman for Eastern autonomy (he spent nearly tea years in jail for urging that Bengalis be given greater control of their destiny). Mujib's Awami League captured 167 of the 169 seats allotted to the East in the 313-member national assembly, giving it a clear majority. The victory meant that Mujib. as the leader of the majority party, would be Prime Minister of all Pakistan.
It was something that Yahya had simply not anticipated. He and his fellow generals expected that Mujib would capture no more than 60% of the East Pakistani seats, and that smaller parties in the East would form a coalition with West Pakistani parties leaving the real power in Islamabad. Mujib feared some sort of double-cross: “If the polls are frustrated,” he declared in a statement that proved horribly prophetic, “the people of East Pakistan will owe it to the million who have died in the cyclone to make the supreme sacrifice of another million lives, if need be, so that we can live as a free people."
With the constitutional assembly scheduled to convene in March, Yahya began a covert troop buildup, flying soldiers dressed in civilian clothes to the East at night. Then he postponed the assembly, explaining that it could not meet until he could determine precisely how much power and autonomy Mujib wanted for the East. Mujib had not espoused full independence but a loosened semblance of national unity under which each wing would control its own taxation, trade and foreign aid. To Yahya and the generals, that was unacceptable. On March 25. Yahya broke off the meetings he had been holding and flew back to Islamabad. Five hours later, soldiers using howitzers, tanks, and rockets launched troop attacks in half a dozen sections of Dacca. The war was on. Swiftly, Yahya outlawed the Awami League and ordered the armed forces “to do their duty". Scores of Awami politicians were seized, including Mujib who now awaits trial in remote Sahiwal. 125 miles southwest of Is lama bad, on charges of treason; the trial expected to begin in August, could lead to the death penalty.
