From the evidence available one must conclude that the aim was so wipe out the Awami League leadership that it could no longer provide an effective leadership for any resistance movement. Sheikh Mujib was arrested and may have been taken to West Pakistan. How many of his lieutenants are gone is impossible to say. The slaughter of student in Dacca, as likely organizers of guerrilla operations, seems well attested. If some move to reverse the orders were now to be made, lest the slaughter go on spreading, leaders who might help to moderate the passions on the Bengali side would be lacking. From Pakistan Radio there are still only the assurances that all is well and the army is in control. Nothing has been said or done that will put a stop to the reverberating fear. Yet nothing could be worse than to allow the present muddle of fighting and minor massacre to drift on.
Judging by the Pakistan Government's account of Dacca being restored to normal with civil servants returning to their duty, shops opening and normal life resuming, the expectation is that with a little more time at least all the populated centers of East Bengal will have been brought under control. Reports from East Pakistan, however, would suggest that the Pakistan army has not got the manpower to bring about this result other than in the main towns. Elsewhere popular resistance will be strong enough to control smaller urban pockets, leaving much of the countryside as an undeclared no-man's land. Some sort of lines of control will this be drawn. But what might such conditions presage? President Yahya Khan's conciliatory actions ever since the elections last year can hardly allow him to contemplate settling down to a long campaign merely to entrench the Central Government's authority throughout East Bengal. At some point the dialogue between the Government and the leaders of East Pakistan must be resumed. The sooner the better judging by the horrors of the past few days.
