| শিরোনাম | সূত্র | তারিখ |
| ১৩৭। অস্ত্রের মুখে একতা | ইকনমিষ্ট | ২ এপ্রিল, ১৯৭১ |
THE WEEKLY ECONOMIST LONDON, APRIL 3. 1971.
UNITY AT GUNPOINT
East Pakistan's Sheikh Mujib looks a loser today, but it is more likely that President Yahya has chosen the road that leads to a civil war he cannot win.
President Yahya has taken desperate action. He has chosen to break the deadlock about Pakistan's future by breaking Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his Awami League. No one thought he would dare to try and still less that he would succeed. But now it seems the army, after its sharp an bloody takeover, has the upper hand. The reports from foreign journalists whom the army failed to expel quickly enough show that in Dacca, at least, the army's claim to have won control was accurate. And after prolonged fighting, the same may now be true of Chittagong the provinces main port. How much resistance there still is elsewhere is unclear. The army owed its apparent success to the suddenness with which it struck arresting a number of the Awami League leaders as well as shooting up parts of Dacca-and unprepared ness of the Awami League Organisation.
But though he may have pacified the main cities, shattered the Awami leadership and cowed many Bengalis into submissiveness, President Yahya's problems are only just beginning. He will find it difficult to police the countryside, much of East Pakistan split by innumerable waterways, is the sort of terrain regular soldiers hare but guerrillas love. Like neighboring West Bengal, East Pakistan has its share of Pro-Peking peasant revolutionaries preaching violence. So long as Sheikh Mujibur promised the fruits of autonomy through negotiation they remained weak and eclipsed by Sheikh Mujib's rising star. But that the army has moved in so bloodily their argument that the violence can only be met with violence may see unanswerable. Presumably their numbers will rise. And so will the level of the Ganges and Brahmaputra which, by the time the monsoon comes in May or June, will make most of East Pakistan impassable for any troops but the men with an automatic and a sack of rice. No doubt the guerrillas will be pretty uncoordinated, because the army seems to have rounded up a good many of their potential leaders, but even a disorganized resistance may be widespread enough to tie down a lot of the 70,000 troops in the eastern region. And President Yahya has a major logistic problem in getting supplies and reinforcement all the way from West Pakistan.
There are other problems for President Yahya besides the threat of guerrilla action. He will have to get the life of the province, which has been running at a trickle for the past month moving again, and this with a population embittered by the reimposition of the West Pakistan military rule. The bitterness will have been compounded by the Army's apparent disregard for civilians. Some Bengalis willing to serve the Martial Law regime will, of course, be found; a lot of others are just not going to co-operate. President Yahya may well have to import Punjabis to run the civil service, and use the army to run essential services. Nor has he any guarantee that West Pakistan will keep quiet. It
