We watched half a dozen of Rab's troops redeploying to “Ten Mile Junction" where the Saidpur road meets the road northwards from Dinajpur, five miles from the town. They had one anti-tank gun (their last remaining artillery), two rocket propelled grenade launchers, and four riflemen.
Refugees, with goats and calves trotting behind them and other meagre possessions balanced on their heads, streamed past. They told of Punjabis burning their villages to the ground, killing all they saw, of wholesale looting and rapes. Although in this civil war, as in all wars, there is perpetual exaggeration, their accounts carried conviction. The soldiers were calm, muted, and sad. They knew they were only there to win a few minutes' time.
Then we visited another defensive position, deep in a bamboo grove. Here the troops were brighter and more optimistic. The local people came with large buckets of rice. “Dal" and poppadums to provide lunch for the troops. Possibly no soldiers in history have been so whole heartedly supported by the local civilian population, inspired both by Bangladesh nationalism and by terror of a massacre.
It was a classic guerrilla war deployment, a dozen men hidden in near-jungle ready to inflict maximum damage then flee.
This is Sgt.-Major Rab's basic strategy. First conventional defense to win time. Then a general dispersal into the surrounding countryside to lure the West Pakistanis into a complacent re-occupation of Dinajpur. Then a long period of stealthy killing.
We talked at length with local politicians who grandly sketched out the future of an independent, non-aligned Bangladesh. But no one seriously pretends the major towns of the country can survive in their control for long. Jessore has already fallen; Dinajpur is even now under assault. The crucial question about the future of the struggle is whether Sgt-Major Rab's guerrilla tactics can be properly put into practice.
In their favor is the over whelming support of the local population and the pressure of world opinion on Yahya Khan. Against them is the un-military character of The Bengalis and their desperate shortage of ammunition and general supplies.
Dinajpur has escaped relatively unscathed so far. But now it must suffer the fate of Dacca, Chittagong and other major centers.
Meanwhile. Sgt.-Major Rab, if he has not been killed at the front, will have escaped to the bamboo groves and small villages to try to continue the fight. With his crisp police uniform and his manner inherited from the British Raj, he makes an improbable Che Guevara of Bangladesh. But if there are many like him in East Pakistan the civil war is going to continue for a long time.
