If India reports that 7,00,000 people may have perished in the East Pakistani fighting seemed wildly exaggerated, the Pakistani Government claim that order and calm prevailed throughout East Pakistan seemed equally improbable. From fragmentary reports it appeared that the federal army was, in fact, in command of most major cities, but control of the countryside remained in doubt. “The troops can make sailies from cantonments and they occasionally do because they have concentrated firepower", correspondent Clifton reported. “However they dare not spend much time away from base for fear of ambush and must return before dark. Their policy seems to be to go on short terror raids to cow the population into surrender. The question is whether the rebels can hold out until the monsoon comes in a month or so when the weather will make the roads impassable".
Brooding
The civil strife in East Pakistan meanwhile, seems hardly to have touched the consciousness of Pakistanis in the western sector more that 1,000 miles away across Indian territory. On the surface at least Newsweek's Milan J. Kubic found that life in West Pakistan moved along at a business as usual pace. But Kubic also discovered a deep sense of brooding among intellectuals and politicians who saw the end of the ideals upon which Pakistan was founded 23 years ago. “When we were building this country, the only argument, we had for dismembering the Indian subcontinent was our desire to “build a home where all of its Moslems would feel free and equal,” an elder statesman in Lahore remarked sadly. “That ideal is now dead, and the Pakistan which we conceived has gone out of existence."
The Awakening of A People
Early last month, when riots erupted in East Pakistan, Newsweek correspondent Loren Jenkins flew to Dacca to 'cover the Bengali struggle for national autonomy. Where civil war flared up and the Pakistani Army put the region under total censorship, Jenkins, along with all other foreign newsmen, was expelled from the country. On his return to Beirut last week, Jenking filed this personal report on East Pakistan's tragic ordeal:
He stood under a hot noon sun, beads of sweat clinging to his forehead around the edge of his slicked-back grey hair. His eyes were red from fatigue, but his face glowed with pride and hope. Only minutes before, a mob of students from the Dacca Medical School' had swirled through the green iron gates into the garden of his modest home in the Dacca suburb of Dhanmondi. The impassioned young people shouted “Joi Bangla". ("Victory to Bengal") to demonstrate their support for Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, 51 year old leader of East Pakistan's 75 million people. His spirits soaring, Mujib (as he is called by everyone in East Pakistan) turned to our group of foreign correspondents in his garden and spoke, with excitement: “My people are united, they cannot be stopped. Do you think machine guns can really extinguish the spirit and the soul of my people?”
Only 36 hours after Mujib uttered those words, Pakistan's army dominated by the Punjabis of West Pakistan, suddenly weighed in with its own ruthless answer, with bloody and sometimes indiscriminate use of its massive firepower the army won the first
