PAKISTAN: Humiliation or War – Monday, 10 May, 1971 – Time Magazine

PAKISTAN Humiliation or War

While East Pakistan continues to suffer from the bloody civil war and the growing threat of food shortages, the other half of the divided country is bearing burdens of another sort. The army-backed federal government of President Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan remains totally committed to keeping the Eastern wing from breaking away to establish Bangla Desh, an independent Bengal state. But the strain of the undertaking is overtaxing West Pakistan’s resources and nerves. “This regime has East Pakistan stuck in its throat,” says one American diplomat in the federal capital of Islamabad. “The army must either swallow it or cough it up.”

By last week open fighting had almost completely ceased in East Pakistan. Nonetheless, West Pakistan must continue for the foreseeable future to lay out huge sums to support an army of occupation in East Pakistan. Moreover, the army is raising two additional divisions to bolster its defenses against India.

Ancient Hatred. Meanwhile, West Pakistani industry is operating at only one-third of capacity because of the loss of sales to the markets in the more populous Eastern half of the country—and because of a general economic slump. West Pakistan is hurt in other ways, too, by East Pakistan’s economic collapse. In normal times East Pakistan’s jute industry earns nearly half the whole country’s foreign exchange; now it lies idle, and the rest of the East’s meager industry and transportation facilities have sustained almost complete disruption. West Pakistan will need to find funds to help the Eastern half get started again.

That will be difficult. “We are on the brink of economic destruction,” declared an editorial in West Pakistan’s New Times last week. The country has just about exhausted its foreign currency reserves, and is unable to meet the debt repayments due to U.S. and European creditors in May and June. Foreign aid, including an $80 million loan from the U.S., has stopped, and the eleven-nation consortium that supports most of Pakistan’s economic development is reluctant to bail out Yahya’s regime until the present crisis is ended.

Under the stress of trying to hang on to East Bengal, the West Pakistanis’ old obsessive hatred of the Indians has flared up again. The federal government has completely sealed off West Pakistan from outside reports about the repressive army crackdown in East Pakistan. Denied reliable reporting, West Pakistanis tend to view the conflict as a sinister Indian plot to dismember their country. India has remained nominally neutral, but it has in fact given Bengali rebels a haven.

Border Shooting. One result is a series of diplomatic snubs and threats between Pakistan and India. After Pakistan’s chief diplomat in Calcutta defected to the Bangla Desh side, Islamabad sent a successor who was unable to make his way to the mission through Indian demonstrators. Pakistan thereupon closed the office and demanded that India shut down its mission in Dacca.

Potentially more dangerous than the diplomatic scuffling, however, was the situation developing along the borders between East Pakistan and India. West Pakistan troops have been pushing to close the boundaries between the insurgents and possible sources of supply in India. Last week both sides traded charges that their troops had fired upon the other’s territory. The tense atmosphere evoked fears among foreign diplomats that another Indo-Pakistan war might break out. Neither country wants to fight, or indeed can afford to; but this was no less true in the period preceding the 17-day war of 1965. “The army’s choice might be humiliation in East Pakistan or war with India,” says one diplomat. “It’s possible that a chain of events in East Pakistan could lead to open hostilities.”