THE INDIANS CROSS THE LINE WAR BECOMES BIGGER AND MUCH MORE DANGEROUS

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32779, 2 December 1971, Page 14

THE INDIANS CROSS THE LINE WAR BECOMES BIGGER AND MUCH MORE DANGEROUS

(Reprinted from the "Economist” by arrangement)

Declarations of war went out long ago. The American Congress has never put its legal stamp on a decade of hostilities in Vietnam; the Arabs and the Israelis did not formally call it war in 1967; and the Indians and the Pakistanis made no declarations during their last big round of fighting in 1965. So it is neither surprising nor significant that President Yahya Khan and Mrs Gandhi omitted to do so again last month. War, According to the dictionary, is a hostile contention between armed forces, and such a contention has been going on for months in East Pakistan. But suddenly this war by many other names has become a bigger and much more dangerous affair.

On November 22, Pakistan i announced that India had J launched an all-out offensive against East Pakistan. It later- claimed that seven Indian divisions were taking part in an attack on at least five fronts. The Indians first insisted that the increased military activity was all a product of the post-monsoon offensive of the Bengali guerrillas, but then admitted what they called .a limited defensive action. By the week’s end there were still no independent authenticated accounts of what was happening in East Pakistan and there was every reason to suspect both the New Delhi and the Islamabad versions. But for all their contradictions, the two were agreed on one point: that for the first time since the Bengal crisis exploded eight months ago, tanks and planes had gone - into battle on the side of the guerrillas.

Denials refuted The armour and aircraft could have come from only one source. So their appearance on the scene must put paid once and for all to India’s repeated denials that it is arming the Mukti Bahini. And even if the Pakistani figures are wildly exaggerated, it can no longer be doubted that the tanks were accompanied across the border by sizable numbers of regular Indian troops. At least one foreign correspondent, Mr Sydney Schanberg of the “New York Times,” watched a convoy of trucks and tanks moving towards the frontier crossing at Boyra carrying not only heavily armed Sikhs but prefabricated bridges and furniture for command posts. He was told by Indian

officers that the troops were heading for the Jessore district, 20 miles into East Pakistan. Co-ordinated movements of this kind on several fronts cannot be freelance initiatives by local Indian commanders; nor, on the admission of guerrilla leaders, could they be carried out by the Mukti Bahini. Clearly India has embarked on a new policy of direct military involvement in East Pakistan. This has always been on the horizon as the. logical egtaisioni. of its previous policy of arming, "training and giving refuge and artillery cover to the guerrillas. The big question is why India decided to strike now, just when Western Governments were fulfilling their promises to Mrs Gandhi to lean on Yahya Khan and just when President Yahya seemed to be responding in a small way by inserting some conciliatory paragraphs into his Ramadan speech.

Monsoon’s end

One reason for the timing must be the end of the monsoon, which makes it possible for tanks to operate in certain areas of East Pakistan. Another factor is presumably India’s conviction, as a result of Mr Bhutto’s disappointing trip to Peking and some friendly noises towards India from the Chinese, that China will not intervene on behalf of Pakistan, even by creating a diversion on the border. The Indians have already acted on this assumption by moving some of their mountain divisions southward; the Pakistanis claimed that these divisions were involved in attacks in the Jessore, Sylhet and Chittagong areas. And a third factor may be India’s recent success in persuading Ceylon to close down the transit facilities it had been offering to Pakistani aircraft. Now Pakistan’s nine military transport aircraft will have to reduce their loads if they are to carry supplies around the tip of India from West to East Pakistan. But the trip was already so difficult that the airlift could have contributed only marginally to Pakistan’s war effort and its restriction will have an even more marginal effect. , J, Obviously the underlying reasons for India’s decision to intervene in East Pakistan must have been mounting frustration at the increasing influx of refugees and the diminishing prospects that any solution which would remove them—either as a result of political concessions by Pakistan or military successes by the guerrillas—could be arrived at quickly enough. But a more immediate cause for action

could well have been India's concern , about increasing internal dissension within the Awami League and its guerrilla force, the Mukti Support for Awami Although the ’ Awami League itself is basically a moderate middle-class party, it has joined forces with

several Maoist groups. The longer the struggle continues without significant success, the more likely it becomes that the extremist factions will wrest control of the movement from the Awami leaders. This possibility worries the Indians because of its inevitable repercussions In the Indians’ own volatile state of West Bengal. So India may have decided to intervene now in order to give the Awami League the military success it needs to consolidate its leadership.

Conceivably the Indians could be aiming at a total military conquest of East Pakistan so as to install an Awami League government and. get, the Pakistani army : and the refugees out of their i hair in one fell swoop. This . would not be militarily im--1 possible, given India’s two- ! to-one advantage over the

Pakistanis—an advantage reinforced by the estimated 150,000 men of the Bengali guerrilla force. And the West Pakistani forces are faced with a hostile population and ■ strained supply routes which ' may soon be cut by an Indian ■ naval blockade.

Such a campaign would be long by the standards of this kind of war—it could take at least two months —and extremely expensive in manpower. It would also have the political disadvantage of making the Awami League leaders look like Indian puppets: in such a campaign total victory could have the same effect as military defeat by pushing the Bangla Desh movement under the thumb of the far left.

Firm bases sought So the aims of India’s intervention are almost certainly more limited than a wholesale takeover of East Pakistan. But the fact that the Indians are attacking on so many fronts at once suggests that they are also aiming at something more than carving out an area of the province into which they could push some of the refugees. The logical place for such an operation would be in the north-west, near a large number of refugee camps where fhe terrain io dry andeaay going for tanks.-’The Indian forces do not seem to be moving in this direction at the moment; for political reasons, this might be best left to the guerrillas. The pattern

of the attacks suggests that what the Indians are after is to establish firm bases in key areas to serve as springboards for further action by the Mukti Bahini. The guerrilla movement would then grow with success and might even spark off a widespread popular uprising. In the end. the Indians must hope, the Pakistanis would cry uncle. Because the odds are so much against the Pakistani army in East Bengal, the Pakistanis are left with two

main options for ending the conflict short of catastrophe: one is to launch an attack in the west; the other is to invite international interven-

tion. In fact, the first would be a means of bringing about the second since the Pakistanis cannot expect to win in the west either—although they might succeed in occupying some Indian territory both in Kashmir and by a drive south from Lahore.

A case lost Although India will undoubtedly continue to resist international intervention foi the same reasons that Pakistan will invite it, the Indians ; have lost a good part of their ' case by their actions last ' week. Until now India has ’ been arguing that the Ben; ’ gal crisis was purely Pakis- ; tan’s problem, and that to , accept a United Nations pre- ; sence on the border would be ’to acknowledge India’s in- , volvement in the conflict. This : involvement is now manifest, ’ and Mrs Gandhi cannot put off much longer the moment when she will have to accept the diplomatic consequences that flow from it. If the Great Powers the ■ Russians, the Americans, and ’ perhaps others—are to halt • the bloodshed on the sub-. • continent they will need s India’s co-operation to do so. i But to gain that co-operation i they will have to convince : India that the advantage in ; stopping the shooting is not : all Pakistan’s. This probably means persuading Pakistan to i grant autonomy to an Awami League government in East Pakistan in exchange for a military freeze that would block Indian support for the guerrillas. All this will take virtuoso diplomacy and a common will on the part of all'the' Great Powers. And' time is against them as the prospect of a wider war comes rapidly closer.