India and Pakistan:
Poised for War

Section: The World, Page 28, TIME, Dec. 6, 1971

The differences have also shaped both countries' foreign policies. As Nehru created a policy of neutrality and sought to establish India as the leader of nonaligned bloc of Third World countries. Pakistan became a firm ally of the west. Then in U.S. in what former Ambassador to India John Kenneth Galbriath calls the most "categorically mischievous and wicked" action it has ever taken, began to build up Pakistan as a military power. With India pursuing a policy of calculated coolness toward the U.S.. Washington turned to Pakistan as a potential ally against Communism: in return Pakistan provided special facilities, including a base that was used for U-2 overflights of the Soviet Union (Francis Gary took off from this airfield).

Pakistan, however viewed the connection as insurance against India, not Communism. After 1965, when the U.S. cut off military aid to both countries. India turned to the Soviet Union and Pakistan to China. With Russia's help, India has built itself into a military power far superior to Pakistan. Its forces(980,000) outnumber Pakistan's(392,000) by more than 2 to 1: its air and naval capacity is also rated superior. If India were to fight Pakistan alone, there is little doubt which would win.

Sharing neither borders nor cultures, Pakistan's divided parts, separated by a thousand miles of Indian territory, make it a political anomaly, at odds not only with India but with itself as well. As Jinnah put it shortly after independence, there was little to hold the country's two divergent wings together except "faith." It was not enough. Last December, when the nation went to the polls in first free elections in its history, East Pakistanis gave an overwhelming endorsement to the Awami League and its leader, Sheik Mujibur Rahman, 51 who had pledged to bring the exploited wing greater autonomy.

The prospect of the political balance of power moving from West Pakistan to the East was not acceptable to the generals. On March 25, Yahya outlawed the Awami League, arrested Mujib, who is now being tried for treason, and launched a ruthless repression that by one estimate has claimed a million lives and has sent nearly 10 million refugees flooding into India, most of them into the state West Bengal. Awami Leaders leaders who escaped to India promptly set up the Bangla Desh government in exile with headquarters in Calcutta, and some 130 Bengali diplomats subsequently defected from Pakistani missions around the world. The rebels immediately began raising and training a guerrilla force that, by some estimates, now numbers 100,000 men.

Today India's worst fear is that many of the refugees will refuse to go back to East Pakistan under any conditions. Nearly 8,000,000 of them are Hindus, who were singled out by the Moslem military for persecution. Pakistan, moreover, claims that only 2,000,000 Pakistani refugees are in India -- a figure that corresponds to the number of Moslems who have fled. This coincidence may suggest that even if there were a settlement, the Pakistanis would refuse to permit Hindus to return.

Swarm of Locusts

The dire forecasts are confirmed by a World Bank report released in September. India's economic development, the report said, could be seriously stunted by the cost of the refugees. That cost, expected to reach $830 million by the end of the fiscal year in March, exceeds all of India's 1971-72 foreign aid for development.

The setback came at a time when the country was just beginning to show some economic headway. With a $50 billion gross national product, India has begun producing all manner of sophisticated materials, from complex computers to nuclear reactors and jet aircraft. But the distance it has come is only measurable by the distance left to go. Some 200 million people still subsist on 15c a day; more than half of the 10 million government workers earn less than $25 a month. As a Calcutta industrialist put it: "The refugees have descend on our hopes like a swarm of locusts on a good crop."

Economic pressures are also building in West Pakistan. So far, the Islamabad regime has been able to muddle through fairly well. The real crunch will come in few months. Pakistan is spending almost 55% of its fiscal outlay on the defense, and the cost of military operations in the East alone runs to $60million a month. One observer estimates that the 3,000-mile route around India that Pakistani planes must take to supply forces in the East is the equivalent of a supply line from Karachi to Rome.

In the light of all this, some West Pakistanis are privately beginning to concede that it may finally be necessary to do what the generals spilled so much blood to avoid: give up East Pakistan. A high Pakistan government official admits that there is no more that "50-50 chance of Pakistan holding together."

There were also indications last week that Yahya is beginning to feel threatened by political opposition in the West. Charging that "some of its leaders are in collaboration with the enemy and are trying to foment revolt in West Pakistan," he suddenly outlawed the National Awami Party, a labor-oriented leftest group that emerged as the dominant provincial party in elections last December. The Pakistan President has promised to convene the National Assembly later this month. But with both the East's Awami League and the West's National Awami League disenfranchised, the Assembly is beginning to appear about as representative as President Ayub Khan's "basic democracy," a scheme by which the former President's rule was sustained through a handpicked electoral college of 120,000 educated Pakistanis.

Secret Proposal

The worst fear of diplomatic observers was that India and the Bengali guerrillas, confident that they would win easily, were attempting to provoke Yahya into a declaration of war. According to this theory, which is held by number of U.S. State Department officials, Mrs. Gandhi's Western jaunt was designed mostly to gain time while India's military buildup progressed. When Pakistan's chief ally, Peking, indicated that it really wanted no part of a war on the subcontinent, the Indian decided to move. With snow falling in the foothills of the Himalayas, making Chinese intervention even more unlikely, they sprang. Their aim was twofold: to draw West Pakistani troops to the border regions, making it easy for the guerillas to gain control of the interior; and to goad Islamabad into declaring war so as to enable India to attack in the west as well as the east, and thus settle the issue of Kashmir once and for all.

Another theory holds that India's militant moves may in fact be designed to force Yahya to reconsider an aborted peace proposal. TIME's Dan Coggin learned that the secret proposal was made by President Nixon to Mrs. Gandhi on her visit to Washington last month. The President reportedly told the Prime Minister that Yahya Khan appeared to be accepting the idea of negotiations with Mujib. If she would remain "moderate" for the time being, Washington promised, it would use its influence to persuade Yahya to sit down with imprisoned Bengali leader and work out a solution.

There were two chief possibilities under consideration by Yahya, both posing the prospect of a referendum for East Pakistanis to decide their status after a two- or three-year cooling-off time. One proposal suggested that Mujib be released and that he and his Awami League be at least partly reinstated during the waiting period. The other involved keeping Mujib under house arrest in West Pakistan and making no substantial political changes in the interim.

Danger of Escalation

In the meantime, however, several hard-lining West Pakistani generals got the wind of the proposal and informed Yahya that they were opposed to any sort of negotiations with Mujib. They argued that Pakistan's unity depended upon maintaining the current policy -- in effect to outlast the guerillas. The generals, moreover, also tried to convince Yahya that Mujib should be executed after his treason trial is completed. Yahya has apparently not yet made up his mind about the Bengali leader, but observers have grown markedly more pessimistic about his fate. "Mujib may well never get back to Bengal alive," says one Western diplomat. In any case, India's new militancy posed grave risks of dangerous new escalations the could get out of hand.

Late last week, Yahya took time out to attend the dedication ceremonies of a new heavy-machinery factory outside Islamabad. The President was in an ebullient mood. The factory had been built with Chinese aid, and it seems good moment to underscore Peking's support.

Yahya thanked China "for renewing the assurance that should Pakistan be subjected to foreign aggression, the Chinese government and people will as always, resolutely support the Pakistan government and people." Then it was China's turn. Peking's own special emissary, Li Shui-ching of the First Ministry of Machine Building, spoke glowingly of Chinese-Pakistani friendship, but he carefully avoided any mention of the tension with India or of specific aid from Peking. Then, in a surprising and symbolic gesture, he released a boxful of doves.

The message was clear -- peace, not war -- but whether the subcontinent's bitter antagonists would heed it was very much in question.

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