received 'red letters' from rebel groups marking them for assassination. Despite the fact that both men surrounded themselves with bodyguards of razakars (progovernment vigilant), both were dead within a week. Bengali rebels gunned down Hamid in broad daylight. And a fierce bund of black-masked guerrillas stormed Sarwar's home routed the corps of razakars, then lopped off Sarwar's head and took it with them."
Message
The Pakistani Army under Lt.-Gen. Tikka Khan, the military governor of East Pakistan, has responded in kind. After guerrillas blew up a bridge north of Dacca. Punjabi soldiers put several neighboring villages to the torch, killing scores of residents and taking others into custody. In the case of the Khulna assassinations, Jenkins reported that the army's response was even more terrifying: “The morning after Sarwar was beheaded, workers traveling to Khulna's jute mills found seventeen dead bodies lined up neatly in front of the railroad station. Their hands had been tied behind their backs and cach man had been shot. The army left the bodies in view for a full 24 hours to make sure the population got the message."
But just how successful the Pakistani Army's tactics would be in keeping an estimated 30,000 guerrillas in check remained very much in doubt. True, wherever Tikka Khan chose to concentrate his troops, the army seemed likely to maintain the upper hand. But elsewhere the outlook was bleak. The Mukti Bahini can draw on the teeming East Pakistan population of more than 70 million. And far from cowing that population into submission each new army atrocity has seemed to strengthen the Bengali resolve. “Yahya Khan and the military high command thought they could terrorise the Bengalis", a Western diplomat in Dacca told Jenkins last week. “The result has been just the opposite Sure the Bengali has been frightened. But he has also been made to hale as he never did before-and he realizes that it is only through violence that he has a chance to free himself."
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