“Go anywhere you wanu see for yourself” Pakistan's President Mohammed Yahya Khan told me. And there was no better place to see how close India and Pakistan might be to war than the border area near Camilla in East Pakistan. I boarded a two-car military supply train headed for Pakistani headquarters. And although there was the danger of Indian artillery fire, an army Colonel said reassuring, “They're lousy shots.” Huddled behind a protective brick wall inside what once was the second-class compartment, I nervously made the trip. We were rattling along, running parallel to the border when the train was flagged down; recoilless rifles were peppering the tracks in front us. There was nothing to do but walk to the nearest command post. A tall Punjabi sergeant fingered his red beard and said, “It's just a mile up the track,”
That one mile turned out to be seven. Mortar shells constantly splashed into the muddy paddy fields alongside the tracks and rifle bullets slammed into the steep railroad embankment. But the paddy water absorbed the mortar fragments, the Indian riflemen were indeed “lousy shots,” and three hours later 1 safely reached the headquarters of Delta Company of the 30th Punjabi Battalion. Bullets kept thudding into the trunks of palm and date trees and ripping through the foliage of the banana groves. The company commander's batman had just been killed while he was saying evening prayers. And the 150 men assigned to defend 9 miles of frontier had been suffering through war's repetitious frustration: continual artillery barrages from the Indians, continual harassment from the Mukti Bahini guerrillas (the Bengali rebels fighting for an autonomous East Pakistan).
However, dangerous or nerve-racking India's artillery barrages may be to the frontline soldiers, the attacks did not seem to border the Pakistani commanders. “We can take it,” Brig. M.H. Alif remarked casually. “We are not afraid. Let the Indians waste a lot of ammo; attrition will hurt them more than it will hurt us.” The tall 43 year old Punjabi officer, a field-hockey star on four Pakistani Olympic teams, was fresh off the tennis court and his attention was focused not so much on the border troubles as on sport. Pakistan's hockey team had just won the world championship (India finished third) and Atif found significance in the event. “Your victory over India,” he cabled the hockey team, morale-raising and considered a good omen out here. Proud of you.” And he told me. “India has five times as many hockey players as Pakistan and we still beat them.” His point was inescapable: Pakistan even though outnumbered militarily 5 to 1. would defeat India in a war as it did in a hockey tournament.
Such thinking lays bare the fact that the Pakistani Army has only the dimmest notion of guerrilla warfare. For while the soldiers were clustered on the border, the Mukti Bahini seemed to have the run of East Pakistan. The government has attempted to combat the insurgents with “razakars,” local teen-age hoodlums raised to the status of a paramilitary force. But the razakars harm the government cause more than they help it. “They think they are God because they have guns,” one villager told me. They tell the people they have blanket power from the army “to make life hell” for the rebels, but they are as apt to terrorise a man who refuses to give them food or a girl who resists their lewd advances. Several times my car was stopped by two or three razakars at makeshift bridges-once with the barrel of a gun poking through the window. I was asked to pay a “toll.” Such
