পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (চতুর্দশ খণ্ড).pdf/৩৬৯

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বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র : চতুর্দশ খণ্ড
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 And even were the war to stop tomorrow other deaths may be in prospect beside those from fighting. Food, petrol and other essential commodities are in the shortest of supply, and the disruption of water and power services has brought a public health risk.

 Returning from Faridpur to Chuadanga with a group of young men with mysterious mission in Calcutta, to do with the setting up of a provisional government, we had a too graphic illustration of the superiority of the Pakistan forces. Crossing the river Gorai by small boat we were strafed by Sabre jets of the Pakistani Air Force. Leaping into the river to take cover among stacks of bricks on the bank, one felt very strongly that Lee Enfield rifles are no match for this sort of thing. Incidentally, a country boat crossing the river is hardly a military target.

 Many of the towns are half empty, and the capture of Pabna yesterday put more refugees on the roads out of Kushtia and Kumarkhali. Faridpur itself only a few miles from the main ferry crossing to Dacca is a town populated largely by young men Partly as a matter of policy, and partly because they could not stop it anyway, women, children and the old have dispersed to their home villages from the towns. Whether they will be safe there is another matter.

 The more realistic among the leaders of the liberation zones put their main hopes in the collapse of the West Pakistan economy. A young accountant in Faridpur who has achieved recent renown for devising a plan to stop planting jute and replacing it with rice told me: “Their economy con not sustain this scale of effort for more than six months or a year. They have forgotten that 10 days of fighting in the IndoPakistani war shattered the economy."

 But in order for this to work. Western nations must cease giving aid to West Pakistan, and one is begged as if one were an ambassador or plenipotentiary of some kind to ensure that Britain at least stops aid.

 Most widespread of all is the feeling that Bengal made a tragic mistake in 1947 when it decided to cast its lot with Pakistan. “We were swept by the passion if communalism,” says Mr. Nasir-ul-Islam in Magura. “I too made that mistake. We all made it; now we are paying the price." The price paid has already been high, and unless the Bengalis are saved by international intervention, or by some other miracle, it will be higher still in the months to come.