369 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ চতুর্দশ খন্ড those ideas the elections produced. One does not need mindless admiration for the Awami League to separate this chain of events, and this central decision, as the future guide to rights and wrongs, the ultimate arbiter of democratic attitudes. Naturally a myriad of buzzing problems arise to obscure basic truths. Pakistan and India enmesh Bangladesh in the ancient webs of their enmity. Yahya announces openly (and covertly in lobbying with British Government representatives) that Mujib was a traitor about to lead East Bengal, via armed mutiny, into the arms of Mrs. Gandhi. Getting on for two million Bengalis flee to border camps and prepare to starve. Greater starvation and disaster threaten-according to aid officials—if flood relief work is delayed any longer. China muddies the waters. America and other horrified countries, thinking of choking off Pakistan aid, realize that the sufferers from such action will be illiterate peasants not smug generals. How should a Government which believes in freedom act in these circumstances? It should not hide behind the diplomatic niceties of "internal matters." It should have an open view. It should manifest the requisite nausea when Yahya's emissaries malign Mujib (for when last did an "evil rebel leader" wait quietly at his home for the troops to take him away?). It should press for an early trial. It should mobilize and offer what relief it can (and it did plenty last November). It should simultaneously marshal the Aid for Pakistan consortium and World Bank and State Department to policies which stop aid for arms buying and defense (sixty per cent of the Pakistan budget) and start aid, all aid, for the millions who need it. It should not allow quasi-democratic exercises-like the impending transfer of negligible power to such stooge Eastern politicians as remain to accept it-to wipe clean Yahya's state. Above everything, it should not let time and boredom condone the initial action. Few pundits today agree on the eventual fate of Bangladesh: whether, through extremism it will become locked in the struggle for an independent Bengal; whether the Awami League is a broken force, an intellectual collection which must now give way to real guerrilla: whether the campaign will take months or years or decades. But no one in tomorrow's debate-and no Government spokesman defending disgruntled inactivity- should pretend that in the long run Yahya and a united Pakistan can survive. Dissolution can, now, be only a matter of time. The process of dissolution will be better, and less bloody, if Mujib can be freed eventually to conduct it (for Mujib has shown himself, almost pathetically, to be a man of peace). Then the refugees will go home. Then the factories will work again, and the rice will be sown. Islamabad is not an impregnable fortress, simply a rocky redoubt of desperate men. They can be toppled, and already they are falling out with Mr. Bhutto and the businessmen who underpin their illusions. What Parliament decides may matter a bit. How many MPs turn up to debate may matter. How Britain reacts through the next six months will certainly have a profound effect on West Pakistani opinion-and it is this West Pakistani opinion which could yet see the sad doings of past two months undone.
