Bengalis and their democratically elected leaders. West Pakistan is on friendly terms with China, and when America's electronic surveillance station became an embarrassment to the latter in 1968, the Americans were thrown out of their Pakistani based installation.
It is commonly acknowledged that a disproportionate amount of aid and foreign revenue found its way into the pockets of West Pakistan's ruling families. The theory was that this was all right because they would plough the money back into their business and it would thus eventually percolate down to the level of the needy. The theory did not work, and the gains were ploughed instead into Swiss Banks and the shops of Hong Kong. After receiving about three billion dollars in economic aid over an eleven year period, the average West Pakistani enjoys a per capita annual income of approximately $ 75 and his East Pakistani counterpart an annual income of approximately S45, according to Professor Dorfman of Harvard: Perhaps the time has come to reconsider the whole issue of aid to Pakistan and its effectiveness.
In 1965, the U. S., the World Bank and the Consortium countries put an embargo on arms and aid and brought the Indo-Pakistan war to a halt in a matter of days. Pakistan is on the verge of bankruptcy now. If America and the Consortium countries suspend all aid, and the World Bank presses for payment of debts due June 30, the slaughter will end, the army will be forced to leave Bengal, the exodus of refugees will cease, and a political settlement will become possible.
And there seems little danger of losing West Pakistan to China. After all, it did not happen in 1965. China has made extravagant omises to help Pakistan before with only token payment. It cannot afford to keep Pakistan in the style to which Western aid has accustomed it.
On the other hand, we have much to lose if, in myopic fearfulness, we back the short- term winner and the long-term loser by allying ourselves, tacitly or openly, with the blundering and brutal military leaders of West Pakistan simply out of habit. It can create another Vietnam. Sheik Mujibur Rahman, head of the Awami League which won 98% of East Bengali votes in the recent election, is a pro-Western, moderate. His Six Point plan would have redressed some of the political and economic wrongs suffered by the East, while preserving the “integrity and unity of the nation” so dear to the West wing. East Bengalis so far have been suspicious of communists: the leftist National Awami Party won very little support in the election, and the Mao Naxalites of West Bengal have made no headway in the East. But the slaughter of Awami League representatives leaves room for more extreme elements to take over and failure and frustration can only radicalize the moderates.
If the Consortium countries and the United States shore up the West Pakistan economy now and enable the army to remain in East Bengal, the exodus of refugees will continue. There are already 6 million of them in India, and they are arriving at the rate of 100,000 a day (which makes West Pakistan claims that “everything is going back to normal” sound rather hollow). India can hardly afford the financial drain or the population increase. So far, it has behaved with admirable political restraint. But
