"Certainly, though the army may have won the first round by sheer brutality, maintaining detested suzerain(y over 73 million people isn't like sending (he police (o Anguilla. Bengal has no forests or mountains except on its eastern borders, but in its odd way it is fine guerilla country. The great Ganges-Brahmaputra delta is spattered with water at any time; when the monsoon breaks, after early June, main roads on embankments rise above an immense lake. I've only been there in the dry season, but I recall seeing the noses of boats' submerged to keep the wood from cracking in the sun, which are the sole means of movement once the rains begin.
"The crime of Yahya Khan in provoking war-if not now then surely some time-is not incalculably but calculably appalling. We know from the Congo and Biafra that a rural population with minimal living standards can be plunged into the abyss of famine by any disturbance of the tenuous rhythm of sowing and reaping, marketing and buying. Last year’s typhoon, with the Royal Navy rushing to the rescue, took 200,008) lives according to probably minimized figures. A season’s war is bound to take millions. A starving child does not suffer the less because the ends of power are being secured-nor because it is statistically surplus to its homeland's resources."
