Non-Fiction
Dacca December Days 1971: <i>“Sartre would dig this place.” *</i>
artwork by savyasachi hazra
(Excerpted from 'Dacca Diary,' by Peter R. Kaan, The Wall Street Journal, 14 December 1971) Sunday, Dec 5: Anticlimactic day. Nothing to compare with yesterday's spectacular. Lots of rumours circulating. One favourite has Indian army columns only 60 miles from Dacca. Someone consults map and discovers Indian border to the east less than 60 miles away. Western families resident in Dacca congregating at Intercontinental. Rumours of planned United Nations relief flight to Bangkok confirmed by UN officials at evening meeting in the bar. A Gregory Peck scene--distinguished grey-haired UN official talking about women and children first. Some of the men buying out hotel bar's Scotch supply at $35 a bottle. It's a stockpiling sort of day. 'Sartre would dig this place,' one reporter says. Why? 'No exit.' Monday, Dec 6: Try a road trip to Sibalay about 50 miles west of Dacca. Impression: Pak army bound to lose East Pakistan if only because of logistics. Small army convoys stalled along roadside. Overheated radiators and other mechanical maladies. When convoy stalls, the Bengali farmers flee from nearby fields. Until now army trucks meant search for Mukti Bahini guerrillas, razed villages, civilian massacres. Army hasn't much time for that now. Irony: Bengalis probably safer now that general war is on. Back at the Intercontinental tonight. Evening talk at the hotel is of UN plane turning back ten minutes out of Dacca because of Indian air strike at airport just before a temporary cease-fire scheduled to go into effect… Tuesday, Dec. 7: Dacca seems to be learning to live with war--or, rather, threat of war, because Indians so far bombing only a few military targets on city outskirts. But people do keep glancing nervously at sky. UN tried again for mercy flight, but the place was hit by naval gunfire, presumably Indian, off East Pakistani coast… I am out near the airport when an air-raid siren goes off. Run across field and spot a foxhole. So do four Bengali rickshaw peddlers, wanting to be the first to hop in. It wouldn't hold more than three. But the planes pass over, and we share a cigarette… More Indian strikes in the afternoon. High-altitude bombing. Now the hotel roof is full of journalists and photographers. One cameraman just up from the swimming pool is still in his bathing suit. Another reporter brings a chair. A diplomat on the roof says Biharis are looting evacuated homes. 'Well,' he adds, 'they can't take it with them where they're going.' General feeling seems to be that Bhiraris had fun while it lasted. One talks of mass killing quite calmly here. A half-million Bengalis massacred by the army in the last nine months and so on. East Pakistan is like a sponge that soaks up suffering. 'You could drop Biafra into East Pakistan and never find it again,' the diplomat says. Wednesday, Dec. 8: UN mercy-flight plans seem to be in limbo. The UN people are always in conference. Curious how much attention we all pay to the plight of several hundred foreign nationals stranded at Intercontinental. A half-million or so Bengalis probably died in last nine months; another ten million or more trapped in misery of border camps. What makes a few hundred Western lives so valuable?... Friday, Dec. 10: The talk at breakfast is about the 3 a.m. air raid during which several bombs landed close to hotel. I slept through it. More Bengalis seem to be leaving the city today for relative safety of villages. Bengali friend, in tear, tells me about continuing army massacres of Bengalis in several suburbs. 'So many children,' he says--and begins to sob. Non-Bengali minority (Biharis) fleeing villages for relative safety of Dacca. Bengalis in Dacca all seem convinced that the bombs that landed on civilian areas the past two nights, including the one that hit the orphanage, were dropped by Pakistani planes so civilian casualties could be blamed on India. Reliable foreign sources note that the bombs were dropped by propeller planes, not MIGs, and that makeshift bomb rack fell from plane along with bombs. Evidence still circumstantial. All seems incredibly cold-blooded. But one diplomat says 'Anyone who has been here since March wouldn't blink an eye at the Paks doing something like that.'… Saturday, Dec. 11: Midmorning blast at United States Information Service library. Debris scattered 100 yards around. Books lying all over the road, including The Nuclear Years and The Role of Popular Participation in Development. This is land of popular participation in destruction. Did the Mukti Bahini do it? Librarian says man who blasted it spoke Urdu, language of West Pakistan. Who knows? Within minutes books being looted from rubble. Old man goes by with tome called Religion and Ethics under his arm. Sunday, Dec. 12: a full-day curfew is in effect. City completely still as if some epidemic had suddenly wiped out all living things except the black crows hovering everywhere. Of course, the only epidemic in the city now is fear… Sunday, Dec. 12: Foreigners are rushing to get to airport…Ride out to airport with elderly American couple booked on evac flight. Man is wearing aluminum hard hat, lady is clutching cage with two squawking myna birds. 'I had to leave my dog,' she says. 'It was terrible.'… Hotel strangely quiet now that evac flights gone. Remaining Westerners, mostly journalists, spend afternoon by swimming pool in pickup game s of water polo and soccer and tossing dirt clots at the omnipresent crows. Games break off every hour on the hour for BBC radio news. Indians moving closer to Dacca, crossing rivers, supposedly dropping parachute units. But Dacca under curfew and no one going out to find the war. Monday, Dec. 13: Drive to city centre during six-hour period when curfew lifted...I see fewer Pakistani flags flying today. 'Every sewing machine in Dacca is busy working on Bangladesh flags,' diplomat says… In the evening, residents meet in a room that used to feature Australian strippers in better days. Rather solemn talk about first aid and fire-fighting equipment, security guard duty, slit trenches… Tuesday, Dec. 14: By early afternoon it appears the battle of Dacca is about to begin. Indian MIGs rocket 'Government House'--Governor's House--in central city. Two reporters return from several-hour drive south-east of city. They report Indian troops 7 miles from city and advancing with only one river to cross… I spend two hours on door duty searching luggage of arriving ministers of civilian government who are seeking refuge here. Strange role for a reporter, but all rules are fluid here. Some of the ministers wait as if in trance as bags are combed. Others try to joke. One says: 'Ashes to ashes and dust to dust; if the Indians don't get you, the Muktis must.' But he can't manage a smile at his own joke… Wednesday, Dec. 15: Indian air strike during breakfast. Dining room empties in about ten seconds. Whole roomful of half-eaten instant scrambled eggs. The chairman of the Dacca Peace Committee, a key collaborator with the West Pakistanis, arrives at hotel gate and is turned away. He argues for a while, finally walks off as if in a trance, like a man walking to his death. Lee Lescaze of Washington Post and I now doing four-hour guard duty at gate. Lee stops a mongoose trying to scurry under the gate into neutral zone. We suggest mongoose get Iranian passport. Thursday, Dec. 16: At 10.10 a.m. a hotel official walks up: 'It's definite, it's definite. It's surrender.' Five minutes later, UN aides in the hotel make it official: 'The ultimatum to surrender has been accepted.' Several reporters hitch a ride out to Pakistan army cantonment…quite a spectacle at cantonment gate. Soldiers now pouring into cantonment in every sort of vehicle--buses, trucks, cars, even rickshaw. Rolling by is a microbus with these words stenciled on back: 'Live and let live'… Rush out to airport with other reporters. At 12.45 a Pak army staff car with two stars on plate rolls up. Figure it's Pak general coming to meet Indian helicopter. But a general in purple turban and another in cavalry hat get out; that isn't Pak military headgear. 'Hello, I am Gen. Nagra, Indian army,' cavalry hat says, 'and this is Brigadier Kler,' he adds, introducing turban. The hat led the Indian army column that pushed into Dacca suburbs from north early this morning… It's 5 p.m., and reporters rush to golf course for formal surrender ceremony. Surrender documents are signed in quadruplicate. Takes a while because Gen. Niazi reads the document as if for the first time. Scene after signing is complete chaos… Friday, Dec. 17: Chat with the hotel laundry bookkeeper who has emerged as a Mukti police inspector. Turns out he had been Mukti cell leader for Intercontinental Hotel staff during past nine months. He had devised an underclothing code. If an agent handed him one undershirt, it meant four terrorist acts had been successfully completed. Two undershirts meant three successes, three undershirts meant two successes, and four undershirts meant only one terrorist success. Nothing seems incredible any more. Two hours later, sipping Scotch in a hotel room, a reporter says, 'Hey, the lights are on.' And so they are. It's the first night in nearly two weeks that's not spent by candlelight. Later, three Indians arrive to report that 'the city is all quiet now, a curfew has been imposed, we have stopped all this bloody shooting business and…' The rest is drowned out by automatic weapons fire. Saturday, Dec. 18: Dacca appears to be calming down gradually. Some men are taking their wives and children for their first stroll in Bangla Desh. One Bengali says his three-year-old son, Aupoo, hasn't been taken out in public for months. The reason is that last March, during the brief period before the Pakistani army cracked down and imposed a reign of terror in the East, the child learned to shout 'Joi Bangla'. But for the past nine months the parents feared that the child might shout 'Joi Bangla' in public and thus get the family killed. Today both father and son are on the streets, yelling, 'Joi, Bangla!'
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