More troops arrive from West Pakistan

The province remained in the grip of a general strike at the call of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. An increase in militancy among Bengalis across the spectrum was perceptible. It was clear that a sea change had come into the thoughts of a people who only days earlier had anticipated a historically defining moment for democracy through an inauguration of the National Assembly session in Dhaka. Poets, writers, artists, indeed people straddling different levels of intellectual life in Bangladesh, joined the movement for democracy through expressing full support for Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who had earlier characterized the Bengali struggle as a non-violent non-cooperation movement.

Despite the efforts of the Bengali leadership to have the movement conducted in a peaceful manner, moves by the army were turning increasingly provocative for the people of the province. Almost every day reports came in of demonstrating Bengalis being shot by soldiers, which further inflamed passions everywhere. In faraway Rawalpindi, having overcome their initial stupefaction over the gathering pace of events in East Pakistan, the Yahya Khan junta huddled amongst themselves to consider a response to the crisis. The hawks were in the ascendant. Indeed, there was hardly any dove in Pakistan's military establishment when it came to handling the Bengalis. The consensus which emerged in Rawalpindi was that toughness needed to be demonstrated in East Pakistan. It was thus that an airlift of soldiers all the way from West Pakistan to East Pakistan got underway. In Dhaka and elsewhere, a process of removing senior level Bengali army officers from important positions, with a good number of them being served with orders of transfer to West Pakistan, got underway in the utmost secrecy.

In moving its troops to the province, though, the army was compelled to take a long circuitous air route from Karachi to Dhaka by way of Colombo. That was necessitated by the ban imposed by India on Pakistan International Airlines flights between the two wings of Pakistan across its territory in the aftermath of the hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane by Kashmiri militants to Lahore in late January. The hijackers were publicly hailed as freedom fighters by People's Party chairman Z.A. Bhutto on his return from Dhaka after abortive talks with the Awami League leadership. A few days later, the plane was blown up by the hijackers, an act sharply condemned by Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The Awami League chief warned of a conspiracy being hatched to muddy the political waters in Pakistan.