The attack on an army garrison in Sind clinches one issue. The people in that province of Pakistan are no longer afraid of the army. Or to put it differently, the army has been so thoroughly discredited in their eyes that they are prepared for direct clashes with it. Otherwise the kind of incident that took place at Khairpur Nathanshah, 250 km. north of Karachi, on Monday would have been inconceivable. In a sense the issue has not been in dispute for quite some time. For one thing, the agitation itself has been directed against the military rule from the very beginning (August 14); General Zia-ul-Haq has been only the principal symbol of the hated regime even if a particularly odious one in view of his determined attempt to enforce barbarous punishments in the name of Islam. For another, other incidents involving the army have taken place earlier. Army vehicles have been set on fire and army personnel have been stoned in recent weeks. Indeed, as has been reported, General Zia’s own helicopter was not allowed at one place and he was greeted by hostile demonstrators in other towns he visited in Sind. Even so, the attack on a garrison is an altogether different proposition. This most violent incident during the movement so far represents a qualitative jump in the determination of the people of Sind to get rid of the military regime. And it is, of course, not an isolated episode. The other incidents underline the fact that the people in other towns too have been prepared to risk a direct confrontation with the army.
All this speaks, on the one hand, of the desperation to which the people in Sind must have been driven and, on the other, of their valour. While the valour cannot be in doubt, we can only infer the immensity of the provocations from current developments. We have no evidence which would show that the Pakistan army has been guilty of systematic and grave atrocities in Sind. The western press, on which we depend more or less exclusively in view of the absence of our correspondents in Pakistan for almost two decades (they were expelled in 1965), has not reported army atrocities in Sind. Amnesty International too has been silent on the issue. But it is difficult to believe that thousands of people in various places in Sind would have been willing to take on army units at the risk of their lives if they had not been driven to utter desperation. So it may not be unreasonable to accept at its face value what Mr. Tariq Ali, the well-known leftist intellectual who has been following developments in Pakistan closely, has been reporting. He has accused the Pakistan army of perpetrating atrocities on the people in the interior of Sind. That apart, there is the incontestable fact that the regime has been using military courts to hand down extremely harsh sentences – imprisonment, heavy fines to be realized by public auction of properties and flogging – to participants in the movement for restoration of democracy. By itself, this is bound to discredit the army as an engine of oppression.