As the crackdowns continued in East Pakistan with Tikka Khan's orders to spread terror and mayhem, more and more young East Pakistani youth took to arms.

East Bengali guerrillas would often cross into India for shelter and recuperation, mixing easily with their Bengali brethren on the Indian side of the border. This infuriated the Pakistani generals in Dhaka and they ordered their air force to strafe and bomb the border areas.

Pakistan felt it could dissuade India from helping the Mukti Bahini by being provocative. The Pakistan Air Force in East Pakistan took to attacking suspected Mukti Bahini camps located inside Indian territory in West Bengal. In the Western and Northern sectors too, occasional clashes, some of them quite bloody, took place.

If the Pakistani leadership was counting on their tactics intimidating the Indians, they were in for a huge mistake. General Maneckshaw was busy preparing for war all through the summer and autumn of 1971. The Pakistani leadership perhaps calculated that India at best would be able to capture some territory in East Pakistan and lose quite a bit in the West.

In the end, the Pakistanis knew that the Western powers would intervene to stop the war and what would matter is who had the most of the other's territory.

Confident that another war would be as much of a stalemate as the 1965 conflict, the Pakistanis on December 3, 1971 reacted with a massive coordinated air strike on several Indian Air Force stations in the West. At midnight, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in a broadcast to the nation declared that India was at war with Pakistan.

As she spoke, the men at the front were already engaged in bitter combat.

For all practical purposes, the war started at about 5:40 pm on December 3 when Pakistan Air Force combat aircraft struck nine Indian airfields along the Western borders. The air strikes were followed by a massive attack on the strategic Chhamb sector in the north.

In the East, it was the Indian Army which went on the offensive. By late that night, artillery shells were raining down all along the Western and Eastern borders. India and Pakistan were locked in a two-front war.

In the West, the Indian Army had very limited offensive aims and were mainly tasked to hold on to territory. The initiative lay with Pakistan. In this theatre, Pakistan had near parity with India in armour and artillery while India had more infantry divisions.

Pakistan's most successful thrust was in Chhamb where the 23rd Pakistani Division completely overwhelmed the forward defensive positions of the Indian 10 Division.

Chhamb village was taken and the Pakistanis threatened to advance towards Jammu, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir. Heavy fighting continued in this sector for a week until the indecisiveness of the Indian divisional commander forced the Indian corps commander to intervene personally and launch heavy attacks to push the Pakistanis back to a non-threatening position.

The Pakistanis launched attacks in various other sectors, including Poonch, Hussainiwalla, Longewala and Fazilka. Oddly enough, the Pakistanis were beaten back at every instance. Soon, it was the Indians in the West who found they held the initiative.

The focus, however, was completely on the East and this is where the Indian Army was to make history.

Image: Mukti Bahini volunteers prepare for battle