BANGLADESH: After the Massacre

"Bangladesh had its massacre," said a senior Western diplomat in Dacca, the capital, last week. "It still awaits its coup." The bloody upheaval that ended the government, and the life, of Sheik Mujibur Rahman two weeks ago (TIME, Aug. 25) was the work of about a dozen young officers (most of them majors). According to the same diplomat, "They are too powerful to be arrested but not powerful enough to run the country."

His point was that the young officers were strong enough to fend off challenges from their superiors in the army but that in order to form...