PAKISTAN: The Benign Year

“Long live martial law!” cried the peasants at village after village on the whistle-stop tour. Tall, strapping General Mohammed Ayub Khan, 52, dressed in open shirt and slacks, would lean from the doorway of his private railroad car and call: “How are you? How are the crops?” The village leader answered: “We are in perfect peace through your kindness.” Others crowded round to beg Ayub to save them from a distasteful return of “democracy and politicians.”

With strong support in the grass roots, with a docile and hero-worshiping press and radio, Sandhurst-educated General Ayub Khan this week celebrated the first anniversary of his “benign dictatorship.” Since peacefully overthrowing the corrupt and inefficient government of Iskander Mirza—which was democratic in name only—Ayub Khan has startled his countrymen and Western observers by fulfilling nearly every promise he made.

Signs of Progress. At home Ayub Khan cleaned house by firing some 2,000 corrupt bureaucrats, cracked down on black-marketeers and hoarders, collected long overdue taxes, and even retrieved two tons of gold from the sea, where it had been sunk by smugglers. Big landowners were forced to disgorge 3,000,000 acres for distribution to landless peasants. Fifty thousand Moslem refugees who had fled India twelve years ago were moved from fetid mud-and-straw shantytowns on the edge of Karachi into newly built camps. Foreign reserves have nearly doubled, industrial production has jumped by 10% and, even more remarkably, a $25 million International Monetary Fund credit was canceled because Ayub decided Pakistan did not need it.

Abroad, Ayub has remained firmly pro-Western and a member of CENTO. He is the first leader of Pakistan to make a determined effort to improve relations with India. The problem of the canal waters of the Indus basin is nearing settlement (TIME, June 1). After twelve years of border conflict in Kashmir, an Indian and a Pakistani commission last week concluded talks that may put this problem to rest. Half a year ago, Nehru and most Indians still spoke contemptuously of the “naked military dictatorship” in Pakistan. Today Indians are increasingly aware that social and economic evils still festering in India under their civilian leader have been successfully attacked in Pakistan by its soldier leader.

Of course, it is not democracy. Critics think Ayub is moving too slowly at reforming Pakistan’s legal system and devising a constitution (answers Ayub: “I am not one of those clever chaps. I like to know exactly what I am doing before I do it”). He agrees that Pakistan needs a constitution, but it will probably be Gaullist when it comes, and Ayub would argue that it has to be. He scorns demagogues (“It is a wrong thing to do to play on the emotions of the people”) and swears, “I had no desire to take on this kind of work,” but many Pakistanis believe that his ambition is to become the constitutionally elected President of his country.

On the Move. One of Ayub’s bold measures is meeting with some criticism. He ordered the removal of the nation’s capital from sweltering Karachi on the shores of the Arabian Sea to the cool mountain heights of Rawalpindi, 750 miles to the northeast. Nearly 1,500 government people, their wives and their families, their filing cabinets and office furniture, were loaded onto special trains this week to make a move. They were also given a “disturbance allowance.” Karachi is hot, ugly and uncomfortable, but it is a big city (pop. 2,000.000) inhabited by nearly all the racial strains of Pakistan—Punjabis, Sindhis, Bengalis. Cool ‘Pindi is relatively small (250,000) a garrison town that is the military headquarters of the Pakistani army (Ayub himself lived there for many years as an army officer), and some Pakistanis fear that governmental power may become concentrated there in the hands of the Punjabis, who already provide the bulk of the armed forces.

Rawalpindi will only be a provisional capital at best, for General Ayub plans to build a brand-new and still unnamed capital city a few miles away on the Potwar plain, at an estimated cost of $100 million. Members of Pakistan’s diplomatic colony, forced now to commute between their embassies in Karachi and their temporary quarters in ‘Pindi, are not happy about the move. Grumbled one: “This is the first time Ayub has acted as a purely military mind.” To which Pakistanis answer: If other nations can fashion artificial capitals in the wilderness such as Washington, Canberra and Brasilia, why can’t Pakistan?