PAKISTAN: Tightened Control

Pakistan’s efficient new strongman leadership tightened its control of the nation last week. Governor General Ghulam Mo hammed (who dissolved Parliament last month) proposed that West Pakistan’s four provinces and ten princely states be swept aside, that there should henceforth be one unified West Pakistan (pop. 33.5 million), to set beside the single state of East Pakistan (pop. 42 million). His proposal was endorsed by the army’s powerful Major General Iskander Mirza; civil servants are already drawing up the changes “that will be necessary.” Premier Mohammed Ali (who retains his office by courtesy of Ghulam) took to the radio to proclaim : “These political divisions were perhaps necessary to foreign rule. The British divided and weakened us. Today such divisions are wasteful luxury.”

There were one or two mutters of dissent. Several hundred college students in Karachi broke classes and demonstrated. Some provincial-minded officials wanted assurances that the government jobs in their provinces would continue to go .to the locals. But the regime has already installed its men as governors of the four West Pakistan provinces, and they will cooperate in the provincial dissolution. The princely rulers—including the Khan of Kalat, the Wali of Swat and the Jam Saheb of Las Bella—noting the direction of the wind, obediently consented that their states should be wiped off the map.