PAKISTAN: Death of a Moderate

A hundred thousand people had come to Rawalpindi’s broad green Company Gardens to hear Liaquat Ali Khan, Prime Minister of Pakistan. Liaquat was in troubled territory: the Northwest frontier is full of tribal jealousies; on one side Afghanistan disputes its borders, on the other lies rich Kashmir, held by India and coveted by Pakistan.

“Brothers in Islam,” Liaquat began—and at that moment there was a sharp report, then another. Liaquat fell to the ground, crying: “Goli lag gai!” (The bullet has hit me).

The assassin, seated ten feet in front of the speaker’s stand, tried to break and run, but the shouting, screaming mob leaped on him. Moslem National Guards thrust at him with their spears. Fingers scooped out his eyeballs. One of his arms was torn off. Later, after Liaquat had died in hospital (see NEWS IN PICTURES), police identified the dead assassin as Said Akbar, 29, an Afghan. The weapon he had used was a Mauser-type pistol, probably made by native craftsmen of the frontier, where gunmaking is a common household industry.

Police had two theories:1) Said Akbar was no solitary fanatic, but a hired assassin; 2) among his attackers were fellow conspirators who wished to silence him.*

The assassin’s Afghan origin might explain his motive—but Afghanistan hastily pointed out that he had been driven out of Afghanistan in 1944 for conspiring against the government. The other possibility was that he belonged to a sect advocating war with India over Kashmir.

Meeting on the night of Liaquat’s death, the Pakistan cabinet appointed as his successor Khwaja Nazimuddin. Roly-poly Nazimuddin, 57, who looks like a jovial friar in his long black Moslem coat, has been Governor General of Pakistan since 1948. Educated—like Nehru—at Cambridge, Nazimuddin opposed British rule in India, rose to be Premier of his native East Bengal, and in 1946 renounced his British knighthood. He is a devout Moslem, has made the pilgrimage to Mecca.

He is a moderate, like Liaquat. The fanatic’s bullets which brought down Liaquat killed a good and able man, but failed to insure the rule of fanaticism.

*A hired assassin has no friends. Mustafa Shukri Asho, who killed King Abdullah of Jordan last July, had expected to escape under cover of grenades thrown by fellow conspirators, but no grenades were thrown. His fellow conspirators had planned that Asho should be killed by guards’ bullets. On his dead body was found an Arab talisman bearing the words: “Kill, thou shalt be safe.” In 1942 the Macedonian who attempted to murder Franz von Papen, then Nazi Ambassador to Turkey, was given a contraption (allegedly by Soviet agents) which, he was told, would produce a smoke screen to cover his escape. When the assassin touched off the “smoke” bomb, it blew him to pieces.