PAKISTAN: The New Dictatorship

Bloodlessly, Pakistan changed from an unstable, pro-Western democracy to a more stable, pro-Western military dictatorship.

The crucial decision took place the night Prime Minister Mohammed Ali, alarmed by threats to his power, returned from Washington with $105 million in U.S. economic aid. Ali's plane touched down at Karachi's airfield, where soldiers in battledress were drawn up, ostensibly to honor him. A crowd of perhaps 5,000 people had gathered, and to them Ali made a brief speech on his success with the Americans. "How about the crisis?" a reporter intervened. "What crisis?" answered Mohammed Ali with a grin.

Ali strolled past the soldiers to his Cadillac, his wife at his side. He got into the car, but was astonished when a couple of Pakistani generals shouldered his wife aside and got in behind him. "There is no room for you," the generals told Mrs. Ali. "You go straight home in another car and wait for your husband. We are taking him to the Governor General's palace." At the palace Ali was hustled protesting into an anteroom and was brusquely told: "Wait here."

Interview in the Palace. Twenty minutes later, Mohammed Ali stood before the Governor General, 59-year-old Ghulam Mohammed, a big rugged man who derives his powers—in the absence of a Pakistan constitution—from the British crown, which appointed him. Beside the Governor General stood the strongman of the Pakistan army, Major General Iskander Mirza. "I am dissolving the Constituent Assembly tomorrow," announced Ghulam to the Prime Minister. "You will remain Prime Minister, but you will reform your Cabinet. Major General Mirza will be your Minister of the Interior. General Ayub Khan will become Defense Minister as well as commander in chief . . ." Angrily, Ali turned on General Mirza and accused him of plotting behind his back; Mirza indifferently shrugged his big shoulders. Desperately, Ali wheeled back on the seated Ghulam. "Suppose I refuse?" Ghulam was inexorable and cold: ''Refusal is out of the question. You seem to forget I am head of state."

Ali got to his home, exhausted, at 2:10 a.m. and poured out the story to his friends. "Now I know how Farouk felt when the British put tanks around his palace," he said. "I've been insulted. I've been humiliated, I'll have my revenge one day." But Ali was beaten, and he knew it. Casually next evening, handsome Ghulam relaxed at a private showing of a movie called Love in Venice. (He is also an ardent Marilyn Monroe fan.) Thus, last week, a new regime was established in Asia.

Wheat & Rice. "Pakistan is moving away from democracy," commented the London Economist, "but no democrat who knows the facts would at the moment have it otherwise." The facts are that Pakistan is a "geographical monstrosity" that not only endures but somehow radiates a buoyant young confidence.