PAKISTAN: Ali Bhutto Begins to Pick Up the Pieces

(2 of 2)

Trump Card. On the one hand, Bhutto insisted that East Pakistan remains "an inseparable and indissoluble part of Pakistan" and demanded an end to the Indian occupation in the East. But then, in a notably conciliatory appeal to the East Bengalis, he asked them "not to forget us, but to forgive us if they are angry with us. Yes, mistakes have been made, but that does not mean that a country should be dismembered." Indeed, he added that he would settle for "a very loose arrangement within the framework of one Pakistan."

In any future negotiations with the new government of Bangladesh (see following story), Bhutto has a strong trump card: "Mujib" Rahman has been imprisoned in West Pakistan since last March. Bhutto may well use Mujib's release as the price for getting back the 60,000 Pakistani soldiers who are held captive by the Indian army in Bangladesh. Last week Bhutto ordered Mujib moved from a prison to house arrest in a more comfortable bungalow, and said that he was ready to begin talks with Mujib shortly.

Tea Parties. In his address to the people, Bhutto also denounced government nepotism and laziness. "As I work night and day, I will expect the bureaucracy to work night and day. These tea parties must come to an end." He promised better conditions for workers, land reform for peasants and an end to the practice of flogging prisoners. Two days later, he impounded the passports of all members of Pakistan's "22 families," the wealthy aristocrats who—until the secession of East Pakistan—controlled two-thirds of the country's industrial assets and 80% of its banking and insurance businesses, and declared that he would break their stranglehold on the nation's economy. Bhutto also announced that he would hold the portfolios of defense, foreign affairs, interior and interprovincial affairs himself.

The inaugural speech was the supreme moment in the career of a cunning and able politician who seems to inspire either unqualified adulation or fierce contempt. The scion of a wealthy landowning family and a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and Oxford University, Bhutto in recent years has become a convinced socialist who has vowed to turn his country into a "people's democracy." As Pakistan's Foreign Minister from 1963 to 1966 under Yahya's predecessor, Mohammed Ayub Khan, Bhutto was the chief architect of his country's friendly policy toward China. He resigned after a series of differences with Ayub, and in 1968-69 spent three months in jail on political charges.

Rule by Rhetoric. Some diplomats in Pakistan consider Bhutto a potential Nasser—a populist demagogue who will rule by rhetoric and charisma. "We have to pick up the pieces, the very small pieces," Bhutto said last week, clearly welcoming the opportunity to do so. If he cannot, he too might well end up a scapegoat for the failures of Yahya and the army in politics and on the battlefield. As a first step, Bhutto must convince his countrymen that any real chance of salvaging Mohammed Ali Jinnah's dream of a united Pakistan is about as realistic as the CRUSH INDIA stickers that can still be seen on car windows in Rawalpindi and Lahore.