Observer (London)

For three weeks after the Pakistani surrender in Bangladesh, there remained just one physical link between the two wings of what was once the world’s largest Moslem State. By continuing to hold Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, acclaimed by the East Bengalis as the father of their new nation, the West Pakistanis could perhaps have throttled the infant Bangladesh, or have left it an orphan in India’s hands. Then Mr. Bhutto, the new civilian President of half a Pakistan, stepped on to the stage at a party rally in Karachi and received the crowd’s assent to releasing Sheikh Mujib and sending him back to Dacca, not as a hostage but as the elected leader of an independent Bangladesh.

It was not, to be sure, simply a humane gesture. Mr. Bhutto also realised that by setting the East Bengali leader free he could repair a little of the damage done over the last nine months to Pakistan’s reputation in the world, and possibly even pave the way for informal ties between West Pakistan and Bangladesh. Yet the release of Sheikh Mujib is much more than an acknowledgement of reality by Mr. Bhutto. It represents the snapping of the last link, the end of Pakistan, for a week after Mr Bhutto’s announcement that he was free to go home, Sheikh Mujib was telling the crowds in Dacca that he had rejected the idea of links between Bangladesh and West Pakistan. There may yet be some informal accommodation between the two countries, but for all practical purposes the old Pakistan is dead and the ideal of a State founded on Islamic unity shattered. In Pakistan’s place there are now two countries, both run by parties that are more secular than Islamic, both poor and both fared with futures that are equally uncertain.

DEMORALISED PEOPLE

For West Pakistan, the break with its eastern wing has crept like a cancer through its political institutions and through its economy, during the months of the crisis. It brutalised a military regime that two years ago showed signs of wanting to do well by the country. It has deprived industries in the West of profitable markets in the East. It has cut off supplies of raw materials from the East. And, most of all, it has shocked and demoralised a whole people.



In the Pakistani economic field, only the tenuous link of a national airline remained. Now that has gone. Pakistan International Airlines, with its 12 Boings and nine Fokker Friendships, was flying 23 flights a week between the two wings of Pakistan right through to October. Its prestige route to London was sustained by Pakistanis from Sylhet, now in Bangladesh, travelling back and forth to their “Indian” restaurants in Britain. Now this business will go to other airlines. The lost traffic between East and West wings alone represents 44 per cent of Pakistan airline’s revenue. There will be redundancies among the airline’s 13,000 workers and unless new routes can quickly be acquired against international competition, aircraft will have to be either leased to other airlines or sold.

The Pakistan Government has a 90 per cent stake in the airline and can cushion the shock. Private industry is less fortunate. The Pakistan Tobacco Company made and exported cigarettes to the East. The guerrilla war stopped this trade. A bicycle factory in Lahore exported 80 per cent, of its products to East Pakistan. Now it exists on 20 per cent of its possible production.

TRUCULENT LABOUR

Redundancies have been heavy. Combined with Pakistan labour’s new found truculence now that a “People's Government” is running the country, this presents Mr. Bhutto with one of his severest problems. As a politician out of power, Mr Bhutto had gained popularity by championing the workers against big business. It has rebounded on him already. His assumption of power coincided with a rash of gheraos, a favoured technique of agitation in which workers encircle their factories to prevent the management leaving until their demands are met. Mr. Bhutto’s pleas to desist have been ignored.

There is more gloom in the realm of Government Finance, despite the chirpy self-confidence of Dr. Mubashi Hasan, Finance Minister. Four months ago Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves were down to less than £40 million with a national debt of £1,600 million. The exact position now is unknown, but Pakistan is certainly bankrupt. Precious foreign exchange was spent on arms during the war and the position further aggravated by short-term borrowing from the Persian Gulf States, while the Government can no longer look to sterling remittances from those “Indian" restaurateurs in Britain.

Yet the notion of economic soundness means little in the third world. Pakistan can survive, however untidily, in the view of economists in the West. Some industries have already adapted to the loss of the East. Where rice was exported to East Pakistan from the West, it is now flowing in large quantities to Russia and the Persian Gulf States. Cotton goods have been diverted elsewhere and this business is booming. There is still the problem of finding other markets for more than £100million-worth of exports which went to East Pakistan each year, and where to find such raw materials as jute and tea that came from the East. On these matters may depend the future of Mr Bhutto’s Government.

Mr. Bhutto’s real headaches, however, are political. From its birth four years ago, his Pakistan People’s party grew to dominate the political life of West Pakistan but his accession to power is an experiment in democracy in a country that for 13 years has been a military dictatorship. Mr. Bhutto’s power lies in the two sophisticated provinces of Sind and Punjab. In Baluchistan and Frontier provinces his party is weak and these are traditionally resentful of central Government. The locally-strong National Awami Party of Abdul Wali Khan has violently opposed the appointment of Mr. Bhutto’s party men as Governors. Unless it is checked, this movement could shatter the fragile unity of West Pakistan.

There could also be trouble for Mr. Bhutto from his own followers, who expected widespread nationalisation. All that he could offer was limited Government control over basic industries. Prisoners expected jail gates to be flung open now that the people are running things, but while some political prisoners of Yahya Khan’s regime have been freed, others have been disappointed.

SKILLED POLITICIAN

The strains of having 93,000 men in prisoner of war camps in India, a faltering economy and internal political troubles would defeat most politicians, certainly any alternative leadership in Pakistan, but in Mr. Bhutto the country has found a man of consummate skill who may just be able to bail it out. In private, he is the suave Oxford lawyer talking patronisingly about his Cabinet as “young men with energy and ideals.” Evidently, chastened by his own role in political impasse in Dacca before the fighting, he talks realistically about past mistakes. In public, he is the Asian demagogue, shouting his brand of nationalism and socialism, and with his black-shirted “People’s Militia” around him, he strikes a chord in the western memory. He is as much at home with mobs as with diplomats.

Hopefully, he is convincing crowds of the desire for a detente with India. He even speaks of a “subcontinental approach” to the man-made and natural problems confronting both nations. Perhaps Mrs. Gandhi and Mr. Bhutto will preside over such a detente. If not, Mrs. Gandhi would certainly be wise not to see Mr. Bhutto in the same light as the blundering generals who preceded him, for politically he is likely to prove a match for the politicians of New Delhi.