Little is known in this country of the factors which finally persuaded Air Marshal Asghar Khan, one of the most prestigious figures in Pakistan, to come out in opposition to President Ayub Khan and his regime. But it is not a sudden a development as it might appear to be. The general impression that the Air Marshal has been one of the closest confidants of the Field Marshal is ill-founded.
The relationship between the two men has in fact been ambivalent. Air Marshal Asghar Khan was regarded as President Ayub Khan’s most powerful rival in knowledgeable quarters even in 1961 when I was serving as a correspondent in Pakistan. It was then widely accepted in diplomatic circles that the Air Marshal had presidential ambitions and that the Field Marshal would not give him an extension as the Chief of Air Staff.
This speculation was vindicated by subsequent events. Air Marshal Asghar Khan was retired while Gen. Musa, loyal to President Ayub Khan, was duly given an extension. Since early this year it has been common knowledge that the Air Marshal was among the candidates for succession to the Field Marshal. Even his recent visit to the United States was seen by some as a mission for canvassing support in Washington. Incidentally the Soviet decision to extend military aid to Pakistan at this stage is also said to have been influenced by Moscow’s desire to acquire some say on the issue of the succession.
Speculation
The Air Marshal would not have decided to join the opposition if he was prepared to wait till President Ayub Khan agreed to step down. He is clearly not willing to wait and has offered himself as an opposition candidate for the presidential election next year. It is a matter of speculation whether he has been impetuous or whether he has come to the conclusion on the basis of a cool calculation that the Field Marshal is no longer as formidable as he appears from a distance.
Mr Asghar Khan presents a far more serious challenge to President Ayub Khan than Mr Bhutto for a variety of reasons. The Air Marshal comes from the heartland of West Pakistan and not from a fringe area like Sind. He enjoys immense prestige among the country’s top power elite while Mr Bhutto’s appeal may be limited to younger officers in the armed forces and to restless students. He is certainly acceptable to the United States and might not be unacceptable to the Soviet Union. Mr Bhutto is intensely disliked in Washington and is not greatly trusted in Moscow either on account of his pro-Chinese inclinations.
But the key question is: how vulnerable or invulnerable is Presided Ayub Khan? This is an extremely difficult question and there can be no finality about the answer because the situation can change. But certain observations would be in order.
It is perhaps an exaggeration to say that power in Pakistan grows out of the barrel of a gun in as much as the civil service there shares power with the armed forces and a certain amount of politicalisation has taken place even under the highly authoritarian constitution of 1962. But the defence forces are clearly a key element in Pakistan’s political scene.
There is no direct evidence to justify the view that President Ayub Khan cannot depend on the unflinching loyalty of the officer corps as he could before it suffered humiliation in the war against India in September 1965. But it stands to reason that he cannot escape responsibility for the miscalculations that led to the conflict and Pakistan’s defeat.
Army Officers
The experience in other countries has been that military defeats often lead to radicalisation of opinion among the armed forces and the rise of militant groups in the officer corps. In the case of Pakistan it is not inconceivable that the apparent decrease in President Ayub Khan’s influence among students in Lahore, Rawalpindi, Karachi and other towns in West Pakistan is reflected in a similar loss of prestige among army officers. The widespread speculation regarding the existence of a pro-Bhutto group among them may not be off the mark.
President Ayub Khan has been seriously ill. By all accounts he suffered a stroke earlier this year. Though he appears to have recovered it is highly unlikely that he can exercise the same amount of personal supervision over the officer corps that he did earlier. The importance of this point should be obvious to anyone who is aware that the Field Marshal has known all army officers above the rank of Major and that he has tried to keep himself fully informed about their views. It is equally unlikely that they would hold him in the same awe as they did before the debacle of 1965 or even before his illness.
The struggle for succession started during President Ayub Khan’s illness and his recovery does not mean that the aspirants have retired from the field. Apart from Air Marshal Asghar Khan the names of Air Marshal Nur Khan, Gen Yahya Khan and Gen Musa have been mentioned in this connection. The relevant point is that the fact of the struggle for succession itself cannot but derogate from President Ayub Khan’s authority.
As for the 120,000 basic democrats who nominally elect the President, the popular assumption is that if the Field Marshal offers himself as a candidate next year a vast majority of them would vote for him. On the face of it this assumption is valid because opposition parties are in disarray and the administrative machinery can be depended upon to use its considerable leverage in his favour. But President Ayub Khan’s victory need not be regarded as a foregone conclusion for various reasons.
President Ayub Khan is at the end of his mental and physical resources. He has lost much of the glamour that he possessed before 1965. His inability to normalise relations with India in fact show that for all practical purposes he has become a prisoner of the disastrous policy which Mr Bhutto had managed to sell to him. On the present evidence it does not appear likely that he can seize the political initiative in a meaningful sense and thus recover the lost ground.
Secondly, in spite of all his efforts President Ayub Khan has not been able to satisfy the aspirations of the non-Punjabi cultural and linguistic communities. The fact that he has had to stage a treason trial in East Pakistan on faked charges and that he has had to arrest Khan Wali Khan, son of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, in connection with Mr Bhutto’s detention indicates that the regime still finds it necessary to resort to dubious tactics to deal with regional discontent.
Thirdly, President Ayub Khan is sandwiched between two powerful ideologies, Islamic fundamentalism as symbolised by the Jamat i-Islami of Maulana Madoudi and radical nationalism as represented by Mr Bhutto. He can continue to suppress both these movements. But this will not win him popularity. The problem is aggravated because President Ayub Khan has no well-defined ideological position of his own. He is a moderniser but he continues to proclaim faith in Pakistan being an Islamic society.
Failure
In his remarkable book Islam in Modern History Mr Cantwel Smith made the point over a decade ago that Pakistanis seek fulfilment through the establishment of a society which can claim to be Islamic in the sense of being based on the Koran and the Hadith and the failure to do so produces intense frustration. Even genuine achievements in the fields of foreign policy and economic development cannot compensate for this failure. This point is as valid as it was when Mr Smith made it. The only force that can make up for this failure is militant nationalism of the Bhutto variety with its intense xenophobia and hatred for India.
President Ayub Khan cannot be blamed for this frustration which is built into Pakistan’s political life. But he cannot escape responsibility for the regime’s failure to move away from a sterile past and must therefore pay the price.
This is not to suggest that President Ayub Khan has ceased to be the most powerful individual in Pakistan. He is still well entrenched in power. It is also true that even Air Marshal Asghar Khan would find it difficult to bring all major opposition parties together. He and Mr Bhutto are not natural allies. The differences between them are both temperamental and Ideological. A regime headed by the Air Marshal would broadly be a continuation of and not a break from the present administration. With Mr Bhutto it would be a different story. The point to be emphasised is that a strong element of uncertainty has crept into the power situation in Pakistan.
The present Constitution has been tailor-made for President Ayub Khan. It has not helped to establish a machinery which can settle the question of succession. If President Ayub Khan steps down voluntarily next year and allows a successor to be elected while he is still around, there may still be a fair chance of Pakistan escaping a prolonged struggle for power and the uncertainty it involves. The Field Marshal is not likely to make such a sacrifice. If he stays in the race he will have jeopardised the prospects of a peaceful and orderly change.
The Times of India, 20 November 1968