Good Soldier Yahya Khan

PAKISTAN'S General Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan had been settled in President's House in Rawalpindi for a full year before he finally agreed to hold a press conference for foreign newsmen. When he entered the packed drawing room where the first conference was held 14 months ago, he immediately let loose a few choice expletives about the hot TV lights. A trembling technician quickly switched them off. Then Yahya started in on the journalists. "Don't play politics with me," he snapped in his characteristically gruff bass, "because I'll play politics with you."

Yahya, 54, runs his country pretty much the same way--with impatience, ill-disguised contempt for bungling civilians, and a cultivated air of resentment about having let himself get involved in the whole messy business in the first place When Ayub Khan yielded the presidency to him two years ago, Yahya switched from khaki to dark business suits, which he still wears with obvious discomfort. As if to emphasize his longing for the barracks, he occasionally carries a swagger stick and misses no chance to play the simple, straight-talking soldier.

ON THE SLOW FLOW OF CYCLONE AID TO EAST PAKISTAN LAST WINTER: "My government is not made up of angels."

ON PAKISTAN'S FISCAL PROBLEMS: "I inherited a bad economy and I'm going to pass it on."

ON HIS MISSION: "I'll be damned if I'll see Pakistan divided."

ON HIS MANDATE: "The people did not bring me to power. I came myself."

Few Pakistanis knew anything about Yahya Khan when he was vaulted into the presidency two years ago. The stocky, bushy-browed Pathan had been army chief of staff since 1966. Half a dozen high-ranking generals were deeply disturbed about the avuncular Ayub Khan's willingness to permit a return of parliamentary democracy, despite his own comment that politicians behaved like "five cats tied by their tails." When a weary Ayub stepped aside in March 1969 in the wake of strikes and student riots that focused on wages, educational reform and a host of other issues, the generals eagerly imposed martial law. In his first speech as President, Yahya delighted his military sponsors by declaring that the country was at "the edge of an abyss." What really bothered the generals was that the country might be on the verge of a return to genuine civilian rule, posing grave dangers to the army's power and perks.

Yahya raised the minimum industrial wage by 30%, to $26 a month, brought in several civilian ministers when soldiers proved unfit for the jobs, and sought to reduce official venality. He had no intention of allowing a sudden return to full civilian rule, yet he did not seem to hanker for power--despite the Pakistani saying that "a general galloping upon a stallion is slow to dismount." Eventually, he decided to press ahead not only with an election but a new constitution, even though, as he later said, "some of my countrymen don't like the idea. They say, 'What the hell's going on? This will lead to chaos.' "

Yahya, however, had misread the political tempers. When East Pakistan's charismatic Sheik Mujibur Rahman won his stunning majority in the December election, the hard-liners began telling Yahya, "I told you so." Six leading generals--including General Abdul Hamid Khan, an old chum of Yahya's who is the current army chief of staff, and Tikka ("Red Hot") Khan, the coldblooded commander in East Pakistan --helped persuade Yahya to deal harshly with the East's "treachery."

Yahya (pronounced Ya-hee-uh) Khan claims direct descent from warrior nobles who fought in the elite armies of Nadir Shah, the Persian adventurer who conquered Delhi in the 18th century. With his pukka sahib manner, Yahya seems strictly Sandhurst, though he learned his trade not in England but at the British-run Indian Military Academy at Dehra Dun. During World War II, he fought in the British Indian army in North Africa and Italy. After partition, like most of the subcontinent's best soldiers, he opted to become a Pakistani (India, the saying goes, got all the bureaucrats). He was an Ayub protege from the start, and his star rose swiftly.

Following Moslem practice, Yahya keeps his family--a wife, Fakhra, and two married children--well out of the public eye. His only known interest, outside of the military, is birds--all varieties. He keeps Australian parrots around President's House, and, in a specially built pool, a number of cranes and swans. He remains fussy as ever about his wavy expanse of thick, white-streaked black hair ("My strength lies in it--like Samson's").

Westerners who know him well describe Yahya as a reasonable man but stubborn, proud and discipline-minded, He began a drive on corruption last year by summoning senior civil servants and telling them that they were all "a bunch of thieves." The bureaucracy ground to a halt in protest, and Yahya soon gave up the effort. But he shows no sign of yielding with the Bengalis, whom he reportedly calls macchar --Urdu for mosquitoes.

"Yahya is not a brutal man," says an American acquaintance. "He is a good soldier. But he has been blinded by his intense nationalism, and his belief that the honor and security of his country have been betrayed." There is a case for Yahya's Lincolnesque attempt to hold the Pakistani house together; there is none for his methods. He might have succeeded had he tried to accommodate the East's justifiable demands for greater autonomy. But his tough crackdown virtually guarantees that the country's two halves, which have precious little in common, will never be successfully reunited.

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