Mounting Troubles

As freezing rain lashed an old farmhouse on Pakistan's northwest frontier, the leader of the country's 6,000,000-member Pathan community, Khan Abdul Wali Khan, huddled over a stove and talked politics with several grizzled elders. In words as dark and foreboding as the winter night, he hinted that Pakistan, already defeated, divided and demoralized, might be veering toward further fragmentation. "We refuse to be treated like East Pakistan," the tall, gray-maned Wali told TIME Correspondent Dan Coggin, referring to the Frontier and Baluchistan provinces where his pro-Soviet National Awami Party predominates. He refused to speak openly of secession, but added ominously: "The potentialities are quite clear."

Smuggled Rifles. The further breakup of Pakistan is a nightmare that has become a possibility--though no more than that as yet--in the aftermath of last December's war with India. Since then, continued martial law has provided a focus for the historic nationalism of the warlike Pathan and Baluch tribesmen. Russian-supplied automatic rifles are being smuggled across the frontier from Afghanistan, evidently destined for the 6,000-strong Zalme Pakhtoon (Pathan Youth). A bloody riot erupted in Quetta, a city in Baluchistan, after Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto appointed governors for the two provinces from his own party, despite the fact that the National Awami Party holds majorities in the provincial assemblies.

Last week, as an unmistakable signal to his restive countrymen, Bhutto moved abruptly to shake up Pakistan's demoralized armed forces. After taking the precaution of placing the television station under guard and temporarily closing down the telegraph office, he went on the air to announce that he had sacked the army and air force commanders, who had helped him gain power last December. He accused them of "Bonapartist tendencies," apparently meaning that they were meddling in political affairs. As the army's new chief of staff, Bhutto named none other than Lieut. General Tikka Khan, the man who supervised last year's brutal repression in East Pakistan, and is also known for his role in crushing a separatist movement in Baluchistan ten years ago.

The appointment of Tikka Khan can hardly help but make more difficult any new approach to breakaway Bangladesh, but Bhutto evidently had other priorities in mind. "I cannot allow Pakistan to become incapacitated by actions of certain elements in the country," he declared. "We have the machinery, and an efficacious machinery, if people try to take the law in their own hands." Pakistan, he added, is in "a total crisis, in all spheres."

Separatism is thus only the worst of a host of problems facing Bhutto's two-month-old government. It is a symptom of rapidly spreading disillusionment among Pakistanis, whose hopes were raised when Bhutto took power last December and promised a prompt return to democracy and an "economic and social revolution." But despite a flurry of decrees, little has been accomplished. Pakistan's ills have been compounded by a postwar economic tailspin and a precipitous deterioration of law-and-order. Items:

· Troops and militia were called out after striking policemen looted shops, cut telephone lines, beat up politicians and fought students in Lahore and Peshawar. The cops were demanding higher pay and an end to interference and high-handedness by members of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party.

· In Karachi alone, 45,000 factory workers have been laid off. Industrial production is running at a third of capacity. The government, deprived of foreign aid for nearly a year, is almost bankrupt and is $120 million behind in foreign-debt repayments.

· Despite the government's new labor policy boosting workers' wages, the country is still beset by strikes and gheraos, the South Asian practice of besieging bosses in their offices until they meet labor demands.

· Almost daily, large delegations of angry wives, mothers, sisters and girl friends troop to Bhutto's office in Rawalpindi for fresh assurance that he is trying to speed the return of 94,000 Pakistani prisoners of war held by India. When Indo-Pakistani negotiations begin, probably later this month, Bhutto will be forced to bargain at a serious disadvantage in prisoners (Pakistan holds only 600) as well as territory seized in the December fighting (5-1 in India's favor).

Bhutto made a strong effort last week to win renewed support. He announced a long-awaited land reform program that "will break the back of feudalism." Under the new plan, the ceiling on individual holdings will drop from 500 to 150 acres of irrigated land, and from 1,000 to 300 acres of dry land. Among the rich men affected, pledged Bhutto, will be his own family, which owns a 4,000-acre estate at Larkana in Sind Province.

But Bhutto still faces widespread criticism for clinging to martial law and delaying his country's return to democracy. Opponents suspect that he is using the delay for political advantage. An interim constitution, now under preparation, is believed by his rivals to provide for a presidential instead of a parliamentary system of government--with Bhutto as a supremely powerful President. He promises to lift martial law and restore democracy "well before the end of the year." But in the meantime, he told Correspondent Coggin, "martial law serves as a psychological deterrent to other forms of unrest." Bhutto is thus relying on martial law--and on the tough Tikka Khan--to hold the country together.

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