Maintaining the Peace

Spurring his warlike Moslems to battle against the hated Hindus in Kashmir last fall was a relatively simple task for Pakistan's President Mohammed Ayub Khan. Calming them down has turned out to be a good deal harder. After all, Ayub's controlled press had claimed one magnificent victory after another in Kashmir. When Ayub and India's late Prime Minister Lai Bahadur Shastri agreed in Tashkent last month to observe the original border and withdraw their troops from it, Pakistan's vitriolic Foreign Minister Zulfikar AH Bhutto nearly resigned in disgust, and students demonstrated in a dozen towns. Throughout Pakistan, the feeling grew that Ayub had sold out.

Resentment reached a bitter peak in Lahore, which was actually attacked by Indian troops last fall and has since borne the brunt of Ayub's propaganda offensive. The Lahore demonstrations lasted for a week, killed five persons. Pakistan's squabbling politicians, who have been looking for an issue to mobilize public opinion behind them ever since Ayub turned them out of office in 1958, held a conference in Lahore two weeks ago, at which they loudly condemned the Tashkent agreement.

Ayub decided that things had gone far enough. He had already barnstormed the country, pleading for his countrymen to "show the same sense of purpose in achieving peace that you did in achieving victory." Last week, in a predawn swoop in Lahore, his police arrested five of the leading opposition leaders on grounds that "they have been indulging in activities highly prejudicial to the maintenance of public order and peaceful conditions." Just in case other politicians did not get the message that Pakistan is now officially at peace, Ayub seemed prepared to arrest them too.

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