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 unlit 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 v lead to chaos."
Yahya, however, had misread the political tempers. When East Pakistan's charismatic Sheikh Mujibur Rahman won his stunning majority in the December election, the hardliners began telling Yahya. “I told you so.” Six leading generalsincluding General Abdul Hamid Khan, an old chum of Yahya who is the current army, chief of staff, and Tikka ("Red Hot") Khan, the cold-blooded 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 on Nadir Shah, the Persian adventurer who conquered Delhi in the 16th 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 sub-continent's best soldiers, he opted 10 become a Pakistani (India, the saying goes, got all the bureaucrats). Ile was an Ayub protege from the start, and his star rose swiftly.
Following Moslem practice, Yahya keeps his family-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 itlike 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 were all “a bunch of thieves.” The bureaucracy rose in protest, and Yahya soon gave up the effort. But he shows no sign of yielding with the Bengalis, whom he reportedly calls “machchar'-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.
