his memoirs. Ayub Khan’s
Friends Not Masters: A Political Autobiography
was published by Oxford University Press in 1967 to great acclaim in the Western press and nothing short of sycophantic hysteria in the government-controlled media at home. *
The biography’s publication was linked to the dictator’s growing unpopularity. A military adventure against India in 1965 had ended in disaster. Ayub, always cautious in these matters, was reluctant to authorize a strike against India. Bhutto and a number of senior generals convinced him that a preemptive strike would take the Indians by surprise and that Operation Grand Slam would liberate Kashmir, the disputed and divided province claimed by both sides after 1947. Ayub finallyagreed. India was taken by surprise and Pakistani forces came close to achieving their strategic objectives, but serious operational and organizational failures halted the advance, giving India time to move its troops forward and push Pakistan back, but only after the largest tank battle since the Second World War. Sixty Pakistani tanks were captured intact after the Indian victory.
Ayub was forced to travel to Tashkent, where the Soviet prime minister, Aleksey Kosygin, brokered a cease-fire deal between the two countries. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, by this time a mercurial foreign minister, resigned soon afterward, alleging that secret protocols attached to the Tashkent Treaty amounted to a betrayal of the Kashmiri people’s right to self-determination. This turned out not to have been the case, but it had become a useful weapon at mass meetings. When, a year later, I asked Bhutto why he had pushed Ayub to wage an unwinnable war, his reply took me aback: “It was the only way to weaken the bloody dictatorship. The regime will crack wide open fairly soon.” Bhutto had by this time decided to organize his own political grouping, and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) was founded in 1966. * From the beginning the party line was to destroy the Ayub regime. In 1967, Bhutto began to address a series of large meetings throughout the country and was arrested. His confidence was high. Knowing full well that his cell was bugged, he would, during meetings with his lawyer, Mahmud Ali Kasuri, provoke the military. “General Musa’s days as governor of West Pakistan are numbered. We’ll dress him in a skirt and make him dance on the streets like a monkey,” was one of the few insults that were printable.
In response to the growing opposition in the country the regime decided that a distraction was needed. In October 1968 lavish celebrations to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the dictatorship were in progress. The Karachi daily
Dawn
competed with the government press by publishing sixty-nine photographs of the field marshal in a single issue. The citizens were triumphantly informed that in Karachi, a city with only three bottled-milk outlets, the consumer could chooseamong Bubble Up, Canada Dry, Citra Cola, Coca-Cola, Double Cola, Kola Kola, Pepsi-Cola, Perri Cola, Fanta, Hoffman’s Mission, and 7UP. In Lahore a reporter from the government newspaper
Pakistan Times
slobbered over a fashion show:
The mannequins received a big hand from the elegant crowd as they moved up and down the brightly lit catwalk modelling the dresses. Some of the creations which the audience warmly applauded were “Romantica,” “Raja’s Ransom,” “Sea Nymph” and “Hello Officer.” . . . The Eleganza ’69 look was defined as a blend of the soft and the severe.
But the bread and circuses became a public relations disaster. On November 7, 1968, students in Rawalpindi and Dhaka surprised the government and themselves by marching out onto the streets. They demanded freedom and the restoration of democracy, recalling the words of the Martinican poet Aimé Césaire:
It was an evening in November . . .
And suddenly shouts lit up the silence;
We had attacked, we the slaves; we, the
Dung-underfoot, we the animals with patient
Friends Not Masters: A Political Autobiography
was published by Oxford University Press in 1967 to great acclaim in the Western press and nothing short of sycophantic hysteria in the government-controlled media at home. *
The biography’s publication was linked to the dictator’s growing unpopularity. A military adventure against India in 1965 had ended in disaster. Ayub, always cautious in these matters, was reluctant to authorize a strike against India. Bhutto and a number of senior generals convinced him that a preemptive strike would take the Indians by surprise and that Operation Grand Slam would liberate Kashmir, the disputed and divided province claimed by both sides after 1947. Ayub finallyagreed. India was taken by surprise and Pakistani forces came close to achieving their strategic objectives, but serious operational and organizational failures halted the advance, giving India time to move its troops forward and push Pakistan back, but only after the largest tank battle since the Second World War. Sixty Pakistani tanks were captured intact after the Indian victory.
Ayub was forced to travel to Tashkent, where the Soviet prime minister, Aleksey Kosygin, brokered a cease-fire deal between the two countries. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, by this time a mercurial foreign minister, resigned soon afterward, alleging that secret protocols attached to the Tashkent Treaty amounted to a betrayal of the Kashmiri people’s right to self-determination. This turned out not to have been the case, but it had become a useful weapon at mass meetings. When, a year later, I asked Bhutto why he had pushed Ayub to wage an unwinnable war, his reply took me aback: “It was the only way to weaken the bloody dictatorship. The regime will crack wide open fairly soon.” Bhutto had by this time decided to organize his own political grouping, and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) was founded in 1966. * From the beginning the party line was to destroy the Ayub regime. In 1967, Bhutto began to address a series of large meetings throughout the country and was arrested. His confidence was high. Knowing full well that his cell was bugged, he would, during meetings with his lawyer, Mahmud Ali Kasuri, provoke the military. “General Musa’s days as governor of West Pakistan are numbered. We’ll dress him in a skirt and make him dance on the streets like a monkey,” was one of the few insults that were printable.
In response to the growing opposition in the country the regime decided that a distraction was needed. In October 1968 lavish celebrations to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the dictatorship were in progress. The Karachi daily
Dawn
competed with the government press by publishing sixty-nine photographs of the field marshal in a single issue. The citizens were triumphantly informed that in Karachi, a city with only three bottled-milk outlets, the consumer could chooseamong Bubble Up, Canada Dry, Citra Cola, Coca-Cola, Double Cola, Kola Kola, Pepsi-Cola, Perri Cola, Fanta, Hoffman’s Mission, and 7UP. In Lahore a reporter from the government newspaper
Pakistan Times
slobbered over a fashion show:
The mannequins received a big hand from the elegant crowd as they moved up and down the brightly lit catwalk modelling the dresses. Some of the creations which the audience warmly applauded were “Romantica,” “Raja’s Ransom,” “Sea Nymph” and “Hello Officer.” . . . The Eleganza ’69 look was defined as a blend of the soft and the severe.
But the bread and circuses became a public relations disaster. On November 7, 1968, students in Rawalpindi and Dhaka surprised the government and themselves by marching out onto the streets. They demanded freedom and the restoration of democracy, recalling the words of the Martinican poet Aimé Césaire:
It was an evening in November . . .
And suddenly shouts lit up the silence;
We had attacked, we the slaves; we, the
Dung-underfoot, we the animals with patient
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