A Pakistani
reminisces
Mohammad Kuli
Khan of the Khattak tribe was a political agent in the Northwest Frontier
Province (NWFP) – he helped manage the relations of the British with tribesmen.
Iskander Mirza – who later became President of Pakistan – was joint secretary
in the defence ministry in Delhi. Early in 1946, Mirza called Kuli Khan over to
Delhi, gave him a large sum of money, and told him to organize an invasion of
Kashmir by frontier tribesmen on the night Pakistan was created. It was
organized. But two tribal leaders, on reaching Muzaffarabad, had a row about
who would be the Amir of Kashmir. There were also enticing homes of Pandits to
loot and women to rape on the way. So valuable time was lost. Still, the
tribesmen got up to Srinagar airport when they were told to draw back. They
never understood why; they thought they had nearly taken Kashmir when they were
ordered to leave everything and go home. There was a rumour that Sardar
Vallabhbhai Patel had sent a message to Jinnah through Mian Iftikharuddin that
he could have Kashmir if he would leave Hyderabad to India. Jinnah apparently replied
that Kashmir was theirs and Hyderabad a legal issue. He lost both.
Kuli Khan sent
his son, Mohammad Aslam Khan, to Oxford in 1928. There he made friends with S S
Dhawan of Dera Ismail Khan and the Sheikhzada of Mangrol in Kathiawar amongst
others. With his Pathan friends he formed a Khyber Union; he published a
pamphlet in which he invented Pakistan, name and all, and made a case for dividing
India. Mohammed Ali Jinnah, whom he went to meet in London, was indignant; at
that time Jinnah believed in indivisible India.
Aslam Khan
failed the civil service examination; on returning home, he joined the
political service like his father. Those were early years of radio. The NWFP
was given a Marconi transmitter, and Aslam was put in charge. When World War II
started, he was given a job in All India Radio, Delhi, to broadcast propaganda
in Arabic, Turkish, Persian and Pushtu. He took a big house near the ridge
(probably on Rajpur road), which soon became a haven for Pathans when they were
visiting Delhi. Amongst them were Congressmen like Dr Khan Sahib, which sullied
Aslam’s image in British eyes. So he went back to Peshawar and did odd jobs in
the NWFP government.
Once Pakistan
came into being and Jinnah made himself its Governor General, he dismissed the
Congress ministry headed by Dr Khan Sahib and replaced him by Abdul Qayyum
Khan. He made Aslam’s life difficult, so Aslam got himself transferred to the
central government in Karachi (Islamabad was still to be built then).
In 1953, a
friend of Aslam’s was appointed ambassador to Afghanistan, and took Aslam with
him. The Afghans were extremely suspicious of Pakistan; they knew that the A in
Pakistan stood for Afghanistan. Aslam Khan explained to them that Pathans and
Afghans were the same thing; that he had himself coined the term Pakistan, and
that A stood for Pathans. The Afghans also thought that Punjabis were Ahmediyas
and oppressed the Sunni Pathans. They were incensed when, in 1955, Pakistan
decided to merge all provinces of the west into one as a counterbalance to East
Pakistan; they thought it was a plot of Punjabis to subjugate the rest of the
provinces.
Aslam Khan decided
that the best way to lay these suspicions to rest was a merger of Pakistan and
Afghanistan. He convinced Huseyn Shahid Suhrawardy, who was then Prime Minister
of Pakistan, and began to work on Afghan leaders. He arranged a visit to
Pakistan by King Zahir Shah, who was delighted to converse in French with
Suhrawardy. When Sardar Daud, the Afghan Prime Minister, congratulated
Suhrawardy on his French, Suhrawardy replied, “Your Royal Highness, once upon a
time when I was a young man I was in Paris. Believe me that the urgency to
learn French was constantly great.” Suhrawardy was a famous womanizer.
The Americans
were consulted about the proposed union, and strongly supported it. They
promised to enlarge the Karachi harbour and build another port for Pakistan, to
supply 50 railway engines and 500 wagons, and to extend the Chaman railway to
Kandahar and the Torkham railway to Jalalabad. Those plans are now being
realized in Gwadar port.
Finally all
pieces were in place, and Daud was invited to Pakistan to finalize the merger. Aslam
Khan took him to the Karachi naval base to see a military exercise. There, a shot
rang out. It ricocheted off the hull of a ship and hit Aslam Khan in the hip.
Daud was convinced that the bullet was meant for him. Soon thereafter, Iskander
Mirza turfed out Feroze Khan Noon as Prime Minister, and was himself then
turfed out by General Ayub Khan. Ayub sent his own son-in-law to replace Aslam
Khan in Kabul, thus ending Aslam’s dream of Greater Pakistan. Ten years later,
Zia manufactured the Taliban in his new Madrasas, got the Americans to arm
them, and used them to take over Afghanistan. Another decade later, the
Americans bombed out the Taliban and took over Afghanistan while Musharraf
watched.
Aslam went home
and got a Coca Cola franchise. When Bhutto became President of Pakistan, he
made Aslam governor of NWFP. But then Bhutto began to suspect that Aslam wanted
to remove him and usurp power, so he sacked him, accused him of bottling
cockroaches in his Coca Cola and closed down his factory. But two years later
in 1974, Bhutto had a change of heart and sent Aslam to Iran as ambassador.
There Aslam put it to the Shah that Iran and Pakistan should federate. The Shah
was not too forthcoming. He told Aslam that no country in South Asia – not even
Iran – could match India’s military power and that Pakistan should settle the
Kashmir problem by accepting the line of control as frontier. Aslam got quite
close to the Shah, as he had earlier to Daud in Afghanistan and General Qassim,
the dictator of Iraq. The Shah’s fondness for Aslam made Bhutto jealous, and
Aslam resigned his ambassadorship.
When Zia staged
a coup against Bhutto, he made Aslam minister home minister. In 1987, tension
between Pakistan and India rose; Rajiv Gandhi staged a huge military exercise,
Operation Brasstacks, on the border of Pakistan. To defuse the tension, General
Zia decided to go to India and watch the India-Pakistan test match in
Bangalore. He took Aslam with him. They landed in Jaipur on the way, where they
were received by Rajiv Gandhi. The cricket diplomacy ended the confrontation.
Now Pakistan has
another dictator who has no use for Aslam, so he lives a quiet life in
Peshawar. He has written an autobiography, A
Pathan Odyssey (Oxford University Press). What stands out in his story is
how concentrated power is in Pakistan, and how arbitrarily it is exercised. The
ruler of the moment is all powerful; he raises people like Aslam to power, and
as suddenly drops them. If they annoy him, he drops a cluster bomb and blows
them to smithereens – as happened to another grandee who had had a career very
similar to Aslam Khan, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti.
