Calcutta. There could be no clearer symptom of Pakistan’s present desperate situation than the reluctance of its martial law leaders, so far at least, to strike at India, both at the time where it could hurt most, and in the places, the Punjab and Kashmir. It can only be because of his country’s parlous political and economic condition, wrought by civil war in breakaway East Pakistan and now India’s massive interference and open backing for the Mukti Fouj guerrillas, that President Yahya Khan has held back. For he, his colleagues in the martial law junta, and the formidable legions of Pakistan’s infantry and armoured divisions at every level from the generals to the riflemen, are by tradition, training and temperament ready and raring to take India on.

As a fighting force, the Pakistan Army is probably one of the finest in the world. Significantly, its ranks come almost exclusively from the so-called “martial races” of old North-Western India, now Pakistan, the Pathans, the Punjabis and Baluchis, peoples who have for centuries had to fight bitterly to defend their homelands from invader after invader. This tradition has bred virtue of severe necessity. It has created a fighting temperament, a reluctance to cavil or compromise, which gives the Pakistan Army its fighting “guts”. To this was grafted, during the days of British rule, more modern forms of military discipline, training and efficiency, which have made the Pakistan Army not only an excellent fighting machine but also the only institution in Pakistan which has, over the years, proved steady and reliable and which has, therefore, been the political as well as the military instrument for holding the nation together.

Of all this, President Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan, 54, is the embodiment Par excellence. As a Pathan by origin, he too is not a man to cavil or compromise, though as a leader of much underestimated intelligence and guile, he has great capacity, if not inclination, for political manoeuvre.

Since taking over from Ayub Khan as President two years ago Yahya Khan 
had been Army commander-in-chief for three years. He had had a fine military career, serving with the old Indian Army during World War II in North Africa, Iraq and Italy. An index of his mettle was shown when he escaped from a prisoner of war camp in Germany in 1944 without being recaptured, despite his conspicuously non-European hue.

Yahya Khan is not by nature or background the politician that circumstances have forced him to become, ably though he did acquit himself, until the pressures became too great. His entire training as a soldier has been opposed to such a role. He is a soldier’s soldier, gruff, bluff, solid, regimental in demeanour, regimental in attitude, given to swearing and heavy “sessions” in the mess, used to rapping out orders and used to having them unquestionably obeyed. This has come out in his vulgar and abusive public references to Mrs. Gandhi. But such bluster must also be seen as a symptom of his nation’s deep weakness in the present situation and a warning sign that, at any moment, his acceptance of the distasteful need to temporise and trim in order to avoid an inevitably ruinous confrontation will crack and that all-out war will begin. For even ruin is better than the utter loss of face and honour.

The mystery of the present situation is that he has not launched a war on India already, for there has been ample excuse. If war comes, the main battle lines will be on India’s western front. War by proxy, through the agency of the Bengali Mukti Fouj guerrillas, has been going on in Bengal, and on India’s other eastern flanks, for months. Now it has been escalated by the Indians almost to the point of all-out involvement. And the Pakistan Army in East Pakistan is taking a drubbing. However, this is not a true measure of its fighting quality, in East Pakistan, the Army is facing insurmountable odds. It is vastly outnumbered by India along the borders - seven Indian divisions to Pakistan’s three.

Those three divisions face not only the Indian Army, but the vast problem of having to police an essentially alien and utterly antagonized land of 75 million people, and of having to cope with intensive guerrilla sabotage and subversion. They are on the end of a frequently disrupted 3,000-mile supply line and know that even if they can stave off defeat they cannot win. On India’s western borders, however, the situation is vastly different, though here, too, the Pakistanis are outnumbered by two to one. This, however, does not dismay the Pakistani commanders, who confidently believe that each of their men is worth 10 Indian soldiers.

At least in the past, there was some truth in this assessment. India performed badly in the 1965 war, and lamentably in the war with China in 1962. While the Indian Army, too, depends heavily on recruitment from the “martial races,” notably the Sikhs and Punjabis, efficiency and organization have always been India’s weakest points. But there is no doubt that India has learned, at least in theory, the disastrous lessons on the 1960s. India’s Army today is well equipped, highly geared, thoroughly trained and prepared, and in the highest spirits. It is unlikely that India would not now give a very good account of itself, and has the additional advantage of massive superiority in armour, artillery and air cover.

Pakistan may, therefore, be banking too hard on the innate “superiority” of its Army, as fighting men as an adequate counterpoise to the sheer numerical superiority of the Indians. Even though the Indians have a third front to worry about, along the frontiers with China, it will not be enough to redress the balance. India now not only has the new advantage of highly capable and professional general-ship, from the commander-in-chief, General “Sam” Manekshaw, downwards, but is no longer hobbled by the political factors which were its downfall, for example in 1962. The then Defence Minister, Krishna Menon, whose pro-Communist and simply idiosyncratic policies under Nehru’s vague and over-tolerant direction left the Army undermanned, under-equipped and, above all, under-prepared, is now in political oblivion.

Mrs. Gandhi, though, Nehru’s daughter, is of infinitely sterner stuff. Sense of direction and determination are no longer lacking in India’s leadership, and when Mrs. Gandhi says that she is “determined to ensure” the return of 10 million refugees to East Pakistan it can be taken as certain that she will ensure it, even if this means war. India’s stance as a meek, pacific nation, which momentarily slipped at the time of the occupation of Goa, has now been totally abandoned. There is a further, possibly vital, factor in the military equation which cannot be left out. India is a democracy; Pakistan is a dictatorship. This counts for something, and for all the drawbacks of democracy from the viewpoint of efficiency, especially military efficiency, it does not count in Pakistan’s favour.

Indian democracy is a lumbering colossus, with many weaknesses. Some of these are embodied in one of its key leaders, Mr. Jagjivan Ram, the Defence Minister and the Cabinet’s leading hawk. As President Yahya is the embodiment of much that is at the crux of the Pakistani nature, so Mr. Ram embodies many of the worst and most outmoded features of Indian life : a complacent, chauvinistic and unashamedly corrupt politician. Nevertheless, ?id despite its growing pains, India is a nation with a national spirit and a national pride and consciousness, however unformed or ill-formed as yet after only 24 years of independence. But Pakistan is no longer a nation, if ever it was, with its two utterly disparate and mutually uncomprehending wings. Today, it is patently on the verge of disintegration.

Pakistan has become effete, has long lost honour and its pride, and knows •t- In Pakistan not only individuals but entire institutions, not least the
Government, are corrupt. Can so moribund a nation, so eaten-away a nation, sustain a major confrontation with a formidable foe, provided that moral fibre which is essential to its fighting forces, whatever their inborn martial qualities? Modern history is full of examples which suggest that it cannot.