Islamabad is a city which believes that it will very soon be in a war. “The military situation is very bad,” said President Yahya Khan late at night to a group of correspondents unexpectedly asked to dine with him, “if she wants a war I will fight it.” By now we are well used to Islamabad shorthand and we have no need to ask who “she” is. “If that woman thinks she is going to cow me down ... I refuse to take it.” Rage and sweet reasonableness alternated in Yahya’s rambling confidences, ever returning to “that woman!” To a tough man like Yahya, being, caught in a pointless trap and waiting helplessly for the next turn of the screw is bad enough; to a Muslim general the idea that the screw is being turned by a Hindu in a sari is, clearly, agonising.

According to the official communiques published in the newspapers here, Pakistan has just won a stunning series of victories in East Bengal and the Indian aggressors have been thrown out. But the atmosphere here, the frenzied preparations for defence and the gloomy reactions of the men and women in the streets suggest that most people have a much clearer idea of the grim realities. Islamabad and its sister town Rawalpindi, are under a ragged, but fairly effective, blackout.

Sugar disappeared from all markets today as hoarders got to work and everyone is digging slit trenches as air raid shelters - school children, soldiers, housewives, and convicts from the local prison guarded by a non¬digging warden with a rifle. Private cars have black-out screens on their head-lamps and military vehicles are smeared with camouflage mud Israel- style. And today the camouflage nets came off mysteriously humps around the military buildings and in the public parts revealing 30-mm anti-aircraft guns underneath. Blood donors have been called for and hospital wards cleared of convalescents and as the city prepares for the worst, but still hopes for a reprieve. I am irresistibly reminded of the atmosphere of Tel Aviv in the first days of June 1967.

A visit to Lahore, 160 miles south and only 17 miles from the Indian border revealed an even tenser situation. The Pakistanis are making every preparation to defend the city in depth and they are clearly taking seriously the threat of an Indian parachute or helicopter-borne surprise attack aimed at cutting off communications to the North and South. Every road and railway bridge has its garrison with dug-in anti-aircraft guns and green tents neatly disposed under the trees. All military transport is effectively camouflaged under green nets near trees and dune-coloured nets out in the open - an indication of careful work in the quarter-masters stores. On Friday, all civilian trucks in Lahore were ordered to report for requisitioning.

But people are still fleeing Lahore in considerable numbers and roads leaving the city are jammed with people who prefer to be somewhere else rather than the obvious target for a lightning Indian attack. Some of them push carts loaded with carpets and cooking pots, some drive laden camels and the wealthy few leave in motor cars jammed with relatives and belongings, almost all showing defiant “Crush India” stickers in their back windows. Further South, Karachi also has slit trenches and a brown-out, although an attack on Pakistan’s biggest port by land over the Sind desert seems hardly likely. As a precaution against surprise attacks by sea, which are certainly within the Indians’ capability, ships have been warned that they will be fired on if they approach Karachi closer than 75 miles by night.

On the legal side, the Government has been equally busy in its preparations for a desperate defence : first, the proclamation of a state of emergency, a genuinely extreme measure in a country which has been under martial law for years, then the setting up of a special two-man court to try people accused of conspiracy, spying or “aiding the enemy, and then on Friday the banning of the National Awami Party and the arrest of some of its leaders. According to Yahya, these people were “conspiring to start insurrection in parts of West Pakistan.” If substantiated, these charges suggest that Pakistan faces war on at least three fronts - the last with the savage Pathan tribesmen of the North-West Frontier area who tied up more than half the British Army in India for 50 years.

The effect of banning the National Awami Party (NAP) - even though individual members of the National Assembly belonging to the Party can still in theory take their seats - is to disenfranchise two more provinces of Pakistan, the North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistan, in which the NAP won a majority of the seats. This means that only two provinces are still represented by members duly elected last December: Punjab and Sind, where respectively Islamabad and Karachi are situated. Both these provinces are strongholds of the Pakistan Peoples’ Party led by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, once Field Marshal Ayub Khan’s foreign minister. Bhutto, however, does not think that his party is likely to follow the Awami League and the National Awami Party into illegality. In a burst of candour rare for a Pakistani politician, he said last week : “We have the two provinces that count.” Ironically, the National Awami Party originally broke away from Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s Awami League because they thought that the Sheikh’s demand for a separate East Pakistan Legislature would break the country into two hostile camps.

The military events of last week, which have undoubtedly brought India and Pakistan to the edge of disaster, can be briefly related. I am not in a position to adjudicate in close focus between the rival claims and counter-claims, accusations and denials, but what is admitted by both sides supplies adequate basic information. It is clear there was a tank clash on the border in the Benapol area of East Pakistan last Monday. One side or the other - probably India on the balance of evidence available here - called in tactical air support and two ageing Pakistani Sabre fighters were shot down. In the next few days there were minor actions, initiated by the Indians, all-round the borders of East Pakistan which compelled the local Pakistani commanders to rush all available troops to the border. This left the interior of East Bengal unprotected