Islamabad: Even before the police started investigations,
Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani had his answer off pat.
Asked to comment on recent reports of arms smuggling in West
Pakistan the leader of the pro-Peking NAP (National Awami
Party) said: "Imperialists are secretly supplying arms worth
millions of rupees to turn Pakistan into another Indonesia."

Other party chiefs were less wild in their predictions but
were equally concerned. The government, they stressed, owed
an urgent explanation to the people about the detection of
large quantities of contraband arms in the country just on
the eve of its first general elections.

In the heat of present electioneering most of the party
leaders failed to notice that the arms and ammunition
recently discovered at Karachi port, said to be worth more
than Rs30 million, had been lying there unclaimed for five
years.

More perturbing was an arms haul at Peshawar, the capital of
the Northwest Frontier Province, where crime squads seized
over 1,000 rifles and about a million rounds of ammunition
said to have been stolen from the Karachi port and found at
various railway stations and goods forwarding firms.

Meanwhile the governors of the four West Pakistan provinces
decided to appoint a committee of police officials for
detailed investigations. Peshawar's Governor K. M. Azhar saw
no "direct link" between the arms traffic and the
forthcoming elections and reminded the public that there had
always been a demand for weapons in the tribal belt as well
as in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Arms smuggling, he concluded, appeared to be a "normal
attempt of the businessmen to make large profits". Punjab's
governor Attiqur Rahman too adopted a soothing stance; but
these statements could not still the Cassandra voice of the
press - and the political parties. CML (Council Moslem
League) leader Mian Mumtaz Daulatana said it was surprising
that arms smuggling could happen when a strong and powerful
government was functioning in Pakistan.

According to the New Times "thesehuge dumps" were not part
of the routine smuggling procedure but lent
"incontrovertible credence to the view that their purpose is
political ... aimed at fomenting largescale disturbances in
the country" .

Though the murder of a CML candidate along with his brother
and two other companions a few days later at Gujarat in the
Punjab and an attempt at Charsadda in the Northwest Frontier
Province to start a land grab movement partly seemed to
justify the paper's warnings, the commentaries still had an
alarmist ring. And whatever Maulana Bhashani was saying
about the objectives of "sinister foreign powers" the
overall law and order situation showed that Pakistan was far
from "turning into another Indonesia" on the eve of its
first general election.