From the start, there were those who considered Pakistan an impossible dream. Only two months after its birth in 1947, Pakistan was described by India's second ‐ ranking leader, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, as a temporary phenomenon. East Pakistan, he predicted, would collapse of its own weight within two or three years.

Instead, Pakistan, for nearly 25 years now, has held together against all strains. Only last week's breakdown of crucial constitutional negotiations over the status of East Pakistan drove the country to the edge of dissolution, causing President Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan to call out national military forces against East Pakistani separatists.

Until then, political leaders in both deeply dissimilar regions of the country had argued the terms of union, but had stood in favor of the continuance of a united Pakistan.

They had good reasons to do so. With a mainly Muslim population of more than 130 million people, a united Pakistan could be counted a leading Islamic nation. Relations with India, generally based on mutual distrust, seemed easier to manage by a united Pakistan than would be possible for either wing separately. Administrative and economic ties — however unsatisfactory, particularly to East Pakistanis—gradually increased the interdependence of the two wings.

These unifying forces operated despite inherent tensions between the dramatically different regions of East and West Pakistan. For years, Pakistan appeared to be demonstrating that wet‐culture and dry‐culture zones, inhabited by peoples of divergent racial, cultural and linguistic stocks, could be united in one country in spite of exceedingly uneven economic development and the dominance by West Pakistanis of both the armed forces and the expanding apparatus of government.

The crisis that has thrown these assumptions freshly into doubt arose from President Yahya's efforts to return the country to parliamentary democracy after years of military‐controlled government and a new period of martial law.

Constitutionally, Pakistan had been built on parity between the two wings. In a gesture of conciliation to East Pakistan, President Yahya offered the democratic principle of one man, one vote. The new National Assembly would have 169 East Pakistani seats out of a total of 313, a clear majority. There appears to have been an estimate that the East Pakistani seats would be split among contending parties.

Surprisingly, exuberant East Pakistanis who went to the polls last December gave 367 of the 369 regional seats to the Awami League. The League had campaigned for virtual autonomy for East Pakistan, except for defense, some financial arrangements and foreign political (but not economic) affairs.

Its support was apparently strengthened by East Pakistani bitterness over slow Central Government responses to the cyclone and tidal horror of a few weeks earlier, a disaster that cost the lives of between 300,000 and 500,000 East Pakistanis. Sheik Mujibur Rahman, leader of the Awami League, became the sole spokesman for East Pakistan in constitutional negotiations.

Collision Course

In succeeding weeks, Awami League spokesmen insisted that they wanted a united Pakistan— but one which, for the first time, would be organized in response to East Pakistani initiative. The League's six‐point program to assert substantially greater powers for the province put the League on a collision course with West Pakistan's long ‐ dominant political forces. It was the break down of efforts to avert the collision that led to President Yahya's decision to reimpose military rule and arrest Sheik Mujib last week.

Whether military force can prevail over the highly charged mass emotions now rampant in East Pakistan remains to be seen. Mass blood‐letting would appear to be the inescapable price, with no assurance of a military victory. The dream of a freely united Pakistan seems over.

As separate entities, both West Pakistan and the Bangla Desh the “Bengal nation,” as East Pakistani separatists now describe themselves—would suffer greater economic strains than heretofore. Much of West Pakistan's new industrial establishment, which is already under utilized, has been built on the expectation of exports to East Pakistan. It has also been financed in part by foreign exchange earnings from East Pakistan. Presumably, neither would continue to be available.

East Pakistani economists believe they could open up trade with India to their profit; for example, by buying coal at about one–third the price that Pakistan now pays for coal from Poland or China. They also believe that Calcutta could provide a market for their surplus fish, and that other commodities could be traded more favorably once the barrier to commerce with India is gone.

Yet, East Pakistan's severe economic limitations would be worsened by separation from West Pakistani resources unless important fresh international assistance could be found. As a separate nation, East Pakistan would have a sharply unfavorable ratio between population and resources.

Politically, the separate entitles would be likely to travel different roads in both domestic and foreign politics. The most dramatic difference could come in relations with India.

Whereas West Pakistani leaders have made confrontation with India a leading tenet of their foreign policy and the principal justification for close relations with mainland China, East Pakistanis for some years have been much more relaxed about relations with India. To them, Kashmir is of relatively little importance in comparison to the advantages of re‐establishing relatively normal relation ships with the neighboring Ben gal area of India.

For India, the division of Pakistan would yield certain advantages—but hold dangers as well. Presumably, West Pakistan alone would pose less of a threat to Indian security interests than united Pakistan. At the same time, Calcutta and the Bengal region of India have confronted the New Delhi Government with some of its most serious internal security problems. These could be further reinforced by a separate and possibly unstable East Pakistan.

China, too, might have mixed feelings about the division of Pakistan. Its closer ties with Pakistan since the 1965 India Pakistan War have presumably been predicated on the advantages of a counterweight in the subcontinent to the ambitions of India, with which China it self clashed in 1961 and 1962. A divided Pakistan would be less important in this respect, On the other hand, China‐oriented Communist movements active in eastern India might develop further bases of operation in an independent and unsettled Bangla Desh.