"My task," said General Mohammed Ayub Khan not long ago, "is to keep the army sound and intact and out of politics." Graduate of Sandhurst and Commander-in-Chief since 1951 of the army of the democratic state of Pakistan, Ayub is understandably proud of a fighting force considered the best east of the Suez. So are his countrymen. If you ask them to tell you about their country, most Pakistanis will begin with their army rather than their feudal agricultural system, ramshackle economy, or spectacularly corrupt politics. Today, however, as chief of the new military dictatorship of Pakistan, General Ayub finds himself, and his army, in the midst of politics.

On October 7, General Ayub and President Iskander Mirza deposed Premier Firoz Khan Noon, abolished the constitution, suspended legislatures and political parties, declared martial law, and took over the government of Pakistan. Acting barely four months before Pakistan's first nation-wide elections were to take place, they accomplished the revolution without bloodshed or even, as General Ayub observed, "head knocking."

It was clear to Mirza, and to most observers, that since the death in 1948 of founding father Mohammed Ali Jinnah, that is to say almost since its inception, Pakistan has been "going to the dogs." More conspicuous than the lack of reform movement was the lack of an atmosphere where anyone would even take the idea of reform seriously. Fearing a "bloody revolution" from below, Mirza convinced Ayub that it was necessary to replace the inept democratic regime with a "benign martial law to assist the civil power to clean up this mess."

Upon the success of the coup, Mirza appointed General Ayub Martial Law Administrator. After three weeks, however, the latter sent three generals to visit Mirza. They received Mirza's "gracious assent" to their proposal that he leave the country.

In his new role as dictator, Ayub is still no politician; but his willingness to grapple with Pakistan's staggering problems has aroused enthusiasm. A New York Times correspondent notes a new air of "civic virtue" among the rickshaw men, beggars and merchants of Karachi.

Yet martial law decrees and warnings of austerity will solve little. General Ayub agrees he has not yet faced the causes of Pakistan's "tremendous mess." The first of his problems is the simple fact of the country's poverty, poverty which far surpasses India's. An agricultural country, Pakistan does not feed herself. Her population is expanding so rapidly, through the influx of Moslem refugees from India and through inadequate methods of birth control, that people in Karachi fight over space in the street to lie down at night. While the top wage for a unionized laborer is 60 cents a day, it takes friends and bribes to get these jobs. Even those who do work must act as black marketeers, procurers and smugglers to feed their families. A radical program of land reform that would eliminate Pakistan's large and absentee holdings will only begin to make their lives easier. Feudal agricultural methods, taxes that penalize the thrifty and industrious, a legal system that few can understand, and the seemingly interminable border disputes with India are but a few of the other problems facing General Ayub.

With the Flat of His Broadsword

His response to this bewildering multitude of problems may be, an observer has suggested, "to try to make the country pure by whacking it with the flat of his broadsword." His expressed eagerness to settle the Kashmir dispute must be set against the intransigence of his recent statements on the subject, which, though no doubt appealing to many of his countrymen, won't solve anything. General Ayub has been a conservative man. Though he may have to produce some radical programs, the political inexperience of his advisors will prove no help to him in making them stick. Already he has found himself obliged to return some of the business of civil administration to the civil service with the announcement that "it is a job for professionals." In short, the self-chosen instrument of reform in Pakistan does not seem up to the job.

The method, that of military dictatorship, may be as hard for Americans to accept as the man. But surely the ten years since Jinnah's death argue well against democracy. As Ayub's former partner said at the time of the coup, "I am quite certain that we could never have fair and honest elections. When we did hold municipal elections in Karachi only 28 per cent voted and a full 50 per cent of the votes were bogus." Mirza concluded that "Democracy without education is hypocrisy without limitation."

That many Asians are thinking this way seems borne out by the appearance, across southern Asia, of numerous military dictatorships bearing a similarity to Nasser's. The revolt in Pakistan may be but one example of a more general movement which has touched Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon in recent months, Thailand, Burma and Pakistan in the last weeks, and which may threaten the governments of Malaya and Ceylon.

Is Democracy Their Answer?

Prime Minister Nehru observed recently that Asians see today's world divided not between Communists and anti-Communists but "haves" and "have-nots." He includes the southern Asians in the latter group. Rising though it does from their desperate poverty, their demand for social and economic reform is keener because of the example of China's startling industrial expansion. Nehru sees this as a challenge to democracy to achieve equal progress without coercion, but in other countries it seems to be felt as a challenge to which democracy has no answer.

Though most of the new dictators have pledged to restore constitutions and democratic government with the passing of the emergency that brought them power, there is no guarantee that they will do so. Like Mirza's, their authority is revolution. Sympathetic to the West and benign to its own people as General Ayub's government may now appear, Nehru has reminded the United States that it is not accurate to maintain that Pakistan still belongs to the free world.

Whether or not Ayub is the man for Pakistan, the revolt in Pakistan raises a further question: Is Democracy the method for the underdeveloped countries of southern Asia? Those who believe with Nehru that Democracy can meet the challenge of Communist China, may lend a readier ear to pleas that the United States devote a larger part of its foreign aid to economic rather than military projects. Policies of primarily military aid in underdeveloped countries may, indeed, foster and maintain the military dictatorships that are now appearing.