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On the Move. One of Ayub's bold measures is meeting with some criticism. He ordered the removal of the nation's capital from sweltering Karachi on the shores of the Arabian Sea to the cool mountain heights of Rawalpindi, 750 miles to the northeast. Nearly 1,500 government people, their wives and their families, their filing cabinets and office furniture, were loaded onto special trains this week to make a move. They were also given a "disturbance allowance." Karachi is hot, ugly and uncomfortable, but it is a big city (pop. 2,000.000) inhabited by nearly all the racial strains of Pakistan—Punjabis, Sindhis, Bengalis. Cool 'Pindi is relatively small (250,000) a garrison town that is the military headquarters of the Pakistani army (Ayub himself lived there for many years as an army officer), and some Pakistanis fear that governmental power may become concentrated there in the hands of the Punjabis, who already provide the bulk of the armed forces.
Rawalpindi will only be a provisional capital at best, for General Ayub plans to build a brand-new and still unnamed capital city a few miles away on the Potwar plain, at an estimated cost of $100 million. Members of Pakistan's diplomatic colony, forced now to commute between their embassies in Karachi and their temporary quarters in 'Pindi, are not happy about the move. Grumbled one: "This is the first time Ayub has acted as a purely military mind." To which Pakistanis answer: If other nations can fashion artificial capitals in the wilderness such as Washington, Canberra and Brasilia, why can't Pakistan?