Those who make history such as royalty or presidents often feel a personal responsibility to maintain a record of it for reasons of state as much as for their own personal purposes. This was Queen Victoria's motive, as it is Queen Elizabeth II's, who maintains a hand-written journal meticulously at the end of each day. Presidents by contrast tend to subcontract such a task to their underlings.

An exception would seem to have been President Ayub Khan. His diaries have recently been published, covering the years 1966 to 1972 -- from his decline in power to his descent from it. In a manuscript note dated September 1, 1966 (reproduced on the book's cover suggesting that the entire diary was also handwritten), Ayub Khan gives two reasons for starting the diary: in case he decided to write a sequel to his autobiography "Friends, Not Masters," and as reference material. Ayub Khan deferred the publication of this "sensitive material" until such time as "it ceases to be part of contemporary history." The manuscript was therefore "impounded for thirty years," although it is not clear by whom.

Today, thirty-three years after Ayub Khan's death, there is unlikely to be anyone left alive whose sleep would be disturbed by its revelations. Those who are dead (wherever they are) must have expressed their own remonstrances to him already. To his intended audience of modern Pakistanis, though, Ayub Khan's diaries will cause a queasy discomfort. One uncorks them expecting a vintage, and instead flows a stream of acidic personal opinions, rancid biases, and vapours of oracular prophecies whose subsequent accuracy make one suspicious of their source.

Was Ayub Khan the "onlie begetter" of these diaries? That is what his editor and publisher would have us believe. And yet every page reveals fingerprints that clearly do not belong to the author. On March 7, 1971, for example, Ayub Khan is admitted to hospital with a severe attack of angina that makes him "not afraid of death, but terrified of living in such a condition." Despite his pain and his life-threatening trauma, he nevertheless finds the time to write (or dictate) over 500 words on the situation fomenting in East Pakistan and its sinister implications for both wings.

Similarly, when he hears of the election results on December 8, 1970 that propel Mujibur Rahman into electoral prominence in East Pakistan and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the West, he can foresee "that Bhutto and Mujibur Rahman would soon get together to chalk out a joint plan if possible. In any case they are bound to agree on demanding declaration of the assembly as a sovereign body and forcing their cabinet on Yahya. Bhutto would demand foreign affairs and the defence ministry."

And before the day is out, he has altered his tune: "Whatever the cost to the country and to the people, he [Bhutto] may even precipitate a war with India and spoil our relations with countries like America and the Soviet Union. Mujib is no less dangerous and reckless. If my assessment is in any way correct, then December 7, 1970 will prove to be the darkest day in the history of Pakistan and an unmitigated tragedy."

In fact, it was Ayub Khan's assessments of events and more particularly of his subordinates that proved to be his undoing. He was once asked: "How is it that I could assess men and their character on casual association and contact?" He replied: "It has been my lifelong profession."

Yet, his diary reads like a shopping list of his more spectacular failures.

Sharifuddin Pirzada, his foreign minister? "Very suspicious by nature [...] Chases small things most of the time and frightened of taking a stand on any issue."

Syed Ghiasuddin? "A skunk."

Ghulam Faruque, his governor in East Pakistan, then commerce minister and defence advisor? "[H]as doubtful scruples ... and is very expensive, especially with public funds."

Pir Dewal Sharif, his spiritual mentor? "A skilful fraud."

Ayub Khan saves his vitriol though for the two persons who were to succeed him to the presidency -- General Yahya Khan and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (whose name he misspells throughout his dairy). Despite the assertions he makes in his diaries, Ayub Khan never recovered from the trauma of being eased out of his presidency, as he claims by Yahya Khan. The entries for the fateful days in March 1969 are of value for their reticence. On March 13, less than a fortnight before he quits, Ayub Khan receives Marshal Grechko, the Russian Defence Minister. Grechko expresses the concern of the Soviet leadership about Pakistan and about Ayub. "I, who had put the country together, given it recognition in the eyes of the world, why did I decide not to fight the next elections when the armed forces and a vast majority of the people were behind me? I gave him my reasons."

Perhaps we must wait for Marshal Grechko's diaries to reveal the reasons that Ayub Khan withheld from his own diary.

On March 24, 1969, Ayub Khan signs his own suicide warrant. "Today, I have written a letter to General Yahya explaining how the civil machinery has ceased to be effective and why it is necessary for me to step aside and hand over to him so that normalcy and decency can be brought back."

The word "decency" was to haunt him during Yahya Khan's presidency. Less than two years later, he complained in his diary of his hand-picked successor: "What surprises me is that Yahya indulges in such laxities and debauchery when the country is facing such critical problems [...] I told someone that if this is the way to run the presidency of the country then I wasted my time working day and night and leading the life of a hermit and ruining my health in the process."

For Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, whom he hand-picked with the other hand as his commerce and then foreign minister, Ayub Khan scours his Thesaurus: "The damage done by Bhutto is deliberate, incalculable and unforgivable. He is the past master of disruption and agitation. He has shaken the roots of the country by simply posing as a socialist and a friend of the have-nots. And this is believed by an enormous amount of people despite the knowledge that he dresses and lives like a millionaire, drinks like a fish day and night, misbehaves with women, is a mimic, a clown and a liar, unfaithful and thoroughly disloyal."

Forgetting his own lapse in choosing such a confederate, Ayub Khan asks rhetorically: "What can you do with people who put their faith in such man? They will get only what they deserve -- chaos, deprivation, and suffering."

One could go on, but it is best to let this self-serving chronicle collapse under the weight of its own all too obvious inconsistencies. Ayub Khan's diaries have to be read, if only to be disbelieved.

In 1983, more than thirty years after Hitler's death, the German magazine Stern published extracts from sixty volumes purporting to be the Fuhrer's diaries. Although authenticated by the British historian Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper, they were later discovered to be the imaginative work of a Stuttgart forger Konrad Kujau. He was sentenced to a prison sentence of forty-two months in jail. One wonders whether he might not have found another assignment after his release.

F.S. Aijazzudin is an eminent Pakistani columnist. This article first appeared in Dawn.