(To be continued.)

The Demographics of Present Day Pakistan

The 165 million Pakistanis are divided ethnically, linguistically and religiously as follows:

Note that Urdu is the official language of Pakistan even though it is the native language of only 8 percent of the population. Brahui is a language in the Dravidian family spoken in southern Balochistan.

In addition to the great ethnic diversity of Pakistan there is the major political problem that most of the ethnic groups within Pakistan are fractions of those ethnic groups internationally. That is to say the Pushtans are divided between Pakistan and Afghanistan; the Balochis are divided between Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan and the Punjabis are divided between Pakistan and India. This is shown in the following map.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah

Muhammad Ali Jinnah

Jinnah was a staunch advocate for protecting the interests of the Muslims of British India as an ethnic population group but not as Muslims per se. On this matter Jinnah said in address to Pakistanis upon being elected leader,

You will find that in the course of time Hindus will ceased to be Hindus and Muslims cease to be Muslims, not in a religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah was born on Christmas day in 1876 in Karachi. His family were merchants and reasonably well to do. Young Ali was tutored at home until he was about eleven. He thereafter attened secular school. Upon successful completion of secondary school his family sent him to England for advanced education and to develop contacts that would be useful in business later in life. Jinnah however disappointed his family hopes for him to pursue a career in business. Instead he choose a career in law. He completed his legal training at age 19.

(To be continued.)

Ayub Khan

Ayub Khan

From 1951 to 1958 Ayub Khan continually increased the power and political perogatives of the military. In 1954 Ayub Khan was the minister of defense in the government as well as commander of the army. Finally in 1958 he carried out a bloodless coup d'etat and ruled Pakistan for the next decade. His justification for his coup was that the politicians were inefficient and corrupt.

On his own Ayub Khan initiated major policy programs and shaped the direction of Pakistan politics permanently. The most important of these policy program was the development of alliances with the powerful neighboring countries of Pakistan and India; i.e., China and the Soviet Union. He also development a political alliance with the United States. These alliances were primarily to offset the imbalance between the power of India with respect to Pakistan.

Another major change for Pakistan initiated by Ayub Khan was the creation of a new capital. At independence Pakistan's capital was situated in Karachi. In 1959 Ayub Khan decided to build a new capital that could be better defended from possible attack by India. He chose a site near the Margalla Hills and near Pakistan's third largest city, Rawalpindi. The new capital was to be named Islamabad (home of Islam). By 1963 the transfer of the capital from Karachi to Islamabad was complete.

Within Pakistan Ayub Khan imposed martial law to suppress what he considered the evils of black marketeering and hoarding. He also carried out a campaign against the corruption of politicians and bureaucrats. One of the punishments he imposed upon politicians was a prohibition against anyone convicted of corruption from participating in politics for fifteen years. This was a very effective means of destroying his political opposition. Ayub Khan also amended the laws concerning newspapers thus giving himself the power to suppress or close down newspapers that opposed him or his policies.

Ayub Khan carried out a program of confiscation of land from the landed aristocracy and selling it. This had the effect of creating a class of land owners with medium sized holdings and reduced the power of the large land holders who opposed him. The peasants on the other hand participated very little in this land redistribution scheme.

Ayub Khan did carry out some programs of changes in social and political institutions which were beneficial to the lower classes. He created political representation at the local level in regional councils for groups of villages having a combined population of about ten thousand. He supported revisions in the more archaic elements of marriage and family law. He tried to rebalance the distribution of political power between the east and west wings of Pakistan by designating Dhaka in East Pakistan as the site of the legislature while the administrative capital remained at Islamabad in West Pakistan. He negotiated a resolution with India of the problems concerning the division of the waters of the Indus River Valley system. The negotiations culminated in the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960. These measures were enough to give Ayub Khan the reputation as being a statesman as well as a dictator.

By 1962 Ayub Khan was ready to lift martial law and allow the election of government officials under a new constitution. He formed a political party based upon the old Muslim League which was named the Pakistan Muslim League (PML). Opposition parties formed and showed some effectiveness in political organization. Ayub Khan and the PML won the election of 1962 but the result showed that his political opposition despite years of suppession and persection was not dead.

As an elected leader Ayub Khan was able to strengthen Pakistan's alliance with the United States. This turned out to be important when war broke out with India in 1965 over Kashmir and border disputes elsewhere. The war changed little and a cease-fire was arranged through the United Nations. In 1966 Ayub Khan and the prime minister of India signed a treaty called the Tashkent Declaration. The Pakistan public, not being well informed about the relative imbalance of Pakistani military power with respect to that of India, treated the Tashkent Declaration as Ayub Khan's surrender to India.

Political protests to Ayub Khan's rule and by 1968 he was on the defensive. In 1969 it was necessary to declare martial law again. Ayub Khan resigned in 1969 turning the power in Pakistan to the administrator of the martial law, Yahya Khan.

Yahya Khan and the Separation of Bangladesh

Yahya Khan

Ayub Khan had promised fair elections and Yahya Khan intended to fulfill that promise. In late 1969 Yahya Khan announced that elections were to held in October of 1970 to chose delegates to a National Assembly that would write a new constitution for civilian government.

Near that designated election time a tropical cyclone hit East Pakistan, a storm in North America would have been called a hurricane. Much of the devastation of a tropical cyclone comes from the storm surge, the rise in the water level due to the lower pressure in the cyclone center and the winds driving the water against a shore. East Pakistan with its low altitude throughout the country is particularly vulnerable to a storm surge. The cyclone of 1970 was terrible for East Pakistan and the government could do little to ameliorate the situation. Nevertheless the people of East Pakistan were resentful at how little the national government in West Pakistan was able to do.

Because of the cyclone the national election was postponed until December of 1970. There were to be 300 delegates selected for the National Assembly. In addition there were to be 13 places filled by appointment of women, seven from the East Wing and six from the West. In this election the seats were to be apportioned strictly on the basis of the population. East Pakistan would elect 162 delegates and West Pakistan 138. In the past elections the apportionment was equal numbers of delegaltes from the East and the West.

Since the creation of Pakistan the country had been dominated by politicians and military leaders from the West Wing despite the significantly larger population and economy in the East Wing.

The dominant political party in the East Wing was the Awami League headed by Mujibur Rahman. Rahman, popularly known as Mujib, and his Awami League had been campaigning for some years for a six point program that consisted of

• that the government of Pakistan be parlimentary and in the nature of a federation
• that members of the national legislature be elected on the basis of universal adult sufferage with the distribution being strictly on the basis of population
• that the power and responsibility of the national government be limited to foreign affairs and national defense
• that each wing have its own fiscal budget and circulate its own currency
• that taxes be imposed and collected on a provincial level and the national government rely upon levies imposed upon the provinces without any powers of direct taxation of the people
• that each province have control of its own foreign exchange earnings
• that each province raise its own military and paramilitary forces.

Clearly the Awami League was promoting a political change of Pakistan to a confederation of nearly autonomous provinces. Such autonomy appealed not only to the East Wing but to the Northwest Frontier Province and to Balochistan as well.

In Punjab and Sindh provinces the dominant political party was the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) founded and led by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, a charismatic politician who had been minister of foreign affairs in the government of Ayub Khan. Bhutto's program was nationalistic democratic Islamic socialism. In the election campaign he promised bread, clothing and shelter for everyone but he also promised a thousand year war with India.

In the election held December 7, 1970 the Awami League won 160 out of the 162 seats allocated to East Pakistan. An affilate of the Awami League, the National Awami League was the most popular party in the Northwest Frontier province and Balochistan winning the most seats there. Thus Mujib had won an outright majority of the seats in the National Assembly and would have the right to form a government and dominate the writing of the new constitution.

Ali Bhutto's PPP won heavily in the provinces of Punjab and Sindh. The PPP had significant representation in the National Assembly but not enough to guarantee Bhutto and the PPP an important role in an Awami-led government. Most politicians acquiesed to an Awami East Wing-oriented government. Yahya Khan referred to Mujib as the next prime minister of Pakistan. But Ali Bhutto was not willing to let the rules of parlimentary democracy prevail. He declared that Pakistan had two majorities. He found a ploy that would prevent the Awami League from forming a government. He announced that the PPP delegates would not join the National Assembly and thus deprive it of a quorum. In his intransigence Ali Bhutto destoyed the fragile ties between the East and West Wings of Pakistan.

Yahya Khan tried conscientously to get Bhutto and Mujib to reach some compromise. Yahya Khan brought Ali Bhutto, Mujib Rahman and himself together in Dakha to try to resolve the impasse, to no avail. The tragic sequence of political chaos, death and destruction can be laid at the feet of Ali Bhutto.

The political impasse led to protests and demonstrations in the East Wing which were interpreted as rebellion against the martial law government of Yahya Khan. Mujib Rahman was arrested and flown to West Pakistan to be tried for treason. Yahya Khan then declared the Awami League illegal and and banned political activity. Censorship was imposed upon newspapers throughout Pakistan. This definitely escalated the protests into outright rebellion. The government in the West flew in troops to the East by way of Sri Lanka. The local militias and police units in the East joined actively in the rebellion.

The West Wing troops suppressed the rebellion at the cost of many thousands of casualities. The atrocities committed indicated that the West Pakistani troops had very little empathy for the culturally alien Bengalis despite the fact that they were fellow Muslims.

Refugees started pouring across the border to where the people were fellow Bengalis who had empathy for them. An army officer, Major Zizur Rahman, declared East Pakistn to be the independent nation of Bangladesh and a government in exile set up in Calcutta. The number of refugees in India soon reached ten million and the government of India announced support for the rebellion and the new nation of Bangladesh. Indian troops invaded the territory occupied by the West Pakistani troops and soon defeated them, capturing about ninety thousand. Other nations around the world besides India began to recognize the sovereignty of the new nation of Bangladesh. Pakistan, however, did not recognize Bangladesh until 1976, five year after its creation.

Bhutto, the agent of the debacle, blamed Yahya Khan for the military defeat of the Pakistani army by the Indian army and the loss of the East Wing. Yahya Khan resigned and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was declared president and chief martial law administrator of Pakistan in December of 1971.

Here is Pervez Musharraf's description of the events of that period of Pakistan history.

In 1970, before the elections could be held, there was a devastating cyclone in East Pakistan, with winds of 120 miles (190 kilometers) per hour. It was accompanied by a huge tidal wave, or tsunami, the worst of the twentieth century and left 200,000 people dead. The response of President Yahya Khan and his government was callous in the extreme. It took him quite sometime to react. He did not even visit the devastated province for many days, and then only under pressure. The people of East Pakistan felt angry, alienated, and badly let down, as if they were a colony instead of part of the country. I am convinced that the government's attitude during this disaster reinforced the impression among East Pakistanis that the western wing did not care for them, and that this brought many more voters behind Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's Awami League.

Pakistan's elections of December 7, 1970, were among the most fateful in its history. The country still incuded East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), where more than half of the population lived. The actual winner of the voting was Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his Awami League, with all its seats coming from East Pakistan. They got 160 of the 162 seats for the National Assembly from East Pakistan, out of a total of 307. The two largest provinces of Pakistan's western wing, Punjab and Sindh, voted for Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his PPP (Pakistan People's Party), which got 82 out of the 138 allocated to four provinces in west Pakistan. Neither of them was represented in the other wing.

Immediately after the elections Bhutto more or less declared himself prime minister, suggesting such bizarre ideas as two constitutions, one for East Pakistan and the other for "West Pakistan," with a prime minister for each wing, forgetting that the latter was no longer one but four provinces and there was no such thing as "West Pakistan" except in a geographic sense. He played on the fears of the west Pakistanis that the Awami League would use its majority to foist a constitution on Pakistan on the basis of its campaign promise to give maximum autonomy to the provinces, leaving only defense, currency, and foreign affairs with the center. He conjured up fears of everlasting domination by the Bengalis, forgetting that they too were Pakistanis and the Awami League had won the elections perfectly legitimately through democratic means. Bhutto even threatened members elected to Constituent Assembly from west Pakistan that he would break their legs if they attended its inaugural session in Dhaka, East Pakistan and that if they insisted on attending they should buy a one-way ticket. The Constituent Assembly was supposed to make a new constitution for Pakistan in three months, but it never met, not least because of Bhutto's threat. It was a nexus between Bhutto and a small coterie of militar rulers that destroyed Pakistan. The myopic and rigid attitude of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman didn't help matters, and he played into Bhutto's an Yahya's hands by remaining rooted in East Pakistan, forgetting that now he was prime minister-elect of the whole of Pakistan and needed to tour the four provinces of the western wing in order to reassure the people there and allay their fears.

Under pressure from the wily Bhutto, and no doubt because he didn't want to lose power, Yahya Khan postponed the meeting of teh Constituent Assembly indefinitely on March 25, 1971. He did not stop there. The very next day he outlawed the Awami League and arrested its leader, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the clear winner of the election. This act infuriated the Bengali masses of East Pakistan, who were already agitating and had a sense of deprivation and alienation. Tempers rose so high with the arrest of the undisputed Bengali leader that an open insurgency was launched by the populace. This was massively supported by the Indians from across the border. With the army completely bogged down in quelling the insurgency, India stabbed Pakistan in the back by blatantly attacking it across its border on several fronts in East Pakistan on November 21, 1971. All-out war between India and Pakistan commenced on December 3, 1971.

Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire, pp. 52-54.

Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto

Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto

Bhutto was born in the Sindh province of British India in 1928 to an aristocratic Rajput family that had converted to the Shi'ia version of Islam. His family was influential in the politics of the time. Ali Bhutto received his highschool education in Bombay (Mumbai) but traveled the United States for his university education at the University of California at Berkeley. This university was effectively the Harvard of the Pacific Rim and Bhutto completed his bachelor's degree there in 1950. Bhutto was thus away from India during the troubled time of the partition and the formation of Pakistan.

Bhutto went on to graduate education at the University of Oxford where he studied law. After the completion of his degree he practiced law and lectured a short time before returning home in 1953 to the new nation of Pakistan. He settled in Karachi and practiced law there. He developed some political ties and was appointed to Pakistan's delegation to the United Nations.

His wife, Nurat, was also of a Shi'ia Islamic faith and but with an Iranian Kurdish heritage.

Politics in Pakistan took a new turn in 1958 when the military leader Mohammad Ayub Khan carried out a coup d'etat. Bhutto was well enough connected that he was appointed to head the Ministry of Commerce. Appointments to other cabinet post followed. Finally he was made foreign minister in 1963. He then began to develop his own policy program. He should to promote ties with China as a counter balance to the militant relation which had developed with independent India.

In 1965 a war with India broke out over the issue of Kashmir and Jammu. Pakistan was overwhelmed militarily by India and had to sue for peace. Bhutto objected to the peace treaty with India that ended the war and in protest he resigned from his position as foreign minister.

After leaving the administration of Ayub Khan, Bhutto began organizing his own political party. It founded at the end of 1967 and was called the Pakistan People's Party (PPP). Out of office and head of his own political party Bhutto began to denounce the Ayub Khan regime as a dictator and, as a result, the regime put him into prison for the years 1968 and 1969.

The Ayub Khan regime was terminated by his resignation and control was assumed by another general, Mohammad Yahya Khan, and national elections were permitted in 1970. At that time Pakistan consisted of two wings. The West Wing consisted of the Indus River Valley and so forth plus Balochistan, the province on the coast south of Afghanistan. The East Wing was what once had been East Bengal. The East Wing had a greater population and more important export industries. The capital and political control was in the hands of the West Pakistanis. The East Wing was providing more taxes but was getting the smaller share of federal government funds.

Bhutto's PPP received overwhelming electoral support in the West Wing but the Awani League, a political party of the East Wing had the greater number of representatives. Since the vote was divided between the Awani League and Bhutto's PPP the legislative government might have had to involve both the Awani League and Bhutto's PPP, but Bhutto refused to enter into a coalition with the Awani League. This created a political crisis which spun out of control. When the Pakistan army under the control of West Wing commanders tried to put down the rebellion the army of India came to the aid of the rebels and defeated the West Wing's attempt suppress the rebellion. The East Wing of Pakistan became the new nation of Bangladesh.

The military regime of Yahya Khan failed miserably and political control was turned over to Ali Bhutto at the end of 1971. Bhutto was able to rule largely by decree.

Bhutto began immediately to consolidate his power and move toward a socialist economy. He nationalized key industries and began to tax the land property of the richer families. Bhutto in 1973 used his political power to install a new constitution which further enhanced his power. He created a Federal Security Force which functioned as a palace guard outside of the control of the military.

After ruling as a dictator for about five years, Bhutto decided to hold a new election in 1977. His party apparently won the election but there was enough suspicion of voting fraud that riots broke out. Bhutto prohibited assemblies for political purpose hoping to throttle the protest movement.

The military under the leadership of General Zia ul-Haq took control of the government and imprisoned Bhutto. Bhutto was uncooperative with the military regime and Zia ul-Haq, tiring of Bhutto's intransigence, had Bhutto charged with arranging the assassination of a political opponent in 1974. Bhutto was found guilty in a trial in 1978 and sentenced to death. Bhutto's appeal of the verdict to the high court was unsuccessful and he was hung in 1979.

Here is Pervez Musharraf's assessment of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto:

With East Pakistan gone, to become Bangladesh, Bhutto's largest number of seats in what was left of Pakistan gave him a dubious legitimacy. He became president of Pakistan, but he also used the absence of a basic law as a pretext to become chief martial law administrator. There was nothing to stop Bhutto from reverting to the constitution of 1956, with amendments to the clauses that pertained to East Pakistan, but he chose raw power instead.

At first I admired Bhutto. He was young, educated, articulate, and dynamic. He had eight years' experience in government under President Ayub Khan. But as time passed, my opinion of Bhutto started to change. My brother Javed, who was principal secretary to the chief minister of the North-West Frontier province, told me that Bhutto was no good and would ruin the country. My brother was right. I saw how the country, and particularly the economy, was ravaged by mindless nationalization. Its institutions were destroyed under his brand of so-called Islamic socialism. Bhutto took control of virtually all the nation's industried--steel, chemicals, cement, shipping, banking, insurance, engineering, gas and power distribution, eand even small industries like flour milling, cotton ginning, and rice husking, as well as private schoolsl and colleges -- the start of the destruction of our educational system. Mercifully, he did not touch textiles, our largest industry. Bhutto ruled not like a democrat but like a despotic dictator. He threw many of his opponents, including editors, journalists, and even cartoonists, into prison. He was really a fascist -- using the most progressive rhetoric to promote regressive ends, the first of which was to stay in power forever. It was a tragedy, because a man of his undoubted capability could have done a lot of good for his country. By the time his regime ended, I had come to the conclusion that Bhutto was the worst thing that had yet happened to Pakistan. I still maintain that he did more damage to the country than anyone else, damage from which we have still not fully recovered. Among other things, he was the first to try to appease the religious right. He banned liquor and gambling and declared Friday a holiday instead of Sunday. This was hypocrisy at its peak, because everyone knew that he did not believe in any one of these actions.

Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire, pp. 57-58.

General Zia ul-Haq

Muhammad Zia ul-Haq

Pervez Musharraf gives an insightful description of the events that led to Zia ul-Haq's deposing of Ali Bhutto.

Throughout this period the political scene became more and more murky. Bhutto's despotic, dictatorial, suppressive rule led to nation-wide discontent. He set up a Gestapo-like force called the Federal Security Force (FSF) that was much hated and feared. His interpersonal dealings with friends, colleagues, and foes were so arrogant and degrading that people hated him but were too frighten to express their feelings openly. He set up concentration camps in a place called Dalai where opponents were "fixed." […]

In this environment Bhutto ventured his first election, in 1977, to prove his legitimacy. The opposition formalized its unity into a political alliance called the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA). Either Bhutto became unnerved during the election campaign or he was bent on winning two-thirds of seats in the National Assembly to enable him to change from a parlimentary system to a presidential system by making a constitutional amendment, as some of his former colleagues now assert. The ballot was grossly rigged== so rigged, in fact, that the people lost their fear and came out into the streets to protest, often violently. The PNA, of course, led the protest demonstrations. The army was called out in Lahore to quell the disturbances. Bhutto imposed martial law in Lahore, but the high court struck it down. On one occasion the situation got sovfar out of control that the army was ordered to fire at the demonstating civilians. Three brigadiers commanding the troops were bold enough to refuse the orders to fire and opted to resign their commissions instead. These honorable and principled officers were brigadiers Ashfaq Gondal, Niaz Ahmed,and Ishtiaq Ali Khan, who were then retired from service.

Finally the situation came to a head. General Zia ul-Haq removed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's government in July 1977.

Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire, pp.60-51.

To gain control of Pakistan Zia only had to declare martial law. Zia then became the chief martial law administrator. Zia asserted that he had taken control of the government solely to administer new elections for the national and provincial offices. The March 1977 elections administered by the Bhutto government were held to be invalid. Zia promised new elections within ninety days but that promise was broken and the other repeated promises that replaced it.

In many ways Zia was a more skilled politician than Bhutto whom he deposed. Bhutto had the oratorical charisma but tended to lack finesse in achieving his goals. Zia could and did wield brute force but he also could achieve his ends through negotiation and compromise.

The most significant policy program of Zia ul-Haq was the Islamization of Pakistan. In 1978 he decreed that all law, old as well as new, must be consistent with Islamic sharia law. Religious conservative parties under Bhutto were campaigning for such principle. There was the complication that there were several interpretations of sharia law among Sunni religious groups and a drastically different interpretation for the Shi'ia. Under Islam those holding wealth are supposed to contribute alms to take care of the poor. Zia decreed that the government would collect these alms as a tax.

In 1979 Zia established sharia courts to try cases involving the violation of sharia law. Islamic punishments were to be imposed for crimes such as theft, drinking alcoholic beverages and adultery.

Charging and paying of interest is forbidden under sharia law and Zia started to convert the financial institutions of Pakistan to Islamic rules.

Although the principle that Pakistan law had to conform to sharia law was established in 1978 that was not enough for the religious fundamentalist. In 1985 there was an attempt to assert the principle that sharia law was more fundamental than the constitution. This in part would have prevented the verdicts of the sharia courts from being appealed to the regular courts including the supreme court of Pakistan. The legislature did not approve this principle, due in part, to the national and provincial legislatures being dismissed for other reasons. Zia tried to establish this principle by fiat in 1986 but the Zia's action did not come up for ratification by the national assembly while Zia still ruled the country.

Perhaps the most significant political change created by Zia was the Eighth Amendment to the constitution which gave the president the power to arbitrarily dissolve the National Assembly thereby removing the prime minister from power. This completely altered the power balance between the president and the prime minister.

Zia encouraged religious education and the creation of madrassas (religious schools). Islamic religious schools are not like Western religious schools in which the participants retreat from the world. Islamic religious schools are more like boot camps for Marines. The participants do memorize the Koran but they are basically being prepared to be soldiers for the religious leaders. This has been true for centuries.

Zia's program of Islamization fortunately did not involve the destruction of the little progress that had been made on the status of women.

Islam and sharia law are socially totalitarian. Not much technical or economic progress comes out of a totalitarian societies. It takes societies with individual freedom to create the social progress that characterizes the modern world. Most of the muslims of the world today would not exist without the medical advances that could only be achieved in a free society. Their great grandparents would have died in infancy.

The true God of human beings is not some tribal leader writ large who worries about whether his subject show obediance five times a day. The true God of humans is not a person but the phenomenon of communication, language and writing which creates human culture. Human culture is a dynamic evolving phenomena. The social rules that made sense in the desert 1400 years ago do not make sense in the urban societies of the present. This is particularly true of the social regulations concerning women and the family.

Pervez Musharraf is critical of Zia ul-Haq and his period of rule.

President Zia, in the 1980's, completed what Bhutto had started in the dying phases of his regime-- the total appeasement of the religious lobby. Zia did not have a political base or lobby. By hanging Bhutto, he turned Bhutto into a martyr and his political party--the PPP--into a greater force. Zia found it convenient to align himself with the religious right and create a supportive constituency for himself. He started overemphasizing and overparticipating in religious rituals to show his alignment with the the religious lobby. Even music and entertainment became officially taboo, whereas I am told that in private he personally enjoyed good semiclassical music.

Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire, pp. 66-67.

The era of Zia with its tumultuous political and institutional changes, international as well as domestic, did not end until his assassination in 1988. Someone planted a device, either involving explosives or poison gas, on Zia's plane killing him and about thirty others including the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan and most of the top generals of Pakistan.

(To be continued.)

Benazir Bhutto

Benazir Bhutto

To begin her higher education she was sent by her family to Harvard University (technically to Radcliffe College, the adjunct college for females of Harvard University). She did extraordinarily well at Harvard. She majored in comparative goverment and graduated cum laude and became a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the honorary society for academic excelence. After her four years (1969 to 1973) at Harvard she went on for graduate education at Oxford University in the United Kingdom. She pursued studies in philosophy, economics, politics, international law and diplomacy. Clearly she was preparing herself for leadership in Pakistan. She spent four years at Oxford (1973-1977) and was elected the president of the Oxford debating society.

She returned to Pakistan to political turmoil. Her father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, had been made Prime Minister in 1971 after the debacle of the separation of Bangladesh. That separation was caused in large part by the intransigence of Ali Bhutto. He ruled as Prime Minister until 1977 when he was deposed as a result of the military coup of Zia ul-Haq. Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan and was placed under house arrest. Her father was arrested and put on trial by Zia and ultimately hanged in 1979. For a period of time around the time of the execution of her father, Benazir and her mother were imprisioned by the Zia government.

In 1984 Benazir Bhutto was allowed to leave Pakistan and migrate to Britain. She later returned to Pakistan and in 1987 she married Asif Ali Zardari in Karachi. When elections were held in 1988 after the death of Zia ul-Haq, the People's Party of Pakistan (PPP) which Benazir Bhutto now controlled was able to form a government with Benazir as the Prime Minister. She tried to bring about reforms but that was not an easy task in Pakistan where any change is suspected of being Westernization.

In 1990 the President of Pakistan exercised his power to dismiss the government of Bhutto and the Punjabi leader, Nawaz Sharif, became Prime Minister. Sharif's government lasted until 1993 when new elections were held. Benazir Bhutto's PPP was again made prime minister. In 1996 another president again exercised the presidential power to dismiss a government and took Benazir Bhutto out of power. She served thereafter as the opposition leader until 1998 when she went into exile.

There were numerous charges of corruption placed against her for events occurring during the time she was in office. In 2007 the charges were dropped and she returned to Pakistan in October of 2007. She campaigned for the election to be held in early 2008. After a PPP rally in Rawalpindi on December 27th, as she was leaving she had her vehicle stopped to recognize a group of her supporters. She stood up through the sun roof to acknowledge the support of the crowd. Shots were fired and a bomb was detonated killed about twenty bystanders. Benazir Bhutto incurred a skull fracture in the incident and died in the hospital shortly afterwards.

Mian Nawaz Sharif

The rise of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto created an opposition force. The families of those who suffered from his program of nationalization adamantly opposed him and his family's political careers. One of those was Mian Nawaz Sharif. Nawaz Sharif's family were major industrialists in the Punjab province, having moved there from Kashmir at Partition. With the loss of their traditional businesses in Punjab to Bhutto's nationalization the family became more entrepreneurial seeking new businesses to replace their losses.

Mian Nawaz Sharif

He rose to power at the provincial level. He first became the minister of finance for Punjab and then chief minister for Punjab. Punjab is the most populous province and about two thirds of Pakistan consider themselves Punjabi. About 60 percent have Punjabi as their native language. Therefore Punjabi politicians have a substantial political power base in national politics.

The political party that Nawaz Sharif belonged to and for which he was a major leader was the Pakistan Muslim League (PML). In the elections of 1990 that came after the death of Zia ul-Haq, the PML joined in a right-of-center coalition called the Islamic Democratic Alliance (ISI). The major opposition was the left-of-center coalition headed by Benazir Bhutto called the Pakistan Democratic Alliance (PDA). The principal force in the PDA was Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP).

In the 1990 election the IJI coalition won 105 seats in the National Assembly of the total 207 possible. Benazir Bhutto's PDA coalition won only 45. Mian Nawaz Sharif was allowed to form a government. He chose nine representatives from Punjab for his cabinet of 18. Six others came from the Sindh province.

Nawaz Sharif emphasized a program of economic development to deal with the crucial problem of unemployment. He tried to reform Pakistan's stultifying economic regulations and carry out the denationalization (privatization) of firms and industries that had be nationalized by the regimes of the Bhutto family. In addition to privatizing industries he promoted policy changes that allowed new firms to enter industries that had been previously closed to private business.

Nawaz Sharif extended Zia's program of Islamization. In 1991 the government passed the Shariat Law the required the laws of Pakistan to be consistent with the Koran and Islamic precepts. There were more fundamentalist parties which were members of his coalition that demanded such measures. Nawaz Sharif led his government to create a National Highway Authority (NHA) to physically link the country together and this NHA did carry out a billion dollar highway building program.

There were some financial scandals which took place during the regime of Nawaz Sharif. Benazir Bhutto in 1992 was organizing street demonstration to destabilize the country and force Nawaz Sharif from power. In 1993 the president of Pakistan under the power granted to him by the infamous Eighth Amendment to the Constitution dissolve the National Assembly and dismissed Nawaz Sharif's government.

About six weeks later the Supreme Court of Pakistan ruled that the dismissal of the National Assembly by the president of Pakistan was unconstitutional. Although Nawaz Sharif was ostensibly again prime minister he and the president both, in a political compromise, resigned their offices. In the October election Benazir Bhtto's party won enough seats in the National Assembly to allow her to become prime minister.

In February of 1997 the Pakistan Muslim League party headed by Nawaz Sharif won an overwhelming majority of the seats in the National Assembly and Sharif was made prime minister. With the legislative majority he commanded Sharif had passed a thirteenth amendment to the constitution which removed the power granted under the eight amendment for the president to dismiss the National Assembly. Sharif also had a fourteenth amendment passed that imposed party discipline on the legislators, meaning that a party leader could any members of the Assembly who failed to vote the way they were instructed.

When India detonated several nuclear device in 1998, Pakistan under the direction of Nawaz Sharif detonated one about two weeks later. These detonations did not mean that either nation had the means of delivering a nuclear bomb against the other. Nevertheless Nawaz Sharif was hailed within Pakistan for having restored Pakistan's national pride and prestige. India had first achieved a nuclear explosion in 1974 and so for about 24 years Pakistan had not faced this disparity with its major rival.

Although Nawaz Sharif's action was popular within Pakistan it resulted in severe reprecusions with economic sanctions were imposed upon Pakistan by other countries, particularly the United States. Nevertheless Sharif used his popularity to justify the passage of a fifthteen amendment to constitution by the National Assembly that would have permitted him, as prime minister, to assume dictatorial powers in achieving an Islamisization of the Pakistan's government. The amendment had to also be passed by the Senate of Pakistan for it to become law. Other political events intervened in this process.

The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan judged the thirteenth amendment to be unconstitutional and thus that the president to still have the power to dismiss the National Assembly. Other members of the Supreme Court disgreed with the Chief Justice. Supporters of Nawaz Sharif attacked the Supreme Court building. Thus a real constitutional crisis was imminent. The army chief of staff, General Jahangir Karamat, was asked to mediate the dispute. Karamat sided with Prime Minister Sharif and the President Leghari resigned.

Having defended his political power against the presidency and the Supreme Court Sharif then decided to take on the only other potential rival to his power, the military. Sharif in 1998 summarily dismissed General Jahangir Karamat as chief of staff of the army. Ostensibly the reason for the dismissal was Karamat making political statements in a public speech. The Pakistan military was displeased with the arbitrary dismissal of their leader without just cause. In the place Karamat, Sharif appointed Pervez Musharraf as army chief of staff. Sharif told Musharraf that a major factor in his selection was that Musharraf was the only one of the top army officials who had not sought the appointment. Pakistan leaders seem to always be looking for a military leader without political ambitions and to always be disappointed in their quest.

The relationship between Nawaz Sharif and Musharraf was soured by the Kargil Conflict. In 1999 India charged Pakistan with violations of the Simla Agreement for intrusions across the line separating Indian and Pakistani forces in the 1971 War over Kashmir and Jammu. Economic sanctions were imposed upon Pakistan and Nawaz Sharif was put under pressure by U.S. President William Clinton to withdraw Pakistani forces. The incident put Nawaz Sharif in the position of not having the army under his control. Perhaps at that time Nawaz Sharif decided to replace Musharraf as chief of staff of the army. But the head of the army must be deposed very carefully.

The opportunity for Nawaz Sharif to replace Musharraf came when Musharraf was flying on a commercial plane from Colombo, Sri Lanka to Karachi and thus out of touch with his military commanders. Nearing the Karachi airport the pilot of the plane found that he was being denied permsission to land and ordered to leave Pakistan airspace immediately. There were 200 passengers on the plane and the attempt to land elsewhere on the limited fuel the plane contained would put the lives of those passengers at risk. When the pilot announced he was going to land the plane without permission the aircontroller told him that there were three fire trucks blocking his landing. However about that time the Pakistan army gained control of the Karachi airport and cleared the plane for landing.

Musharraf found that Nawaz Sharif had announced that Musharraf had retired and another officer had been made chief of staff. Musharraf refused to accept his firing and declared martial law making himself chief administrator of Pakistan. Musharraf's takeover of the government took only about three hours. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his hand-picked President were arrested.

Nawaz Sharif was charged with the attempted hijacking of Musharraf's plane. In the year 2000 Nawaz Sharif was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. The Army however, at the request of Crown Prince (and now King) Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, commuted the sentence to exile in Saudi Arabia. Sharif was banned from political involvement for 21 years. Later Nazam Sharif was charged with corruption and given an additional sentence of 14 years.

In 2006 Sharif appealed to Musharraf to be allowed to leave Saudi Arabia and go to London to visit his seriously ill son. Musharraf granted his permission and Sharif went to London and did not return to Saudi Arabia. He also violated the terms of his agreement and began to engage in political commentaries concerning conditions in Pakistan. In September of 2007 Sharif attempted to return to Pakistan by air from London. He was not allowed to enter Pakistan and was sent back into exile in Saudi Arabia. At the end of November after former-prime minister Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan Sharif was allowed to enter Pakistan and engage in political activities.

(To be continued.)

Pakistan's Armed Forces, Inc.

In Pakistan the army, navy and airforce own extensive business empires. What started as a means for providing economic benefits for inadequately paid military personnel has grown into a sector which dominates the economy and gives the military the incentive to control the government out of simple financial self-interest. Here are some of the business interests owned by the military.