Pakistan: A Political History

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President Asif Ali Zardari raises his hands in victory towards supporters. Photo: Muhammad Shahid Nawaz.

Pakistan's short history as a country has been very turbulent.
Fighting among the provinces--as well as a deep-rooted conflict that
led to a nuclear stand-off with India--prevented Pakistan from gaining
real stability in the last five decades. It oscillates between military
rule and democratically elected governments, between secular policies
and financial backing as a "frontline" state during the Cold War and
the war against terrorism. Recent declared states of emergency and the
political assasination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto indicate
a continuing trend of economic and political instability.

Overview
When Pakistan became a country on August 14th, 1947, to form the
largest Muslim state in the world. The creation of Pakistan was
catalyst to the largest demographic movement in recorded history.
Nearly seventeen million people-Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs-are reported
to have moved in both directions between India and the two wings of
Pakistan (the eastern wing is now Bangladesh). Sixty million of the
ninety-five million Muslims on the Indian subcontinent became citizens
of Pakistan at the time of its creation. Subsequently, thirty-five
million Muslims remained inside India making it the largest Muslim
minority in a non-Muslim state.

Scarred from birth, Pakistan's quest for survival has been as
compelling as it has been uncertain. Despite the shared religion of its
overwhelmingly Muslim population, Pakistan has been engaged in a
precarious struggle to define a national identity and evolve a
political system for its linguistically diverse population. Pakistan is
known to have over twenty languages and over 300 distinct dialects,
Urdu and English are the official languages but Punjabi, Sindhi,
Pashtu, Baluchi and Seraiki are considered main languages. This
diversity has caused chronic regional tensions and successive failures
in forming a constitution. Pakistan has also been burdened by
full-scale wars with India, a strategically exposed northwestern
frontier, and series of economic crises. It has difficulty allocating
its scarce economic and natural resources in an equitable manner.

All of Pakistan's struggles underpin the dilemma they face in
reconciling the goal of national integration with the imperatives of
national security.

Following a military defeat at the hands of India the breakaway of its
eastern territory, which India divides it from, caused the
establishment of Bangladesh in 1971. This situation epitomizes the most
dramatic manifestation of Pakistan's dilemma as a decentralized nation.
Political developments in Pakistan continue to be marred by provincial
jealousies and, in particular, by the deep resentments in the smaller
provinces of Sind, Baluchistan, and the North-West Frontier Province
against what is seen to be a monopoly by the Punjabi majority of the
benefits of power, profit, and patronage. Pakistan's political
instability over time has been matched by a fierce ideological debate
about the form of government it should adopt, Islamic or secular. In
the absence of any nationally based political party, Pakistan has long
had to rely on the civil service and the army to maintain the
continuities of government.

The Emergence of Pakistan
The roots of Pakistan's multifaceted problems can be traced to March
1940 when the All-India Muslim League formally orchestrated the demand
for a Pakistan consisting of Muslim-majority provinces in the northwest
and northeast of India. By asserting that the Indian Muslims were a
nation, not a minority, the Muslim League and its leader, Mohammad Ali
Jinnah, had hoped to negotiate a constitutional arrangement that
provided an equitable share of power between Hindus and Muslims once
the British relinquished control of India. The demand for a "Pakistan"
was Jinnah's and the League's bid to register their claim to be the
spokesmen of all Indian Muslims, both in provinces were they were in a
majority as well as in provinces where they were a minority. Jinnah and
the League's main bases of support, however, were in the
Muslim-minority provinces. In the 1937 general elections, the league
had met a serious rejection from the Muslim voters in the majority
provinces.

There was an obvious contradiction in a demand for a separate Muslim
state and the claim to be speaking for all Indian Muslims. During the
remaining years of the British Raj in India neither Jinnah nor the
Muslim League explained how Muslims in the minority provinces could
benefit from a Pakistan based on an undivided Punjab, Sind, North-West
Frontier Province, and Baluchistan in the northwest, and an undivided
Bengal and Assam in the northeast. Jinnah did at least had tried to get
around the inconsistencies by arguing that since there were two nations
in India-Hindu and Muslim-any transfer of power from British to Indian
hands would necessarily entail disbanding of the unitary center created
by the imperial rulers. Reconstitution of the Indian union would have
to be based on either confederal or treaty arrangements between
Pakistan (representing the Muslim-majority provinces) and Hindustan
(representing the Hindu-majority provinces). Jinnah also maintained
that Pakistan would have to include an undivided Punjab and Bengal. The
substantial non-Muslim minorities in both these provinces were the best
guarantee that the Indian National Congress would see sense in
negotiating reciprocal arrangements with the Muslim League to safeguard
the interests of Muslim minorities in Hindustan.

Despite Jinnah's large claims, the Muslim League failed to build up
effective party machinery in the Muslim-majority provinces.
Consequently the league had no real control over either the politicians
or the populace at the base that was mobilized in the name of Islam.
During the final negotiations, Jinnah's options were limited by
uncertain commitment of the Muslim-majority province politicians to the
league's goals in the demand for Pakistan. The outbreak of communal
troubles constrained Jinnah further still. In the end he had little
choice but to settle for a Pakistan stripped of the non-Muslim majority
districts of the Punjab and Bengal and to abandon his hopes of a
settlement that might have secured the interests of all Muslims. But
the worst cut of all was Congress's refusal to interpret partition as a
division of India between Pakistan and Hindustan. According to the
Congress, partition simply meant that certain areas with Muslim
majorities were 'splitting off' from the "Indian union." The
implication was that if Pakistan failed to survive, the Muslim areas
would have to return to the Indian union; there would be no assistance
to recreate it on the basis of two sovereign states.

With this agreement nothing stood in the way of the reincorporation of
the Muslim areas into the Indian union except the notion of a central
authority, which had yet to be firmly established. To establish a
central authority proved to be difficult, especially since the
provinces had been governed from New Delhi for so long and the
separation of Pakistan's eastern and western wings by one thousand
miles of Indian territory. Even if Islamic sentiments were the best
hope of keeping the Pakistani provinces unified, their pluralistic
traditions and linguistic affiliations were formidable stumbling
blocks. Islam had certainly been a useful rallying cry, but it had not
been effectively translated into the solid support that Jinnah and the
League needed from the Muslim provinces in order to negotiate an
arrangement on behalf of all Indian Muslims.

The diversity of Pakistan's provinces, therefore, was a potential
threat to central authority. While the provincial arenas continued to
be the main centers of political activity, those who set about creating
the centralized government in Karachi were either politicians with no
real support or civil servants trained in the old traditions of British
Indian administration. The inherent weaknesses of the Muslim League's
structure, together with the absence of a central administrative
apparatus that could coordinate the affairs of the state, proved to be
a crippling disadvantage for Pakistan overall. The presence of millions
of refugees called for urgent remedial action by a central government
that, beyond not being established, had neither adequate resources nor
capacities. The commercial groups had yet to invest in some desperately
needed industrial units. And the need to extract revenues from the
agrarian sector called for state interventions, which caused a schism
between the administrative apparatus of the Muslim League and the
landed elite who dominated the Muslim League.

Power and Governance
Both the military and the civil bureaucracy were affected by the
disruptions wrought by partition. Pakistan cycled through a number of
politicians through their beginning political and economic crises. The
politicians were corrupt, interested in maintaining their political
power and securing the interests of the elite, so to have them as the
representative authority did not provide much hope of a democratic
state that provided socio-economic justice and fair administration to
all Pakistani citizens. Ranging controversies over the issue of the
national language, the role of Islam, provincial representation, and
the distribution of power between the center and the provinces delayed
constitution making and postponed general elections. In October 1956 a
consensus was cobbled together and Pakistan's first constitution
declared. The experiment in democratic government was short but not
sweet. Ministries were made and broken in quick succession and in
October 1958, with national elections scheduled for the following year,
General Mohammad Ayub Khan carried out a military coup with confounding
ease.

Between 1958 and 1971 President Ayub Khan, through autocratic rule was
able to centralize the government without the inconvenience of unstable
ministerial coalitions that had characterized its first decade after
independence. Khan brought together an alliance of a predominantly
Punjabi army and civil bureaucracy with the small but influential
industrial class as well as segments of the landed elite, to replace
the parliamentary government by a system of Basic Democracies. Basic
Democracies code was founded on the premise of Khan's diagnosis that
the politicians and their "free-for-all" type of fighting had had ill
effect on the country. He therefore disqualified all old politicians
under the Elective Bodies Disqualification Order, 1959 (EBDO). The
Basic Democracies institution was then enforced justifying "that it was
democracy that suited the genius of the people." A small number of
basic democrats (initially eighty thousand divided equally between the
two wings and later increased by another forty thousand) elected the
members of both the provincial and national assemblies. Consequently
the Basic Democracies system did not empower the individual citizens to
participate in the democratic process, but opened up the opportunity to
bribe and buy votes from the limited voters who were privileged enough
to vote.

By giving the civil bureaucracy (the chosen few) a part in electoral
politics, Khan had hoped to bolster central authority, and largely
American-directed, programs for Pakistan's economic development. But
his policies exacerbated existing disparities between the provinces as
well as within them. Which gave the grievances of the eastern wing a
potency that threatened the very centralized control Khan was trying to
establish. In West Pakistan, notable successes in increasing
productivity were more than offset by growing inequalities in the
agrarian sector and their lack of representation, an agonizing process
of urbanization, and the concentration of wealth in a few industrial
houses. In the aftermath of the 1965 war with India, mounting regional
discontent in East Pakistan and urban unrest in West Pakistan helped
undermine Ayub Khan's authority, forcing him to relinquish power in
March 1969.

Bangladesh Secedes
After Ayub Khan, General Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan headed the second
military regime from 1969-1971. By that time the country had been under
military rule for thirteen of its twenty-five years of existence. This
second military regime emphasized the extent to which the process of
centralization under bureaucratic and military tutelage had fragmented
Pakistani society and politics. The general elections of 1970 on the
basis of adult franchise revealed for the first time ever in Pakistan's
history how regionalism and social conflict had come to dominate
politics despite the efforts at controlled development. The Awami
League, led by Mujibur Rahman, campaigned on a six-point program of
provincial autonomy, capturing all but one seat in East Pakistan and
securing an absolute majority in the national assembly. In West
Pakistan the Pakistan People's Party, led by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, had a
populist platform that stole the thunder from the Islamic parties (the
Muslim League, the oldest political party captured no more than a few
seats) and emerged as the largest single bloc. The prospect of an Awami
Leagues government was a threat to politicians in West Pakistan who in
conspiracy with the military leadership prevented Mujibur from taking
the reins of power. This was the final straw for the east wing who was
already fed up with the their under-representation in all sectors of
the government, economic deprivation and then the suppression of the
democratic process. An armed rebellion in East Pakistan engendered all
of these frustrations, which caused Indian military intervention to
crush it. Pakistan was now involved in its third war with India, thus
clearing the way for the establishment of Bangladesh in 1971.

A Democratic Government
The dismemberment of Pakistan discredited both the civil bureaucracy
and the army, General Yahya Khan was left no choice but to hand all
power over to the Pakistan's People's Party (PPP) who saw the formation
of a representative led by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Bhutto's electoral
strength, however, was confined to the Punjab and Sind, and even there
it had not been based on solid political party organization. This,
together with the PPP's lack of following in the North-West Frontier
Province and Baluchistan, meant that Bhutto could not work the central
apparatus without at least the implicit support of the civil
bureaucracy and the military high command. The 1973 constitution made
large concessions to the non-Punjabi provinces and provided the
blueprint for a political system based on the semblance of a national
consensus. But Bhutto failed to implement the federal provisions of the
constitution. He relied on the coercive arm of the state to snuff out
political opposition and by neglecting to build the PPP as a truly
popular national party. The gap between his popular rhetoric and the
marginal successes of his somewhat haphazard economic reforms prevented
Bhutto form consolidating a social base of support. Thus, despite a
temporary loss of face in 1971 the civil bureaucracy and the army
remained the most important pillars of the state structure, instead of
the citizens of Pakistan who were still struggling to be recognized in
the democratic process. Although Bhutto's PPP won the 1977 elections,
the Pakistan National Alliance-a nine-party coalition-charged him with
rigging the vote. Violent urban unrest gave the army under General
Zia-ul Haq the pretext to make a powerful comeback to the political
arena, and on July 5, 1977 Pakistan was placed under military rule yet
again and the 1973 Constitution was suspended.

Upon assuming power General Zia banned all political parties and
expressed his determination to recast the Pakistani state and society
into an Islamic mold. In April 1979 Bhutto was executed on murder
charges and the PPP's remaining leadership was jailed or exiled. By
holding nonparty elections and initiating a series of Islamization
policies, Zia sought to create a popular base of support in the hope of
legitimizing the role of the military in Pakistani politics. The Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 caused Zia's regime to receive
international support as a stable government bordering Soviet
territory. Although Pakistan had now formally disentangled its self
from both SEATO and CENTO and joined the nonaligned movement, was
regarded by the West as an important front-line state and is a major
recipient of American military and financial aid. Despite a string of
statistics advertising the health of the economy, murmurs of
discontent, though muffled, continued to be heard. On December 30,
1985, after confirming his own position in a controversial "Islamic"
referendum, completing a fresh round of nonparty elections of the
provincial and national assemblies, and introducing a series of
amendments to the 1973 constitution, Zia finally lifted martial law and
announced the dawn of a new democratic era in Pakistan.

This new democratic era was just as turbulent as Pakistan's previous
political history. Major political parties called for a boycott the
1985 election due to the non-party bias platform. In absence of
political parties the candidates focused on local issues that
superseded the majority of the candidates affiliations to particular
parties. The Pakistani people were obviously interested in
participating in the democratic process and disregarded the urge to
boycott, 52.9% cast ballots for the National Assembly and 56.9% cast
ballots for the provincial elections.

President Zia first initiative was to introduce amendments to the 1973
constitution that would secure his power over the parliamentary system.
The eighth amendment turned out to be the most detrimental to the
people's faith in the democratic system. Now the president could
possess complete control and power to take any step, which he felt was
necessary to secure national integrity. For the next twelve years the
presidents used this amendment to expel a number of prime ministers
from their post, mainly due to either personal struggles or insecurity
over shift in power.

Following the 1988 election, Muhammad Khan Junejo was nominated as the
prime minister, who had a unanimous vote of confidence by the National
Assembly. Junejo seemed to be a promising component to the Pakistani
government; he fostered a smooth transition from the army to civil
authority, which generated optimism about the democratic process of
Pakistan. For the first of his years in office, Junejo was able to
strike a balance between establishing the parliamentary credentials as
a democratic body and maintaining President Zia's blessing. He
developed the five-point program that aimed at improving development,
literacy rate, eliminating corruption and improvement of the common
man's lot. He was as well improving foreign policy abroad and was
grappling a major budgetary deficit from the heavy expenditure of the
martial law regimes. But on May 29th 1988 President Zia dissolved the
National Assembly and removed the prime minister under the article
58-2-b of the Constitution. He claimed that Jenejo was conspiring
against him in order to undermine his position; he blamed the National
Assembly of corruption and failure to enforce Islamic way of life.

The opposition parties were in support of Zia's decision because it
worked in their benefit, providing an early election. They demanded
elections to be schedule in ninety days in accordance with the
constitution. President Zia interpreted this article of the
constitution differently. He felt he was required to announce the
election schedule in ninety days while the elections could be held
later. Simultaneously he wanted to hold the elections on a non-party
basis as he had in 1985, but the Supreme Court upheld that this went
against the spirit of the constitution. Political confusion ensued as a
result of Zia's proposal to postpone the elections to re-structure the
political system in the name of Islam. There was fear that Zia may
impose martial law and the Muslim League became split between
supporters of Zia and Junejo. All of this was stalled when Zia died in
a plane crash on august 17th.

Ghulam Ishaq Khan was sworn in as president being the chairman of the
Senate and elections were initiated. Which surprised to outside
observers who feared that the military could easily take over power.
The November elections of 1988 were based on political party platforms
for the first time in fifteen years. None of the parties won the
majority of the National Assembly but the Pakistan People's Party
emerged as the single largest holder of seats. Benazir Bhutto, the
PPP's chairperson, was named prime minister after the PPP formed a
coalition of smaller parties to form a working majority. At first
people were hopeful that Bhutto would work together with the opposition
party's leader Nawaz Sharif of the IJI party, who headed the Punjabi
party, the majority province. But soon they escalated bitterness to new
heights and drained the economy with bribes to other politicians to
sway affiliations. These accounts plus no improvement on the economic
front scarred the central government's image. In 1990 the President
dismissed Bhutto under the eighth amendment of the constitution, a
decision upheld by the Supreme Court. So once again elections were held
a short two years later.

The Pakistani people were losing faith in the democratic system. They
felt it was corrupt, haphazard and based on the squabbles of the
military and bureaucratic elite. This attitude was reinforced by the
fact that Nawaz Sharif was assigned prime minister in 1990, and
dismissed in 1993 even though he had liberalized investment, restored
confidence of domestic and international investors, so that investment
increased by 17.6%. And as a result the GDP had a growth rate of 6.9%
while the inflation stayed under 10%. President Ghulam Ishaq Khan was
accused of conspiring with Benazir Bhutto in the dismissal of Sharif.
For the first time in Pakistan's history the Supreme Court declared
that the dismissal of the National Assembly and Sharif
unconstitutional, reinstating Sharif and the National Assembly. This
act showed that the president was not the overriding power but the
events that followed proved how unstable the government was. Through
bribes and palace intrigues Ghulam was able to influence a rebellion in
Punjab in 1993, which represented Sharif and his party as incompetent.
This situation caused an upheaval in the system that resulted in
intervention of the chief of Army Staff General, Abdul Waheed Kaker. It
was agreed that both the president and prime minister would resign and
new elections would be arranged.

An even lower turn out affected the legitimacy of the all too frequent
electoral process. In this election the mandate was divided by the same
players, the PPP with Bhutto and the Muslim League with Sharif. Sharif
had lost the popular support in Punjab, which caused the PPP to claim
the majority of the seats. So once again the PPP claimed the majority
of the seats and Bhutto was placed as prime minister. She was able to
get Farooq Ahmad Khan Leghari elected as president, which secured her
government against the eighth amendment. Regardless Bhutto was unable
to run a just government; she fell back into corruption, misuses of
state resources, which was detrimental to the Pakistani people. Both
the Chief Justice and President wanted to maintain the autonomy of
their position in the government, while Bhutto was attempting to
override the political system. President Leghari soon dismissed her
with the support of the Supreme Court. The public hailed this decision
and in February 1997 prepared for new elections, the fifth in twelve
years. The voter support for the elections waned proportionately
throughout these twelve years.

It was obvious that the two leading parties were alternating public
support when Sharif and the Muslim League were reinstated as the Prime
Minister and majority party respectively. The Muslim League used its
parliamentary majority to enact a fundamental change in the political
system with the introduction of amendments thirteen in the
constitution. The thirteenth amendment limited the power of the
president to that of a nominal head of state, while restoring the
parliament as the central governmental power. This amendment basically
created a check and balance procedure to article eight, in an attempt
to maintain political stability. By 1999 the eighth amendment was
stripped of the constraints that empowered the president to dissolve
the National Assembly or dismiss the prime minister. These legislative
feats were impressive, but overall the Muslim League's performance was
mixed. They inherited a lot of obstacles, an economy that was on the
verge of collapse and a political culture of corruption. The May 1998
decision to conduct nuclear tests in response to India's nuclear tests
resulted in the imposition of sanctions that stifled the economy even
more so. Bhutto's corrupt usage of foreign funds and the freezing of
foreign investments further complicated investment relations.

Turmoil
Prime Minister Sharif was gaining disapproval on many fronts, for he
was perceived to be power hungry and possibly corrupt. He had forced
out the chief justice of the supreme court and the army chief soon
after the eighth amendment was revised, he was cracking down on the
press that did not support him and his family's firm, Ittefaq
Industries, was doing abnormally well in times of economic slowdown,
which led to suspicions of corruption. The army chief, Jehangir Karamat
was among the many who were worried about Sharif's mounting power, he
demanded that the army be included in the country's decision-making
process in attempt to balance the civil government. Two days later he
resigned putting General Pervez Musharraf in his position. Musharraf
had been one of the principal strategists in the Kashmiri crisis with
India. He soon suspected that he did not have the political backing of
the civil government in his aggressive quest in Kashmir. The
combination of Shariff's reluctance in the Kashmiri opposition,
mounting factional disputes, terrorism all provided Musharraf with the
justification to lead a coup to overthrow the civil government. On
October 12th, 1999 he successfully ousted Sharif and the Muslim League
on the grounds that he was maintaining law and order while
strengthening the institution of governance.

The Pakistani people thought that this may be on a temporary basis and
once things had stabilized, Musharraf would call for new elections of
the National Assembly. But Musharraf has refused to reinstate the
National Assembly via elections until October 2002, a deadline set by
the Supreme Court. In July of 2001 Musharraf declared himself president
before meeting with the Indian prime minister to legitimize his
authority within the Pakistani government. He has since recalled all
regional militant Islamic factions through out Pakistan and encouraged
them to return their weapons to the central government. He has been
unwavering on Pakistan's position on Kashmir, which resulted in
shortening talks with India. He is now cooperating with the American
government and western world in the coalition against terrorism, which
puts him in an awkward position with his Afghanistan neighbors and the
fractious groups within Pakistan who sympathize with the Taliban and
Osama Bin Laden on an ethnic, ideological and political level.

Mohammad Ali Jinnah had always envisioned a democratic Pakistan and
many of his successors have struggle towards this goal, but not more
than maintaining their own platforms of power. It is ironic that such
political instability plagues a country whose number one objective of
its leaders is to secure their own power. Maybe it is time for a new
equation. The actions of both civil and military leaders have
exhaustively tried the Pakistani people and their struggle as a nation.
Pakistan faces the unenviable task of setting government priorities in
accordance with the needs of its diverse and unevenly developed
constituent units. Regardless of the form of government--civilian or
military, Islamic or secular--solutions of the problem of mass
illiteracy and economic inequities on the one hand, and the imperatives
of national integration and national security will also determine the
degree of political stability, or instability, that Pakistan faces in
the decades ahead. But the people and the nation persevere offering the
world great cultural, religious, and intellectual traditions.

Based on Ayesha Jalal for for the Encyclopedia of Asian History, adapted by Amanda Snellinger. © Asia Society. From The Encyclopedia of Asian History. Asia Society and Charles Scribner's Sons.