A history of video games from the 1950s up to now in terms of influence and innovation. Links to video footage of games included.
1950s
1952 - OXO (Alexander Douglas) - This tic-tac-toe game is the first known computer game.
1970s
1972 - Arcade: Pong (Atari) - The first video game to achieve widespread success.
1975 - RPG: dnd and Dungeon - The two first CRPGs (computer role-playing games).
1976 - Adventure: Colossal Cave Adventure (William Crowther and Don Woods) - The very first adventure game.
1978 - Arcade: Space invaders (Taito Corporation) - This highly popular game played an important role in turning video games into a global industry, inspiring dozens of manufacturers to enter the market.
1980s
1980 - Arcade: Pac-Man (Namco) - A classic video game and 1980s pop culture icon, Pac-Man introduced a new video game genre which appeals to both genders.
1980 - Arcade: Battlezone (Atari) - The first true 3D game.
1980 - Adventure: Zork I: The Great Underground Empire (Infocom) - The game that arguably popularized the adventure game genre. It is completely text-based.
1980 - Adventure: Mystery House (Sierra) - The first adventure game with graphics.
1984 - Adventure: King's Quest 1: Quest for the Crown (Sierra) - This game pioneered the modern adventure game genre and was one of the first animated adventures. It led to many other successful quest games including the Police Quest, Space Quest and Quest for Glory series.
1985 - Platform: Super Mario Bros (Nintendo) - Popularized the side scrolling genre of video games.
1986 - Action/Adventure: The Legend of Zelda (Nintendo) - Introduced one of the most - if not the most - critically acclaimed game series of all time.
1987 - Adventure: Maniac Mansion (LucasArts) - This game introduced the shift to point-and-click interfaces for adventure games (instead of text input). Its other innovations are multiple possible endings and selectable characters with different abilities.
1989 - Platform: Prince Of Persia (Brøderbund) - The fluid, life-like character motion was a huge leap forward in animation quality.
1989 - Strategy/Simulation: SimCity (Maxis) - The very first sim (simulation) game, pioneering a new genre of video games which are open-ended. Game publishers were initially skeptical that such a game could be successful.
1990s
1992 - RPG: Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (Looking Glass Studios) - An RPG with an advanced 3D engine which brought unparalleled realism. Among the innovations are relatively advanced texture mapping, inclined surfaces, ability to jump and an interactive world with 3D objects that could be picked up and thrown. Its 3D engine was much more advanced than the one used by Wolfenstein 3D, released later in the year.
1992 - FPS: Wolfenstein 3D (id Software) - The game that launched and popularized the First Person Shooter (FPS) genre.
1992 - Strategy: Dune II: The Building Of A Dynasty (Virgin Games) - The game that popularized and set the standard game mechanics for the Real Time Strategy (RTS) genre, building the basis for future RTS games such as Warcraft and Command & Conquer.
1992 - Survival horror: Alone in the Dark (Infogrames) - This game popularized the survival horror genre. It was the first 3D survival horror game and the first game known to use interpolated animation.
1993 - Strategy: UFO: Enemy Unknown (X-COM: UFO Defense) (MicroProse) - X-COM successfully blended different types of game play, mixing tactical combat, base building and research elements, making it a unique game unlike anything seen before.
1993 - Adventure: Myst (Cyan Worlds) - Myst popularized a new style of puzzle-based adventure games.
1993 - FPS: Doom (id Software) - Doom further popularized the FPS genre and pioneered realistic and immersive 3D graphics, networked multiplayer gaming and support for custom expansions.
1996 - FPS: Quake (id Software) - Quake introduced play over the Internet in first-person shooters (FPS) and helped turn Internet multiplayer capability into a de facto requirement.
1997 - MMORPG: Ultima Online (Origin Systems) - Popularized the MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) genre, and was the first MMORPG to reach a subscriber base of 100,000.
1997 - RPG: Diablo (Blizzard) - Introduced the point-and-click action RPG sub-genre. The game mechanics of this sub-genre have been copied by many subsequent RPG games.
1998 - Strategy: Starcraft (Blizzard) - Pioneered the use of highly distinct races in strategy games and is often seen as the standard for real-time strategy games. In Korea, StarCraft led to the establishment of a successful pro-gaming scene; games are broadcast on TV and professional gamers have become celebrities.
The new millenium
2004 - MMORPG: World of Warcraft (Blizzard) - Although not particularly innovative, it borrowed the best features of its predecessors and made RPGs more accessible to casual players. It is one of the best selling PC games of all time and the most popular MMORPG with over 10 million subscribers worldwide.
2006 - Arcade: Wii Sports (Nintendo) - The best-selling video game of all time, it introduced many non-gamers to games. It has also become popular in senior centers and retirement homes.
Developers with the most innovative games according to this list:
Blizzard: 3 games - Diablo (1997), Starcraft (1998), World of Warcraft (2004)
id Software: 3 games - Wolfenstein 3D (1992), Doom (1993), Quake (1996)
Nintendo: 3 games - Super Mario Bros (1985), The Legend of Zelda (1986), Wii Sports (2006)
Atari: 2 games - Pong (1972), Battlezone (1980)
Sierra: 2 games - Mystery House (1980), King's Quest (1984)
Summary:
1970s: dnd, Dungeon, Colossal Cave Adventure, Pong, Space invaders
1980s: Battlezone, King's Quest 1, The Legend of Zelda, Maniac Mansion, Mystery House, Pac-Man, Prince of Persia, SimCity, Super Mario Bros, Zork 1
1990s: Alone in the Dark, Diablo, Doom, Dune II, Myst, Quake, Starcraft, UFO: Enemy Unknown (X-COM), Ultima Online, Ultima Underworld, Wolfenstein 3D
2000s: Wii Sports, World of Warcraft
Saturday, April 7, 2012
What is the History of Video Games? Timeline Walkthrough of Gaming
memory lane & learn the history of video games. Our timeline of video game history includes best selling games, technology developments & more.There may be many names who can share in the glory of the glowing popularity of the history of video games, with the earliest time frames being between the late 40’s through the 50’s and 60’s. This can be attributed to the advancement of radio, television and computers, which during that era were mostly mainframes that only a select few individuals had access to.
The first commercially introduced video game was released in 1971, bringing forth a whole new concept to the entertainment industry.
Of course, just like any new concept there were to be a few hurdles to pass before the boom in video gaming became as popular as it is today.
The first commercially introduced video game was released in 1971, bringing forth a whole new concept to the entertainment industry.
Of course, just like any new concept there were to be a few hurdles to pass before the boom in video gaming became as popular as it is today.
Timeline: History of Westeros
Timeline of the History of Westeros
Note: The dates listed are approximations. Westerosi scholars debate many of the events of history, and thus there may be conflicting interpretations. Additionally, the current period is the year of Lord Jon Arryn’s death and the appointment of Lord Eddard Stark as King Robert Baratheon’s Hand.
YEARS AGO EVENT
12,000+ DAWN AGE
12,000 - First Men come to Westeros
12,000 — 10,000 - Wars between the First Men and the children of the forest
10,000 - The Pact between the First Men and the children of the forest
8,000
AGE OF HEROES
- Long Night
- Battle for the Dawn
- Building of the Wall
- Founding of House Stark
6,000 - Arrival of the Andals
- Breaking of the Pact
- Rise of Valyria
5,000 AGE OF VALYRIA
- Valyria conquers Old Ghis
- War between Valyria and the cities of the Rhoyne
1,000 - Arrival of Nymeria and the Rhoynar in Dorne
650 - Storm Kings kill the last River King
500 - Targaryens leave Valyria, land on Dragonstone
400 - Doom of Valyria
- Dothraki ride out of the east
400 — 300 - The Bleeding Years
300 AGE OF THE DRAGONS
- Harren the Black rules the Iron Islands and the Trident
- Targaryens set foot on Westeros
- Aegon’s conquest
- The army of the Two Kings destroyed on the Field of Fire
- Harlen Tyrell raised to lord of the Reach
- Orys slays Argilac the Storm King, becomes lord of Stormlands
- Edmyn Tully elevated as lord of the Trident
- Vickon Greyjoy chosen as lord of the Iron Islands
- Torrhen Stark bends the knee to Aegon Targaryen
171 - Dance of the Dragons
- Death of the last dragon
143 - Daeron I conquers Dorne
139 - Dornish rebellion
116 - Daeron II succeeds King Aegon IV
104 - Blackfyre rebellion
103 - Dorne joins the Seven Kingdoms by marriage
100 - Raymun Redbeard, King-Beyond-the-Wall, invades over the Wall
40 - War of the Ninepenny Kings
38 - King Aerys II ascends to the throne
15 - War of the Usurper (Robert’s Rebellion)
9 - Greyjoy’s Rebellion
0 - Appointment of Eddard Stark as Hand of the King
Note: The dates listed are approximations. Westerosi scholars debate many of the events of history, and thus there may be conflicting interpretations. Additionally, the current period is the year of Lord Jon Arryn’s death and the appointment of Lord Eddard Stark as King Robert Baratheon’s Hand.
YEARS AGO EVENT
12,000+ DAWN AGE
12,000 - First Men come to Westeros
12,000 — 10,000 - Wars between the First Men and the children of the forest
10,000 - The Pact between the First Men and the children of the forest
8,000
AGE OF HEROES
- Long Night
- Battle for the Dawn
- Building of the Wall
- Founding of House Stark
6,000 - Arrival of the Andals
- Breaking of the Pact
- Rise of Valyria
5,000 AGE OF VALYRIA
- Valyria conquers Old Ghis
- War between Valyria and the cities of the Rhoyne
1,000 - Arrival of Nymeria and the Rhoynar in Dorne
650 - Storm Kings kill the last River King
500 - Targaryens leave Valyria, land on Dragonstone
400 - Doom of Valyria
- Dothraki ride out of the east
400 — 300 - The Bleeding Years
300 AGE OF THE DRAGONS
- Harren the Black rules the Iron Islands and the Trident
- Targaryens set foot on Westeros
- Aegon’s conquest
- The army of the Two Kings destroyed on the Field of Fire
- Harlen Tyrell raised to lord of the Reach
- Orys slays Argilac the Storm King, becomes lord of Stormlands
- Edmyn Tully elevated as lord of the Trident
- Vickon Greyjoy chosen as lord of the Iron Islands
- Torrhen Stark bends the knee to Aegon Targaryen
171 - Dance of the Dragons
- Death of the last dragon
143 - Daeron I conquers Dorne
139 - Dornish rebellion
116 - Daeron II succeeds King Aegon IV
104 - Blackfyre rebellion
103 - Dorne joins the Seven Kingdoms by marriage
100 - Raymun Redbeard, King-Beyond-the-Wall, invades over the Wall
40 - War of the Ninepenny Kings
38 - King Aerys II ascends to the throne
15 - War of the Usurper (Robert’s Rebellion)
9 - Greyjoy’s Rebellion
0 - Appointment of Eddard Stark as Hand of the King
A Football History - from its origin to now
There is no clear documentation stating the date and place of origination of today's most popular sport - world football. However, most historians agree that some type of a ball game has been played for at least over 3000 years. The origins of the game can be seen in games played in China, Japan, Egypt, Greece before our modern game developed in England.
Here is a brief outline of some of the events that have shaped the game of soccer throughout history.
Here is a brief outline of some of the events that have shaped the game of soccer throughout history.
Slavery comes to North America, 1619
To satisfy the labor needs of the rapidly growing North American colonies, white European settlers turned in the early 17th century from indentured servants (mostly poorer Europeans) to a cheaper, more plentiful labor source: African slaves. Beginning around 1619, when a Dutch ship brought 20 Africans ashore at the British colony of Jamestown, Virginia, slavery spread quickly through the American colonies. Though it is impossible to give accurate figures, some historians have estimated that 6 to 7 million slaves were imported to the New World during the 18th century alone, depriving the African continent of its most valuable resource–its healthiest and ablest men and women.
After the American Revolution, many colonists (particularly in the North, where slavery was relatively unimportant to the economy) began to link the oppression of black slaves to their own oppression by the British. Though leaders such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson–both slaveholders from Virginiatook cautious steps towards limiting slavery in the newly independent nation, the Constitution tacitly acknowledged the institution, guaranteeing the right to repossess any “person held to service or labor" (an obvious euphemism for slavery). Many northern states had abolished slavery by the end of the 18th century, but the institution was absolutely vital to the South, where blacks constituted a large minority of the population and the economy relied on the production of crops like tobacco and cotton. Congress outlawed the import of new slaves in 1808, but the slave population in the U.S. nearly tripled over the next 50 years, and by 1860 it had reached nearly 4 million, with more than half living in the cotton-producing states of the South.
After the American Revolution, many colonists (particularly in the North, where slavery was relatively unimportant to the economy) began to link the oppression of black slaves to their own oppression by the British. Though leaders such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson–both slaveholders from Virginiatook cautious steps towards limiting slavery in the newly independent nation, the Constitution tacitly acknowledged the institution, guaranteeing the right to repossess any “person held to service or labor" (an obvious euphemism for slavery). Many northern states had abolished slavery by the end of the 18th century, but the institution was absolutely vital to the South, where blacks constituted a large minority of the population and the economy relied on the production of crops like tobacco and cotton. Congress outlawed the import of new slaves in 1808, but the slave population in the U.S. nearly tripled over the next 50 years, and by 1860 it had reached nearly 4 million, with more than half living in the cotton-producing states of the South.
HISTORY OF HOME AND GAME COMPUTERS
This site will offer you information about all sorts of home computers and game computers from the seventies and eighties. Computers today and computer games are much more advanced, but it's nice to go back and look at where it all began. From the Altair to the latest Dell touch screen laptop, computers have evolved in an exponential and dramatic fashion. Their history, anecdotes about their development and the people behind them, like Ralph Baer who invented the Magnavox Odyssey waiting at a bus terminal and of course Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari.
You can also take a look at my own cartridges, pong consoles and my computer collection, with home computers and game consoles I'm very proud of, like the Sinclair ZX80, the Commodore SX-64 and the first GDR home computer, the Robotron Z1013. I also have many interesting home and game computers for swap. When you see what desktop computers today are capable of such as system z deduplication and virtual tape deduplication it is hard to compare the two.
In other words... welcome to the nostalgic history of Pac-Man, Space Invaders, and famous home and game computers like Atari, Commodore and Sinclair. The time you had to wait endlessly before a computer game had loaded, but in which systems hardly crashed yet.
The history section of my site will gradually take shape. Almost every time you visit this site, you'll see that a section is added. Feel free to e-mail me or sign the guestbook with any suggestions and remarks.
Some home and game computers in my collection:
You can also take a look at my own cartridges, pong consoles and my computer collection, with home computers and game consoles I'm very proud of, like the Sinclair ZX80, the Commodore SX-64 and the first GDR home computer, the Robotron Z1013. I also have many interesting home and game computers for swap. When you see what desktop computers today are capable of such as system z deduplication and virtual tape deduplication it is hard to compare the two.
In other words... welcome to the nostalgic history of Pac-Man, Space Invaders, and famous home and game computers like Atari, Commodore and Sinclair. The time you had to wait endlessly before a computer game had loaded, but in which systems hardly crashed yet.
The history section of my site will gradually take shape. Almost every time you visit this site, you'll see that a section is added. Feel free to e-mail me or sign the guestbook with any suggestions and remarks.
Some home and game computers in my collection:
The 7 Biggest Dick Moves in the History of Online Gaming Read more: The 7 Biggest Dick Moves in the History of Online Gaming
Tens of millions of adults spend all their free time in fictional worlds that are full of more tedious work and assholes than most real-life jobs. Combining Internet anonymity with people who have absurd amounts of free time, massive multiplayer online role-playing Gamers (MMORPG)are a better guarantee of asshole-ry than a digestive system, and yield uglier results. But there are some spectacular douche bags who have put more work into screwing with strangers than should be humanly possible.
Read more: The 7 Biggest Dick Moves in the History of Online Gaming | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-7-biggest-dick-moves-in-history-online-gaming/#ixzz1rO5KVY5i
EVE Online's universe consists of 350,000 active subscribers piloting customizable space craft around 7,500 solar systems. Putting that many people in space with lasers might sound like an open horizon to awesome, but the players who hang out there created a fully functional free market economy that ends up feeling more like space accountancy. The ad may look like this ...
Read more: The 7 Biggest Dick Moves in the History of Online Gaming | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-7-biggest-dick-moves-in-history-online-gaming/#ixzz1rO5PqYUc but it doesn't tell you that you have to pay for those lasers. To do that, a lot of game play involves your screen looking more like this ...
Read more: The 7 Biggest Dick Moves in the History of Online Gaming | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-7-biggest-dick-moves-in-history-online-gaming/#ixzz1rO5TbdZZAs with the real-world economy, making a profit in the world of EVE Online is easier if you form corporations. While many spend years working together for mutual gain, others behave a lot like corporations do in the real world. Or at least how they would if they operated in a universe where murder is legal.
For instance, the Guiding Hand Social Club assassinates people for profit and steals their stuff for bonuses. In one instance, they were hired to destroy "Mirial," the CEO of Ubiqua Seraph corporation. While many EVE Online players literally grind rocks for hours to make a profit, the GHSC use the assignment to show everyone what Ocean's Eleven would have been like if it took place in the Star Wars universe. No one has had so much more fun than everyone else playing a game since Michael Jackson suggested Junior Twister.
Read more: The 7 Biggest Dick Moves in the History of Online Gaming | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-7-biggest-dick-moves-in-history-online-gaming/#ixzz1rO5ZrxTB
First, they got jobs with the target corporation and worked their way up the ranks. The primary assassin became second in command of the entire firm because the background checks for imaginary space pilots aren't very good.
Then, after a year of real-time play, they struck harder than Keyser Soze in that one flashback scene where he's played by Fabio. They killed Mirial, emptied the corp's accounts and hangars, stole everything that wasn't bolted down and blew up everything that was, then killed Mirial again because EVE is specifically programmed to let you kill people twice. The first time gives you all the XP and valuable wreckage, but allows the murdered player to escape in a pod. The second does nothing but shout, "Screw You!" with murder (which is admittedly the best way to do that).
Mirial was in a Navy Apocalypse at the time, which is basically EVE Online's equivalent of the Death Star.
Read more: The 7 Biggest Dick Moves in the History of Online Gaming | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-7-biggest-dick-moves-in-history-online-gaming/#ixzz1rO5fAAav
Read more: The 7 Biggest Dick Moves in the History of Online Gaming | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-7-biggest-dick-moves-in-history-online-gaming/#ixzz1rO5KVY5i
EVE Online's universe consists of 350,000 active subscribers piloting customizable space craft around 7,500 solar systems. Putting that many people in space with lasers might sound like an open horizon to awesome, but the players who hang out there created a fully functional free market economy that ends up feeling more like space accountancy. The ad may look like this ...
Read more: The 7 Biggest Dick Moves in the History of Online Gaming | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-7-biggest-dick-moves-in-history-online-gaming/#ixzz1rO5PqYUc but it doesn't tell you that you have to pay for those lasers. To do that, a lot of game play involves your screen looking more like this ...
Read more: The 7 Biggest Dick Moves in the History of Online Gaming | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-7-biggest-dick-moves-in-history-online-gaming/#ixzz1rO5TbdZZAs with the real-world economy, making a profit in the world of EVE Online is easier if you form corporations. While many spend years working together for mutual gain, others behave a lot like corporations do in the real world. Or at least how they would if they operated in a universe where murder is legal.
For instance, the Guiding Hand Social Club assassinates people for profit and steals their stuff for bonuses. In one instance, they were hired to destroy "Mirial," the CEO of Ubiqua Seraph corporation. While many EVE Online players literally grind rocks for hours to make a profit, the GHSC use the assignment to show everyone what Ocean's Eleven would have been like if it took place in the Star Wars universe. No one has had so much more fun than everyone else playing a game since Michael Jackson suggested Junior Twister.
Read more: The 7 Biggest Dick Moves in the History of Online Gaming | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-7-biggest-dick-moves-in-history-online-gaming/#ixzz1rO5ZrxTB
First, they got jobs with the target corporation and worked their way up the ranks. The primary assassin became second in command of the entire firm because the background checks for imaginary space pilots aren't very good.
Then, after a year of real-time play, they struck harder than Keyser Soze in that one flashback scene where he's played by Fabio. They killed Mirial, emptied the corp's accounts and hangars, stole everything that wasn't bolted down and blew up everything that was, then killed Mirial again because EVE is specifically programmed to let you kill people twice. The first time gives you all the XP and valuable wreckage, but allows the murdered player to escape in a pod. The second does nothing but shout, "Screw You!" with murder (which is admittedly the best way to do that).
Mirial was in a Navy Apocalypse at the time, which is basically EVE Online's equivalent of the Death Star.
Read more: The 7 Biggest Dick Moves in the History of Online Gaming | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-7-biggest-dick-moves-in-history-online-gaming/#ixzz1rO5fAAav
History of Pakistan
PAKISTAN BECAME AN INDEPENDENT STATE in 1947, the realization of a yearning by India's Muslims, who feared domination by the Hindu majority in a postcolonial India. As the British made their final plans to surrender the "Jewel in the Crown" of their empire, the earlier, elite "Two Nations Theory," premised on the notion of a separate homeland for the subcontinent's Muslim minority, had broadened its popular appeal and evolved into a collective vision championed by Muslims of all backgrounds. After independence, a debate commenced among contending groups over further refinement of that vision. Agreement on what system of government the new nation should adopt--a critical aspect of the debate--was never fully reached. Indeed, few nations have in so short a period undergone as many successive political and constitutional experiments as has Pakistan. This irresolution contributed, in the decades following independence, to a recurrent pattern of crisis: repeated coups and extended periods in which martial law replaced civilian government, violent deaths of several national leaders, periodic strife among ethnic groups, and, most traumatically, a civil war that divided the country in two.
The struggle over the character and soul of Pakistan continues. Although democracy returned to Pakistan in 1988 after a long lapse, it is on trial daily, its continuation by no means certain. Definition of the vision of what Pakistan represents is still being contested from many opposing quarters.
Pakistan's status in the world has changed dramatically in the nearly one-half century of its existence as an independent state. In the twilight years of the Cold War, it achieved international stature as a "frontline" state during the Soviet occupation of neighboring Afghanistan. With the Soviet departure from Afghanistan in the late 1980s and the end of the Cold War, Pakistan's role in the world arena has become less visible, and its voice has diminished to the level of many other developing states competing in the new world order. Yet, during the years it spent in support of the Afghan struggle against Soviet domination, Pakistan impressed upon the world community a new appreciation of its standing among Islamic nations and of its ideological commitment to causes it champions.
In terms of its military and economic development, Pakistan is a "threshold" state. The world's first Islamic "de facto" nuclear-weapon state, it has long been at loggerheads with its larger and more powerful neighbor, India, which, like Pakistan, denies having built nuclear weapons but not its ability to do so at the "turn of a screw." A nation well positioned to serve as an economic model for other developing countries in the post-Cold- War era--especially the Islamic states of the former Soviet Union--Pakistan has shown steady and impressive long-term economic growth and is successfully making the transition from an overwhelmingly agricultural to an industrial economy. Yet, despite its considerable achievements in technology and commerce, Pakistan confronts many of the same problems it faced at its birth. The nation has one of the world's highest population growth rates, making it difficult for the government to address the problems of poverty and attendant ills that affect so many in its society. Indeed, social development has lagged behind economic gains. Quality of life indicators--literacy rates, especially among women, human rights, and universal access to heath care--have shown Pakistan to be a country with serious deficiencies.
Throughout history, Pakistan has been strongly affected by its geostrategic placement as a South Asian frontier located at the juncture of South Asia, West Asia, and Central Asia. Scholars have called Pakistan the "fulcrum of Asia" because since antiquity invaders have traversed this frontier carrying with them the seeds of great civilizations. The armies of Islam came to South Asia through the same mountain passes in the north-west of Pakistan that the Indo-Aryans, Alexander the Great, the Kushans, and others had earlier entered.
Present-day Pakistan has been shaped by its rich history, pre-Islamic as well as Islamic, but colored in particular by the exigencies of its troubled and bloody birth as a nation in 1947. The partitioning of British India into India and Pakistan was preceded and accompanied by communal riots of unprecedented violence and scope that forced millions of Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh refugees to flee across the new international borders.
The partition plan that led to the separate states of India and Pakistan was drawn up in an atmosphere of urgency as a swell of religious and ethnic unrest shook India. Under guidelines established with the help of Britain's last viceroy in India, Lord Louis Mountbatten, the perplexing task of establishing the new boundaries of Pakistan was accomplished. Most Indian Muslims lived either on the dusty plains of Punjab or in the humid delta of Bengal. Contiguous Muslim-majority districts in Punjab and Bengal were awarded to Pakistan under the plan's guidelines. The additional task of deciding the status of the more than 500 semiautonomous princely states of India still remained. All but three of these quickly acceded to either Pakistan or India. But the two largest princely states, Jammu and Kashmir (ususally just called Kashmir) and Hyderabad, and one small state, Junagadh, posed special problems. Hyderabad and Junagadh were located within territory awarded to India but were both Hindu majority states ruled by a Muslim leader. These states hesitated but were quickly incorporated by force into India. The status of the third state, Kashmir, which had borders with both India and Pakistan, proved especially problematic. Unlike Hyderabad and Junagadh, Kashmir had a Muslim majority and was ruled by a Hindu. Kashmir's maharaja was reluctant to accede to either Pakistan or India, but when threatened by a Muslim uprising (with outside support from Pakistani tribesmen) against his unpopular rule, he hurriedly signed the documents of accession, in October 1947, required by India before it would provide aid. Pakistan then launched an active military and diplomatic campaign to undo the accession, which it maintained was secured by fraud. Kashmir was subsequently divided by the occupying armies of both nations, the Indians holding two-thirds of the state, including the Muslim- dominated Vale of Kashmir and the Hindu-majority region of Jammu to the south, while the Pakistanis controlled the western third, which they call Azad (Free) Kashmir. India and Pakistan would fight two major wars to maintain or seize control over this state: in 1947-48 and in 1965. Kashmir's contested and indeterminate status continues dangerously to complicate relations between South Asia's two most powerful states.
The bifurcated Pakistan that existed from August 1947 to December 1971 was composed of two parts, or wings, known as East Pakistan and West Pakistan, separated by 1,600 kilometers of Indian territory. Observers pointed out, however, that the people of the two wings were estranged from each other in language and cultural traditions: that the Bengali "monsoon Islam" of the East Wing was alien to the "desert Islam" of the West Wing. The East Wing, notable for its Bengali ethnic homogeneity and its collective Bangla cultural and linguistic heritage, contained over half of the population of Pakistan and sharply contrasted with the ethnic and linguistic diversity of the West Wing. The West Wing consisted of four major ethnic groups--Punjabis, Pakhtuns, Sindhis, and Baloch. The muhajirs constituted a fifth important group. The political leaders of Pakistan, however--particularly those of West Pakistan--asserted that the Islamic faith and a shared fear of "Hindu India" provided an indestructible bond joining the two societies into one nation. This assertion proved flawed, however. A culture of distrust grew between the two wings, fueled by imbalances of representation in the government and military. Furthermore, Bengali politicians argued that the economic "underdevelopment" of East Pakistan was a result of the "internal colonialism" of the rapacious capitalist class of West Pakistan. In the final analysis, real and perceived iniquities would fray this "indestructible" bond holding the country together. Less than a quarter century after the country's founding, Pakistan would fission, the eastern wing becoming the independent nation of Bangladesh.
It was not Pakistan's precarious security nor even its cultural and ethnic diversity, but rather characteristics deeply rooted in the nation's polity that most impeded its early democratic development. The essentials for such a process-- disciplined political parties and a participatory mass electorate--were missing in Pakistan's first years as an independent state. The All-India Muslim League, the party that led the struggle for Pakistan, failed to mature into a stable democratic party with a national following capable of holding together the nation's diverse ethnic and cultural groups. Instead, it disintegrated into rival factions soon after independence. Lack of a consensus over prospective Islamic provisions for the nation's governance, Bengali resentment over the West Pakistanis' initial imposition of Urdu as the national language, and the reluctance of West Pakistani politicians to share power with politicians of the East Wing--all were factors that delayed the acceptance of Pakistan's first constitution until nine years after independence. The nation was also dealt a severe psychological blow when in September 1948, only thirteen months after independence, Mohammad Ali Jinnah--known reverentially as the Quaid-i-Azam (Great Leader)--died. Jinnah's role in the creation of Pakistan had been so dominant that it has been observed that he had neither peers nor associates, only lieutenants and aides. Jinnah's primary lieutenant, Liaquat Ali Khan, the nation's first prime minister, was assassinated in October 1951.
Jinnah's and Liaquat's leadership, so critical to the nation in its infancy, was replaced in the early and mid-1950s by the generally lackluster, often inept performances of the nation's politicians. Those few politicians who were effective were all too willing to play upon the emotions of an electorate as yet unaccustomed to open democratic debate. The ethnic and provincial causes championed by these politicians too often took precedence over national concerns. The government was weak and unable to quell the violence and ethnic unrest that distracted it from building strong parliamentary institutions.
Believing that Pakistan's first attempt at establishing a parliamentary system of government failed, in the late 1950s the military ousted the "inefficient and rascally" politicians. During this period, however, the belief that democracy was the "natural state" of Pakistan and an important political goal was not entirely abandoned. Mohammad Ayub Khan, Pakistan's first "soldier-statesman," regarded himself as more of a reformer than an autocrat and, as chief martial law administrator, early on acknowledged the need to relinquish some military control. In his unique governmental system called the "Basic Democracies," Ayub Khan became the "civilian" head of a military regime. Ayub Khan's "democracy from above" allowed for controlled participation of the electorate and was supposed to capture the peculiar "genius" of Pakistan. To his critics, however, Ayub Khan's political system was better characterized as a form of "representational dictatorship." In 1969 an ailing Ayub Khan was forced to resign following nationwide rioting against his regime's perceived corruption, spent economic policies, and responsibility for Pakistan's defeat in the 1965 Indo-Pakistani War over Kashmir. Ayub Khan was briefly succeeded by his army commander in chief, General Mohammad Yahya Khan, who would best be remembered for presiding over the two most traumatic and psychologically devastating events in the country's history: the humiliating defeat of Pakistan's armed forces by India and the secession of East Pakistan.
The East Wing of Pakistan had not benefitted greatly from Ayub Khan's "Decade of Progress," with its gains in agricultural production and trade. Bengali politicians wanted to improve what they considered to be the second-class political and economic status of their province vis-à-vis West Pakistan, just as they had earlier agitated for greater cultural and linguistic recognition. The country's first nationwide direct elections were held in December 1970. The East Pakistan-based Awami League, campaigning on a platform calling for almost total provincial autonomy, won virtually all the seats allotted to the East Wing and was thereby assured a majority in the national legislature.
The results of Pakistan's first nationwide experiment in democracy were not honored. Fearing Bengali dominance in the nation's political affairs, West Pakistani politicians, led by Pakistan People's Party (PPP) leader Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and supported by senior army officers, most of whom were Punjabis, pressured Yahya Khan to postpone the convening of the National Assembly. When the Bengalis of East Pakistan revolted openly at this turn of events, the Pakistani military banned the Awami League, arrested its leader, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and began a massive military crackdown. In the savage civil war that followed, tens of thousands of Bengalis were killed, and an estimated 10 million people took refuge in India. In early December 1971, India entered the war and within weeks decisively defeated the Pakistan military. From the aftermath of the war and the dismemberment of Pakistan came the birth of a new nation: Bangladesh.
To most Pakistanis, the news of Pakistan's defeat came as a numbing shock--their military was disgraced and condemned for its brutal crackdown in East Pakistan. Literally overnight, the country had lost its status as the largest Muslim nation in the world. Gone, too, were any illusions of military parity with India.
Pakistan soon recovered under the charismatic leadership of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who launched a forceful campaign to restore the people's self-confidence and to repair Pakistan's tarnished image abroad. Initially, Bhutto was sworn in as president and chief martial law administrator, the two positions he took over from Yahya Khan. Although he soon revoked formal martial law, he governed autocratically until he was overthrown in 1977.
A man of contradictions, a product of a privileged feudal background, the Western-educated Bhutto nonetheless expounded populist themes of shared wealth, national unity, and the need to restore political democracy under the slogan "Islam our Faith, Democracy our Polity, Socialism our Economy." Bhutto nationalized a large number of the most important manufacturing, insurance, and domestically owned banking industries--actions that substantially slowed economic growth.
By the mid-1970s, Bhutto's autocratic tendencies were interfering with his ability to govern. His determination to crush any and all potential opposition had become obsessive. Bhutto purged his party of real or imagined opponents, created a praetorian security force answerable only to himself, brought the prestigious civil service under his personal control, and sacked military officers who possessed what he described as "Bonapartist tendencies." Fatefully, Bhutto then named General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq--a relatively junior and obscure general--to hold the top army post. Most observers had predicted that Bhutto's PPP would retain control of the National Assembly in the elections of March 1977, but the margin of the PPP's victory was so overwhelming that charges of fraud were immediately made, and riots erupted throughout the country. General Zia was well positioned to act against Bhutto. He abruptly informed the nation that he had taken over as the chief martial law administrator but assured the people that the military desired only to supervise fair elections, which he said would be held in ninety days. This was the first of many promises Zia did not keep. As election time approached, Zia announced that criminal charges were being brought against Bhutto and postponed the elections until after Bhutto had been tried in court. Bhutto was found guilty of complicity in murder of a political opponent, and later hanged. The memory of Bhutto and the circumstances surrounding his fall became a rallying cry for his daughter, Benazir, who, during the 1980s, embraced the politics of revenge as she began her political ascent in steadfast opposition to Zia and martial law.
Zia ul-Haq's eleven years of rule left a profound--and controversial--legacy on Pakistani society. Zia's military junta differed in important aspects from the earlier military regime of Ayub Khan. Like Zia, Ayub Khan had been contemptuous of politicians; his style of governing was autocratic in the tradition of the British Raj and its Mughal predecessors. Nevertheless, Ayub Khan welcomed Western influences in his quest for economic development, and he introduced various reform measures, such as the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance, which provided protection for women within their families. Moreover, early in his rule, Ayub Khan isolated the army from the governmental decision-making process and instead relied heavily on senior civil servants and a few conservative politicians.
Zia's rule, by contrast, was notable for the high visibility of a small number of army officers and for his fervent advocacy of a more stringent version of Islamic orthodoxy. Zia made clear his desire to supplant the prevailing legal system with Islamic law, the sharia, and championed a role for Islam that was more state directed and less a matter of personal choice. He proclaimed that all laws had to conform with Islamic tenets and values and charged the military with protecting the nation's ideology as well as its territorial integrity. His establishment of the Federal Shariat Court to examine laws in light of the injunctions of Islam further involved the state in religious affairs.
The crucial and perplexing question of the role Islam should play in Pakistan existed before the creation of the nation and remains unresolved today. Jinnah, himself, supplied a historical reference to the dilemma, stating in his inaugural address, "You will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State." Although each of Pakistan's indigenous constitutions has defined Pakistan as an Islamic state, determining what this means in practice has usually been left open to individual preference. Zia elevated the tempo of the debate over the role of Islam in Pakistani society by directly involving the state with religion.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 and its nine-year occupation of that country not only had a direct impact on Pakistani society in general but also held vital importance for Zia's leadership, influencing his domestic and international image as well as the survivability of his regime. From the beginning of his rule, Zia was regarded by much of the world community as a usurper of power and as something of an international pariah. He furthered his isolation by deciding, early in his regime, to pursue the development of nuclear weapons, a program begun earlier by Bhutto. Building on the long and close relationship between the United States and Pakistan dating from the early years of the Cold War, United States president Jimmy Carter and his administration worked energetically but unsuccessfully to discourage Pakistan's nuclear program, and finally suspending all economic and military aid on April 6, 1979. The execution of Bhutto two days earlier that month had added to United States displeasure with the Zia regime and Pakistan. Relations with the United States soured further when a Pakistani mob burned down the United States Embassy in November 1979.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan abruptly ended Pakistan's estrangement from the United States. Within days, Pakistan once again became Washington's indispensable frontline ally against Soviet expansionism. Massive military and economic assistance flowed into Pakistan despite Zia's continued pursuit of nuclear weapons technology. Pakistan's nuclear program made major advances in the 1980s. Moreover, the change in geostrategic circumstances following the occupation of neighboring Afghanistan allowed Zia to postpone the promised elections repeatedly while he consolidated his position. Foreign assistance provided a stimulus to the economy and became an important means by which Zia neutralized his opponents. The war, depicted by Zia and the Afghan resistance as a holy war of believers versus nonbelievers, facilitated Zia's efforts to transform Pakistan into a state governed by Islamic law.
The war in Afghanistan had many profound and disturbing residual effects on Pakistani society. Pakistan absorbed more than 3.2 million Afghan refugees into its North-West Frontier Province and Balochistan. The influx of so many displaced people threatened to overwhelm the local economies as refugees competed with Pakistanis for resources. With the refugees came an arsenal of weapons. Domestic violence increased dramatically during the war years, and observers spoke dismally of a "Kalashnikov culture" asserting itself in Pakistani society.
By the time of Zia's death in an airplane explosion in August 1988, an agreement had been signed signaling the end of Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan, and the Soviet pullout had already begun. Domestic politics in Pakistan were surprisingly tranquil as Pakistan prepared for a transition of power and elections for the National Assembly, which Zia had earlier dissolved. An era seemed to have ended and a new, more promising one to have begun. The prospect for genuine democracy in Pakistan appeared to have dramatically improved, and Pakistan appeared to have reached a watershed in its political development.
After her party won a plurality of seats in the parliamentary elections of November 1988, Benazir Bhutto formed a fragile coalition government and assumed the position of prime minister. She became the first freely elected leader in Pakistan since her father was deposed and the first woman to hold such a high position in a Muslim country. Confronted by severe disadvantages from the start, Benazir soon discovered that the art of governance was considerably more difficult than orchestrating opposition politics. An experienced politician but an inexperienced head of government, she was outmaneuvered by her political opposition, intimidated by the military, and diverted from her reform program. Benazir was also frustrated by her inability to control the spreading social disorder, the widespread banditry, and the mounting ethnic violence between Sindhis and muhajirs in her home province of Sindh. A prolonged struggle between Bhutto and the provincial government of Mian Nawaz Sharif in Punjab culminated in bureaucrat-turned- president Ghulam Ishaq Khan's siding with Nawaz Sharif against Benazir. Empowered by the Eighth Amendment provisions of the constitution--a direct legacy of the Zia ul-Haq regime, which strengthened the powers of the president at the expense of the prime minister--Ishaq Khan dismissed Benazir in August 1990 for alleged corruption and her inability to maintain law and order. He also dismissed her cabinet and dissolved the National Assembly as well as the Sindh North-West Frontier Province provincial assemblies and ordered new elections for October.
The struggle over the character and soul of Pakistan continues. Although democracy returned to Pakistan in 1988 after a long lapse, it is on trial daily, its continuation by no means certain. Definition of the vision of what Pakistan represents is still being contested from many opposing quarters.
Pakistan's status in the world has changed dramatically in the nearly one-half century of its existence as an independent state. In the twilight years of the Cold War, it achieved international stature as a "frontline" state during the Soviet occupation of neighboring Afghanistan. With the Soviet departure from Afghanistan in the late 1980s and the end of the Cold War, Pakistan's role in the world arena has become less visible, and its voice has diminished to the level of many other developing states competing in the new world order. Yet, during the years it spent in support of the Afghan struggle against Soviet domination, Pakistan impressed upon the world community a new appreciation of its standing among Islamic nations and of its ideological commitment to causes it champions.
In terms of its military and economic development, Pakistan is a "threshold" state. The world's first Islamic "de facto" nuclear-weapon state, it has long been at loggerheads with its larger and more powerful neighbor, India, which, like Pakistan, denies having built nuclear weapons but not its ability to do so at the "turn of a screw." A nation well positioned to serve as an economic model for other developing countries in the post-Cold- War era--especially the Islamic states of the former Soviet Union--Pakistan has shown steady and impressive long-term economic growth and is successfully making the transition from an overwhelmingly agricultural to an industrial economy. Yet, despite its considerable achievements in technology and commerce, Pakistan confronts many of the same problems it faced at its birth. The nation has one of the world's highest population growth rates, making it difficult for the government to address the problems of poverty and attendant ills that affect so many in its society. Indeed, social development has lagged behind economic gains. Quality of life indicators--literacy rates, especially among women, human rights, and universal access to heath care--have shown Pakistan to be a country with serious deficiencies.
Throughout history, Pakistan has been strongly affected by its geostrategic placement as a South Asian frontier located at the juncture of South Asia, West Asia, and Central Asia. Scholars have called Pakistan the "fulcrum of Asia" because since antiquity invaders have traversed this frontier carrying with them the seeds of great civilizations. The armies of Islam came to South Asia through the same mountain passes in the north-west of Pakistan that the Indo-Aryans, Alexander the Great, the Kushans, and others had earlier entered.
Present-day Pakistan has been shaped by its rich history, pre-Islamic as well as Islamic, but colored in particular by the exigencies of its troubled and bloody birth as a nation in 1947. The partitioning of British India into India and Pakistan was preceded and accompanied by communal riots of unprecedented violence and scope that forced millions of Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh refugees to flee across the new international borders.
The partition plan that led to the separate states of India and Pakistan was drawn up in an atmosphere of urgency as a swell of religious and ethnic unrest shook India. Under guidelines established with the help of Britain's last viceroy in India, Lord Louis Mountbatten, the perplexing task of establishing the new boundaries of Pakistan was accomplished. Most Indian Muslims lived either on the dusty plains of Punjab or in the humid delta of Bengal. Contiguous Muslim-majority districts in Punjab and Bengal were awarded to Pakistan under the plan's guidelines. The additional task of deciding the status of the more than 500 semiautonomous princely states of India still remained. All but three of these quickly acceded to either Pakistan or India. But the two largest princely states, Jammu and Kashmir (ususally just called Kashmir) and Hyderabad, and one small state, Junagadh, posed special problems. Hyderabad and Junagadh were located within territory awarded to India but were both Hindu majority states ruled by a Muslim leader. These states hesitated but were quickly incorporated by force into India. The status of the third state, Kashmir, which had borders with both India and Pakistan, proved especially problematic. Unlike Hyderabad and Junagadh, Kashmir had a Muslim majority and was ruled by a Hindu. Kashmir's maharaja was reluctant to accede to either Pakistan or India, but when threatened by a Muslim uprising (with outside support from Pakistani tribesmen) against his unpopular rule, he hurriedly signed the documents of accession, in October 1947, required by India before it would provide aid. Pakistan then launched an active military and diplomatic campaign to undo the accession, which it maintained was secured by fraud. Kashmir was subsequently divided by the occupying armies of both nations, the Indians holding two-thirds of the state, including the Muslim- dominated Vale of Kashmir and the Hindu-majority region of Jammu to the south, while the Pakistanis controlled the western third, which they call Azad (Free) Kashmir. India and Pakistan would fight two major wars to maintain or seize control over this state: in 1947-48 and in 1965. Kashmir's contested and indeterminate status continues dangerously to complicate relations between South Asia's two most powerful states.
The bifurcated Pakistan that existed from August 1947 to December 1971 was composed of two parts, or wings, known as East Pakistan and West Pakistan, separated by 1,600 kilometers of Indian territory. Observers pointed out, however, that the people of the two wings were estranged from each other in language and cultural traditions: that the Bengali "monsoon Islam" of the East Wing was alien to the "desert Islam" of the West Wing. The East Wing, notable for its Bengali ethnic homogeneity and its collective Bangla cultural and linguistic heritage, contained over half of the population of Pakistan and sharply contrasted with the ethnic and linguistic diversity of the West Wing. The West Wing consisted of four major ethnic groups--Punjabis, Pakhtuns, Sindhis, and Baloch. The muhajirs constituted a fifth important group. The political leaders of Pakistan, however--particularly those of West Pakistan--asserted that the Islamic faith and a shared fear of "Hindu India" provided an indestructible bond joining the two societies into one nation. This assertion proved flawed, however. A culture of distrust grew between the two wings, fueled by imbalances of representation in the government and military. Furthermore, Bengali politicians argued that the economic "underdevelopment" of East Pakistan was a result of the "internal colonialism" of the rapacious capitalist class of West Pakistan. In the final analysis, real and perceived iniquities would fray this "indestructible" bond holding the country together. Less than a quarter century after the country's founding, Pakistan would fission, the eastern wing becoming the independent nation of Bangladesh.
It was not Pakistan's precarious security nor even its cultural and ethnic diversity, but rather characteristics deeply rooted in the nation's polity that most impeded its early democratic development. The essentials for such a process-- disciplined political parties and a participatory mass electorate--were missing in Pakistan's first years as an independent state. The All-India Muslim League, the party that led the struggle for Pakistan, failed to mature into a stable democratic party with a national following capable of holding together the nation's diverse ethnic and cultural groups. Instead, it disintegrated into rival factions soon after independence. Lack of a consensus over prospective Islamic provisions for the nation's governance, Bengali resentment over the West Pakistanis' initial imposition of Urdu as the national language, and the reluctance of West Pakistani politicians to share power with politicians of the East Wing--all were factors that delayed the acceptance of Pakistan's first constitution until nine years after independence. The nation was also dealt a severe psychological blow when in September 1948, only thirteen months after independence, Mohammad Ali Jinnah--known reverentially as the Quaid-i-Azam (Great Leader)--died. Jinnah's role in the creation of Pakistan had been so dominant that it has been observed that he had neither peers nor associates, only lieutenants and aides. Jinnah's primary lieutenant, Liaquat Ali Khan, the nation's first prime minister, was assassinated in October 1951.
Jinnah's and Liaquat's leadership, so critical to the nation in its infancy, was replaced in the early and mid-1950s by the generally lackluster, often inept performances of the nation's politicians. Those few politicians who were effective were all too willing to play upon the emotions of an electorate as yet unaccustomed to open democratic debate. The ethnic and provincial causes championed by these politicians too often took precedence over national concerns. The government was weak and unable to quell the violence and ethnic unrest that distracted it from building strong parliamentary institutions.
Believing that Pakistan's first attempt at establishing a parliamentary system of government failed, in the late 1950s the military ousted the "inefficient and rascally" politicians. During this period, however, the belief that democracy was the "natural state" of Pakistan and an important political goal was not entirely abandoned. Mohammad Ayub Khan, Pakistan's first "soldier-statesman," regarded himself as more of a reformer than an autocrat and, as chief martial law administrator, early on acknowledged the need to relinquish some military control. In his unique governmental system called the "Basic Democracies," Ayub Khan became the "civilian" head of a military regime. Ayub Khan's "democracy from above" allowed for controlled participation of the electorate and was supposed to capture the peculiar "genius" of Pakistan. To his critics, however, Ayub Khan's political system was better characterized as a form of "representational dictatorship." In 1969 an ailing Ayub Khan was forced to resign following nationwide rioting against his regime's perceived corruption, spent economic policies, and responsibility for Pakistan's defeat in the 1965 Indo-Pakistani War over Kashmir. Ayub Khan was briefly succeeded by his army commander in chief, General Mohammad Yahya Khan, who would best be remembered for presiding over the two most traumatic and psychologically devastating events in the country's history: the humiliating defeat of Pakistan's armed forces by India and the secession of East Pakistan.
The East Wing of Pakistan had not benefitted greatly from Ayub Khan's "Decade of Progress," with its gains in agricultural production and trade. Bengali politicians wanted to improve what they considered to be the second-class political and economic status of their province vis-à-vis West Pakistan, just as they had earlier agitated for greater cultural and linguistic recognition. The country's first nationwide direct elections were held in December 1970. The East Pakistan-based Awami League, campaigning on a platform calling for almost total provincial autonomy, won virtually all the seats allotted to the East Wing and was thereby assured a majority in the national legislature.
The results of Pakistan's first nationwide experiment in democracy were not honored. Fearing Bengali dominance in the nation's political affairs, West Pakistani politicians, led by Pakistan People's Party (PPP) leader Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and supported by senior army officers, most of whom were Punjabis, pressured Yahya Khan to postpone the convening of the National Assembly. When the Bengalis of East Pakistan revolted openly at this turn of events, the Pakistani military banned the Awami League, arrested its leader, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and began a massive military crackdown. In the savage civil war that followed, tens of thousands of Bengalis were killed, and an estimated 10 million people took refuge in India. In early December 1971, India entered the war and within weeks decisively defeated the Pakistan military. From the aftermath of the war and the dismemberment of Pakistan came the birth of a new nation: Bangladesh.
To most Pakistanis, the news of Pakistan's defeat came as a numbing shock--their military was disgraced and condemned for its brutal crackdown in East Pakistan. Literally overnight, the country had lost its status as the largest Muslim nation in the world. Gone, too, were any illusions of military parity with India.
Pakistan soon recovered under the charismatic leadership of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who launched a forceful campaign to restore the people's self-confidence and to repair Pakistan's tarnished image abroad. Initially, Bhutto was sworn in as president and chief martial law administrator, the two positions he took over from Yahya Khan. Although he soon revoked formal martial law, he governed autocratically until he was overthrown in 1977.
A man of contradictions, a product of a privileged feudal background, the Western-educated Bhutto nonetheless expounded populist themes of shared wealth, national unity, and the need to restore political democracy under the slogan "Islam our Faith, Democracy our Polity, Socialism our Economy." Bhutto nationalized a large number of the most important manufacturing, insurance, and domestically owned banking industries--actions that substantially slowed economic growth.
By the mid-1970s, Bhutto's autocratic tendencies were interfering with his ability to govern. His determination to crush any and all potential opposition had become obsessive. Bhutto purged his party of real or imagined opponents, created a praetorian security force answerable only to himself, brought the prestigious civil service under his personal control, and sacked military officers who possessed what he described as "Bonapartist tendencies." Fatefully, Bhutto then named General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq--a relatively junior and obscure general--to hold the top army post. Most observers had predicted that Bhutto's PPP would retain control of the National Assembly in the elections of March 1977, but the margin of the PPP's victory was so overwhelming that charges of fraud were immediately made, and riots erupted throughout the country. General Zia was well positioned to act against Bhutto. He abruptly informed the nation that he had taken over as the chief martial law administrator but assured the people that the military desired only to supervise fair elections, which he said would be held in ninety days. This was the first of many promises Zia did not keep. As election time approached, Zia announced that criminal charges were being brought against Bhutto and postponed the elections until after Bhutto had been tried in court. Bhutto was found guilty of complicity in murder of a political opponent, and later hanged. The memory of Bhutto and the circumstances surrounding his fall became a rallying cry for his daughter, Benazir, who, during the 1980s, embraced the politics of revenge as she began her political ascent in steadfast opposition to Zia and martial law.
Zia ul-Haq's eleven years of rule left a profound--and controversial--legacy on Pakistani society. Zia's military junta differed in important aspects from the earlier military regime of Ayub Khan. Like Zia, Ayub Khan had been contemptuous of politicians; his style of governing was autocratic in the tradition of the British Raj and its Mughal predecessors. Nevertheless, Ayub Khan welcomed Western influences in his quest for economic development, and he introduced various reform measures, such as the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance, which provided protection for women within their families. Moreover, early in his rule, Ayub Khan isolated the army from the governmental decision-making process and instead relied heavily on senior civil servants and a few conservative politicians.
Zia's rule, by contrast, was notable for the high visibility of a small number of army officers and for his fervent advocacy of a more stringent version of Islamic orthodoxy. Zia made clear his desire to supplant the prevailing legal system with Islamic law, the sharia, and championed a role for Islam that was more state directed and less a matter of personal choice. He proclaimed that all laws had to conform with Islamic tenets and values and charged the military with protecting the nation's ideology as well as its territorial integrity. His establishment of the Federal Shariat Court to examine laws in light of the injunctions of Islam further involved the state in religious affairs.
The crucial and perplexing question of the role Islam should play in Pakistan existed before the creation of the nation and remains unresolved today. Jinnah, himself, supplied a historical reference to the dilemma, stating in his inaugural address, "You will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State." Although each of Pakistan's indigenous constitutions has defined Pakistan as an Islamic state, determining what this means in practice has usually been left open to individual preference. Zia elevated the tempo of the debate over the role of Islam in Pakistani society by directly involving the state with religion.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 and its nine-year occupation of that country not only had a direct impact on Pakistani society in general but also held vital importance for Zia's leadership, influencing his domestic and international image as well as the survivability of his regime. From the beginning of his rule, Zia was regarded by much of the world community as a usurper of power and as something of an international pariah. He furthered his isolation by deciding, early in his regime, to pursue the development of nuclear weapons, a program begun earlier by Bhutto. Building on the long and close relationship between the United States and Pakistan dating from the early years of the Cold War, United States president Jimmy Carter and his administration worked energetically but unsuccessfully to discourage Pakistan's nuclear program, and finally suspending all economic and military aid on April 6, 1979. The execution of Bhutto two days earlier that month had added to United States displeasure with the Zia regime and Pakistan. Relations with the United States soured further when a Pakistani mob burned down the United States Embassy in November 1979.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan abruptly ended Pakistan's estrangement from the United States. Within days, Pakistan once again became Washington's indispensable frontline ally against Soviet expansionism. Massive military and economic assistance flowed into Pakistan despite Zia's continued pursuit of nuclear weapons technology. Pakistan's nuclear program made major advances in the 1980s. Moreover, the change in geostrategic circumstances following the occupation of neighboring Afghanistan allowed Zia to postpone the promised elections repeatedly while he consolidated his position. Foreign assistance provided a stimulus to the economy and became an important means by which Zia neutralized his opponents. The war, depicted by Zia and the Afghan resistance as a holy war of believers versus nonbelievers, facilitated Zia's efforts to transform Pakistan into a state governed by Islamic law.
The war in Afghanistan had many profound and disturbing residual effects on Pakistani society. Pakistan absorbed more than 3.2 million Afghan refugees into its North-West Frontier Province and Balochistan. The influx of so many displaced people threatened to overwhelm the local economies as refugees competed with Pakistanis for resources. With the refugees came an arsenal of weapons. Domestic violence increased dramatically during the war years, and observers spoke dismally of a "Kalashnikov culture" asserting itself in Pakistani society.
By the time of Zia's death in an airplane explosion in August 1988, an agreement had been signed signaling the end of Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan, and the Soviet pullout had already begun. Domestic politics in Pakistan were surprisingly tranquil as Pakistan prepared for a transition of power and elections for the National Assembly, which Zia had earlier dissolved. An era seemed to have ended and a new, more promising one to have begun. The prospect for genuine democracy in Pakistan appeared to have dramatically improved, and Pakistan appeared to have reached a watershed in its political development.
After her party won a plurality of seats in the parliamentary elections of November 1988, Benazir Bhutto formed a fragile coalition government and assumed the position of prime minister. She became the first freely elected leader in Pakistan since her father was deposed and the first woman to hold such a high position in a Muslim country. Confronted by severe disadvantages from the start, Benazir soon discovered that the art of governance was considerably more difficult than orchestrating opposition politics. An experienced politician but an inexperienced head of government, she was outmaneuvered by her political opposition, intimidated by the military, and diverted from her reform program. Benazir was also frustrated by her inability to control the spreading social disorder, the widespread banditry, and the mounting ethnic violence between Sindhis and muhajirs in her home province of Sindh. A prolonged struggle between Bhutto and the provincial government of Mian Nawaz Sharif in Punjab culminated in bureaucrat-turned- president Ghulam Ishaq Khan's siding with Nawaz Sharif against Benazir. Empowered by the Eighth Amendment provisions of the constitution--a direct legacy of the Zia ul-Haq regime, which strengthened the powers of the president at the expense of the prime minister--Ishaq Khan dismissed Benazir in August 1990 for alleged corruption and her inability to maintain law and order. He also dismissed her cabinet and dissolved the National Assembly as well as the Sindh North-West Frontier Province provincial assemblies and ordered new elections for October.
Pakistan: A Cradle of Civilization Breeds a Young Nation
As a nation, Pakistan is a mere 60 years old, but as a civilization, it is an astonishing 4,500 years old. One of the world’s earliest civilizations, the Indus Valley culture once thrived where a large part of Pakistan stands today. Since then, the country’s journey toward nation building has been long and arduous, marked by milestones like the freedom struggle, independence from British rule, separation from India, government formation, and alternating civilian and military rule. Unfortunately, though, the country is yet to reach some sort of constancy. Geographically, Pakistan lies at the meeting point of South Asia, Central Asia, and South West Asia. Bordered by Iran, Afghanistan, China, and India, it has an area of 340,403 square miles. Though a very poor nation at birth, Pakistan clocked above-average growth in the initial years of its formation. However, a tumultuous political climate stymied development in the 1990s. Nevertheless, the beginning of this century saw economic growth back on track despite a military rule.
History
From invasion to division
Pakistan is a part of the Indian subcontinent, the Southeast Asian peninsula that, for the greater part, is comprised of Pakistan, India, and Sri Lanka. The nation’s history more or less mirrors the history of the subcontinent. After the Indus Valley Civilization, which flourished largely in Pakistan and some parts of today’s India, ended around 1700 BC, the subcontinent saw its next big milestone in history during AD 700-1800 when many Muslim invaders raided and overtook the region. Prominent among these were Mohammed of Ghazni, Qutubuddin Aibak, and the Mughal emperors. In fact, this long period of Muslim rule forms the basis of Pakistan’s culture and identity today. The Mughals were the last Muslim rulers of the Indian subcontinent. In the 18th Century, when the Mughals were considerably weak, the British snatched control and spread their roots throughout the subcontinent. They ruled until a long, and arguably history’s biggest, freedom struggle unseated them. But before leaving, they partitioned India and Pakistan into separate countries. This was at the insistence of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League which was formed at the height of the freedom struggle in 1906. Thus, finally, the birth of Pakistan took place on August 14, 1947. India was declared independent the next day. The State of Pakistan comprised two territories, West Pakistan, which is current-day Pakistan, and East Pakistan, which is at present Bangladesh. The two territories lay separated by 1,000 miles of Indian territory.
The division of India and Pakistan dislocated millions of people. Muslim refugees moved to Pakistan from India and numerous Hindus and Sikhs moved to India from Pakistan. One issue that has been festering between India and Pakistan since partition is the territory of Kashmir. During the independence of Pakistan and India, Kashmir had a largely Muslim population but a Hindu king who ruled under British protection. The king decided to remain with India during partition. However, Pakistan has been claiming its right over Kashmir on the grounds that 85% of the region’s population is Muslim. There have been three wars between India and Pakistan over this issue. The dispute regarding the area remains a barrier to friendly relations between the two countries.
History
From invasion to division
Pakistan is a part of the Indian subcontinent, the Southeast Asian peninsula that, for the greater part, is comprised of Pakistan, India, and Sri Lanka. The nation’s history more or less mirrors the history of the subcontinent. After the Indus Valley Civilization, which flourished largely in Pakistan and some parts of today’s India, ended around 1700 BC, the subcontinent saw its next big milestone in history during AD 700-1800 when many Muslim invaders raided and overtook the region. Prominent among these were Mohammed of Ghazni, Qutubuddin Aibak, and the Mughal emperors. In fact, this long period of Muslim rule forms the basis of Pakistan’s culture and identity today. The Mughals were the last Muslim rulers of the Indian subcontinent. In the 18th Century, when the Mughals were considerably weak, the British snatched control and spread their roots throughout the subcontinent. They ruled until a long, and arguably history’s biggest, freedom struggle unseated them. But before leaving, they partitioned India and Pakistan into separate countries. This was at the insistence of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League which was formed at the height of the freedom struggle in 1906. Thus, finally, the birth of Pakistan took place on August 14, 1947. India was declared independent the next day. The State of Pakistan comprised two territories, West Pakistan, which is current-day Pakistan, and East Pakistan, which is at present Bangladesh. The two territories lay separated by 1,000 miles of Indian territory.
The division of India and Pakistan dislocated millions of people. Muslim refugees moved to Pakistan from India and numerous Hindus and Sikhs moved to India from Pakistan. One issue that has been festering between India and Pakistan since partition is the territory of Kashmir. During the independence of Pakistan and India, Kashmir had a largely Muslim population but a Hindu king who ruled under British protection. The king decided to remain with India during partition. However, Pakistan has been claiming its right over Kashmir on the grounds that 85% of the region’s population is Muslim. There have been three wars between India and Pakistan over this issue. The dispute regarding the area remains a barrier to friendly relations between the two countries.
History of Pakistan After Independence
After Independence
Jinnah became Pakistan’s first governor-general. The newly established country ended up with few natural resources, little manufacturing capability and relatively little of the Raj’s old administrative-commercial infrastructure. But its most serious problem was simply that there were two Pakistan, separated by 1600 km of hostile India.
West Pakistan consisted of Baluchistan, Sind West Punjab (including what’ s now the NWPF) and – pending a Kashmir settlement – so – called Azad (Free) Kashmir and the Northern Areas, while Bengal and part of Sylhet district made up east Pakistan. Though the west was militarily dominant, Bengalis made up slightly more than half the population, and their tea and jute supplied most of the country’s export earnings. The tone was set early and there was fierce eastern objections to Urdu as the official language. The only real connection between the two halves was that they were Muslim.
In September 1948, barely a year into independence and in the midst of the war with India, Jinnah died of tuberculosis. His death was body blow for the struggling country, which had no other politicians equal to Jinnah – known posthumously as Quaid-i-Azam (pronounced ‘kye-dee-AH-zum’) or Great Leader.
His deputy and friend Liaquat Ali Khan became Prime Minister. A Mohajir, he believed like Jinnah that Pakistan should be a secular state. Many Muslim religious leaders felt otherwise, and the argument still rages today. When Liaquat Ali was assassinated three years later in Rawalpindi, Pakistan headed towards chaos.
A muddle of squabbling governors –general and Prime Ministers and severe economic slump followed, but in March 1956-8 ½ years after its founding – Pakistan finally produced a constitution, becoming the Islamic republic of Pakistan, with a parliamentary form of government. West Pakistan’s Provinces were amalgamated into a single mega-province in symmetry with East Pakistan.
But President Iskander Mirza, a retired major general with no patience for the factionalism, bickering and opportunism that was (and still is) typical of Pakistan politics, nor with the growing autonomy movement in the east, in October 1958 abrogated the constitution, abolished political parties and declared martial law – a state Pakistan has been in, in one from or another, for most of its life since then. Mirza promised it would be brief, until he could ‘clean up the mess’ and write a new constitution.
Karachi had been the temporary capital but in 1959 it was decided to build a brand new one near the Grand Trunk Road, the foothills and the army’s headquarters at Rawalpindi. Construction began on the city of Islamabad in 1961.
China, following its invasion of Tibet in 1950, occupied parts of Ladakh, Baltistan and the upper Shimshal Valley in the mid-1950s.
Ayub Khan
Mirza’s Prime –minister was the army commander-in-chief, General Muhammad Ayub Khan, and three other ministers were lieutenant –generals . Within hours of their swearing in, they told Mirza to resign and Ayub Khan assumed the presidency too.
Martial law lasted over 3 ½ year. In March 1962 Ayub presented a new constitution proving for a powerful president, a National Assembly and east and west provincial assemblies, chosen by a bizarre system of easily manipulated village-level elections. He, of course, was confirmed as president.
Despite limited political freedoms, many Pakistanis look back fondly on the early Ayub years. Economic growth was vigorous. As part of a water – rights settlement with India, the world Bank gave enormous sums to build Mangla dam on the Jhelum River and Tarbela Dam, the world’s biggest earthen Dam, on the Indus. From the USA Came military aid. Somehow the East Pakistanis never seemed to get their share of the pie.
When China and India clashed in 1962 over their border in Ladakh (still disputed today), Pakistan saw a new ally. In a 1964 thaw, China and Pakistan sorted out their own Karakoram border and proposed a ‘Friendship Highway’ over the mountains (a story claims that Ayub declined a similar offer by Soviet Premier Bulganin to build a road through Ishkoman).
Pakistan already had a Swat-to-Gilgit jeep road underway. A 1966 pact expanded this to a two-lane highway from Havelian to the border, the so-called Karakoram Highway, with Pakistanis working north from the Indus and Chinese working south from the Khunjerab Pass, as well as on their own side. In the end the work went on in Pakistan until 1980.
Ayub was re-elected in 1965. in the same year Pakistan and India again went to war over Kashmir, a 2 ½-week exercise in which Pakistan took a beating. After that Ayub became remote and dictatorial, sacking his foreign minister (a Sind landowner named Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto) and arresting Sheikh Mujibur Raman (Sheikh Mujib), leader of the Awami Party which advocated autonomy was made on Ayub’s life.
Yahya Khan & Civil War
in March 1969 a ill Ayub handed responsibility over to his own commander-in-chief, general Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan, and resigned. Yahya imposed martial law again and named himself president. Among his early acts was to end the autonomy of the old princely states of the north – Chitral, Swat, Dir, Hunza, Nagar and various Baltistan fiefdoms.
Political activity was legally resumed in January 1970, the old separate western Province were resurrected and general elections for a civilian government were scheduled for December. In the meantime, a cyclone wreaked havoc in East Pakistan and West Pakistan’s shamefully indifferent response was the last straw for the Bengalis.
The elections turned Pakistan on its head. The charismatic Z A Bhutto and his Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) won a majority of West Pakistan seats in the National Assembly, but Sheikh Mujib’s Awami League won nearly all of East Pakistan’s seats, giving it an overall majority. Even Bhutto refused to allow the easterners to from the government. After some futile attempts at compromise, Yahya suspended the assembly and East Pakistan went on general strike. In March 1971 the army clamped down, Sheikh Mujib was arrested and civil war broke out.
Army cruelty was met by an equally cruel resistance, and hundreds of thousands died. The Bengalis declared themselves the independent state of Bangladesh. In November, India, flooded with more than nine million refugees, declared war on Pakistan; hostilities also broke out on the western border. Again Pakistan took a drubbing, and surrendered within weeks.
Bangladesh went its way in January 1972, and Z A Bhutto replaced Yahya Khan as president of a truncated Pakistan. When Bangladesh was admitted to the British Commonwealth in the same year, Pakistan withdrew from that organization.
Bhutto & Zia
Faced with demoralization and imminent economic collapse, Bhutto undertook major judicial, agrarian, health and educational reforms aimed at greater social equity. He nationalized bank and industries and restructured the military, and there was talk of land reform. A 1973 constitution revived the post of prime minister, which he assumed.
In February 1973 Bhutto sacked the Baluchistan government, whom he suspected of wanting to secede. The resulting Baluch tribal uprising, in which some 10,000 people died, was only put down with some the help of the air force. Despite his populist beginnings, Bhutto began allying himself with industrialists and zamindars (rural landowners), and set up a powerful ‘palace guard’, the Federal Security Service.
Bhutto met Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi at Simla (India) in June 1972, where they agreed to ‘respect’ the so-called line of control –ie the 1971 cease-fire line, little different from the 1949 one – and to resolve future differences peacefully. (in trying to justify its continued hold on Kashmir, India has since suggested that the wording of the Simla Agreement endorses the line of control as a genuine border.) Pakistan recognized Bangladesh in 1974.
The (PPP) did very well in 1977 elections, but they were accused of fraud and people took to the streets in protest across the country. Bhutto declared martial law in Karachi, Hyderabad and Lahore and had opposition leaders arrested. With anti-government violence on the rise his army chief of staff, general Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, on 5 July 1977 staged a bloodless coup and it was back to martial law. Bhutto was arrested on trumped-up murder charges, tried and convicted, and despite an international outcry he was hanged in April 1979.
Zia had promised elections within 90 days but ended up ruling by decree for 7 ½ years, banning political parties, introduction Islamic penal laws and moving the country toward strict rule. His big windfall was the December 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, after which the USA began funneling huge amounts of military assistance to Pakistan, and Zia went from pariah to hero of the fee world. Afghan Mujahideen set up bases in Pakistan, and almost four million refugees eventually crossed into the NWFP and Baluchistan. With them came a flood of guns and drugs.
In 1982, Zia visited China, the KKH was inaugurated, the Northern Areas were opened to tourism and the Khunjerab pass was opened to official traffic and trade (and to tourists in 1986).
Meanwhile the PPP and other parties began re-forming, under the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy. Bhutto’s widow Nusrat and his Western-educated daughter Benazir were elected to chair the PPP. A programme of civil disobedience in 1983 failed to dislodge Zia, and many activists, including Bhutto, went into exile. Thousands died in anti-government riots across Sind.
Under domestic and International pressure Zia permitted a non-party national Assembly election in February 1985. The following December he legalized political parties under strict conditions , and lifted martial law.
Benazir Bhutto
Bhutto returned from England April1986 and traveled round the country drawing rapturous, record-size crowds and calling for Zia’s resignation and free elections. But when she and other were briefly jailed in August, the momentum was lost. She surprised some supporters by agreeing to an arranged marriage, In December 1987, to Sindhi businessman Asif Lai Zardari.
In May 1988 Zia unexpectedly dismissed his hand –picked prime minister, Mohammad Khan Junejo, dissolved the assemblies and scheduled elections for 16 November. But on 17 August Zia, five of his generals and the US ambassador died in the crash of a military plane at Bahawalpur, the cause of which has never been determined (or at any rate never made public).
Surprisingly, things at that point moved strictly in accordance with the constitution. Acting president Ghulam ishaq Khan insisted the election would go ahead and the Supreme Court upheld a PPP petition for political parties to participate. Despite strenuous efforts by the military to discredit them, the PPP did just well enough to from a coalition government. In 1 December 1988, in an atmosphere of national euphoria, Bhutto was sworn in as prime minister, the first ever elected woman leader of a Muslim country.
The job was formidable for a 36-year-old with no political experience, particularly with the military looking over her shoulder. She declared war on the burgeoning heroin trade, and received death threats for her trouble. Provincial party politics scuttled social and economic programmes, and prices soared.
In foreign policy Bhutto seemed to be a hostage of the army. The last Soviet troops left Afghanistan in February 1989 but the war continued by proxy, the Soviets aiding Kabul and the USA arming the guerrillas with the help of Pakistan military gence. In an encouraging move. Indian Prime minister Rajiv Gandhi visited Islamabad in July 1989, but by the end of the year India n troops had burst into Kashmir to begin a programme of repression that turned things sour. On a positive note, Pakistan in 1990 rejoined the Commonwealth.
Pakistan politics being more about power than principals, Bhutto’s opponents hammered away at her. The biggest thorn in her side was Zia Protégé Mian Nawaz Sharif, then chief Minister of Punjab. Bhutto did’t help matters with her arrogant style. PPP government coalitions in Sind and the NWFP collapsed. Her husband’s legal threats against at least 10 Pakistani newspapers antagonised the press. In October 1989, a vote of no confidence was only narrowly averted in the national Assembly.
In 1989 and 1990, hundreds died in mob violence and political terrorism among Sindhis, Pashtuns and Mohajirs in Karachi and Hyderabad. Rural banditry and kidnapping became a growth industry in Sind. Bhutto (herself a Sindhi) demanded army help for the Sind government but the army essentially wanted martial law.
President Ishaq Khan finally bowed to pressure and on 6 August 1990 dismissed the 20-month-old government, citing corruption, nepotism and abuse of power. In a series of special tribunals, Bhutto faced corruption charges (still unresolved), and her husband was arrested on charges of kidnapping and extortion.
In elections two months later, a PPP-dominated alliance was crushed, Nawaz Sharif became Prime minister and his Islamic Democratic Alliance formed ruling coalitions in every province. The Bhutto name had been exorcised from Pakistani politics, and a brilliant chance to put Pakistan on its feet had been squandered.
Nawaz Sharif
Fears of a return to martial law have not materialized but Nawaz Sharif is Having a rough ride, and the army is still clearly in the back ground.
In 1990, the USA suspended US$564 million in economic and military aid over Pakistan’s alleged nuclear bomb programme. The 1990-91 Kuwait War brought an end to huge remittances by Pakistani workers in Kuwait. The aid cut-off and the war generated bitter anti-American feelings, and most foreign tourists , aid workers and missionaries either left the country or moved around very carefully.
The government was rocked in 1991by a savings bank scandal in the wake of the BCCI collapse, and Sharif’s own family came out of it with dirty hands. While the zamindars and others with connections prospered, great Swaths of people at the bottom end simply gave up on finding work.
Worst of all lawlessness was spreading all over the country –violence in Karachi, routine looting and kidnappings in rural Sind and southern Punjab, guns in the NWFP, Sunni-Shea tension in the Northern Areas and a general rise in crime. Few were betting on Nawaz Sharif.
The USA and USSR agreed in 1991 to end aid to the Afghanistan government and guerrillas. With the Afghan government and guerrillas. With the collapse of the USSR (later CIS)at the end of that year, Pakistan began to lose its image as a valued strategic ally. The Afghan conflict moved into endgame. In April 1992, Afghan President Najibullah was ejected in a palace coup and, one by one, Afghanistan’s Major cities fell to the Mujahideen. Since installation of a Mujahideen central government in Afghanistan, some refugees have begun returning to their ravaged homeland.
In September 1992, two weeks of heavy monsoon rains unleashed Pakistan’s worst floods in a century. Mountain villages were buried under rock and mudslides. Nearly all the bridges in Azad Jammu & Kashmir were washed away. Flood waves surged down the Indus, Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi and Sutlej rivers, growing as they converged, overflowing their banks and submerging thousands of villages and towns.
Thousand of People are thought to Have died (including some 400 on an island below Mangla Dam who drowned when the dam’s floodgates were opened abruptly) and more than a million made homeless. To save threatened downstream dams, barrages and towns, many embankments were blasted open, flooding further cropland in the plains. The resulting massive crop losses –especially of cotton and rice, Pakistan’s main export earners –dealt a heavy blow to the country’s economy.
Nawaz Sharif (who in the midst of the disaster went off on a pilgrimage to Mecca) took a bettering for his government’s slow and inadequate relief efforts. Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto capitalized on popular anger with a campaign of rallies and mass march aimed at his resignation. She was briefly put under house arrest and banned from the capital area when she attempted to lead a march from Rawalpindi to Islamabad.
Jinnah became Pakistan’s first governor-general. The newly established country ended up with few natural resources, little manufacturing capability and relatively little of the Raj’s old administrative-commercial infrastructure. But its most serious problem was simply that there were two Pakistan, separated by 1600 km of hostile India.
West Pakistan consisted of Baluchistan, Sind West Punjab (including what’ s now the NWPF) and – pending a Kashmir settlement – so – called Azad (Free) Kashmir and the Northern Areas, while Bengal and part of Sylhet district made up east Pakistan. Though the west was militarily dominant, Bengalis made up slightly more than half the population, and their tea and jute supplied most of the country’s export earnings. The tone was set early and there was fierce eastern objections to Urdu as the official language. The only real connection between the two halves was that they were Muslim.
In September 1948, barely a year into independence and in the midst of the war with India, Jinnah died of tuberculosis. His death was body blow for the struggling country, which had no other politicians equal to Jinnah – known posthumously as Quaid-i-Azam (pronounced ‘kye-dee-AH-zum’) or Great Leader.
His deputy and friend Liaquat Ali Khan became Prime Minister. A Mohajir, he believed like Jinnah that Pakistan should be a secular state. Many Muslim religious leaders felt otherwise, and the argument still rages today. When Liaquat Ali was assassinated three years later in Rawalpindi, Pakistan headed towards chaos.
A muddle of squabbling governors –general and Prime Ministers and severe economic slump followed, but in March 1956-8 ½ years after its founding – Pakistan finally produced a constitution, becoming the Islamic republic of Pakistan, with a parliamentary form of government. West Pakistan’s Provinces were amalgamated into a single mega-province in symmetry with East Pakistan.
But President Iskander Mirza, a retired major general with no patience for the factionalism, bickering and opportunism that was (and still is) typical of Pakistan politics, nor with the growing autonomy movement in the east, in October 1958 abrogated the constitution, abolished political parties and declared martial law – a state Pakistan has been in, in one from or another, for most of its life since then. Mirza promised it would be brief, until he could ‘clean up the mess’ and write a new constitution.
Karachi had been the temporary capital but in 1959 it was decided to build a brand new one near the Grand Trunk Road, the foothills and the army’s headquarters at Rawalpindi. Construction began on the city of Islamabad in 1961.
China, following its invasion of Tibet in 1950, occupied parts of Ladakh, Baltistan and the upper Shimshal Valley in the mid-1950s.
Ayub Khan
Mirza’s Prime –minister was the army commander-in-chief, General Muhammad Ayub Khan, and three other ministers were lieutenant –generals . Within hours of their swearing in, they told Mirza to resign and Ayub Khan assumed the presidency too.
Martial law lasted over 3 ½ year. In March 1962 Ayub presented a new constitution proving for a powerful president, a National Assembly and east and west provincial assemblies, chosen by a bizarre system of easily manipulated village-level elections. He, of course, was confirmed as president.
Despite limited political freedoms, many Pakistanis look back fondly on the early Ayub years. Economic growth was vigorous. As part of a water – rights settlement with India, the world Bank gave enormous sums to build Mangla dam on the Jhelum River and Tarbela Dam, the world’s biggest earthen Dam, on the Indus. From the USA Came military aid. Somehow the East Pakistanis never seemed to get their share of the pie.
When China and India clashed in 1962 over their border in Ladakh (still disputed today), Pakistan saw a new ally. In a 1964 thaw, China and Pakistan sorted out their own Karakoram border and proposed a ‘Friendship Highway’ over the mountains (a story claims that Ayub declined a similar offer by Soviet Premier Bulganin to build a road through Ishkoman).
Pakistan already had a Swat-to-Gilgit jeep road underway. A 1966 pact expanded this to a two-lane highway from Havelian to the border, the so-called Karakoram Highway, with Pakistanis working north from the Indus and Chinese working south from the Khunjerab Pass, as well as on their own side. In the end the work went on in Pakistan until 1980.
Ayub was re-elected in 1965. in the same year Pakistan and India again went to war over Kashmir, a 2 ½-week exercise in which Pakistan took a beating. After that Ayub became remote and dictatorial, sacking his foreign minister (a Sind landowner named Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto) and arresting Sheikh Mujibur Raman (Sheikh Mujib), leader of the Awami Party which advocated autonomy was made on Ayub’s life.
Yahya Khan & Civil War
in March 1969 a ill Ayub handed responsibility over to his own commander-in-chief, general Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan, and resigned. Yahya imposed martial law again and named himself president. Among his early acts was to end the autonomy of the old princely states of the north – Chitral, Swat, Dir, Hunza, Nagar and various Baltistan fiefdoms.
Political activity was legally resumed in January 1970, the old separate western Province were resurrected and general elections for a civilian government were scheduled for December. In the meantime, a cyclone wreaked havoc in East Pakistan and West Pakistan’s shamefully indifferent response was the last straw for the Bengalis.
The elections turned Pakistan on its head. The charismatic Z A Bhutto and his Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) won a majority of West Pakistan seats in the National Assembly, but Sheikh Mujib’s Awami League won nearly all of East Pakistan’s seats, giving it an overall majority. Even Bhutto refused to allow the easterners to from the government. After some futile attempts at compromise, Yahya suspended the assembly and East Pakistan went on general strike. In March 1971 the army clamped down, Sheikh Mujib was arrested and civil war broke out.
Army cruelty was met by an equally cruel resistance, and hundreds of thousands died. The Bengalis declared themselves the independent state of Bangladesh. In November, India, flooded with more than nine million refugees, declared war on Pakistan; hostilities also broke out on the western border. Again Pakistan took a drubbing, and surrendered within weeks.
Bangladesh went its way in January 1972, and Z A Bhutto replaced Yahya Khan as president of a truncated Pakistan. When Bangladesh was admitted to the British Commonwealth in the same year, Pakistan withdrew from that organization.
Bhutto & Zia
Faced with demoralization and imminent economic collapse, Bhutto undertook major judicial, agrarian, health and educational reforms aimed at greater social equity. He nationalized bank and industries and restructured the military, and there was talk of land reform. A 1973 constitution revived the post of prime minister, which he assumed.
In February 1973 Bhutto sacked the Baluchistan government, whom he suspected of wanting to secede. The resulting Baluch tribal uprising, in which some 10,000 people died, was only put down with some the help of the air force. Despite his populist beginnings, Bhutto began allying himself with industrialists and zamindars (rural landowners), and set up a powerful ‘palace guard’, the Federal Security Service.
Bhutto met Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi at Simla (India) in June 1972, where they agreed to ‘respect’ the so-called line of control –ie the 1971 cease-fire line, little different from the 1949 one – and to resolve future differences peacefully. (in trying to justify its continued hold on Kashmir, India has since suggested that the wording of the Simla Agreement endorses the line of control as a genuine border.) Pakistan recognized Bangladesh in 1974.
The (PPP) did very well in 1977 elections, but they were accused of fraud and people took to the streets in protest across the country. Bhutto declared martial law in Karachi, Hyderabad and Lahore and had opposition leaders arrested. With anti-government violence on the rise his army chief of staff, general Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, on 5 July 1977 staged a bloodless coup and it was back to martial law. Bhutto was arrested on trumped-up murder charges, tried and convicted, and despite an international outcry he was hanged in April 1979.
Zia had promised elections within 90 days but ended up ruling by decree for 7 ½ years, banning political parties, introduction Islamic penal laws and moving the country toward strict rule. His big windfall was the December 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, after which the USA began funneling huge amounts of military assistance to Pakistan, and Zia went from pariah to hero of the fee world. Afghan Mujahideen set up bases in Pakistan, and almost four million refugees eventually crossed into the NWFP and Baluchistan. With them came a flood of guns and drugs.
In 1982, Zia visited China, the KKH was inaugurated, the Northern Areas were opened to tourism and the Khunjerab pass was opened to official traffic and trade (and to tourists in 1986).
Meanwhile the PPP and other parties began re-forming, under the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy. Bhutto’s widow Nusrat and his Western-educated daughter Benazir were elected to chair the PPP. A programme of civil disobedience in 1983 failed to dislodge Zia, and many activists, including Bhutto, went into exile. Thousands died in anti-government riots across Sind.
Under domestic and International pressure Zia permitted a non-party national Assembly election in February 1985. The following December he legalized political parties under strict conditions , and lifted martial law.
Benazir Bhutto
Bhutto returned from England April1986 and traveled round the country drawing rapturous, record-size crowds and calling for Zia’s resignation and free elections. But when she and other were briefly jailed in August, the momentum was lost. She surprised some supporters by agreeing to an arranged marriage, In December 1987, to Sindhi businessman Asif Lai Zardari.
In May 1988 Zia unexpectedly dismissed his hand –picked prime minister, Mohammad Khan Junejo, dissolved the assemblies and scheduled elections for 16 November. But on 17 August Zia, five of his generals and the US ambassador died in the crash of a military plane at Bahawalpur, the cause of which has never been determined (or at any rate never made public).
Surprisingly, things at that point moved strictly in accordance with the constitution. Acting president Ghulam ishaq Khan insisted the election would go ahead and the Supreme Court upheld a PPP petition for political parties to participate. Despite strenuous efforts by the military to discredit them, the PPP did just well enough to from a coalition government. In 1 December 1988, in an atmosphere of national euphoria, Bhutto was sworn in as prime minister, the first ever elected woman leader of a Muslim country.
The job was formidable for a 36-year-old with no political experience, particularly with the military looking over her shoulder. She declared war on the burgeoning heroin trade, and received death threats for her trouble. Provincial party politics scuttled social and economic programmes, and prices soared.
In foreign policy Bhutto seemed to be a hostage of the army. The last Soviet troops left Afghanistan in February 1989 but the war continued by proxy, the Soviets aiding Kabul and the USA arming the guerrillas with the help of Pakistan military gence. In an encouraging move. Indian Prime minister Rajiv Gandhi visited Islamabad in July 1989, but by the end of the year India n troops had burst into Kashmir to begin a programme of repression that turned things sour. On a positive note, Pakistan in 1990 rejoined the Commonwealth.
Pakistan politics being more about power than principals, Bhutto’s opponents hammered away at her. The biggest thorn in her side was Zia Protégé Mian Nawaz Sharif, then chief Minister of Punjab. Bhutto did’t help matters with her arrogant style. PPP government coalitions in Sind and the NWFP collapsed. Her husband’s legal threats against at least 10 Pakistani newspapers antagonised the press. In October 1989, a vote of no confidence was only narrowly averted in the national Assembly.
In 1989 and 1990, hundreds died in mob violence and political terrorism among Sindhis, Pashtuns and Mohajirs in Karachi and Hyderabad. Rural banditry and kidnapping became a growth industry in Sind. Bhutto (herself a Sindhi) demanded army help for the Sind government but the army essentially wanted martial law.
President Ishaq Khan finally bowed to pressure and on 6 August 1990 dismissed the 20-month-old government, citing corruption, nepotism and abuse of power. In a series of special tribunals, Bhutto faced corruption charges (still unresolved), and her husband was arrested on charges of kidnapping and extortion.
In elections two months later, a PPP-dominated alliance was crushed, Nawaz Sharif became Prime minister and his Islamic Democratic Alliance formed ruling coalitions in every province. The Bhutto name had been exorcised from Pakistani politics, and a brilliant chance to put Pakistan on its feet had been squandered.
Nawaz Sharif
Fears of a return to martial law have not materialized but Nawaz Sharif is Having a rough ride, and the army is still clearly in the back ground.
In 1990, the USA suspended US$564 million in economic and military aid over Pakistan’s alleged nuclear bomb programme. The 1990-91 Kuwait War brought an end to huge remittances by Pakistani workers in Kuwait. The aid cut-off and the war generated bitter anti-American feelings, and most foreign tourists , aid workers and missionaries either left the country or moved around very carefully.
The government was rocked in 1991by a savings bank scandal in the wake of the BCCI collapse, and Sharif’s own family came out of it with dirty hands. While the zamindars and others with connections prospered, great Swaths of people at the bottom end simply gave up on finding work.
Worst of all lawlessness was spreading all over the country –violence in Karachi, routine looting and kidnappings in rural Sind and southern Punjab, guns in the NWFP, Sunni-Shea tension in the Northern Areas and a general rise in crime. Few were betting on Nawaz Sharif.
The USA and USSR agreed in 1991 to end aid to the Afghanistan government and guerrillas. With the Afghan government and guerrillas. With the collapse of the USSR (later CIS)at the end of that year, Pakistan began to lose its image as a valued strategic ally. The Afghan conflict moved into endgame. In April 1992, Afghan President Najibullah was ejected in a palace coup and, one by one, Afghanistan’s Major cities fell to the Mujahideen. Since installation of a Mujahideen central government in Afghanistan, some refugees have begun returning to their ravaged homeland.
In September 1992, two weeks of heavy monsoon rains unleashed Pakistan’s worst floods in a century. Mountain villages were buried under rock and mudslides. Nearly all the bridges in Azad Jammu & Kashmir were washed away. Flood waves surged down the Indus, Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi and Sutlej rivers, growing as they converged, overflowing their banks and submerging thousands of villages and towns.
Thousand of People are thought to Have died (including some 400 on an island below Mangla Dam who drowned when the dam’s floodgates were opened abruptly) and more than a million made homeless. To save threatened downstream dams, barrages and towns, many embankments were blasted open, flooding further cropland in the plains. The resulting massive crop losses –especially of cotton and rice, Pakistan’s main export earners –dealt a heavy blow to the country’s economy.
Nawaz Sharif (who in the midst of the disaster went off on a pilgrimage to Mecca) took a bettering for his government’s slow and inadequate relief efforts. Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto capitalized on popular anger with a campaign of rallies and mass march aimed at his resignation. She was briefly put under house arrest and banned from the capital area when she attempted to lead a march from Rawalpindi to Islamabad.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Petroleum Exploration History of Pakistan
Archeology records that stone implements were attached to wood or bone handles with the help of sticky bitumen (a tarry substance) at least 36,000 years ago. The ancient Egyptians coated mummies with pitch. About 600 B.C. Bitumen bound the walls of both Jericho and Babylon; it was also used as a sealant in the construction of brick baths as early as 3000 B.C. Also as Hydrocarbon seepage were found all over the world so the Ancient people might have been used them as energy source.
Ancient Peoples used crude oil for fuel, as a sealant, as body paint, and for medicinal purposes hundreds of years before the first white settlers arrived. A major breakthrough in the use of petroleum occurred in the 1840's, when a Canadian geologist named Abraham Gesner discovered kerosene. This fuel could be distilled from coal or oil. Kerosene became widely used for lighting lamps, and oil quickly rose in value.
Petroleum exploration in Pakistan began more than a century ago. The first well was drilled in 1866 at oil seepage Kundal in the Mianwali District of Punjab Province. Right after seven year of World’s 1st well Drilled in 1859 in Titusville, Pennsylvania by Edwin Drake.
Ancient Peoples used crude oil for fuel, as a sealant, as body paint, and for medicinal purposes hundreds of years before the first white settlers arrived. A major breakthrough in the use of petroleum occurred in the 1840's, when a Canadian geologist named Abraham Gesner discovered kerosene. This fuel could be distilled from coal or oil. Kerosene became widely used for lighting lamps, and oil quickly rose in value.
Petroleum exploration in Pakistan began more than a century ago. The first well was drilled in 1866 at oil seepage Kundal in the Mianwali District of Punjab Province. Right after seven year of World’s 1st well Drilled in 1859 in Titusville, Pennsylvania by Edwin Drake.
History Of Pakistan
Pakistan traces its history back to 2,500 years B.C., when a highly developed civilization flourished in the Indus Valley. Excavations at Harrappa, Moenjodaro, Kot Diji and Mehr Garh have brought to light, the evidence of an advanced civilization existing even in more ancient times. Around 1,500 B.C., the Aryans overwhelmed this region and influenced the Hindu civilization, whose centre moved to Ganges valley, further east. Later, the Persians occupied the northern region in the 5th century B.C. up to the 2nd century AD. The Greeks came in 327 B.C., under Alexander of Macedonia, and passed away like a meteor. In 712 AD, the Arabs, led by Muhammad Bin Qasim, landed somewhere near modern Karachi and ruled the lower half of Pakistan for 200 years. During this time, Islam took roots in the soil and influenced the life, culture and traditions of the people.
In the 10th century AD, began the systematic conquest of South Asia by the Muslims from Central Asia, who ruled here up to the 18th century. Then the British came and ruled for nearly 100 years over what is Pakistan now.
Independence Movement
The Muslim revival began towards the end of the last century when Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, a renowned Muslim leader and educationist, launched a movement for intellectual renaissance of the Muslims of South Asia. In 1930, the well-known poet-philosopher, Allama Muhammad Iqbal, conceived the idea of a separate state for the Muslims of South Asia. In 1940, a resolution was adopted by the All-India Muslim League, demanding a separate independent home land for the Muslims. After 07 years of un-tiring struggle under the brilliant leadership of Quaid-e-Azam (the great leader) Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan emerged on the world map as a sovereign state, on 14th August, 1947.
CHRONOLOGY OF IMPORTANT HISTORICAL EVENTS
This is the summary of important historical events of the subcontinent.
Ancient Empires
3000-1500 B.C. Harappan culture in the Indus Valley and elsewhere
500-500 B.C.Migrations of Aryan-speaking tribes; the Vedic Age
550-486 B.C.Life of Gautama Buddha, founding of Buddhism
320-180 B.C.Mauryan Empire; Asoka most famous emperor; spread of Buddhism
180 B.C – 150 A.D.Saka dynasties in Indus Valley and northwest
78-200 A.D. Kushan Empire; Gandharan art flourishes
300-700 A.D Gupta Empire; Classical Age in northern India
Coming of Islam
711Arab Muslims in Sindh
998-1030 Mahmud of Ghazni raids into the subcontinent from Afghanistan
1192 Muhammad of Ghor defeats Rajputs
1206 Establishment of Delhi Sultanate
1398 Destruction of Delhi by Timur
Mughal Period
1526 Babur victorious in first Battle of Paniput
1530-1556 Wars of succession
1556 Akbar victorious in second Battle of Paniput
1556-1605 Reign of Akbar the Great
1605-1627 Reign of Jahangir; in 1612 East India Company opens first trading center
1628-1658 Reign of Shah Jahan
1658-1707 Reign of Aurangzeb
1761 Third Battle of Panipat; an Afghan victory over a Maratha army
1707-1858 Decline of the Mughal Empire
British India
1757 Battle of Plassey – British victory over Mughal forces in Bengal; conventional date for beginning of
British rule in India
1784 William Pitt’s India Act
1799-1839 Sikh kingdom in the Punjab under Maharaja Ranjit Singh
1830s Institution of British education and other reform measures
1838-1842 First Afghan war
1843 British annex Sindh, Hyderabad and Khairpur
1845-49 Sikh Wars; British annex the Punjab and sell Kashmir, Gilgit, and Ladakh “Package,” known as Kashmir
1857-1858 Uprising, variously known as the first war of independence, the Mutiny,and the Sepoy Rebellion
1858 British Raj begins
1878-1880 Second Afghan War
1885 Indian National Congress formed
1893 Durand Line established as boundary between Afghanistan and British India
1905 Partition of Bengal
1906 All-India Muslim League founded
1911 Partition of Bengal annulled
1919 Montague-Chelmsford Reforms; Third Afghan War
1935 Government of India Act of 1935
March 23, 1940 Muslim League adopts Pakistan Resolution
In the 10th century AD, began the systematic conquest of South Asia by the Muslims from Central Asia, who ruled here up to the 18th century. Then the British came and ruled for nearly 100 years over what is Pakistan now.
Independence Movement
The Muslim revival began towards the end of the last century when Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, a renowned Muslim leader and educationist, launched a movement for intellectual renaissance of the Muslims of South Asia. In 1930, the well-known poet-philosopher, Allama Muhammad Iqbal, conceived the idea of a separate state for the Muslims of South Asia. In 1940, a resolution was adopted by the All-India Muslim League, demanding a separate independent home land for the Muslims. After 07 years of un-tiring struggle under the brilliant leadership of Quaid-e-Azam (the great leader) Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan emerged on the world map as a sovereign state, on 14th August, 1947.
CHRONOLOGY OF IMPORTANT HISTORICAL EVENTS
This is the summary of important historical events of the subcontinent.
Ancient Empires
3000-1500 B.C. Harappan culture in the Indus Valley and elsewhere
500-500 B.C.Migrations of Aryan-speaking tribes; the Vedic Age
550-486 B.C.Life of Gautama Buddha, founding of Buddhism
320-180 B.C.Mauryan Empire; Asoka most famous emperor; spread of Buddhism
180 B.C – 150 A.D.Saka dynasties in Indus Valley and northwest
78-200 A.D. Kushan Empire; Gandharan art flourishes
300-700 A.D Gupta Empire; Classical Age in northern India
Coming of Islam
711Arab Muslims in Sindh
998-1030 Mahmud of Ghazni raids into the subcontinent from Afghanistan
1192 Muhammad of Ghor defeats Rajputs
1206 Establishment of Delhi Sultanate
1398 Destruction of Delhi by Timur
Mughal Period
1526 Babur victorious in first Battle of Paniput
1530-1556 Wars of succession
1556 Akbar victorious in second Battle of Paniput
1556-1605 Reign of Akbar the Great
1605-1627 Reign of Jahangir; in 1612 East India Company opens first trading center
1628-1658 Reign of Shah Jahan
1658-1707 Reign of Aurangzeb
1761 Third Battle of Panipat; an Afghan victory over a Maratha army
1707-1858 Decline of the Mughal Empire
British India
1757 Battle of Plassey – British victory over Mughal forces in Bengal; conventional date for beginning of
British rule in India
1784 William Pitt’s India Act
1799-1839 Sikh kingdom in the Punjab under Maharaja Ranjit Singh
1830s Institution of British education and other reform measures
1838-1842 First Afghan war
1843 British annex Sindh, Hyderabad and Khairpur
1845-49 Sikh Wars; British annex the Punjab and sell Kashmir, Gilgit, and Ladakh “Package,” known as Kashmir
1857-1858 Uprising, variously known as the first war of independence, the Mutiny,and the Sepoy Rebellion
1858 British Raj begins
1878-1880 Second Afghan War
1885 Indian National Congress formed
1893 Durand Line established as boundary between Afghanistan and British India
1905 Partition of Bengal
1906 All-India Muslim League founded
1911 Partition of Bengal annulled
1919 Montague-Chelmsford Reforms; Third Afghan War
1935 Government of India Act of 1935
March 23, 1940 Muslim League adopts Pakistan Resolution
History of Pakistan
PAKISTAN BECAME AN INDEPENDENT STATE in 1947, the realization of a yearning by India's Muslims, who feared domination by the Hindu majority in a postcolonial India. As the British made their final plans to surrender the "Jewel in the Crown" of their empire, the earlier, elite "Two Nations Theory," premised on the notion of a separate homeland for the subcontinent's Muslim minority, had broadened its popular appeal and evolved into a collective vision championed by Muslims of all backgrounds. After independence, a debate commenced among contending groups over further refinement of that vision. Agreement on what system of government the new nation should adopt--a critical aspect of the debate--was never fully reached. Indeed, few nations have in so short a period undergone as many successive political and constitutional experiments as has Pakistan. This irresolution contributed, in the decades following independence, to a recurrent pattern of crisis: repeated coups and extended periods in which martial law replaced civilian government, violent deaths of several national leaders, periodic strife among ethnic groups, and, most traumatically, a civil war that divided the country in two.
The struggle over the character and soul of Pakistan continues. Although democracy returned to Pakistan in 1988 after a long lapse, it is on trial daily, its continuation by no means certain. Definition of the vision of what Pakistan represents is still being contested from many opposing quarters.
Pakistan's status in the world has changed dramatically in the nearly one-half century of its existence as an independent state. In the twilight years of the Cold War, it achieved international stature as a "frontline" state during the Soviet occupation of neighboring Afghanistan. With the Soviet departure from Afghanistan in the late 1980s and the end of the Cold War, Pakistan's role in the world arena has become less visible, and its voice has diminished to the level of many other developing states competing in the new world order. Yet, during the years it spent in support of the Afghan struggle against Soviet domination, Pakistan impressed upon the world community a new appreciation of its standing among Islamic nations and of its ideological commitment to causes it champions.
In terms of its military and economic development, Pakistan is a "threshold" state. The world's first Islamic "de facto" nuclear-weapon state, it has long been at loggerheads with its larger and more powerful neighbor, India, which, like Pakistan, denies having built nuclear weapons but not its ability to do so at the "turn of a screw." A nation well positioned to serve as an economic model for other developing countries in the post-Cold- War era--especially the Islamic states of the former Soviet Union--Pakistan has shown steady and impressive long-term economic growth and is successfully making the transition from an overwhelmingly agricultural to an industrial economy. Yet, despite its considerable achievements in technology and commerce, Pakistan confronts many of the same problems it faced at its birth. The nation has one of the world's highest population growth rates, making it difficult for the government to address the problems of poverty and attendant ills that affect so many in its society. Indeed, social development has lagged behind economic gains. Quality of life indicators--literacy rates, especially among women, human rights, and universal access to heath care--have shown Pakistan to be a country with serious deficiencies.
Throughout history, Pakistan has been strongly affected by its geostrategic placement as a South Asian frontier located at the juncture of South Asia, West Asia, and Central Asia. Scholars have called Pakistan the "fulcrum of Asia" because since antiquity invaders have traversed this frontier carrying with them the seeds of great civilizations. The armies of Islam came to South Asia through the same mountain passes in the north-west of Pakistan that the Indo-Aryans, Alexander the Great, the Kushans, and others had earlier entered.
Present-day Pakistan has been shaped by its rich history, pre-Islamic as well as Islamic, but colored in particular by the exigencies of its troubled and bloody birth as a nation in 1947. The partitioning of British India into India and Pakistan was preceded and accompanied by communal riots of unprecedented violence and scope that forced millions of Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh refugees to flee across the new international borders.
The partition plan that led to the separate states of India and Pakistan was drawn up in an atmosphere of urgency as a swell of religious and ethnic unrest shook India. Under guidelines established with the help of Britain's last viceroy in India, Lord Louis Mountbatten, the perplexing task of establishing the new boundaries of Pakistan was accomplished. Most Indian Muslims lived either on the dusty plains of Punjab or in the humid delta of Bengal. Contiguous Muslim-majority districts in Punjab and Bengal were awarded to Pakistan under the plan's guidelines. The additional task of deciding the status of the more than 500 semiautonomous princely states of India still remained. All but three of these quickly acceded to either Pakistan or India. But the two largest princely states, Jammu and Kashmir (ususally just called Kashmir) and Hyderabad, and one small state, Junagadh, posed special problems. Hyderabad and Junagadh were located within territory awarded to India but were both Hindu majority states ruled by a Muslim leader. These states hesitated but were quickly incorporated by force into India. The status of the third state, Kashmir, which had borders with both India and Pakistan, proved especially problematic. Unlike Hyderabad and Junagadh, Kashmir had a Muslim majority and was ruled by a Hindu. Kashmir's maharaja was reluctant to accede to either Pakistan or India, but when threatened by a Muslim uprising (with outside support from Pakistani tribesmen) against his unpopular rule, he hurriedly signed the documents of accession, in October 1947, required by India before it would provide aid. Pakistan then launched an active military and diplomatic campaign to undo the accession, which it maintained was secured by fraud. Kashmir was subsequently divided by the occupying armies of both nations, the Indians holding two-thirds of the state, including the Muslim- dominated Vale of Kashmir and the Hindu-majority region of Jammu to the south, while the Pakistanis controlled the western third, which they call Azad (Free) Kashmir. India and Pakistan would fight two major wars to maintain or seize control over this state: in 1947-48 and in 1965. Kashmir's contested and indeterminate status continues dangerously to complicate relations between South Asia's two most powerful states.
The bifurcated Pakistan that existed from August 1947 to December 1971 was composed of two parts, or wings, known as East Pakistan and West Pakistan, separated by 1,600 kilometers of Indian territory. Observers pointed out, however, that the people of the two wings were estranged from each other in language and cultural traditions: that the Bengali "monsoon Islam" of the East Wing was alien to the "desert Islam" of the West Wing. The East Wing, notable for its Bengali ethnic homogeneity and its collective Bangla cultural and linguistic heritage, contained over half of the population of Pakistan and sharply contrasted with the ethnic and linguistic diversity of the West Wing. The West Wing consisted of four major ethnic groups--Punjabis, Pakhtuns, Sindhis, and Baloch. The muhajirs constituted a fifth important group. The political leaders of Pakistan, however--particularly those of West Pakistan--asserted that the Islamic faith and a shared fear of "Hindu India" provided an indestructible bond joining the two societies into one nation. This assertion proved flawed, however. A culture of distrust grew between the two wings, fueled by imbalances of representation in the government and military. Furthermore, Bengali politicians argued that the economic "underdevelopment" of East Pakistan was a result of the "internal colonialism" of the rapacious capitalist class of West Pakistan. In the final analysis, real and perceived iniquities would fray this "indestructible" bond holding the country together. Less than a quarter century after the country's founding, Pakistan would fission, the eastern wing becoming the independent nation of Bangladesh.
It was not Pakistan's precarious security nor even its cultural and ethnic diversity, but rather characteristics deeply rooted in the nation's polity that most impeded its early democratic development. The essentials for such a process-- disciplined political parties and a participatory mass electorate--were missing in Pakistan's first years as an independent state. The All-India Muslim League, the party that led the struggle for Pakistan, failed to mature into a stable democratic party with a national following capable of holding together the nation's diverse ethnic and cultural groups. Instead, it disintegrated into rival factions soon after independence. Lack of a consensus over prospective Islamic provisions for the nation's governance, Bengali resentment over the West Pakistanis' initial imposition of Urdu as the national language, and the reluctance of West Pakistani politicians to share power with politicians of the East Wing--all were factors that delayed the acceptance of Pakistan's first constitution until nine years after independence. The nation was also dealt a severe psychological blow when in September 1948, only thirteen months after independence, Mohammad Ali Jinnah--known reverentially as the Quaid-i-Azam (Great Leader)--died. Jinnah's role in the creation of Pakistan had been so dominant that it has been observed that he had neither peers nor associates, only lieutenants and aides. Jinnah's primary lieutenant, Liaquat Ali Khan, the nation's first prime minister, was assassinated in October 1951.
Jinnah's and Liaquat's leadership, so critical to the nation in its infancy, was replaced in the early and mid-1950s by the generally lackluster, often inept performances of the nation's politicians. Those few politicians who were effective were all too willing to play upon the emotions of an electorate as yet unaccustomed to open democratic debate. The ethnic and provincial causes championed by these politicians too often took precedence over national concerns. The government was weak and unable to quell the violence and ethnic unrest that distracted it from building strong parliamentary institutions.
Believing that Pakistan's first attempt at establishing a parliamentary system of government failed, in the late 1950s the military ousted the "inefficient and rascally" politicians. During this period, however, the belief that democracy was the "natural state" of Pakistan and an important political goal was not entirely abandoned. Mohammad Ayub Khan, Pakistan's first "soldier-statesman," regarded himself as more of a reformer than an autocrat and, as chief martial law administrator, early on acknowledged the need to relinquish some military control. In his unique governmental system called the "Basic Democracies," Ayub Khan became the "civilian" head of a military regime. Ayub Khan's "democracy from above" allowed for controlled participation of the electorate and was supposed to capture the peculiar "genius" of Pakistan. To his critics, however, Ayub Khan's political system was better characterized as a form of "representational dictatorship." In 1969 an ailing Ayub Khan was forced to resign following nationwide rioting against his regime's perceived corruption, spent economic policies, and responsibility for Pakistan's defeat in the 1965 Indo-Pakistani War over Kashmir. Ayub Khan was briefly succeeded by his army commander in chief, General Mohammad Yahya Khan, who would best be remembered for presiding over the two most traumatic and psychologically devastating events in the country's history: the humiliating defeat of Pakistan's armed forces by India and the secession of East Pakistan.
The East Wing of Pakistan had not benefitted greatly from Ayub Khan's "Decade of Progress," with its gains in agricultural production and trade. Bengali politicians wanted to improve what they considered to be the second-class political and economic status of their province vis-à-vis West Pakistan, just as they had earlier agitated for greater cultural and linguistic recognition. The country's first nationwide direct elections were held in December 1970. The East Pakistan-based Awami League, campaigning on a platform calling for almost total provincial autonomy, won virtually all the seats allotted to the East Wing and was thereby assured a majority in the national legislature.
The results of Pakistan's first nationwide experiment in democracy were not honored. Fearing Bengali dominance in the nation's political affairs, West Pakistani politicians, led by Pakistan People's Party (PPP) leader Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and supported by senior army officers, most of whom were Punjabis, pressured Yahya Khan to postpone the convening of the National Assembly. When the Bengalis of East Pakistan revolted openly at this turn of events, the Pakistani military banned the Awami League, arrested its leader, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and began a massive military crackdown. In the savage civil war that followed, tens of thousands of Bengalis were killed, and an estimated 10 million people took refuge in India. In early December 1971, India entered the war and within weeks decisively defeated the Pakistan military. From the aftermath of the war and the dismemberment of Pakistan came the birth of a new nation: Bangladesh.
To most Pakistanis, the news of Pakistan's defeat came as a numbing shock--their military was disgraced and condemned for its brutal crackdown in East Pakistan. Literally overnight, the country had lost its status as the largest Muslim nation in the world. Gone, too, were any illusions of military parity with India.
Pakistan soon recovered under the charismatic leadership of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who launched a forceful campaign to restore the people's self-confidence and to repair Pakistan's tarnished image abroad. Initially, Bhutto was sworn in as president and chief martial law administrator, the two positions he took over from Yahya Khan. Although he soon revoked formal martial law, he governed autocratically until he was overthrown in 1977.
A man of contradictions, a product of a privileged feudal background, the Western-educated Bhutto nonetheless expounded populist themes of shared wealth, national unity, and the need to restore political democracy under the slogan "Islam our Faith, Democracy our Polity, Socialism our Economy." Bhutto nationalized a large number of the most important manufacturing, insurance, and domestically owned banking industries--actions that substantially slowed economic growth.
By the mid-1970s, Bhutto's autocratic tendencies were interfering with his ability to govern. His determination to crush any and all potential opposition had become obsessive. Bhutto purged his party of real or imagined opponents, created a praetorian security force answerable only to himself, brought the prestigious civil service under his personal control, and sacked military officers who possessed what he described as "Bonapartist tendencies." Fatefully, Bhutto then named General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq--a relatively junior and obscure general--to hold the top army post. Most observers had predicted that Bhutto's PPP would retain control of the National Assembly in the elections of March 1977, but the margin of the PPP's victory was so overwhelming that charges of fraud were immediately made, and riots erupted throughout the country. General Zia was well positioned to act against Bhutto. He abruptly informed the nation that he had taken over as the chief martial law administrator but assured the people that the military desired only to supervise fair elections, which he said would be held in ninety days. This was the first of many promises Zia did not keep. As election time approached, Zia announced that criminal charges were being brought against Bhutto and postponed the elections until after Bhutto had been tried in court. Bhutto was found guilty of complicity in murder of a political opponent, and later hanged. The memory of Bhutto and the circumstances surrounding his fall became a rallying cry for his daughter, Benazir, who, during the 1980s, embraced the politics of revenge as she began her political ascent in steadfast opposition to Zia and martial law.
Zia ul-Haq's eleven years of rule left a profound--and controversial--legacy on Pakistani society. Zia's military junta differed in important aspects from the earlier military regime of Ayub Khan. Like Zia, Ayub Khan had been contemptuous of politicians; his style of governing was autocratic in the tradition of the British Raj and its Mughal predecessors. Nevertheless, Ayub Khan welcomed Western influences in his quest for economic development, and he introduced various reform measures, such as the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance, which provided protection for women within their families. Moreover, early in his rule, Ayub Khan isolated the army from the governmental decision-making process and instead relied heavily on senior civil servants and a few conservative politicians.
The struggle over the character and soul of Pakistan continues. Although democracy returned to Pakistan in 1988 after a long lapse, it is on trial daily, its continuation by no means certain. Definition of the vision of what Pakistan represents is still being contested from many opposing quarters.
Pakistan's status in the world has changed dramatically in the nearly one-half century of its existence as an independent state. In the twilight years of the Cold War, it achieved international stature as a "frontline" state during the Soviet occupation of neighboring Afghanistan. With the Soviet departure from Afghanistan in the late 1980s and the end of the Cold War, Pakistan's role in the world arena has become less visible, and its voice has diminished to the level of many other developing states competing in the new world order. Yet, during the years it spent in support of the Afghan struggle against Soviet domination, Pakistan impressed upon the world community a new appreciation of its standing among Islamic nations and of its ideological commitment to causes it champions.
In terms of its military and economic development, Pakistan is a "threshold" state. The world's first Islamic "de facto" nuclear-weapon state, it has long been at loggerheads with its larger and more powerful neighbor, India, which, like Pakistan, denies having built nuclear weapons but not its ability to do so at the "turn of a screw." A nation well positioned to serve as an economic model for other developing countries in the post-Cold- War era--especially the Islamic states of the former Soviet Union--Pakistan has shown steady and impressive long-term economic growth and is successfully making the transition from an overwhelmingly agricultural to an industrial economy. Yet, despite its considerable achievements in technology and commerce, Pakistan confronts many of the same problems it faced at its birth. The nation has one of the world's highest population growth rates, making it difficult for the government to address the problems of poverty and attendant ills that affect so many in its society. Indeed, social development has lagged behind economic gains. Quality of life indicators--literacy rates, especially among women, human rights, and universal access to heath care--have shown Pakistan to be a country with serious deficiencies.
Throughout history, Pakistan has been strongly affected by its geostrategic placement as a South Asian frontier located at the juncture of South Asia, West Asia, and Central Asia. Scholars have called Pakistan the "fulcrum of Asia" because since antiquity invaders have traversed this frontier carrying with them the seeds of great civilizations. The armies of Islam came to South Asia through the same mountain passes in the north-west of Pakistan that the Indo-Aryans, Alexander the Great, the Kushans, and others had earlier entered.
Present-day Pakistan has been shaped by its rich history, pre-Islamic as well as Islamic, but colored in particular by the exigencies of its troubled and bloody birth as a nation in 1947. The partitioning of British India into India and Pakistan was preceded and accompanied by communal riots of unprecedented violence and scope that forced millions of Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh refugees to flee across the new international borders.
The partition plan that led to the separate states of India and Pakistan was drawn up in an atmosphere of urgency as a swell of religious and ethnic unrest shook India. Under guidelines established with the help of Britain's last viceroy in India, Lord Louis Mountbatten, the perplexing task of establishing the new boundaries of Pakistan was accomplished. Most Indian Muslims lived either on the dusty plains of Punjab or in the humid delta of Bengal. Contiguous Muslim-majority districts in Punjab and Bengal were awarded to Pakistan under the plan's guidelines. The additional task of deciding the status of the more than 500 semiautonomous princely states of India still remained. All but three of these quickly acceded to either Pakistan or India. But the two largest princely states, Jammu and Kashmir (ususally just called Kashmir) and Hyderabad, and one small state, Junagadh, posed special problems. Hyderabad and Junagadh were located within territory awarded to India but were both Hindu majority states ruled by a Muslim leader. These states hesitated but were quickly incorporated by force into India. The status of the third state, Kashmir, which had borders with both India and Pakistan, proved especially problematic. Unlike Hyderabad and Junagadh, Kashmir had a Muslim majority and was ruled by a Hindu. Kashmir's maharaja was reluctant to accede to either Pakistan or India, but when threatened by a Muslim uprising (with outside support from Pakistani tribesmen) against his unpopular rule, he hurriedly signed the documents of accession, in October 1947, required by India before it would provide aid. Pakistan then launched an active military and diplomatic campaign to undo the accession, which it maintained was secured by fraud. Kashmir was subsequently divided by the occupying armies of both nations, the Indians holding two-thirds of the state, including the Muslim- dominated Vale of Kashmir and the Hindu-majority region of Jammu to the south, while the Pakistanis controlled the western third, which they call Azad (Free) Kashmir. India and Pakistan would fight two major wars to maintain or seize control over this state: in 1947-48 and in 1965. Kashmir's contested and indeterminate status continues dangerously to complicate relations between South Asia's two most powerful states.
The bifurcated Pakistan that existed from August 1947 to December 1971 was composed of two parts, or wings, known as East Pakistan and West Pakistan, separated by 1,600 kilometers of Indian territory. Observers pointed out, however, that the people of the two wings were estranged from each other in language and cultural traditions: that the Bengali "monsoon Islam" of the East Wing was alien to the "desert Islam" of the West Wing. The East Wing, notable for its Bengali ethnic homogeneity and its collective Bangla cultural and linguistic heritage, contained over half of the population of Pakistan and sharply contrasted with the ethnic and linguistic diversity of the West Wing. The West Wing consisted of four major ethnic groups--Punjabis, Pakhtuns, Sindhis, and Baloch. The muhajirs constituted a fifth important group. The political leaders of Pakistan, however--particularly those of West Pakistan--asserted that the Islamic faith and a shared fear of "Hindu India" provided an indestructible bond joining the two societies into one nation. This assertion proved flawed, however. A culture of distrust grew between the two wings, fueled by imbalances of representation in the government and military. Furthermore, Bengali politicians argued that the economic "underdevelopment" of East Pakistan was a result of the "internal colonialism" of the rapacious capitalist class of West Pakistan. In the final analysis, real and perceived iniquities would fray this "indestructible" bond holding the country together. Less than a quarter century after the country's founding, Pakistan would fission, the eastern wing becoming the independent nation of Bangladesh.
It was not Pakistan's precarious security nor even its cultural and ethnic diversity, but rather characteristics deeply rooted in the nation's polity that most impeded its early democratic development. The essentials for such a process-- disciplined political parties and a participatory mass electorate--were missing in Pakistan's first years as an independent state. The All-India Muslim League, the party that led the struggle for Pakistan, failed to mature into a stable democratic party with a national following capable of holding together the nation's diverse ethnic and cultural groups. Instead, it disintegrated into rival factions soon after independence. Lack of a consensus over prospective Islamic provisions for the nation's governance, Bengali resentment over the West Pakistanis' initial imposition of Urdu as the national language, and the reluctance of West Pakistani politicians to share power with politicians of the East Wing--all were factors that delayed the acceptance of Pakistan's first constitution until nine years after independence. The nation was also dealt a severe psychological blow when in September 1948, only thirteen months after independence, Mohammad Ali Jinnah--known reverentially as the Quaid-i-Azam (Great Leader)--died. Jinnah's role in the creation of Pakistan had been so dominant that it has been observed that he had neither peers nor associates, only lieutenants and aides. Jinnah's primary lieutenant, Liaquat Ali Khan, the nation's first prime minister, was assassinated in October 1951.
Jinnah's and Liaquat's leadership, so critical to the nation in its infancy, was replaced in the early and mid-1950s by the generally lackluster, often inept performances of the nation's politicians. Those few politicians who were effective were all too willing to play upon the emotions of an electorate as yet unaccustomed to open democratic debate. The ethnic and provincial causes championed by these politicians too often took precedence over national concerns. The government was weak and unable to quell the violence and ethnic unrest that distracted it from building strong parliamentary institutions.
Believing that Pakistan's first attempt at establishing a parliamentary system of government failed, in the late 1950s the military ousted the "inefficient and rascally" politicians. During this period, however, the belief that democracy was the "natural state" of Pakistan and an important political goal was not entirely abandoned. Mohammad Ayub Khan, Pakistan's first "soldier-statesman," regarded himself as more of a reformer than an autocrat and, as chief martial law administrator, early on acknowledged the need to relinquish some military control. In his unique governmental system called the "Basic Democracies," Ayub Khan became the "civilian" head of a military regime. Ayub Khan's "democracy from above" allowed for controlled participation of the electorate and was supposed to capture the peculiar "genius" of Pakistan. To his critics, however, Ayub Khan's political system was better characterized as a form of "representational dictatorship." In 1969 an ailing Ayub Khan was forced to resign following nationwide rioting against his regime's perceived corruption, spent economic policies, and responsibility for Pakistan's defeat in the 1965 Indo-Pakistani War over Kashmir. Ayub Khan was briefly succeeded by his army commander in chief, General Mohammad Yahya Khan, who would best be remembered for presiding over the two most traumatic and psychologically devastating events in the country's history: the humiliating defeat of Pakistan's armed forces by India and the secession of East Pakistan.
The East Wing of Pakistan had not benefitted greatly from Ayub Khan's "Decade of Progress," with its gains in agricultural production and trade. Bengali politicians wanted to improve what they considered to be the second-class political and economic status of their province vis-à-vis West Pakistan, just as they had earlier agitated for greater cultural and linguistic recognition. The country's first nationwide direct elections were held in December 1970. The East Pakistan-based Awami League, campaigning on a platform calling for almost total provincial autonomy, won virtually all the seats allotted to the East Wing and was thereby assured a majority in the national legislature.
The results of Pakistan's first nationwide experiment in democracy were not honored. Fearing Bengali dominance in the nation's political affairs, West Pakistani politicians, led by Pakistan People's Party (PPP) leader Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and supported by senior army officers, most of whom were Punjabis, pressured Yahya Khan to postpone the convening of the National Assembly. When the Bengalis of East Pakistan revolted openly at this turn of events, the Pakistani military banned the Awami League, arrested its leader, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and began a massive military crackdown. In the savage civil war that followed, tens of thousands of Bengalis were killed, and an estimated 10 million people took refuge in India. In early December 1971, India entered the war and within weeks decisively defeated the Pakistan military. From the aftermath of the war and the dismemberment of Pakistan came the birth of a new nation: Bangladesh.
To most Pakistanis, the news of Pakistan's defeat came as a numbing shock--their military was disgraced and condemned for its brutal crackdown in East Pakistan. Literally overnight, the country had lost its status as the largest Muslim nation in the world. Gone, too, were any illusions of military parity with India.
Pakistan soon recovered under the charismatic leadership of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who launched a forceful campaign to restore the people's self-confidence and to repair Pakistan's tarnished image abroad. Initially, Bhutto was sworn in as president and chief martial law administrator, the two positions he took over from Yahya Khan. Although he soon revoked formal martial law, he governed autocratically until he was overthrown in 1977.
A man of contradictions, a product of a privileged feudal background, the Western-educated Bhutto nonetheless expounded populist themes of shared wealth, national unity, and the need to restore political democracy under the slogan "Islam our Faith, Democracy our Polity, Socialism our Economy." Bhutto nationalized a large number of the most important manufacturing, insurance, and domestically owned banking industries--actions that substantially slowed economic growth.
By the mid-1970s, Bhutto's autocratic tendencies were interfering with his ability to govern. His determination to crush any and all potential opposition had become obsessive. Bhutto purged his party of real or imagined opponents, created a praetorian security force answerable only to himself, brought the prestigious civil service under his personal control, and sacked military officers who possessed what he described as "Bonapartist tendencies." Fatefully, Bhutto then named General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq--a relatively junior and obscure general--to hold the top army post. Most observers had predicted that Bhutto's PPP would retain control of the National Assembly in the elections of March 1977, but the margin of the PPP's victory was so overwhelming that charges of fraud were immediately made, and riots erupted throughout the country. General Zia was well positioned to act against Bhutto. He abruptly informed the nation that he had taken over as the chief martial law administrator but assured the people that the military desired only to supervise fair elections, which he said would be held in ninety days. This was the first of many promises Zia did not keep. As election time approached, Zia announced that criminal charges were being brought against Bhutto and postponed the elections until after Bhutto had been tried in court. Bhutto was found guilty of complicity in murder of a political opponent, and later hanged. The memory of Bhutto and the circumstances surrounding his fall became a rallying cry for his daughter, Benazir, who, during the 1980s, embraced the politics of revenge as she began her political ascent in steadfast opposition to Zia and martial law.
Zia ul-Haq's eleven years of rule left a profound--and controversial--legacy on Pakistani society. Zia's military junta differed in important aspects from the earlier military regime of Ayub Khan. Like Zia, Ayub Khan had been contemptuous of politicians; his style of governing was autocratic in the tradition of the British Raj and its Mughal predecessors. Nevertheless, Ayub Khan welcomed Western influences in his quest for economic development, and he introduced various reform measures, such as the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance, which provided protection for women within their families. Moreover, early in his rule, Ayub Khan isolated the army from the governmental decision-making process and instead relied heavily on senior civil servants and a few conservative politicians.
The People and the Land of Baluchistan
In spite of the intrinsic hostility of its landscape and climate, archaeological discoveries have confirmed that Baluchistan was already inhabited in the Stone Age, and the important neolithic site at Mehrgarh is the earliest (7000-3000 B.C.) on the subcontinent. Until its overthrow by Alexander the Great, Baluchistan was part of the Persian Empire, whose records refer to it as “Maka”.
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Ghaznavid Rule of Pakistan
The next period in Pakistan’s history begins with the defeat of Raj Jaipal and his son Anandpal, rulers of northern areas of Pakistan, and of the Ismaili and Carmathian rulers of southern areas i.e., Multan and Sind at the hands of Mahmud Ghaznavi, leading to the unity of the two region. Eleventh century ushered in an era of Muslim rule over the entire length and breadth of Pakistan. During the 32 years of his rule Mahmud invaded Pakistan and India more than 17 times and though he carried his successful arms up to Muthra, Kanauj, Baran and Gawaliar, he did not annex any area beyond Ravi. As such, Pakistan continued to remain separate from India, again looking westward constituting a part of the Ghaznavi Empire. The boundaries also were almost the same which had been coming down from the days of the Indus Valley Civilization. It will be notice that this phenomena of Pakistan forming a separate country with its eastern boundaries running upto either Ravi, Beas or Sutlej has been recurring again and again.
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History of Sindh
The land of Sind has a hoary past with some of the most striking episodes in history having occurred in its bosom. It has given a slightly different variation of its name to our neighbouring country and to the religious majority of its inhabitants. Both the words India and Hindu are derived from Sindhu, which, in Persian became Hind and Hindu (the letter H substituted for S) and in Greek and Roman, Ind (the letter S of Sind having being dropped). The meaning of the word Sindhu is water, referring to the great river. There is an old belief among Muslims that four rivers had sprung from Heaven: Neel (Nile), Furat (Euphrates), Jehoon (Juxartes) and Sehoon (Sind).
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Historical Background of Pakistan and its People
Muslim world is a vast and immense mass of land sprawling from West Africa facing the Atlantic to southern Philippines far in the Pacific. Its northern limits touch the Volga in Russia while southern frontiers run up to Mozambique in South-East Africa on the Indian Ocean. In China, in addition to Sinkiang, Muslims are in substantial numbers in the provinces bordering Burma and in the districts around Peking. Total population of Muslims in the world is estimated at one billion.
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