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.