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HISTORY
: In ancient times, the area that
now comprises Pakistan marked the farthest reaches of the conquests of
Alexander the Great. It was also the home of Buddhist Ghandaran
culture. It was not until 1947 and the independence of India, that
Pakistan acquired nationhood. Under pressure from Indian Muslims led
by Mohammed Ali Jinnah - considered to be the ‘father of the nation’ -
the British created a separate Muslim state. Originally, it consisted
of two parts, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and West Pakistan (now a
single unitary state), separated from each other by 1600km (1000
miles) of Indian territory. Jinnah, the leading Muslim inside the
Indian Congress party that led the independence struggle (see India
section), became the new country’s first president.
In contrast to India, democracy failed to take root and Pakistan
suffered prolonged periods of military rule. The first of these came
in 1958, when martial law was declared and political parties
abolished. The martial law ‘co-ordinator’, General (later Field
Marshall) Ayub Khan, became President in 1960. He was replaced in
1969, by the Commander-in-Chief of the army, General Agha Muhammed
Yahya Khan, who resisted demands for autonomy by the eastern region of
the country, where civil war broke out in 1971. The intervention of
the Indian army on the side of the secessionists eventually secured an
independent Bangladesh, leaving a truncated Pakistan in the west.
Democratic civilian government followed the defeat and President
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto took over as president from the discredited
military regime.
In 1977, however, the military again took power in a coup and
re-established martial law under General Mohammed Zia ul-Haq. Bhutto
was executed in 1979. Military rule continued until the death of
General Zia in a plane crash in 1988, after which a democratic
constitution and civilian government were re-instituted. Despite a
strong challenge from the military-backed Islamic Democratic Alliance,
Bhutto’s daughter, Benazir, long the focus for opposition, came to
power as leader of the Pakistan People’s Party. But in August 1990,
President Ghulam Ishaq Khan dismissed Bhutto and her government,
accusing her and it of corruption and nepotism. The electoral campaign
that followed was an exceptionally violent one, in which Bhutto’s
Pakistan People’s Party was heavily defeated by the Islamic Democratic
Alliance (IDA), led by Mohammed Nawaz Sharif.
The Sharif government suffered from all the problems of its PPP
predecessor. In July 1993, the army engineered its removal and
supervised new elections, which were held in October. These were won
by Benazir Bhutto and the PPP. The second Benazir Bhutto government
was no better than the first. (None of Pakistan’s recent civilian
governments have made much headway in tackling the country’s huge
economic and political problems). The situation was particularly bad
in Karachi, where the Mohajir Quami Movement (MQM), the political
organisation of the Mohajir (descendants of refugees from India,
following the creation of Pakistan in 1947-48), has a major presence
and engaged in regular confrontations with the government and security
forces. In 1996, a political reform movement emerged, led by former
cricketer Imran Khan, known as the Tehrik-e-Insaaf (Movement for
Justice). Despite much favourable publicity, the lack of a substantial
political base or policies has since consigned it to the political
fringes.
Later that year, President Leghari, although he was originally a
political ally of Bhutto, dismissed her government. Nawaz Sharif
returned to office the following February, in an election marked by an
extremely low turnout. Watching this revolving door of Pakistani
politics over the previous ten years, the military had remained on the
sidelines. This time, however, their patience was to be stretched
beyond endurance. The process began in May 1998, when Sharif
authorised the military to carry out a series of nuclear tests.
International reaction was swift and vehement; wide-ranging, crippling
sanctions followed.
The nuclear programme had begun in 1971, after Pakistan’s defeat by
India and progressed steadily with Chinese assistance thereafter.
Pakistan is now believed to possess at least a handful of nuclear
warheads and the means of delivery. The conflict with India (also a
nuclear power) is a central feature of Pakistani politics,
particularly with regards to the attitude and posture of the military,
with a long-running dispute over the status of Kashmir as well as the
nuclear standoff. Throughout 1998 and 1999, the army assumed a more
aggressive stance towards India, engineering a number of border
clashes and other incidents. But in August 1999, under pressure from
the USA and elsewhere, Sharif ordered the army to back down.
This triggered a series of clashes between Sharif and his army chief
of staff, General Pervez Musharraf, which culminated in October 1999,
with a military coup. Musharraf, unusually for a senior general, is a
Mohajir and originally from northern India. The coup was generally
popular among the people and, despite routine condemnation from abroad
and suspension from the Commonwealth, Musharraf was given time to
stabilise the country and try and tackle the endemic corruption and
chronic mismanagement. Then, in 2001, events in neighbouring
Afghanistan - Pakistan’s other major foreign policy interest - put
Pakistan at the centre of the world stage and provided an unexpected
political and economic opportunity.
The 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon
in the USA drew an immediate and massive response from the US
government. Its targets were the Afghanistan-based al-Qaeda (The Base)
organisation and its host, the Taleban regime. Pakistan had been
intimately involved with the creation of the Taleban (roughly
‘students of Islam’), most of whom had fled from Afghanistan and
enrolled in government-backed mudrassas (Islamic colleges). The
graduates were recruited into the mujahidin guerrilla formations
fighting the Soviet invaders. These veterans, who had since relocated
into the southern provinces of Afghanistan, formed the core of the
Taleban movement. Moreover, the Pathans of Pakistan, who are
especially well represented in the military, are closely linked to the
Pashtun, Afghanstan’s largest ethnic group, who also made up most of
the Taleban.
The US demand for assistance in deposing the Taleban thus put the
Pakistani government in something of a quandary, although General
Musharraf quickly decided to back the USA. The decision paid immediate
economic dividends in the lifting of the 1998 sanctions and the
promise of a substantial financial aid package. Senior officers
suspected of active sympathy for the Taleban were edged out. Within
weeks, the Taleban had been driven from power.
At home, the Musharraf government sought to establish its popular
legitimacy by holding elections for the national assembly as well as a
referendum on his presidency, in October 2002. These returned General
Musharraf - now partially reinvented as a civilian president - while
his supporters took control of the national assembly. The general is
extremely unpopular among parts of Pakistani society - he was the
target of at least six assassination attempts in 2002 - but, for the
time being and until the emergence of a civilian political leader
untainted by gross corruption and incompetence, he is probably the
best prospect for the future of his country.
GOVERNMENT :
The constitution and legislature have been
suspended under the military regime, led by general Pervez Musharraf,
which took power in October 1999. The constitution, which dates from
1985, allows for a bicameral legislature comprising a 207-member
National Assembly and an 87-member Senate, the former directly elected
by universal suffrage and the latter elected by four provincial
assemblies. In April 1997 executive powers were transferred from the
president to the prime minister. This divested the president of the
power to appoint and dismiss the prime minister, to dissolve the
legislature, to order a national referendum and to appoint both
provincial governors and armed forces chiefs. |
