A Political History of Pakistan
Synopsis
Pakistan established a country on August 14, 1947, to form the world's largest Muslim state at the time. The establishment of Pakistan triggered the biggest demographic shift in recorded history. Nearly seventeen million people—Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs—are said to have gone in both directions between India and Pakistan's two wings (the eastern wing is now Bangladesh). At the time of its formation, sixty million of the ninety-five million Muslims in the Indian subcontinent became citizens of Pakistan. As a result, 35 million Muslims stayed in India, making it the largest Muslim minority in a non-Muslim state.
Pakistan's struggle for existence has been as captivating as it has been uncertain because of its birthmarks. Pakistan has been involved in a tenuous battle to establish a national identity and develop a democratic structure for its linguistically varied people, despite the fact that the country's population is predominately Muslim. The official languages of Pakistan are Urdu and English, although there are also more than 300 other dialects spoken there. The primary languages include Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashtu, Baluchi, and Seraiki. This variety has led to ongoing regional conflicts and repeated constitution-formation failures. Full-scale conflicts with India, a northern border that is vulnerable tactically, and a string of economic crises have all been burdens for Pakistan. It struggles to distribute its limited natural and economic resources fairly.
The difficulty Pakistan faces in balancing the objective of national unity with the requirements of national security is rooted in all of its battles.
Bangladesh was founded in 1971 as a result of the separation of its eastern area, which India divides it, following a war defeat at the hands of India. The most striking example of Pakistan's predicament as a decentralized country may be seen in this circumstance. Provincial envy and, in particular, the intense resentment in the smaller provinces of Sind, Baluchistan, and the North-West Frontier Province against what is perceived as a monopoly by the Punjabi majority of the benefits of power, profit, and patronage continue to impede political developments in Pakistan. The ongoing ideological conflict over whether Pakistan should have an Islamic or a secular government has mirrored the country's political instability. Pakistan has historically been forced to rely on the civil service and the army to guarantee the continuity of government because there isn't a single national political party.
Prosperity of Pakistan
The All-India Muslim League officially sponsored the demand for a Pakistan made up of Muslim-majority provinces in the northwest and northeast of India in March 1940, which is when Pakistan's many issues have their roots. The Muslim League and its leader, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, had intended to negotiate a constitutional arrangement that gave an equitable share of power between Hindus and Muslims once the British abandoned control of India by claiming that the Indian Muslims were a country, not a minority. Jinnah and the League's call for a "Pakistan" was an effort to formalize their claim to represent the voice of all Indian Muslims, both in the provinces where they were the majority and in the provinces where they were the minority. The regions with a Muslim minority, however, served as the main sources of support for Jinnah and the League. The Muslim electorate in the provinces with the largest Muslim populations had severely rejected the league in the 1937 national elections.
The demand for a separate Muslim state and the assertion that one was speaking for all Indian Muslims were in blatant contradiction. Jinnah and the Muslim League failed to articulate how a Pakistan based on an undivided Punjab, Sind, North-West Frontier Province, and Baluchistan in the northwest, and an undivided Bengal and Assam in the northeast, could benefit Muslims in the minority provinces during the remaining years of the British Raj in India. Since there were two countries in India—Hindu and Muslim—Jinnah at least made an effort to explain away the contradictions by claiming that any transfer of power from the British to Indian hands would inevitably result in the dissolution of the unitary center established by the imperial rulers. India's union would need to be reconstituted on the basis of either confederal or treaty agreements between Pakistan (representing the provinces with a Muslim majority) and Hindustan (representing the Hindu-majority provinces). Jinnah also argued that an undivided Bengal and Punjab were required for Pakistan. The largest assurance that the Indian National Congress would see the wisdom of establishing reciprocal agreements with the Muslim League to protect the interests of Muslim minorities in Hindustan was the sizeable non-Muslim minorities in both provinces.
Jinnah made several bold claims, but the Muslim League was unable to establish a strong party apparatus in the provinces with a Muslim majority. As a result, the league had no actual power over the people who were mobilized in the name of Islam, both the politicians and the base population. The legislators in the province with a Muslim majority had a shaky commitment to the league's objectives in the demand for Pakistan, which limited Jinnah's options during the final discussions. The emergence of racial tensions placed even more restrictions on Jinnah. He ultimately had no alternative but to give up on his expectations of a settlement that might have protected the interests of all Muslims and accept a Pakistan without the non-Muslim majority areas of the Punjab and Bengal. The Congress's inability to understand Partition as a divide of India between Pakistan and Hindustan was the biggest blow of all. The Congress said that the term "partition" simply referred to the "breaking off" of some Muslim-majority regions from the "Indian unity." The subtext was that if Pakistan did not succeed, the Muslim regions would have to rejoin India; assistance in rebuilding it on the basis of two independent states would not be provided.
With this agreement, the only thing preventing the Muslim regions from being reincorporated into the Indian union was the idea of a central authority, which had not yet been properly established. It was challenging to establish a central authority, particularly given that the provinces had been administered from New Delhi for such a long time and that Pakistan's eastern and western wings were divided by 1,000 miles of Indian territory. Even if Islamic emotions represented the best chance of maintaining the unity of the Pakistani provinces, their heterogeneous traditions, and linguistic connections posed significant obstacles. Although Islam had served as a significant rallying point, Jinnah and the League had not been able to properly transform it into the strong backing they required from the Muslim regions in
Therefore, Pakistan's diverse provinces posed a possible danger to the federal government. While the provincial arenas remained the main hubs of political activity, it was either weak-willed politicians or civil servants versed in the venerable customs of the British Indian administration that set about establishing a centralized government in Karachi. The inherent flaws in the Muslim League's organizational design combined with the lack of a centralized administrative structure that could oversee state operations ultimately proved to be Pakistan's undoing. A central authority that was not established nor equipped to handle the millions of migrants that were presently needed to take immediate corrective action. Commercial organizations still hadn't made any urgently required industrial unit investments. Additionally, the requirement for state intervention in the agrarian sector to extract revenues led to a rift between the Muslim League's administrative structure and its dominant landed aristocracy.
Governance and Power
The repercussions of partition were felt by both the military and the civil bureaucracy. During the country's initial political and economic challenges, Pakistan went through a number of political leaders. There was little possibility of a democratic state that delivered socioeconomic justice and fair administration to all Pakistani residents because the politicians were corrupt, focused on preserving their political power, and ensuring the interests of the elite. Wide-ranging disagreements over the national language, the place of Islam, the representation of the provinces, and the division of power between the center and the provinces caused delays in the constitution-making process and postponed general elections. Pakistan's first constitution was promulgated in October 1956 after a compromise was reached. The democratic experiment was brief but unsatisfying. In October 1958, with national elections set for the following year, General Mohammad Ayub Khan executed a military coup with astonishing ease. Ministries were formed and disbanded in rapid succession.
Through autocratic control, President Ayub Khan was able to concentrate the government from 1958 to 1971 without the hindrance of the shaky ministerial coalitions that had marked its first decade after independence. In order to replace the parliamentary system with a system of Basic Democracies, Khan pulled together an alliance of a mostly Punjabi army and civil bureaucracy with the small but powerful industrial sector as well as portions of the landed aristocracy. Khan's hypothesis that the politicians and their "free-for-all" style of battling had had a negative impact on the nation served as the foundation for the Basic Democracies Code. In accordance with the Elective Bodies Disqualification Order, 1959, he subsequently disqualified all senior politicians (EBDO). The Basic Democracies institution was subsequently put into place with the justification that "democracy was the best fit for the genius of the people." The members of the provincial and national legislatures were chosen by a very small group of basic democratic voters—originally eighty thousand, split evenly between the two wings, then increased by another forty thousand voters. Therefore, the Basic Democracies system opened up the possibility of bribing and buying votes from the small number of people who were granted the right to vote, rather than empowering individual citizens to engage in the democratic process.
Khan had wanted to support central authority and mostly American-directed schemes for Pakistan's economic development by allowing the civil bureaucracy (the selected few) to participate in electoral politics. However, his policies widened gaps that already existed between and within the provinces. Due to this, Khan was attempting to build a more concentrated authority, which gave the complaints of the eastern wing a strength that challenged it. In West Pakistan, considerable gains in productivity were more than countered by growing rural inequality and underrepresentation, a painful urbanization process, and the concentration of wealth in a few industrial families. Ayub Khan's authority was undermined in the aftermath of the 1965 war with India by growing regional instability in East Pakistan and urban unrest in West Pakistan, which led to his resignation in March 1969.
Bangladesh breaks apart
General Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan led the second military dictatorship from 1969 to 1971 after Ayub Khan. By that point, thirteen of the nation's twenty-five years had been spent under military authority. This second military rule highlighted the degree to which Pakistani society and politics had been divided by the process of centralization under military and bureaucratic control. For the first time in Pakistan's history, the general elections held in 1970 under the adult franchise exposed how, despite efforts to promote controlled growth, regionalism and social conflict had come to dominate politics. With the exception of one seat in East Pakistan, the Awami League, led by Mujibur Rahman, won the election on a platform of six points for provincial autonomy, winning an absolute majority in the national assembly. The Pakistan People's Party, led by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, won the most seats in West Pakistan and overtook the Islamic parties thanks to its populist program (the Muslim League, the country's oldest political party, only managed to win a small number of seats). Politicians in West Pakistan who conspired with the military leadership to prevent Mujibur from assuming power feared the possibility of the Awami Leagues' rules. The east wing had had enough of being underrepresented in all facets of the administration, experiencing economic hardship, and then having the democratic process suppressed. This was the last straw for them. All of these problems were the result of an armed insurrection in East Pakistan, which was put down thanks to Indian military intervention. Bangladesh was able to be founded in 1971 because Pakistan was now engaged in its third war with India.
A Democratic Regime
Because the disintegration of Pakistan had humiliated both the civil bureaucracy and the army, General Yahya Khan was forced to transfer all power to the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), which saw the formation of a government led by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Bhutto's electoral strength, on the other hand, was limited to Punjab and Sind, and even there it was not founded on effective political party organization. This, combined with the PPP's lack of support in the North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistan, meant that Bhutto could not operate the central machinery without the tacit support of the civil bureaucracy and military high command. The 1973 constitution made significant concessions to non-Punjabi provinces and laid the groundwork for a political system based on an appearance of national consensus. However, Bhutto failed to put the constitution's federal sections into effect. He relied on the state's coercive force to suppress political opposition while failing to turn the PPP into a truly popular national party. Bhutto was unable to consolidate a social basis of support due to the disparity between his populist rhetoric and the minor accomplishments of his sometimes haphazard economic reforms. As a result, despite a short loss of face in 1971, the civil bureaucracy and the army remained the most essential foundations of the state structure, rather than the inhabitants of Pakistan, who were still fighting for recognition in the democratic process. Despite the fact that Bhutto's PPP won the 1977 elections, the Pakistan National Alliance, a nine-party alliance, accused him of vote manipulation. Violent urban unrest provided the justification for the army, led by General Zia-ul Haq, to make a powerful comeback in the political arena, and on July 5, 1977, Pakistan was placed under military administration once more, and the 1973 Constitution was suspended.
When General Zia took office, he banned all political parties and declared his intention to reshape Pakistan's state and society into an Islamic mold. Bhutto was executed on murder charges in April 1979, and the PPP's remaining leadership was imprisoned or exiled. By holding nonparty elections and implementing a number of Islamization initiatives, Zia hoped to build a popular base of support in order to legitimize the military's position in Pakistani politics. Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, Zia's regime gained international recognition as a stable government abutting Soviet territory. Despite the fact that Pakistan has now formally disengaged from both SEATO and CENTO and joined the nonaligned movement, the West still regards Pakistan as an essential front-line state and a key receiver of American military and financial aid. Despite a slew of statistics touting the economy's strength, murmurs of unhappiness remained audible, however, muffled. After confirming his own position in a contentious "Islamic" referendum, completing a new round of nonparty elections for provincial and national assemblies, and introducing a series of amendments to the 1973 constitution, Zia finally lifted martial law and declared the beginning of a new democratic era in Pakistan on December 30, 1985.
This new democratic age in Pakistan was as volatile as the country's previous political history. Because of the non-party bias platform, major political parties called for a boycott of the 1985 election. In the absence of political parties, candidates concentrated on local issues, which trumped the majority of candidates' party connections. The Pakistani people were clearly eager in participating in the political process and ignored the pressure to boycott, with 52.9% voting in the National Assembly and 56.9% voting in the provincial elections.
President Zia's first step was to propose constitutional reforms to secure his control over the parliamentary system. The eighth amendment proved to be the most damaging to people's trust in the democratic system. The president now had complete control and authority to take any action he deemed necessary to ensure national integrity. For the next twelve years, presidents utilized this amendment to remove a number of prime ministers from office, primarily due to personal conflicts or concerns about a power transfer.
Following the 1988 election, Muhammad Khan Junejo was nominated as prime minister, and the National Assembly gave him a unanimous vote of confidence. Junejo appeared to be a promising member of the Pakistani administration; he facilitated a smooth transition from the army to civil authorities, which encouraged optimism about Pakistan's democratic process. Junejo was able to find a compromise during his first year in power between establishing the legislative credentials as a democratic body and preserving President Zia's endorsement. He devised a five-point agenda aiming at promoting development, and literacy rates, eradicating corruption and improving the plight of the common man. He was also working to improve foreign policy while dealing with a huge budget deficit caused by the martial law regimes' massive spending. However, on May 29, 1988, President Zia dissolved the National Assembly and removed the prime minister in accordance with Article 58-2-b of the Constitution. He stated that Jenejo was plotting against him to destabilize his position, and he accused the National Assembly of corruption and failing to enforce the Islamic way of life.
The opposition parties backed Zia's move since it benefited them by allowing for an early election. They asked that elections be held within ninety days, as required by the constitution. This article of the constitution was interpreted differently by President Zia. He felt obligated to disclose the election calendar in ninety days, even if the elections may be held later. Simultaneously, he intended to organize elections on a non-party basis, as he had done in 1985, but the Supreme Court ruled that this violated the spirit of the constitution. As a result of Zia's suggestion to postpone elections in order to restructure the political system in the interest of Islam, political turmoil arose. There was concern that Zia might implement martial law, and the Muslim League split into supporters of Zia and Junejo. All of this came to a halt on August 17th, when Zia perished in a plane crash.
Ghulam Ishaq Khan, the chairman of the Senate, was sworn in as president, and elections were held. Outside observers, who expected that the military would easily seize power, were astonished. For the first time in fifteen years, the November 1988 elections were based on political party programs. Although no party received a majority in the National Assembly, the Pakistan People's Party emerged as the single largest holder of seats. The PPP's chairperson, Benazir Bhutto, was named prime minister after the PPP forged a coalition with minor parties to form a working majority. People first hoped that Bhutto would cooperate with the opposition party's leader, Nawaz Sharif of the IJI party, who led the Punjabi party, the majority province. However, they quickly elevated animosity to new heights and depleted the economy with bribes to other politicians in order to shift allegiance. These accounts, combined with no improvement in the economy, tarnished the central government's image. The President fired Bhutto in 1990, citing the eighth amendment to the constitution, a judgment affirmed by the Supreme Court. So, just two years later, elections were held once more.
The people of Pakistan were losing faith in the democratic system. They saw it as crooked, chaotic, and based on squabbles between the military and bureaucratic elite. This attitude was strengthened by the fact that Nawaz Sharif was appointed prime minister in 1990 and dismissed in 1993, despite the fact that he liberalized investment and restored confidence among local and international investors, resulting in a 17.6% rise in investment. As a result, the GDP increased by 6.9% while inflation remained below 10%. President Ghulam Ishaq Khan was accused of scheming with Benazir Bhutto to remove Sharif from office. For the first time in Pakistani history, the Supreme Court ruled that the removal of Sharif and the National Assembly was illegal, and reinstated Sharif and the National Assembly. This act demonstrated that the president did not have absolute power, but the events that followed demonstrated how unstable the government was. Ghulam was able to influence a mutiny in Punjab in 1993 through bribes and palace intrigues, portraying Sharif and his party as inept. This event shook the establishment, prompting the intervention of Army Chief of Staff General Abdul Waheed Kakar. Both the president and the prime minister decided to resign, and new elections would be held.
Even lesser turnout harmed the legitimacy of the all-too-common political process. The mandate was divided in this election by the same players, the PPP with Bhutto and the Muslim League with Sharif. Sharif has lost public support in Punjab, allowing the PPP to win the majority of seats. So, once again, the PPP won the majority of seats, and Bhutto was appointed Prime Minister. She was successful in electing Farooq Ahmad Khan Leghari as president, which protected her government from the eighth amendment. Regardless, Bhutto was unable to operate a just government; she relapsed into corruption and mismanagement of public resources, which harmed the Pakistani people. Both the Chief Justice and the President sought to maintain their autonomy in government, but Bhutto was aiming to overthrow the political system. President Leghari quickly removed her, with the Supreme Court's support. The populace applauded this move, and in February 1997, new elections were held, the fifth in twelve years. Throughout the twelve years, voter support for elections declined proportionally.
When Sharif and the Muslim League were re-elected as Prime Minister and majority party, it was clear that the two major parties were rotating public support. The Muslim League used its legislative majority to achieve a fundamental change in the political system by amending the constitution thirteen times. The thirteenth amendment reduced the president's role to that of a titular head of state while returning parliament as the primary governing body. In order to maintain political stability, this modification essentially added a check and balance procedure to article eight. By 1999, the president's authority to dissolve the National Assembly or fire the prime minister had been removed from the eighth amendment. These legislative achievements were noteworthy, but the Muslim League's overall performance was mixed. They inherited a slew of challenges, including a collapsing economy and a corrupt political culture. The decision to conduct nuclear tests in reaction to India's nuclear tests in May 1998 resulted in the implementation of sanctions that further hindered the economy. Bhutto's unscrupulous use of foreign cash, as well as the blocking of foreign assets, strained investment relations even more.
Upheaval
Prime Minister Sharif was garnering widespread criticism for being power-hungry and probably corrupt. Soon after the eighth amendment was revised, he forced out the chief justice of the Supreme Court and the army chief, he was cracking down on the press that did not support him, and his family's firm, Ittefaq Industries, was doing unusually well in times of economic slowdown, raising suspicions of corruption. Among those concerned about Sharif's growing influence was army chief Jehangir Karamat, who requested that the army be included in the country's decision-making process in order to balance the civil government. He resigned two days later, placing General Pervez Musharraf in charge. Musharraf has been a key strategist in the Kashmir conflict with India. He soon realized that he did not have the civil government's political support in his aggressive pursuit in Kashmir. The combination of Shariff's hesitancy in the Kashmiri resistance, rising factional disagreements, and terrorism offered Musharraf a pretext to conduct a coup to destabilize the civil government. On October 12, 1999, he effectively deposed Sharif and the Muslim League, claiming that he was maintaining peace and order while improving the institution of governance.
The Pakistani public believed that this was only a temporary measure and that once matters had calmed, Musharraf would call for new National Assembly elections. However, Musharraf refused to reestablish the National Assembly through elections until October 2002, the Supreme Court's deadline. Musharraf declared himself president in July 2001 before meeting with the Indian prime minister to establish his authority within the Pakistani administration. Since then, he has summoned all regional militant Islamic factions in Pakistan and persuaded them to surrender their weapons to the central government. He has been staunch in his support for Pakistan's position on Kashmir, which has shortened negotiations with India. He is now working with the US government and the rest of the world to fight terrorism, which puts him in a delicate position with his Afghan neighbors and the fractious elements within Pakistan that sympathize with the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden on ethnic, ideological, and political grounds.
Mohammad Ali Jinnah has always envisioned a democratic Pakistan, and many of his successors have worked towards this goal, but for no other reason than to retain their own power bases. It is ironic that such political instability affects a country whose leaders' primary goal is to secure their own power. Perhaps it's time for a new equation. The activities of both civic and military leaders have thoroughly tested the Pakistani people and their national struggle. Pakistan is faced with the unpleasant challenge of allocating government priorities based on the requirements of its diverse and unevenly developed component divisions. Regardless of the form of government—civilian or military, Islamic or secular—solutions to the problems of mass illiteracy and economic inequity on the one hand, and the imperatives of national integration and national security on the other, will determine the level of political stability, or instability, that Pakistan will face in the coming decades. However, the people and the country continue to offer the globe significant cultural, religious, and intellectual traditions.
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