Creation of Pakistan

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

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

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

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

Following a military defeat at the hands of India the breakaway of its eastern
territory, which India divides it from, caused the establishment of Bangladesh in
1971. This situation epitomizes the most dramatic manifestation of Pakistan's
dilemma as a decentralized nation. Political developments in Pakistan continue to be
marred by provincial jealousies and, in particular, by the deep resentments in the
smaller provinces of Sind, Baluchistan, and the North-West Frontier Province against
what is seen to be a monopoly by the Punjabi majority of the benefits of power,
profit, and patronage. Pakistan's political instability over time has been matched by a
fierce ideological debate about the form of government it should adopt, Islamic or
secular. In the absence of any nationally based political party, Pakistan has long had
to rely on the civil service and the army to maintain the continuities of government.
The Emergence of Pakistan
The roots of Pakistan's multifaceted problems can be traced to March 1940 when the
All-India Muslim League formally orchestrated the demand for a Pakistan consisting
of Muslim-majority provinces in the northwest and northeast of India. By asserting
that the Indian Muslims were a nation, not a minority, the Muslim League and its
leader, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, had hoped to negotiate a constitutional arrangement
that provided an equitable share of power between Hindus and Muslims once the
British relinquished control of India. The demand for a "Pakistan" was Jinnah's and
the League's bid to register their claim to be the spokesmen of all Indian Muslims,
both in provinces were they were in a majority as well as in provinces where they
were a minority. Jinnah and the League's main bases of support, however, were in
the Muslim-minority provinces. In the 1937 general elections, the league had met a
serious rejection from the Muslim voters in the majority provinces.

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

Despite Jinnah's large claims, the Muslim League failed to build up effective party
machinery in the Muslim-majority provinces. Consequently the league had no real
control over either the politicians or the populace at the base that was mobilized in
the name of Islam. During the final negotiations, Jinnah's options were limited by
uncertain commitment of the Muslim-majority province politicians to the league's
goals in the demand for Pakistan. The outbreak of communal troubles constrained
Jinnah further still. In the end he had little choice but to settle for a Pakistan stripped
of the non-Muslim majority districts of the Punjab and Bengal and to abandon his
hopes of a settlement that might have secured the interests of all Muslims. But the
worst cut of all was Congress's refusal to interpret partition as a division of India
between Pakistan and Hindustan. According to the Congress, partition simply meant
that certain areas with Muslim majorities were 'splitting off' from the "Indian union."
The implication was that if Pakistan failed to survive, the Muslim areas would have to
return to the Indian union; there would be no assistance to recreate it on the basis of
two sovereign states.
With this agreement nothing stood in the way of the reincorporation of the Muslim
areas into the Indian union except the notion of a central authority, which had yet to
be firmly established. To establish a central authority proved to be difficult, especially
since the provinces had been governed from New Delhi for so long and the
separation of Pakistan's eastern and western wings by one thousand miles of Indian
territory. Even if Islamic sentiments were the best hope of keeping the Pakistani
provinces unified, their pluralistic traditions and linguistic affiliations were formidable
stumbling blocks. Islam had certainly been a useful rallying cry, but it had not been
effectively translated into the solid support that Jinnah and the League needed from
the Muslim provinces in order to negotiate an arrangement on behalf of all Indian
Muslims.

The diversity of Pakistan's provinces, therefore, was a potential threat to central

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

Power and Governance

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

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

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

Bangladesh Secedes
After Ayub Khan, General Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan headed the second military
regime from 1969-1971. By that time the country had been under military rule for
thirteen of its twenty-five years of existence. This second military regime emphasized
the extent to which the process of centralization under bureaucratic and military
tutelage had fragmented Pakistani society and politics. The general elections of 1970
on the basis of adult franchise revealed for the first time ever in Pakistan's history
how regionalism and social conflict had come to dominate politics despite the efforts
at controlled development. The Awami League, led by Mujibur Rahman, campaigned
on a six-point program of provincial autonomy, capturing all but one seat in East
Pakistan and securing an absolute majority in the national assembly. In West
Pakistan the Pakistan People's Party, led by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, had a populist
platform that stole the thunder from the Islamic parties (the Muslim League, the
oldest political party captured no more than a few seats) and emerged as the largest
single bloc. The prospect of an Awami Leagues government was a threat to
politicians in West Pakistan who in conspiracy with the military leadership prevented
Mujibur from taking the reins of power. This was the final straw for the east wing who
was already fed up with the their under-representation in all sectors of the
government, economic deprivation and then the suppression of the democratic
process. An armed rebellion in East Pakistan engendered all of these frustrations,
which caused Indian military intervention to crush it. Pakistan was now involved in its
third war with India, thus clearing the way for the establishment of Bangladesh in
1971.
A Democratic Government
The dismemberment of Pakistan discredited both the civil bureaucracy and the army,
General Yahya Khan was left no choice but to hand all power over to the Pakistan's
People's Party (PPP) who saw the formation of a representative led by Zulfikar Ali
Bhutto. Bhutto's electoral strength, however, was confined to the Punjab and Sind,
and even there it had not been based on solid political party organization. This,
together with the PPP's lack of following in the North-West Frontier Province and
Baluchistan, meant that Bhutto could not work the central apparatus without at least
the implicit support of the civil bureaucracy and the military high command. The 1973
constitution made large concessions to the non-Punjabi provinces and provided the
blueprint for a political system based on the semblance of a national consensus. But
Bhutto failed to implement the federal provisions of the constitution. He relied on the
coercive arm of the state to snuff out political opposition and by neglecting to build
the PPP as a truly popular national party. The gap between his popular rhetoric and
the marginal successes of his somewhat haphazard economic reforms prevented
Bhutto form consolidating a social base of support. Thus, despite a temporary loss of
face in 1971 the civil bureaucracy and the army remained the most important pillars
of the state structure, instead of the citizens of Pakistan who were still struggling to
be recognized in the democratic process. Although Bhutto's PPP won the 1977
elections, the Pakistan National Alliance-a nine-party coalition-charged him with
rigging the vote. Violent urban unrest gave the army under General Zia-ul Haq the
pretext to make a powerful comeback to the political arena, and on July 5, 1977
Pakistan was placed under military rule yet again and the 1973 Constitution was
suspended.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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