ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — President Zia ul-Haq announced Saturday that Pakistan’s suspended 1973 constitution will be revived and amended to make himself an unchallenged head of state, but he promised a gradual end to 7 1/2 years of martial law.
The 60-year-old general, in full military uniform, disclosed the long-awaited constitutional amendments in a 90-minute address on national television and radio a few days after Pakistanis voted for representatives to a 237-seat National Assembly and to provincial assemblies in the first elections since Zia took power.
“My desire is to restore the constitution quickly, but martial law will be lifted step by step,” said Zia, who seized power from Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in a military coup in July, 1977. Bhutto was later executed.
In the 1973 constitution, suspended after the coup, the presidency was little more than a figurehead position.
Zia said the amendments will allow the president to name the prime minister, his Cabinet, the heads of the armed forces and provincial governors. The president also may dissolve the National Assembly and stage a referendum on any issue.
One amendment adds a clause to the constitution accepting a national referendum that Zia held in December to extend his rule by five years.
Balancing of Powers
Zia described the changes as a balancing of powers between himself and the future prime minister.
“The basic structure of the constitution has not been touched,” he said. “It will continue to be parliamentary.”
Zia had already made himself head of the newly created 11-member National Security Council, an advisory body that will be composed of political and military leaders.
He did not give a timetable for restoration of the constitution or abolition of martial law, saying only that the National Assembly and Senate will meet on March 23, “and thus democratic institutions will be established.”
The National Assembly elected Monday could reject the constitutional amendments, but only with a two-thirds majority and with support from the four provincial assemblies elected Thursday.
In the early 1980 General Ziaul Haq was under pressure from his Western supporters to deal with human rights violation issues, including the cases of political activists.
The pressure had mounted since first Nusrat Bhutto in 1982 and then Benazir Bhutto in 1984 were released from detention and allowed to go abroad. Visiting London and the United States, Benazir talked to the media, human rights activists and politicians there about human rights violations by the military regime and stated that Gen Zia was not prepared to restore democracy in the country.
As she travelled through Western capitals, Gen Zia discussed with his team and some legal experts about the future political set-up of the country. After holding local bodies elections on non-party basis he thought that a similar experiment in the national politics would also bring change in the country.
Time proved him wrong.
The MRD movement had created in him a latent fear about his future. Though the movement had been crushed brutally, its force left Gen Zia with the feeling that one day this passion could outclass his wits and as Ayub Khan could not withstand the people’s wrath, he could also become its victim. This was another reason for him to think about restoring democracy in some weak and dubious form. The referendum had assured him of his rule for five years; now he could share some power with politicians and landed aristocrats.
He had indirectly agreed, in August 1983, to hold the elections on non-party basis, with an approximate date of March 1985. Perhaps he wanted to buy time to think of some ways to clamp restrictions on taking part in elections so that only new and inexperienced people could come to the parliament who would act as his yes men; he wanted a house which would need his leadership.
Such amendments to the Political Parties Act, 1962 are introduced that are obviously meant to keep the PPP and liberals away from polls
The PNA parties except Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) and the PPP had refused to contest the polls, while the Muslim league faction led by Pir Sahib Pagara had decided to take part. The JI leadership had decided to participate in elections as its leader Tufail Ahmad was closely associated with the general. There was also a chance that Pir Pagara’s Muslim League would win sufficient number of seats to form a government. Gen Zia had a special regard for Pir Pagara, as in 1980 he had offered the general the platform of his faction of the Muslim League. But the general was not ready to make any compromises in a party set up.
On Jan 8, 1985, the Chief Martial Law Administer (CMLA) promulgated a Martial Law Order No 65 by which it was notified that the government could disqualify any person from taking part in politics; this was meant as a warning that the government was prepared to restrain any person whom it thought undesirable.
Two lawyers in his team, A.K. Brohi and Sharifuddin Pirzada, had been assigned the task of ensuring Zia’s continuation in power. They drew a long list of amendments which would disqualify almost all candidates belonging to the PPP and other liberal groups, who would like to contest despite their party’s decision to boycott.
The elections were held on Feb 25, 1985 on non-party basis, though some political parties allowed their members to contest the elections as independent candidates.
Such amendments in the Political Parties Act, 1962 were introduced that PPP leaders and activists, including former members or ministers, stood disqualified. For instance, the amended Political Parties Act implied that any person who had at any time after Dec 1, 1971, been an office-bearer or a member of the executive committee at the national or provincial setup of a party which had not been registered nor declared eligible to participate in elections by the Election Commission by Oct 11, 1979 stood disqualified for seven years to be elected as member of the National Assembly or a Provincial assembly.
Further, any person who had been a federal minister, minister of state, an adviser or provincial minister between Dec 1, 1971 and July 5, 1977 stood disqualified for seven years from participating in the elections. The very amendments provided guarantees to Gen Zia that no PPP supporter would reach any assembly.
The elections were held on Feb 25, 1985 on non-party basis, though some political parties allowed their members to contest the elections as independent candidates; after the elections some parties claimed winning a number of seats as the candidate had won due to their support. The election brought new faces belonging to the landed aristocracy and business tycoons.
There were different claims about the turnout of voters: official figures claimed a voter turnout at 53.71 per cent, while the political parties said it was not more than15pc. Four days later, elections to the provincial assemblies were also held. The elections brought hope that a house of politically elected members could also be hoped in future, and that the House could be tamed democratically.
With a separate electorate system, Gen Zia presumed that perhaps the minorities, especially the Hindus, supported the PPP and might have helped in bringing a few PPP supporters in the National Assembly. This would create a serious issue for Gen Zia.
shaikhaziz38@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, August 9th, 2015
In the aftermath of the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD), there was unrelenting pressure on Chief Martial Law Administrator (CMLA) General Ziaul Haq to relinquish and transfer power. By the beginning of 1984, even the general’s friends in the army began pressing him to adopt certain measures which could help the country return to normalcy. It was time to act.
There were two schools of thought: the first favoured seeking legitimacy from the people for Gen Zia, and towards this end they wanted him to hold a referendum. The second opinion was to hold elections and hand over power to the elected representatives.
As always, Gen Zia was averse to holding elections; the general had made it abundantly clear that were his administration to go down that route, he favoured non-party elections. But before any polls, he insisted on holding a referendum to elicit people’s will.
When it was time to secure another five years for the general, his team tied his continuation in power to the salvation of Islam and the preservation of Pakistan
Political circles immediately opposed this suggestion, and reminded the general that it was him and his friends in the army who had opposed Bhutto’s decision to conduct a referendum during the PNA agitation. But elsewhere, there was growing support for the referendum option.
In a meeting of martial law administrators (MLAs) on Nov 6, 1984, it was resolved that the referendum would be held on Dec 19, 1984. Gen Zia announced the decision on Dec 1 to the general populace.
Now came the most crucial phase of the process: crafting the question that was to be put before the public.
This process required a tricky question, asking the voter whether they wanted to support Islamisation and, therefore, want Gen Zia to continue for another five years after Martial Law was lifted. What was eventually crafted linked the general to the salvation of Islam and preservation of Pakistan: “Do you endorse the process initiated by the President of Pakistan, General Mohammad Ziaul Haq, for bringing the laws of Pakistan in conformity with the injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Holy Quran and Sunnah of the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) and for the preservation of the ideology of Pakistan, and are you in favour of continuation and further consolidation of that process and for the smooth and orderly transfer of power to the elected representatives of the people.”
The question sought a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer — affirmative replies would mean support for Gen Zia to continue as president till 1990.
The martial law administrators all knew that if arrangements were not undertaken to get a ‘Yes’ vote, the scheme might backfire. The governors were therefore asked to do everything in their control to prop support for the general. Meanwhile, Gen Zia would undertake visits to all provincial capitals and also address the nation on radio and television.
In his address, Gen Zia announced that national identity cards would be a must for voting. But due to flawed policies, not all citizens possessed identity cards. The issue was re-examined by the officials concerned, and two days before polling, the condition of producing a national identity card to vote in the referendum was waived.
The MRD and other parties boycotted the referendum. Polling stations on the day wore a deserted look but when the results were announced, it was claimed that the general had bagged more than 60 per cent votes and was thus elected for another five years after the lifting of martial law.
The MRD and other parties boycotted the referendum. Polling stations on the day wore a deserted look but when the results were announced, it was claimed that the general had bagged more than 60 per cent votes and was thus elected for another five years after the lifting of martial law.
With his power seemingly reinforced, the general was now confronted by another promise he had made during the MRD campaign on Aug 12, 1983: conducting general elections in February 1985. Towards this end, began an exercise aimed at reducing the vote bank of the PPP and other leftist parties. He did not want any move which diluted his political philosophy.
In 1983, a movement against the Ziaul Haq dictatorship began to spiral out of control and threatened a full-scale civil war in the Sindh province.
Dozens of civilians were killed, hundreds arrested and many escaped into the thick forests near the cities of Dadu and Moro to (eventually) become dacoits.
A movement that had begun as a nationwide anti-Zia agitation, mutated into becoming a civil war of sorts between Sindhi nationalists and the state. The movement was eventually crushed with the help of the army.
One of the most intriguing characters of the movement was a middle-aged Sindhi man reportedly belonging to a small Maoist party, the Awami Tehreek.
His sudden claim to fame had to do with just one act of his: In September 1983, he had jumped in front of an armored limousine in which Zia was travelling (in Dadu), lift the dhotihe was wearing, and flashed his privates for the dictator to see, all the while shouting (in Sindhi), ‘bhali karey aya, bhali karey aya‘ (‘welcome, welcome’).
He was arrested and never seen or heard from again.
The following narrative was weaved from one of the most detailed papers on the 1983 MRD Movement (written by Amir Ali, Mughal Ahmad and Fauzia Naseem for Berkeley Journal of Social Sciences); and an insightful paper authored by eminent political scientist, Khalid B. Sayeed, Pakistan in 1983: Internal Stresses More Serious than External Problems(University of California, 1984); and dispatches from BBC’s South Asian correspondents who regularly reported from the movement’s hotspots in the interior of Sindh.
Making the move
Though protests against the Ziaul Haq dictatorship had begun almost immediately after his military coup in July 1977, his regime’s harsh measures against any and all opposition did not allow opposition groups to organise themselves in a more coherent and systematic manner.
The beginning of the anti-Soviet insurgency in Afghanistan in early 1980 had meant that the Zia regime was poised to attract recognition from the United States, and become its vessel to carry the large military and financial aid that the US and Saudi Arabia pledged as a way to back Afghan insurgents in Afghanistan. But it would take another few years for Zia to use this patronage to strengthen his position.
A policeman flogs an anti-Zia political activist in Lahore in 1979.
The Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD) was formed in 1981. It was a multiparty alliance initiated by the left-leaning Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), which, at the time, was being led by former Prime Minister ZA Bhutto’s widow, Begum Nusrat Bhutto, and her then 28-year-old daughter, Benazir Bhutto. Both had been in and out of jails ever since ZA Bhutto was executed through a controversial trial in April 1979.
Nusrat Bhutto leaves after speaking at a PPP rally in Karachi in 1978.
The MRD included the centre-left PPP; the center-left Pakistan National Party; the far-left Awami Tehreek; the far-left Qaumi Mahaz-i-Azadi; the far-left Muzdoor Kissan Party; the centre-left National Democratic Party; the centrist Tehreek-i-Istaqlal; the centre-right Pakistan Democratic Party; the centrist Muslim League (Malik Qasim faction); and the right-wing Jamiat Ulema Islam, which was the only mainstream religious party that was opposing Zia.
Though the movement kicked off in early 1981, it took another two years for MRD to gather a more substantial momentum against Zia’s dictatorship.
But by 1983, Zia had consolidated his political position and revived the economy. Yet, this revival, which was largely built upon the substantial flow of US and Saudi aid that had begun to arrive, brought with it a new kind of institutional corruption and the initial emergence of thorny factors such as heroin/gun smuggling, and the mainstreaming of radical clerics who were propped up by the state to recruit and indoctrinate young Pakistanis and Afghans for the insurgency against Soviet forces in Kabul.
A group of anti-Soviet Afghan insurgents (Mujahideen) gathered on the Pakistan side of the Pak-Afghan border (1983).
The battle for Punjab
The country’s largest and most populated province, Punjab, was a bastion of the PPP ever since the late 1960s. The party, though led by a Sindhi (ZA Bhutto), had swept the election in the province in the 1970 election and then again in the (latter annulled) 1977 election.
To dent the PPP’s support base in Punjab, Zia (an immigrant Punjabi), began to overtly patronise those sections of the province that had been adversely affected by the Bhutto regime’s haphazard ‘socialist’ policies. Such sections included prominent business groups of the province.
Zia’s economic policies were also designed to attract the support of Punjab’s urban middle and lower-middle-class traders and shopkeepers (or those urban sections of the province who had overwhelmingly voted for ZA Bhutto’s PPP in the 1970 election).
Zia then gradually aligned these sections with certain radical religious outfits that he had begun to foster. Thus, an economic revival witnessed during the Zia regime was accompanied by a burst of religiosity within Punjab’s bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie.
The MRD leadership reacted to this by deducing that the fruits of the economic revival witnessed (after 1980) were mostly falling in the hands of central/urban Punjab’s industrialist and business communities and the trader classes; whereas rest of the country (as well as working-class and rural Punjabis) were being ravaged by economic exploitation, the rising rates of crime and corruption, and the growing incidents of sectarian violence.
On August 14, 1983 (one year after Zia had gotten himself elected as ‘President’ through a dubious referendum), the MRD launched a movement against him.
Zia casting his vote during the 1982 referendum that made him ‘President.’ Observers described the whole exercise as being ‘an electoral farce’.
Though the movement kicked-off simultaneously in Sindh and the Punjab, it failed to gather much support in the latter province. Soon, it became restricted to Sindh, where at one point, it treateningly began to look like it would turn into a full-blown Sindhi nationalist movement and even a civil war.
MRD activists and youth belonging to the student-wings of MRD parties and various left-wing Sindhi nationalist groups plunged into the fray and disrupted everyday life in Sindh. Sindh’s metropolitan capital, Karachi too, witnessed widespread protests by journalist, student and women’s organisations, but compared to the rest of the province, Karachi remained relatively unruffled.
In the interior of Sindh, the situation eventually became too hot for the police to handle and Zia had to call in the army. Dozens of MRD supporters were killed in the ensuing violence.
By September 1983, the movement had squarely become a militant Sindhi nationalist expression when Punjab failed to rise.
Firebrand leftist leader, Miraj Mohammad Khan, being hauled up by the police during the 1983 MRD Movement in Karachi.
But why Sindh?
We have already discussed how Zia managed to change the political and social complexion of Punjab by initiating the gradual process of drying up the support that the PPP had enjoyed in that province.
But whereas he managed to also keep Balochistan quiet (after releasing Baloch nationalists who had been thrown in jails by the Bhutto regime); and with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa caught-up in receiving waves of Afghan insurgents (termed as ‘guests’) and refugees (described as ‘brothers’), Sindh was largely left to its own devices.
Apart from the fact that there was already anger among the Sindhis against the hanging of a Sindhi prime minister, contributing to the violence in the province in 1983 was the feeling that Sindhis, as well as the Urdu-speakers (Mohajirs) in Karachi were being ‘invaded’ by elements that were posing a threat to their economic and political interests.
Firstly, from 1982 onwards, Karachi began receiving large numbers of Afghan refugees, some of whom came for the sole purpose of setting up illegal drug and weapons businesses in the city. This trend would go on to trigger the vicious circle of ethnic violence in Karachi from 1985 onwards.
Secondly, Zia began to allot lands in interior Sindh to Punjabis who were encouraged (by the regime) to migrate from Punjab to Sindh.
Zia did this to create a constituency for himself in Sindh. But what he received was resistance and resentment from the Sindhis and Urdu-speaking traders and members of the Sindhi landed elite.
In Karachi, Memon, Sindhi, and Urdu-speaking traders and businessmen formed an organisation called the Maha Sindh to ‘protect the interests of Sindh’s Mohajirs and Sindhis’. But this organisation was mostly centred in Karachi. It soon became an entirely Mohajir vehicle and would partly evolve into becoming the Mohajir Qaumi Movement (MQM) in 1984.
But the reaction to the regime’s manoeuvres was more violent in the interior of Sindh, where protesters turned militant and military troops had to be called in to quell the turmoil.
A riot breaks out as a women’s rally is baton-charged by the police during the MRD Movement (1983).
The flasher
Begun on August 14 1983, the MRD Movement had started to whirl out of control by early September, not only for the Zia dictatorship but for the main MRD leadership as well. Sindh was in serious turmoil.
In August, Sindh’s capital, Karachi (in the south), had witnessed court arrests and protest rallies on a daily basis by labour and trade unionists, student leaders and anti-Zia politicians. But in September, the focus of the movement had shifted to the central and northern parts of Sindh that got caught in a whirlpool of violence.
The MRD movement here had begun to take the shape of a Sindhi nationalist uprising bordering on an insurgency against the state.
Faced with a volley of questions (mainly from foreign journalists), Zia decided to prove that ‘only a handful of troublemakers’ were involved in the violence. He announced that he would go on a whirlwind tour of Sindh to attest that he was as popular there as he believed he was in the Punjab.
So he took off from Rawalpindi in his big military aircraft (C-130) to Sindh’s capital, Karachi.
Zia’s plane landed at the Karachi International Airport, and from Karachi, he planned to fly to Hyderabad with his posse. With him was also a crew from the state-controlled Pakistan Television (PTV) who was to cover the general’s ‘successful tour of Sindh.’
After arriving in Karachi, Zia briefly talked to a select group of journalists and reiterated his views about the situation in Sindh, insisting all was well, and that the MRD movement was the work of a handful of politicians who were ‘working against Islam, Pakistan and the country’s armed forces.’
He sounded confident about the success of his visit to the troubled spots of Sindh. This confidence was not only generated by what he was hearing from the brownnosers he had gathered around him; but also because by the time he reached Sindh’s second largest city, Hyderabad, he’d already had telephonic conversations with Sindh’s most respected nationalist leader and scholar, GM Syed.
Video grab of Zia speaking to a gathering after reaching Hyderabad (September, 1983).
Syed was the main architect of the historical and scholarly narrative behind Sindhi nationalism. After building a radical narrative against the so-called ‘Punjabi ruling elite,’ Syed formed the Jeeay Sindh Tehreek (JST). In 1973, he called for Sindh’s separation from Pakistan. He was promptly jailed by the ZA Bhutto regime.
Ironically, 10 years later when Sindh erupted during the MRD movement in 1983, Syed was nowhere to be seen. He had decided to stay out of the movement, a fact cleverly exploited by Zia.
A staunch opponent of Bhutto and his PPP, Syed, right after Bhutto was hanged in April 1979, was quoted as saying: ‘The (Punjabi) establishment doesn’t realise it has hanged its greatest asset …’
In September 1983, when journalists asked Syed why his party wasn’t taking part in the MRD Movement, he replied: ‘Zia is doing my work. His actions will force the separation of Sindh (from rest of Pakistan). That’s what I want as well. So I’ll let him do it for me.’
In another statement he said: ‘It (the MRD Movement) is a PPP-led movement and it has nothing to do with Sindhi nationalism. PPP is just trying to grab power.’
The decision to ignore the 1983 MRD Movement would eventually cost Syed his political career. Though respected as the Sindhi nation’s greatest scholar till the time of his death in 1996, Syed, however, lost his political clout when a major faction from his Jeeay Sindh Tehreek broke away and joined the movement.
Zia visits Syed.
Syed’s logic behind opting not to take any part in the movement seems to be linked to his perception of the PPP as a party that was being used by the ‘Punjabi ruling elite’ to keep nationalist sentiments in Sindh at bay.
This narrative was well known by Syed’s admirers. Yet, what shocked many of them was not really the act of Syed not taking part in a PPP-led movement, but the fact that Syed was actually responding to Zia’s friendly overtures towards him.
Syed’s apologists have suggested that Syed did this to neutralise the PPP’s influence in Sindh so he could construct a Sindhi separatist movement on his own terms.
So Syed sat quietly, watching the MRD movement in Sindh fast becoming a Sindhi nationalist uprising – without him.
By September, the movement had begun to slip away from the hands of the top leadership of the PPP and of other MRD component parties. PPP chairperson, Benazir Bhutto, released a statement from her jail cell urging Punjab to rise if it wanted to save Pakistan from breaking up. She was getting nervous.
Benazir being produced in front of a judge at a local court in Karachi (1983).
The movement was now almost entirely being navigated by the local leaders of PPP’s youth-wing; Maoist outfits such as Awami Tehreek, Qaumi Mahaz-i-Azadi and Mazdoor Kissan Party; left-wing student organizations such as the revamped Democratic Students Federation (DSF), and the breakaway faction of the Jeeay Sindh Tehreek.
Though several rallies were also taken out in Punjab’s capital city, Lahore, the province did not rise the way MRD was expecting it to.
Revolutionary poet, Habib Jalib, reciting a poem at an MRD rally in Lahore (1983). He shouted: ‘Zulmat Ko Zia, Sar Sar Ko Saba, Banday Ko Khuda Kia Likhna …!’
Back in Hyderabad, Zia spoke about the inherent patriotism of all Sindhis. By this, he meant not only indigenous Sindhis, but also the Urdu-speakers (Mohajirs) and the Punjabis settled in the province (called ‘New Sindhis’).
Palejo, though not a Syed disciple, echoed Syed’s original narrative about Mohajirs. In the 1960s, Syed had accused the Urdu-speakers of coming to Sindh (as migrants from India), but behaving like those Europeans who had invaded the lands of the ‘Red Indians’ in the Americas and had treated them shabbily.
Palejo’s rebuff did not go down well with the Mohajir members of the various small left-wing parties and youth outfits that were taking part in the movement.
Aamer Zain, a young Urdu-speaking activist of the DSF in the Sindh city of Khairpur, was quoted in a pro-PPP Sindhi newspaper as saying: ‘With all due respect to Palejo Sahib, I am as much a Sindhi as he is, otherwise why would I be risking my student life, future, and everything else by taking part in this movement …?’
Palejo speaking to the BBC.
On 15th September, Zain was arrested by the police during a violent rally in the Sindh city of Nawabshah and severely tortured. After his release in 1988, he joined the MQM.
In 1983, there was no Mohajir Qaumi Movement (MQM). The Mohajir majority in Karachi and the Mohajirs in the rest of Sindh were voters and supporters of three main political parties.
The progressive Mohajirs were either associated with the PPP, or with various leftist student outfits such as the NSF. The conservative Mohajirs backed the Jamat-i-Islami (JI) and Jamiat Ulema Pakistan (JUP). After the rise of MQM in 1985, however, the majority of Mohajirs went on to become MQM aficionados. They still are.
But in 1983, there were just two tiny Mohajir nationalist organisations with not much influence. There was also the student outfit, All Pakistan Mohajir Students Organisation (APMSO), but it wasn’t as prominent as it would become after 1985. The Mohajir community largely sat out the MRD movement.
Ghous Baksh Bizenjo (a prominent MRD leader), speaking at a protest rally in Karachi’s Lyari area (1983).
The Sindhi nationalists’ biggest grudge during the MRD movement, however, was with the Punjabi settlers. Sindhi nationalists had been accusing the Zia regime of sending and settling ambitious Punjabi traders and agriculturalists in Sindh to prop up a constituency for himself in the province.
The nationalists claimed that these settlers were taking over Sindhi businesses and jobs and siding with the pro-Zia feudal elite to repress Sindhi nationalism. One of the most prominent among these feudal leaders was Peer Pagaro.
MRD activists court arrest in Sukkur (1983).
From Hyderabad, Zia began his tour of the troubled interior of the Sindh province. He particularly wanted the cameras to capture his tour of Dadu and Moro, the two cities most affected by the movement. It was decided by his security team that he would use a helicopter to fly there. His aides seemed a tad fidgety and nervous.
The thick forests around Moro and Dadu had become sanctuaries for hundreds of activists escaping Zia’s forces. Another rallying point for the activists were the many big and small shrines of Sufi saints across Sindh.
As Zia sat in the helicopter, waiting to land in Dadu, some of his security advisers shared with him his regime’s latest triumphs in the area: Hundreds of ‘troublemakers and traitors’ had been arrested and eliminated, he was told, and a plan was also afoot to flush out ‘rebels’ hiding in the shrines and the forests.
Most of Sindh’s influential peers (Sufi spiritual leaders) were opposing Zia. They had thrived during the Bhutto regime, especially the powerful Peer of Hala. So Zia contacted another influential Peer, Peer Pagaro (who was a Zia supporter), and requested him to use his influence to make the keepers of the Sufi shrines reject ‘Sindhi rebels’. Pagara tried but failed.
The shrine of Sufi saint Shah Abdul Latif in Sindh’s Matiari District was a major rallying point of MRD activists in 1983.
One September evening in 1983, Pakistanis watched a video clip on the state-owned PTV’s 9pm Urdu news bulletin that showed Zia descending from a helicopter and being greeted by a dozen or so smiling men in Sindhi caps. He had reached Dadu.
Viewers were told that Zia was ‘warmly greeted by patriotic Sindhis in Dadu.’
The next day, however, when Pakistanis tuned into BBC Radio’s Urdu service at 8pm, the newscaster, after detailing the nature of the day’s rallies, protest marches and violence in Sindh, also added a brief report about a more amusing episode.
This report became a topic of glee at the Karachi Press Club that was heavily involved in accommodating the journalists who were taking part in the movement.
Karachi Press Club was a hotbed of anti-Zia politics in the late 1970s and 1980s.
This is what happened: As Zia’s helicopter landed on a helipad in Dadu, he was greeted by a few men wearing Sindhi caps. He was then escorted towards a bulletproof limousine that was followed by jeeps carrying armed security personnel.
He was expecting the roads of Dadu to be lined up with Sindhis cheering his arrival. In fact, he was sure that his aides had done well to organise a colourful show for the TV cameras to capture.
His motorcade moved into the city on its way to a building where he was expected to speak to the press. To his satisfaction, he did find a sprinkling of people on the roadsides, holding small Pakistani flags. But then, suddenly, his speeding limo swayed to the right, closely avoiding hitting a stray dog that had appeared, as if out of nowhere.
It was no ordinary dog. It had been pushed in front of the general’s motorcade by the same small roadside crowd. On the dog’s body something (in Sindhi) was scribbled with red paint. It read: ‘Zia’
The journalists and the BBC correspondent accompanying the motorcade were not sure what Zia’s reaction to this was.
As the motorcade moved on, a donkey was seen being made to run on the edges of the scruffy Dadu road that Zia’s limo was travelling on. The poor beast was being chased by a group of small kids and on its body too, the red paint screamed Zia’s appellation.
So much for the show of pomp and popularity the President was expecting from his aides.
The general’s limo now gathered even more speed, until it came to a bumpy portion of the road. Here, it slowed down. In front of the limo was a jeep packed with police guards. The jeep came to an abrupt halt and the cops rushed out, brandishing their rifles. What happened?
A middle-aged man, hiding in a tree whose branches hung over this part of the road, had suddenly jumped down from the tree and landed (on his backside) right in front of Zia’s limo.
The man was wearing a traditional Sindhi dress that also included a dhoti (a long piece of cloth wrapped around the waist).
Before the guards could grab him, he lifted his dhoti and exposed his privates, all the while shouting (in Sindhi) ‘Bhali karey aya! Bhali kary aya!’ (Welcome! Welcome!).
He was grabbed, pulled back to one side of the road and beaten up by the guards, as Zia’s limo screeched away.
Nobody quite knows what happened to the gentleman-flasher after he was arrested. But Zia did decide to suddenly end his ‘famous’ tour of Sindh the very next day – terming it a ‘great success.’
A civil war? Not quite
Two factors prevented the movement from turning into a full-scale civil war. First was the calling in of the Pakistan Army, whose prowess was just too overwhelming to challenge by the rather anarchic and disjointed nature of the agitation.
Though the movement had been initiated by an organised alliance of anti-Zia parties, it soon swirled out of the immediate orbit of the alliance’s top leadership and began being steered by the leaders and workers of small Maoist outfits and the student-wings of the parties that were part of the MRD.
By September 1983, the movement did not have anyone piloting it from a central command point, and the violence that followed was largely triggered by spontaneous rallies and agitation organised by anti-Zia groups stationed in various cities and villages of north and central Sindh.
There was hardly any co-ordination between such groups, and no central or joint leaders. Every group followed its own particular party’s local leader who had eventually lost contact with the main MRD leadership, which was either operating from different cities, villages or towns; or had been arrested.
Though the Zia regime saw the movement as a kind of an insurgency, it really wasn’t. The bulk of the agitation constituted protest rallies. Even the rallies that turned violent, the protesters were armed with just stones and bricks.
Episodes of armed violence only took place when the police tried to enter the forests of Moro and Dadu to flush out the activists who had escaped into the woods. And even then, the armed retaliation did not come from the escapees, but by the hardened highway dacoits who already had their bases in these forests. However, over the next few years, many of the escapees were recruited by the dacoits and became notorious highway men.
Portion of the forests in interior Sindh.
Secondly, MRD’s senior leadership too prevented the movement from turning into an all-out insurgency. The movement was originally launched to trigger nationwide protests against the regime and force Zia to resign (so fresh elections could follow).
But when the movement mutated and became a radical expression of Sindhi nationalism in Sindh, the main MRD leadership held itself back to reorient the movement (which it did in 1986).
The movement thus fell into the hands of small Maoist and militant Sindhi nationalist groups and localised student-wings of MRD parties. Not everyone was on the same page.
In 1997, an activist of the JUI (the only religious party that was part of the movement), wrote a telling account of what happened to the movement. Though the book (written in Urdu) is largely about his time in various jails of Sindh during the movement, his observations about his jail mates reflect the anarchic nature that the movement eventually took.
He was arrested in 1983 from Karachi and was locked in a tiny jail cell in Hyderabad. He was first accused of being a ‘Soviet agent’, and then of being a member of the clandestine left-wing urban guerrilla outfit, the Al-Zulfiqar.
After realising the absurdity of accusing a member of a right-wing religious party of being a communist, the police booked him for taking part in ‘anti-state activities’. He was constantly tortured, along with the young men who kept being thrown in the same jail.
His jail mates included members of the PPP’s student wing; young Sindhi nationalists; and fiery Maoists. He wrote that though they were taking part in the same movement, they often held onto each other in contempt.
People gather around the body of an MRD activist in a village near Dadu (September, 1983).
As for the flasher, the most popular theory about him is that he was a peasant in a village near Dadu who had managed to get one of his sons educated.
His son had travelled to Karachi for further studies (at the Karachi University). Here, he first joined the student-wing of the Jeeay Sindh Tehreek and then the progressive student alliance, the United Students Movement (USM).
He was arrested in 1981 after a serious episode of violence between the USM and Jamat-i-Islami’s student-wing, the IJT, erupted at the Karachi University.
He was still in a Karachi jail when his father performed the flasher stunt in September 1983. It is believed that the stunt was the idea of the Dadu chapter of the Maoist Awami Tehreek.
No one knows what happened to the man after he was arrested, but it is believed that his son was released after Zia’s demise in 1988.
With increasing anti-government unrest, the army grew restive. On July 5, 1977, the military removed Bhutto from power and arrested him, declared martial law, and suspended portions of the 1973 Constitution. Chief of Army Staff Gen. Muhammad Zia ul-Haq became Chief Martial Law Administratorand promised to hold new elections within 3 months. General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, chief of the army staff (COAS), took control of Pakistan by proclaiming martial law, beginning the longest period of rule by a single leader in Pakistan’s history. It ended only with his death in a still-unexplained aircraft crash on August 17, 1988. President Fazal Elahi Chaudhry remained in office until his term expired in September 1978, when Zia assumed that office in addition to his role as chief martial law administrator.
In announcing his takeover of the government, Zia stated that he had taken action only in order to hold new elections for national and provincial assemblies within ninety days. Political parties were not banned, and nominations were filed for seats. The country expected that a new “free and fair” poll would take place. It did not. Zia canceled the elections because, he said, it was his responsibility first to carry out a program of “accountability”; he had “unexpectedly” found “irregularities” in the previous regime. As a result, a number of “white papers” on topics ranging from fraud in the 1977 elections, to abuses by the Federal Security Force, and to Bhutto’s manipulation of the press were generated.
Zia released Bhutto and asserted that he could contest new elections scheduled for October 1977. However, after it became clear that Bhutto’s popularity had survived his government, Zia postponed the elections and began criminal investigations of the senior PPP leadership. Subsequently, Bhutto was convicted and sentenced to death for an alleged conspiracy to murder a political opponent. Despite international appeals on his behalf, Bhutto was hanged on April 6, 1979.
After elections were canceled by decree on March 1, 1978, Zia banned all political activity, although political parties were not banned. The same month, some 200 journalists were arrested, and a number of newspapers were shut down. Zia, however, maintained that there would be elections sometime in 1979. Members of some of the PNA parties, including the Jamaat-i-Islami and the Pakistan Muslim League, joined Zia’s cabinet as he tried to give a civilian cast to his government. But suppression of the PPP continued, and at times Bhutto’s widow, Nusrat, and his daughter, Benazir, were placed under house arrest or jailed. Elections for local bodies were held in September 1979 on a nonparty basis, a system Zia continued in the 1985 national and provincial elections. Many of those elected locally identified themselves as Awami Dost (friends of the people), a designation well known as a synonym for the PPP. Zia announced national and provincial elections for November 17 and 20, 1979, respectively, but these, too, were canceled. Many thought that the showing of the Awami Dost made him fear that a substantial number of PPP sympathizers would be elected. As further restrictions were placed on political activity, parties were also banned.
On February 6, 1981, the PPP — officially “defunct,” as were the other parties — and several other parties joined to form the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy. Its demands were simple: an end to martial law and elections to be held under the suspended 1973 constitution. The Movement for the Restoration of Democracy demonstrated from time to time against Zia’s government, especially in August 1983, but Zia was able to withstand its demands. Many of the leaders spent time in jail.
Nusrat Bhutto brought a suit protesting the martial law takeover. The Supreme Court ruled against her and invoked once again the “doctrine of necessity,” permitting the regime to “perform all such acts and promulgate all measures, which [fall] within the scope of the law of necessity, including the power to amend the Constitution.” After this ruling, Zia issued the Provisional Constitutional Order of 1980, which excluded all martial law actions from the jurisdiction of the courts. When the Quetta High Court ruled that this order was beyond the power of the martial law regime, the Provisional Constitutional Order of 1981 was issued. This order required all judges of the Supreme Court and high courts to take new oaths in which they swore to act in accordance with the orders. Several judges refused to do so and resigned.
In February 1982, in an unsatisfactory response to the demand for elections, Zia created an appointed Majlis-i-Shoora (Council of Advisers), claiming that this was the pattern of Islamic law. The body was clearly unrepresentative and had no powers of legislation. It served merely as a tame debating body.
The Islamization of Pakistan was another of Zia’s goals. In 1978 he announced that Pakistani law would be based on Nizam-i-Mustafa, one of the demands of the PNA in the 1977 election. This requirement meant that any laws passed by legislative bodies had to conform to Islamic law and any passed previously would be nullified if they were repugnant to Islamic law. Nizam-i-Mustafa raised several problems. Most Pakistanis are Sunni, but there is a substantial minority of Shia whose interpretation of Islamic law differs in some important aspects from that of the Sunnis. Zia’s introduction of state collection of zakat (see Glossary) was strongly protested by the Shia, and after they demonstrated in Islamabad, the rules were modified in 1981 for Shia adherents. There were also major differences in the views held by the ulama in the interpretation of what constituted nonconformity and repugnance in Islam (see Islam in Pakistani Society , ch. 2).
In 1979 Zia decreed the establishment of shariat courts to try cases under Islamic law. A year later, Islamic punishments were assigned to various violations, including drinking alcoholic beverages, theft, prostitution, fornication, adultery, and bearing false witness. Zia also began a process for the eventual Islamization of the financial system aimed at “eliminating that which is forbidden and establishing that which is enjoined by Islam.” Of special concern to Zia was the Islamic prohibition on interest or riba (sometimes translated as usury).
Women’s groups feared that Zia would repeal the Family Laws Ordinance of 1961, but he did not. The Family Laws Ordinance provided women critical access to basic legal protection, including, among other things, the right to divorce, support, and inheritance, and it placed limitations on polygyny. Still, women found unfair the rules of evidence under Islamic law by which women frequently were found guilty of adultery or fornication when in fact they had been raped. They also opposed rules that in some cases equated the testimony of two women with that of one man.
After the 1985 election, two members of the Senate from the Jamaat-i-Islami introduced legislation to make the sharia the basic law of Pakistan, placing it above the constitution and other legislation. The bill also would have added the ulama to sharia courts and would have prohibited appeals from these courts from going to the Supreme Court. The bill did not pass in 1985, but after the dismissal of Prime Minister Junejo and the dissolution of the national assembly and provincial assemblies in 1988, Zia enacted the bill by ordinance. The ordinance died when it was not approved by Parliament during the first prime ministership of Benazir Bhutto (December 1988-August 1990), but a revised shariat bill was passed by the government of Nawaz Sharif (November 1990-July 1993) in May 1991.
Provincialism increased during Zia’s tenure. He handled the problem of unrest in Balochistan more successfully than had Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Zia used various schemes of economic development to assuage the Baloch and was successful to a high degree. The North-West Frontier Province, alarmed at the presence of Soviet troops next door after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, remained relatively quiet. But the long-festering division between Sindhis and non-Sindhis exploded into violence in Sindh. The muhajirs formed new organizations, the most significant-being the Refugee People’s Movement (Muhajir Qaumi Mahaz). The incendiary tensions resulted not only from Sindhi-muhajir opposition but also from Sindhi fear of others who had moved into the province, including Baloch, Pakhtuns, and Punjabis. The fact that Sindhi was becoming the mother tongue of fewer and fewer people of Sindh was also resented. The violence escalated in the late 1980s to the extent that some compared Karachi and Hyderabad to the Beirut of that period. The growth of the illicit drug industry also added to the ethnic problem.
Pressure on Zia to hold elections mounted, and some of it came from overseas, including from the United States. In 1984 Zia announced that elections to legislative bodies would be held in 1985, and this time the schedule held.
Zia decided to restore the separate electorates, abandoned under Ayub Khan. In the National Assembly, ten of the 217 directly elected seats were set aside for minorities: four each for Hindus and Christians and one each for Ahmadiyyas and “others,” including Parsis, Sikhs, and Buddhists. There were also twenty indirectly elected seats reserved for women, although women could run for directly elected seats. Zia decided that parties would not be permitted to participate. Each candidate, therefore, would be an “independent.”
Before the general elections, Zia held a national referendum ostensibly seeking a mandate to continue in office as president. The referendum, on December 19, 1984, focused on Pakistan’s Islamization program. The electorate was asked simply if it felt the government was doing a good job of Islamizing the various social institutions of the state. Zia interpreted the positive results (98 percent voting “yes”) to mean that he had received the right to a new five-year term as head of state. There was, however, little doubt that the vote was rigged.
After the “election,” which most PPP supporters boycotted, Zia announced the appointment of Mohammad Khan Junejo as prime minister, subject to a vote of confidence in the National Assembly. Junejo, a Sindhi, took office on March 23, 1985. Zia issued the Revival of the Constitution of 1973 Order, which was a misnomer. The constitution was so vastly changed by various decrees that it was much different from the one enacted by the Bhutto regime. In the 1973 document, power had been in the hands of the prime minister; by 1985 it was in the hands of the president.
Zia promised to end martial law by the end of 1985, but he exacted a high price for this. The Eighth Amendment to the constitution confirmed and legalized all acts taken under martial law, including changes to the constitution. It affirmed the right of the president to appoint and dismiss the prime minister. With the amendment passed, Zia ended martial law in late 1985. Political parties were revived. In 1986 Junejo became president of a revived Pakistan Muslim League. The PPP, although self-excluded from the National Assembly, also resumed activity under the leadership of Benazir Bhutto.
Junejo, however, was not able to accomplish all of Zia’s agenda. For example, his government did not pass the sharia bill. It allowed the resumption of political parties, a step not welcomed by Zia, who saw parties as divisive in what should be a united Islamic community. Nonetheless, the dismissal of Junejo on May 29, 1988, and the dissolution of the national and provincial assemblies the next day, came as a surprise. In explaining his action, Zia pointed to the failure to carry Islamization forward and also to corruption, deterioration of law and order, and mismanagement of the economy. Another important reason for Junejo’s dismissal was his interference in army promotions and his call for an investigation into an arsenal explosion near Islamabad; civilians were not expected to meddle in military affairs.
Zia procrastinated on calling new elections, which even his own version of the constitution required within ninety days. He finally set November 17, 1988, as the polling date for the National Assembly, with provincial elections three days later. His reasons for the delay were the holy month of Muharram, which fell in August during the hot weather, and the lack of current electoral registrations (a point he blamed on Junejo). Despite the open operation of political parties, Zia indicated that elections would again be on a nonparty basis.
On August 17, 1988, a plane carrying President Zia, American Ambassador Arnold Raphel, US Brig. General Herbert Wassom, and 28 Pakistani military officers crashed on a return flight from a military equipment trial near Bahawalpur, killing all on board. A joint United States- Pakistani committee investigating the accident later established that the crash was caused by “a criminal act of sabotage perpetrated in the aircraft.”
In accordance with the Constitution, Chairman of the Senate Ghulam Ishaq Khan became Acting President and announced that elections scheduled for November 1988 would take place. Court actions ended the nonparty basis for the elections, and parties were permitted to participate. A technicality — the failure to register as a political party — that would have prohibited the PPP from taking part was also voided. Elections were held on a party basis. On one side was an eight-party alliance and on the other, the PPP. The PPP won 94 seats out of 207 and the Islamic Democratic Alliance (IJI) won 54. Muhammad Khan Junejo lost from his home constituency. The president was bound to invite the PPP to from the government, but he delayed doing so for two weeks in order to give the IJI time to muster the support of other groups. Ultimately, the president asked PPP Co-chairperson Benazir Bhutto to form a government. The PPP, under Benazir Bhutto’s leadership, succeeded in forming a coalition government with several smaller parties, including the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM).
Mohammad Zia ul-Haq constantly promised democracy without ever really giving it during the 11 years he ruled Pakistan.
General Zia, who took power in a coup as his fractious nation deteriorated into fierce rioting, later refused to stop the execution of the man he overthrew, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, despite protests from leaders around the world.
He developed Pakistan’s nuclear capability against the strong complaints of Washington, but overall was a cooperative ally of the Reagan Administration in its successful efforts to force the Soviet Union to withdraw its 115,000 troops from neighboring Afghanistan, where Moscow was helping the Kabul Government fight a civil war against American-backed rebels.
The coup that brought General Zia to power was unusual by most standards. Shortly after the general’s troops had surrounded the home of Prime Minister Bhutto, the two men were on the phone, calmly discussing details of the changeover. And in the following weeks and months, the short, barrel-chested general insisted that he would soon relinquish power.
”With the help of the Almighty Allah, the armed forces will do everything we can to insure stability,” he said shortly after the coup on July 5, 1977. ”I genuinely feel that the survival of this country lies in democracy and democracy alone.” ‘A Reluctant Ruler’ Who Imprisoned Many
President Zia, 64 years old, was a devout Moslem who tried to unify his nation of 102 million people under the banner of Islamization and played the precarious balances of international power politics with a certain finesse. But he never kept many of his promises, perhaps because he placed his own political survival above democratization.
President Zia presented himself as a humble man, and stories of his per-sonal touch were common. According to one account, he once stopped his official car and ordered his driver to take the victim of a road accident to a hospital. The next day, he visited the man. In the early days of his rule, he rode a bicycle in public to poularize it as a cheap mode of transportation.
He was, in fact, a man of simple tastes. In accordance with his Moslem beliefs, he did not drink alcohol and his only indulgence appeared to be British cigarettes. His walls were covered with embroidered verses from the Koran.
”I really have been a reluctant ruler,” General Zia told reporters recently. ”Really, you can say that. But I am not a person to just give up in disgust and walk away. I am determined to stay here until I solve all of the many problems that continue to face our country.
”Only then,” he added, ”will I disappear and start playing as much golf as I wish I were playing right now.”
For those who opposed him, the image was quite different. After the image was quite different. After the 1977 coup, thousands of Bhutto supporters were imprisoned and hundred were publicly flogged. Four years later, though the Government insisted there were no political prisoners in its jails, Western diplomats estimated the number at close to 2,000. From Moslem Youth To Military Man
The coup came after months of political paralysis in the five-and-a-half years of the Bhutto regime and murderous riots in the streets of major cities. At the time, General Zia was what one Pakistani diplomat described as the ”least ambitious” of the nation’s generals.
Prime Minister Bhutto himself made General Zia Chief of Staff, promoting him over the heads of several more senior officers and thereby putting him in the position to seize power. Yet until the coup General Zia had always treated Mr. Bhutto with deference; once, when Mr. Bhutto appeared unexpectedly, General Zia shoved a lit cigarette into a pocket of his uniform rather than commit the impropriety of being caught smoking in the presence of his superior.
Born on Aug. 12, 1924, in Jullundur, East Punjab, which remained part of India after independence and the creation of Pakistan in 1947, General Zia came from a middle-class family. According to an official biography, his father ”drilled him in the Islamic way of life.”
The biography goes on to say that he attended St. Stephens College in Delhi where, ”besides his studies, he offered his prayers regularly, observed fasts and mobilized the Moslem youth to serve the cause of faith.” A Promise on Takeover: ‘I Will Step Down Soon’
In World War II, as an enlisted man, the future general served under the British and saw action in Burma, Malaya and Indonesia. Later, he was admitted to the Royal Indian Military Academy at Dehru-Dun, graduating in May 1945 among the last group of officers to be commissioned before Britain granted independence to India and presided over the birth of Pakistan. Lieutenant Zia moved to the new nation.
Throughout his career, General Zia specialized in the command of armored forces. He attended the United States Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth in 1963. Two years later, and again in 1971, he fought in wars against India. In 1970, while King Hussein and the Palestine Liberation Organization were locked in battle in Amman, General Zia led a Pakistani military advisory mission to Jordan. He was later decorated by King Hussein.
”I am a military man,” the General said after the overthrow of Prime Minister Bhutto. ”I will step down soon.”
The coup had come despite Prime Minister Bhutto’s attempts at land redistribution and improvements in working conditions. Those moves had done little to quell political turbulence.
In anticipation of the elections in March 1977, nine widely disparate political parties opposed to the Bhutto regime had formed the Pakistan National Alliance. When the Pakistan People’s Party of Mr. Bhutto won 155 of the 200 National Assembly seats, the Alliance leadership charged fraud, demanded the Prime Minister’s resignation and called for a national strike. Mr. Bhutto responded by arresting opposition leaders and instituting military rule in the major cities. As The World Watches, Bhutto Is Executed
On July 5, 1977, after about 350 people had been killed in riots over the four months and negotiations between the Government and the Alliance had become hopelessly deadlocked, General Zia staged the coup and imposed martial law throughout the country. General Zia’s was the third military regime in Pakistan, a country that has experienced 24 years of military rule in its 41-year history.
Two months after the coup, Mr. Bhutto was arrested on a charge of having conspired to murder an opposition politician in an ambush three years earlier. For almost two years, he would languish in a tiny, unheated jail cell, under sentence of death, while Mr. Zia presided over a divided country with a hybrid government of military and civilian figures.
General Zia’s said his benign attitude toward Mr. Bhutto changed as he learned more about the character of his predecessor’s regime. He said he had authorized Mr. Bhutto’s arrest after learning of a ”shocking and disillusioning lack of politican morality.”
In February 1979, as the Pakistani Supreme Court’s verdict on Mr. Bhutto’s appeal approached, President Zia told a British reporter that if the judgment went against the former Prime Minister he would ”hang the blighter.” Mr. Bhutto was hanged by the military on April 4, 1979.
The daughter of Prime Minister Bhutto, Benazir Bhutto, has steadfastly maintained her father’s innocence. She returned to Pakistan from exile in London in April 1986 and was welcomed by a throng at Lahore Airport that was considered the largest anti-government rally since President Zia seized power. She is now perhaps Pakistan’s strongest opposition leader.
Her arrival and the rise of other anti-Government parties pointed to a perpetual question in Pakistan’s history: Can President Zia’s Government or any other hold together the nation against persistent internal rivalries and ethnic independence movements in the individual provinces? These movements, particularly in Baluchistan and the Northwest Frontier Province, have constantly threatened to bring the dissolution of the nation, much as earlier ethnic differences split East and West Pakistan into the independent nations of Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Early in 1985, President Zia finally allowed a National Assembly to be elected, but its powers were purely advisory. Later that year, he lifted martial law and allowed parties to function. And he promised that elections for parliament would take place. A civilian, Muhammad Khan Junejo, was appointed Prime Minister and placed in charge of day-to-day administration, but in practice President Zia remained in control. As Election Approaches, Regime Is Cut Down
On Nov. 30, 1987, Pakistanis chose candidates to fill 70,000 positions in local governments throughout the country. The election was viewed as a precursor to a national election this November and the balloting was watched for clues to public sentiment.
But on May 29, President Zia dissolved the three-year-old Government of Prime Minister Junejo, charging it with incompetence, corruption and indifference to Islam. And last month he delivered a crippling blow to the opposition, announcing that candidates in the Nov. 16 national election would not be allowed to campaign on the basis of party affiliation.
In justifying the ban, President Zia said in comments directed to Amer-icans: ”As your George Washington once said, America would do better without political parties.”
In the years after President Zia’s assumption of power, laws calling for Islamic punishment – such as cutting off the hands of thieves – were passed but were never enforced. A woman convicted of adultery has been sentenced to be stoned to death, but the case is being appealed and many doubt the punishment will ever be carried out. Proponents of Islamization also contend that only the Koran can govern such family practices as divorce and polygamy.
In July, President Zia authorized civilian courts to strike down laws inconsistent with the Koran. And to help the civilian judges, he said an Islamic adviser would be assigned to each courtroom, but it was unclear whether that step would undercut the right of an elected Parliament to make a final decision on the legal system.
Supporters of the Islamization have maintained that a common religious fervor offered the best hope of uniting the divided country, which was, after all, carved out of India in 1947 for the sole purpose of creating a nation for India’s Moslems. But critics among the westernized elite derided the Islamization drive as a device that brought further divisions into an already sharply divided society. Despite Some Quarrels, A Friend of the U.S.
In foreign affairs, President Zia did not greatly alter Pakistan’s essentially pro-Western policies, being more cooperative with the United States than Mr. Bhutto had been. In the year before his ouster, Mr. Bhutto accused the United States Embassy in Islamabad and the Central Intelligence Agency of plotting his downfall.
Although General Zia’s relations with the Reagan Administration have been relatively smooth, President Jimmy Carter cut off aid to Pakistan in 1979 after the general refused to allow international inspection of his country’s nuclear installations. Then, when Mr. Carter offered some military aid to Pakistan after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, President Zia scornfully called the offer peanuts.
Much of the tension between Pakistan and the United States during General Zia’s tenure centered on nuclear arms. In recent years, the United States has blocked several surreptitious attempts to export material to Pakistan that could be used in the creation of such weapons. Those efforts, in defiance of American law, flew in the face of President Zia’s repeated assurances that Pakistan had no nuclear weapons program. A Great Fear of India Drives Nuclear Program
Central to the nuclear issue is the nation’s historic rivalry with India. Both Pakistan and India are on the brink of building nuclear arsenals, although American officials say Washington has no hard evidence that either country has actually assembled atomic bombs.
Last Dec. 17, President Reagan certified to Congress, as he is required to do each year to justify aid to Pakistan, that ”Pakistan does not possess a nuclear explosive device.” But Administration officials have told Congress that both nations have all the components, and the technical ability, to assemble nuclear weapons quickly.
Two events were the catalysts that drove Pakistan in its campaign to build an atomic bomb. In 1971, India defeated Pakistan in the war that gave East Pakistan its independence as the new nation of Bangladesh. Three years later, India exploded its own nuclear device, prompting Prime Minister Bhutto to declare that Pakistanis would ”eat grass” if necessary to match India.
One of the best-known results of Pakistan’s disagreement with the United States over nuclear arms came in August 1985, 14 months after three Pakistanis were arrested in Houston trying to export triggering switches for atomic bombs, when Congress approved an amendment requiring that aid be cut off from any nation caught trying to export restricted American equipment for a nuclear weapons program. The amendment was called the Solarz amendment after its sponsor, Representative Stephen J. Solarz, a Brooklyn Democrat.
Then, in July 1987, after another smuggler of such material was convicted by a Federal jury in Philadephia, President Zia denied all Government involvement, saying the case had been ”cooked up” by the United States to embarrass Pakistan.
Despite the evidence, a Congressional conference committee cleared the way for a big infusion of American aid to Pakistan. President Reagan then granted Pakistan a waiver from the aid cutoff imposed by the Solarz amendment, declaring that continued aid to the country was ”in the national interest” of the United States.
The ”national interest” in this case meant in particular the American desire to insure the continued flow of arms to the rebels battling Soviet troops in Afghanistan. A Tilt Toward Iran Irritates Washington
More recently, efforts to ease tensions between India and Pakistan have met with limited success. In February 1987, President Zia conferred over dinner in New Delhi with Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of India. They both expressed satisfaction at having defused a crisis the previous month over troop buildups on their border. The meeting was the fourth between the two leaders since Mr. Gandhi took office in 1984.
Meanwhile, throughout the eight years of warfare in the Persian Gulf between Iran and Iraq, President Zia had sought to portray his country as strictly neutral. But last year Reagan Administration officials began expressing irritation over what they called Pakistan’s tilt toward Iran.
The close relationship between Pakistan and Iran was based, foreign policy experts said, on their common border, their close trade relationship, the similarity of their policies on Afghanistan and the existence of a disaffected Shiite Moslem minority in Pakistan that President Zia did not want to alienate further.
The tilt toward Iran, Reagan administration officials said, was manifested by Pakistan’s criticism of the United States’s military buildup in the Persian Gulf without condemnation of Iranian attacks on shipping.
Though he never did fulfill his promise to relinquish power, President Zia, unlike previous Pakistani military leaders, resisted the formation of a cult of personality and did not permit his portrait to be hung in public places. And while his public image was stern, acquaintances said he was warm and kind in private.
The general also was the first head of state to use the national language, Urdu, instead of English at all state functions. And he encouraged officials to wear national dress.
President Zia and his wife, Shafiq, had two sons and three daughters.
Photos of Mohammad Zia ul-Haq and Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1977 (AP); Pres. Zia and Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi (Agence France-Presse)
GENEVA, APRIL 14 — With the United States and Soviet Union acting as guarantors, Pakistan and Afghanistan today signed a set of agreements under negotiation for nearly six years providing for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan by next Feb. 15.
“History has been made today,” said Secretary of State George P. Shultz, who flew overnight from Washington to put his signature on the accords together with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze. The accords provide no cease-fire in the fighting.
“For over eight years, the Afghan people have suffered a brutal war that has brought unmeasurable death, dislocation and destruction. The world community has long sought to remove the cause of this agony — the Soviet military occupation of Afghanistan,” Shultz said at a news conference after the signing ceremony in the old League of Nations council chamber.
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Overseeing the brief signing ceremony were U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar and his top political aide, Diego Cordovez, the chief mediator in the indirect negotiations between Pakistan and the Soviet-backed Kabul government, which Pakistan has refused to recognize.
Perez de Cuellar called the accords, which take effect May 15, “a major stride” toward peace in Afghanistan and said he was “confident that the signatories of these agreements will abide fully by the letter and spirit of the texts and that they will implement them in good faith.”
However, both the United States and Pakistan immediately made clear that they are not ready to abide by “the letter and spirit” of the accords unless the Soviet Union carries out its troop withdrawal exactly as promised and cuts off all its military aid to the Kabul regime.
They also made clear that they regard the Afghan government that signed the accords as “illegitimate” and unworthy of diplomatic recognition.
This gave the whole ceremony something of an unreal quality, with two signatories of the accords stating publicly that they intend to violate some of the key provisions under certain circumstances and refusing to recognize the legitimacy of one of the other signatories.
Shevardnadze, at a press conference held separately from Shultz’s, put a different emphasis on the meaning of the accords, saying that they represent a “political settlement of the situation around Afghanistan.” He also stressed that Pakistan and Afghanistan are assuming “treaty obligations” to end all interference in each other’s affairs “in any form whatsoever.”
While the United States and Pakistan view the main achievement of the four interlocking Geneva accords to be the withdrawal of the 115,000 Soviet troops present in Afghanistan, the Soviet Union and the Soviet-backed Kabul government clearly see it as cutting off arms for the Afghan resistance from the United States through Pakistan.
“Only irresponsible political figures can ignore, reject or violate the norms and principles of the settlement,” Shevardnadze said in what appeared to be a warning to Pakistani leaders to end the flow of American arms to the Afghan resistance through their territory.
Shevardnadze said he had told Shultz “openly and honestly the U.S. has no right to deliver arms” to the resistance any more. “There’s no doubt that if the U.S. does that it will complicate a political settlement,” he said.
Continued Soviet supplies to the Kabul government, on the other hand, are “on a legitimate basis” because of longstanding treaties between the Soviet Union and Afghanistan, he said.
The first agreement, signed between Pakistan and Afghanistan, commits both sides to “refrain from the promotion, encouragement or support, direct or indirect, of rebellious or secessionist activities” against each other. They also pledged to refrain from making “any agreements or arrangements with other states designed to intervene or interfere in the internal and external affairs” of each other.
Signing the accords were Pakistani Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Zain Noorani and Afghan Foreign Minister Abdul Wakil.
Even as the United States and Pakistan were signing the accords, Shultz and Noorani were making it clear that this act did not represent U.S. and Pakistani recognition of the Kabul government or an end to their support for the Afghan resistance.
They also made it clear the United States will simply ignore the nonintervention provisions of the accords and continue sending arms to the resistance if the Soviets send military supplies to the Kabul government.
At his press conference, Shultz released a statement submitted to Perez de Cuellar before the ceremony making clear the U.S. interpretation of its agreement to act as a guarantor of the accords.
The statement said that Soviet compliance with the promised withdrawal timetable is “essential” to ending foreign interference in Afghanistan but that the United States had told the Soviet Union it retains the right “consistent with its obligations as guarantor to provide military assistance to parties in Afghanistan. Should the Soviet Union exercise restraint in providing military assistance to parties in Afghanistan, the U.S. similarly will exercise restaint.”
The statement also said that by signing on as a guarantor of the accords, the United States did not intend to imply “in any respect” recognition of the present Kabul regime as “the lawful government of Afghanistan.”
Shultz sidestepped the question of whether the United States already recognizes the Afghan government by virtue of having a functioning embassy in Kabul.
Noorani sent a letter to Perez de Cuellar also reaffirming Pakistan’s nonrecognition of the Kabul government and saying its position was the same as that of the United States regarding continuing aid to the Afghan resistance if the Soviets supply the Kabul regime.
Asked whether Pakistan would now close resistance military training camps on its territory, Noorani said that there are only refugee camps and the rebels need no training because “there is no Afghan today who needs training in warfare.”
He dodged questions abut how Pakistan could live up to the noninterference terms of the accords and still help the resistance by allowing U.S. arms to pass through its territory.
He said it was “squarely on the shoulders” of the Soviets to avoid this by cutting off their own supplies to Kabul and he called the U.S-Pakistani commitment to continue sending aid to the resistance if Moscow resupplies its Afghan ally “a restraining factor” on the Soviets.
The Geneva accords have four parts, signed by different sets of countries. The first is between Pakistan and Afghanistan and contains detailed provisions barring all kinds of interference in each other’s affairs.
The second is a declaration on international guarantees, signed by the United States and Soviet Union. The third is another Pakistani-Afghan accord, on the voluntary return of the estimated 5 million Afghan war refugees living in Pakistan and Iran.
The last agreement, signed by all four countries, concerns the interrelationship of the three others and ties them to the Soviet troop withdrawal timetable. The withdrawal is to begin on May 15, with half of the Soviet troops gone by Aug. 15 and all of them within nine months.
The fourth agreement also contains a “memorandum of understanding” regarding the mandate for a 50-person U.N. observer team being set up to monitor the Soviet withdrawal and the noninterference provisions.
The chamber where today’s signing took place saw another ceremony 34 years ago, when France signed an agreement providing for its withdrawal from Indochina. The building is now called the Palais des Nations and houses the United Nations’ European headquarters.
April 1978: The Marxist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan overthrows the Afghan republic headed by Mohammed Daoud and installs Nur Mohammed Taraki as president. Daoud, his family and hundreds of his supporters are killed. The armed noncommunist resistance begins.
Feb. 14, 1979: U.S. Ambassador Adolph Dubs is kidnaped and killed in Kabul.
March 12, 1979: The National Liberation Front, a Moslem group, calls for a jihad, or holy war, against the Kabul government.
July 1979: The Soviets deploy their first combat unit in Afghanistan, just north of Kabul.
September 1979: Prime Minister Hafizullah Amin gains control of the government after a shootout at the presidential palace.
October 1979: The official Kabul news media announce Taraki’s death.
Late December 1979: A massive Soviet airlift involving thousands of troops begins. Soviet commandos attack the presidential palace, Amin is killed and Babrak Karmal becomes president.
January 1980: The Soviets deploy 40,000 more troops in Afghanistan. (Troop strength eventually reached 115,000, according to western estimates.) The United Nations General Assembly votes 104 to 18 for a resolution demanding an “immediate, unconditional and total withdrawal of foreign troops.”
June 1982: In Geneva, U.N. Undersecretary for Political Affairs Diego Cordovez conducts the first indirect peace talks between officials of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Kabul represents the Soviets and Islamabad speaks for the Afghan resistance.
April 1984: Soviets, for the first time, conduct saturation bombing of guerrilla strongholds and villages.
August 1984: Pakistan lodges protests with the Kabul government over repeated aerial bombing and cross-border shelling.
May 1985: The International Institute for Strategic Studies in London estimates the Soviets have suffered 20,000 to 25,000 casualties in the five-year-old war. In Peshawar, Pakistan, fundamentalist Moslem guerrillas join a grouping of moderates to form a seven-party Islamic alliance.
May 1986: Karmal steps down, reportedly for health reasons. Western observers contend it is due to Moscow’s dissatisfaction at his failure to defeat the armed resistance. He is succeeded by Najibullah, a former chief of state security.
July 1986: Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev announces plans to withdraw six regiments from Afghanistan. Washington later says the forces mainly were unnecessary antiaircraft units, and were replaced by armored regiments.
September 1986: Guerrillas reportedly receive their first U.S. Stinger and British Blowpipe antiaircraft missiles. Within months, they reportedly shoot down an average of one enemy aircraft a day.
January 1987: Najibullah declares a unilateral cease-fire as part of a new program of national reconciliation. It is ignored by both sides, and the guerrillas reject any power-sharing with the communists.
October 1987: A survey conducted by Geneva University professor Marek Sliwinski for Gallup Pakistan estimates that more than 1.2 million Afghans have died in the war. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that 2.9 million Afghans have fled to Pakistan and 2.3 million to Iran.
December 1987: One of Gorbachev’s chief advisers tells reporters he expects the Soviet Union to pull out of Afghanistan in 1988.
January 1988: Pakistani President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq declares his acceptance of some communist involvement in a future Afghan government as the price for a Soviet withdrawal. Cordovez begins a 20-day diplomatic shuttle mission between Islamabad and Kabul.
February 1988: Gorbachev offers to withdraw Soviet troops beginning May 15 and ending 10 months later, if a Geneva accord is signed by March 15. Cordovez meets for the first time with Afghan guerrilla leaders. He concludes his shuttle mission in Islamabad, announcing near-agreement on terms of a Soviet pullout and a new round of Geneva talks starting March 2.
March 1988: Indirect talks between Islamabad and Kabul resume with U.S. and Soviet delegations standing by. Agreement is reached that Soviet troop withdrawal must be completed within nine months once it starts. But negotations continue past Gorbachev’s March 15 target date.
April 1988: Agreement is reached for signing an accord in Geneva on Soviet troop withdrawal, return of refugees and other issues.
After the all-party conference and the cabinet meeting, the prime minister, Mohammed Khan Junejo, was sure that he would succeed in having his way against Gen Zia’s wishes. On the other hand, Zain Noorani kept both of them guessing as to what was happening at Geneva, and in the end both found themselves bluffed. On his return to Islamabad, he explained his position, communicating to both that the international stakeholders wanted some more time to think.
During his stay at Geneva, Noorani faced all kinds of pressures to sign the accord without insisting upon the formation of an interim government after the removal of the Najeebullah administration.
The Soviet Union wanted to resolve the issue without meeting the condition of forming a consensus government. The United States too was interested in that perception and supported the USSR — perhaps it was more interested in the ouster of Russian troops than a stable government in Kabul, because the US did not want Gorbachev to claim the credit of vacating Afghanistan as a unilateral act.
Gen Zia wanted his proposal to be adopted as part of the final accord, but the US continued to dissuade him
All the powers seemed to be overactive in resolving the issue in a way that was more suitable for them. Gen Zia seriously wanted his proposal to be adopted as part of the final accord, while the US continued to dissuade him. When it became difficult for the US to influence Gen Zia it imposed a 120-day ban on aid to Pakistan. The US wanted to show its anger; it feared that perhaps Gen Zia wanted to make Afghanistan a laboratory for his fundamentalism and might lead to the formation of a new fundamentalist bloc in the Central Asia.
Efforts were still afoot in various directions and at different levels when on the morning of April 10, Islamabad and the garrison town Rawalpindi experienced a dreadful tragedy. It all began with two huge explosions; and in a couple of minutes missiles, rockets and all kinds of projectiles were raining on the twin cities. It was revealed that the storehouse of Ojhri near Rawalpindi, meant for storing arms and ammunition for the Mujahideen, had exploded sending missiles and bombs raining down. While more than 100 people had been killed and many more injured, the extent of damage to the property was incalculable; the military sheds were completely gutted. The magnitude of loss was still to be ascertained. The armed forces were shocked but they had to ascertain the causes, the magnitude of loss and, finallythe responsibility.
The nation was in a state of complete confusion, with no clue as to how it happened and who could be held responsible for the colossal loss. While Junejo and his administration diverted their attention towards minimising the damage and finding out the causes of the Ojhri disaster, Noorani continued to sift through the huge pile of papers and documents to meet the deadline as the peace planners were busy figuring out an agreeable solution to the Afghan issue.
World leaders were unable to reach a decision as to what could be done in a situation of chaos and confusion, utter disillusion and hopelessness. All parties were already busy to evolve an acceptable accord since the talks were postponed in March, and a series of meetings and parleys had already taken place. A new round of talks that was initiated by the UN secretary general Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, won a popular support. With this development someone thought of moving things further. Finally, a draft of the accord was finalised, duly helped by the UN secretary general, and copies were distributed to all countries concerned including Pakistan, though Gen Zia didn’t like it.
The draft accord was accepted by most parties and finally it was ready by the evening of April 13, 1988. All parties were optimistic. The historic Geneva Accord was signed at Geneva the next morning, witnessed by the US Foreign Minister George Schulz, the UN diplomat Diego Cordovez and Zain Noorani of Pakistan. On April 15, when the news broke, Gen Zia reacted before his companions in a terse and happy mood. He continued slaying the exclusion of his proposal about the Najeebullah government and feared a worst series of battles in Afghanistan. But for the record, he issued a statement, welcomed the signing of the accord, and termed the return of Russian troops a miracle of the 20th century. He remarked that the Najeebullah government should have gone earlier as its presence could reignite another flare-up.
The draft accord was accepted by most parties and finally it was ready by the evening of April 13, 1988. All were optimist. The historic Geneva Accord was signed at Geneva the next morning, witnessed by US foreign minister George Schulz, UN diplomat Diego Cordovez and Zain Noorani of Pakistan.
The world was satisfied to have witnessed an accord which brought an end to the war. However, the destruction and misery left behind remained a stark reminder of the war for decades to come. Pakistan became the worst affected country, with the introduction of narcotics, arms trade and factionalism; besides its economy was heavily burdened by having to feed about four million Afghan refugees for nine years.
The accord mainly emphasised non-interference in Afghan policies, with international guarantees, and voluntary repatriation of Afghan refugees and their rehabilitation. In all, the accord included several instruments and a bilateral agreement between Pakistan and Afghanistan on the principles of mutual relations. An agreement was also signed on the inter-relationships for the settlement of the situation relating to Afghanistan, signed by Pakistan and Afghanistan and witnessed by the Soviet Union and the United States.
The agreements also contained provisions for the timetable of the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan. It officially began on May 15, 1988 and ended by Feb 15, 1989, thus ending a nine-year-long Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Forty years ago General Ziaul Haq seized power and put the country under its third and longest martial law. Over the next decade, he decisively transformed what was left of Jinnah’s dream of a secular democratic Pakistan into an almost completely theocratic polity. His handiwork has survived more than three decades and appears unlikely to be replaced with another political structure in the foreseeable future.
In order to understand Ziaul Haq’s success in redefining Pakistan and the survival of his scheme we have to examine the genesis of ‘the Pakistan idea’ because he drew upon the tussle between two groups of people over what Pakistan was meant to be.
The Lahore Resolution of 1940 offered a constitutional scheme as an alternative to the one embodied in the Government of India Act of 1935. In his address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on August 11, 1947, the Quaid-i-Azam also described the creation of Pakistan and Partition as the only solution of India’s constitutional problem. This would imply that the movement for Pakistan was a purely political struggle unrelated to any religious objective.
July 5 marks the 40th anniversary of the 1977 military coup which brought General Ziaul Haq into power. Eos looks back at the coup that fundamentally altered Pakistan’s trajectory, whose repercussions are being felt to this day
However, the new constitutional scheme advanced for two parts of the British Indian territory was based on the fact that these were Muslim-majority areas and, after the failure of the Muslim leaders to secure adequate safeguards to which they were entitled as a large minority, the All-India Muslim League had won considerable support for the Two Nation Theory. This theory defined the Muslims of India as a nation completely different from the majority (Hindu) community and one entitled to a state of its own.
The grounding of the Pakistan demand in the religious identity of the people for whom a state was being demanded gave rise to the idea that Pakistan could be an Islamic state. Jinnah did not advocate a religious polity but he did not completely disown the religious motivation either. He ignored Gandhi’s offer of persuading Congress to concede Pakistan if it was not demanded on the basis of religion. Jinnah often maintained that he was asking for a democratic state and that was what Islam stood for. The only people who believed Pakistan was not going to be an Islamic state were the ulema, with rare exceptions.
The elections of 1945-1946 revealed a significant division in the ranks of Pakistan’s supporters. While the League leadership continued demanding Pakistan without disclosing in detail what Pakistan was going to be (like, religious slogans were raised especially in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa). Although the slogan Pakistan ka matlab kia, La Ilaha il-Allah was not the battle cry, it was frequently raised at some places. Other religious slogans, such as Muslim hai tau Muslim League mein aa [If you are a Muslim join the Muslim League] and Pakistan mein Musalmaanon ki hukumat hogi [Pakistan will be ruled by Muslims] were freely used.
That religion did play a role in the movement for Pakistan was confirmed by the request made by Congress campaign organisers in Punjab to their high command to send some Muslim scholars to help them. Thus the Pakistan supporters were divided into two camps; one may be loosely defined as the group that swore by democracy while the other was vaguely attached to the concept of a religious state. The roots of Zia’s Pakistan lay in this division.
With the creation of Pakistan there was a reshuffling of posture by both groups. The Quaid-i-Azam realized he no longer needed the religious card. Three days before Pakistan’s emergence as a new state he said goodbye to the Two Nation Theory and called for the formation of a new nation on the basis of people’s citizenship of Pakistan. The religious parties that had opposed the Pakistan demand did a complete volte-face and called for making Pakistan an Islamic state.
Pakistanis today live not in the country envisaged by Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah but in the country practically shaped by Gen Zia, who drew on a tussle from its founding moments
Two factors guided them: They had opposed Pakistan because they had no hope of its becoming an Islamic state; in the Pakistan the League had demanded, the Muslims were going to be in a nominal majority and declaring it as an Islamic state would have been almost impossible. The partition of Punjab and Bengal changed the situation. In the new Pakistan’s population of 65 million, non-Muslims were only around 20 million, and most of them were in the eastern wing. The ongoing riots could further reduce the non-Muslim population. Besides, the religious parties had seen in the elections the strength of the religious slogans. These two factors had brightened the prospect of declaring Pakistan an Islamic state.
Maulana Maududi was among the first ulema who decided to benefit from this situation. He migrated to Pakistan, deleted the anti-Pakistan thesis from his major publication Musalman aur Siyasi Kashmakash [Muslims and Political Struggle], accepted the Punjab government’s invitation to lecture the bureaucrats on Islamic values and broadcast similar messages on the radio. However, he soon lost the government’s goodwill when he declared that Pakistan’s involvement in Kashmir was not jihad as the state was not Islamic.
Within a few months of Pakistan’s creation, in February 1948, the ulema of various shades of opinion presented the government with a charter of demands containing steps required to establish a religious state. They were put off with promises of favourable consideration of their demands. But the government was rattled by East Bengal’s demands for acceptance of its cultural rights and tried to face these demands by raising the standard of Islamic solidarity. Eventually, it took refuge under the Objectives Resolution of March 1949, which displayed a variety of wares to suit different sections of the population. The most important feature of the resolution was a declaration that sovereignty belonged to Allah. The ulema were jubilant. The slogan-walas had defeated the Jinnah lobby. The Jamaat-i-Islami now declared Pakistan an Islamic state. The most telling observation on the Objectives Resolution came from a Congress member of the assembly who warned the house that the resolution had cleared the way for the emergence of an adventurer who could claim to be God’s appointee. And General Zia behaved exactly like that.
Front page of Dawn newspaper July 6, 1977
Thus we find that between 1947 and 1953 the ‘religious slogan group’ acquired a toehold in the political arena, thanks to the failure of the ‘democratic ideals group’ to honour Jinnah’s advice to keep religion out of politics and also its failure to promote democratic norms. Further, it made the grave mistake of resisting democratic demands by seeking refuge under a religious canopy. The ‘religious slogan group’ took an exaggerated view of its strength and challenged the government by launching the anti-Ahmadi agitation in 1953. It lost because the state services, especially the army, had not abandoned the colonial policy of denying religious/sectarian elements any accommodation at the cost of law and order. But this was the only victory the ‘democratic ideals group’ was able to achieve against the ‘religious slogan group’.
Between 1953 and 1958 the ‘democratic ideals group’ had to contend with a new challenger — a civil and military bureaucratic combine that had scant respect for the democratic facade that had hitherto been sustained to a certain degree. Neither party paid much attention to the ‘religious slogan group’ that was left to lick the wounds it sustained in 1953. However, while preparing the country’s first constitution, the civil bureaucracy gave considerable concession to the religious parties by calling the state the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, reserving the presidentship for Muslims and creating an Islamic board to advise the government on its religious duties, including the task of ‘Islamisation’ of laws. These provisions were later to be used as the foundations of a theocratic state.
The Pakistan supporters were divided into two camps; one may be loosely defined as the group that swore by democracy while the other was vaguely attached to the concept of a religious state. The roots of Zia’s Pakistan lay in this division.
The Ayub regime tried to crush both the ‘democratic ideals’ and ‘religious slogan’ groups. The former were Ebdo-ed out of the political arena (Ebdo was the Elective Bodies Disqualification Order which threatened prosecution of politicians for ‘misconduct’ unless they promised not to participate in politics for seven years). The latter were controlled by putting mosques under the Auqaf department. Further, Jamaat-i-Islami was subjected to a propaganda campaign in addition to the detention of its leader. When the regime brought in its constitution in 1962, it dropped the word “Islamic” from the state’s title. (It also dropped the chapter on fundamental rights.)
However, the Ayub regime was responsible for strengthening the religious parties’ place in national politics. After most of the politicians had been sent into the wilderness, mosques were the only platforms left for any agitation. When the opposition parties got together to set up their candidates to contest the 1965 presidential election, the alliance had as many religious parties as the quasi-democratic ones and they gained in terms of popular support while campaigning in favour of Fatima Jinnah.
The anti-Ayub agitation was a secular, democratic movement and therefore Yahya Khan concentrated on removing the people’s political grievances by accepting the ‘one-man, one-vote’ principle, and undoing the one-unit. He did not think of pandering to the religious lobby till his attempt to issue a new constitution on the night of surrender at Dhaka but these parties’ support to this draft constitution was of help neither to Yahya nor to themselves.
The religious parties benefitted a great deal from Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s attempts to win them over to his side. The constitution of 1973 declared Islam as the state religion and invested the Council of Islamic Ideology with wide powers. In February 1974, Bhutto joined King Faisal’s efforts to counter the forces of Arab nationalism with Islamic nationalism and organised the Islamic Summit. About six months later, his government had the Ahmadis declared non-Muslims. All this did not help him. And after the mishandling of the 1977 election by his advisers, the religious parties spearheaded a movement for his ouster under the slogan of Nizam-i-Mustafa, which called for Islamic laws to be implemented in the country. Further concessions to the clergy — such as imposing of a ban on the sale and consumption of liquor and declaring Friday as the weekly holiday — did not help Bhutto because Zia had already decided to overthrow him. Now it can be said that the Bhutto government of 1971-1977 provided Zia with a broad enough platform to launch his plan to redefine Pakistan. And he went about this task with the zeal and confidence of a neo-convert.
Between 1978 and 1985, Zia took a number of steps to complete Pakistan’s transformation into a theocracy of the medieval variety. A Federal Shariat Court was created for enforcing religious laws, striking down laws it found repugnant to Islam, and with some power to make laws. The state assumed the power to collect zakat and ushr. Ahmadis were barred from calling their prayer houses mosques, from possessing and reading the Quran or using the Muslim ways of greeting one another, using Islamic epithets or naming their daughters after women belonging to the Holy Prophet’s (PBUH) family.
The Penal Code was amended to provide for punishment for desecration of the Holy Quran and for punishing blasphemy with death or life imprisonment (later on the the Shariat Court made death for blasphemy mandatory). The parliament was designated as the Majlis-e-Shura, and an arbitrarily amended Objectives Resolution — used hitherto as a preamble to the constitution — was made its substantive part. Furthermore, an attempt was made to subvert the system of democratic elections by holding party-less polls.
In addition, Zia amended the constitutional provisions relating to qualifications for membership of assemblies and disqualification of members to make them suggestive of respect for religious criteria. He also subverted the education system, firstly by facilitating the growth of religious seminaries (while extension and improvement of general education were neglected and books on rights and democracy were burnt) and increased religion-related lessons in textbooks at all grade levels. Further he tried to consolidate his measures through a constitutional amendment (the ninth amendment) but it was not adopted. He was also unable in his attempts to create morality brigades to enforce the system of prayers and puritanical regulations.
Many factors helped Zia to impose his belief on the people including measures that lacked Islamic sanction. He fully exploited the political advantages the religious parties had won from poorly performing quasi-democratic governments. And the conflict in Afghanistan yielded him enormous dividends. He was able to convince a large body of people that through his Afghan policy he had brought glory to Islam.
That Pakistan today is what Gen Zia made it into cannot be denied and the reasons are not far to seek.
First, it has not been possible to undo the changes made by Zia in the constitution and the laws. Every bit of change made by him is treated by the religious lobby as divinely ordained. Some of the parties that are not included among religious outfits are unabashedly loyal to Zia’s legacy — those that are not are afraid of taking on the religious mobs. The secular elements lost the streets to the hordes controlled by the clergy, especially by the madressah authorities, long ago. The judiciary, never keen to rule against religious extremists, has often declined to touch Zia’s amendments on the grounds of their having been endorsed by elected governments through acquiescence.
The difficulty in interfering with Zia’s disruption of the Pakistan structure can be judged from the fact that his name could not be removed from Article 270-A of the constitution until April 2010 — that is, 22 years and five elections after his death.
Secondly, the religious landscape is dominated by arch-conservative elements who do not allow any intra-religious discourse and those who can challenge them dare not stay in the country. Further, the ouster of left-of-centre parties from the councils of influence and power has made the so-called mainstream parties hostages to the orthodoxy.
In this situation, there is little hope of relief from exploitation of belief in the interest of an unjust and oppressive status quo. The curse of the Zia legacy will continue to bedevil the state and the people for quite some time till ordinary citizens realize it has nothing to offer them except for unmitigated misery.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Prime Minister Mohammad Khan Junejo unveiled the civilian government’s five-point program for post-martial law rule Tuesday amid opposition criticism of President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq’s reluctance to give up his Army chief post.
Zia ended 8 years of martial law Monday, but kept strict control over the new civilian government, the military and political parties.
‘It is a dangerous precedent to hold the office of the chief of Army staff while remaining the president of Pakistan,’ Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, leader of the unofficial Pakistan Peoples Party, said from Karachi. ‘The post of the Army chief of staff belongs to the Army and as such it should go to the Army.’
Jatoi also urged the government to lift the ban on trade unions, free political prisoners and restore complete press freedom.
In a 50-minute telecast to the Moslem nation’s 85 million people, Junejo indicated his government would not deviate from Zia’s policies.
Junejo listed his five points as ‘the establishment of a strong Islamic democratic system; continuation of a strong national defense and a non-aligned foreign policy; promotion of an equitable economic system; elimination of illiteracy, and a crusade against bribery, injustice and corruption.’
‘My government will make a determined effort to eradicate social evils. No leniency will be shown to corrupt officials,’ he said. ‘The process of accountability will be observed.’
Although Junejo invited his political opponents to forget past differences and to join him in celebrating the lifting of martial law, observers were surprised that he made no mention of his plans to revive a long dormant political party, the Moslem League.
A complete ban on political parties was lifted along with martial law, but Zia, who endorses a partyless state, has insisted that parties be licensed. Parties who deviate from Islamic ideology or are too critical of the military would be open to disqualification.
Junejo urged politicians and unofficial political parties ‘not to place any hindrance in the process of democratization’ but to organize themselves for the next elections in 1990.
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