Pakistan - HISTORY

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Pakistan - History

WHEN BRITISH ARCHAEOLOGIST Sir Mortimer Wheeler was commissioned in 1947 by the government of Pakistan to give a historical account of the then new country, he entitled his work Five Thousand Years of Pakistan. Indeed, Pakistan has a history that can be dated back to the Indus Valley civilization (ca. 2500-1600 B.C.), the principal sites of which lay in present-day Sindh and Punjab provinces. Pakistan was later the entryway for the migrating pastoral tribes known as Indo-Aryans, or simply Aryans, who brought with them and developed the rudiments of the religio-philosophical system of what later evolved into Hinduism. They also brought an early version of Sanskrit, the base of Urdu, Punjabi, and Sindhi languages that are spoken in much of Pakistan today.

Hindu rulers were eventually displaced by Muslim invaders, who, in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, entered northwestern India through the same passes in the mountains used earlier by the Indo-Aryans. The culmination of Muslim rule in the Mughal Empire (1526-1858, with effective rule between 1560 and 1707) encompassed much of the area that is today Pakistan. Sikhism, another religious movement that arose partially on the soil of present-day Pakistan, was briefly dominant in Punjab and in the northwest in the early nineteenth century. All of these regimes subsequently fell to the expanding power of the British, whose empire lasted from the eighteenth century to the midtwentieth century, until they too left the scene, yielding power to the successor states of India and Pakistan.

The departure of the British was also a goal of the Muslim movement championed by the All-India Muslim League (created in 1906 to counter the Hindu-dominated Indian National Congress), which in turn wanted both political independence and cultural separation from the Hindu-majority regions of British India. These objectives were reached in 1947, when British India received its independence as two new sovereign states. The Muslim-majority areas in northwestern and eastern India were separated and became Pakistan, divided into the West Wing and East Wing, respectively. The placement of two widely separated regions within a single state did not last, and in 1971 the East Wing broke away and achieved independence as Bangladesh.

The pride that Pakistan displayed after independence in its long and multicultural history has disappeared in many of its officially sponsored textbooks and other material used for teaching history (although the Indus Valley sites remain high on the list of the directors of tourism). As noted anthropologist Akbar S. Ahmed has written in History Today, "In Pakistan the Hindu past simply does not exist. History only begins in the seventh century after the advent of Islam and the Muslim invasion of Sindh."

Pakistan

Pakistan - EARLY CIVILIZATIONS

From the earliest times, the Indus River valley region has been both a transmitter of cultures and a receptacle of different ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups. Indus Valley civilization (known also as Harappan culture) appeared around 2500 B.C. along the Indus River valley in Punjab and Sindh. This civilization, which had a writing system, urban centers, and a diversified social and economic system, was discovered in the 1920s at its two most important sites: Mohenjo-daro, in Sindh near Sukkur, and Harappa, in Punjab south of Lahore. A number of other lesser sites stretching from the Himalayan foothills in Indian Punjab to Gujarat east of the Indus River and to Balochistan to the west have also been discovered and studied. How closely these places were connected to Mohenjo-daro and Harappa is not clearly known, but evidence indicates that there was some link and that the people inhabiting these places were probably related.

An abundance of artifacts have been found at Harappa--so much so, that the name of that city has been equated with the Indus Valley civilization (Harappan culture) it represents. Yet the site was damaged in the latter part of the nineteenth century when engineers constructing the Lahore-Multan railroad used brick from the ancient city for ballast. Fortunately, the site at Mohenjo-daro has been less disturbed in modern times and shows a well-planned and well-constructed city of brick.

Indus Valley civilization was essentially a city culture sustained by surplus agricultural produce and extensive commerce, which included trade with Sumer in southern Mesopotamia in what is today modern Iraq. Copper and bronze were in use, but not iron. Mohenjo-daro and Harappa were cities built on similar plans of well-laid-out streets, elaborate drainage systems, public baths, differentiated residential areas, flat-roofed brick houses and fortified administrative and religious centers enclosing meeting halls and granaries. Weights and measures were standardized. Distinctive engraved stamp seals were used, perhaps to identify property. Cotton was spun, woven, and dyed for clothing. Wheat, rice, and other food crops were cultivated, and a variety of animals were domesticated. Wheel-made pottery--some of it adorned with animal and geometric motifs--has been found in profusion at all the major Indus sites. A centralized administration has been inferred from the cultural uniformity revealed, but it remains uncertain whether authority lay with a priestly or a commercial oligarchy.

By far the most exquisite but most obscure artifacts unearthed to date are the small, square steatite seals engraved with human or animal motifs. Large numbers of the seals have been found at Mohenjo-daro, many bearing pictographic inscriptions generally thought to be a kind of script. Despite the efforts of philologists from all parts of the world, however, and despite the use of computers, the script remains undeciphered, and it is unknown if it is proto-Dravidian or proto-Sanskrit. Nevertheless, extensive research on the Indus Valley sites, which has led to speculations on both the archaeological and the linguistic contributions of the pre--Aryan population to Hinduism's subsequent development, has offered new insights into the cultural heritage of the Dravidian population still dominant in southern India. Artifacts with motifs relating to asceticism and fertility rites suggest that these concepts entered Hinduism from the earlier civilization. Although historians agree that the civilization ceased abruptly, at least in Mohenjo-daro and Harappa there is disagreement on the possible causes for its end. Invaders from central and western Asia are considered by some historians to have been "destroyers" of Indus Valley civilization, but this view is open to reinterpretation. More plausible explanations are recurrent floods caused by tectonic earth movement, soil salinity, and desertification.

Until the entry of the Europeans by sea in the late fifteenth century, and with the exception of the Arab conquests of Muhammad bin Qasim in the early eighth century, the route taken by peoples who migrated to India has been through the mountain passes, most notably the Khyber Pass, in northwestern Pakistan. Although unrecorded migrations may have taken place earlier, it is certain that migrations increased in the second millennium B.C. The records of these people--who spoke an Indo-European language--are literary, not archaeological, and were preserved in the Vedas, collections of orally transmitted hymns. In the greatest of these, the "Rig Veda," the Aryan speakers appear as a tribally organized, pastoral, and pantheistic people. The later Vedas and other Sanskritic sources, such as the Puranas (literally, "old writings"--an encyclopedic collection of Hindu legends, myths, and genealogy), indicate an eastward movement from the Indus Valley into the Ganges Valley (called Ganga in Asia) and southward at least as far as the Vindhya Range, in central India. A social and political system evolved in which the Aryans dominated, but various indigenous peoples and ideas were accommodated and absorbed. The caste system that remained characteristic of Hinduism also evolved. One theory is that the three highest castes--Brahmins, Kshatriyas, and Vaishyas--were composed of Aryans, while a lower caste--the Sudras--came from the indigenous peoples.

By the sixth century B.C., knowledge of Indian history becomes more focused because of the available Buddhist and Jain sources of a later period. Northern India was populated by a number of small princely states that rose and fell in the sixth century B.C. In this milieu, a phenomenon arose that affected the history of the region for several centuries--Buddhism. Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, the "Enlightened One" (ca. 563-483 B.C.), was born in the Ganges Valley. His teachings were spread in all directions by monks, missionaries, and merchants. The Buddha's teachings proved enormously popular when considered against the more obscure and highly complicated rituals and philosophy of Vedic Hinduism. The original doctrines of the Buddha also constituted a protest against the inequities of the caste system, attracting large numbers of followers.

At about the same time, the semi-independent kingdom of Gandhara, roughly located in northern Pakistan and centered in the region of Peshawar, stood between the expanding kingdoms of the Ganges Valley to the east and the Achaemenid Empire of Persia to the west. Gandhara probably came under the influence of Persia during the reign of Cyrus the Great (559-530 B.C.). The Persian Empire fell to Alexander the Great in 330 B.C., and he continued his march eastward through Afghanistan and into India. Alexander defeated Porus, the Gandharan ruler of Taxila, in 326 B.C. and marched on to the Ravi River before turning back. The return march through Sindh and Balochistan ended with Alexander's death at Babylon in 323 B.C.

Greek rule did not survive in northwestern India, although a school of art known as Indo-Greek developed and influenced art as far as Central Asia. The region of Gandhara was conquered by Chandragupta (r. ca. 321-ca. 297 B.C.), the founder of the Mauryan Empire, the first universal state of northern India, with its capital at present-day Patna in Bihar. His grandson, Ashoka (r. ca. 274-ca. 236 B.C.), became a Buddhist. Taxila became a leading center of Buddhist learning. Successors to Alexander at times controlled the northwestern of region present-day Pakistan and even Punjab after Maurya power waned in the region.

The northern regions of Pakistan came under the rule of the Sakas, who originated in Central Asia in the second century B.C. They were soon driven eastward by Pahlavas (Parthians related to the Scythians), who in turn were displaced by the Kushans (also known as the Yueh-Chih in Chinese chronicles).

The Kushans had earlier moved into territory in the northern part of present-day Afghanistan and had taken control of Bactria. Kanishka, the greatest of the Kushan rulers (r. ca. A.D. 120-60), extended his empire from Patna in the east to Bukhara in the west and from the Pamirs in the north to central India, with the capital at Peshawar (then Purushapura). Kushan territories were eventually overrun by the Huns in the north and taken over by the Guptas in the east and the Sassanians of Persia in the west.

The age of the imperial Guptas in northern India (fourth to seventh centuries A.D.) is regarded as the classical age of Hindu civilization. Sanskrit literature was of a high standard; extensive knowledge in astronomy, mathematics, and medicine was gained; and artistic expression flowered. Society became more settled and more hierarchical, and rigid social codes emerged that separated castes and occupations. The Guptas maintained loose control over the upper Indus Valley.

Northern India suffered a sharp decline after the seventh century. As a result, Islam came to a disunited India through the same passes that Indo-Aryans, Alexander, Kushans, and others had entered.

Pakistan

Pakistan - ISLAM IN INDIA

The initial entry of Islam into India came in the first century after the death of the Prophet Muhammad. The Umayyad caliph in Damascus sent an expedition to Balochistan and Sindh in 711 led by Muhammad bin Qasim (for whom Karachi's second port is named). The expedition went as far north as Multan but was not able to retain that region and was not successful in expanding Islamic rule to other parts of India. Coastal trade and the presence of a Muslim colony in Sindh, however, permitted significant cultural exchanges and the introduction into the subcontinent of saintly teachers. Muslim influence grew with conversions.

Almost three centuries later, the Turks and the Afghans spearheaded the Islamic conquest in India through the traditional invasion routes of the northwest. Mahmud of Ghazni (979-1030) led a series of raids against Rajput kingdoms and rich Hindu temples and established a base in Punjab for future incursions. Mahmud's tactics originated the legend of idol-smashing Muslims bent on plunder and forced conversions, a reputation that persists in India to the present day.

During the last quarter of the twelfth century, Muhammad of Ghor invaded the Indo-Gangetic Plain, conquering in succession Ghazni, Multan, Sindh, Lahore, and Delhi. His successors established the first dynasty of the Delhi Sultanate, the Mamluk Dynasty (mamluk means "slave") in 1211 (however, the Delhi Sultanate is traditionally held to have been founded in 1206). The territory under control of the Muslim rulers in Delhi expanded rapidly. By mid-century, Bengal and much of central India was under the Delhi Sultanate. Several Turko-Afghan dynasties ruled from Delhi: the Mamluk (1211-90), the Khalji (1290-1320), the Tughlaq (1320-1413), the Sayyid (1414-51), and the Lodhi (1451-1526). As Muslims extended their rule into southern India, only the Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagar remained immune, until it too fell in 1565. Although some kingdoms remained independent of Delhi in the Deccan and in Gujarat, Malwa (central India), and Bengal, almost all of the area in presentday Pakistan came under the rule of Delhi.

The sultans of Delhi enjoyed cordial, if superficial, relations with Muslim rulers in the Near East but owed them no allegiance. The sultans based their laws on the Quran and the sharia and permitted non-Muslim subjects to practice their religion only if they paid jizya or head tax. The sultans ruled from urban centers--while military camps and trading posts provided the nuclei for towns that sprang up in the countryside. Perhaps the greatest contribution of the sultanate was its temporary success in insulating the subcontinent from the potential devastation of the Mongol invasion from Central Asia in the thirteenth century. The sultanate ushered in a period of Indian cultural renaissance resulting from the stimulation of Islam by Hinduism. The resulting "Indo-Muslim" fusion left lasting monuments in architecture, music, literature, and religion. The sultanate suffered from the sacking of Delhi in 1398 by Timur (Tamerlane) but revived briefly under the Lodhis before it was conquered by the Mughals.

Pakistan

Pakistan - THE MUGHAL PERIOD

India in the sixteenth century presented a fragmented picture of rulers, both Muslim and Hindu, who lacked concern for their subjects and who failed to create a common body of laws or institutions. Outside developments also played a role in shaping events. The circumnavigation of Africa by the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama in 1498 allowed Europeans to challenge Arab control of the trading routes between Europe and Asia. In Central Asia and Afghanistan, shifts in power pushed Babur of Ferghana (in present-day Uzbekistan) southward, first to Kabul and then to India. The dynasty he founded endured for more than three centuries.

Claiming descent from both Chinggis Khan (also seen as Genghis Khan) and Timur, Babur combined strength and courage with a love of beauty, and military ability with cultivation. Babur concentrated on gaining control of northwestern India. He did so in 1526 by defeating the last Lodhi sultan at the first Battle of Panipat, a town north of Delhi. Babur then turned to the tasks of persuading his Central Asian followers to stay on in India and of overcoming other contenders for power, mainly the Rajputs and the Afghans. He succeeded in both tasks but died shortly thereafter in 1530. The Mughal Empire was one of the largest centralized states in premodern history and was the precursor to the British Indian Empire.

The perennial question of who was the greatest of the six "Great Mughals" receives varying answers in present-day Pakistan and India. Some favor Babur the pioneer and others his great-grandson, Shah Jahan (r. 1628-58), builder of the Taj Mahal and other magnificent buildings. The other two towering figures of the era by general consensus were Akbar (r. 1556-1605) and Aurangzeb (r. 1658-1707). Both rulers expanded the empire greatly and were able administrators. However, Akbar was known for his religious tolerance and administrative genius, while Aurangzeb was a pious Muslim and fierce protector of orthodox Islam in an alien and heterodox environment.

Akbar succeeded his father, Humayun (r. 1530-40 and 1555-56), whose rule was interrupted by the Afghan Sur Dynasty, which rebelled against him. It was only just before his death that Humayun was able to regain the empire and leave it to his son. In restoring and expanding Mughal rule, Akbar based his authority on the ability and loyalty of his followers, irrespective of their religion. In 1564 the jizya on non-Muslims was abolished, and bans on temple building and Hindu pilgrimages were lifted.

Akbar's methods of administration reinforced his power against two possible sources of challenge--the Afghan-Turkish aristocracy and the traditional interpreters of Islamic law, the ulama. He created a ranked imperial service based on ability rather than birth, whose members were obliged to serve wherever required. They were remunerated with cash rather than land and were kept away from their inherited estates, thus centralizing the imperial power base and assuring its supremacy. The military and political functions of the imperial service were separate from those of revenue collection, which was supervised by the imperial treasury. This system of administration, known as the mansabdari, was based on loyal service and cash payments and was the backbone of the Mughal Empire; its effectiveness depended on personal loyalty to the emperor and his ability and willingness to choose, remunerate, and supervise.

Akbar declared himself the final arbiter in all disputes of law derived from the Quran and the sharia. He backed his religious authority primarily with his authority in the state. In 1580 he also initiated a syncretic court religion called the Din-i-Ilahi (Divine Faith). In theory, the new faith was compatible with any other, provided that the devotee was loyal to the emperor. In practice, however, its ritual and content profoundly offended orthodox Muslims. The ulama found their influence undermined. The concept of Islam as a superior religion with a historic mission in the world appeared to be compromised. The syncretism of the court and its tolerance of both Hindus and unorthodox Shia sects among Muslims triggered a reaction among Sunni Muslims. In the fratricidal war of succession that closed the reign of Akbar's grandson Shah Jahan in 1658, the aristocracy supported the austere military commander Aurangzeb against his learned and eclectic brother Dara Shikoh, whom Aurangzeb defeated in battle and later had decapitated in 1662.

Aurangzeb's reign ushered in the decline of the Mughal Empire. Aurangzeb, who in the latter half of his long rule assumed the title "Alamgir" or "world-seizer," was known for aggressively expanding the empire's frontiers and for his militant enforcement of orthodox Sunni Islam. During his reign, the Mughal empire reached its greatest extent, although his policies also led to its dissolution. Although he was an outstanding general and a rigorous administrator, Mughal fiscal and military standards declined as security and luxury increased. Land rather than cash became the usual means of remunerating high-ranking officials, and divisive tendencies in his large empire further undermined central authority.

In 1679 Aurangzeb reimposed the hated jizya on Hindus. Coming after a series of other taxes and also discriminatory measures favoring Sunni Muslims this action by the "prayermonger " (emperor), incited rebellion among Hindus and others in many parts of the empire--Jat, Sikh, and Rajput forces in the north and Maratha forces in the Deccan. The emperor managed to crush the rebellions in the north, but at a high cost to agricultural productivity and to the legitimacy of Mughal rule. Aurangzeb was compelled to move his headquarters to Daulatabad in the Deccan to mount a costly campaign against Maratha guerrilla fighters, which lasted twenty-six-years until he died in 1707 at the age of ninety. Aurangzeb, oppressed by a sense of failure, isolation, and impending doom, lamented that in life he "came alone" and would "go as a stranger."

In the century- and one-half that followed, effective control by Aurangzeb's successors weakened. Succession to imperial and even provincial power, which had often become hereditary, was subject to intrigue and force. The mansabdari system gave way to the zamindari system, in which high-ranking officials took on the appearance of hereditary landed aristocracy with powers of collecting rents. As Delhi's control waned, other contenders for power emerged and clashed, thus preparing the way for the eventual British takeover.

Vasco da Gama led the first documented European expedition to India, sailing into Calicut on the southwest coast in 1498. In 1510 the Portuguese captured Goa, which became the seat of their activity. Under Admiral Alfonso de Albuquerque, Portugal successfully challenged Arab power in the Indian Ocean and dominated the sea routes for a century. Jesuits came to convert, to converse, and to record observations of India. The Protestant countries of the Netherlands and England, upset by the Portuguese monopoly, formed private trading companies at the turn of the seventeenth century to challenge the Portuguese.

Mughal officials permitted the new carriers of India's considerable export trade to establish trading posts (factories) in India. The Dutch East India Company concentrated mainly on the spice trade from present-day Indonesia. Britain's East India Company carried on trade with India. The French East India Company also set up factories.

During the wars of the eighteenth century, the factories served not only as collection and transshipment points for trade but also increasingly as fortified centers of refuge for both foreigners and Indians. British factories gradually began to apply British law to disputes arising within their jurisdiction. The posts also began to grow in area and population. Armed company servants were effective protectors of trade. As rival contenders for power called for armed assistance and as individual European adventurers found permanent homes in India, British and French companies found themselves more and more involved in local politics in the south and in Bengal. Plots and counterplots climaxed when British East India Company forces, led by Robert Clive, decisively defeated the larger but divided forces of Nawab Siraj-ud-Dawlah at Plassey (Pilasi) in Bengal in 1757.

Pakistan

Pakistan - COMPANY RULE

It was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that almost all of the territory that constitutes Pakistan and India came under the rule of the British East India Company. The patterns of territorial acquisition and rule as applied by the company in Sindh and Punjab and the manner of governance became the basis for direct British rule in the British Indian Empire and indirect rule in the princely states under the paramountcy of the crown.

Although the British had earlier ruled in the factory areas, the beginning of British rule is often dated from the Battle of Plassey. Clive's victory was consolidated in 1764 at the Battle of Buxar (in Bihar), where the emperor, Shah Alam II, was defeated. As a result, Shah Alam was coerced to appoint the company to be the diwan (collector of revenue) for the areas of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa (this pretense of Mughal control was abandoned in 1827). The company thus became the supreme, but not the titular, power in much of the Ganges Valley, and company agents continued to trade on terms highly favorable to them.

The area controlled by the company expanded during the first three decades of the nineteenth century by two methods. The first was the use of subsidiary agreements (sanad) between the British and the local rulers, under which control of foreign affairs, defense, and communications was transferred from the ruler to the company and the rulers were allowed to rule as they wished (up to a limit) on other matters. This development created what came to be called the Native States, or Princely India, that is, the world of the maharaja and his Muslim counterpart the nawab. The second method was outright military conquest or direct annexation of territories; it was these areas that were properly called British India. Most of northern India was annexed by the British. (OTR))

At the start of the nineteenth century, most of present-day Pakistan was under independent rulers. Sindh was ruled by the Muslim Talpur mirs (chiefs) in three small states that were annexed by the British in 1843. In Punjab, the decline of the Mughal Empire allowed the rise of the Sikhs, first as a military force and later as a political administration in Lahore. The kingdom of Lahore was at its most powerful and expansive during the rule of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, when Sikh control was extended beyond Peshawar, and Kashmir was added to his dominions in 1819. After Ranjit Singh died in 1839, political conditions in Punjab deteriorated, and the British fought two wars with the Sikhs. The second of these wars, in 1849, saw the annexation of Punjab, including the present-day North-West Frontier Province, to the company's territories. Kashmir was transferred by sale in the Treaty of Amritsar in 1850 to the Dogra Dynasty, which ruled the area under British paramountcy until 1947.

As the British increased their territory in India, so did Russia expand in Central Asia. The East India Company signed treaties with a number of Afghan rulers and with Ranjit Singh. Russia backed Persian ambitions in western Afghanistan. In 1838 the company's actions bought about the First Afghan War (1838- 42). Assisted by Sikh allies, the company took Kandahar and Kabul and made its own candidate amir. The amir proved unpopular with the Afghans, however, and the British garrison's position became untenable. The retreat of the British from Kabul in January 1842 was one of the worst disasters in British military history, as a column of more than 16,000 (about one-third soldiers, the rest camp followers) was annihilated by Afghan tribesmen as they struggled through the snowbound passes on their way back to India. The British later sent a punitive expedition to Kabul, which it burned in retribution, but made no attempt to reoccupy Afghanistan.

In Punjab, annexed in 1849, a group of extraordinarily able British officers, serving first the company and then the British crown, governed the area. They avoided the administrative mistakes made earlier in Bengal. A number of reforms were introduced, although local customs were generally respected. Irrigation projects later in the century helped Punjab become the granary of northern India. The respect gained by the new administration could be gauged by the fact that within ten years Punjabi troops were fighting for the British elsewhere in India to subdue the uprising of 1857-58. Punjab was to become the major recruiting area for the British Indian Army, recruiting both Sikhs and Muslims.

Pakistan

Pakistan - THE BRITISH RAJ

The uprising of 1857-58 became the great divide in nineteenth-century South Asian history. Understated by British historians as the Indian Mutiny or Sepoy Rebellion and referred to with some exaggeration by later Indian nationalists as the First War of Independence, the uprising nevertheless heralded the formal end of the Mughal Empire and marked the end of company rule in India as well. In general, the uprising was a reaction to British expansionism and the outcome of the policies of modernization and annexation of Governor General Lord Dalhousie (1848-56), especially in Oudh (Avadh, now part of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh) in 1856. The immediate spark for mutiny by the sepoys (Indian soldiers employed by the East India Company) was the introduction of the new Enfield rifle, which had to be cartridges, allegedly greased with cow or pig fat, the tips of which had to be bitten off before loading. Both Muslim and Hindu soldiers were outraged at this offense to their religious scruples and refused to comply. British officers responded by summarily dismissing regiment after regiment from the Bengal Army for refusing to load their weapons. The mutiny ignited at the cantonment at Meerut, north of Delhi, when all three of the sepoy regiments rose in revolt against the British, killing some British officers before heading for Delhi to restore Bahadur Shah II to imperial glory. Although the area of fighting was limited to northern and central India and participation to sepoys of the Bengal army and some princely states, the uprisings lasted a year and were a severe blow to British confidence. In putting down the rebellion, British troops were aided substantially by their recently recruited troops from Punjab.

The uprising of 1857-58 heralded the formal end of the Mughal Empire and marked as well the end of company rule in India. The British Parliament passed the Government of India Act of 1858, which transferred authority to the British crown, represented in India by the governor general, who thereafter also had the title of viceroy. Queen Victoria was proclaimed empress of India in 1877.

The Victorian model of administration in British India became the standard reference point for law, order, and probity in contemporary Pakistan. At the apex of the administration stood the governor general, almost always a British peer. The governor general held supreme legislative and executive powers and was responsible directly to the secretary of state for India, a member of the British cabinet. British India was divided into provinces (suba) for administrative purposes, each headed, depending on size and importance, by a governor or lieutenant governor. Provinces were divided into divisions, and these in turn were divided into districts (zilla), the basic administrative units, encompassing substantial territory and population. In many cases, the provinces and districts followed the lines of those created by the Mughals.

The district officer was the linchpin of the system. The officer was revenue collector as well as dispenser of justice and was called district collector, district magistrate, and, in some areas, deputy commissioner (the DC) with equal validity. District officers were usually drawn from the prestigious meritocracy, the Indian Civil Service. Recruitment to the Indian Civil Service was competitive, based on examination of young men with a British classical education. Exclusively British at its beginning, the Indian Civil Service was forced to open its doors slightly to successful Indian candidates. After 1871 district boards and municipal committees were established to assist the district officers in their administrative functions. Thus elective politics, in however limited a form, was introduced to the subcontinent. The governor general was also known as the viceroy and crown representative when dealing with Indian princes. Relations between the British crown and Indian princes were set out in an elusive doctrine of "paramountcy." The princes promised loyalty and surrendered all rights to conduct foreign or defense policy; the crown promised noninterference in internal affairs (except in cases of gross maladministration or injustice) and protection from external and internal enemies.

The British Raj was socially and politically conservative, but it brought profound economic change to the subcontinent. For strategic, administrative, and commercial reasons, the British improved transportation and communications and kept them in good repair. Coal mines were opened in Bihar and Bengal, and irrigation canals were laid out in the Yamuna (also seen as Jumna), Ganges, and Indus valleys; the Indus Valley became the largest irrigated area in the world. The expansion of irrigation in Punjab led to the development of canal colonies, settled mainly by Sikhs and Muslims, and the designation of Punjab as the granary of India. Law and order guaranteed a high rate of return on British, and later Indian, investment in these enterprises.

Racial criteria were also used in a dramatic overhaul of the British Indian Army. The number of British soldiers was increased relative to the Indians, and Indians were excluded from artillery and technical services. A theory of "martial races" was used to accelerate recruitment from among "loyal" Sikhs, Punjabi Muslims, Dogras, Gurkas, and Pakhtuns (Pathans) and to discourage enlistment of "disloyal" Bengalis and high-caste Hindus.

Pakistan

Pakistan - THE BRITISH RAJ - The Forward Policy

British policy toward the tribal peoples on the northwest frontier vacillated between caution and adventurism during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Some viceroys opposed extending direct administration or defense beyond the Indus River. Others favored a more assertive posture, or "forward policy." The latters' view prevailed, partly because Russian advances in Central Asia gave their arguments credence. In 1874 Sir Robert Sandeman was sent to improve British relations with the Baloch tribes and the khan of Kalat. In 1876 Sandeman concluded a treaty with the khan that brought his territories--including Kharan, Makran, and Las Bela--under British suzerainty. The Second Afghan War was fought in 1878-80, sparked by Britain's demands that Afghan foreign policy come completely under its control. In the Treaty of Gandamak concluded in May 1879, the Afghan amir ceded his districts of Pishin, Sibi, Harnai, and Thal Chotiali to the British. During succeeding years, other tribal areas were forcibly occupied by the British. In 1883 the British leased the Bolan Pass, southeast of Quetta, from the khan of Kalat on a permanent basis, and in 1887 some areas of Balochistan were declared British territory.

A similar forward policy was pursued farther north. A British political agent was stationed in Gilgit in 1876 to report on Russian activities as well as on developments in the nearby states of Hunza and Nagar. In 1889 the Gilgit Agency was made permanent. A British expedition was sent against Hunza and Nagar, which submitted to British control. A new mir from the ruling family of Hunza was appointed by the British. British garrisons were established in Hunza and Chitral in 1892. A formal protectorate was declared over Chitral and Gilgit in 1893.

Also in 1893, Sir Mortimer Durand negotiated an agreement with Amir Abdur Rahman Khan of Afghanistan to fix an only partially surveyed line (the Durand Line) running from Chitral to Balochistan to designate the areas of influence for the Afghans and the British. Each party pledged not to interfere in each other's lands. This agreement brought under British domination territory and peoples that had not yet been conquered and would become the source of much difficulty between Pakistan and Afghanistan in the future.

The establishment of British hegemony in the northwest frontier regions did not lead to direct administration similar to that in other parts of India. Local customary law continued, as did the traditional lines of authority and social customs upheld by the maliks (tribal chiefs). To a large extent, the frontier was little more than a vast buffer zone with Afghanistan between the British and Russian empires in Asia and a training ground for the British Indian Army.

Pakistan

Pakistan - The Seeds of Muslim Nationalism

The uprising of 1857-58 was the last fitful assertion of an all but moribund Mughal Empire. Mutinous sepoys had marched from Meerut, the site of the first outbreak, to Delhi proclaiming their intention to restore the poet-emperor Bahadur Shah II to imperial glory. British forces with Punjabi sepoys recaptured Delhi and banished the emperor to Burma, where he died in penury in 1862. British distrust of Muslim aristocracy resulted from the rebellious sepoys' attempt to restore the power of the emperor. Muslim leaders were alleged to have had a major role in planning and leading the revolt, although the revolt itself was a series of badly planned and uncoordinated uprisings and the principal leaders, Nana Sahib and Tantia Topi, were Hindus. In the eyes of British rulers, Muslim leaders had been discredited.

As a consequence, the landed Muslim upper classes in the north Indian heartland retreated into cultural and political isolation, while fellow Muslims in Punjab were rewarded for assisting the British. The former failed to reemerge economically and produced no large group comparable to the upwardly mobile British-educated Hindu middle class. They did not revise the doctrines of Islam to meet the challenges posed by alien rule, Christian missionaries, and revivalist Hindu sects, such as the Arya Samaj, attempting reconversion to Hinduism. The former Muslim rulers of India were in danger of becoming a permanent noncompetitive class in the British Raj at the very time the forces of Indian nationalism were gathering strength.

One response to British rule came to be known as the Deoband Movement, which was led by the ulama, who were expanding traditional Islamic education. The ulama also sought to reform the teaching of Islamic law and to promote its application in contemporary Muslim society. They promoted publications in Urdu, established fund-raising drives, and undertook other modern organizational work on an all-India basis. While most Deobandis eventually were to support the Indian National Congress and a united India, a group that favored the creation of Pakistan later emerged as the core of the Jamiat-ul-Ulama-i-Islam party.

Another response was led by Syed Ahmad Khan (1817-98, known as Sir Syed) and was called the Aligarh Movement after the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College (now Aligarh Muslim University), which he founded in 1875 at Aligarh in north-central India. Sir Syed considered access to British education as the best means of social mobility for the sons of the Muslim gentry under colonial rule.

Meanwhile, the beginnings of the Indian nationalist movement were to be discerned in the increasing tendency to form all-India associations representing various interests. English-speaking Indians, predominantly middle-class but from different parts of the country, were discovering the efficacy of association and public meetings in propagating their views to a wider audience and in winning the attention of the British government. In 1885 the Indian National Congress (also referred to as Congress) was founded to formulate proposals and demands to present to the British.

A national, all-India forum, Congress was an umbrella organization. Many of its members envisioned a long British period of tutelage and advocated strictly constitutionalist and gradualist reforms, but after World War I, Congress argued for a speedy end to alien rule. The idea of the territorial integrity of India and opposition to any sectarian division of India, however, always remained sacrosanct to Congress.

Although Sir Syed often voiced demands similar to those made by the founders of Congress--local self-government, Indian representation on the viceroy's and the governors' councils, and equal duties for Indian members of the Indian Civil Service and the judicial service--he remained aloof when Congress was founded and advised his followers not to join Congress, because he thought the organization would be dominated by Hindus and would inevitably become antigovernment. It has been argued that Sir Syed's fear of Hindu domination sowed the seeds for the "Two Nations Theory" later espoused by the All-India Muslim League (also referred to as Muslim League), founded in 1906, and led to its demand for a separate state for the Muslims of India-- reinforcing his view that the British were the only guarantor of the rights of the Muslims. Sir Syed argued that education and not politics was the key to Muslim advancement. Graduates of Aligarh generally made their careers initially in administration, not politics, and thus were not greatly affected by the introduction of representative institutions at the provincial level by the India Councils Act of 1892.

Events in Bengal proved that agitation was as useful as politics. Lord Curzon (George Nathaniel Curzon), the viceroy, partitioned the large province of Bengal (which then included Bihar and Orissa) in 1905. Although the province was unwieldy, Curzon's plan divided the Bengali speakers by creating the new province of Eastern Bengal and Assam and reducing the original province to western Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa. The eastern province had a Muslim majority.

A massive antipartition campaign was launched against the British by Hindus in Bengal, using constitutional methods as well as terrorism spearheaded by revolutionaries. The partition of Bengal was annulled in 1911. The province of Eastern Bengal and Assam was dissolved, Bengal proper was reunited, Assam was separated, and a new province of Bihar and Orissa was created. Although the reunited Bengal province had a small Muslim majority, ambitious Muslims in the province were disgruntled and looked to the Muslim League for better prospects.

In 1906 the All-India Muslim League had been founded in Dhaka to promote loyalty to the British and "to protect and advance the political rights of the Muslims of India and respectfully represent their needs and aspirations to the Government." It was also stated that there was no intention to affect the rights of other religious groups. Earlier that same year, a group of Muslims--the Simla Delegation--led by Aga Khan III, met the viceroy and put forward the concept of "separate electorates." If the proposal were accepted, Muslim members of elected bodies would be chosen from electorates composed of Muslims only, and the number of seats in the elected bodies allotted to Muslims would be at least proportional to the Muslim share of the population, but preferably "weighted" to give Muslims a share in seats somewhat higher than their proportion of the population. The principles of communal representation, separate electorates, and weightage were included in the Government of India Act of 1909 and were expanded to include such other groups as Sikhs and Christians in later constitutional enactments.

Pakistan

Pakistan - Beginnings of Self-Government

The Government of India Act of 1909--also known as the Morley-Minto Reforms (John Morley was the secretary of state for India, and Gilbert Elliot, fourth earl of Minto, was viceroy)-- gave Indians limited roles in the central and provincial legislatures, known as legislative councils. Indians had previously been appointed to legislative councils, but after the reforms some were elected to them. At the center, the majority of council members continued to be government-appointed officials, and the viceroy was in no way responsible to the legislature. At the provincial level, the elected members, together with unofficial appointees, outnumbered the appointed officials, but responsibility of the governor to the legislature was not contemplated. Morley made it clear in introducing the legislation to the British Parliament that parliamentary self-government was not the goal of the British government.

The granting of separate electorates and communal representation was welcomed by Muslims but opposed by Congress. The Muslim League was pleased by the apparent British intention to support and safeguard Muslim interests in the subcontinent. Separate electorates remained a part of the Muslim League platform even after the independence of Pakistan. Congress opposition was understandable. As the majority community in most provinces, Hindus stood to lose from weighted minority representation. Congress also presented itself as a national secular party and could not support identification of voters with a particular community.

The Morley-Minto Reforms were a milestone. Step by step, the elective principle was introduced for membership in Indian legislative councils. The "electorate" was limited, however, to a small group of upper-class Indians. These elected members increasingly became an "opposition" to the "official government." Communal electorates were later extended to other communities and made a political factor of the Indian tendency toward group identification through religion. The practice created certain vital questions for all concerned. The intentions of the British were questioned. How humanitarian was their concern for the minorities? Were separate electorates a manifestation of "divide and rule"?

For Muslims it was important both to gain a place in all- India politics and to retain their Muslim identity, objectives that required varying responses according to circumstances, as the example of Mohammad Ali Jinnah illustrates. Jinnah, who was born in 1876, studied law in England and began his career as an enthusiastic liberal in Congress on returning to India. In 1913 he joined the Muslim League, which had been shocked by the 1911 annulment of the partition of Bengal into cooperating with Congress to make demands on the British. Jinnah continued his membership in Congress until 1919. During this dual membership period, he was described by a leading Congress spokesperson as the "ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity."

India's important contributions to the efforts of the British Empire in World War I stimulated further demands by Indians and further response from the British. Congress and the Muslim League met in joint session in December 1916. Under the leadership of Jinnah and Pandit Motilal Nehru (father of Jawalharlal Nehru), unity was preached and a proposal for constitutional reform was made that included the concept of separate electorates. The resulting Congress-Muslim League Pact (often referred to as the Lucknow Pact) was a sincere effort to compromise. Congress accepted the separate electorates demanded by the Muslim League, and the Muslim League joined with Congress in demanding self-government. The pact was expected to lead to permanent and constitutional united action.

In August 1917, the British government formally announced a policy of "increasing association of Indians in every branch of the administration and the gradual development of self-governing institutions with a view to the progressive realization of responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire." Constitutional reforms were embodied in the Government of India Act of 1919--also known as the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms (Edwin Samuel Montagu was Britain's secretary of state for India; the Marquess of Chelmsford was viceroy). These reforms represented the maximum concessions the British were prepared to make at that time. The franchise was extended, and increased authority was given to central and provincial legislative councils, but the viceroy remained responsible only to London.

The changes at the provincial level were significant, as the provincial legislative councils contained a considerable majority of elected members. In a system called "dyarchy," the nation- building departments of government--agriculture, education, public works, and the like--were placed under ministers who were individually responsible to the legislature. The departments that made up the "steel frame" of British rule--finance, revenue, and home affairs--were retained by executive councillors who were often, but not always, British and who were responsible to the governor.

The 1919 reforms did not satisfy political demands in India. The British repressed opposition, and restrictions on the press and on movement were reenacted. An apparently unwitting example of violation of rules against the gathering of people led to the massacre at Jalianwala Bagh in Amritsar in April 1919. This tragedy galvanized such political leaders as Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948) and the masses who followed them to press for further action.

The Allies' post-World War I peace settlement with Turkey provided an additional stimulus to the grievances of the Muslims, who feared that one goal of the Allies was to end the caliphate of the Ottoman sultan. After the end of the Mughal Empire, the Ottoman caliph had become the symbol of Islamic authority and unity to Indian Sunni Muslims. A pan-Islamic movement, known as the Khilafat Movement, spread in India. It was a mass repudiation of Muslim loyalty to British rule and thus legitimated Muslim participation in the Indian nationalist movement. The leaders of the Khilafat Movement used Islamic symbols to unite the diverse but assertive Muslim community on an all-India basis and bargain with both Congress leaders and the British for recognition of minority rights and political concessions.

Muslim leaders from the Deoband and Aligarh movements joined Gandhi in mobilizing the masses for the 1920 and 1921 demonstrations of civil disobedience and noncooperation in response to the massacre at Amritsar. At the same time, Gandhi endorsed the Khilafat Movement, thereby placing many Hindus behind what had been solely a Muslim demand.

Despite impressive achievements, however, the Khilafat Movement failed. Turkey rejected the caliphate and became a secular state. Furthermore, the religious, mass-based aspects of the movement alienated such Western-oriented constitutional politicians as Jinnah, who resigned from Congress. Other Muslims also were uncomfortable with Gandhi's leadership. The British historian Sir Percival Spear wrote that "a mass appeal in his [Gandhi's] hands could not be other than a Hindu one. He could transcend caste but not community. The [Hindu] devices he used went sour in the mouths of Muslims." In the final analysis, the movement failed to lay a lasting foundation of Indian unity and served only to aggravate Hindu-Muslim differences among masses that were being politicized. Indeed, as India moved closer to the self-government implied in the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms, rivalry over what might be called the spoils of independence sharpened the differences between the communities. .

The political picture in India was not at all clear when the mandated decennial review of the Government of India Act of 1919 became due in 1929. Prospects of further constitutional reforms spurred greater agitation and a frenzy of demands from different groups. The commission in charge of the review was headed by Sir John Simon, who recommended further constitutional change, but it was not until 1935 that a new Government of India Act was passed. Three consecutive roundtable conferences were held in London in 1930, 1931, and 1932, at which a wide variety of interests from India were represented. The major disagreement concerned the continuation of separate electorates, which Gandhi and Congress strongly opposed. As a result, the decision was forced on the British government. Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald issued his "communal award," which continued the system of separate electorates at both the central and the provincial level.

The principal result of the act was "provincial autonomy." The dyarchical system was discontinued, and all subjects were placed under ministers who were individually and collectively responsible to the former legislative councils, which were renamed legislative assemblies. (In a few provinces, including Bengal, a bicameral system was established; the upper house continued to be called a legislative council.) Almost all assembly members were elected, with the exception of some special and otherwise unrepresented groups. After the elections, provincial chief ministers and cabinets took office, although the governors had limited "emergency powers." Sindh was separated from Bombay and became a province. The 1919 reforms had earlier been introduced in the North-West Frontier Province. Balochistan, however, retained special status; it had no legislature and was governed by an "agent general to the governor general." At the center, the act essentially provided for the establishment of dyarchy, but it also provided for a federal system that included the princes. The princes refused to join a system that might force them to accept decisions made by elected politicians. Thus, the full provisions of the 1935 act did not come into force at the center.

Pakistan

Pakistan - The Two Nations Theory

Events in the late 1920s and 1930s led Muslims to begin to think that their destiny might be in a separate state, a concept that developed into the demand for partition. Motilal Nehru convened an "all-party" conference in 1929 to suggest changes that would lead to independence when the British took up the report of the Simon Commission. The majority of the delegates demanded the end of the system of separate electorates. Jinnah, in turn, put forward fifteen points that would satisfy Muslim interests--in particular, the retention of separate electorates or the creation of "safeguards" to prevent a Hindu-controlled legislature. Jinnah's proposals were rejected, and from then on cooperation between Hindus and Muslims in the independence movement was rare.

In his presidential address to the Muslim League session at Allahabad in 1930, the leading modern Muslim philosopher in South Asia, Sir Muhammad Iqbal (1876-1938), described India as Asia in miniature, in which a unitary form of government was inconceivable and religious community rather than territory was the basis for identification. To him, communalism in its highest sense was the key to the formation of a harmonious whole in India. Therefore, he demanded the establishment of a confederated India to include a Muslim state consisting of Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sindh, and Balochistan. In subsequent speeches and writings, Iqbal reiterated the claims of Muslims to be considered a nation "based on unity of language, race, history, religion, and identity of economic interests."

Iqbal gave no name to his projected state. That was done by a group of students at Cambridge in Britain who issued a pamphlet in 1933 entitled Now or Never. They opposed the idea of federation, denied that India was a single country, and demanded partition into regions, the northwest receiving national status as a "Pakistan." They explained the term as follows: "Pakistan . . . is . . . composed of letters taken from the names of our homelands: that is, Punjab, Afghania [North-West Frontier Province], Kashmir, Iran, Sindh, Tukharistan, Afghanistan, and Balochistan. It means the land of the Paks, the spiritually pure and clean."

In 1934 Jinnah returned to the leadership of the Muslim League after a period of residence in London, but found it divided and without a sense of mission. He set about restoring a sense of purpose to Muslims, and he emphasized the Two Nations Theory.

The 1937-40 period was critical in the growth of the Two Nations Theory. Under the 1935 Government of India Act, elections to the provincial legislative assemblies were held in 1937. Congress gained majorities in seven of the eleven provinces. Congress took a strictly legalistic stand on the formation of provincial ministries and refused to form coalition governments with the Muslim League, even in the United Provinces (Uttar Pradesh in contemporary India), which had a substantial Muslim minority, and vigorously denied the Muslim League's claim to be the only true representative of Indian Muslims. This claim, however, was not substantiated because the Muslim League had done poorly in the elections, especially in the Muslim-majority provinces such as Punjab and the North-West Frontier Province. The conduct of Congress governments in the Muslim-minority provinces permanently alienated the Muslim League.

By the late 1930s, Jinnah was convinced of the need for a unifying issue among Muslims, and Pakistan was the obvious answer. At its annual session in Lahore on March 23, 1940, the Muslim League resolved that the areas of Muslim majority in northwestern and eastern India should be grouped together to constitute independent states--autonomous and sovereign--and that any independence plan without this provision was unacceptable to Muslims. Federation was rejected. The Lahore Resolution was often referred to as the "Pakistan Resolution"; however, the word Pakistan did not appear in it.

An interesting aspect of the Pakistan movement was that it received its greatest support from areas in which Muslims were a minority. In those areas, the main issue was finding an alternative to replacing British rule with Congress, that is, Hindu, rule.

Pakistan

Pakistan - Toward Partition

Congress predictably opposed all proposals for partition and advocated a united India with a strong center and a fully responsible parliamentary government. To many, notably to Jawaharlal Nehru, the idea of a sovereign state based on a common religion seemed a historical anachronism and a denial of democracy. From 1940 on, reconciliation between Congress and the Muslim League became increasingly difficult, if not impossible.

During World War II, the Muslim League and Congress adopted different attitudes toward British rule. British priorities were driven by the expediencies of defense, and war was declared abruptly without any prior consultation with Indian politicians. Congress ministers in the provinces resigned in protest. As a consequence, Congress, with most of its leaders in jail for opposition to the Raj, lost its political leverage over the British. The Muslim League, however, followed a course of cooperation, gaining time to consolidate. The British appreciated the loyalty and valor of the British Indian Army, many of whose members were Punjabi Muslims. The Muslim League's success could be gauged from its sweep of 90 percent of the Muslim seats in the 1946 election, compared with only 4.5 percent in the 1937 elections. The 1946 election was, in effect, a plebiscite among Muslims on Pakistan. In London it became clear that there were three parties in any discussion on the future of India: the British, Congress, and the Muslim League.

Spurred by the Japanese advance in Asia and forceful persuasion from Washington, British prime minister Winston Churchill's coalition war government in 1942 had dispatched Sir Stafford Cripps to India with a proposal for settlement. The plan provided for dominion status after the war for an Indian union of British Indian provinces and princely states wishing to accede to it, a separate dominion for those who did not, and firm defense links between Britain and an Indian union. Cripps himself was sympathetic to Indian nationalism. However, his mission failed, and Gandhi described it as "a post-dated check on a crashing bank."

In August 1942, Gandhi launched the "Quit India Movement" against the British. Jinnah condemned the movement. The government retaliated by arresting about 60,000 individuals and outlawing Congress. Communal riots increased. Talks between Jinnah and Gandhi in 1944 proved as futile as negotiations between Gandhi and the viceroy.

In July 1945, the Labour Party came to power in Britain with a large majority. Its choices in India were limited by the decline of British power and the necessity of retaining Indian links in imperial defense. General unrest in India spread, and, when a naval mutiny in Bombay broke out in 1945, British officials came to the conclusion that independence was the only alternative to forcible retention of control over an unwilling dependency. The viceroy, Lord Wavell, met with Indian leaders in Simla in 1945 to decide what form of interim government would be acceptable. No agreement was reached.

New elections to the provincial and central legislatures were ordered, and a three-man team came from Britain to discuss plans for self-government. The Cabinet Mission Plan, proposed by Cripps, represented Britain's last, desperate attempt to transfer the power it retained over India to a single union. The mission put forward a three-tier federal form of government in which the central government would be limited to power over defense, foreign relations, currency, and communications; significant other power would be delegated to the provinces. The plan also prescribed the zones that would be created: northeastern Bengal and Assam would be joined to form a zone with a slight Muslim majority; in the northwest, Punjab, Sindh, North-West Frontier Province, and Balochistan would be joined for a clear Muslim majority; and the remainder of the country would be the third zone, with a clear Hindu majority. The approximation of the boundaries of a new Pakistan was clear from the delineation of the zones. The mission also suggested the right of veto on legislation by communities that saw their interests adversely affected. Finally, the mission proposed that an interim government be established immediately and that new elections be held.

Congress and the Muslim League emerged from the 1946 elections as the two dominant parties, although the Muslim League again was unable to capture a majority of the Muslim seats in the North-West Frontier Province. At first, both parties seemed to accept the Cabinet Mission Plan, despite many reservations, but the subsequent behavior of the leaders soon led to bitterness and mistrust. Nehru effectively quashed any prospect of the plan's success when he announced that Congress would not be "fettered" by agreements with the British, thereby making it clear that Congress would use its majority in the newly created Constituent Assembly to write a constitution that conformed to its ideas. The formation of an interim government was also controversial. Jinnah demanded equality between the Muslim League and Congress, a proposal rejected by the viceroy. The Muslim League boycotted the interim government, and each party disputed the right of the other to appoint Muslim ministers, a prerogative Jinnah claimed belonged solely to the Muslim League.

When the viceroy proceeded to form an interim government without the Muslim League, Jinnah called for demonstrations, or "Direct Action," on August 16, 1946. Communal rioting broke out on an unprecedented scale, especially in Bengal and Bihar. The massacre of Muslims in Calcutta brought Gandhi to the scene, where he worked with the Muslim League provincial chief minister, Hussain Shahid Suhrawardy. Gandhi's and Suhrawardy's efforts calmed fears in Bengal, but rioting quickly spread elsewhere and continued well into 1947. Jinnah permitted the Muslim League to enter the interim government in an effort to stem further communal violence. Disagreements among the ministers paralyzed the government, already haunted by the specter of civil war.

In February 1947, Lord Mountbatten was appointed viceroy with specific instructions to arrange for a transfer of power by June 1948. Mountbatten assessed the situation and became convinced that Congress was willing to accept partition as the price for independence, that Jinnah would accept a smaller Pakistan than the one he demanded (that is, all of Punjab and Bengal), and that Sikhs would learn to accept a division of Punjab. Mountbatten was convinced by the rising temperature of communal emotions that the June 1948 date for partition was too distant and persuaded most Indian leaders that immediate acceptance of his plan was imperative.

On June 3, 1947, British prime minister Clement Attlee introduced a bill in the House of Commons calling for the independence and partition of India. On July 14, the House of Commons passed the India Independence Act, by which two independent dominions were created on the subcontinent; the princely states were left to accede to either. The partition plan stated that contiguous Muslim-majority districts in Punjab and Bengal would go to Pakistan, provided that the legislatures of the two provinces agreed that the provinces should be partitioned--they did. Sindh's legislature and Balochistan's jirga (council of tribal leaders) agreed to join Pakistan. A plebiscite was held in the Sylhet District of Assam, and, as a result, part of the district was transferred to Pakistan. A plebiscite was also held in the North-West Frontier Province. Despite a boycott by Congress, the province was deemed to have chosen Pakistan. The princely states, however, presented a more difficult problem. All but three of the more than 500 states quickly acceded to Pakistan or India under guidelines established with the aid of Mountbatten. The states made their decisions after giving consideration to the geographic location of their respective areas and to their religious majority. Hyderabad, the most populated of the princely states, was ruled by a Muslim but had a Hindu majority and was surrounded by territory that would go to India, and Junagadh (a small state with a Muslim prince but a Hindu majority) presented a problem. Both hesitated but were quickly absorbed into India. The accession of the third state, Jammu and Kashmir, could not be resolved peacefully, and its indeterminate status has poisoned relations between India and Pakistan ever since.

Throughout the summer of 1947, as communal violence mounted, preparations for partition proceeded in Delhi. Assets were divided, boundary commissions were set up to demarcate frontiers, and British troops were evacuated. The military was restructured into two forces. Law and order broke down in different parts of the country. Civil servants were given the choice of joining either country; British officers could retire with compensation if not invited to stay on. Jinnah and Nehru tried unsuccessfully to quell the passions of communal fury that neither fully understood. On August 14, 1947, Pakistan and India achieved independence. Jinnah the first governor general of the Dominion of Pakistan.

Pakistan

INDEPENDENT PAKISTAN

Problems at Independence

In August 1947, Pakistan was faced with a number of problems, some immediate but others long term. The most important of these concerns was the role played by Islam. Was Pakistan to be a secular state serving as a homeland for Muslims of the subcontinent, or was it to be an Islamic state governed by the sharia, in which non-Muslims would be second-class citizens? The second question concerned the distribution of power between the center and the provincial governments, a question that eventually led to the dissolution of the country with the painful loss of the East Wing (East Bengal, later East Pakistan, now Bangladesh) in 1971, an issue that remained unresolved in the mid-1990s.

The territory of Pakistan was divided into two parts at independence, separated by about 1,600 kilometers of Indian territory. The 1940 Lahore Resolution had called for independent "states" in the northwest and the northeast. This objective was changed, by a 1946 meeting of Muslim League legislators to a call for a single state (the acronym Pakistan had no letter for Bengal). Pakistan lacked the machinery, personnel, and equipment for a new government. Even its capital, Karachi, was a second choice--Lahore was rejected because it was too close to the Indian border. Pakistan's economy seemed enviable after severing ties with India, the major market for its commodities. And much of Punjab's electricity was imported from Indian power stations.

Above all other concerns were the violence and the refugee problem: Muslims were fleeing India; Hindus and Sikhs were fleeing Pakistan. Jinnah's plea to regard religion as a personal matter, not a state matter, was ignored. No one was prepared for the communal rioting and the mass movements of population that followed the June 3, 1947, London announcement of imminent independence and partition. The most conservative estimates of the casualties were 250,000 dead and 12 million to 24 million refugees. The actual boundaries of the two new states were not even known until August 17, when they were announced by a commission headed by a British judge. The boundaries-- unacceptable to both India and Pakistan--have remained.

West Pakistan lost Hindus and Sikhs. These communities had managed much of the commercial activity of West Pakistan. The Sikhs were especially prominent in agricultural colonies. They were replaced largely by Muslims from India, mostly Urdu speakers from the United Provinces. Although some people, especially Muslims from eastern Punjab (in India), settled in western Punjab (in Pakistan), many headed for Karachi and other cities in Sindh, where they took the jobs vacated by departing Hindus. In 1951 close to half of the population of Pakistan's major cities were immigrants (muhajirs--refugees from India and their descendants).

The aspirations for Pakistan that had been so important to Muslims in Muslim-minority provinces and the goals for the new state these urban refugees had fled to were not always compatible with those of the traditional rural people already inhabiting Pakistan, whose support for the concept of Pakistan came much later. Pakistani society was polarized from its inception.

The land and people west of the Indus River continued to pose problems. The most immediate problem was the continued presence of a Congress government in the North-West Frontier Province, a government effective at the grassroots level and popular despite the loss of the plebiscite. Led by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and his Khudai-i-Khitmagar (Servants of God, a Congress faction), this group was often referred to as the Red Shirts after its members' attire. Ghaffar Khan asked his followers not to participate in the July 1947 plebiscite.

Pakistan also had to establish its legitimacy against a possible challenge from Afghanistan. Irredentist claims from Kabul were based on the ethnic unity of tribes straddling the border; the emotional appeal of "Pakhtunistan," homeland of the Pakhtuns, was undeniable. However, Pakistan upheld the treaties Britain had signed with Afghanistan and refused to discuss the validity of the Durand Line as the international border. Relations with Afghanistan were hostile, resulting in the rupture of diplomatic and commercial relations and leading Afghanistan to cast the only vote against Pakistan's admission to the United Nations (UN) in 1947.

The India Independence Act left the princes theoretically free to accede to either dominion. The frontier princely states of Dir, Chitral, Amb, and Hunza acceded quickly to Pakistan while retaining substantial autonomy in internal administration and customary law. The khan of Kalat in Balochistan declared independence on August 15, 1947, but offered to negotiate a special relationship with Pakistan. Other Baloch sardar (tribal chiefs) also expressed their preference for a separate identity. Pakistan took military action against them and the khan and brought about their accession in 1948. The state of Bahawalpur, with a Muslim ruler and a Muslim population, acceded to Pakistan, as did Khairpur.

The maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, unpopular among his subjects, was reluctant to decide on accession to either dominion. He first signed agreements with both Pakistan and India that would provide for the continued flow of people and goods to Kashmir--as it is usually called--from both dominions. Alarmed by reports of oppression of fellow Muslims in Kashmir, armed groups from the North-West Frontier Province entered the maharaja's territory. The ruler requested military assistance from India but had to sign documents acceding to India before that country would provide aid in October 1947.

The government of Pakistan refused to recognize the accession and denounced it as a fraud even though the Indian government announced that it would require an expression of the people's will through a plebiscite after the invaders were driven back. Pakistan launched an active military and diplomatic campaign to undo the accession. The UN Security Council eventually brought about a cease-fire between Pakistani and Indian troops, which took place on January 1, 1949, thus ending the first Indo- Pakistani War, and directed that a plebiscite be held. The cease- fire agreement formalized the military status quo, leaving about 30 percent of Kashmir under Pakistani control.

Partition and its accompanying confusion also brought severe economic challenges to the two newly created and antagonistic countries. The partition plan ignored the principles of complementarity. West Pakistan, for example, traditionally produced more wheat than it consumed and had supplied the deficit areas in India. Cotton grown in West Pakistan was used in mills in Bombay and other west Indian cities. Commodities such as coal and sugar were in short supply in Pakistan--they had traditionally come from areas now part of India. Furthermore, Pakistan faced logistic problems for its commercial transportation because of the four major ports in British India, it was awarded only Karachi. But the problem that proved most intractable was defining relations between the two wings of Pakistan, which had had little economic exchange before partition.

The two dominions decided to allow free movement of goods, persons, and capital for one year after independence, but this agreement broke down. In November 1947, Pakistan levied export duties on jute; India retaliated with export duties of its own. The trade war reached a crisis in September 1949 when Britain devalued the pound, to which both the Pakistani rupee and the Indian rupee were pegged. India followed Britain's lead, but Pakistan did not, so India severed trade relations with Pakistan. The outbreak of the Korean War (1950-53) and the consequent price rises in jute, leather, cotton, and wool as a result of wartime needs, saved the economy of Pakistan. New trading relationships were formed, and the construction of cotton and jute mills in Pakistan was quickly undertaken. Although India and Pakistan resumed trade in 1951, both the volume and the value of trade steadily declined; the two countries ignored bilateral trade for the most part and developed the new international trade links they had made.

The assets of British India were divided in the ratio of seventeen for India to five for Pakistan by decision of the Viceroy's Council in June 1947. Division was difficult to implement, however, and Pakistan complained of nondeliveries. A financial agreement was reached in December 1948, but the actual settlement of financial and other disputes continued until 1960.

Division of the all-India services of the Indian Civil Service and the Indian Police Service was also difficult. Only 101 out of a total of 1,157 Indian officers were Muslim. Among these Muslim officers, ninety-five officers opted for Pakistan; they were joined by one Christian, eleven Muslim military officers transferring to civilian service, and fifty Britons, for a total of 157. But only twenty of them had had more than fifteen years of service, and more than half had had fewer than ten years. These men formed the core of the Civil Service of Pakistan, which became one of the most elite and privileged bureaucracies in the world. Members of the Civil Service of Pakistan were the architects of the administrative, judicial, and diplomatic services. They proved indispensable in running the government machinery during Pakistan's first two decades, and their contributions to government policy and economics were profound during the era of Mohammad Ayub Khan. The Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto government in the 1970s precipitated a major reorganization and reorientation of the bureaucracy, however, which resulted in a noticeable decline in both the morale and the standards of the bureaucracy.

Pakistan

Pakistan - Constitutional Beginnings

At independence Jinnah was the supreme authority. An accomplished politician, he won independence for Pakistan within seven years of the Lahore Resolution and was hailed by his followers as the Quaid-i-Azam (Great Leader). As governor general, he assumed the ceremonial functions of head of state while taking on effective power as head of government, dominating his prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan (the Quaid-i-Millet, or Leader of the Nation). To these roles, he added the leadership of the Muslim League and the office of president of the Constituent Assembly.

Although Jinnah had led the movement for Pakistan as a separate Muslim nation, he was appalled by the communal riots and urged equal rights for all citizens irrespective of religion. Jinnah died in September 1948--only thirteen months after independence--leaving his successors to tackle the problems of Pakistan's identity.

Jinnah's acknowledged lieutenant, Liaquat Ali Khan, assumed leadership and continued in the position of prime minister. Born to a Punjabi landed family, Liaquat used his experience in law to attempt to frame a constitution along the lines of the British Westminster system of parliamentary democracy. He failed in large part because neither the Muslim League nor the Constituent Assembly was equipped to resolve in a parliamentary manner the problems and conflicts of the role of Islam and the degree of autonomy for the provinces. Liaquat's term of office ended when he was assassinated in Rawalpindi in October 1951. He was replaced by Khwaja Nazimuddin, who stepped down as governor general; Nazimuddin was replaced as governor general by Ghulam Mohammad, the former minister of finance.

The Muslim League, unlike Congress, had not prepared itself for a postindependence role. Congress had constitutional, economic, social, and even foreign policy plans in place before independence and was ready to put them into effect when the time came. The Muslim League was so preoccupied with the struggle for Pakistan that it was poorly prepared for effective government. Its leaders were largely urban professionals whose political base was mainly in areas that were in India. In the areas that had become Pakistan, its base was weak. Landlords with ascriptive and inherited privileges were uncomfortable with procedures of decision making through debate, discussion, compromise, and majority vote. The Muslim League was a party with little grassroots support, a weak organizational structure, powerful factional leaders, and decisions made at the top. Although Ghulam Mohammad tried to exercise the "viceregal" power that Jinnah had used so powerfully as governor general, concern for office and the fruits of power were more important to most of the politicians than the evolution of ideology or the implementation of mass programs. The effect of this lack of direction was shown most clearly when the Muslim League was routed in the 1954 election in East Pakistan by the United Front--mainly a coalition of the Awami League and the Krishak Sramik Party, led by two one-time Muslim League members, Hussain Shahid Suhrawardy and Fazlul Haq, who ran on an autonomist platform. Other parties established during this period included the leftist National Awami Party (a breakaway from the Awami League), which also supported provincial autonomy. Islamic parties also made their appearance on the electoral scene, most notably the Jamaat-i-Islami.

The Muslim League was held responsible for the deterioration of politics and society after independence and had to answer for its failure to fulfill people's high expectations. There was a rising level of opposition and frustration and an increasing use of repressive laws inherited from the British or enacted by Pakistan that included preventive detention and rules prohibiting the gathering of more than five persons. In 1949 the Public and Representative Office Disqualification Act (PRODA) allowed the government to disqualify persons found guilty of "misconduct," a term that acquired a broad definition. In 1952 the Security of Pakistan Act expanded the powers of the government in the interests of public order.

The armed forces also posed a threat to Liaquat's government, which was less hostile toward India than some officers wished. In March 1951, Major General Mohammad Akbar Khan, chief of the general staff, was arrested along with fourteen other officers on charges of plotting a coup d'�tat. The authors of what became known as the Rawalpindi Conspiracy were tried in secret, convicted, and sentenced to imprisonment. All were subsequently released.

Pakistan's first Constituent Assembly was made up of members of the prepartition Indian Constituent Assembly who represented areas that had gone to Pakistan. The body's eighty members functioned as the legislature of Pakistan. As a constitution-making body, the assembly's only achievement was the Objectives Resolution of March 1949, which specified that Pakistan would be Islamic, democratic, and federal. But the assembly could not reach agreement on how these objectives would take form, raising fears among minorities and concern among East Bengalis. Other important matters remained equally problematic-- the division of executive power between the governor general and the prime minister; the distribution of power between the center and the provinces; the balance of power, especially electoral, between the two wings; and the role of Islam in the government. With the 1951 assassination of Liaquat, resolution of these issues became unlikely.

During the years after Liaquat's assassination, none of these problems were resolved, and a major confrontation occurred between the governor general, Ghulam Mohammad, a Punjabi from the civil service, and the prime minister, Nazimuddin, a former chief minister of united Bengal and now chief minister of East Bengal. Ghulam Mohammad, who relished the trappings of dominance earlier held by Jinnah, asserted his power by declaring martial law in 1953 in Punjab during disturbances involving the Ahmadiyyas, a small but influential sect considered heterodox by orthodox Muslims, and a year later by imposing governor's rule after the Muslim League defeat in East Bengal, not permitting the United Front to take office. When Nazimuddin attempted to limit the power of the governor general through amendments to the Government of India Act of 1935--then still the basic law for Pakistan, as altered by the India Independence Act of 1947-- Ghulam Mohammad unceremoniously dismissed him in April 1953, and then the following year appointed his own "cabinet of talents," dismissing the Constituent Assembly.

The so-called cabinet of talents was headed by Mohammad Ali Bogra, a minor political figure from East Bengal who had previously been Pakistan's ambassador to the United States. Significantly, the cabinet also included both military and civil officials. Chaudhuri Mohammad Ali, who had been head of the Civil Service of Pakistan, became minister of finance. General Mohammad Ayub Khan became minister of defense while retaining his post as commander in chief of the army. Major General Iskander Mirza, a military officer who was seconded to civilian posts, including becoming governor of East Bengal when Ghulam Mohammad imposed governor's rule on that province, became minister of home affairs. The cabinet thus provided an opportunity for the military to take a direct role in politics. Ghulam Mohammad was successful in subordinating the prime minister because of the support of military and civil officers as well as the backing of the strong landed interests in Punjab. The facade of parliamentary government crumbled, exposing the military's role in Pakistan's political system to public view.

The revived Constituent Assembly convened in 1955. It differed in composition from the first such assembly because of the notable reduction of Muslim League members and the presence of a United Front coalition from East Bengal. Provincial autonomy was the main plank of the United Front. Also in 1955, failing health and the ascendancy of General Iskander Mirza forced Ghulam Mohammad to resign as governor general. He died the following year.

In 1956 the Constituent Assembly adopted a constitution that proclaimed Pakistan an Islamic republic and contained directives for the establishment of an Islamic state. It also renamed the Constituent Assembly the Legislative Assembly. The lawyer-politicians who led the Pakistan movement used the principles and legal precedents of a nonreligious British parliamentary tradition even while they advanced the idea of Muslim nationhood as an axiom. Many of them represented a liberal movement in Islam, in which their personal religion was compatible with Western technology and political institutions. They saw the basis for democratic processes and tolerance in the Islamic tradition of ijma (consensus of the community) and ijtihad (the concept of continuing interpretations of Islamic law). Most of Pakistan's intelligentsia and Westernized elites belonged to the group of ijma modernists.

In contrast stood the traditionalist ulama, whose position was a legalistic one based on the unity of religion and politics in Islam. The ulama asserted that the Quran, the sunna, and the sharia provided the general principles for all aspects of life if correctly interpreted and applied. The government's duty, therefore, was to recognize the role of the ulama in the interpretation of the law. Because the ulama and the less-learned mullahs (Muslim clerics) enjoyed influence among the masses, especially in urban areas, and because no politician could afford to be denounced as anti-Islamic, none dared publicly to ignore them. Nevertheless, they were not given powers of legal interpretation until the Muhammad Zia ul-Haq regime of 1977-88. The lawyer-politicians making decisions in the 1950s almost without exception preferred the courts and legal institutions they inherited from the British.

Another interpretation of Islam was provided by an Islamist movement in Pakistan, regarded in some quarters as fundamentalist. Its most significant organization was the Jamaat-i-Islami, which gradually built up support among the refugees, the urban lower middle-class, and students. Unlike the traditional ulama, the Islamist movement was the outcome of modern Islamic idealism. Crucial in the constitutional and political development of Pakistan, it forced politicians to face the question of Islamic identity. On occasion, definitions of Islamic identity resulted in violent controversy, as in Punjab during the early 1950s when agitation was directed against the Ahmadiyyas. In the mid-1970s, the Ahmadiyyas were declared to be non-Muslims by the government of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (1971-77) and the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), based in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia.

During the 1950s, however, the fundamentalist movement led by Maulana Abul Ala Maududi, the founder and leader of the Jamaat-i-Islami, succeeded only in introducing Islamic principles into the 1956 constitution. A nonjudiciable section called the Directive Principles of State Policy attempted to define ways in which the Islamic way of life and Islamic moral standards could be pursued. The principles contained injunctions against the consumption of alcohol and the practice of usury. The substance of the 1956 clauses reappeared in the 1962 constitution, but the Islamist cause was undefeated. Sharia courts were established under Zia, and under Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif in the early 1990s, the sharia was proclaimed the basic law of the land.

Pakistan

Pakistan - Early Foreign Policy

Pakistan's early foreign policy espoused nonalignment. Despite disputes with India, the policies of the two countries were similar: membership in the Commonwealth of Nations; no commitment to either the United States or the Soviet Union; and a role in the UN.

Pakistan's foreign policy stance shifted significantly in 1953 when it accepted the United States offer of military and economic assistance in return for membership in an alliance system designed to contain international communism. When the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower sought a series of alliances in the "Northern Tier"--Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey--and in East Asia, Pakistan became a candidate for membership in each. In 1954 Pakistan signed a Mutual Defense Agreement with the United States and became a member of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). The following year, Pakistan joined Iran, Iraq, and Turkey in the Baghdad Pact, later converted into the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) after Iraq's withdrawal in 1959. Pakistan also leased bases to the United States for intelligence-gathering and communications facilities. Pakistan saw these agreements not as bulwarks against Soviet or Chinese aggression, but as a means to bolster itself against India.

Pakistan

Pakistan - Collapse of the Parliamentary System

The parliamentary system outlined in the 1956 constitution required disciplined political parties, which did not exist. The Muslim League--the one political party that had appeared capable of developing into a national democratic party--continued to decline in prestige. In West Pakistan, Sindh and the North-West Frontier Province resented the political and economic dominance accorded Punjab and were hostile to the "One Unit Plan" introduced by the Constituent Assembly the year before. The One Unit Plan merged the western provinces of Balochistan, the NorthWest Frontier Province, Punjab, and Sindh into a single administrative unit named West Pakistan, which in the new Legislative Assembly was to have parity with the more populous province of East Pakistan.

In 1956 Suhrawardy formed a coalition cabinet at the center that included the Awami League and the newly formed Republican Party of the West Wing, which had broken off from the Muslim League. Suhrawardy was highly respected in East Pakistan, but he had no measurable political strength in West Pakistan. By taking a strong position in favor of the One Unit Plan, he lost support in Sindh, the North-West Frontier Province, and Balochistan.

Societal violence and ethnic unrest further complicated the growth and functioning of parliamentary government. In West Pakistan, chief minister Khan Sahib was assassinated. In the North-West Frontier Province, Khan Sahib's brother, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, of the National Awami Party, turned his back on national politics and said he would work for the attainment of a separate homeland for the Pakhtuns. And in Balochistan, the khan of Kalat again declared his independence, but the Pakistan Army restored Pakistani control.

On October 7, 1958, President Mirza, with the support of the army, suspended the 1956 constitution, imposed martial law, and canceled the elections scheduled for January 1959. Mirza was also supported by the civil service bureaucracy, which harbored deep suspicions of politicians. Nonetheless, on October 27 Mirza was ousted and sent into lifetime exile in London. General Ayub Khan, the army commander in chief, assumed control of a military government.

Pakistan

Pakistan - AYUB KHAN

In January 1951, Ayub Khan succeeded General Sir Douglas Gracey as commander in chief of the Pakistan Army, becoming the first Pakistani in that position. Although Ayub Khan's military career was not particularly brilliant and although he had not previously held a combat command, he was promoted over several senior officers with distinguished careers. Ayub Khan probably was selected because of his reputation as an able administrator, his presumed lack of political ambition, and his lack of powerful group backing. Coming from a humble family of an obscure Pakhtun tribe, Ayub Khan also lacked affiliation with major internal power blocks and was, therefore, acceptable to all elements.

Within a short time of his promotion, however, Ayub Khan had become a powerful political figure. Perhaps more than any other Pakistani, Ayub Khan was responsible for seeking and securing military and economic assistance from the United States and for aligning Pakistan with it in international affairs. As army commander in chief and for a time as minister of defense in 1954, Ayub Khan was empowered to veto virtually any government policy that he felt was inimical to the interests of the armed forces.

By 1958 Ayub Khan and his fellow officers decided to turn out the "inefficient and rascally" politicians--a task easily accomplished without bloodshed. Ayub Khan's philosophy was indebted to the Mughal and viceregal traditions; his rule was similarly highly personalized. Ayub Khan justified his assumption of power by citing the nation's need for stability and the necessity for the army to play a central role. When internal stability broke down in the 1960s, he remained contemptuous of lawyer-politicians and handed over power to his fellow army officers.

Ayub Khan used two main approaches to governing in his first few years. He concentrated on consolidating power and intimidating the opposition. He also aimed to establish the groundwork for future stability through altering the economic, legal, and constitutional institutions.

The imposition of martial law in 1958 targeted "antisocial" practices such as abducting women and children, black marketeering, smuggling, and hoarding. Many in the Civil Service of Pakistan and Police Service of Pakistan were investigated and punished for corruption, misconduct, inefficiency, or subversive activities. Ayub Khan's message was clear: he, not the civil servants, was in control.

Sterner measures were used against the politicians. The PRODA prescribed fifteen years' exclusion from public office for those found guilty of corruption. The Elective Bodies Disqualification Order (EBDO) authorized special tribunals to try former politicians for "misconduct," an infraction not clearly defined. Prosecution could be avoided if the accused agreed not to be a candidate for any elective body for a period of seven years. About 7,000 individuals were "EBDOed." Some people, including Suhrawardy, who was arrested, fought prosecution.

The Press and Publications Ordinance was amended in 1960 to specify broad conditions under which newspapers and other publications could be commandeered or closed down. Trade organizations, unions, and student groups were closely monitored and cautioned to avoid political activity, and imams at mosques were warned against including political matters in sermons.

On the whole, however, the martial law years were not severe. The army maintained low visibility and was content to uphold the traditional social order. By early 1959, most army units had resumed their regular duties. Ayub Khan generally left administration in the hands of the civil bureaucracy, with some exceptions.

Efforts were made to popularize the regime while the opposition was muzzled. Ayub Khan maintained a high public profile, often taking trips expressly to "meet the people." He was also aware of the need to address some of the acute grievances of East Pakistan. To the extent possible, only Bengali members of the civil service were posted in the East Wing; previously, many of the officers had been from the West Wing and knew neither the region nor the language. Dhaka was designated the legislative capital of Pakistan, while the newly created Islamabad became the administrative capital. Central government bodies, such as the Planning Commission, were now instructed to hold regular sessions in Dhaka. Public investment in East Pakistan increased, although private investment remained heavily skewed in favor of West Pakistan. The Ayub Khan regime was so highly centralized, however, that, in the absence of democratic institutions, densely populated and politicized Bengal continued to feel it was being slighted.

Between 1958 and 1962, Ayub Khan used martial law to initiate a number of reforms that reduced the power of groups opposing him. One such group was the landed aristocracy. The Land Reform Commission was set up in 1958, and in 1959 the government imposed a ceiling of 200 hectares of irrigated land and 400 hectares of unirrigated land in the West Wing for a single holding. In the East Wing, the landholding ceiling was raised from thirty-three hectares to forty-eight hectares. Landholders retained their dominant positions in the social hierarchy and their political influence but heeded Ayub Khan's warnings against political assertiveness. Moreover, some 4 million hectares of land in West Pakistan, much of it in Sindh, was released for public acquisition between 1959 and 1969 and sold mainly to civil and military officers, thus creating a new class of farmers having medium-sized holdings. These farms became immensely important for future agricultural development, but the peasants benefited scarcely at all.

In 1955 a legal commission was set up to suggest reforms of the family and marriage laws. Ayub Khan examined its report and in 1961 issued the Family Laws Ordinance. Among other things, it restricted polygyny and "regulated" marriage and divorce, giving women more equal treatment under the law than they had had before. It was a humane measure supported by women's organizations in Pakistan, but the ordinance could not have been promulgated if the vehement opposition to it from the ulama and the fundamentalist Muslim groups had been allowed free expression. However, this law which was similar to the one passed on family planning, was relatively mild and did not seriously transform the patriarchal pattern of society.

Ayub Khan adopted an energetic approach toward economic development that soon bore fruit in a rising rate of economic growth. Land reform, consolidation of holdings, and stern measures against hoarding were combined with rural credit programs and work programs, higher procurement prices, augmented allocations for agriculture, and, especially, improved seeds to put the country on the road to self-sufficiency in food grains in the process described as the Green Revolution.

The Export Bonus Vouchers Scheme (1959) and tax incentives stimulated new industrial entrepreneurs and exporters. Bonus vouchers facilitated access to foreign exchange for imports of industrial machinery and raw materials. Tax concessions were offered for investment in less-developed areas. These measures had important consequences in bringing industry to Punjab and gave rise to a new class of small industrialists.

Basic Democracies

Ayub Khan's martial law regime, critics observed, was a form of "representational dictatorship," but the new political system, introduced in 1959 as "Basic Democracy," was an apt expression of what Ayub Khan called the particular "genius" of Pakistan. In 1962 a new constitution was promulgated as a product of that indirect elective system. Ayub Khan did not believe that a sophisticated parliamentary democracy was suitable for Pakistan. Instead, the Basic Democracies, as the individual administrative units were called, were intended to initiate and educate a largely illiterate population in the working of government by giving them limited representation and associating them with decision making at a "level commensurate with their ability." Basic Democracies were concerned with no more than local government and rural development. They were meant to provide a two-way channel of communication between the Ayub Khan regime and the common people and allow social change to move slowly.

The Basic Democracies system set up five tiers of institutions. The lowest but most important tier was composed of union councils, one each for groups of villages having an approximate total population of 10,000. Each union council comprised ten directly elected members and five appointed members, all called Basic Democrats. Union councils were responsible for local agricultural and community development and for rural law and order maintenance; they were empowered to impose local taxes for local projects. These powers, however, were more than balanced at the local level by the fact that the controlling authority for the union councils was the deputy commissioner, whose high status and traditionally paternalistic attitudes often elicited obedient cooperation rather than demands.

The next tier consisted of the tehsil (subdistrict) councils, which performed coordination functions. Above them, the district (zilla) councils, chaired by the deputy commissioners, were composed of nominated official and nonofficial members, including the chairmen of union councils. The district councils were assigned both compulsory and optional functions pertaining to education, sanitation, local culture, and social welfare. Above them, the divisional advisory councils coordinated the activities with representatives of government departments. The highest tier consisted of one development advisory council for each province, chaired by the governor and appointed by the president. The urban areas had a similar arrangement, under which the smaller union councils were grouped together into municipal committees to perform similar duties. In 1960 the elected members of the union councils voted to confirm Ayub Khan's presidency, and under the 1962 constitution they formed an electoral college to elect the president, the National Assembly, and the provincial assemblies.

The system of Basic Democracies did not have time to take root or to fulfill Ayub Khan's intentions before he and the system fell in 1969. Whether or not a new class of political leaders equipped with some administrative experience could have emerged to replace those trained in British constitutional law was never discovered. And the system did not provide for the mobilization of the rural population around institutions of national integration. Its emphasis was on economic development and social welfare alone. The authority of the civil service was augmented in the Basic Democracies, and the power of the landlords and the big industrialists in the West Wing went unchallenged.

The 1962 Constitution

In 1958 Ayub Khan had promised a speedy return to constitutional government. In February 1960, an eleven-member constitutional commission was established. The commission's recommendations for direct elections, strong legislative and judicial organs, free political parties, and defined limitations on presidential authority went against Ayub Khan's philosophy of government, so he ordered other committees to make revisions.

The 1962 constitution retained some aspects of the Islamic nature of the republic but omitted the word Islamic in its original version; amid protests, Ayub Khan added that word later. The president would be a Muslim, and the Advisory Council of Islamic Ideology and the Islamic Research Institute were established to assist the government in reconciling all legislation with the tenets of the Quran and the sunna. Their functions were advisory and their members appointed by the president, so the ulama had no real power base.

Ayub Khan sought to retain certain aspects of his dominant authority in the 1962 constitution, which ended the period of martial law. The document created a presidential system in which the traditional powers of the chief executive were augmented by control of the legislature, the power to issue ordinances, the right of appeal to referendum, protection from impeachment, control over the budget, and special emergency powers, which included the power to suspend civil rights. As the 1965 elections showed, the presidential system of government was opposed by those who equated constitutional government with parliamentary democracy. The 1962 constitution relaxed martial law limitations on personal freedom and made fundamental rights justiciable. The courts continued their traditional function of protecting the rights of individual citizens against encroachment by the government, but the government made it clear that the exercise of claims based on fundamental rights would not be permitted to nullify its previous progressive legislation on land reforms and family laws.

The National Assembly, consisting of 156 members (including six women) and elected by an electoral college of 80,000 Basic Democrats, was established as the federal legislature. Legislative powers were divided between the National Assembly and provincial legislative assemblies. The National Assembly was to hold sessions alternatively in Islamabad and Dhaka; the Supreme Court would also hold sessions in Dhaka. The ban on political parties was operational at the time of the first elections to the National Assembly and provincial legislative assemblies in January 1960, as was the prohibition on "EBDOed" politicians. Many of those elected were new and merged into factions formed on the basis of personal or provincial loyalties. Despite the ban, political parties functioned outside the legislative bodies as vehicles of criticism and formers of opinion. In late 1962, political parties were again legalized and factions crystallized into government and opposition groups. Ayub Khan combined fragments of the old Muslim League and created the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) as the official government party.

The presidential election of January 1965 resulted in a victory for Ayub Khan but also demonstrated the appeal of the opposition. Four political parties joined to form the Combined Opposition Parties (COP). These parties were the Council Muslim League, strongest in Punjab and Karachi; the Awami League, strongest in East Pakistan; the National Awami Party, strongest in the North-West Frontier Province, where it stood for dissolving the One Unit Plan; and the Jamaat-i-Islami, surprisingly supporting the candidacy of a woman. The COP nominated Fatima Jinnah (sister of the Quaid-i-Azam and known as Madar-i-Millet, the Mother of the Nation) their presidential candidate. The nine-point program put forward by the COP emphasized the restoration of parliamentary democracy. Ayub Khan won 63.3 percent of the electoral college vote. His majority was larger in West Pakistan (73.6 percent) than in East Pakistan (53.1 percent).

Ayub Khan's Foreign Policy and the 1965 War with India

Ayub Khan articulated his foreign policy on several occasions, particularly in his autobiography, Friends not Masters. His objectives were the security and development of Pakistan and the preservation of its ideology as he saw it. Toward these ends, he sought to improve, or normalize, relations with Pakistan's immediate and looming neighbors--India, China, and the Soviet Union. While retaining and renewing the alliance with the United States, Ayub Khan emphasized his preference for friendship, not subordination, and bargained hard for higher returns to Pakistan.

Other than ideology and Kashmir, the main source of friction between Pakistan and India was the distribution of the waters of the Indus River system. As the upper riparian power, India controlled the headworks of the prepartition irrigation canals. After independence India had, in addition, constructed several multipurpose projects on the eastern tributaries of the Indus. Pakistan feared that India might repeat a 1948 incident that curtailed the water supply as a means of coercion. A compromise that appeared to meet the needs of both countries was reached during the 1950s; it was not until 1960 that a solution finally found favor with Ayub Khan and Jawaharlal Nehru.

The Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 was backed by the World Bank and the United States. Broadly speaking, the agreement allocated use of the three western Indus rivers (the Indus itself and its tributaries, the Jhelum and the Chenab) to Pakistan, and the three eastern Indus tributaries (the Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej) to India. The basis of the plan was that irrigation canals in Pakistan that had been supplied by the eastern rivers would begin to draw water from the western Indus rivers through a system of barrages and link canals. The agreement also detailed transitional arrangements, new irrigation and hydroelectric power works, and the waterlogging and salinity problems in Pakistan's Punjab. The Indus Basin Development Fund was established and financed by the World Bank, the major contributors to the Aid-to-Pakistan Consortium, and India.

Pakistan's tentative approaches to China intensified in 1959 when China's occupation of Tibet and the flight of the Dalai Lama to India ended five years of Chinese-Indian friendship. An entente between Pakistan and China evolved in inverse ratio to Sino-Indian hostility, which climaxed in a border war in 1962. This informal alliance became a keystone of Pakistan's foreign policy and grew to include a border agreement in March 1963, highway construction connecting the two countries at the Karakoram Pass, agreements on trade, and Chinese economic assistance and grants of military equipment, which was later thought to have included exchanges in nuclear technology. China's diplomatic support and transfer of military equipment was important to Pakistan during the 1965 Indo-Pakistani War over Kashmir. China's new diplomatic influence in the UN was also exerted on Pakistan's behalf after the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. Ayub Khan's foreign minister, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, is often credited for this China policy, which gave Pakistan new flexibility in its international relationships. The entente deepened during the Zia regime (1977-88).

The Soviet Union strongly disapproved of Pakistan's alliance with the United States, but Moscow was interested in keeping doors open to both Pakistan and India. Ayub Khan was able to secure Soviet neutrality during the 1965 Indo-Pakistani War.

Ayub Khan was the architect of Pakistan's policy of close alignment with the United States, and his first major foreign policy act was to sign bilateral economic and military agreements with the United States in 1959. Nevertheless, Ayub Khan expected more from these agreements than the United States was willing to offer and thus remained critical of the role the United States played in South Asia. He was vehemently opposed to simultaneous United States support, direct or indirect, for India's military, especially when this assistance was augmented in the wake of the Sino-Indian War of 1962. Ayub Khan maintained, as did many Pakistanis, that in return for the use of Pakistani military facilities, the United States owed Pakistan security allegiance in all cases, not merely in response to communist aggression. Especially troublesome to Pakistan was United States neutrality during the 1965 Indo-Pakistani War. The United States stance at this time was a contributing factor to Pakistan's closing of United States communications and intelligence facilities near Peshawar. Pakistan did not extend the ten-year agreement signed in 1959.

The 1965 war began as a series of border flare-ups along undemarcated territory at the Rann of Kutch in the southeast in April and soon after along the cease-fire line in Kashmir. The Rann of Kutch conflict was resolved by mutual consent and British sponsorship and arbitration, but the Kashmir conflict proved more dangerous and widespread. In the early spring of 1965, UN observers and India reported increased activity by infiltrators from Pakistan into Indian-held Kashmir. Pakistan hoped to support an uprising by Kashmiris against India. No such uprising took place, and by August India had retaken Pakistani-held positions in the north while Pakistan attacked in the Chamb sector in southwestern Kashmir in September. Each country had limited objectives, and neither was economically capable of sustaining a long war because military supplies were cut to both countries by the United States and Britain.

On September 23, a cease-fire was arranged through the UN Security Council. In January 1966, Ayub Khan and India's prime minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri, signed the Tashkent Declaration, which formally ended hostilities and called for a mutual withdrawal of forces. This objectively statesmanlike act elicited an adverse reaction in West Pakistan. Students as well as politicians demonstrated in urban areas, and many were arrested. The Tashkent Declaration was the turning point in the political fortunes of the Ayub Khan administration.

In February 1966, a national conference was held in Lahore, where all the opposition parties convened to discuss their differences and their common interests. The central issue discussed was the Tashkent Declaration, which most of the assembled politicians characterized as Ayub Khan's unnecessary capitulation to India. More significant, perhaps, was the noticeable underrepresentation of politicians from the East Wing. About 700 persons attended the conference, but only twenty-one were from the East Wing. They were led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (known as Mujib) of the Awami League, who presented his controversial six-point political and economic program for East Pakistani provincial autonomy. The six points consisted of the following demands that the government be federal and parliamentary in nature, its members elected by universal adult suffrage with legislative representation on the basis of distribution of population; that the federal government have principal responsibility for foreign affairs and defense only; that each wing have its own currency and separate fiscal accounts; that taxation occur at the provincial level, with a federal government funded by constitutionally guaranteed grants; that each federal unit control its own earnings of foreign exchange; and that each unit raise its own militia or paramilitary forces.

Ayub Khan's also lost the services of Minister of Foreign Affairs Bhutto, who resigned became a vocal opposition leader, and founded the Pakistan People's Party (PPP). By 1968 it was obvious that except for the military and the civil service, Ayub Khan had lost most of his support. Ayub Khan's illness in February 1968 and the alleged corruption of members of his family further weakened his position. In West Pakistan, Bhutto's PPP called for a "revolution"; in the east, the Awami League's six points became the rallying cry of the opposition.

In October 1968, the government sponsored a celebration called the Decade of Development. Instead of reminding people of the achievements of the Ayub Khan regime, the festivities highlighted the frustrations of the urban poor afflicted by inflation and the costs of the 1965 war. For the masses, Ayub Khan had become the symbol of inequality. Bhutto capitalized on this and challenged Ayub Khan at the ballot box. In East Pakistan, dissatisfaction with the system went deeper than opposition to Ayub Khan. In January 1969, several opposition parties formed the Democratic Action Committee with the declared aim of restoring democracy through a mass movement.

Ayub Khan reacted by alternating conciliation and repression. Disorder spread. The army moved into Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, Dhaka, and Khulna to restore order. In rural areas of East Pakistan, a curfew was ineffective; local officials sensed government control ebbing and began retreating from the incipient peasant revolt. In February Ayub Khan released political prisoners, invited the Democratic Action Committee and others to meet him in Rawalpindi, promised a new constitution, and said he would not stand for reelection in 1970. Still in poor health and lacking the confidence of his generals, Ayub Khan sought a political settlement as violence continued.

On March 25, 1969, martial law was again proclaimed; General Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan, the army commander in chief, was designated chief martial law administrator (CMLA). The 1962 constitution was abrogated, Ayub Khan announced his resignation, and Yahya Khan assumed the presidency. Yahya Khan soon promised elections on the basis of adult franchise to the National Assembly, which would draw up a new constitution. He also entered into discussions with leaders of political parties.

Pakistan

Pakistan - YAHYA KHAN AND BANGLADESH

The new administration formed a committee of deputy and provincial martial law administrators that functioned above the civil machinery of government. The generals held power and were no longer the supporting arm of the civilians--elected or bureaucratic--as they had been throughout much of the country's history. In the past, every significant change of government had relied, in large part, on the allegiance of the military. However, Yahya Khan and his military advisers proved no more capable of overcoming the nation's problems than their predecessors. The attempt to establish a military hierarchy running parallel to and supplanting the authority of the civilian administration inevitably ruptured the bureaucratic-military alliance, on which efficiency and stability depended. Little effort was made to promote a national program.

These weaknesses were not immediately apparent but became so as events moved quickly toward a crisis in East Pakistan. On November 28, 1969, Yahya Khan made a nationwide broadcast announcing his proposals for a return to constitutional government. General elections for the National Assembly were set for October 5, 1970, but were postponed to December as the result of a severe cyclone that hit the coast of East Pakistan. The National Assembly was obliged within 120 days to draw up a new constitution, which would permit maximum provincial autonomy. Yahya Khan, however, made it clear that the federal government would require powers of taxation well beyond those contemplated by the six points of the Awami League. He also reserved the right to "authenticate" the constitution. On July 1, 1970, the One Unit Plan was dissolved into the four original provinces. Yahya Khan also determined that the parity of representation in the National Assembly between the East Wing and the West Wing that had existed under the 1956 and 1962 constitutions would end and that representation would be based on population. This arrangement gave East Pakistan 162 seats (plus seven reserved for women) versus 138 seats (plus six for women) for the new provinces of the West Wing.

An intense election campaign took place in 1970 as restrictions on press, speech, and assembly were removed. Bhutto campaigned in the West Wing on a strongly nationalist and leftist platform. The slogan of his party was "Islam our Faith, Democracy our Policy, Socialism our Economy." He said that the PPP would provide "roti, kapra, aur makhan" (bread, clothing, and shelter) to all. He also proclaimed a "thousand year war with India," although this pronouncement was played down later in the campaign. In the East Wing, the Awami League gained widespread support for the six-point program. Its cause was further strengthened because West Pakistani politicians were perceived as callously indifferent to the Bengali victims of the October cyclone and slow to come to their aid.

The first general election conducted in Pakistan on the basis of one person, one vote, was held on December 7, 1970; elections to provincial legislative assemblies followed three days later. The voting was heavy. Yahya Khan kept his promise of free and fair elections. The Awami League won a colossal victory in East Pakistan, for it was directly elected to 160 of the 162 seats in the east and thus gained a majority of the 300 directly elected seats in the National Assembly (plus the thirteen indirectly elected seats for women, bringing the total to 313 members) without winning a seat in the West Wing. The PPP won a large majority in the West Wing, especially in Punjab and Sindh, but no seats in the East Wing. In the North- West Frontier Province and Balochistan, the National Awami Party won a plurality of the seats. The Muslim League and the Islamic parties did poorly in the west and were not represented in the east.

Any constitutional agreement clearly depended on the consent of three persons: Mujib of the East Wing, Bhutto of the West Wing, and Yahya Khan, as the ultimate authenticator representing the military government. In his role as intermediary and head of state, Yahya Khan tried to persuade Bhutto and Mujib to come to some kind of accommodation. This effort proved unsuccessful as Mujib insisted on his right as leader of the majority to form a government--a stand at variance with Bhutto, who claimed there were "two majorities" in Pakistan. Bhutto declared that the PPP would not attend the inaugural session of the assembly, thereby making the establishment of civilian government impossible. On March 1, 1971, Yahya Khan, who earlier had referred to Mujib as the "future prime minister of Pakistan," dissolved his civilian cabinet and declared an indefinite postponement of the National Assembly. In East Pakistan, the reaction was immediate. Strikes, demonstrations, and civil disobedience increased in tempo until there was open revolt. Prodded by Mujib, Bengalis declared they would pay no taxes and would ignore martial law regulations on press and radio censorship. The writ of the central government all but ceased to exist in East Pakistan.

Mujib, Bhutto, and Yahya Khan held negotiations in Dhaka in late March in a last-ditch attempt to defuse the growing crisis; simultaneously, General Tikka Khan, who commanded the Pakistani forces in East Pakistan, prepared a contingency plan for a military takeover and called for troop reinforcements to be flown in via Sri Lanka. In an atmosphere of distrust and suspicion, the talks broke down, and on March 25 Yahya Khan and Bhutto flew back to West Pakistan.

Tikka Khan's emergency plan went into operation. Roadblocks and barriers appeared all over Dhaka. Mujib was taken into custody and flown to the West Wing to stand trial for treason. Universities were attacked, and the first of many deaths occurred. The tempo of violence of the military crackdown during these first days soon accelerated into a full-blown and brutal civil war.

On March 26, Yahya Khan outlawed the Awami League, banned political activity, and reimposed press censorship in both wings. Because of these strictures, people in the West Wing remained uninformed about the crackdown in the east and tended to discount reports appearing in the international press as an Indian conspiracy.

Major Ziaur Rahman, a political unknown at the time, proclaimed the independence of Bangladesh from Chittagong, a city in the southeast of the new country. He would become president of Bangladesh in April 1977. A Bangladeshi government in exile was formed in Calcutta.

Ziaur Rahman and others organized Bengali troops to form the Mukti Bahini (Liberation Force) to resist the Pakistan Army. The East Pakistan Rifles, a paramilitary force, mutinied and joined the revolutionary forces. Nevertheless, the Pakistan Army pressed its heavy offensive and in early April controlled most of East Pakistan. More than 250,000 refugees crossed into India in the first few days of the war. The influx continued over the next six months and reached a total of about 10 million. No accurate estimate can be made of the numbers of people killed or wounded or the numbers women of raped, but the assessment of international human rights organizations is that the Pakistani crackdown was particularly alarming in its ferocity.

Relations between Pakistan and India, already tense, deteriorated sharply as a result of the crisis. On March 31, the Indian parliament passed a resolution in support of the "people of Bengal." The Mukti Bahini, formed around regular and paramilitary forces, received equipment, training, and other assistance from India. Superpower rivalries further complicated the situation, impinged on Pakistan's war, and possibly impeded its political resolution.

In the fall, military and guerrilla operations increased, and Pakistan and India reported escalation of border shelling. On the western border of East Pakistan, military preparations were also in evidence. On November 21, the Mukti Bahini launched an offensive on Jessore, southwest of Dhaka. Yahya Khan declared a state of emergency in all of Pakistan on November 23 and asked his people to prepare for war. In response to Indian military movements along and across the Indian-East Pakistani border, the Pakistan Air Force attacked military targets in northern India on December 3, and on December 4 India began an integrated ground, naval, and air invasion of East Pakistan. The Indian army launched a five-pronged attack and began converging on Dhaka. Indian forces closed in around Dhaka and received the surrender of Pakistani forces on December 16. Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi proclaimed a unilateral cease-fire on December 17.

Violent demonstrations against the military government soon broke out at the news of Pakistan's defeat. Yahya Khan resigned on December 20. Bhutto assumed power as president and chief martial law administrator of a disgraced military, a shattered government, and a bewildered and demoralized population. Formal relations between Pakistan and Bangladesh were not established until 1976.

Pakistan

Pakistan - ZULFIQAR ALI BHUTTO

On assuming power on December 20, 1971, Bhutto promised to make a new Pakistan out of the West Wing and to restore national confidence. He conveniently laid the entire blame for the 1971 war and Pakistan's defeat on Yahya Khan and his junta. Asserting the principle of civilian leadership, Bhutto introduced a new constitution with a modified parliamentary and federal system. He attempted to control and reform the civil service and took steps to revitalize a stagnant economy and ameliorate conditions for the poor under the banner of Islamic socialism. Bhutto's most visible success, however, was in the international arena, where he employed his diplomatic skills. He negotiated a satisfactory peace settlement with India in 1972, built new links between Pakistan and the oil-exporting Islamic countries to the west, and generally was effective in repairing Pakistan's image in the aftermath of the war.

Bhutto's program appeared to be laudable but fell short in performance. His near-monopoly of decision-making power prevented democratic institutions from taking root, and his overreaching ambitions managed in time to antagonize all but his closest friends.

The PPP manifesto was couched in socialist terms. When Bhutto issued the Economic Reform Order on January 3, 1972, banking and insurance institutions were nationalized, and seventy other industrial enterprises were taken over by the government. The Ministry of Production, which incorporated the Board of Industrial Management, was established to oversee industry. Investment in the public sector increased substantially, and Bhutto maneuvered to break the power of the approximately twenty elite families who had dominated the nation's economy during the Ayub Khan period. Trade unions were strengthened, and welfare measures for labor were announced. Although Bhutto's initial zeal diminished as he came face-to-face with economic realities and the shortage of capital, he tried to refurbish his populist image with another spate of nationalizations in 1976.

Bhutto purged the military ranks of about 1,400 officers. He also created a paramilitary force called the Federal Security Force (which functioned almost as his personal bodyguard), a watchdog on the armed forces, and an internal security force. A white paper on defense issued in 1976 firmly subordinated the armed forces to civilian control and gave Bhutto, then also prime minister, the decisive voice in all matters relating to national security. In that role, Bhutto took credit for bringing home more than 90,000 prisoners of war without allowing any of them to come to trial in Bangladesh for war crimes. In 1976 Bhutto replaced Tikka Khan, whose term had expired, with General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq as chief of staff of the army. Like Ayub Khan, Zia was appointed over several more senior generals. Also like Ayub Khan, Zia came from a community not heavily represented in the armed forces (the Arains from Punjab) and was thought to be without political ambition.

In April 1972, Bhutto lifted martial law and convened the National Assembly, which consisted of members elected from the West Wing in December 1970 (plus two from the East Wing who decided their loyalties were with a united Pakistan). The standing controversies about the role of Islam, provincial autonomy, and the form of government--presidential or parliamentary--remained on the agenda. There was much jostling for position among the three major political groups: the PPP, most powerful in Punjab and Sindh; the National Awami Party (NAP) and the Jamiat-ul-Ulama-i-Islam (JUI), both based in the North- West Frontier Province and Balochistan. The provincial assemblies were constituted from those elected in December 1970. There was much tension during the process of drafting a new constitution, especially from members from the North-West Frontier Province and Balochistan. Bhutto reached some accommodation with opposition leaders from those two provinces on the matter of gubernatorial appointment and constitutional principle.

Pakistan's third constitution was formally submitted on December 31, 1972, approved on April 10, 1973, and promulgated on independence day, August 14, 1973. Although Bhutto campaigned in 1970 for the restoration of a parliamentary system, by 1972 he preferred a presidential system with himself as president. However, in deference to the wishes of the opposition and some in his own cabinet, Bhutto accepted a formal parliamentary system in which the executive was responsible to the legislature. Supposedly, in the interests of government stability, provisions were also included that made it almost impossible for the National Assembly to remove the prime minister. The 1973 constitution provided for a federal structure in which residuary powers were reserved for the provinces. However, Bhutto dismissed the coalition NAP-JUI ministries in Balochistan and the North- West Frontier Province, revealing his preference for a powerful center without opposition in the provinces.

Bhutto's power derived less from the 1973 constitution than from his charismatic appeal to the people and from the vigor of the PPP. Its socialist program and Bhutto's oratory had done much to radicalize the urban sectors in the late 1960s and were responsible for the popular optimism accompanying the restoration of democracy. The ideological appeal of the PPP to the masses sat uneasily with the compromises Bhutto reached with the holders of economic and political influence--the landlords and commercial elites. Factionalism and patrimonialism became rife in the PPP, especially in Punjab. The internal cohesion of the PPP and its standing in public esteem were affected adversely by the ubiquitous political and bureaucratic corruption that accompanied state intervention in the economy and, equally, by the rising incidence of political violence, which included beating, arresting, and even murdering opponents. The PPP had started as a movement mobilizing people to overthrow a military regime, but in Bhutto's lifetime it failed to change into a political party organized for peaceful functioning in an open polity.

Bhutto's predilection for a strong center and for provincial governments in the hands of the PPP inevitably aroused opposition in provinces where regional and ethnic identity was strong. Feelings of Sindhi solidarity were maintained by Bhutto's personal connections with the feudal leaders (wadera) of Sindh and his ability to manipulate offices and officeholders. He did not enjoy the same leverage in the North-West Frontier Province or Balochistan.

A long-dormant crisis erupted in Balochistan in 1973 into an insurgency that lasted four years and became increasingly bitter. The insurgency was put down by the Pakistan Army, which employed brutal methods and equipment, including Huey-Cobra helicopter gunships, provided by Iran and flown by Iranian pilots. The deep-seated Baloch nationalism based on tribal identity had international as well as domestic aspects. Divided in the nineteenth century among Iran, Afghanistan, and British India, the Baloch found their aspirations and traditional nomadic life frustrated by the presence of national boundaries and the extension of central administration over their lands. Moreover, many of the most militant Baloch nationalists were also vaguely Marxist-Leninist and willing to risk Soviet protection for an autonomous Balochistan. As the insurgency wore on, the influence of a relatively small but disciplined liberation front seemed to increase.

Bhutto was able to mobilize domestic support for his drive against the Baloch. Punjab's support was most tangibly represented in the use of the army to put down the insurgency. One of the main Baloch grievances was the influx of Punjabi settlers, miners, and traders into their resource-rich but sparsely populated lands. Bhutto could also invoke the idea of national integration with effect in the aftermath of Bengali secession. External assistance to Bhutto was generously given by the shah of Iran, who feared a spread of the insurrection among the Iranian Baloch. Some foreign governments feared that an independent or autonomous Balochistan might allow the Soviet Union to develop and use the port at Gwadar, and no outside power was willing to assist the Baloch openly or to sponsor the cause of Baloch autonomy. During the mid-1970s, Afghanistan was preoccupied with its own internal problems and seemingly anxious to normalize relations with Pakistan. India was fearful of further balkanization of the subcontinent after Bangladesh, and the Soviet Union did not wish to jeopardize the leverage it was gaining with Pakistan. However, during the Bhutto regime hostilities in Balochistan were protracted. The succeeding Zia ul-Haq government took a more moderate approach, relying more on economic development to placate the Baloch.

Bhutto proceeded cautiously in the field of land reform and did not fulfill earlier promises of distributing land to the landless on the scale he had promised, as he was forced to recognize and to cultivate the sociopolitical influence of landowners. However, he did not impede the process of consolidation of tenancy rights and acquisition of mid-sized holdings by servicemen. Punjab was the vital agricultural region of Pakistan; it remained a bastion of support for the government.

Bhutto specifically targeted the powerful and privileged Civil Service of Pakistan (CSP) and introduced measures of administrative reform with the declared purpose of limiting the paternalistic power of the bureaucracy. The CSP, however, had played the role of guardian alongside the army since independence. Many of its members reacted badly to Bhutto's politicizing appointments, for which patronage seemed a more important criterion than merit or seniority.

Relations with India were, at best, uneven during the Bhutto period. He accomplished the return of the prisoners of war through the Simla Agreement of 1972, but no settlement of the key problem of Kashmir was possible beyond an agreement that any settlement should be peaceful. Bhutto reacted strongly to the detonation of a nuclear device by India in 1974 and pledged that Pakistan would match that development even if Pakistanis had to "eat grass" to cover the cost.

Bhutto claimed success for his economic policies. The gross national product (GNP) and the rate of economic growth climbed. Inflation fell from 25 percent in fiscal year (FY) 1972 to 6 percent in FY 1976, although other economic measures he introduced did not perform as well.

Bhutto pointed out that his foreign policy had brought Pakistan prestige in the Islamic world, peace if not friendship with India, and self-respect in dealings with the great powers. He felt assured of victory in any election. Therefore, with commitment to a constitutional order at stake, in January 1977 he announced he would hold national and provincial assembly elections in March.

The response of the opposition to this news was vigorous. Nine political parties ranging across the ideological spectrum formed a united front--the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA). Fundamentalist Muslims were satisfied by the adoption of Nizam-i-Mustafa, meaning "Rule of the Prophet," as the front's slogan. Modern secular elements, however, respected the association of Air Marshal Asghar Khan. The PNA ran candidates for almost all national and provincial seats. As curbs on the press and political activity were relaxed for the election campaign, an apparently strong wave of support for the PNA swept Pakistan's cities. This prompted a whirlwind tour of the country by Bhutto, with all his winning charm in the forefront. In the background lurked indirect curbs on free expression as well as political gangsterism.

National Assembly election results were announced on March 7, proclaiming the PPP the winner with 155 seats versus thirty-six seats for the PNA. Expecting trouble, Bhutto invoked Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which restricted assembly for political reasons. The PNA immediately challenged the election results as rigged and demanded a new election--not a recount. Bhutto refused, and a mass protest movement was launched against him. Religious symbols were used by both sides to mobilize agitation; for example, Bhutto imposed prohibitions on the consumption of alcoholic beverages and on gambling. Despite talks between Bhutto and opposition leaders, the disorders persisted as a multitude of frustrations were vented. The army intervened on July 5, took all political leaders including Bhutto into custody, and proclaimed martial law.

Pakistan

Pakistan - ZIA UL-HAQ

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. The attacks on the Bhutto administration increased as time passed and culminated in the trial and the hanging in April 1979 of Bhutto for complicity in the murder of a political opponent.

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 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.

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. Before elections took place, Zia was killed in a mysterious aircraft accident near Bahawalpur, in Punjab, on August 17, 1988, along with the chairman of the joint chiefs committee, the United States ambassador, and twenty-seven others. 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."

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. The election gave a plurality, not a majority, to the PPP. Its leader, Benazir Bhutto, was able to gain the assistance of other groups, and she was sworn in as prime minister on December 1, 1988, by acting President Ghulam Ishaq Khan. He in turn was elected to a five-year term as president by the National Assembly and the Senate.

Pakistan

Pakistan - THE ZIA REGIME

When Zia assumed power in mid-1977, Pakistan was out of the limelight and indeed was considered by some observers to be a political backwater. By the time of Zia's death in 1988, it had, because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, become an important actor occupying a central position in the world arena.

Although Zulifqar Ali Bhutto had tried to redirect Pakistan's regional orientation toward West Asia and Zia continued this trend, the nation's geostrategic interests dictated a concentration on South Asia. Pakistan's foreign policy was very much centered on India. Less than two years after Zia's assumption of power, Congress, led by Indira Gandhi, was voted out of office and replaced by the Janata Party, whose foreign minister was Atal Behari Vajpayee of the Jana Sangh, long seen as anti-Pakistan. Nonetheless, relations between Pakistan and India may have reached their most cordial level during the almost three years Janata was in power. Vajpayee visited Pakistan in February 1978. There were exchanges on many issues, and agreements were signed on trade, cultural exchanges, and communications--but not on such key issues as Kashmir and nuclear development.

The nuclear issue was of critical importance to both Pakistan and India. In 1974 India successfully tested a nuclear "device." Bhutto reacted strongly to this test and said Pakistan must develop its own "Islamic bomb." Zia thus inherited a pledge that for domestic reasons he could not discard, and he continued the development program. He asked India to agree to several steps to end this potential nuclear arms race on the subcontinent. One of these measures was the simultaneous signing of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The second step was a joint agreement for inspection of all nuclear sites by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Pakistan also proposed a pact between the two countries to allow for mutual inspection of sites. And, finally, Pakistan proposed a South Asian nuclear-free zone. It appeared that Zia was looking for a way to terminate the costly Pakistani program. But in order to sell this idea in Pakistan, he required some concessions from India. Termination would also get him out of difficulties the program was causing with the United States, including the curtailment of aid in 1979. These proposals were still on the table in the early 1990s, and were supplemented by then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's call for a roundtable discussion among Pakistan, India, the United States, Russia, and China on nuclear weapons in South Asia.

Not all relations within South Asia were negative. President Ziaur Rahman of Bangladesh proposed an organization for South Asian cooperation. Pakistan was at first reluctant, fearing Indian domination, but eventually agreed to join the group, along with Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) was formally inaugurated at a summit meeting in Dhaka in 1985. There have been some positive steps toward cooperation, and regular rotating summits are held, although often with some delays.

Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of India (1984-89) came to Islamabad in 1988 to attend a SAARC summit, the first visit of an Indian prime minister since 1960, when Nehru visited to sign the Indus Waters Treaty. Zia stopped briefly in New Delhi in December 1985 and in February 1987 visited again, having invited himself to see a cricket match between the two countries. Zia's estimation was that he and Rajiv could meet quite cordially but could not agree on substantive issues.

Active and potential conflict continued to be a constant factor in Pakistan's relations with India. The dispute over the precise demarcation of the Line of Control in Kashmir at the Siachen Glacier heated up periodically and over time caused substantial casualties on both sides because of numerous small skirmishes and the extreme cold in the remote area. Also, in the 1986-87 winter the Indian army conducted Operation Brass Tacks, maneuvers close to the Pakistan border, and Pakistan mobilized its forces. However, the dangerous situation was defused, and no hostilities took place. India accused Pakistan of aiding Sikh insurgents in India's state of Punjab. Pakistan denied this accusation, but some people thought that Operation Brass Tacks might have been a means to strike at alleged bases in Pakistan's Punjab Province. Zia skillfully handled the diplomacy during the period of tension.

Zia continued the process, begun by Bhutto, of opening Pakistan to the West and drew on Pakistan's Islamic, trade, and military ties to the Middle East. Military ties included stationing Pakistani troops in Saudi Arabia and training missions in several other countries. Remittances from Pakistanis employed as migrant workers in the Middle East, especially in the Persian Gulf area, increased during the Zia years and became an important factor in Pakistan's foreign-exchange holdings.

Zia played a prominent role in the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). A Pakistani was secretary general of the OIC, and Zia served on committees concerning the status of Jerusalem and the settlement of the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88), neither of which were successful. At the 1984 summit at Casablanca, he played a key role in the readmission of Egypt to the OIC and, in doing so, reminded his fellow heads of government that the organization was one for the entire Muslim community and not only for Arab states.

The United States under the administration of Jimmy Carter did not welcome the displacement of Bhutto by Zia; representative government, human rights, and nuclear nonproliferation were also of concern to Carter. The execution of Bhutto only added to the United States displeasure with Zia and Pakistan. In March 1979, Pakistan--and Iran--terminated their membership in CENTO.

A number of United States laws, amendments to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, applied to Pakistan and its program of nuclear weapons development. The 1976 Symington Amendment stipulated that economic assistance be terminated to any country that imported uranium enrichment technology. The Glenn Amendment of 1977 similarly called for an end to aid to countries that imported reprocessing technology--Pakistan had from France. United States economic assistance, except for food aid, was terminated under the Symington Amendment in April 1979. In 1985 the Solarz Amendment was added to prohibit aid to countries that attempt to import nuclear commodities from the United States. In the same year, the Pressler Amendment was passed; referring specifically to Pakistan, it said that if that nation possessed a nuclear device, aid would be suspended. Many of these amendments could be waived if the president declared that it was in the national interests of the United States to continue assistance.

The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, causing a sudden reversal of United States policy. Carter, who had described Pakistan as a "frontline state" in the Cold War, offered US$400 million in military and economic aid to Pakistan-- an amount that Zia spurned and contemptuously termed "peanuts." When the Ronald Reagan administration took office in January 1981, the level of assistance increased substantially. Presidential waivers for several of the amendments were required. The initial package from the United States was for US$3.2 billion over six years, equally divided between economic and military assistance. A separate arrangement was made for the purchase of forty F-16 fighter aircraft. In 1986 a follow-on program of assistance over a further period of six years was announced at a total of more than US$4 billion, of which 57 percent was economic aid and the rest military aid.

The Soviet Union, meanwhile, under its new leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, was reassessing its role in Afghanistan. Indirect "proximity" negotiations in Geneva under the auspices of the UN were going on between Afghanistan and Pakistan with the United States and the Soviet Union as observers. In April 1988, a series of agreements were signed among the United States, the Soviet Union, Pakistan, and Afghanistan that called for the withdrawal of Soviet forces by mid-February 1989. The withdrawal was completed on time.

Throughout the years of Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, relations between the United States and Pakistan were best characterized by close cooperation. Still, United States policy makers became increasingly concerned that Zia and his associates- -most notably, General Akhtar Abdur Rahman, then head of the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence--appeared to give preferential treatment to the Islamic fundamentalists, especially mujahidin leader Gulbaddin Hikmatyar. Other disagreements persisted, particularly over the failure of the Zia regime to convert to representative government. Documented Pakistani violations of human rights were another major issue; Pakistani involvement in narcotics trafficking was yet another. But the issue that after Zia's death led to another cutoff of aid was Pakistan's persistent drive toward nuclear development.

The event of the Zia period brought Pakistan to a leading position in world affairs. However, Pakistan's new visibility was closely connected to the supportive role it played for the anti- Soviet mujahidin in Afghanistan--and this deceased when the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan. In the 1990s, Pakistan faced some major domestic problems--mounting ethnic and sectarian strife as well as widespread civil disorder. Pakistan will need to address these problems as it strives to improve its international standing as a maturing democratic nation and one aspiring to be the industrial and technological leader of the Muslim world.

Pakistan