A History of Pakistan

D ITS ORIGINS
: EDITED BY
CHRISTOPHE JAFFRELOT
A HISTORY OF PAKISTAN
AND ITS ORIGINS
Born in turmoil barely half a century

ago, Pakistan seems to be in an
interminable pursuit of its own
identity and at the same time finds
itself a pivotal player in world
politics. Its short existence has
witnessed much: four coups d'etat,
the rise of Islam as a power;
tensions between ethnic, religious
and separatist movements; the
Kashmir conflict and the near-
constant war footing with India.
Written by an internationally-
renowed team of scholars, and
including an up-to-date and in-
depth analysis of Pakistan's critical
relations with Afghanistan in the
wake of the events of 9/11, A
History of Pakistan and.Its Origins
is a comprehensive and detailed
study of one of the most diverse,
volatile and strategically significant
countries in the world today.
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A HISTORY OF
PAKISTAN
AND ITS ORIGINS
Edited by
Christophe Jaffrelot
Translated by
Gillian Beaumont
Anthem Press
Anthem Press is an imprint of
Wimbledon Publishing Company
PO Box 9779
London
SW19 7QA
This edition first published by

Wimbledon Publishing Company 2002
© LIBRAIRIE ARTHEME FAYARD 2000

First published by LIBRAIRIE ARTHEME
FAYARD, Paris, 2000
as Le Pakistan
English translation
© Wimbledon Publishing Company 2002
Afterword © Christophe Jaffrelot 2002
All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored ina retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form
or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of
Wimbledon Publishing Company, or as expressly permitted
by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate
reprographics rights organization.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Data available
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

A catalog record has been applied for
ISBN 1 84331 030 9 (hbk)
L307 SO Rb a.r2
CONTENTS
List of Maps vil

Contributors to This Volume
Introduction
PART I
A Country in Search of an Identity
1 Islamic Identity and Ethnic Tensions

2 East Bengal: Between Islam and a Regional Identity oo
3 A Fruitless Search for Democracy 61
PART II
Pakistan’s Foreign Policy 95
4 Pakistan and the Power Game 97
5 Living with India: Relations between Pakistan and India ri2
6 Islam and Foreign Policy: Central Asia and the

Arab—Persian World 134
PART III
The Economy and Social Structures 149
7 The Country and Its People 131
8 Economic Development 163
9 Between Caste and Tribe 189

vi CONTENTS
PART IV
A Plural Culture? 219
10 The Many Faces of Islam 224
11 Islam and Politics Zan
12 Languages and Education 250
Conclusion: A Country in Crisis 256
Epilogue: Musharraf and the Islamists: from

support to opposition after September 11 259
Glossary 281
Chronology 285
Notes 295
Index 316
LIST OF MAPS
The Partition of India

Pakistan before 1955 22
Kashmir 119
Pakistan 152
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CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS
VOLUME
France Bhattacharya, Professor at INALCO: Chapter 2.

Gilbert Etienne, Honorary Professor at the Institut universitaire des hautes études
internationales, Geneva: Chapters 7 and 8.
Marc Gaborieau, Director of Studies at EHESS and Director of CEIAS:
Chapter 11.
Christophe Jaffrelot, Research fellow at the CNRS and Director of CERI:
Introduction; Chapters 1 and 3; Conclusion and Epilogue.
Pierre Lafrance, formerly French Ambassador to Pakistan: Chapter 9.
Aminah Mohammad, Research fellow at the CNRS-CEIAS: Chapter 10.
Jean-Luc Racine, Director of Research at the CNRS-CEIAS: Chapters 4 and 5.
Tariq Rahman, Professor at Qaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad: Chapter 12.
Olivier Roy, Director of Research at the CNRS: Chapter 6.
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INTRODUCTION
The Partition of British India and the decolonization of southern Asia resulted in
the birth of two separate states: Pakistan was born on 14 August 1947. The ‘land of
the pure’ is, then, the outcome ofa long historical sequence. Since the beginning of
the twentieth century, the Muslims of the Raj — as the subcontinent came to be
known during the colonial period — had been preparing themselves to defend their
interests against those of the Hindu majority, with the eventual aim of claiming an
independent territory. The outcome was in doubt until the very last moment. The
standard-bearer of the anticolonial struggle, the Indian National Congress, was
always opposed to what it termed ‘Muslim communalism’, since it wanted to estab-
lish a ‘plural’ nation where all religions could coexist. In May 1944, Gandhi did his
best to convince Muhammad Ali Jinnah, leader of the Muslim separatists, that
there would be room for a Muslim community in an independent India, where it
would enjoy considerable autonomy. Jinnah could not be persuaded. He was all the
more resolute since his party, the Muslim League, had won nine-tenths of the seats
reserved for Muslims at the expense of the Congress Party at the September 1945
elections. The Congress Party accused him ofa criminal obstinacy, that had received
the blessing of the British.
Members of the Congress Party even accused the British of fomenting discord
between Hindus and Muslims as part of a ‘divide and rule’ strategy, before with-
drawing precipitately under the auspices of a new modus operandi: ‘divide and
quit’.! It was indeed England, exhausted after six years of war, which started the
decolonization process in 1946. However, the Cabinet mission sent out by the Attlee
government in May 1946 proposed a plan specifically intended to defuse the Muslim
League’s demands. Independent India was to be a federal union in which overall
central government control would be limited to foreign affairs, defence and com-
munications. The provinces, which would assume responsibility for other matters,
would be free to form regional groupings. The Punjab and Bengal, the provinces
with a Muslim majority, would therefore be able to set themselves up as autonomous
states within a truly loose federation. Both the Muslim League and the Congress
in
Party accepted this plan, and their elected representatives prepared to sit together
a Constituent Assembly designated by the provincial assemblies in 1945-6. So the
spectre of Partition receded; but on 10 July 1946 Jawaharlal Nehru, the Congress
leader, stated that his party did not consider itself bound by any previous
INTRODUCTION
commitments, and that the Constituent Assembly — in which Congress had a major-
ity — would be sovereign in all matters. The Muslim League decided to withdraw
from the constitutional process, and to mobilize its troops for a “day of direct action’
on 16 August. The demonstration degenerated into riots in Calcutta in which thou-
sands — mainly Hindus — died. The violence intensified across the whole country, and
from that moment Partition seemed inevitable. The viceroy, Lord Wavell, asked
Congress to form a government under Nehru’s leadership. Nehru took up his post
of Prime Minister in September, and invited the League to work with him, but they
agreed to do so only in order to cause systematic obstruction. On 20 February 1947
Attlee declared that the British would leave India by June 1948 at the latest, and
appointed Admiral Lord Mountbatten as viceroy with the responsibility of ensuring
the smooth running of this accelerated departure.
As intercommunal riots continued to proliferate, Lord Mountbatten became con-
vinced of the need to separate the Hindus from the Muslims. Considering any
last-minute effort at reconciliation useless, he announced his plan, to be brought into
effect on 3 June: a division of both Bengal and the Punjab, where only areas with a
Muslim majority would become part of Pakistan — the Muslim League, however, had
expected them to be transferred completely. A few weeks later, and in advance of the
due date, the British handed over power to an independent India and an indepen-
dent Pakistan.”
Might Partition have been avoided if the British had acted differently, and Jinnah
had not been head of the Muslim League — or if the parties to the negotiations had
known that he had contracted tuberculosis, and had only a few months to live? The
last years of British rule in India might give the impression that Pakistan was the
product of circumstances, but Jinnah’s obstinacy was part of the Muslim League’s
long-drawn-out strategy and intercommunal violence reflected the depth of the
chasm between Hindus and Muslims.
An Artificial Construction?
The idea that Partition could have been avoided has led some observers to think of
Pakistan as an artificial construction. It is true that in 1947, the imbalance between
the two countries formed by the Raj was striking. Pakistan represented a mere 23 per
cent of the area, and 18 per cent of the population, of British India. Essentially
rural, it inherited no more than 10 per cent of the industrial potential. Above all, it
was a country of refugees; thousands of Muslims fleeing the intercommunal violence
migrated towards Pakistan. According to the 1957 census, one in every ten Pakistanis
was a mohajir (migrant); this proportion was even higher in West Pakistan than it
was in East Pakistan, where there were 700,000 refugees. During the summer and
autumn of 1947, 4.6 million people fled the eastern Punjab alone. In total, 6 million
Muslims crossed the new frontier. This huge exodus was marked by violence which
claimed 200,000 victims. Some writers, therefore, thought of Pakistan as a slice of
India which had drifted away,’ led by men who felt that they were embarking on a
dangerous adventure — an adventure they would live to regret. Some even
maintained that the new state would by its very nature prove unviable: not only were
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4 INTRODUCTION
the Princely States of Pakistan integrated more slowly than those in India,* but the
west of the country was separated from the east by two thousand kilometres of
Indian territory — at a time when India became, in effect, Pakistan’s Enemy Number
One. From this it was easy to conclude that Pakistan was destined to fail — and
numerous observers accepted this conclusion readily.
The scepticism which greeted the birth of Pakistan also derived from the widely
voiced observation that an ‘ideological’ state was relying on one fragile basis: the
Muslim religion.° Islam proved an inadequate cement when East Bengal became the
theatre of a separatist movement which resulted in 1971 in the emergence of
Bangladesh. Yet the feeling that Pakistan is a mere artificial construction has outlived
this second partition, as though this nation has found it impossible to assume an
identity of its own. Pakistanis themselves sometimes have difficulty in finding a
sense of their history and heritage — even in defining their borders. Some recall the
origins of their land before the Christian era: the civilization that flourished in the
Indus Valley, or the invasions of Cyrus.® Others assert that claiming a separate state
for Muslims in southern Asia harks back to the early Muslim expansions — a purely
anachronistic concept.’ This confusion is explained in part by the numerous exter-
nal influences and changes of rule that the region has experienced throughout
history.
Pakistan is situated at the confluence of three areas: South Asia, the Arab—Persian
world, and Central Asia. The Mughal Empire, followed by the British Empire, have
tied it into the Indian subcontinent. Its South Asian identity is revealed by the use of
Urdu (a language with a vocabulary and alphabet of Persian origin, whose syntax is
shaped by Hindi) and regional languages, such as Punjabi and Bengali, since the two
principal provinces of the Pakistan which first saw the light of day in 1947 are the
result of the partition of regions half of which remain Indian. ‘This South Asian base
has been institutionalized by Pakistan’s adherence to the South Asia Association for
Regional Cooperation (SAARC) since the establishment of that association in 1985.
‘The country’s affinities with the Persian world, and beyond that with the Middle
East, are no less strong. ‘They derive first from the physical and human geography of
the area, for the plateaus of Baluchistan stretch along both sides of the Iranian
border, and the tribes inhabiting them belong to the same culture. Besides, Pakistan
looks west naturally, because of its Muslim identity. Homeland of the Muslims of the
Indian subcontinent, Pakistan quickly established close relations with other nations
that shared the Muslim faith, and organized the second international Islamic con-
ference in 1973. This enterprise also led to a military cooperation which allowed
Pakistan to show off one of its particular strengths: its army.
Yet Pakistan also has ties with Central Asia. The Pashtuns of the North-West
Frontier Province are ethnically the same as the Pashtuns of Afghanistan; this rela-
tionship led to strong irredentist sympathies during the colonial period. Since the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Islamabad has been closely involved politi-
cally with Kabul — some elements of the Pakistani military have even justified their
support for the Taliban as a necessary reinforcement of ‘strategic depth’. Beyond
Afghanistan, those in power in Pakistan have sought to build a rapprochement with
the nations of Central Asia born of the collapse of the USSR, and — along with the
INTRODUCTION 5
two other founder members, Iran and Turkey — welcomed them in 1992 into the
heart of the Organization for Economic Cooperation.
The history of this ‘crossroads’ state has been as divided as its land. It goes back
to the Indus Valley civilization (2500-1500 sc), symbolized by the ruins of Mohenjo-
Daro. Yet this ancient site has been taken over by other prestigious civilizations. ‘The
region was invaded in turn by the Achaemenids between the sixth and fourth cen-
turies Bc, and the armies of Alexander the Great (330-324 sc), before the
establishment there of short-lived Buddhist kingdoms. One Graeco-Buddhist civi-
lization — that of Gandhara, between the second century sc and the first century
AD — was spread on horseback over the entire area of present-day Pakistan and
Afghanistan. If we think in terms of centuries, the most significant event was the
arrival of Islam in Sind. Its significance grew with the Mongol invasion in the
eleventh century, which gave birth to a new civilization that reached its zenith under
the Mughal Empire, of which Lahore was the capital at that time. The Great
Mughals extended their conquests as far as Bengal, and established the basis of a
common destiny, sealed in due course by British colonization.
The temporal and spatial silhouette of Pakistan contrasted sharply with that of
India, whose historical continuity was underpinned by its Hindu origins, and pro-
duced a world of its own — if only because of its sheer size. These differences should
not, however, be exaggerated. Pakistani space may well be fragmented, but every-
where it is dominated byasingle river, the Indus, which is in effect the country’s
jugular vein. The Indus basin is a truly prosperous region, and a channel of com-
munication which has played a crucial role in the integration of this nation
throughout the centuries.® Despite the many disruptions Pakistan has suffered com-
pared with India, its cultural history has remained unique to itself: Pakistan identifies
strongly with its roots in the Indus Valley civilization, and indeed with its roots in
Gandhara, source of magnificent art.?
With about 140 million inhabitants, Pakistan has the sixth-largest population in
the world. Moreover, since 1998 it has been an established nuclear power, and its
continually abrasive relations with India could degenerate into a nuclear war. Since
1999 it has been the only state with such capability under a military government.!°
Under these circumstances, the generally nonchalant attitude to this country is all
the more astonishing. The pages that follow attempt to compensate for this by pre-
senting Pakistan from four complementary points of view. Part I of the book is
devoted to the problem of national identity — particularly with reference to the ten-
sion between Islam on the one hand and specific ethnic groups on the other, but also
to the stability of Pakistan’s institutions, which are grievously dysfunctional in a
country where military regimes have alternated with phases of democratic rule with
worrying regularity. Part II is concerned with the country’s external relations,
which — here more than anywhere else — are indissoluble from internal politics.
Successive governments — military ones included — have often consolidated their
position by gathering support from external sources, in particular from the United
States, which has seen Pakistan as a key element in its containment strategy for the
Soviet Union; this was clear during the USSR invasion of Afghanistan. Part IH,
which covers the economy and the structure of society, bears witness to the opening
6 INTRODUCTION
of the country to external influences, since the physical and human geography of
Pakistan form the hinge of two worlds: the western half is at one with the Iranian
and Afghan world, as much in terms of physical structure as of the tribal organiza-
tion of the population; while the eastern half is deeply affected by the monsoons of
Asia, and shares with India the logic of the caste system. Part IV is devoted to cul-
tural aspects which illustrate, from a different viewpoint, the tension between unity
and diversity to which Pakistan has been subject since its inception. Although the
country was created specifically for the Muslims of South Asia, Islam in Pakistan pre-
sents a very varied picture, and nourishes conflicts which could be considered
sectarian. The policy of extending Islamization introduced by different govern-
ments has served only to exacerbate old antagonisms. Efforts to promote Urdu as the
national language have hardly reduced the influence of ethnic identities; quite the
reverse — even if some centrifugal forces have been regulated. Each in its own way,
the succeeding chapters build up an assessment of half a century of nation-building
in Pakistan, while at the same time placing the country within the context of its rela-
tions with the outside world.
PART |
A COUNTRY IN SEARCH
OF AN IDENTITY
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5
ISLAMIC IDENTITY AND
ETHNIC TENSIONS
Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founding father of Pakistan, wanted to build a strong
nation based on the principle of ‘one nation, one culture, one language’.! All his suc-
cessors as head of state took their inspiration in the same way from Islam, and in a
less formal way from the Urdu culture. The preamble to the first Constitution of
1956 stipulated that citizens ‘should organize their lives both as individuals and col-
lectively in accord with the demands and the principles of Islam as laid down in the
Koran and in the Sunna [the traditional law of the Prophet].?
Although General Ayub Khan, who seized power in 1958, was in favour of
some Islamic reform, he had it written into the 1962 Constitution that the laws of
the state should never be in conflict with sharia law. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto laid the
foundations of a genuine Islamization policy in the 1973 Constitution, which stated
bluntly that Pakistan was an Islamic state. This new Constitution also included a
reminder that Urdu was the national language of Pakistan, and that measures
would be taken for it to replace English as the only official language within fifteen
years (Article 251). General Zia, who succeeded Bhutto in 1977 and remained in
power until 1988, set in motion a yet more dogmatic Islamization policy. As a
defender of Urdu, he strove to enforce its compulsory teaching from the earliest
years, threatening to make it the language of several secondary-standard exami-
nations from the beginning of 1989. The last civilian ruler of the country, Nawaz
Sharif, strengthened his allegiance to Islamization policy in 1998 when he intro-
duced afifteenth constitutional amendment, stipulating that the federal state was
obliged to apply sharia law.
If these statesmen have taken their inspiration from Islam, it has been far less as
a result of their personal religious faith than of their aim to establish a Muslim
nation which might transcend ethnic differences. Now this Islamic ideology sprang
directly from the struggle waged by the Muslim League in the British era, when they
hoped to carve out a ‘homeland’ for the Muslims from the old Raj. At that time how-
ever the League represented above all the Muslims of the provinces where they were
in a minority; once they were in power, their ideology failed to erase the sense of
ethnic identity of Muslims in other areas.
10 A COUNTRY IN SEARCH OF AN IDENTITY
A Creation of the Muslim ‘Minorities’ of the Raj

It was the Muslims from the areas in British India where they were in a minority who
first showed separatist tendencies, and in particular those who lived in the United
Provinces (present-day Uttar Pradesh). At the turn of the century the Muslim elite
of this part of India found their status being reduced as the power of the Hindus
rose. Aristocratic inheritors of the Mughal Empire they earned the mistrust of the
British when they took part in the Indian Mutiny in 1857.* At the end of the nine-
teenth century, their pride suffered when the colonial power decided in 1899 to place
both Urdu and Hindi on an equal footing as the official languages of the province.?
They also were upset by the first stirrings of political democratization: since 1882,
native Indians had been able to elect some municipal councillors and in 1909
provinces under direct British rule had been granted legislative councils based on
universal suffrage. All these measures reinforced their fears of being in a Muslim
minority, for all the demographic forces were against them (according to the
1881census they represented no more thanafifth of the population compared with
a Hindu representation of 75 per cent). These small steps towards democratization
had an effect on the Muslim elite throughout British India, but they were especially
strongly felt in the United Provinces, where they had more to lose, since there, more
than elsewhere, they were better represented among the intelligentsia. In 1886 the
Muslims, who constituted 13.4 per cent of the population of the area, nevertheless
occupied 45 per cent of the administrative positions.®
From the School of Aligarh to the Muslim League

The movement that was to become Pakistan was formed in the United Provinces — or,
more precisely, in the town of Aligarh. It was there, in the 1860s, that Sayyid Ahmad
Khan started his movement for reform, and for the defence of the Muslim community.
Descended from a prominent family at the Mughal court in Delhi, Ahmad Khan
chose a career as a lawyer. Having become a judge, he demonstrated his loyalty to
the British at the time of the Mutiny. W W Hunter’s report on the Muslims of
Bengal convinced him that the Muslims were decadent,’ and he made up his mind
to improve the standard of education within his community — already far higher in
the United Provinces than it was in Bengal. In 1863 he founded the Aligarh
Scientific Society, based on the doctrine that Islam and Western rationalism were not
incompatible. He himself maintained that science and nature were both of divine
origin. Then, after a visit to England, he set up the Muhammedan Anglo-Oriental
College, modelled on Oxford and Cambridge — all with the assistance of the British
who found himasite at Aligarh. The MAO College boasted 66 students in 1875 and
457 in 1900, the majority of whom came from the United Provinces, and awarded
diplomas to no fewer than 1,184 Muslims between 1882 and 1892.° So the ‘school
of Aligarh’ provided the basis for the mobilization of a community spirit, which in
turn developed, in the early years of the twentieth century, a political character quite
separate from the Indian National Congress, spearhead of the anticolonial
movement.
ISLAMIC IDENTITY AND ETHNIC TENSIONS 1]
The Congress Party, established in 1885, was in effect the brainchild of the Hindu
intelligentsia. The Muslims within it were very much in a minority: they represented
no more than 6.5 per cent on average of the delegates to the annual conferences until
1906. That year — with the aim of unloading some local responsibilities, and under
pressure from Congress, which was demanding Indianization of the bureaucracy and
more democratic politics — the British announced the creation of legislative councils n
the provinces. Immediately the Aligarh intelligentsia formed a new interest group, the
Muhammedan Educational Conference, in conjunction with the aristocratic elite of
East Bengal,? with the intention of obtaining protection for Muslims because of their
being in a minority. A delegation led by Muhsin al-Mulk, secretary of the MAO
College, therefore appeared before the viceroy, Lord Minto, advocating the setting-up
of a separate electorate on behalf of the Muslims. Adept at the art of divide and rule,
Minto agreed to this demand: he could see value in the establishment of a counter-
balancing Muslim force in the face of a Congress that was looking increasingly
militant. The Muslims therefore voted within a separate electoral college from the time
of the inauguration of the legislative councils in 1909.
The Muslims of the United Provinces, with eleven members, thus became heavily
over represented within the delegation which otherwise included seven Punjabis
and just one Bengali. Yet it was in Bengal — at Dhaka, the Dhaka of today — that on
30 December 1906, under the auspices of the nawab, the Muhammedan
Educational Conference became the Muslim League.
The identity of the Muslim League was strengthened after the First World War.
The peace treaties — which deprived the Ottoman sultan of his title of caliph, that
is, Commander of the faithful — stirred profound emotions among the Muslims of
the Indian subcontinent. Several members of the intelligentsia in Aligarh, notably
the brothers Muhammad and Shaukat Ali — seeking to put pressure on the British,
and party to the peace negotiations — launched a movement in defence of the
caliphate. This movement was supported by Gandhi but provoked the hostility of
other members of the Congress who, for their part, were involved in encouraging a
nationalistic Hindu feeling at the heart of the party, the Hindu Mahasabha. In this
way the 1920s saw the crystalization of mutual opposition between Hindus and
Muslims. Outbreaks of violence between the two communities became more fre-
quent, particularly in the north of India. im
It was in this context that Muhammad Ali Jinnah endeavoured to rejuvenate the
Muslim League, which had gradually fallen into a state of disrepair.
Jinnah himself was from an area where Muslims were in a minority: the Bombay
Presidency, which included the province of his birth, Sind, until 1936. He was a
member of the liberal intelligentsia. He had studied law in England — like so many
other men in politics of the period he was a barrister — and had stretched his
heterodoxy to the extent of marrying a Parsee.!! He started his political career in the
Congress Party, though he joined the Muslim League in 1913, and even sat on the
All India Congress Committee from 1908 to 1920. His respect for institutions how-
ever prompted him to leave the Congress in 1920, when Gandhi organized his first
campaign of civil disobedience against the British.
At that time the Muslim League was by no means the Muslims’ only mouthpiece.
Some supported the Association of Ulemas of India (Jamiyyat-ul Ulama-i Hind),

which was dominated by the ulemas of the traditional Deobandi school. Some
remained with the Congress movement, which presented itself as the incarnation of
the Indian nation rising above the divides between the religious communities. As for
the Ali brothers’ Central Committee for the Caliphate, it distanced itself from
Congress in the name of a more and more strident Muslim nationalism, without
going quite as far as the League.
At the end of the 1920s the Muslims strove to reestablish their unity when the
Simon Commission was charged by the British government with studying new con-
stitutional reforms. Since there was not a single Indian on the Commission, this
initiative provoked violent reactions. The Congress decided to boycott it, and set out
a constitution project of its own, associated particularly with Nehru, wherein the
principle of separate electorates was dropped entirely on the grounds that this
divided the nation. The Muslims, for their part, organized a conference uniting all
the different factions (the All-Party Muslim Conference of December 1928), in the
course of which they emphasized the strength of their attachment to the principle
of separate electorates. Yet they achieved only partial unity. Jinnah himself orga-
nized an individual group which was prepared to trade the separate electorates in
exchange for a fixed quota of one-third of the seats at the heart of the National
Assembly sitting in New Delhi reserved for Muslims. This difference reflected the
opposition between the Muslims of those regions where they were in the minority
and those regions where they were in a majority; the latter attached less importance
to central power.
The reticence of Muslims in ‘majority’ areas toward the

‘theory of two nations’
Jinnah stuck firmly to his guns from the first conference — called the Round Table —
in London in 1930, when the British tried to find a constitutional compromise
among the various parties in India. In regions where they were in a majority, the
Punjab and Bengal, the Muslims wished above all to reinforce the autonomy of these
provinces, which they had gained in 1909 and strengthened in 1919, so that they
could take advantage of their demographic superiority. ‘The Constitution (the
Government of India Act) eventually published by the British in 1935 gave them
some satisfaction, since it did represent one more step towards the establishment of
a federal system.
The 1937 elections conducted under the auspices of this constitution produced a
paradoxical result. For the first time Congress did not boycott them and won a
majority in seven provinces (then an eighth in 1938), where it formed the govern-
ment. For its part the Muslim League collected no more than 5 percent of the
Muslim vote, but its defeat set the scene for future victories.
Jinnah was able to exploit this setback to bolster his own interests. Presenting
Congress as just a Hindu party, he hammered home the point that a Congress-
dominated government would prove a real menace to the Muslim minority once the
British left — an event which was steadily approaching. Hindus and Muslims, he
ISLAMIC IDENTITY AND ETHNIC TENSIONS 13
maintained, made up two nations which could not live side by side — since they
belonged to two different civilizations. Uniting these two peoples within the heart of
a single state — the one with a majority, the other in a minority — could not fail to pro-
duce an ever-increasing discontentment.!* To a Congress which claimed to represent
all the communities, and to be installing a secularist political regime, Jinnah set out
an ethnic concept of the nation, stressing that the Islam of India constituted a sep-
arate culture. On the basis of this ‘theory of two nations’ he demanded a separate
state. :
Such a project had been expounded since 1930 by Mohammad Iqbal, the philoso-
pher-poet whose writings remain popular in Pakistan. As the president at that time
of the Muslim League, Iqbal had called for the creation of a Muslim state
comprising the Punjab, Sind, the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and
Baluchistan. Three years later, in January 1933, a Muslim student at Cambridge,
Chaudri Rehmat Ali, had taken up the idea and suggested that the state should be
called ‘Pakistan’, literally the ‘land of the pure’, the word being formed acronymi-
cally: ‘P’ for Punjab, ‘& for Afghans of the frontier (in fact the Pashtuns of the
NWFP), ‘K’ for Kashmir, ‘S’ for Sind, and ‘tan’ for Baluchistan.!* These proposals
became more or less a dead letter. In March 1940 however the Muslim League, in
session in Lahore, announced that it was in favour of the creation of two indepen-
dent states. The name ‘Pakistan’ was not mentioned but it was specified that ‘those
areas where Muslims were in the majority, as in the northwest and the east, should
be reorganized to form independent states.’
During the 1940s, therefore, the League campaigned invoking the threatening
slogan ‘Hindu Congress’. The Punjab provided a perfect example of this strategy.
Here the Muslim League was in conflict with two political forces. The first of these,
Congress, received the support of Hindus in the towns, mostly merchants, profes-
sionals and civil servants. The second, the Unionist Party, was supported by the rural
population, both Hindu and Muslim. This party founded in 1922, portraying itself
as the defender of rural interests, won the 1923, 1926, 1934 and 1937 elections
under the guidance of two peasant leaders, one a Hindu named Chhotu Ram; the
other a Muslim Fazl-i-Hussain. The intercommunal solidarity represented here did
not leave much room for manoeuvre for the Muslim League.'”
The League, however, benefited from these very circumstances. Fazl-i-Hussain
died in 1936 and was succeeded by Sikander Hayat Khan, head of the Unionist
government of the Punjab. Hayat Khan was susceptible to Jinnah’s blandishments
to the point where he was in September 1937 prepared to sign a pact with him, by
which he agreed to pledge the support of all Muslim Unionists to the Muslim
League. The recent Congress victory in seven provinces of the Raj had led him to
fear that central power could fall only to that party, and that they would use it to the
detriment of the Muslims of the Punjab, particularly by reducing Muslim repre-
sentation in the army.'© Doubtless Hayat Khan also hoped to gain control of the
Muslim League in his own province, if not become its overall leader. Above all, he
was offering decisive support to a Muslim League which had failed to win more than
just a single seat in the Punjab in 1937. Soon after this, the Unionist Party became
very unpopular asa result of the participation of the Punjab, breadbasket of India,
in the war effort of 1939-45. All this apart, the disappearance from the scene of
Sikander Hayat Khan in 1942 and of Chhotu Ram in 1945 reduced its strength
considerably. During the 1946 elections the League exploited these handicaps, cam-
paigning on the theme ‘Islam in danger’.
Jinnah and most of his lieutenants were not religious, but they used Islam as a
focus for an evocation of nationalism, playing on its emotional power to gain the
attention of the Muslims in the streets. In the Punjab this strategy was crowned with
success as numerous pir weighed in to support the idea of a separate state.'’ Thus
Islam became a lingua franca which allowed the establishment of a front combining
the Muslims in ‘minority’ situations with those in the Punjab. In the 1946 elections
the League won a majority in the province with 75 seats compared with just ten for
the Unionists.
The Muslim League also managed to win Sind in the same way. There the party
had still had to deal with two rival forces: Congress, which gleamed most of its sup-
porters from the mainly Hindu urban districts, and the Sind United Party (SUP),
founded in 1936 at the same time as the province itself, on the model of the Punjab
Unionist Party. At this time the SUP was closely allied with the major landowners,
the waderas, a social category of which Shah Nawaz Bhutto, father of Zulfikar Ah
Bhutto (who took part in the foundation of the SUP) is a perfect example. From the
end of the 1930s the Muslim League succeeded in implanting itself throughout Sind
mobilizing the Muslims around a controversial cult site called Manzilgarh, which the
League wished to be regarded as a mosque.!® It can therefore be said to have manip-
ulated Islam before this occurred in the Punjab.
Meanwhile, its leaders were as concerned about the defence of the Sindi identity
as they were about the project for an Islamic state — as witness the political journey
of G M Syed, who left the Congress Party in 1938 to become the architect of the
League of Sind. He was, however, expelled from it in 1946, when he went on record
demanding the right of self-determination for all the provinces.!® Yet the persistence
of Sindi nationalist sentiment at the heart of the Muslim League in that region does
suggest that the demand for Pakistan was seen above all as the way to free Sind from
British and Hindu tutelage, to gain a regional as much as an Islamic identity.
In Bengal, the League had always enjoyed a greater Muslim majority than in its
other provinces. Its roots lay less in its ideology than in its capacity to bring to light
a separatist tradition of an earlier time, and above all in its exploitation of socio-
economic frustrations. In 1871 the Hunter Report had underlined the poverty of the
Muslims of Bengal. This community, composed mainly of a landless peasantry, of
tenant farmers and craftsmen, worked for big landowners and industrialists who
were, in the main, Hindus. Principally concentrated in the eastern part of Bengal,
it wanted this area to be a separate province. In 1905 the British agreed to split the
vast Presidency of Bengal into two, but went back on their decision in 1911 under
pressure from the Congress. The Muslims of East Bengal continued to labour under
a separation which the League had used to its own advantage since its creation in
Dhaka (Dhaka) in 1906.
Since the 1930s, like the Punjab and Sind, the League had been confronted with
Congress — well established among the Hindu population — and with a rural party
which liked to think itself above religious differences, the party of peasant citizens
(the Krishak Proja Party). Founded in 1936 by A K Fazlul Hug, this party mainly
comprised small Muslim farmers and Muslim agricultural workers. It won 31 per
cent of the votes at the 1937 elections, against 27 per cent for the League, which won
39 of the 82 seats. Huq was therefore asked to lead a coalition government with sup-
port from the Muslim League. This however was an unnatural partnership, since the
League continued above all to represent the Muslim zamindar (large landowners) in
the province. This discredited the KPP. It lost its traditional supporters and finally
took the swift downward route into the arms of the Muslim League, which played to
a greater and greater effect the card of Islamic defence. In 1946 the League won 104
of the 111 available seats. Nevertheless the rising popularity of the ‘theory of two
nations’ could not sideline a powerful regional nationalism. In May 1944 a journal-
ist, Abdul Mansur Ahmad, became leader of the Muslim League in Bengal, and
presided over the party’s annual conference. He declared that the Muslims of Bengal
were different not only from the Hindus but also from Muslims from other provinces,
because ‘religion and culture are not the same thing. Religion transcends geographic
frontiers, but culture behaves differently’.?° It was such pronouncements which
sowed the seed for the future Bangladesh back in the 1940s.
The Muslim League’s hold was far weaker in the North West Frontier Province
(NWFP), a region cobbled together by the British in 1901 as a means of defending
the Raj against possible assaults from Central Asia. Although the Pashtuns repre-
sented no more than 37 per cent of the population of the province, they formed the
dominant ethnic component, with their clan chiefs, the ‘hans, wielding absolute
local power. ‘Pashtun’ is the name given to a member of the Pashtun tribe of
Pakistan: the same linguistic community extends into Afghanistan on the far side of
the Durand Line. Since the 1920s certain Pashtun leaders of the NWFP have
delivered a clear irredentist message which chimes with the ‘theory of two nations’.
They aimed to regroup in a ‘Pashtunistan’ incorporating ethnically similar people
speaking the Pashto language on both sides of the border.
For the NWEP. this ideology was encapsulated by Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a typical
representative of the khan of intermediate rank who had been able to reinforce his
hold with the support of the British. This was the breeding-ground from which
Pashtun nationalism had sprung. Abdul Ghaffar Khan published a monthly peri-
odical in the Pashto language, the Pashtun, in 1928; the following year he launched
a movement called the Khudai Khidmatgar, better known as the ‘Red Shirts’ from
the colour of its members’ uniforms. This movement fought hard to defend the
Pashto language against the expansion of Punjabi. Impervious to the Muslim
League’s Islamic message it allied itself with Congress, whose leader, Gandhi, it
greatly admired. Abdul Ghaffar Khan was indeed known as the ‘Gandhi of the
Frontier’, since he also was in favour of non-violent protest. This alliance, consoli-
dated during the campaign of civil disobedience launched by Gandhi in 1930, left
little room for the Muslim League whose influence was limited to the urban intelli-
gentsia and the — non-Pashtun ~ district of Hazara. At the 1946 elections to the
provincial assembly the League won only 17 seats against Congress’s 30.
To sum up: the notion of Pakistan first developed at the heart of the intelligentsia
in provinces with a Hindu majority. The Punjab, Sind and Bengal rallied slowly to
the idea, without renouncing their regional identity; the North-West Frontier
Province took it up even more slowly. This difference between those in majority and
minority situations is explained largely by the quasi-federal political system in British
India: the Muslim elite in the United Provinces and the Presidency of Bombay
wanted to create a state they could govern — this also went for the Muslims in the
military — or a market for their industrial businesses;?! while those in regions where
there was a Muslim majority were already in power and had less to fear from the
Hindus.
The Muslim League leaders knew that Pakistan would never see the light of day
unless all the Muslim regions could be brought together and separated from India.
That is why Jinnah — who played only a minor role until the end of the 1930s”? —
sought to intensify the Hindu—Muslim conflict, depicting Congress as the very incar-
nation of the Hindu menace. From 1937 this strategy was buttressed by the electoral
success of the new dominant party. The ‘Muslim Mass Contract Campaign’ which
Nehru organized in 1938 to combat Jinnah’s propaganda was a failure. Through his
campaigns for the defence of Islam, whose culmination was the ‘Direct Action
Day” in August 1946, Jinnah succeeded in exacerbating fears of Hindu domination
as British withdrawal — precipitated by the Second World War — drew nearer. Thus
he was able to create between 1945 and 1947 what Yunas Samad has termed “a brief
moment of political unity,’* among the Muslims. At the same time, the Muslim
League strove to present the future Pakistan as a loose structure in which each
province would enjoy considerable autonomy. The ‘Lahore Resolution’ of 23 March
1940, created during a session where Jinnah spoke officially for the first tume of two
independent states, stipulated that their ‘constituent units’ would be ‘autonomous
and sovereign’. This was the ultimate concession to the Muslims of the provinces
where they already enjoyed majorities, to get them to rally around the project of a
Pakistani state.?° In 1946, during negotiations with the Cabinet Mission, the League
replaced the concept of two Muslim states with a single Pakistan but one in which
the regions would continue to enjoy considerable autonomy.”°
For all practical purposes, the League as a political organization — made scant pro-
vision for the provinces with Muslim majorities. Its governing body allowed for only
a small number of representatives, as the figures show: before reform of the statutes
in 1938, Bengal, despite its 33 million Muslims, had only ten seats more than the
United Provinces which was home to no more than 7 million Muslims.?’
‘The history of the movement for Pakistan in the colonial period allowed the
buildup of strong tensions between on the one hand the Muslim League, dominated
by an elite from provinces with large Hindu majorities; and, on the other, whole
provinces jealous of their cultural identity and of their autonomy.
Islam and Urdu: Forces for Unity or Domination?

The Pakistan which first saw the light of day in 1947 was an Islamic state. For
Jinnah, the promotion of Islam should enable the new country to rise above the
regional fault-line and go hand in hand with a strong centralized state. Pakistan was
not a federal state in the same way as India, where, after the 1950s, the recognition
of regionalism resulted in the states of the union orientating themselves along lin-
guistic lines.
‘The place of Islam in Pakistan, and its political centralization, are both explained
by the ethnic make-up of the country. The Muslims of British India who supported
the movement for the creation of Pakistan with the utmost determination had
never — unlike the Punjabis or Bengalis — had a local base. The state they wanted to
create therefore had to have as its base the Islamic ideology of the Muslim League,
and a strong centralized power under their command.
Pakistan: A state of immigrants?

From the start Pakistan was the creation of the Muhajirs — literally the migrants.
According to the 1951 census there were 7 million Muhajirs in the country —
700,000 of them in East Pakistan. This meant that in West Pakistan there were 6.3
million Muhajirs — a fifth of the total population of 33.7 million.
Once they crossed the border, most Muhajirs made their new home ina similar
cultural and linguistic environment: Muslims from the eastern Punjab chose western
Punjab, while those from west Bengal made for east Bengal. For the Muhajirs who
had fled the Indian provinces with Hindu majorities, however it was a different
matter: 100,000 Urdu-speaking Muslims from Bihar migrated into East Bengal,
and a million from Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat went to West Pakistan. Soon the label
of ‘Muhajir’ was no longer restricted to their own community. From the start, the
Muhgajirs’ influence in Pakistani politics and society was out of proportion to their
simple demographic weight. Since they came from an intellectual, trading elite,
they tended to settle principally in the towns of Sind — above all inKarachi, Jinnah’s
birthplace, which became the capital of the new state.?8 Karachi, despite its numer-
ous commercial enterprises, boasted a mere 360,000 inhabitants in 1941, only half
the size of Lahore. In ten years its population had more than tripled, and had
exceeded 1.1 million by 1951. At that time the Muhajirs accounted for a fifth of the
population of Sind but 57 per cent of the new capital.?9 Other Muhajirs found their
homes in Hyderabad and in Sukkur where, according to the 1951 census, they
made up 65 per cent and 55 per cent respectively of the population. Thus urban
Pakistan became to a large extent a world of migrants. In fact, in 1951, the immi-
grants formed nearly half the entire population (46 per cent) living in the twelve
most important towns.
At the beginning, the Muhajirs acquired a sort of prestige. After all, they had
played a decisive role in the establishment of Pakistan, and had given up everything
to go and live there. They dominated the state through the Muslim League and its
two leaders: Jinnah, the governor general, and Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan,
who was himself from Uttar Pradesh. They also dominated the public services (95
out of the 101 Muslims in the Indian Civil Service left India, among whom athird
were Punjabis and many were Urdu speakers”) and the liberal professions. In Sind
the careers of lawyer, teacher and businessman had by tradition been filled by
Hindus, who left in droves after 1947. The Muhajirs, taking advantage of their
abilities in these spheres, took their place to the great satisfaction — which did not
last — of the Sindis, who, once Partition had taken place, feared for the continuity of
their businesses and public services, and their local government.?!
Under Muhajir pressure, Urdu was promoted to the rank of official language,
even though English remained the natural language of the elite, and therefore of the
state. Despite recognizing that English was essential for the smooth functioning of
the administration, the government insisted in pressing on with the promotion of
Urdu. The organisation charged with defending Urdu, the Anjuman-i Taraqi-i
Urdu, saw its budget double between 1948-49 and 1950-51. Meanwhile, the courts
and the regional assemblies were strongly encouraged to use Urdu, and in the early
1950s the Committee for the Official Language — established by the government of
the Punjab, a province which was very advanced in this matter — invented thousands
of Urdu synonyms for English terms where there had been none before.** The
Punjabis, in fact, played the dominant ideology game the better to indoctrinate the
outposts of the new state, and make them abandon their mother tongue in favour of
the official language without too much difficulty.
The beginning of Punjabi hegemony

For a long time the Muslims of the Punjab had had reservations about the idea of
Pakistan. Nonetheless, from its very inception, they maintained the power they held
in their province before independence, and strove to extend it throughout the coun-
try. Although they accounted for only a quarter of the population according to the
1951 census, they were heavily over-represented in the army, where they held 80 per
cent of the posts, and the military establishment allowed them to reinforce their
power during the 1950s.** For them service in the army was arevered tradition. The
British enlisted many Punjabis during the First World War.** For years they had rec-
ognized the soldierly skills of the many Muslim clans of the ‘country of five rivers’,
and had recruited them in large numbers as part of their ‘Afghan Policy’ of estab-
lishing a defence against any future Russian incursion into Central Asia.
At the same time, in the 1950s, Punjabis cropped up everywhere in the adminis-
tration, where they alone occupied 55 per cent of the posts.*? During the colonial
period the Hindus of the province constituted a larger part of the urban population
than the Muslims and, by virtue of this very fact, enjoyed a better standard of edu-
cation. Since 1921 however, Miam Fazl-i Hussain, newly appointed Education
Minister in the Punjabi government, had sought to restore some equilibrium by
introducing quotas for Muslims in institutions as important as the administration col-
lege and the medical faculty.
However, the Punjabis had the benefit of yet a third resource: the land. The great
irrigation projects carried out by the British in the Punjab from 1880 onwards had
established it as the granary of all sorts of cereal crop — but particularly wheat — for
the Raj, and later, of course, for Pakistan, as indeed for India. This prosperity formed
the basis for the “Green Revolution’ of the 1960s, the results of which were particu-
larly spectacular in the districts of Lyallpur, Multan and Montgomery. Agricultural
production rose by nearly 9 per cent between 1959-60 and 1964—5, almost a
doubling of the national rate of growth.*© Fifteen years later, in the early 1980s, 80
per cent of tractors and 88 per cent of tubewells were to be found in the Punjab.
From the start, then, Pakistan has been dominated on the one hand by Punjabis —
dominant in the military and the administration — and on the other by Muhajirs,
occupying all the higher positions in the administration and the executive power. The
government of Liaquat Ali Khan was formed mainly from members of his own
community.>’ Yet the Punjabis and the Muhajirs shared neither the same political cul-
ture nor the same interests. The Muhajirs had always thought of the Muslims of
South Asia as an ethnic entity on the basis of their culture, and considered Islam to
be nothing more than an identifying symbol.*® In one way their ideology had been
overtaken by a process of nationalist secularization. The Punjabi, for his part, had
been called to the colours of the state of Pakistan by the cry ‘Islam in danger’, and his
province, which was still very rural, continued to be guided by a conservative social
and political ethos.
There was also a socioeconomic side to the opposition between Muhajirs and
Punjabis. The former were predominantly urban, while the majority of the latter
were tillers of the land, who owed their relative prosperity to the state’s policies of
financing irrigation work, controlling agricultural markets and protecting the prop-
erty rights of owner farmers.*? While the Muhajirs tended towards a liberal outlook,
the Punjabis were happy to be part of an interventionist state.*
The latent antagonism between Muhajirs and Punjabis was accentuated by
Jinnah’s death in 1948. Leadership of the Muslim League passed seamlessly to con-
trol Liaquat Ali Khan who succeeded Jinnah as head of both government and
party. In 1951 however he was assassinated.*! The post of Prime Minister went to
two Bengalis, Khwaja Nazimuddin (1951-53), Muhammad Ali Bogra (1951-55);
then to Chandri Muhammad Ali, a leader of the Muslim League born in the east-
ern Punjab. The post of governor general was occupied first by a Pashtun, Ghulam
Muhammad (1951-55), then by Iskander Mirza (1955-58), a Bengali who followed
the Punjabi line. He favoured the development of a new party born of a split in the
Muslim League, the Republican Party, composed essentially of Punjabis, some of
whom had only recently rallied to the movement for Pakistan. The Republicans dis-
missed the last Muhajir Prime Minister, I 1 Chundrigar, in 1958, replacing him by a
Punjabi, Malik Firoz Khan Noon.
So the Muhajirs did not succeed in integrating themselves with the Pakistani elite as
well as they had been led to expect in the fervour of the country’s birth. These difhi-
culties were explained partly by the jealousies which underlay the financial success of
some of them, notably in Karachi; while others, in relative poverty, had laid claim to
land. The government, however, proved unwilling to accede to demands from immi-
grant farmers for land which had to be taken from wealthy landowners, who made
their opposition clear. The Muhajirs of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Hyderabad felt
t
especially hard done by, since Pakistan had reached at no compensation agreemen
with these Indian provinces.” They turned for support to the state, but the governme nt
of a
of General Ayub Khan, a Pashtun who had seized power from Mirza by means
ts from
a military coup, had no hesitation in pointing out that, in contrast to immigran
riots of
East Punjab and those from West Bengal, the Muhajirs had not suffered the
1947 to provoke their decision to leave. Ayub Khan preferred to give priority to the
farmers who had fled East Punjab. To them he gave title to land; this allowed them to
take over property abandoned by Hindus and Sikhs.
The military’s accession to power sealed the supremacy of the Punjabis — often in
alliance with the Pashtuns. The West Punjabis and those arriving from the eastern
part of the province — many of them members of Ayub Khan’s entourage —there-
fore tended to constitute a single homogenous group. The Muhajirs’ loss of influence
was reinforced in 1960 when the capital was transferred from Karachi to
Rawalpindi, a Punjabi garrison town. At the end of the 1960s it was again moved a
short distance to the purpose-built capital city of Islamabad.
The competition between the ethnic communities was made more bitter by the
contrast between their socioeconomic profiles. ‘This is shown especially clearly in the
case of East Bengal, where the income level was less than half of that in Baluchistan
and a mere seventh of that in Khairpur, one of the Princely States integrated within
West Pakistan in 1955.
Table 1.1 Population and income, 1951 (by province)
Population Income Per capita income

Provinces (thousands) % (millions of rupees) (rupees)
The Punjab 18,815 24.9 246.2 12

Sind 4,606 6.1 97 21.1
NWFP 5,865 * 7.8 65 20.1
Bahawalpur 1,822 2 50.5 a hed
Khairpur 19 0.4 12 37.6
BSA** 552 0.7 5.8 10.5
Baluchistan 602 0.8 not available not available
Karachi Lai23 Ld not available not available
Total for
West Pakistan 33,704 44.6 not available not available
East Pakistan 41,932 55.4 234.5 5.6
Total 75,636 100
* These figures include the ‘North West Frontier Agencies’ territories.

** Baluchistan States Union.
Source: Keith Callard, Pakistan, a Political Study, London, Allen & Unwin, 1957, p. 156.
The Bengalis of East Pakistan — victims of the underdevelopment of their

province but constituting a majority in the country as a whole — demanded, in their
turn, a place in the state’s institutions.
Political centralization and separatism:

From East Pakistan to Bangladesh
By 1951 the population of East Pakistan had reached 41.9 million, but that of West
Pakistan amounted to no more than 33.7 million. On these grounds, the people of
. East Pakistan demanded at least equal representation in the democratic institutions

which the Constituent Assembly was charged to set up.
The provisional Constitution bestowed upon Pakistan in 1947 gave considerable
powers to the provinces.*? The Constituent Assembly also adopted federalistic
perspective from the outset, in large measure because its members came with an
automatic majority from East Bengal — 44 compared with 22 from the Punjab, 5
from Sind, 3 from the NWFP and 1 from Baluchistan. The Basic Principles
Committee (BPC), charged with the establishment of the fundamental principles of
the regime, produced its report on 7 September 1950. It recommended afederal
system with two chambers: the first would represent the provinces, while the second
would be elected under direct universal suffrage. The elected members from the
Punjab immediately demanded an equal arrangement, with each wing of the new
state allocated the same number of seats in the parliament. For their part those from
East Bengal sought the support of the Sindis, Pashtuns and Baluchis in the Assembly
in order to gain a clear majority.
From linguistic confluct to a ‘One Unit Scheme?

In Karachi, the central authorities thought about passing an act imposing Urdu as
a fundamental part of the Pakistani state immediately after independence. ‘The
Bengalis, however, were deeply attached to their own language, and continued to
venerate its literature, even when its authors had been Hindus of West Bengal. In
1952, when Urdu was elevated to the status of national language, they organized
protest movements, and riots broke out. On 21 February 1952, suppression of a
strike in support of the national language resulted in several deaths. The event is
commemorated each year by a Remembrance Day.
The Muslim League lost the support of Bengali public opinion. It suffered a
fresh setback in March 1954, at the time of new elections to the local assembly. ‘The
Pakistani government was forced to make some concessions, and in May 1954 a con-
stitutional amendment recognized Urdu and Bengali as national languages of equal
status. In October 1954, however just as the Constituent Assembly was preparing a
statement on the BPC the governor general, Ghulam Muhammad — a Pashtun
from East Punjab, and hostile to any form of Bengali domination — activated his
right to dissolve the Assembly and declare a state of emergency. In March 1955 he
took upon himself the power to create a single province of West Pakistan, uniting
with the Punjab the regions of Sind, Baluchistan and the NWFP to counterbalance
East Bengal: this was the ‘One Unit Scheme’. A new Constituent Assembly —
elected, like the previous ones, by the legislative councils of the provinces in June
1955 — ratified this reform in September 1955. As for East Bengal, it was renamed
East Pakistan. By this manoeuvre Karachi was in a better position to hold the
Bengalis down just as they had been kept down ever since Partition ina situation of
significant socioeconomic disadvantage.
___'| Territories ceded by

Pakistan to Chin
a
Muzaffarabad
Peshawar
Zz
QL \
ae
x eee
ah ey
</
PAKISTAN
PUNJAB Lahoree
PUNJAB
IP eat
100 km
Recognised frontier
----- Limit of Pakistani province or Indian state
seeeneees Line of control (1949) ye Non-

determined
frontier
s===a Extent of Kashmir claimed by India
aa Northern territories (under Pakistani control)
Territories controlled by China
a Azad Kashmir (under Pakistani control)
==} Main routes
OK (India occupied Kashmir)
according to Islamabad
Altitude above 3000 m
Source: Y. Lacoste, Dictionnaire Géopolitique,
Rammarion 1995
Source: after Hérodote,
Editions La Découverte, no. 71, 1993.
ISLAMIC IDENTITY AND ETHNIC TENSIONS a8
The two-economy theory

Of the 95 Muslims in the Indian Civil Service (ICS) who opted for Pakistan, only
one or two were from Bengal. From the beginning, therefore, the administration of
East Bengal had been in the hands of staff from West Pakistan. After 1949, however
Bengalis were allowed an entry quota into the public service: 20 per cent of posts
were allotted on merit alone; 40 per cent were allocated to West Pakistan, 23 per cent
to the Punjab and Bahawalpur, 15 per cent to a grouping of Sind, NWFP and
Baluchistan, and 2 per cent to Karachi. The Bengalis were by no means satisfied
with this arrangement.** They remained in a tiny minority in the central adminis-
tration, where there were only two Bengalis out of 17 high officials in 1964; while on
the army list in 1955 only one of 58 generals was from East Bengal.
At the same time the Bengalis were victims of genuine economic exploitation. The
hard currency earned from their exports, particularly of jute, was used to finance the
industrialization of West Pakistan. Between 1947 and 1962, the eastern region of
Pakistan exported goods to the value of 13.08 billion rupees, while the value of
exports from the western region reached only 9.9 billion. Similarly, while the value of
eastern imports came to no more than 7.9 billion rupees, that from the western wing
reached 19.7 billion as it purchased equipment abroad thanks to the favourable bal-
ance of trade achieved by East Bengal. The Bengalis complained all the more bitterly
since their per capita income at the beginning of the 1960s was about 25 per cent
below that of West Pakistan, and the eastern province’s growth rate was poorer by a
half. Personal incomes had risen by only 17 per cent in East Pakistan between
1959-70, while those in West Pakistan had risen by 42 per cent in the same period.
Now the politicization of the Bengali population grew more rapidly as progress in
education improved. In 1961, 17.6 per cent of Bengalis were literate, compared with
13.6 per cent in West Pakistan. The economists — of whom there were many among
the Bengali intelligentsia — denounced the state of affairs in East Pakistan, suggest-
ing that the ‘theory of two nations’ was being replaced by the ‘theory of two
economies’.
The Six-Point Programme
Discontent among Bengalis was reflected in the increasing number of opposition

parties. Their region had been slow and half-hearted in support of the Muslim
League. Fazlul Huq, who had been associated with the League in the 1940s,
regained his liberty, and once Independence had been declared he started a new
party: the Krishak Sramik Party, the peasants and workers party. A few years later in
1950, H S Suhrawardy created his own party, the Awami League, or the league of
the people. These two parties formed an alliance, the United Front, for the 1954
regional elections and won a handsome victory. Huq formed a provincial govern-
ment, but two months later he was dismissed on the pretext of separatist intrigues.
Similar repression was experienced by the Awami League, and several of its mem-
bers hardened their attitude.
At this time, the central government under Ayub Khan blew hot and cold. On the
one hand it tried particularly to reduce the development gap between the two halves
of the country. The share of development grants for East Pakistan rose from 20 per
cent in 1950-55 to 36 per cent in 1965-70 at the expense of West Pakistan, though
that province remained the major beneficiary. On the other hand Ayub Khan still
showed signs of an authoritarian centralism. The 1962 Constitution maintained the
principle of parity between East and West Pakistan, thus negating true federalism.
To be sure, the list of headings under which the administration assisted the provinces
was lengthened as compared with the 1956 Constitution, but in fact the provinces
had no real room for manoeuvre. Executive power was in the hands of governors
nominated by Ayub Khan, who were empowered to dismiss regional governments.
Huq demanded greater regional autonomy, which would have left central
government with power over foreign affairs and defence only. The Awami League
hardened its political attitude further after Suhrawardy’s death in 1963. In 1966
their new leader, Mujibur Rahman, announced asix-point programme which
amounted to a challenge for power. He demanded in particular that democracy
should be restored; that central government should restrict itself to the control of
defence and foreign affairs; and that each half of the country should decide its
own monetary and fiscal policy (for more details, see Chapter 2 below).
Ayub Khan’s response was to arrest Mujibur Rahman on the pretext that he was
threatening the integrity of Pakistan. The authorities then ensured that he was dis-
credited by accusing him of accepting arms from India. The ‘Agartala trial’ — named
after the town in India where the alleged transaction took place — opened in 1968 in
Dhaka where it provoked a massive mobilization of opponents of the regime. ‘The
judges dismissed the charge for lack of proof. The entire episode merely enhanced
Mujibur Rahman’s popularity.
The mood in Karachi favoured the establishment of a movement for self-gov-
ernment in East Pakistan. Ayub Khan took this on board, but belatedly. In
February 1969 he held a conference, called the Round Table, at which he pro-
posed to both sides that the Constitution should be amended in a federalist
direction. However, the conference — in which Rahman himself agreed to take
part — ended without result. This was largely due to the boycott of this meeting by
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who had recently set up the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).
Ayub Khan then decided to step down in favour of the army’s chief of staff,
Yahya Khan. His first decision was to abrogate the 1962 Constitution and impose
martial law, while at the same time announcing new elections and setting out
plans for a federal constitution. Early in 1970 he promulgated a Legal Framework
Order, which established a federal regime and gave East Pakistan 169 seats in the
313-strong National Assembly.
The elections took place in December 1970, and resulted in a triumph for the
Awami League, which won 160 seats compared with just 81 for the PPP. This ballot
sealed the political partition of Pakistan, since the Awami League had contested no
seat in the western part of the country while the PPP had contested none in the east-
ern part. The PPP, though it was led by a Sindi, enjoyed considerable success in the
Punjab, with 62 of the 83 seats. ‘This demonstrated the West Pakistanis’ willingness
to stand up to the Bengalis. Meanwhile Bhutto sought to set himself up as repre-
senting the ‘real’ Pakistan, maintaining that ‘Punjab and Sind are the bastions of
power in Pakistan. Majority alone does not count in national politics’.*° His priority
was identical to that of the Punjabis: the Bengalis should not be allowed to govern.
Rahman now demanded that the government implement his six-point pro-
gramme. Yahya Khan seemed to be ready to call a constituent assembly in Dhaka,
but Zulfikar Al Bhutto, the new strong man of West Pakistan, declared that his party
would boycott any such move.*” On | March 1971, Yahya Khan announced that the
establishment of the proposed constituent assembly would be postponed indefinitely.
Rahman’s response was to launch a general strike throughout East Pakistan. He
demanded the immediate setting up of a confederation in which each half of the
country would have its own constitution.
At this, Karachi sent thousands of soldiers and launched a large-scale military
operation during the night of 25-26 March 1971. This act of repression had innu-
merable victims — many struck down in cold blood — and resulted in an exodus
towards the Indian border of 10 million Bengalis. New Delhi, in its turn, declared
war on Pakistan on 22 November, having taken the time necessary to mobilize its
forces, with the declared object of ‘liberating Bangladesh’. On 3 December the war
spread to West Pakistan, obliging Islamabad to loosen itsgrip."
The multiple constitutional debates and texts produced between 1947 and the
early 1970s revealed the determination of the elites of West Pakistan — whether
Muhajirs, Punjabis or Sindis — to keep the Bengalis out of power. The formation of
a self-government movement in East Pakistan was, in the main, a direct result of this
centralization of the state. In the course of the 1970s, an analogous movement ~first
for autonomy, later for separation — developed in the North-West Frontier Province
and in Baluchistan; while Sind allied itself even more strongly with the Pakistan
nation as a result of the electoral successes of the Bhutto family.
The Sindis rise to power
After the secession of East Pakistan, the Punjabis represented nearly 60 per cent of
the country’s population, and remained overrepresented in the new military, where
they filled 70 per cent of the posts.*? Nevertheless, it was a Sindi, Bhutto, who suc-
ceeded Yahya Khan as head of state in 1971. Within the context of martial law,
which had been extended, a new constitution — at first sight more favourable to fed-
eralism than its predecessors — was promulgated on 12 April 1973. It established a
Council of Common Interests where representatives of central government and the
four provinces sat as equals. Its responsibility extended over various matters, such as
the distribution of river water among the regions. It gave the small provinces equal
representation in numbers of seats to that of the Punjab in the Upper Chamber of
the parliament. This reform made a limited impact since that chamber had no say
in financial affairs. Moreover, the bulk of investment continued to be concentrated
in the Punjab.® In fact Bhutto — whose PPP, as we have seen, won a great victory in
the Punjab at the 1970 elections — conducted a tacit agreement with the Punjabis.
An alliance of Sindis and Punjabis seemed set to dominate the country.
The awakening of Sindi nationalism
Bhutto’s arrival at the head of the government was accompanied by a political

resurgence by the Sindis, who were becoming more and more incensed at the posi-
tion of the Muhajirs — at least those in Karachi, who still constituted a more
prosperous elite than the people of Sindi origin. Their relative success aroused a
sense of jealousy which the Sindi nationalist movement exploited.
Before Independence, G M Syed had already set himself up as spokesman for the
‘Sindi nation’, who, he declared, would reestablish the Indus civilization whose most
important vestiges — in particular Mohenjo-Daro”! — were in their possession. After
Partition he denounced the Muhajirs’ and Punjabis’ grip on Pakistan, criticizing
especially the use of Urdu at the expense of Sindi in Karachi. Asa result of his mil-
itancy he spent a large part of his life under house arrest.
From the beginning of 1972, Bhutto’s PPP, which was in charge of the govern-
ment of Sind, adopted part of the Sindi nationalists’ programme. It protested at the
meagre representation of Sindis in the army: a mere 2.2 per cent and not one in the
senior officer ranks.°? He also denounced the near monopoly of Punjabis and
Muhajirs in the administration — asituation that was partly due to the status of Urdu
as the official language. The PPP therefore put through the regional assembly a pro-
ject to reestablish the Sindi language in the province’s schools. This measure
provoked demonstrations by the Muhajirs in Karachi, Hyderabad and Larkana,
where many riots broke out. Bhutto meanwhile supported the Sindi authorities,
whom he had appointed himself — thus pandering to their nationalism. He declared
at the National Assembly: ‘We have given our lands; we have given our homes, we
have given our lives [. . .] to people from all parts, to the Pashtuns, Punjabis, to the
Muhajirs living in Sind [. . .| What else can we do to show our loyalty, our love and
our respect for Pakistan and for our Muhajir brothers?’
Table 1.2 1973 quotas and community representation in the administration: 1973 and 1983
Provinces Quotas General Senior public — General Senior public

% administration positions administration _ positions
(1973) (1973) (1983) (1983)
The Punjab 50 49.2 53.5 54.9 55ch

NWFP 11.5 10.5 i 13.4 11.6
Urban Sind 7.6 30.2 oa. 17.4 20.2
Rural Sind 11.4 Dee 2.7 ot Onl
Baluchistan on a 5 3.4 3:1
Northern Areas
and FATA 4 2.6 L3 3.6 3.4
Azad Kashmir 2 1.8 0.5 Lo 0.9
Total 90 100 100 100 100

N=84,749 N=6,011 N=134,310 N=11,816
Source: Charles H Kennedy, Bureaucracy in Pakistan, Karachi, Oxford University Press, 1987, p. 194.
In addition, a quota of 11.4 per cent of posts for Sindhi was established in the
federal administration to remedy a flagrant imbalance. In 1973 the Muhajirs still
occupied 33.5 per cent of the senior public positions, although they represented only
7 per cent of the total population; while the Sindis themselves had only 2.7 per cent.
Bhutto brought about nationalizations which especially penalized the many
Muhajirs within the commercial world of Karachi. Furthermore, the vote on the
Teaching Promotion and Use of the Sindi Language Bill, introduced in 1972, pro-
voked more demonstrations among the Muhajirs. The law was then amended to
establish Urdu as the official language alongside Sindi (speakers of any other
language to have had twelve years in which to learn Sindi).
Winning power on the back of Sindi nationalism

Sindi nationalism became even more extreme in 1977 after the dismissal of Bhutto
by General Zia, a Punjabi; by his death sentence, meted out by a tribunal composed
of a majority of Punjabis;°* and then by his execution. This made him a Sindi
martyr; all the more so as his whole family suffered either exile or life under per-
manent house arrest.
Once more Zia favoured Punjabis over Sindis. Starting in February 1978, 1,746
civil servants of Sindi origin were sacked from the provincial administration.°” To
cap it all, General Zia tightened controls in the region to subdue the dissidence of
any Sindis who denounced his usurpation of power and the ‘murder’ of Bhutto.
These circumstances explain the success of the Movement for the Restoration of
Democracy in Sind. This movement was launched in 1981 bya coalition of the prin-
cipal opposition parties nationwide, but it found a particular echo in Sind because of
the PPP’s influence in that province.°° Over a six-month period, 45,000 soldiers were
deployed, and this repression caused around 300 fatal casualties. Pamphlets circulated
clandestinely to promote the cause of the ‘Sindi Desh’ (Sindi Nation). One of the
movement’s leaders was Mumtaz Bhutto, former governor of Sind and a cousin of
Zulfikar Ali. He formulated a programme similar to Mujibur Rahman‘s Six-Point
Programme, demanding a confederation in which Sind would enjoy considerable
autonomy.
Benazir Bhutto, returning to Pakistan from years in exile, followed a different
strategy.°’ The electoral successes of her father, Zulfikar Ali, especially in the Punjab,
had proved that a Sindi could govern Pakistan. This doubtless dissuaded her from
promoting too radical a form of Sindi nationalism. Choosing to play her cards
within the national political field, she took over the leadership of the PPP shortly
before the 1988 elections, which marked the restoration of democracy following the
death of Zia, and led the party to victory. Although it won 52 seats out of 113 in the
Punjab, the PPP had the air of a Sindi party. It won all the seats in rural areas of
Sind and gained a two-thirds majority in the provincial assembly, whereas it won
only 94 of the 240 seats at the regional elections to the Punjabi assembly, which were
organized to coincide with the general election. The Sindi nationalist parties, on the
other hand, did not win a single seat. This reversal — particularly unexpected in the
case of the Sind National Front, founded by Mumtaz Bhutto in 1984 — confirmed the
recognition of the Sindis within the PPP. The party could be said to have become a
pivotal force for their national integration. The fact that Benazir became Prime
Minister made the Sindis even more eager to renew their allegiance to the Pakistani
state. However, this toing and froing between enthusiasm and defiance in attitudes to
a state of according to the ethnic origin of the leader, reveals the weakness of its insti-
tutions. The state had not managed to free itself from regional idiosyncrasies. Instead
of standing above the throng, it became the stake in a competition between the elites
of the different communities. Nevertheless, this political pattern facilitated a national
integration of the groups which could hope to gain power ~ in the event, the Sindis.
Just at the very moment when the Sindis were beginning to lurch away from
their old separatist philosophy and support Z A Bhutto’s rise to power, two other
minorities, the Baluchis and the Pashtuns, felt a rush of nationalist fervour, mainly
because of Bhutto’s policies.
The Baluchi Self-Determination Movement

Although it is home to a mere 5 per cent of the population of Pakistan according to
the 1998 census, Baluchistan covers 42 per cent of the country. It occupies a strate-
gic region bordering both Iran and Afghanistan. The fact is that the Baluchi
population extends over several countries — Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan — and this
explains the irredentist nature of their own nationalism within Pakistan.
This nationalism harks back to the realm of Kalat, a principality of the Afghan
state. Its eighteenth-century borders coincided roughly with the area over which the
ethnic Baluchi population is spread. During the period of British colonization, in
1871, the Goldsmid Line was drawn in the west, ceding a quarter of the zone occu-
pied by Baluchis to Iran. This was followed by the Durand Line, which allocated a
further — smaller — area to Afghanistan. In addition, many Baluchi’s of colonial India
were subjects of various Princely States, of which one was Kalat; while others lived
under direct British rule. At the time of Partition the ruler of Kalat opted for inde-
pendence, but the Pakistani army overcame his resistance in March 1948. The heir
to the throne of Kalat then tried to bring together the Baluchi tribal leaders (the
sardar) in an autonomous state in accordance with the Lahore Resolution of 1940.
The Pakistani government, however, succeeded in winning over these chiefs, and two
provinces were established — Baluchistan, combining the zones previously under
British rule; and the Baluchistan States Union, grouping the former Princely States.
The two came together in 1955 under the terms of the ‘One Unit Scheme’. However,
Baluchistan did not get its first assembly under universal suffrage until 1972.
In the 1950s the Prince of Kalat, Abdul Karim, launched a People’s Party which
spoke for a Baluchi nationalism based less on language than on an ethnic identity
fostered by imagined traditions. In fact Baluchis belong to two linguistic groups; one
group speaks Baluchi and the other Brahui, which was accepted as a Baluchi lan-
guage since Brahui was spoken by the Kalat dynasty itself. The People’s Party
protested at the underrepresentation of Baluchis in the state apparatus, but interclan
rivalries hindered its development.
Baluchi nationalism began to crystallize under the influence of the centralizing
zeal of Z A Bhutto. In 1972 a coalition formed by the National Awami Party —

whose base was in the NWFP, but which had combined with the People’s Party — and
the Jamiyyat-ul Ulama-i Islam (JUI), Militant Muslims supported by the sardar of
Baluchistan— won the elections in both regions. The new governments announced
that they were happy to ‘indigenize’ the administrations of their province, duly
replacing civil servants from outside by ‘sons of the soil’. However Islamabad dis-
approved of this ‘spoil system’ which deprived the national elite — and above all the
Punjabis — of attractive opportunities. Redistribution of investments introduced a
further point of discord, because Baluchistan and the NWFP, accusing Islamabad of
not being sufficiently concerned with development in their territory, wanted control
of their own industrialization.°®
In February 1973 Bhutto, citing separatist intrigues, dismissed the Baluchistan
government — at that time under the control of Attaullah Khan Mengal — and the
NWEP leader resigned in sympathy. Arms opportunely discovered in the possession
of the Iraqi military attaché were said to have been destined for delivery to A K
Mengal. Nevertheless, the Baluchi assembly showed strong support for national
integration, voting unanimously in favour of Urdu as the province’s official language.
Such expressions of goodwill evidently did nothing to prevent repression of the
Baluchi movement, which was what concerned the capital. However, imprisoning
the heads of this movement meant that their subordinates — who, in general were
more radical — took their places and organized a guerrilla campaign whose discourse
was nationalistic with Marxist overtones. This attracted a number of students and
the BPLF (Baluchi People’s Liberation Front), together with the BSO (Baluchi
Students’ Organization), launched an insurrection which led to the mobilization of
more than 10,000 fighters over a period of four years.
To put an end to all this, the Pakistani army had to deploy 80,000 men aided by
the Shah of Iran, who had no wish to see the troubles boil over into his territory of
West Baluchistan.°? The casualty total for this conflict was heavy: 5,300 victims
among the Baluchis and 3,300 in the Pakistani army.°” The suppression of this
insurrection marked a turning point. Before it, the Baluchis simply wanted ‘regional
autonomy within a confederal Pakistani constitutional framework’ but after the hos-
tilities the separatist feelings were ‘much intensified’.°! Once again, state centralism
was a key factor in the emergence of self-determination movements. Z A Bhutto has
much to answer for in this respect.°?
General Zia managed to appease one section of the Baluchis by releasing several
thousand prisoners and granting an amnesty to those who had sought refuge in
Afghanistan or Iran. Some chose to go into exile. One was Ataullah Khan Mengal.
He went to London to found the Sind Baluch Pashtun Front with the help of
Mumtaz Bhutto and Khair Buksh Marri, who settled in Kabul. Both remained par-
tisans, determined to continue an armed struggle for a confederate regime.
Those who remained in Pakistan adopted a more moderate stance. Former governor
Ghaus Bux Bizenjo set up the Pakistan National Party with the aim of exerting pressure
on Islamabad to make the authorities respect the federal arrangements inscribed in the
1973 Constitution. An appreciable number of the sardar preferred merely to collaborate
with central government; which was perfectly happy to accept them.
Baluchi nationalism could hardly look for support from an intelligentsia or a

middle class. Neither existed to any great extent in a region where literacy levels were
the lowest in the country at 8.5 per cent.®? Moreover, the province began to lose its
relative cultural homogeneity, since so many Baluchis were migrating to other
provinces. Of 4 million Baluchis counted in Pakistan in 1981, a third lived in Sind,
in the NWFP or in the Punjab, while Baluchistan also received an appreciable
number of immigrants. Thus 57 per cent of the inhabitants spoke either Baluchi or
Brahui, while 28 per cent spoke Pashto and 8 per cent Sindi.
Among the Pashto speakers were the Pashtuns in the north of the province, a zone
which had benefited from a particular effort at development by the British, and a
large number of Afghan refugees driven by war to flee their own country. In 1997,
out of 1,350,000 Afghan refugees in Pakistan, 352,700 were in Baluchistan.®* These
refugees founded a political party, the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party, which
claimed Pakistani citizenship and the right to vote on their behalf — both of which
the Baluchis refused them. Besides, the Baluchi parties had been opposed to orga-
nizing a further census for a long time, fearing that it would merely bring out the
demographic expansion of Pashtuns in general. In the end this ‘enemy within’ con-
sumed a sizeable portion of their fighting energy, and they no longer blamed
Islamabad for all their problems.
The 1988 elections, and those that followed, saw the return to strength of old
political factions. In November 1988 the sardar Akhtar Mengal had formed the
Baluchistan National Movement, which became the majority partner in a coalition
government — the Baluchistan National Alliance — whose architect was another
Baluchi notable, Nawal Akbar Bugti. Meanwhile on the eve of the 1990 elections,
internal strife led to schism. As a result, Bugti created the Jamhoori Watan Party
(JWP), which formed an alliance with the Pakistan Muslim League, Nawaz Sharif’s
party which proceeded to take power in Quetta. This marked a change of strategy
by Baluchi political figures, who — rather than associate themselves with other region-
alists, as in the days before 1970 — preferred to seek allies among the parties in power
in Islamabad. Thus Zulfigar Ali Khan Magsi led a coalition government in 1996
with the benediction of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto: His cabinet included
members from the PPP, the Pakistan Muslim League and the Jamiyyat-ul Ulama-i
Islami.
In December 1996, the Mengal and Bizenjo factions combined into a new polit-
ical party, the Baluchistan National Party (BNP). Yet no regional party managed to
win a majority at the 1997 elections. The BNP — with just 10 seats out of the 43 in
the Baluchistan assembly — gained the most, but was still very much in a minority.
Accordingly, Akhtar Mengal formed a government with the support of four other
parties, one of which was the PPP. At the same time, in the National Assembly the
BNP was supporting Nawaz Sharif, the Prime Minister from the Pakistan Muslim
League.® In 1998 however, Mengal resigned, on the pretext that Baluchi honour
had been besmirched because the authorities in Quetta had not been kept informed
about the nuclear tests carried out in Baluchistan by the Islamabad government. In
fact, the main bone of contention between Mengal and Sharif concerned the
improper allocation by central governement of funds derived from the exploitation
ISLAMIC IDENTITY AND ETHNIC TENSIONS ot
of natural gas in Baluchistan, and the distribution between the provinces of federal
subsidies for which Islamabad was responsible. In January 1998 Mengal had ques-
tioned the National Finance Commission’s annual budget plans. Once again,
conflicts of interest fed arguments over identity®® but at the same time they encour-
aged a certain degree of pragmatism. This tendency, together with the divisions
between the Baluchi leaders, explains their strategy of alliance with the national par-
ties, and the erosion of their natural militancy. The Pashtun movement followed a
similar course.
The Pashtuns: From Pashtunistan to Pakhtunkhwa
At the moment of independence, the principal Pashtun leaders were against the inte-
gration of their province into Pakistan. Gaffar Khan’s ‘Red Shirt’ movement even
called for the formation of a Pashtunistan, and boycotted the referendum which led
to the NWEP becoming part of Pakistan.°’ Khan was arrested, and Jinnah dismissed
the government.
In the end, Ghaffar Khan went into exile in Afghanistan, but his son, Wali Khan,
joined in setting up the National Awami Party (NAP), which agreed to play to the
rules of the Pakistani political game. The Pashtun intelligentsia, unlike the elites from
Bengal and from Sind, had been educated in Aligarh or in the Punjab. The Pashtuns
felt even more at ease than the Baluchis about taking part in the building of the new
Pakistan, because of their presence in the army.®° At the end of the 1960s there were
19 Pashtuns among the 48 highest-ranking officers compared with 16 Punjabis;
and three of them — Ayub Khan was one — became chief of army staff. Factors to
do with national identity were the main explanations for the mediocre pulling power
of Wali Khan’s party, which never gained more than 20 per cent of the vote, and
only 18 per cent in 1970. It resigned itself to moderating its message for that very
reason. In 1969, for example, it accepted the borderline between the NWFP and
Baluchistan, part of which Wali Khan had hitherto claimed. ‘The NAP govern-
ment of 1972 even promoted Urdu to the rank of official language in the province.
The government of Baluchistan had passed the same measure, but here it was
mainly a reflection of Wali Khan’s wish to be seen as a national figure. Furthermore
he wanted to compete with Z A Bhutto in presenting himself as a socialist leader on
the national political scene.
Pashtun nationalism was, nevertheless supported by propaganda emanating from
Kabul. In 1947 the King of Afghanistan had asked the British to allow the NWFP
to choose between becoming part of Afghanistan or setting up an independent
Pashtunistan. The Afghan authorities pursued this line again after Daud’s seizure
of power in 1973.70 The new strong man in Kabul declared that he would work for
the establishment of an independent Pashtunistan, on the model of the new
in
Bangladesh, in cooperation with the secretary general of the NAP now in exile
Kabul, Ajmal Khattak. He was evidently altogether more radical than Wali Khan,
who had approved of the federal dimension of the constitution set out by Bhutto in
1971. The NAP continued to play its politics the Pakistani way.
This outside support would certainly have been insufficient to relaunch Pashtun
nationalism, had it not been revived at that very moment by the centralizing politics
of Islamabad. As we have seen, Bhutto dismissed the Baluchi government in 1973,
precipitating in turn the resignation of the North West Frontier Province govern-
ment. The rivalry between Bhutto and Wali Khan intensified, and in 1975 Bhutto
used the pretext of the murder of a PPP minister, H M Sherpao, in the NWFP to
have Wali Khan arrested and to dissolve the NAP on 9 February. The trial of Wali
Khan dragged on until Bhutto’s downfall in 1977, at which point the accusations
were dropped. The case had never aroused any prolonged violence, and Pashtun
nationalism now started to enjoy a modest revival. It is undeniable that the economic
position in the NWFP was distinctly improved by the end of the 1970s. Without
doubt, after the Punjab, the NWFP was the province that gained most from the rural
exodus towards Karachi and the migration of workers to the Gulf States, where
between 1976 and 1981, 35 per cent of expatriate workers — some 300,000 — were
from Pakistan.
Paradoxically the war in Afghanistan went some way towards reducing Pashtun
irredentism, for several reasons. Four-fifths of the some 3 million Afghans, 80 per
cent of whom were Pashtuns, who fled to Pakistan between 1980 and 1985, settled
in the NWFP, where the population increased by 20 per cent to 16 million, thereby
exceeding Afghanistan’s population of 14 million. Some Pakistani Pashtun leaders
dared to assert that a Pashtunistan had already come into existence de facto.’! The
Pashtuns also toned down their most radical nationalistic claims because they saw
their priority as aiding General Zia’s war effort against the Soviets. In support of the
war, Zia promoted a certain number of Pashtuns in the administration and the
forces.’* The influx of so many Afghan refugees was not in itself something that
encouraged Pashtun irredentism, given that they provided competition for the local
tradesmen and workers, particularly in Peshawar.’? Wali Khan’s party, known
thenceforth as the Awami National Party (ANP), finally protested — especially before
the 1988 elections — against the costs of the war effort and supporting the swarms of
immigrants into the NWFP.’* The economic argument was indeed pressing, forcing
the government in Islamabad to repatriate refugees. According to official sources, 2
million were repatriated in 2000, but that still left 870,000 of them in the NWFP and
457,000 in Baluchistan.’° Finally, following the Talibanization of Afghanistan, Islam
was added to Pashtun tribalism on the identity market of the North West Frontier
Province. ‘The new Kabul regime, which relied on an ethnic Pashtun base, therefore
found ready recruits among the Pashtuns of Pakistan, as Chapter 6 below demon-
strates. Henceforth Islamic militancy tends to prevail over the Pashtun nationalist
programme.
All these factors, particularly the relative prosperity of the Pashtuns and their
increasing integration into the country’s military and administrative elites, explain
the weakening of Wali Khan’s nationalist programme. It was he, for example, who
supported first Zia in 1983, during the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy.
As a result, the Pashtun leaders exiled in Kabul returned in 1986. The ANP per-
sisted with this political approach during the 1998 elections, since these elections
showed that from now on the mainstream national parties took the front of the polit-
ical stage in the NWFP. While the ANP and JUI both won 3 seats each, the PPP
gained 7, and Nawaz Sharif’s Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (JI) gained 8. The national-
ists therefore decided to collaborate with them. In spring 1989 Wali Khan entered
into an alliance with Nawaz Sharif against their common enemy, the Bhutto family.
This coalition, which sealed the rapprochement between Pashtuns and Punjabis,
provided Sharif with a good way of emasculating Pashtun nationalism; it was to last
nearly ten years.
In 1997 the ANP won 28 of the 83 seats in the NWFP assembly. Its alliance with
Nawaz Sharif’s party, the Pakistan Muslim League (N), which had won 31 seats, was
therefore renewed. It formed a new government under aleader of the PML(N). It
broke with Islamabad a year later when Nawaz Sharif rejected a NWFP assembly
resolution, passed on 14 November 1997, to rename the province Pakhtunkhwa.
Sharif has followed this line because the unpopularity of such a change of name
among the non-Pashtuns of the region of Hazara, electoral bastion of the PML.’°
However, the issue about which the ANP and the PML(N) parted ways reflected the
growing moderation of the Pashtun nationalists. By demonstrating the renaming of
the NWFP, they admitted that they had given up the idea of forming a common
province with the Pashtuns of Baluchistan — that is to say, Pashtunistan. ‘The ANP
accepted the frontier inherited from the British.
In fact one of the principal bones of contention was the Kalabagh barrage pro-
ject, destined for the NWFP frontier. It had been in the planning stage for some
years. The ANP was against it, arguing that the irrigation waters would benefit
only the Punjab and its agriculture, while there was a risk that the retained water
would cause floods upstream. Once again, economic interests were hidden in the
folds of ideological discussion.’’
The Growth of a Muhajir Sense of Identity

Of all the communities preoccupied with nationalist feeling, the only one still
inclined towards a violent activism was that of the Muhaijirs, yet this movement did
not appear in an obviously separatist light. The Muhajirs became more radical in the
1970s as they reacted to the politicies of Bhutto and the PPP in the province of Sind.
At that time they remained faithful to the Islamic parties and particularly to the
Jamaat-i Islami (JI).’* Thereafter, looking at themselves as ‘more or less imaginary’
victims of discrimination by the state, they tended to define themselves more and
more as a community apart rather than as the spearhead of Islamic ideology. ‘The
Gujaratis and the Urdu speakers minimized their differences and began to ‘think of
themselves as Muhajirs’.”? Once more, a group refashioned its political identity
according to its socioeconomic interests.
Distancing themselves from the JI, the Muhajirs formed their own organization at
the end of the 1970s. Students played a pioneering role in this as they reacted to the
new policy of quotas within the educational system. Some of them — such as Altaf
Hussain, who had just left the Students’ Union section of the JI because, in his view
it had been taken over by Punjabis — founded the All-Pakistan Muhajir Student
Organisation (APMSO) in Karachi in 1978. The Muhajirs also demonstrated when
civil
the quotas put in place by Zia were raised again, reserving 10 per cent of
service posts for retired soldiers — the army after all being solidly Punjabi. The
Muhajirs resented this measure even more than other changes, all to their disad-
vantage, in the 1980s. The ‘Green Revolution’ from which Punjabis had benefited
since the 1960s had reinforced their hegemony and allowed them to invest in indus-
try even in Karachi.®° Migrants who wanted to capitalize on the city’s dynamism
flooded in from all the provinces of Pakistan, not to mention refugees from the
Afghan war. In 1981, according to the census figures, the city’s population was 61
per cent Muhajir, 16 per cent Punjabi, 11 per cent Pashtun, 7 per cent indigenous
Sindi and 5 per cent Baluchi. Finally, the Pashtuns increasing influence in the upper
echelons of the army after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, further disadvantaged
the Muhajirs — just at the very moment when they were losing government posts as
a result of the quotas introduced in 1973. Ten years later, the cities of Sind were
represented in onlya fifth of the higher-ranked civil service posts, compared with a
third in 1973. From all this, militant Muhajirs derived grounds for arguing that
there was a deliberate pauperization of their community. This point, albeit over-
stated, was widely taken by groups which — although they still constituted an elite —
could not bear to see their privileged positions challenged — very much like the
Sikhs in India at about the same time.
In 1984, the leaders of the APMSO ~— again including Altaf Hussain — formed
a political party, the Muhajir Qaumi Mahaz (MQM).®! This Muhajir National
Movement recruited principally among students whose hopes of climbing the social
ladder had been dashed by the arrival of so many ‘foreigners’, notably Pashtuns.
The Pashtuns became the first victims of the violence that broke out in the mid-
1980s, generally on trivial grounds which the MQM did its best to exacerbate.®?
The MOM had several demands. Its main claims were first, that the Muhajirs
should be represented in greater numbers in the University and in the administra-
tion, and second, that only those who had lived in Sind at least twenty years should
be entitled to vote and buy property within the province. Deep down, they wanted
to establish a “Karachisuba’ — a Muhajir province based exclusively on the main city
in the land.*8
This programme, announced in 1987, allowed the MOM to win the municipal
elections in both Karachi and the second city of Sind, Hyderabad, during that
same year. ‘The party did very well again at the 1998 general elections, — they won
13 seats and the PPP, although it came out on top, failed to gain an absolute major-
ity. As a result, Benazir Bhutto drew up an agreement with. the MQM which added
enough seats to supply such a majority. In turn the MQM, having thus made an
alliance with a national political force, was able to creep up on the other regional
parties. he agreement represented a virtual charter for the Muhajir party, but the
new Prime Minister was reluctant to keep her promise. Notably she refused entry to
the Biharis of Bangladesh, who had wanted for a long time to settle in urban Sind,
a move which would have allowed them to reinforce their ranks of the Muhajirs.
‘The Muhajirs’ reply was to organize large demonstrations. ‘These degenerated into
riots, and the MQM then dissociated itself from the PPP. The violence increased
President Ghulam Ishaq Khan’s distrust for Benazir Bhutto, who was dismissed
from her position for her inability to restore order in Karachi.
With the 1990 elections approaching, the MOM formed a new alliance, this time
with the Islam-i Jamhoori Ittehad of Nawaz Sharif, the chief minister of the Punjab,
who was able to win a majority in Parliament. Once in power, however, this party
proved to be no better disposed towards the Muhajirs than the PPP. In June 1992 the
army was called in to ‘cleanse’ Karachi of its ‘antisocial’ elements. Operation
‘Clean-up’, which was meant to last six months, dragged on for two years. Some
MQM leaders went underground and some fled the country. Altaf Hussain was
already established in London; he is still there in 2002, and controls the movement
from a distance.®* The military operation only reinforced the Muhajir population’s
allegiance to the MQM. The military themselves left the field in November 1994.
The MQM boycotted the 1993 general election, which saw the return to power
of Benazir Bhutto, but participated in the provincial ones in Sind, which were won
by the PPP with just 56 seats out of 100 against 27 for the MQM{A); the (A) signi-
fied the faction controlled by Altaf Hussain. The MOM had suffered a schism not
long before; the other faction, the ‘authentic’ MQM, was called the MOM Haaiai.
This group seemed somehow seduced by advances made by the army once
Operation Clean-up was over. It united a number of dissidents who had been
turned away from Altaf Hussain because of his autocratic attitude, and was made up
of militants every bit as violent as the MQM(A) — hence the multiple vendettas and
bloody settlements of scores — but it had closer links to the local mafia. The death toll
due to rioting in Karachi rose to 1,500 in 1995 compared with 600 in 1994. In
October and December 1995 the MQM(A) organized two general strikes in
response to the murder of two of Altaf’s henchmen; paralysing the city.
This violence was part of what came to be called the “Kalashnikov Culture’.
During the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the resistance was supplied with arms,
particularly Chinese and Egyptian copies of the Kalashnikov and these often came
by way of Karachi. The Muhajir movements misappropriated some of this trade, at
the same time cementing a relationship between their clients and the gangs involved
in other forms of contraband, such as drugs. The armed groups offered them hench-
men in exchange for police protection, which they were able to provide periodically
when the MOM was in power. The end result was a virtual criminalization of the
Muhajir movement.
Far from being irrational, the MQM violence had the aim of ‘liberating’ some dis-
on
tricts of Karachi. Once the army withdrew in 1994, the party worked
reestablishing its authority in the districts lost during Operation Clean-up, particu-
larly those which had passed to the control of the Haqiqi faction. The MQM(A)
seemed at times to be involved less in an urban guerrilla operation than in a conquest
of territory. It declared that it was prepared to envisage a new partition similar to the
s.®°
one that had given birth to Bangladesh if Islamabad did not satisfy its ambition
Yet it seemed above all to be looking for an opportunity to go in for illegal traffick-
ing, and levy a sort of revolutionary tax."°
l
Despite its declared separatist aim, the MOM continued to play the electora
game. It even changed its name — but not its acronym — to Mutaheda Qaumi Mahaz
ity
(National United Movement) to avoid identification with a particular commun
especially
and thus be in a position to solicit votes throughout the whole country —
within the middle class. After the February 1997 elections, though the PPP remained
the largest single party, with 36 seats out of 100 in the Sind assembly, it could not
head the majority coalition. However, the PML(N) — the Pakistan Muslim League
(Nawaz) of Nawaz Sharif — and the Haq Parast group — the political window of the
MQM - won 15 and 28 seats respectively. This success prompted Nawaz Sharif and
Altaf Hussain to get together and form a more or less majority coalition, with 72
seats of their own and support from small parties and independent candidates. ‘The
agreement between the MQM and the PML(N) meant that the former could hold
three central government portfolios, the governorship of Sind as well as the presi-
dency of the province’s assembly, and a number of ministries similar to that held by
PMLJ(N) in the provincial administration. In addition, the ‘Biharis’ of Bangladesh
would be repatriated, while the quota of Muhajirs in the civil service would be
raised to 11.5 per cent and the MQM(Haqiqi) disarmed.
Since Nawaz Sharif failed to keep these three promises — least of all the one con-
cerning the MOM(Hagqiqi) — the MOM{(A) left the Sind government. In autumn
1998, the Prime Minister asked it to hand over the murderer of Hakim Saeed, a
former governor who had remained very popular. When the party refused, Sharif
declared a state of emergency in the province, whereupon the MQM(A) withdrew
its support.
General Musharraf’s seizure of power in October 1999 could have been an
embarrassment to the Muhajirs. On the one hand, the army had always considered
the MQM(A) a terrorist organization, colluding with the Indian secret services in
destabilizing the state. This had, after all, been one of the reasons for the extreme
violence of Operation Clean-up. On the other hand, for the first tume since Liaquat
Ali Khan, the strong man of the country was himself a Muhajir, born in Delhi and
a member of a family from Uttar Pradesh. But, in fact, the Muhajirs did not con-
sider Liaquat Ali Khan to be one of them. The MQM’s militancy is declining for
another reason today: the population of Karachi is tired of violence, and is starting
to resent its effect on the local economy: although Karachi generates 70 per cent of
the state’s revenue, it no longer attracts so much foreign investment. This economic
situation threatens to influence the development of a movement whose roots were
themselves socioeconomic.
No National Integration Yet?

The national integration of Pakistan looked more likely in 2000 than it did in 1970,
but it is still far from being achieved, particularly because of the Muhajir problem and
the minor provinces’ persistent resentment against domination by the Punjab. At the
end of the 1990s, under the last civilian government, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif,
President ‘Tarar (elected on 31 December 1997), and army chief Jahangir Karamat
were all Punjabis.®’ This province has thereby benefited from ambitious infrastructure
schemes, such as the Islamabad — Lahore motorway, construction of which gave
Nawaz Sharif the chance to squirrel away considerable sums by way of commission.®°
The political domination of the Punjabis during the process of democratization
was more or less inevitable, since their province has a majority of assembly seats —
115 out of 207 — compared with 46 for Sind, 26 for the NWFP and 11 for
Baluchistan. The Punjabis had grave reservations about the organization of the
last census, fearing that its results would show a population growth proportionately
stronger in the other regions, and that this would result ina fall in its share of the
federal budget. Furthermore, the census — which was organized in 1998 seven
years late under army supervision — revealed only a modest drop in the compara-
tive weight of the Punjab in favour of Sind where urban growth appeared to
have been underestimated. The MOM in particular has denounced the underes-
timate of the population of Karachi, which must cast doubts on the accuracy of
the census.°®?
Such a reaction demonstrates the importance which Pakistanis attach to reports
of comparative community strength related to the policy on quotas. The mobiliza-
tion of the small provinces has taken a new form since October 1998, with the
creation of the Movement for the Oppressed Nationalities of Pakistan (PONM).
Launched on the initiative of the ANP, this alliance combined the nationalist move-
ments of the NWEP. Sind, Baluchistan, and that part of the Punjab where Seraiki
is spoken. The inhabitants of this part of the Punjab consider that they are victim-
ized by other Punjabis.°°
The leaders of the PONM demanded the creation of a Seraiki province, which,
if it split from the Punjab, would mitigate the resentment provoked by its current
domination. Their other demands concerned the setting up ofa truly federal system,
and proportional representation of the provinces in the army and the administra-
tion.2! It was said that General Musharraf, himself of Muhajir origin, had provoked
disquiet among Punjabis following an interview he had given to Ajmal Khattak, the
Pashtun leader of the PONM. He had also shown his concern for regional minori-
ties by naming ministers within the government from among the Baluchis, the
Pashtuns and the Sindis. Such gestures indicated the start of a rebalancing process
but required confirmation and amplification so that Punjabi domination might be
called into question.
The limits of national integration explain the campaigns against ‘others’, regularly
brought into play by Pakistani leaders in order to weld the unity of the country once
more. These campaigns are launched against ‘bad Muslims’ such as the Ahmadi (see
Chapter 10 below) or against the Hindus or the Christians. The Hindus were the vic-
tims of planned persecutions, a direct echo of the excesses suffered by the Muslims
Table 1.3 Linguistic groups (%, by province, 1984) ao

Rilbes e
Punjabi Pashto Sindi Seraiki Urdu ~— Baluchi_—_ Other languages
Punjab 78.7 0.8 0.1 14:9 4.3 0.6 0.6

Sind Tat | O24 Pee) 22.6 4.9 14
NWFP 1 68.3 0.1 a 0.8 0.1 25.6
Baluchistan a Doel 8.3 Sul le 36.3 23.6
Pakistan 48.2 13:1 11.8 9.8 7.6 3 6.5
————————— an
Bureau of
Source: Government of Pakistan, Statistical Pocket Book of Pakistan, 1984, Islamabad, Federal
Statistics, 1984.
Table 1.4 Population (%, by province, 1981 and 1998 census)

i a al i acter
1981 1998
Punjab 56.7 56
Sind 22.6 23
NWFP Le! 13.4
Baluchistan Fal 5
FATA 2.6 2S
Source: S. Ahmed, ‘Centralization, Authoritarianism and the Mismanagement of Ethnic Relations in

Pakistan’, in M.E. Brown and S. Ganguly (eds), Government Politics and Ethnic Relations in Asta and the
Pacific, Cambridge Mass., MIT Press, 1997; Dawn, 9 July 1998.
in India at the same moment: uprisings in East Bengal in the 1950s, or those that fol-
lowed the destruction of the mosque at Ayodhya in 1992. This series of violent
eruptions has led to a continuing flow of immigration and in 2000 there were fewer
than 3 million Hindus in Pakistan, almost all concentrated in Sind.?* The Christians,
often converted Untouchables, have been, and remain, targets and are just as vul-
nerable.2? Over and above these scapegoats, those directing the affairs of Pakistan
carry on the confrontation with India, systematically invoking the old ‘theory of two
nations’, and all in aid of internal politics. The orchestration of this antagonism is
all of a piece with the perpetuation of the conflict over Kashmir. Pakistan, therefore,
might well be a case of nationalism without a nation.%*
2
EAST BENGAL
Between Islam and a Regional Identity
In 1947, the Muslim League — led by M.A. Jinnah, who was struggling to create a
single nation incorporating all the Muslims of the subcontinent — gained impressive
support in the province of Bengal. Who, then, were these Muslim Bengalis who
wanted to join their coreligionists in the north and northwest to form a ‘land of the
pure’?
Muslim Society in Bengal

At the very beginning of the thirteenth century, an aristocracy, proud of its foreign
origins, established itself in Bengal while still retaining its links with the north of
India.!
Its cultural language was Persian, and Urdu was its vernacular dialect. A political
and military elite, it took over great stretches of land during the time of the sul-
tanates and of the Mughal Empire. Nevertheless, by the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries these great Muslim landowners had become a minority.? They did not
speak the local dialect, nor did they feel any particular ties to Bengal. By the end of
the period this Muslim elite had admitted high caste Hindu converts to their ranks.
For a long time therefore, the Muslim League had formed apart of the zamindar
in East Bengal of which the nawab of Dhaka constituted a fine example. Khwaja
Nazimuddin, who led the first Cabinet of Pakistani East Bengal, came from a family
whose forebears had arrived in Bengal from Kashmir early in the eighteenth century,
to trade in leathers and pelts. They had acquired widespread landed properties, as
a result of their support for the British at the time of the Mutiny, one of them was
granted the hereditary title of nawab. As Urdu speakers, members of the family had
few ties with the people of Bengal. Their luxurious residence in Dhaka, Ahsan
Manzil, became the centre for Muslim League activities in Bengal from the time of
its foundation, and remained so throughout the Pakistani period.
Alongside this cultural aristocracy with its non-Bengali origins, a second elite
grew up. Comprising members of the liberal professions, mostly living in Calcutta —
lawyers, journalists and university professors — as well as industrialists and business-
men, for the most part Urdu speakers. Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy — head of the
last government of a unified Bengal, then founder of the Awami League and finally,
for a while, Prime Minister of Pakistan — gives us an idea of the social profile of this
small but very influential class which claimed, as did the elite described above, the
status of ashraf.
At the other end of the social scale were the huge majority of Muslim peas-
antry —illiterate, poor, and speaking only Bengali. These country folk practised a
popular Islam largely concerned with the worship of saints and the veneration of
Sufi teachers. Throughout the nineteenth century they had been the targets of
reformists, who convinced them — with some success — to abandon many practices
foreign to the Islam of the Koran, and to maintain their distance from their neigh-
bours, the Hindus.? Numerous meetings [anjuman] were organized to pass on the
instructions of Muslim representatives in the villages. Pious assemblies [waz mehfils]
in these villages attracted a large number of participants to listen to and pray with
a celebrated preacher.* All the same, however sincere this piety may have been, the
peasantry, long exploited by landowners and moneylenders aspired above all to a
betterment of their economic and social condition. In most cases the exploiters
belonged to a different religious community and this gave a special edge to the con-
flicts of interest which partly explained the ‘peasants’ support for the creation of
Pakistan.
Between these extremes — a few aristocrats on the one side, and a numerous
impoverished peasantry on the other — an essentially rural middle class arose at the
beginning of the twentieth century, thanks to profits from commercial enterprises
introduced and developed by the British. Once these Bengali-speaking families of
peasant stock had money they sent their sons to study at Dhaka (Dhaka) University,
founded in 1921. Many of them were imbued with the liberal culture of the rebirth
of Bengal, and a few were attracted by the ideals of the Communist Party of India,
established during the 1920s. The influence of the Russian Revolution in October
1917 was always more important in Bengal than in the western provinces of British
India, and the students, grouped in syndicates according to their political views, were
more activist.°
For a long time the Muslim League remained the party of the big property
owners, of members of the liberal professions, and industrialists, among whom the
most famous were the Ispahani. Only a few years before Partition, it transformed
itself into a mass party embracing the great majority of Muslims in the region.
Appointed secretary of the League in 1944, Abul Hashim, who was from an edu-
cated West Bengal Family, quickly succeeded in selling the party and its ideals to the
lower middle class and the peasantry. And so the unity of Muslim society in Bengal
was formed around its religious identity. The League seemed to be its guarantor and
expression in the face of the Bengali Hindus, who had dominated the political and
economic scene ever since the arrival of the British. All the same, the new Pakistani
citizens would soon assert with some force the other side of their identity, based this
time on their Bengali language and culture.
Nevertheless, the question of the ‘national’ language of the Muslims of Bengal
nevertheless did not arise in a vacuum. It had been the subject of numerous debates
throughout the nineteenth century, and the local press had largely echoed these.®
EAST BENGAL 41
Some, in the name of Islam and its culture, centred on the Near and Middle East,
defended the place of Urdu and its Arabic alphabet; others, taking due account of
the reality and the criterion of numbers, affirmed the preeminence of Bengali. In
the end, after much discussion, the Muslim press opted between 1920 and 1930 for
Bengali, without taking into account the value of Urdu as a means of communi-
cating with Muslims elsewhere in India. Middle-class intellectuals and university
students championed their mother tongue above even the creation of a Pakistani
state. To a former vice-chancellor of Aligarh who had suggested that Urdu should
become the national language of Pakistan, Muhammad Shahdullah, an eminent
linguist at Dhaka University had replied that using Urdu instead of Bengali in the
courts andin universities (of their region) would amount to political slavery.’
East Pakistan or Bang-I Islam

Nevertheless, Bengali linguistic ‘nationalism’ had not lessened the rivalries between
the Bengali speakers of the two religious communities. In the years preceding
Partition, religion had become the salient factor. At the 1946 provincial elections,
where the question of Pakistan was at stake, Bengali Muslims elected 113 League
candidates out of the 121 seats reserved for Muslims. It can therefore be said that the
success of the League, and of its programme, was incontestable. A strong majority
of Muslim electors had supported the principle of separation from India, without
being sure what the exact position of Bengal in a future Pakistan would be — whether
it would be divided, fully included or even remain united and independent. In the
very last hours before Partition, a small number of leaders showed a belated burst of
Bengali nationalism, but this did nothing to change the fact that the two religious
communities were finding it increasingly difficult to live side by side.
Let us recall the circumstances that exacerbated the antagonisms between Hindus
and Muslims. Numerous intercommunital disturbances had increased the sense of
insecurity between them. The most serious — on the day of direct action 16 August
1946, ordered by the Chief Minister of the government, H.S. Suhrawardy, demand-
ing the creation of Pakistan, caused thousands of deaths in the city of Calcutta
alone, especially among the Muslim minority. It was followed by the massacres of
Hindus at Noakhali and in Bihar. Ever since 1937 successive governments of the
province had been headed by Muslims. Having enjoyed an overall majority in
Bengal as a whole since the end of the nineteenth century, they had obtained from
the British the agreement that elections should be held according to the principle of
separate electorates, so they dominated the political life of the province. A.K. Fazlul
Hug, founder of Krishak Praja, the Peasants’ Party, was at that time allied with the
Muslim League, and he had become the first Chief Minister of Bengal. ‘This gen-
tleman — highly thought of by the peasants of the delta and considered by no one to
be ‘essentially secular’,® yet apparently somewhat capricious — had presented an
unequivocal resolution for the creation of Pakistan on 23 March 1940, during the
League’s famous session in Lahore. It stipulated that ‘the regions where the Muslims
held a numerical majority, as in the northwest and the east of India, should be
grouped together to form independent states in which the constituent units should
hold autonomous and sovereign status’. This declaration was subject to numerous
interpretations; that is why the immediate question arose whether there should be
Pakistan in the northwest, Bang-i Islam in the east, and Usmanistan (Hyderabad and
Berar) in the centre.?
The next year, Fazlul Huq had to leave the League due to differences of opinion
with Jinnah who, in his view, did not take the interests of Bengal seriously enough.
He then formed a second administration without a single member of the League,
but he had to resign from the post of Chief Minister in 1943 under pressure from
the governor and following the defection of some European members of the assem-
bly who supported the League. His place was taken by a very influential member of
this party and one who was close to Jinnah, Khwaja Nazimuddin. ‘That same year
the province suffered a terrible famine which caused 3 million deaths. Then, in
March 1946, the elections brought to power Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy, a lawyer
from Calcutta who found himself at the head of the last Cabinet of an undivided
Bengal.
It was in this same year, 1946, that an amendment to the Lahore Resolution rec-
ommended the creation of a single state for the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent,
a state which would include the regions of the northwest and the east, where they
were in a majority. On 27 April 1947 however during a press conference,
Suhrawardy announced aplan for the founding of a sovereign, united and entirely
independent Bengal. He expressed his agreement with the two most important
members of Congress at regional level: Sarat Chandra Bose, elder brother of
Subhas Chandra Bose: and Kiran Shankar Roy, leader of Congress members in the
regional assembly. This was a risk for these politicians, without the prior support of
their respective parties. Bose and Roy had distinctly divergent views concerning the
direction to be taken by Congress in Delhi. As for Suhrawardy, when he took this ini-
tiative he was going against the theory of two nations defended by Jinnah.
Nevertheless, Jinnah did not at first seem to be against the plan, but the other
important leaders of the League in Bengal, Khwaja Nazimuddin and his friends,
reacted against it violently. The majority of the Bengali members of the League still
hoped that the whole province would be incorporated in the future Pakistan —
including the city of Calcutta, with its factories and its port. Put together late in the
day, and against a background of serious intercommunal disturbances, the claim for
a unified and sovereign Bengal looked rather like a last-minute proposal by a few
Bengali Muslim leaders to prevent the partition of the province and avoid the loss to
Pakistan of Calcutta — a loss they dreaded more than anything else, and which
seemed inevitable.
Some historians of Bangladesh would like to see in Suhrawardy’s declaration the
earliest manifestation of a Bengali nationalism destined to grow with the passing
years. They recalled the strength with which the Hindus of Bengal had fought the
first attempt at partition in 1905 in the name of ‘Bengality’ at a time when their own
dominant position seemed to be assured. In 1947, on the other hand, the Hindus,
now in the minority in their province, felt — at least politically — thoroughly weak-
ened. Under the influence of the Hindu Nationalist party, the Hindu Mahasabha
and its Bengali leader Shyamprasad Mookerjee, they had no confidence that
EAST BENGAL Po)
politicians within the League would defend their interests. The experience of the
previous ten years, during which there had been a succession of governments with
a Muslim majority in Calcutta, seemed to them to be a proof of impending danger.
Encouraged by a press largely in favour of Partition, they therefore preferred to see
a separation of their province, even at the price of tremendous displacements of
population and the series of painful disasters which would follow in its wake.
In truth, the question of a unified and sovereign Bengal could not be the object of
more extensive discussion, because the English wanted to sort out the way in which
power might be transferred very quickly, while on the other hand the very powerful
leaders of the Congress Party, Jawarhalal Nehru and Sardar Patel, were vehemently
expressing their opposition to an independent Bengal. To them, such independence
would mean the domination of the country by the Muslim League, and — in either
the shorter or longer term — the risk that Bengal, with its majority Muslim popula-
tion might elect to join Pakistan.'? Indeed the independence of Bangladesh in 1971
did not give rise to any movement, from either side of the border, in favour of
reuniting the Indian State of West Bengal with the new sovereign country. Only a
confederation including India and Pakistan might, perhaps, have been able to pro-
vide for a unified Bengali nationalism. The question remains to be answered.
The Language Movement

On the morning of 16 August 1947, the Bengalis — for the most part Muslims — in
East Bengal therefore woke to find themselves included in a partnership, where due
account had been taken of their religion, but where they had the immediate impres-
son that their political weight did not correspond to the size of their population.
Assertion of their identity took the form of claim for an equal status for their lan-
guage and their culture above all else. Economic and political demands were added
later.
The first Cabinet of Pakistani East Bengal was led by Khwaja Nazimuddin, a
conservative politician ever loyal to Jinnah. As of 15 September 1947, a mere month
after Partition and Independence, a pamphlet circulated in Dhaka proposing that
Bengali should be chosen as the language for education, in the courts and in East
Pakistan’s administration; while Urdu and Bengali should be used jointly at the
‘centre’ — at that time Karachi. Those who ran the country failed to appreciate the
significance of this claim.
As early as September 1947, students at Dhaka University organized themselves
in a group known as the Tamaddun Majlis, or Cultural Association, which launched
a campaign calling for Bengali to be the language for education and in the courts,
but also the language of central government. '! The following month the Tamaddun
Majlis took the initiative by forming an Action Committee in favour of the national
language, at first strove to put its point of view in the press and to government ofh-
cials. Reacting to a decision taken at an education conference held in Karachi,
which had accepted Urdu as the state language of Pakistan, the students of Dhaka
University gathered on the campus on 6 December 1947 demanding that Bengali
should ‘take priority in so far as it was a national language of the Pakistani State and
at the same time the official language for teaching and the courts in East Pakistan’. 2
The demonstrators were already denouncing what they termed the ‘betrayal of
Bengali and the people of East Bengal’. After this meeting they marched through the
streets of the eastern capital. At the same time, at Sylhet, in the northeast of the
country, the partisans of Urdu were apprising the Prime Minister of the province,
Khwaja Nazimuddin, of their point of view, but they were very much in the minor-
ity and theirs was an isolated action.
The middle class — and particularly the ‘vernacular elite’!? who spoke Bengali nat-
urally felt humiliated by the use of only English and Urdu on banknotes, stamps,
coinage, and at the top of governmental papers. When, at the first session of the
Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, a Bengali asked for his language to be used in the
deliberations on a par with English and Urdu, the Prime Minister, Liaquat Ali
Khan, issued a blunt refusal on the pretext of protecting Pakistan unity. This refusal
gave rise to vehement protest from the students of the Action Committee: strikes,
marches and meetings proliferated. At this time, Bengalis made up 44 million of the
total Pakistan population of 69 million. On the basis of numbers alone their lan-
guage deserved at least equal status with Urdu, mother tongue of no more than 3.5
per cent of the population, according to one 1951 statistic.'* As for English, its
retention as an official language should have been time-limited. As far as Liaquat Ah
Khan and the leaders of the League in Karachi were concerned, Urdu was the lan-
guage of all the Muslims in India, and it had been for those millions that Pakistan
had been created at the cost of years of struggle and suffering. This argument was
specious on the linguistic level but it did have a certain impact where the Muslims of
the north of the subcontinent were concerned, especially for those who had emi-
grated from the former United Provinces to the new state.
Faced with opposition from the authorities, a fresh action committee of students
from all parties except the League was formed in March 1948. It called itself the
Action Committee for the National Language, and appealed for a general strike. Its
members organized pickets in front of government offices, post offices and courts.
The police charged the strikers and demonstrators with lathis, and made numerous
arrests. Under pressure from the students, agitation in favour of Bengali gained
support in most towns, and was severely repressed in every case. On 15 March
1948 the Prime Minister of East Pakistan, Khwaja Nazimuddin, agreed to receive
a delegation from the Action Committee, although he had declared on several occa-
sions that it was made up of communists, enemies of Pakistan. The Pakistani
Communist Party did not attract a large number of members at that time but out of
130 deputies to the party’s 1948 national congress, 125 were Bengalis and only five
from West Pakistan. ‘To men of politics in the West, the influence of East Bengal’s
communists seemed significant. Besides, some years prior to Independence, several
peasant movements — such as the ‘Tebhaga, which had mobilized the tenant farmers
to demand a more equitable distribution of revenues from land — had highlighted on
the role of communists in the rural north of Bengal. From the start of the campaign
for the language, the authorities showed a tendency to throw the leaders of the
movement into prison.!°
Up against the students, Khwaja Nazimuddin signed a document containing
EAST BENGAL 45
eight points under which he undertook to release the imprisoned demonstrators. He

also promised that the regional assembly, due to meet in the first week of April,
would recognize that Bengali should have the status of the official language of the
eastern half of the country once English had been abandoned. Education at all
levels should be in the state language; nevertheless in schools and universities the
mother tongue of the population concerned could also be used. Under another res-
olution the regional assembly agreed to recommend to the National Assembly that
Bengali should be adopted on an equal status with Urdu as a national language of
Pakistan, and the recommendation made it clear that the two languages should
have equal status in central government recruitment examinations. Khwaja
Nazimuddin probably had no intention of honouring his second promise. Indeed,
the question of the national language was never raised by the regional assembly with
the authorities in Karachi during his administration. His primary objective was to
calm the situation before Qaid-i Azam Jinnah’s arrival in Dhaka.
In fact Muhammad Ali Jinnah did come to Dhaka, where he delivered a long
speech on 21 March 1948 in the course of which he spoke firmly about the language
question. He left to the government and to the elected representatives the job of
deciding for themselves what language should be used by the administration, in edu-
cation and in the courts — for Bengali alone. He vigorously condemned the fomenters
of disturbances and was delighted that Khwaja Nazimuddin had been so firm in his
efforts to restore order. He considered the promises made by the Prime Minister to
the students invalid, saying they had been extorted from him. Moreover, he insisted
on the principle that Urdu alone should be the national language of Pakistan, since
he saw this as absolutely essential to guarantee the unity of the state. On this occa-
sion, Jinnah — who had no doubt been badly advised — lacked his customary
shrewdness. Next day, having agreed to receive a few representatives of the Action
Committee, he reiterated his refusal to grant Bengali a status equivalent to that of
Urdu.
The resolution adopted by the East Bengal Assembly on 6 April 1948 therefore
granted Bengali the status of an official language only within the province and then
only once it had been decided to drop English. ‘This was designed to postpone the
matter to an uncertain future. Professor Shahidullah, university man and highly
regarded linguist, solemnly reaffirmed the ‘Bengality’ of the province’s inhabitants,
going so far as to write in the Daily Azad of 1 January 1949: ‘It is true that there are
Hindus and Muslims. But what is transcending is that they are in essence Bengali.
This is a reality. Nature with her own hand has stamped the indelible mark of
Bengali in such a manner on our appearance and language that it is no longer pos-
sible to conceal it.’ This declaration by a very respected university man, who was
clearly above suspicion as neither a communist nor a foreign agent, marked the
beginning of the linguistic and cultural identity of Bengalis, whatever their religious
affinity.
The students’ activism in defence of Bengali was not entirely disinterested.
Thinking of their future careers in the administration they were not unaware of the
fact that for many years to come, English alone would give them access to the senior
In
jobs. However they saw the rejection of their own language as an intolerable slur.
their struggle on its behalf they were defending their dignity and they made Bengali
the symbol of their identity. The authorities in Karachi failed to understand this.
Not content with refusing Bengali the status of a national language, central gov-
ernment decided, in the name of Pakistan’s national unity, to substitute the
Arabic-Persian alphabet for the alphabet in which Bengalis had always written their
language. Bengali had always been written in an alphabet derived from Brahman
writings in the reign of Ashoka in the third century BC, similar to the Devanagari
script used for Sanskrit and Hindi. The Pakistan government spent large sums of
money establishing centres where adult literacy in Bengali could be taught with the
aid of the Arabic alphabet. Inducements in the form of prizes were also given to
authors who published their works in Bengali, but in Arabic script. This brutal
change of alphabet seemed unacceptable both to students and to intellectuals in the
province, since it cut them off from their rich Bengali literature, whose first mani-
festations went back to the eleventh century. Professor Shahidullah, a member of the
Committee for the Reform of the Language of East Bengal, joined the students in
condemning this policy. The recommendations of this government committee were
not made public until several years later, in the time of Ayub Khan’s regime. He pro-
posed the substitution of the Bengali vocabulary, richly embellished with Sanskrit
both by borrowing and by derivation, by an Arabic—Persian lexicon which would be
shared with Urdu. Bengali grammar was also to be freed from references based on
Sanskrit, and the presentation of the language was to be simplified. Finally, the
committee hoped for the general acceptance of Urdu as the second language in edu-
cational establishments at both primary and secondary level.
Between 1948 and 1952, when the province’s economic situation was far from sat-
isfactory, little attention was paid to the subject of language. Some districts had to
face conditions of scarcity, aggravated by the deplorable state of all means of com-
munication and the absence of most forms of transport. The peasants expressed
their dissatisfaction violently. ‘There were also strikes against rising prices and low
wages in the industrial sector, which was still underdeveloped, and indeed by junior
civil servants and teachers. During the years following Partition, therefore, popular
discontent can be laid at the door of the decisions taken by the government in
Dhaka which reacted by imposing strict control on the press, and putting demon-
strators in prison. Little by little, popular opinion realized that the regional
government was content merely to apply orders from central government and that
it really had little room for manoeuvre. Disaffection towards the politicians in the
west, members of the League, grew wherever their responsibility for the misfortunes
of Bengal was clearly recognized. This discontent was not limited to Communist
Party sympathisers: opposition emerged even from the Muslim League of Bengal.
‘The party known as the Awami Muslim League, which had acted as spearhead of
the struggle for autonomy and then independence, had been founded in 1949 by
H.S. Suhrawardy, Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhasani and Sheikh Mujibur
Rahman, who was twenty-nine at the time. They were all former members of the
Muslim League. Later, in 1953, the Awami Muslim League, seeking to show that is
was a non-religious party, dropped the word Muslim. This party went on to unite all
the nationalists, whether they came from the left, the centre or the right, on a
EAST BENGAL ve
common platform. In fact the Communist Party leaders pushed their members to
join the ranks of the new party, where they were less exposed to official repression,
and then to work from the inside to get the communist point of view heard. The
East Pakistan Youth League, (the Purba Pakistan Yubo League), was set up soon
afterwards with the aim of enlisting the young people in the campaigns for the
national language and for the propagation of left-wing ideas.
The movement for the defence of the Bengali language was revived once more —
and with greater strength after all the frustrations of those who had realized how
little importance Karachi attached to the aspirations of East Bengal. In January
1952, Khwaja Nazimuddin, who had become Prime Minister of Pakistan following
the assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan, reaffirmed that Urdu alone would be the
national language. This declaration was in direct opposition to the promise he had
made to the students four years earlier, and was tantamount to snapping his fingers
at the previous year’s census figures, which had indicated that a majority — 56.4 per-
cent — of the Pakistani population declared Bengali to be their mother tongue,
while the figure for Urdu had dropped to only 3.37 percent.'® It provoked a protest
campaign which mobilized many outside of the Action Committee for the National
Language. The Awami League under its president, Maulana Bhasani, the League of
Muslim Students of East Pakistan and other student organizations combined to
launch an appeal for a strike. An action committee was formed from all the parties
for defence of the national language (the All Parties National Language Action
Committee). Meetings and marches followed, and a general strike was called for on
21 February 1952, the Day for the National Language.
The government reacted by absolutely forbidding any meeting or march for a
period of thirty days from 20 February. Despite some dithering by the leaders of the
movement, the students decided to carry on regardless. They organized meetings
and defied the forces of law and order in small groups, leaving the university in pro-
cession. The death of three of them, killed by police bullets, gave the movement its
first martyrs. Today, 21 February is still commemorated, and celebrations are held
around the monument erected to the memory of the students killed defending their
language.
These three deaths were followed by several others the day after and the days after
that. The importance of those days, particularly of 21 February, also lies in the fact
that the death of these students aroused general indignation right out as far as the
villages, and it mobilised whole new sections of the population, in both town and
country around the status of Bengali and the fight against government decisions. In
the days which followed, the Prime Minister of East Bengal, Nurul Amin, accused
foreign agents and the communists of fomenting the troubles. Most of the leaders of
the Action Committee found themselves in prison.
The 1954 Elections
Encouraged by the Awami League, preparations for the first general elections in
March 1954 went ahead with a United Front assembled from all the parties opposed
to the Muslim League: the Awami League itself, the Krishak Sramik Party of
peasants and workers which the leader AK Fazlul Huq, had put together for the
occasion, Maulana Ataha Ali’s Nizam-i Islami and the Ganatantri Dal, a party of
the left including the communists and led by a former leader of the Tebhaga peas-
ant movement.
This United Front adopted a twenty-one-point programme covering — apart from
claims about the adoption of Bengali as one of Pakistan’s national languages, and its
introduction as the language of education — economic improvements: nationaliza-
tion of the jute trade, guaranteed prices for this product, abolition without
compensation of the zamindar, distribution of surplus land among the peasants, and
lowering of farm rents. The programme also referred to the Lahore Resolution
and insisted that only defence, foreign affairs and finance should remain with central
government. Moreover, the Front opposed any military alliance with the United
States. This programme was set down as a challenge from the ‘vernacular elite’ to
the ‘national elite’.!® This same elite was prepared to carry the struggle as far as inde-
pendence. Nonetheless, under pressure from the most left-wing elements of the
Front, it was obliged to take into account the demands of the peasants and, to a
lesser extent, those of the workers. Thus it succeeded in including in its wish-list
something for everyone in East Bengal.
Since the creation of Pakistan, the frustrations of the Bengalis had continued to
grow. Politically and economically, they felt that they had been deprived of their
share of the benefits of independence. Between 1947 and 1958 the imbalance
between the two halves of the country had been strengthened by the effect of struc-
tural factors due not only to the weakness of the province’s economic framework, but
also — and above all — to the partisan policies of central government. Bengalis could
not accept that income derived from the export of jute produced by growers in their
province should be used largely for the development of the western half of the coun-
try. The sharing out of national resources was passing them by. As for foreign aid, it
was used mainly to finance projects in West Pakistan. It was to the west, too, that all
the imports went. The fact that the country’s capital and all the main government
departments, including the headquarters of all three military services, were situated
in the west exacerbated the discrepancy. Moreover, East Bengal had to buy manu-
factured goods of mediocre quality from West Pakistan at exorbitant prices in a
protected market.
From the earliest years of independence, recruitment into the public administra-
tion and armed services favoured the sons of the Punjabi elite. In 1955, only 14 out
of 894 high-ranking officers in the Pakistan army were Bengalis. In the navy there
were 593 from West Pakistan against seven Bengalis. At that time, not one secretary-
general of a ministry was from East Bengal — in a total of 19 all were from the
western half of the country.'? Regional autonomy seemed the only way to reestab-
lish the balance, and put an end to what Dhaka had long called the ‘colonization’ of
East Bengal by Pakistan. The inequality of treatment of the two regions, at least
until 1958, was an accepted fact.?°
All these factors ensured victory for the Front in the 1954 elections in Bengal: 223
seats out of 309. The Muslim League, with only nine, had to admit to a resounding
defeat. M.A. Jinnah’s party was never given a hearing in the region again. Nurul
EAST BENGAL 49
Amin, Prime Minister of the province, lost his own seat. The old leader, Fazlul
Hug, was therefore called to form a regional Cabinet in which Sheikh Mujibur
Rahman, a rising star of the Awami League, was included — rather at the last
minute — as Minister for Trade and Industry. This might have been seen as an
important portfolio, given that Bengal was suffering such a haemorrhage of its
resources. In fact, since independence, important decisions concerning the province
had been taken by officials whose upper echelons all originated in the west, and who
obeyed orders from the capital. Local ministers really had very little power. A mere
six weeks after taking office the minister from the Front had been hounded out of
power by central government on the pretext of social problems affecting the
Narayanganj jute factories and the Chittagong paper factories. A short while before,
Fazlul Huq had been accused — on the basis of remarks made duringa trip to
Calcutta, repeated in the Pakistani press, — of wanting to dismantle Pakistan.
Numerous incidents following strikes gave Karachi a convenient excuse to rid them-
selves of a Prime Minister who was considered weak. Total power in Bengal was
assumed in Bengal by the governor, Iskander Mirza. The Communist Party of East
Pakistan was proscribed, and militant members of the Front were imprisoned;
Mujibur Rahman among them.
One of the first measures taken by the second Constituent Assembly in July 1955,
was to combine the four regions of West Pakistan in a single political and adminis-
trative entity. In the parity established between the two halves of the country East
Bengal saw only too clearly a negation of its numerical superiority and a ruse to pre-
vent it from seeking to form alliances with Sind or Baluchistan — regions that were
equally hostile to Punjabi domination.
In the Constitution of Pakistan which was finally promulgated on 23 March
1956, Bengali was recognized as a national language of equal status with Urdu. This
measure came too late to give full satisfaction to the inhabitants of the province. In
so far as the symbol of identity was eventually recognized the language had played
its part. Other demands now had to pick up the baton.
In September 1956, the governor of East Bengal, A.K. Fazlul Huq, gave Ataur
Rahman Khan of the Awami League the task of forming of a provincial govern-
ment. For some time the Awami League, which had three distinct tendancies — the
right led by Suhrawardy; the centre with Mujibur Rahman; and the left, under
Maulana Bhasani — had been subject to internal pressures which jeopardized its
unity. The presence of Suhrawardy in the government of 1955, led by Muhammad
Ali Bogra, was not acceptable to militants of the two other tendancies. It was the
same in the following year when Iskander Khan, the new governor general, chose
Suhrawardy as Prime Minister of Pakistan. His party demanded that he should
introduce regional autonomy, reestablish the division of West Pakistan into four
regions, and adopt non-alignment as the basis of his foreign policy. In 1957, the
Awami League split. Maulana Bhasani left, and took with him those elements which
favoured a more aggressive policy in defence of peasants’ interests and more vio-
lently hostile to military alliance with the United States, which Suhrawardy
supported. His party took the name National Awami Party (NAP), and recruited in
both halves of the country without, however, influencing central government policies
to any great extent. Maulana’s party, wishing to ally Islamism to socialism, played a
rather equivocal role in the period preceding the secession of his country in so far as
it was drawn towards Ayub Khan’s Islamic programme and pro-China policy.
Surhrawardy found himself in a minority after thirteen months in power. He died
in 1963, without succeeding in curbing the deterioration in relations between cen-
tral government and his eastern wing. According to some analysts, he alone would
have been able to keep Bengal within Pakistan.?!
On 7 October 1958, General Ayub Khan’s coup d’état put an end to hopes for
democracy and from the Constitution adopted only two years earlier. The principal
leaders of the Awami League, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman among them, were arrested.
Liberty of the press and the right of association were severely curbed, and political
parties themselves were banned until 1962. When martial law was lifted, the regu-
lations known as the Public Office Disqualification Order and the Electiwe Bodies
Disqualification Order prevented politicians who had been indicted for acts said to be
prejudicial to the state from participating in political life, and further disallowed them
from presenting themselves for election for the next eight years. This measure, which
removed the principal opposition party chiefs, provoked much criticism in East
Bengal. It was the same with the reductions in the electorate defined by the new con-
stitution promulgated in 1962: it reduced to 80,000 ‘basic democrats’ the electorate
charged with electing the President — who, meanwhile retained all executive powers
including that of dissolving the Assembly. ‘The ensuing protests once more put their
leaders, including Mujibur Rahman, in prison. In East Bengal, the opposition
against central government, with middle-class university students from rural areas in
the vanguard, intensified. Strikes followed strikes. During the academic year
1962-63, there were only 32 days of uninterrupted study.
The Six-Point Programme

Bengalis felt that they were playing a smaller and smaller role in the conduct of their
own affairs. As the political pundit Rounaq Jahan wrote: ‘Clearly, the Bengalis were
marginally represented in the policy-making and political support groups during the
Arab period. ‘This nonrepresentation in the elite is a highly elitist system naturally
deepened the Bengalis’ sense of alienation.’
Ayub Khan came to East Bengal in 1958 to try to win over the province by con-
centrating on its development in an effort to reduce the disparity between the two
halves of the country. Despite some advances under his leadership, only a third of
the economic growth went to the eastern province. Middle-class Bengalis therefore
felt that separation of the two economies was the only way that East Pakistan
could develop using its own resources and exercise the right to manage a
favourable financial policy.*? So the demand for economic autonomy was added
the cries for the liberalization and democratization of political life. Opposition to
Ayub Khan’s regime met with some success: in the January 1965 presidential
election Fatima Jinnah, sister of the founder of Pakistan, secured 37 per cent of
the votes over the country as a whole, despite government aid to the candidacy of
Ayub Khan.*4
EAST BENGAL 51
The war between Pakistan and India which broke out in 1965 made the Pakistani
Bengalis acutely aware of their extreme vulnerability. Feeling that they were inade-
quately protected, they added to their list a claim for the establishment of their own
military defence force against a possible attack by neighbouring India. In 1965 the
Pakistani army had only 300 officers of Bengali origin out of a total of 6,000.” The
prestige of the army, often presented as invincible, suffered when the terms of the
Indo-Pakistani accord signed at Tashkent became known. The next year at Lahore,
during a conference attended by all the country’s political parties, Sheikh Mujibur
Rahman, who was leading the East Bengal delegation, presented a programme of
claims involving six points set out by the Awami League:
* a federation based on the 1940 Lahore Resolution, a parliamentary regime

with direct universal suffrage for the National Assembly, and legislative
supremacy over the executive;
* a federal government with responsibility for defence and foreign affairs, while all
other matters would be the concern of the federated states;
* each half of the country to have its own fiscal and financial policies, the two
currencies being freely convertible one with the other; or, if a single currency
were to be retained, constitutional guarantees to prevent the flight of capital
from east to west;
* the federal government to have no right to impose tax, the federated states
reserving a fixed proportion of the taxes they themselves levied to cover the
needs of central government;
* each half of the country to take separate account of its own currency and the
revenues of each to remain there. The foreign exchange needs of central gov-
ernment to be met by each half equally or in predetermined proportions. ‘The
products of each half to be available to the other without internal custom tolls,
and the Constitution to permit the federated states freely to establish commer-
cial arrangements with foreign countries;
* each federated state to be authorized to set up its own paramilitary and territo-
rial forces.
The declaration of the Six Points reawoke the autonomist agitation in East Bengal.
Students belonging to the Awami League united to form the East Pakistan Students’
League, and at the same time mobilized to promote the use of Bengali in every walk
of public life. They protested against attempts to stop the songs of Tagore being
broadcast on radio and television, and against the artificial Islamization of the
Bengali language and culture. The workers of Narayanganj joined unions affiliated
to the Awami League, and participated massively in demonstrations in defence of
the Six Points. At the time, Mujibur Rahman was not against some agreement with
central government on the basis of negotiations around the Six Points, and a com-
promise solution did not seem impossible. Yet the Ayub Khan regime preferred to
continue a policy of repression. They had Mujibur Rahman and several other
members of the Awami League imprisoned once more, together with some Bengali
soldiers and civil servants. Accused of conspiring with India to bring about the
destruction of Pakistan, they spent three years in gaol, but eventually the
government had to abandon their trial for lack of proof.
This case, known as the ‘Agartala Conspiracy Case’, further radicalized the move-
ment in favour of the Six Points. In December 1968, students from the various
parties regrouped in an All Parties Students Action Committee, which drew up an
eleven-point programme, including the Awami League’s six, involving the intro-
duction of Bengali at every level in education and the public services, but above all
claims of socialist inspiration for the defence of the interests of the lower middle
classes and the popular masses. They further demanded the reduction of taxes on
the peasants, the nationalization of banks, insurance companies and industry, and
the raising of workers’ wages. The “Eleven Points’ represented a significant advance
on the Six Points which preceded them. Political agitation was no longer limited to
student meetings, but spread among the jute workers, and even to the peasants.
Repressive measures made numerous victims. The demonstrating students — most of
them from families which owned and made their living from land, retained close
links with their home areas. Besides, the former occupants of student halls of resi-
dence of Dhaka University remained in contact with their successors through
associations established in the moderate-sized towns and villages. These factors
went some way towards explaining why people rallied to the call from student orga-
nizations which, for their part, had ongoing relationships with political parties, as
indeed is the case today.
During these troubled times, some Bengali leaders — albeit opposed to the
regime — were unwilling to go as far as the Awami League towards autonomy, and
sought to find a degree of accord with central government, but no one was prepared
to listen.2° Nurul Amin, former Chief Minister and member of the Muslim League,
and founder of the Republican Democratic Party, favoured the re-establishment of
democracy, but did not support the claim for complete autonomy in the Awami
League programme. Yet other Bengali politicians supported the Karachi regime
without reservation; they would pay the price for this later. The governor of East
Bengal between 1963 and 1969 — Abdul Monem Khan, who came from
Mymensingh ~ was killed in a guerrilla reprisal operation in Dhaka in June 1971.
The 1971 Elections

The mass movement in favour of the Six Points shook the government; in March
1969 the principal leaders of both halves of the country were summoned to a
round-table conference to discuss the constitutional future of Pakistan. Sheikh
Mujibur Rahman refused to attend because he was a prisoner on parole.
Accordingly he was granted an unconditional release. Once out of prison, he pre-
sented his claims — which were refused — and pleaded forcefully for a reduction in the
economic disparity between the two regions. As each five-year plan was being out-
lined, the Bengali economists taking part in the discussions vigorously raised
questions about the uneven development of the two regions and the rising discrep-
ancy between the per capita incomes of their respective inhabitants, yet their concerns
were never acknowledged. After 1962, Ayub Khan certainly made several efforts at
EAST BENGAL 53
restoring equilibrium, but they had never satisfied the Bengalis, who were no longer
ready to forego regional autonomy.”’ Participants in the round-table discussions
succeeded in reaching agreement on only wo points: the reestablishment of univer-
sal suffrage, in stead of an electoral college restricted to ‘basic democrats’, and the
establishment of parliamentary democracy. The government rejected the demand
for a federal administration with full autonomy for each region as presented by
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and the conference ended in failure.
Ayub Khan considered that a strong central authority was indispensable to the
survival of Pakistan. This explains why, unable to contain the discontent with his
regime, he resigned in favour of the commander-in-chief of the army, General
Yahya Khan on 25 March 1969. Taking power while strikes and demonstrations
proliferated in the streets, the general reimposed martial law, rekindling the protest
movements in East Bengal. The assemblies were dissolved. To resolve the political
crisis, Yahya Khan announced that general elections would take place in December
1970 on the basis of universal suffrage, and that the Assembly, once elected, would
produce a new constitution. However, he was no more capable than his predecessor
of reducing the Punjabis domination in the army and the government. Nevertheless,
he did agree to split the western half of the country once more into four provinces,
just as it had been until Ayub Khan decided otherwise. At the same time he aban-
doned the idea of parity between East and West and, giving every adult the right to
vote, he accepted de facto the numerical superiority of the electors of East Bengal in
the Central Assembly. Of its projected 300 seats, 162 deputies would be returned by
Bengal.
In that province the electoral campaign was arranged on the basis of the Awami
League Six-Point programme. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who could not imagine
that there could be any other programme, declared several times that the elections
must be a referendum for or against the Six Points. The more radical students
wanted to go beyond the Six Points towards independence anda socialist regime. All
the same, they accepted that they should participate according to the framework set
by the powers-that-were at the time. Maulani Bhasani, leader of the pro-Chinese
strand of the National Awami League, preferred to ask his candidates to withdraw
at the last moment to devote themselves to helping victims of the recent floods.
In fact, once the electoral campaign was in full swing, and after the lifting of all
the restrictions imposed on the political parties, a terrible cyclone, followed byatidal
wave and serious flooding, hit the coast of East Bengal on 12 November 1970,
causing — according to the international press — 350,000 deaths.”® Faced with this
catastrophe, the Pakistanis of Bengal once again had the feeling that they were
being abandoned to their own devices, despite a brief visit by Yahya Khan, who
failed to order emergency help on anational scale. International aid was seen as
more forthcoming, faster and more efficacious.
The elections took place less than four weeks after this disaster, though some
coastal districts were able to delay them by a month. The result was a triumph for
the Awami League, which took 160 of 162 seats allotted to the province in the
National Assembly and 288 of 300 in the provincial assembly, while the votes for the
ten seats reserved for women were never counted.*? The members elected to the
Dhaka assembly vowed to demand the implementation of the Six and Eleven Points
that had already been presented so often. The fatwa by 130 Islamic leaders
condemning the vote in favour of nationalism as antireligious and socialist had no
effect at all. Nurul Amin and the rajah, Tridiv Roy, were returned unopposed by the
tribes of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, as the only two elected members who alone did
not belong to the Awami League.
According to the election results there is no doubt that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman
should have been called upon to head the new central government, since his party
won the greatest number of seats. In fact Z A Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party,
which came second, won only 81 out of the 138 seats allotted to the western half of
the country. Yet neither General Yahya Khan nor Z A Bhutto could face seeing the
province of Bengal lay down the law to those who had dominated the national
stage since the creation of the state, first from Karachi and later from Islamabad. As
for Mujibur Rahman, the position of Prime Minister of Pakistan meant less than the
introduction of his Six Points into the Constitution which the Assembly was due to
set out. On 1 March 1971, after weeks and months of hesitation and abortive nego-
tiations, Yahya Khan decided to prorogue the National Assembly, this time sie die.
The session had been due to start in Dhaka two days later. Yahya had decided that
the meeting should take place in Dhaka in order to give greater solemnity to the
inauguration of a new building designed by an American architect to house the
provincial assembly. To justify the prorogation, Yahya Khan used the pretext that
Bhutto and members of his party had refused to take their seats in Bengal. The lack
of agreement between the Awami League and the Pakistan People’s Party on the
constitutional status of the country had led the leaders of the PPP to say that they
feared for their safety if they set foot in Dhaka. In reality, as soon as the election
results were made public, Bhutto had declared that his party would not attend the
inaugural session of the Assembly unless he was given the assurance that he would
be able to share central power with the Awami League. He had even sworn to get rid
of any member of his party who went to Dhaka in answer to the summons.”? Z A
Bhutto’s responsibility for the events which ensued is undeniable.*!
The prorogation of the session brought an immediate response from the East
Bengal population: a call for a general strike. A majority of the students, united in
the Students of Independent Bangladesh Central Committee for Action, and several
politicians, such as Maulana Bhasani and Ataur Rahman Khan, a former chief
minister, asked that Mujibur Rahman should declare independence, this he did not
do.*? Hoping to restore order Yahya Khan, replaced the governor general of the
province, Admiral Ahsan — whom the Bengalis liked — with General Tikka Khan,
who had brutally repressed separatist movements in Baluchistan. The president of
the High Court, followed by the other judges, who knew of his reputation, refused
to let him swear them in.
Faced with this array of strength, Mujibur Rahman launched a solemn appeal for
noncooperation with the authorities. The movement, however was to remain non-
violent. ‘The government of the province was very quickly paralysed: civil servants
did not go to their offices, taxes and bills were not paid, banks did not function, com-
munications were cut. Repression, however, was pitiless, and fusillades of rifle fire
EAST BENGAL 55
from the army caused many casualties. The population lost their heads and local
feelings boiled over, making victims of ‘Biharis’, ordinary Muslims from other
regions of northern India who had settled in East Bengal at the time of Partition. In
1947, some 500,000 had chosen to make their home in the eastern half of the new
state.?3 Remaining loyal to the ideology which had led to Pakistan’s creation, and
showing little inclination to mix with the indigenous population, they had come to
be an unpopular minority. It was they who suffered the backlash of the violence
meted out to the Bengalis. Meanwhile, these sporadic uncontrolled assaults provided
an army with the excuse to increase the ferocity of its repression.
Throughout March, the students raised the orange and green standard of
Bangladesh, while Rabindranath Tagore’s song Amar Sonar Bangla (“My Golden
Bengal’) and the slogan ‘Joy Bangla’ (Victory to Bengal) resonated over the airwaves
from Radio Dhaka, which had ceased to use its official title of Radio Pakistan, Dhaka.
Amar Sonar Bangla had been the students’ choice as national anthem for the future
Bangladesh. During a passionate address on 7 March, the Sheikh whose nickname
was Bangabandu (Friend of Bengal) declared: ‘Our struggle today is a fight for freedom,
a fight for independence’. Representing, as he did, the majority of the electorate of
the whole country, and therefore invested with the legitimate authority of the ballot
box, he set down in the name of his party four conditions to be laid before the first
session of the National Assembly, which was finally scheduled to open on 25 March:
the lifting of martial law, the transfer of power to the elected representatives of the
people, the announcement ofa judicial inquiry into the circumstances leading to the
death of so many demonstrators, and finally the army’s return to its barracks. ‘There
is not the slightest doubt that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had no firm plan for the dis-
mantling of Pakistan. He would have preferred a confederation which could have
freed East Bengal from the tyranny of the soldiers and bureaucrats of central gov-
ernment and allowed it to follow its own political, economic and cultural path. The
intransigence of his political adversaries forced him to accept the path of the seces-
sionist movement that geography and cultural differences between the two halves of
the country demanded. Despite pressure from radical elements, which had always
supported him, and although he defended the centralist position, he was prepared to
discuss matters over and over again with those who wanted nothing more than the
maintenance of the status quo in relations between central government and the
provinces, even if it entailed his own disappearance from the political scene.
On 15 March, General Yahya Khan decided to come with his advisers to Dhaka
for negotiations on the basis of the Six Points, to which had been added the demands
for the lifting of martial law and transfer of power to the elected representatives. ‘The
arrival of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto some days later threw everything back into doubt,
although Yahya Khan had already accepted Mujibur Rahman’s demands in princi-
ple, and an initial draft of a presidential proclamation lifting martial law and
transferring power to the majority parties in the provinces had already received the
assent of the two main protagonists. Bhutto refused point-blank to endorse the pro-
posed text.°*
On 23 March the students declared a day of protest against the denial of the
transfer of power to those properly elected. In the presence of Mujibur Rahman and
an enormous crowd, they hoisted the standard of Bangladesh and refused to raise
that of Pakistan alongside it.
A last meeting was again laid on between Yahya Khan and the leaders of the
Awami League was still scheduled in an effort to agree a text for the proclamation
acceptable to all sides, but on 25 March, Yahya Khan and Z A Bhutto took the plane
back to Rawalpindi. In the evening of that same day, the emergency plan prepared
long before by General Tikka Khan was put into effect.°° This was Operation
Searchlight, in the course of which the army attacked the campus of Dhaka
University, the police barracks, the barracks of the East Pakistan Rifles and the East
Bengal Regiment, and areas where there was a Hindu majority. Those Bengali ofhi-
cers and soldiers serving in the army regiments and in the police who managed to
escape the massacre rallied to the cause of independence. In Dhaka and Chittagong,
and in other towns, the militias who wanted to keep East Bengal within Pakistan,
and drew their inspiration primarily from Islam, took part in massacres of intellec-
tuals, teachers, newly elected members of the Assembly and members of the Awami
League and important members of the Hindu minority. Those known for their
progressive opinions and their attachment to secularism became the first victims.
That same night — the night of 25-26 March — Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was
arrested, accused of high treason, and thrown into prison in West Pakistan. Ina final
message, he called on the citizens to sacrifice everything for the true liberation of
their country.°° On 27 March on Chittagong Radio, Major Ziaur Rahman officially
proclaimed independence in the name of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
~ The brutal behaviour of the military dealt a fatal blow to the Pakistani nation. Yet
had it ever really existed? The national liberation movement had mobilized the
popular masses around some thousands of the East Bengal Regiment, the East
Pakistan Rifles and the Bengali police, who had received military training. ‘These
men were joined by students, farm and factory workers, without weapons or know-
how, and constituted the footsoldiers of the army of liberation [Mukti Bahini]. Before
them stood an organized and disciplined force of several divisions including artillery,
tanks and aircraft. ‘The Islamic pro-Pakistani militias, Razakers, Al Badr and Al Shams,
composed essentially of ‘biharis’ and members of the Islamic Chhatra Sangha, the
student wing of the Jamaat-i Islami Party, also played their part in the military
operations. This party, opposed to the break-up of Pakistan and in favour of a
strong central power, engaged at least some of its 40,000 ‘associate’ members and
425 full members in the struggle, alongside the Pakistani army.°” With the members
of Nizam-i Islami from the Jamiyyat-ul Ulama-i Pakistan and the Jamaat-i Islami, all
devoted to the cause of a united Pakistan, the military forces organized councils of
peace in towns and villages both great and small; inhabitants were encouraged to act
as informers on Hindus and Awami League sympathizers.
On 10 April the principal leaders of the Awami League formed a provisional gov-
ernment, the seat of which, Mujibnagar, was near the Indian border. Colonel MAG
Osmany was appointed chief of the army of liberation. Following a period of suc-
cess, during which the Mukti Bahini took control of a significant part of districts at
some distance from the centre, the Pakistan army took a grip on itself, received rein-
forcements of men and material, and inflicted heavy losses on its enemies. The
EAST BENGAL oy
soldiers occupied the principal towns, and did not hesitate to bombard civilians.
Altogether 9.5 million inhabitants of Bengal took refuge in India. Among them were
many Hindus but also numerous Muslims, democratic partisans, whose language
was Bengali, whose culture was humanist and non-communalist, who had responded
to the Awami League’s appeal and had some left-wing sympathies. Only a few com-
munists with Maoist leanings condemned this popular uprising. Since it’s aim was
not a socialist state, the dubbed it a nationalist and petty-bourgeois revolution.
From the start of the armed struggle, India, supplied the fighters of the Mukti
Bahini with a refuge, arms and military training. Its frontier forces were ordered to
allow anyone who wished to enter India to do so. Its support was vital to the consti-
tution of a special guerrilla force. Nevertheless, considering that its army was not
adequately prepared to take on Pakistan on two fronts, and possibly an intervention
from China on behalf of its ally Pakistan at the same time, the Indian government
decided against launching an immediate military campaign in Bengal. During this
period, many important intellectuals and former senior civil servants from East
Bengal travelled to Europe and the USA, to make sure governments and public
opinion there were aware of the fate of Bangladesh.
On 3 December 1971, war between India and Pakistan broke out, and the Indian
army made an incursion into East Bengal. The break-up of Pakistan and the
prospect of a friendly government in Dhaka could cause no displeasure in India.
Moreover, Indira Gandhi wanted control of operations in East Bengal to remain in
the hands of the Awami League, whose political programme was not dissimilar to
that of the Congress Party. She was highly distrustful of left-wing movements, which
at the time were very active both as guerrillas and as other ‘loose cannons’. There
was no question of allowing a Maoist revolution on the eastern frontier of India
which might, with the help of China, spill over into neighbouring territory. ‘The
financial cost of the influx of refugees was also proving a heavy burden on the
Indian economy. It was obvious that they would not be going home ~ at least, not
until Bangladesh had become a reality. Reassured about the intentions of Pakistan’s
allies — the USA and China having made it clear they were adopting a non-inter-
ventionist position militarily — Indira Gandhi decided in the end to send troops in on
the ground. Several months previously she had signed a peace, friendship and coop-
eration treaty with the Soviet Union.
The Indian invasion involved seven divisions which attacked the Pakistani forces
from west, north and east. Coordination with the Mukti Bahini was excellent. Indian
aircraft made quick work of assuring air mastery, and rendered the airports unus-
able. The fleet blocked the ports. The Pakistan army, unable to get any help from
outside, was rapidly demoralized. Only twelve days after the start of operations, on
15 December, General AAK Niazi, commanding the 93,000 Pakistani soldiers sta-
tioned in East Bengal, surrendered unconditionally to the Indian General JS Arora.
According to the commanders of the units of the Mukti Bahini, the Indian army
arrived just when they had almost finished the job.*® In fact, despite the courage
shown by the Bengalis — the majority of whom were under twenty-five — and the effi-
cacy of the guerrilla actions, we must recognize that it was the Indian forces’
participation which brought things to a head, and secured a rapid victory for the
liberation movement. The number of Bengali victims during the nine months —
April to December 1971 — which led to independence has been variously estimated
at between one and three million. Whatever the truth, it is certainly justifiable to talk
in terms of genocide.*?
On 10 January 1972, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, freed from his Pakistani prison,
returned to an independent Bangladesh to take up the post of Prime Minister of a par-
liamentary democracy. In just one year the new state was able to equip itself with a
constitution of which the four main fundamental principles were democracy, national-
ism, socialism and secularism (equal protection for all religions by the public authorities).
Between 1947 and 1971, the Bengalis had strongly affirmed their linguistic and
cultural identity in the face of the Punjabi oligarchy which governed Pakistan.
Because of the geographical distance between them, the differences in landscape, cli-
mate, diet and clothing customs — to which may be added those of language and
culture — only religion could bring the two halves of the country together. Taking as
symbols their language and their culture, Bengalis asserted their identity with force,
even though their society, in all its variety, found itself dominated once more. This
time it was their coreligionists who were to blame.
In this context, the role played by the ideals defended by the writers of the Bengali
‘Renaissance’, Rabindranath Tagore and Kazi Nasrul Islam — as for example,
humanism and love of liberty — should not be underestimated. The idealized image
of the socialist revolution also inspired a good number of students and intellectuals
of the time. And we must not go away with the idea that the Bangladeshis had for-
gotten their religion. Indeed, the ‘Bengality’ of the Muslims of East Bengal did not
dilute their attachment to Islam. They are not the only people to possess a plural
identity of which the two components are never quite in balance.
Meanwhile, the importance of the Movement for the Defence of the Bengali
Language was not restricted to politics alone. Literature and cultural life also had a
strong influence. Between 1947 and 1971, at least 1,500 novels were published in East
Bengal, many more than in preceding years. The authors of short stories, also very
numerous, could find an outlet in the literary magazines which proliferated. Among
the principal authors, Saokat Osman (1917-99), Syed Waliullah (1922-71) and
Alauddin al-Azad (born 1934) imbued their works with a humanistic and generous
message which characterizes the texts of the period. As Badruddin Umar has written:
‘The language movement has actually laid the foundation not only of a
new cultural life of the people but also of a truly non-communal and
democratic movement in the country. Muslims of Bengal, during the
decades of communal politics almost forgot their national identity.
Through the shedding of the martyr’s blood the Bengalees began to dis-
cover their national identity and their social, cultural, intellectual and
political life began to strike roots in the soil of East Bengal.’*°
During the presidency of Ayub Khan, banning Tagore’s songs from radio and tele-
vision on the pretext that they were inimical to the Islamic ideal only had the effect
of making them even more popular — at least with the middle class.
EAST BENGAL 50
The theatre, too, enjoyed a resurgence at this time. Munier Chowdhury wrote
Kabor (‘The Tomb’), although he was imprisoned in Dhaka for participating in
demonstrations against central government policies, and the play was put on by the
inmates of the gaol on the eve of 22 February 1952. Dramatic works of the time
show an awareness of the hard socioeconomic realities in the rural areas. They
mock the superstitions and hypocrisy of the clerics, and they protest against the
domination of Bengal by a centralised oligarchy. Actors and actresses were very
active during the events of 1971. They put on political plays in the streets and in vil-
lage squares to keep the national liberation movement alive. Several fine intellectuals
were murdered on 25 March 1971. Munier Chowdhury (born 1925), dramatic
author and essayist; Moffazal Haider Chowdhury (born 1926) and Anwar Pasha
(born 1929), essayists and literary critics, were among those who were killed that day
in their homes on the campus of Dhaka University.
Independent Bangladesh and Pakistan

The politicians of Pakistan had the wisdom to return the sheikh to his people and,
in so doing, allowed a speedy reconciliation between Pakistan and the newly inde-
pendent state.
From February 1974, diplomatic relations were established. During the months of
struggle, only India and its ally the Soviet Union had supported the future
Bangladesh, and they were the first to give it official recognition. The United States
and China would have liked to prevent the break-up of Pakistan. During the war, in
the name of the peoples’ right to self-determination, an appeal for aid from Maulana
Bhasani had failed to move Mao Ze-Dong, to whom he addressed himself. All the
same, in 1974 Bangladesh could put in an appearance at the Islamic Conference
when it met in Lahore. The same year, it participated in the creation of the Islamic
Development Bank at Jeddah.
After Mujibur’s assassination by the military on 15 August 1975, General Ziaur
Rahman seized power. Bangladesh aligned itself more with the Islamic countries
and less with India, with which Mujibur had nevertheless signed a treaty of friend-
ship. During the time when first Ziaur Rahman and then General H.M. Ershad
were in charge, relations with Pakistan were amicable. The officers of the
Bangladeshi army, formed in Pakistan before the secession, had taken no part in the
war; many of them had been kept in the west of the country at the time. Their
return and the gradual elimination of the chief combatants of 1971 — by putsch,
trial or banishment — facilitated a rapprochement between the two countries. ‘The reli-
gious parties, proscribed at first, later allowed to express themselves freely once
again. The amnesty law, promulgated in 1973 by Mujibur Rahman, had allowed a
number of the ‘collaborators’ to regain their rights as citizens and their place in soci-
ety, even if the Islamic parties were still not officially authorized.
Under the presidency of Ziaur Rahman, the mention of ‘secularism’ disappeared
from the Constitution, to be replaced by the phrase ‘absolute trust and faith in
Allah, the All-Powerful’; and nationalism was expressed as Bangladeshi rather than
Bengali in an effort to underline the difference between the two Bengals. In 1988,
President Ershad, by an amendment to the Constitution, declared Islam to be the

state religion, thus aligning Bangladesh more closely with the Muslim countries in
general and Pakistan in particular. The geographical position of Bangladesh, encir-
cled by India — not to mention their relatives sizes — leads to contention between the
two countries India is readily regarded as a Goliath facing a Bangladeshi David. The
division of the water of the Ganges after construction of the Farakka Dam by India
at the end of 1974 was resented as a grave injustice. Not until 1996, and the arrival
of the government of IK Gujral, could a new, more equitable agreement be signed.
Other points of disagreement remain.
Pakistan, separated from East Bengal by 2,000 kilometres of Indian territory,
hardly suffers any longer from a negative image. Successive governments have allied
themselves ever more closely to the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), the party of
Ziaur Rahman, assassinated by the military in 1981 for — it would seem — personal
reasons, and of his widow Begum Khaleda, than with the Awami League of
Mujibur Rahman and his daughter, Sheikh Hasina Wajed.
The Awami League, considering itself the only nationalist and workers’party of
the liberation, never misses a chance to stress the pivotal role of Sheikh Mujibur
Rahman in the independence struggle, Mukti Bahini heroism in the face of the
Punjabi soldiers and the atrocities committed by those soldiers upon the people of
Bengal. Such talk can serve only to revive antagonism between Dhaka and
Islamabad. Nevertheless, for some time now the Awami League has sought to shake
off its image as the ‘party of India’, which gives it no kudos in the eyes of the elec-
torate in general. Its relations with Pakistan will doubtless improve. The BNP, which
was again in power between 1991 and 1996, not to speak of the Jamaat-i Islami, the
party fundamentally hostile to independence, takes a far less critical line than the
Awami League on the Pakistani period of East Bengal.
The problem for Urdu-speaking Biharis — who, having chosen to settle in East
Bengal in 1947, today find themselves isolated in a Bangladesh whose citizenship
many of them refuse to accept — hardly disturbs the Islamabad authorities, who have
no wish to swell the ranks of their Muhajirs. There are still about 250,000. ‘This is
the only remaining problem between the two countries, if we ignore deadlocked
arguments about the division of possessions at the time of secession. It would seem,
rather, that some Pakistani intellectuals are asking themselves whether their country
should now be apologizing to the Bangladeshi people for the terrible events of
1971.4! That would be a moral gesture, albeit one with heavy political overtones.
3
A FRUITLESS SEARCH FOR
DEMOCRACY
Since achieving its independence in 1947 Pakistan has had three constitutions and
experienced four military coups. This alternation of civil and military regimes,
which have succeeded each other at intervals of about ten years, is a striking contrast
to the stability of the institutions of its Indian neighbour, which has experienced only
one non-democratic interval of eighteen months’ duration in 1975-77. How can
two states born of the same proto-parliamentary British regime have diverged so
much? Yielding to the simplifying charms of culturalism plenty of apologists have
maintained the hypothesis that there is an innate incompatibility between Islam and
political pluralism.!
In fact the shocks and mishaps suffered by democracy in Pakistan have resulted in
large part from the heritage bequeathed by the British Raj. The regions united to
form Pakistan in 1947 — to start with the Punjab — were submitted during the time of
the Raj to more authoritarian regimes than other parts of the Empire. Furthermore,
the vice-regal pattern was furthermore a great influence on the father of the nation,
Jinnah, who took power into his own hands in 1947 to stress the necessity of build-
ing a whole from disparate parts. His successors continued the same methods to the
detriment of the political parties which were seen as divisive elements in the fledging
nation: those in charge paid no attention to the Muslim League, whose decline
deprived the country of a precious link between society and the political establish-
ment. Furthermore, tensions between the various ethnic groups hindered the
implementation of a democratic regime. Finally, the obsession with security born of
three wars with India explains the influence of the army, ever present in the corridors
of power when it was not at the helm itself:
The Priority of State Construction in the Origins of

Pakistani Authoritarianism
Quaid-i Azam Jinnah, the New Viceroy?”

In 1947 India and Pakistan were elevated by the British to the status of dominions.
The Indian Independence Act (July 1947) simply did away with every reference to
control by the British Crown given by the Government of India Act (1935), thus
fundamentally altering the law of both countries. India drew up its own constitu-
tion as early as 1950; Pakistan waited until 1956 to do so. India, like every other
dominion in the Commonwealth, appointed as governor general a figure who
commanded respect but had no great political authority: G Rajagopalichariar. In
Pakistan however, Muhammad Ali Jinnah himself decided to assume this function,
despite Lord Mountbatten’s lack of enthusiasm. Jinnah, drawing inspiration from
the British governors general who bore the title of viceroy, followed the authori-
tarian and centralizing line bequeathed by the British, while India was more
influenced by the parliamentary and federal aspect of the bequest.
Certainly Jinnah declared that he was in favour of an Islamic democracy. Some
weeks before Independence, during a Muslim League meeting on 9 June 1947, he
proclaimed that the Pakistani Constitution would be ‘of a democratic type’, and
that it would ‘embody the essential principles of Islam’.? A little later, on 11
August in his inaugural address to the Constituent Assembly, he declared: “In the
course of time, Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims will cease to be
Muslims, not in the religious sense because that is personal faith of each individ-
ual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State.** Jinnah himself believed,
therefore, in liberal democracy. All his successors felt that they must follow in his
footsteps — perhaps so as not to be outdone by India. Right from the birth of
Pakistan, however, the project of an Islamic democracy on a universalist basis
foundered on Jinnah’s authoritarianism, which did not leave much room for the
religious and linguistic communities.
If Jinnah saw himself as a democrat, he did not conceal his reservations about the
parliamentary regime: ‘Presidential form of government more suited forPakistan’,°
he acknowledged as early as July 1947. From the outset he inculcated a forceful per-
sonalization of power from which Pakistan has never been able to free itself: as well
as acting as a governor general, he was also President of the Constituent Assembly.®
This amalgamation of these duties remains unique in the history of the British
dominions.’
The concentration of power instituted by Jinnah went hand in hand with a
strong centralization of the state. Certainly he did abrogate Article 93 of the
Government of India Act (1935) which gave the viceroy the right to dismiss a
regional government but he achieved the same result by invoking Article 51 (5),
under the terms of which provincial governors were under the authority of the gov-
ernor general, who equally had the right to dismiss the government of their
constituency. One week after the creation of Pakistan he had the government of the
NWFP fired in this way. Its chief was Dr Khan Sahib,® who had called for an inde-
pendent Pashtunistan. Similarly, on 28 April 1948 the governor of Sind dismissed,
on his orders, the chief minister, M A Khuhro, who had objected to its capital,
Karachi, being placed under direct central government control. Jinnah justified his
centralizing authoritarianism by arguing that there was a state to be built®, an
argument we shall examine below. This bad start, however, put a strain on the
democracy to which he claimed to aspire.
A FRUITLESS SEARCH FOR DEMOCRACY 63
Liaquat Ali Khan: the Prime Minister who distrusted the

party system
Once Jinnah had disappeared from the scene in September 1948, the strong man of
the country, Liaquat Ali Khan, became Prime Minister and appointed a new gov-
ernor general, Khwaja Nazimuddin. Instead of relying on his parliamentary
majority and the Muslim League Liaquat Ali Khan immediately adopted the poli-
tics of Jinnah. As early as January 1949 he dismissed the Punjabi government on the
pretext of mismanagement, although it enjoyed a solid majority in the provincial
assembly.!° Like Jinnah, Liaquat Ali Khan amalgamated posts of responsibility and
so took over leadership of the Muslim League in 1950.
The weakness of the Muslim League and the party system therefore appeared to be
an insuperable obstacle in the path of parliamentary democracy. Numerous parties sur-
faced, above all in the provinces — initially expressions of ethnic movements. Dismissed
from his job as chief of the NWFP government, Khan Sahib formed the Republican
Party, which served as a model for the National Awami Party founded by Wali Khan,
the son of Ghaffar Khan, figurehead of Pashtun nationalism. This movement, which
was particularly active during the 1950s against the ‘One Unit Scheme’, soon concluded
an alliance with G M Syed, leader of a Sindi organization which changed its name sev-
eral times. In East Pakistan, too, two regional parties emerged: Suhrawardy’s Awami
League and the Krishak Sramik Party (peasants’ and workers’ party), led by Fazlul Huq.
Although they claimed to repreent the will of the people [awami] of Pakistan, none of
these political formations was nationwide. The only organizations boasting pan-
Pakistani ambitions were, of course, those based on Islam, principally the Jamaat-i
Islami (see Chapter 11 below) and the Muslim League. Although the League was
roughly the Pakistani equivalent of the Indian National Congress, it was by no means
as well structured as that party, which had a whole network of local and regional sec-
tions put in place by Gandhi as long ago as the 1920s. For a long time the League had
been no more than a small elite group representing a landowning and literate aristoc-
racy, and even by the mid-1940s it had hardly begun to mobilize the Muslim masses.
After Independence, Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan both used the party as an instrument
to wield power. The other leaders of the League never attempted to oppose the execu-
tive — even when it fell into the hands of Ghulam Muhammad.!! On the contrary, they
called upon their activists to fall in behind the leaders parachuted in by the executive,
of
all of which threw considerable doubt on the party’s credibility. The centralization
power in the hands of the government and the civil service, and the infrequency of elec-
tions encouraged the grass-roots workers not to bother to work ‘on the ground’ but
rather to devote themselves to backroom politics and internecine struggles.
Liaquat Ali Khan, a party leader himself, never really admitted the existence of
other parties, and spent little time on his own. Pakistan was ‘the child of the Muslim
‘ene-
League’, and in his view those who joined other political formations were the
i Islami,
mies of Pakistan who aim to destroy the unity of the people’. !2 The Jamaat-
provided
determined to participate in the construction of democratic institutions
Its leader
they recognized the sovereignty of Allah, was the first to suffer repression.
was arrested in October 1948, and spent many months in gaol.!$
Liaquat Ali Khan’s distrust of politicians was obvious in the Public and
Representative Officers (Disqualification) Act (PRODA), voted in on 26 January
1950. This law gave the governor general, the governors of provinces and even ordi-
nary citizens the right to lodge a complaint against a minister or an elected member
suspected of corruption, nepotism, favouritism or bad management. The accusa-
tions had to be heard by a tribunal composed of two judges nominated by the
governor general, and the maximum penalty was exclusion from public duties for a
period of ten years. So, rather than holding elections to win support for its respon-
sible politicians, Pakistan had recourse to a new kind of legal action, which would
eliminate the most pernicious. Politicians prepared to risk 5,000 rupees — the deposit
required to start proceedings — used the PRODA to attack their rivals, giving rise to
partisan vendettas which gave a bad name to the whole political class. The Assembly
abrogated this law in 1954.
The decline of the Muslim League and the weakness of the party system pre-
cluded the establishment of an essential link between government and people. ‘The
contrast with the situation in India is striking. On the other side of the border, as
election followed election, the state was built gradually with the support of the
Congress Party and its network of notables.'* In Pakistan, those in charge devoted all
their energies to establishing a centralized administration which lacked any electoral
blessing right down to the local level. In the Punjab, for example, the municipal and
district councils — and there were not many — were presided over by a functionary
appointed by central government, just as in colonial times. At the end of the 1950s
more than half of them were controlled directly by the state, which disdained to
organize local elections, since these might reinforce the establishment of party pol-
itics.'!° The Pakistani leaders thereby deprived themselves of the links and channels
of communication indispensable to the democratic plan which they professed to
favour.
The Punjabis reject the law of numbers

The effect of demographic forces placed a further obstacle in the way of constitu-
tional debate. To begin with, democracy was high on the agenda. In March 1949
Liaquat Ali Khan’s government submitted to the Constituent Assembly an
‘Objectives Resolution’ which stipulated that ‘the principles of democracy, free-
dom, equality, tolerance and social justice as enunciated in Islam shall be fully
observed.’
The Constituent Assembly was composed of Muslims elected by the assemblies of
the regions which constituted Pakistan after Partition. It had a Committee of
Fundamental Principles, divided into several subcommittees, whose reports formed
the basis ofa first draft of a constitution, known as the ‘Interim Report’. Liaquat Ali
Khan submitted it to the Assembly in September 1950. But this rough outline of a
constitution soon gave rise to protestations from Bengali representatives worried
both by the elevation of Urdu to the rank of national language and by their under-
representation in the proposed institutions. Although the Bengalis were in a majority
in the country, according to these proposals they would be represented on an equal
basis with the other administrative entities of West Pakistan (the Punjab, the NWFP,
Baluchistan, Sind and Karachi) in the Upper Chamber. This parity was even more
prejudicial to their interests in that the two assemblies would have the same legisla-
tive competence. Faced with opposition from the Bengalis and with protestations
from the religious groups, who felt that the report gave insufficient emphasis to
Islam, Liaquat Ali Khan withdrew it in November 1950.
The difficulty of installing a democratic regime stemmed toa large extent from the
power relations of the various linguistic communities. !° The Bengalis had rejected the
Interim Report because of the parity issue, but their position became more difficult
after the Punjabis, who were keener on it than any other ethnic group, took power
from the start of the 1950s. On 16 October 1951, Liaquat Ali Khan was assassinated
during a meeting in Rawalpindi. Khwaja Muhammad then took over as Prime
Minister, leaving the post of governor general to Ghulam Muhammad, who was offi-
cially appointed by the British Crown on 18 October. This arrangement established
the advent of ‘the bureaucrats’ — as they are traditionally called in Pakistan — at the
expense of politicians and the Punjabis at the expense of the Bengalis.
Formerly Finance Minister under Liaquat Ali Khan, Ghulam Muhammad had
begun his career in the Indian Civil Service. From his years as a senior functionary
of the Raj he had retained his nostalgia for the efficacy of the British ‘steel frame’ —
the colonial administration, a sentiment that was far more thoroughly developed in
the Punjab, his home province, than in the others, particularly Bengal. In that
region, from the end of the eighteenth century, the British East India Company had
in effect established institutions on the British model: the governor general gov-
erned in concert with his council in which over the years, Indians had made their
appearance little by little. In the Punjab on the other hand, a province conquered as
late as 1849, long after Bengal, the administration, and more precisely the adminis-
trators within it, were all-powerful; the colonial imagery presented them as strong
personalities in direct contact with those they administered. The district magistrates
traversed their territory, levying taxes and administering justice. They were the pil-
lars of the state accounting to no assembly for their actions and their prestige,
supposedly genuine, arose from their devotion to the public good. At the time of the
Raj, this lack of political participation in the Punjab — contrasting with the ‘colonial
parliamentarianism’'’ prevalent further east — was to be found equally in the other
provinces of the northwest, which formed the defensive perimeter of the Indian
Empire to contain the Russian thrust into Central Asia.!®
The arrival of Ghulam Muhammad therefore marks the triumph of atypically
Punjabi authoritarian bureaucracy. The new governor general gave the politicians
even less confidence than had Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan, and distrusted the par-
liamentary system — its debates, its sources of division and its delays — even more.
These reservations about a democratic regime could also be explained by an under-
standable self-interest: the Punjabis, whom he represented more than any other
group, had everything to lose from the development of institutions based on the law
of numbers because of their relative demographic weakness. The Bengalis, on the
other hand, were drawn to democracy not just because of their constitutionalist
tradition but again, and above all, because they represented the majority of the
population. Their principal representative was Prime Minister Nazimuddin. He

submitted a new report for the Committee of Fundamental Principles to the
Constituent Assembly in November 1952, having erased the earlier report’s clauses
favouring West Pakistan: the Bengalis found that they would henceforth have a
majority of seats in the Lower Chamber. The Punjabi Muslim League, however,
rejected these proposals, and Ghulam Muhammad was against them too.
Nazimuddin withdrew the report on 21 January 1953, and the Constituent Assembly
was adjourned sine die. On 17 April Nazimuddin was dismissed by the governor gen-
eral, who also disapproved of the reduction in military expenditure in the report’s
financial section. (Ghulam Muhammad enjoyed a privileged relationship with the
army.) Nazamuddin tried to complain ~— notably to Queen Elizabeth II — about the
unconstitutional nature of his dismissal but he was speedily discouraged by the
police pressure to which he found himself subject.
One of the first moves of the new Prime Minister - Muhammad Ali Bogra,
another Bengali — consisted of implementing the ‘One Unit Scheme’, conceived by
Ghulam Muhammad to integrate the various provinces of West Pakistan and so
assist in restoring the balance with East Bengal. Pakistan would henceforth be made
up of more than two administrative entities, corresponding to its two ‘wings’. ‘The
‘western’ Cabinet was entrusted to a Pashtun, Dr Khan Sahib, who had renounced
Pashtun nationalism, but this reform clearly illustrated the Punjabis’ determination
to establish their hegemony over the western ‘wing’, the better to resist the Bengali
majority. The minor provinces — Sind, Baluchistan and the NWFP — protested in
vain against this administrative reorganization.
However, Bogra also defended the interest of his own community, the Bengalis.
On 7 October 1953 he submitted to the Constituent Assembly the final report to the
Committee of Fundamental Principles, which still gave to the Bengalis a majority of
seats in the Lower Chamber. As the regional elections of March 1954 approached,
the Bengali political class showed its determination by forming a coalition, the
United Front, which grouped together the Awami League, Suhrawardy’s party, and
Fazlul Huq’s KSP. This alliance, which campaigned on a 21 point-programme with
strong autonomist undertones, won handsomely against the Muslim League, which
kept only 11 seats out of 239. Fazlul Huq was soon at the head of the government.
Soon afterwards, on 7 May, Bogra had the Assembly pass a motion by which Bengali
was to be used as a national language on a par with Urdu, while English remained
the official language.
Ghulam Muhammad reacted to the Bengali call to arms by dismissing Huq from
his duties as chief minister of Bengal on the pretext that he would be in favour of
union with Indian West Bengal. The decisive turning point came six months later.
On 21 September 1954, the Constituent Assembly finally approved the report of the
Committee of Fundamental Rights against the Punjabi deputies in the chamber.
One month later, however, Ghulam Muhammad succeeded in avoiding the adoption
of a constitution which would have established a truly parliamentary regime by
declaring a state of emergency on the pretext that ‘the constitutional machine has
broken down’.!? He imposed press censorship and prevented elected members from
taking their seats in the Assembly.
This show of strength was not followed by demonstrations in the streets, even in
Bengal, particularly because the governor general had taken care to include in his
new government the two principal leaders of the province, Huq and Suhrawardy.
The only person to take a stand against the regime’s drift towards authoritarianism
was the President of the Assembly, Tamizuddin Khan, who, on 8 November 1954,
placed before the Sind tribunal a complaint contesting the validity of the measures
taken by Ghulam Muhammad. The tribunal ruled unanimously in his favour, con-
sidering the Constituent Assembly to be a sovereign body. The government entered
an appeal before the Supreme Court, the highest tribunal in the land, which
approved the governor general’s actions on 21 March 1955. The chief of the
Supreme Court, a Punjabi named Munir appointed by the governor general a few
months earlier, implicitly agreed with the latter’s contention concerning the ‘Bengali
menace’ and justified the state of emergency on the basis of a new doctrine the ‘civil
law of necessity’.?°
Once the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly was confirmed, Ghulam
Muhammad had a second one elected in 1955. This assembly produced, in record
time, a constitution which appeared to have all the attributes of parliamentary gov-
ernment, yet devolved upon the governor general — now rebaptized the president —
prerogatives that were incompatible with such a regime, since he could now dismiss
the central government as well as those of the provinces. The Constitution was
finally promulgated in 1956. Ghulam Muhammad then resigned in favour of
Iskander Mirza, who thus became the first President of Pakistan. Mirza, a senior
civil servant like his predecessor, was born in Bengal but had been linked with
Punjabi bureaucrats throughout his career.
By the mid-1950s therefore parliamentary democracy had foundered on the
demographic power relations between Bengalis and Punjabis on the one hand, and
between politicians and bureaucrats on the other. Moreover, Ghulam Muhammad
British
and Iskander Mirza, were senior civil servants trained in the tradition of
administration and hostile to political parties whose degree of dysfunction — it must
be admitted — did strain their credibility.
The Politics of Factions and ‘Feudalism’:

The 1956 Constitution Fails
presidential
The country now hada constitution combining parliamentary and
did not exist. A
principles but the political parties that could have brought it to life
the Muslim
form of multiparty system was certainly confirmed by the decline of
Assembly
League, which lost its majority at the elections to the second Constituent
but
with just 20 seats against 16 for the United Front and 12 for the Awami League,
ned above —
most of their rivals were either the regional parties — like those mentio
in 1956 to act
or some artificial creations like the Republican Party which emerged
similar tiny
as a screen for Ghulam Muhammad and Mirza. This party, like so many
groups, was born of the factionalism of the Muslim League.
cannot be
The factionalism which undermined the political parties of Pakistan,
of Baluchistan and
dissociated from the sway held by tribal chiefs, such as the sardar
the khan of the NWFP, and the ‘feudal lords’ — as they are traditionally called in
Pakistan, particularly the big landowners of the Punjab and Sind.*! The distribution
of land was significant: 0.17 per cent of property owners, or about 6,000 people,
possessed 7.5 million acres or some 15 per cent of the cultivated land surface, each
holding in general to over more than 500 acres. This ‘feudal’ domination was espe-
cially marked in the western area: 28 of the 40 members elected from this region to
the second Constituent Assembly were landed property owners.”? Their hold on
political power explains why agrarian reform got bogged down: the Muslim League
had made proposals in this direction in July 1949, but they were buried.
The ‘feudal’ character of Pakistani politics goes a long way to explain the intensity
of factional strife. The choice of a leader or of a party was to a great extent dictated
by quarrels between tribes, biradan or family clans often going back several generations.
So in the Punjab the republican party was supported by the Qizilbash, the Noon, the
Tiwana, the Gardezi, the Leghari and the Gilani, well-known rural grandees who
opposed other ‘feudals’ who themselves supported the regional boss of the Muslim
League, Mian Mumtaz Daultana. The superimposition of ‘feudal’ politics and fac-
tional strife weakened the political parties even more and led to instability in regional
governments because of the volatility of their support in the Assembly, a tendency fur-
ther reinforced by the central government’s strategy of “divide and rule’.
Iskander Mirza was a past master in this art, as his capacity to play Huq off
against Suhrawardy in East Pakistan demonstrated.*? In three years — between 1956
and 1958 — there were three prime ministers, Suhrawardy, I I Chundrigar and Firoz
Khan Noon — belonging to three different parties (the Awami League, the Muslim
League and the Republican Party). This instability reflected the opportunism of
the elected representatives, who were all the more ready to switch allegiances as the
dividing lines between the parties were artificial. It also had the effect of introduc-
ing antagonism between Prime Minister and President. H S Suhrawardy tried to
break free from Mirza’s tutelage by seeking a vote of confidence from the Assembly.
Mirza, unwilling to recognize the Assembly’s power to make and unmake govern-
ments, refused to convoke the Assembly, forcing Suhrawardy to resign on 11 October
1957. His place was taken by Firoz Khan Noon, who was no easier to manipulate
and took the same line as Suhrawardy.
In fact, Pakistan was facing a problem which it had to confront repeatedly until
1990s. ‘The Constitution wanted parliamentary government but, at the same time,
gave the President such prerogatives that he could not bring himself to let his Prime
Minister get on with governing. In the case of a conflict, the only solution was to dis-
miss the government and/or the Assembly, perhaps even suspending the institutions.
Mirza chose that last option on 7 October 1958 by proclaiming martial law.
Ayub Khan’s Praetorian Rule: From Martial Law to

‘Controlled Democracy’
‘To some extent, Mirza took his decision under the influence of General Muhammad
Ayub Khan, commander-in-chief of the army, whose authority symbolized the
growing role of the military at the heart of all the institutions.
From its birth, Pakistan had felt threatened by its neighbour, India, and wanted a
powerful army.” This categorical imperative had been reinforced more strongly still
during the first war over Kashmir in 1948-49. Now the troops which Pakistan had
inherited at the time of Partition represented only 36 per cent of the British Indian
Army (140,000 men out of 400,000), giving New Delhi a considerable advantage.”°
The government therefore made an exceptional financial effort to strengthen the
_ army and modernize its equipment. Between 1947 and 1949 military spending rep-
resented on average more than half the annual budget, with a peak of 73 per cent
in the fiscal year 1950-51.*©The country’s political economy was clearly dominated
by security considerations.?’
This priority explains why Pakistan joined the Western camp and its network of
military alliances in the context of the Cold War. From 1953, American support
helped it to finance its armaments effort. Furthermore, it benefited from external
support, which was all the more appreciable during times of crisis. It jommed the
Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) and the Central Treaty Organization
(CENTO) in 1954-55, two years in the course of which American economic aid rose
from 15 million to 114 million dollars.*°At this stage, Pakistani officers began to go
to the United States rather than England for their training courses.”? So Pakistan
formed part of a mechanism of ‘containment’ directed against the USSR, a con-
tinuation of the ‘great diplomatic and military game’, whose theatre this region had
been when Afghanistan and the northern provinces of Pakistan served as a buffer
zone for the British. This geopolitical constant had guaranteed the Pakistani military
particularly strong American support at the beginning of the Cold War and again
after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, but it had also reinforced the military in the
Punjab and in the North-West Frontier Province.
In 1947, the Pakistan army consisted of 77 per cent Punjabis; Pashtuns repre-
sented 19.5 per cent of the troops.*° Officers were taught that every country tends
to organize itself around a ‘heartland’, loss of which generally leads to the collapse
of national resistance — in the case of Pakistan that ‘heartland’ is, of course, the
Punjab. As in many countries, the Pakistani military rather despised the politicians
because of their incessant squabbling. Democracy did not appeal to them much
either, because it risked giving power to the Bengalis, a community the Punjabis and
Pashtuns looked down on. Since colonial times, according to a well-established
stereotype, Bengalis had been seen by them — and others as puny, effeminate crea-
tures.3! The Punjabis and Pashtuns, whom the British had labelled ‘martial races’,
considered that their warrior ethic was necessary to the survival of the country.
Whatever might happen, they could not conceive of a situation where the Bengalis
gained power over a simple question of demographic power relations.
Ayub Khan, who had been army commander-in-chief since 1951, embodied this
military institution better than anyone. His ethnic origin was Pashtun, he was born
in the Punjab — like Ghulam Muhammad ~ and he believed in a centralized state
dominated by the Punjab, to which he was keen to rally members of his commu-
nity.°2 Since his studies at Sandhurst Military Academy in England and years spent
under the command of British officers, he had adhered to the notion that soldiers
should avoid politics. °° Yet the failings of the civilian government since 1947
convinced him that Pakistan’s survival depended on the army. He then found him-
self alongside Ghulam Muhammad in 1953-54 when the “Bengali threat’ became a
reality and he even agreed to serve as Minister of Defence. This experience, how-
ever, strengthened his misgivings about politicians. Mirza, the manipulator, did not
seem much of an improvement: having urged him to impose martial law, he forced
him to resign on 27 October 1958.
Ayub Khan took over the presidency from Mirza. The 1956 Constitution was
abrogated, the governments — that of the centre as well as those of the provinces —
were dismissed, the Assembly was dissolved, and political parties were declared ille-
gal. Nearly 150 former ministers, from national as well as provincial governments,
and 600 ex-deputies were put on trial for corruption. Among them were Suhrawardy
and Firoz Khan Noon. The civil service did not escape the purge, since the com-
missions of inquiry set up by the new authorities forced the dismissal or premature
retirement of 1,662 officials.** Finally, in March 1959, Ayub Khan promulgated a
decree confirming his willingness to drive politicians from the public sphere: the
Elective Bodies (Disqualification) Order (EBDO), under the terms of which those
suspected of improper behaviour or corruption had the choice of trial or retirement
from political life, the guilty being banned from public office until 31 December
1966. Several important politicians, including Mian Mumtaz Daultana, Firoz Khan
Noon and M A Khurho ~fell foul of the terms of EBDO. The main political par-
ties lost their leaders.*°
At the same time, Ayub Khan took several populist measures. A few weeks after seiz-
ing power he fixed the price of basic foodstuffs and promised agrarian reform. ‘The
‘feudal lords’, whom no civilian government had as yet dared to attack, were the first
victims of martial law. A commission charged with agrarian reform was appointed
from as early as 31 October 1958: it reported on 7 February 1959 and on the basis of
this report Ayub Khan’s regime limited the maximum individual landholding to 500
acres of irrigated and 1,000 acres of non-irrigated land, allowing the redistribution of
2.2 million acres among 150,000 new property owners. ‘The reform undoubtedly
spared the middle-ranking landowners, the main recruitment source of so many
Punjabi and Pashtun soldiers, but it was still greeted with approval by the press.
Ayub Khan also emphasized industrial development — as witness his decision to
take over the presidency of the Planning Commission. ‘This effort produced a rise in
the average annual growth of manufacturing production during the second five-year
plan (1960-65). He was popular among businessmen for his firm return to political
stability. Nevertheless, only a minority gained from this boom, in particular the
‘twenty-two families’ who were said to own Pakistan. While this is an exaggeration,
it is true that in 1962 four big merchant communities — the Memons, the Chiniotis,
the Bohras and the Khojas — controlled two-thirds of the national industrial heritage,
though they represented only 0.5 per cent of the population.*© This trend was con-
firmed at the end of Ayub Khan’s reign: in 1968 two-thirds of industry and 87 per
cent of banking and insurance were in the hands of a couple of dozen families.
“These industrial families, together with an estimated 15,000 senior civil servants
belonging to approximately 10,000 families, and about 500 generals and senior mil-
itary officials, formed the core of the regime’s bases of support in the urban areas.’
Having achieved economic development, Ayub Khan also forced through the
modernization of Islam in Pakistan. The religion seemed to him to be the sole basis
of national unity but he took a public stand against the obscurantism of the ulemas,
and sought to separate spiritual and temporal spheres.*° He pressurized the imams
in the mosques to open their thoughts to Western science and to reform the Muslim
practices which stood in the way of the country’s progress, such as divorce by the
mere repudiation of wives, and polygamy, itself in part responsible for the country’s
disturbing demographic growth. To this effect on 15 July 1961 he promulgated the
Muslim Family Laws Ordinance (MFLO), establishing a council of arbitration, to
which all demands for divorce had to be submitted, which insisted on a three-month
period during which the couple had to attempt reconciliation. This procedure con-
formed to the Islamic tradition of talaq al-ahsan, while husbands often preferred
pure and simple repudiation of their wives according to talag al-bid’a. This council
was also charged with obtaining the first wife’s assent when a man wanted to
remarry. Should he fail to submit to the council’s decision, he was liable to a
punishment which might extend to as much as a year in gaol. Finally the MFLO
allowed orphans of both father and mother irrespective of sex, to inherit from their
grandparents. All these reforms clearly reflected the University of Aligarh’s mod-
ernizing influence on the young Ayub Khan, before he continued his studies in
England. From traditional Islam he extracted a political model, that of the Caliph
Omar (634-44), who governed alone, though from time to time he took advice
from a consultative committee. Ayub Khan cast the Parliament in this role.*9
Even if Ayub Khan’s speeches were studded with democratic references, (such as
‘controlled democracy’, of which he was especially fond)", his political ideal was
reminiscent of the authoritarian paternalism of the Punjabi administration of the
British period. The Basic Democracies Order, promulgated to mark the first anniver-
sary of his coming to power, in fact established a political regime very similar to the
indirect administration of the Raj. The aim of this political mechanism was to
coopt local notables who could form a link with government authority, both local
and regional, just like the collaborators whom the British saw as the ‘national lead-
ers’ of the rural world. There were four levels. At village level, the committee was
elected by universal suffrage; but at the dehsi/, regional and provincial level the ‘basic
democrats’ who served on the committees were elected by indirect ballot. These
authorities, as in colonial times, inevitably included a high proportion of members
chosen by central government or by those acting in its name ~ this proportion could
be as high as 50 per cent. Moreover, these ‘basic democrats’ formed an 80,000
strong electoral college, half chosen from West Pakistan and half from East Pakistan,
with whom lay the responsibility of electing the President. Ayub Khan, as the only
candidate, was thus elected in January 1960 by 75,084 votes to 2,829.
The Constitution was promulgated on 8 June 1962, at the moment when martial
law was lifted, and formally sanctioned the rule of Ayub Khan. The presidential
right of veto over decisions of the single-chamber Parliament was absolute in all
fields except that of finance*! — even in the event of a two-thirds-majority vote,
because the President could always submit the matter for decision by referendum.
The National Assembly was clearly within the President’s control. It was elected, just
as he was, by the electoral college formed by the 80,000 ‘basic democrats’, whose
votes he could readily buy or force. Even if members of the opposition managed to
get elected — as was the case in April 1962, when Ayub Khan failed to gain a two-
thirds majority (necessary where votes on constitutional amendments were
concerned) — he found the means to achieve his ends: some rural deputies were
threatened with loss of water for their irrigation canals if they voted the wrong way.”
Moreover, the April 1962 elections took place just when the courts had lost some of
their room for manoeuvre, the press were still under censorship," and political par-
ties were still proscribed, thus preventing the formation of parliamentary groups and
the mobilization of an opposition.
After martial law had been lifted, the Bengali leaders of the Awami League and
the KSP revolted against the ban on political parties in the form of a common
announcement on 24 June 1962. Their campaign compelled Ayub Khan to legalize
them in July by the Political Parties Act. Suhrawardy then formed the National
Democratic Front combining the Awami League, the KSP and the Jamaat-i Islami,
the readiest of all to reorganize. Ayub Khan had to admit that political parties were
back with a vengeance. Asa result he established his own political party, the Muslim
Convention League, created in September 1962 out of the debris of a breakaway fac-
tion of the Muslim League. Although he disdained to be a party man, Ayub Khan
became its president in December 1963. Like Ghulam Muhammad and Mirza’s
Republican Party, it was no more than a collection of courtiers, a sycophantic coterie
without any local connections. The majority of Muslim League veterans did not rally
to it, but set up their own Muslim League Council, which, under the presidency of
Khwaja Nazimuddin, joined the National Democratic Front.
This return to partisan politics was not complete because many politicians
remained disqualified under the EBDO regulations, which still prevented the heavy-
weights of Pakistani politics from contesting the 1965 presidential election. Fatima
Jinnah, the Qaid-i Azam’s sister, therefore stood against Ayub Khan with the support
of most of the parties, including the Jamaat-i Islami. Its electoral campaign, under
the slogan ‘Democracy Against Dictatorship’, found a profound echo among the
population, as witnessed by the dense crowds attending its meetings in every corner
of the country. The ‘basic democrats’ voted 65 per cent for Ayub Khan, but the con-
frontation left him weakened.
The military defeat of Pakistan by India in 1965 marked a far more decisive turn-
ing point a little later. Pakistan, having gained confidence from India’s rout by the
Chinese in 1962, took the initiative, but Ayub Khan and his army overestimated the
Indian Kashmiris’ determination to revolt against New Delhi, while they underesti-
mated the Indian army’s capacity to react. Kashmir remained relatively calm,
despite the launching in the region of Operation Gibraltar by the Pakistan army;
while the Indian air force replied by attacking Lahore and Sialkot on 6 September
1965, to the amazement of the authorities in Islamabad. On 22 September Ayub
Khan had to accept a humiliating cease-fire, to the considerable displeasure of his
Foreign Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who took no part in the negotiations in
‘Tashkent in January 1966, and even resigned from the government in June.
Ayub Khan never recovered from the defeat of 1965, which all the opposition
A FRUITLESS SEARCH FOR DEMOCRACY a3
parties were quick to exploit. On 13 January, the leaders of organizations as diverse

as the Awami League and the Jamaat-i Islami held a joint press conference in
Lahore to denounce the peace of Tashkent. This opposition was considerably
strengthened by the creation of the Pakistan People’s Party in November 1967 on
the initiative of Z A Bhutto, who succeeded in channelling student agitation against
the humiliation at Tashkent and the anger of the working class, those who had not
benefited from economic growth.** The disturbances reached such proportions
that on 13 November 1968 Ayub Khan had to put his former foreign minister
under arrest for several weeks.
The Bengali question provided the final straw that broke the back of Ayub Khan.
Mujibur Rahman’s campaign for greater autonomy for East Pakistan led Islamabad
to reimpose martial law on 17 March 1969. A few days later, on 25 March, the pres-
ident resigned himself to stepping down. He invited his military chief, General
Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan, to succeed him, thus scorning the constitutional
procedures which foresaw the passage of power to the Assembly’s president in the
case of the president’s resignation. Yahya Khan abrogated the Constitution, dis-
solved the assemblies and banned political parties, just as Ayub Khan had done
eleven years earlier.
Democratization and Bengali Separatism

Yahya Khan came to power with no preconceived ideas.* Inheriting a delicate sit-
uation in which presidential power was being contested more and more, he was in
no doubt that some concessions to the opposition were needed, as much in terms of
political liberalization as of recognition of ethnic differences. Yet both these two lines
of attack were still as unacceptable to the Punjabi elite as they had been in the 1950s.
Any democratization — especially if it also meant a significant move towards recog-
nition of the country’s cultural diversity — must result in the end in submitting the
Punjabis — indeed all of West Pakistan — to domination by the majority Bengalis,
whose nationalist feelings had been aroused by decades of repression.*
The day after the taking up of duties, Yahya Khan announced free elections and
then annulled the ‘One Unit Scheme’. He also promulgated, on 30 March 1970, a
Legal Framework Order stipulating that the future National Assembly would have
313 seats, of which 169 would go to East Pakistan, and that the provinces would
enjoy autonomy under a federal system. Yahya Khan believed he was taking a cal-
culated risk after the secret service had assured him that Mujibur Rahman’s Awami
League would not gain more than 80 seats. *7
The 1970 elections and the regionalization

of Pakistani politics
From the start of the election campaign the authorities, sticking to a custom that
harked back to Mirza’s Republican Party, appropriated one party: a Muslim League,
whose leadership was entrusted to Abdul Qayyum Khan, former head of the NWFP
government, which received significant subsidies. Yahya Khan also supported —
more or less directly — the Islamic parties, the Jamaat-i Islami, the Deobandi JUI and
the Barelwi JUP (see Chapters 10 and 11 below). None of these organizations won
more than 9 out of the 300 seats available — not only because they had never man-
aged to gain a foothold in East Pakistan, where they had never gained asingle seat,
but above all because they clashed in West Pakistan with a new rival, the PPP.
Table 3.1 National Assembly elections, 1970 (by party and region)
West East
The Punjab Sind NWFP Baluchistan Pakistan Pakistan Total
Awami League = = = = fe 160 ‘160

Pakistan People’s Party
Vad = 1 = 81
Pakistan Muslim League “ - : a
(Qayyum Khan) 1 7 = 9 = 9
Convention Muslim if
7 = = = 7 a
League
Jamiyyat-ul Ulama (H)
Jamiyyat-ul Ulama-i ‘ : ,
Pakistan 4 3 ee a 7 = 7
National Awami Party =
(Wali Khan) z = : 2 e _
Jamaat-i Islami | 2 l = a = 4
Others 2 = = ad 2 1 3
Independents 5 3 7 = 15 i 16
Total 82 2 20 4 138 162 300
Source: C.. Baxter, ‘Pakistan Votes — 1970’, Asian Survey, 11 (3), March 1971.
The Pakistan People’s Party, a new creation of Z A Bhutto, concentrated its efforts
in West Pakistan alone, never putting up a candidate in the eastern half of the coun-
try. Its programme was more attractive, its leader more dynamic. For months Bhutto
held meetings as he toured the whole of West Pakistan in the populist style embodied
at the same time in India by Indira Gandhi. Bhutto went to the people to promise
them ‘roti, kapra aur makan’ (bread, clothes and a house). In answer to this slogan the reli-
gious parties could produce only the negative ‘Socialism kufir hai: Muslim millat ek ho’
(Socialism is a heresy: let us defend the Muslim people). Bhutto accepted the epithet
‘socialist’ with good grace, since he claimed it made him the protector of the masses
while fending off the implied criticism by qualifying his doctrine as ‘Islamic socialism’,*®
an idea he associated with musawat, the equality of all Muslims as defined by their reli-
gion. What was more, the extreme anti-Indian line that he had taken when he was
Foreign Minister (and after) had given himanationalist image that was very attractive
to Muhajirs and Punjabis alike. ‘Thus Bhutto overcame the handicaps of being a Shi’a
Sindi. The PPP took 81 seats — 62 in the Punjab, where it had contested 82, and 18 out
of 27 in Sind. It was the main victor in West Pakistan despite a clear rejection in
Baluchistan and the NWFP, two provinces where the Islamic and ethnic parties tri-
umphed, a sign of the growing regionalization of the political game in Pakistan.
This trend, which would have been systematic but for Bhutto’s incursions into the
Punjab, was even more evident from the tidal wave with which the Awami League
swept through East Pakistan. Frustrating the prognostications of the agents of army
intelligence, Mujibur Rahman’s party took 160 of the 162 seats available in East
Bengal. Such a success was unlikely to induce a moderation of his claims for autonomy.
Democratization leads to a second partition

The 1970 elections confirmed West Pakistan’s fears: the use of democratic proce-
dures could have only one effect — the transfer of power to the Bengalis as a result
of the simple play of demographic forces.
Bhutto did not leave it at that. As soon as the results came out, he declared that the
law of the majority was not the only consideration in politics, and that the historic
role played by the PPP in the struggle against Ayub Khan gave it the right to
share power. Mujibur Rahman replied on 3 January 1971 that the Awami League
was now the majority party, and his intention was to endow the country with a
new constitution based on his Six-Point Programme. Conversations ensued
between Rahman, Yahya Khan and Bhutto, but they were inconclusive; the latter
two were adamant that they would not concede the power Rahman claimed. The
events that followed have been related in Chapter 2 above.
Yahya Khan put off sine die the convocation of the National Assembly. The
Awami League then organized demonstrations for 3 March, the day the Assembly
had been due to meet. Yahya Khan announced soon after that his deputies would
take their seats on 25 March, but Rahman stipulated further conditions for his
party’s participation, among which were the lifting of martial law and the immedi-
ate transfer of power to the Assembly. The conversations continued, but on 23
March, the anniversary of the Lahore Resolution, Rahman announced that he
would accept only a Pakistani confederation where central government would retain
limited sovereign prerogatives. On the advice of the military, who encouraged him
to resort once more to force in order to eradicate the Awami League, Yahya Khan
launched Operation Searchlight at midnight on 25 March. Students at Dhaka
University, some of Rahman’s most faithful supporters, were the first targets — the
army’s intervention left hundreds of victims strewn about the campus. The soldiers
or police employed in the repression were all either Punjabis or Biharis, Urdu-
speakers who had come from Bihar in 1947, or their descendants.
Mujibur Rahman was arrested, but some of his lieutenants made it to India,
where they set up a government-in-exile on 17 April. In total, ten million refugees
from East Pakistan found refuge in India. The Indian army lent support to the
Mukti Bahini, the liberation army consisting of commandos largely from among the
youth, who carried on guerrilla operations in the name of Bangladesh. In November
1971 India launched afull-scale attack which it had been preparing for some time.
The war lasted only two weeks, during which the Pakistani forces lost half their fleet,
a third of their army and a quarter of their air force. On 16 December Islamabad
was forced to sign a humiliating cease-fire under the terms of which India held as
prisoners 93,000 soldiers captured in the area around Dhaka.
The rout was such that the army had to persuade Yahya Khan to resign and
entrust power to a civilian, Bhutto. It was on 20 December, therefore, that Bhutto
became President and the administrator of martial law. The transition to democracy,
initiated after the 1965 war, resumed after the conflict of 1971. Unfortunately, it
seems that Pakistan lacked the internal resources necessary to consolidate a democ-
ratization process that, once again, was prompted by an external crisis.
The Bhutto Years: Democracy’s False Dawn

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto found himself faced with the same challenge as his predecessors:
he had to assert the primacy of those returned to power over the military and the
bureaucrats. In seeking to do so he did hold one personal trump: his extraordinary
fighting spirit, and a popularity not seen since the days of Jinnah, to whom he
largely owed his social and nationalistic programme. Yet his origins provoked some
doubts over his progressiveness: even if he had studied law in England, he remained
a wadera, a big Sindi property owner, whose lands in Larkana stretched as far as the
eye could see. All his biographers have stressed the ambivalence of a man who
combined modern values with feudal attitudes.”
Bhutto started by showing the military that he was the real captain of the ship.
Four months after his accession to power, 29 senior officers had been shown the
door, including his chief of army staff, General Gul Hassan Khan, who was replaced
by General Tikka Khan.°?! The new President wanted to build a more professional
army in the service of the civil government”? and at first the soldiers approved of
his reforms,” all the more so as military expenditure remained very high — 59.3
per cent of the budget in 1972—73 and 44.7 per cent in 1976—-77.°* To counter-
balance the military influence however, in October 1972 Bhutto created a federal
security force under the control of central government, with the duty of helping
the police in operations to maintain civil order. The army never accepted this new
institution, which soon boasted 18,500 men, seeing it as a force to limit the risk of
a putsch. The military had to take an oath never to take part in any political
activity, and the crime of high treason was defined as an act seeking to subvert the
Constitution by force. Nevertheless, Bhutto brought the army to the front of the
political stage involuntarily in 1973, when he dismissed the government of
Baluchistan and committed himself to a war that involved 80,000 men in 1977.
This deployment of force showed just how dependent the civilian government was
on the armed forces.
Nor did Bhutto succeed in freeing himself from the influence of the civil service.
Following the example of his predecessors, he certainly indulged in ‘spoil system’ tac-
tics in his dealings with senior civil servants. He even abolished the Police Service of
Pakistan and the Civil Service of Pakistan, the state’s aristocracy which was still pro-
viding the country’s ‘steel frame’, and absorbed them into a new All-Pakistan Unified
Grade.°° He had to resign himself, however, to restoring something of their old glory
to the bureaucrats when the nationalizations in which he indulged in the 1970s
demanded the skills of a greater number of them. Other ‘socialist’ measures, such
as agrarian reforms, led him also to rely on the bureaucrats: as defender of an
A FRUITLESS SEARCH FOR DEMOCRACY if
ideology in which the state must be the architect of social progress, Bhutto could not
manage without the civil service.
The force Bhutto was able to muster to face the army and the administration was
largely the result of the popular legitimacy of his programme, combining as it did
democracy and socialism. He was indeed the architect of the first Pakistani democ-
ratization that Yahya Khan had only managed to sketch out under pressure of
circumstances. Four months after seizing power, on 21 April 1972, he put an end to
martial law by promulgating a temporary constitution. This was superseded on 14
August 1973 by Pakistan’s third Constitution, which is still in place today, although it
has been amended many times. This introduced atruly parliamentary system where
power was in the hands of a Prime Minister elected by the Assembly, rather than in
those of the President. Article 48, for example, stipulates that the Prime Minister’s sig-
nature should also appear on presidential decrees.
From the time of the promulgation of the Constitution, Bhutto therefore occupied
the position of prime minister, the post of president going to a background figure,
Fazlal Elahi Chaudhry. The Constitution reaffirmed the Islamic character of
Pakistan — both prime minister and president must be Muslims. It foresaw, as
replacement for the Advisory Council on Islamic Ideology, in suspended animation
since the mid 1960s (see Note 38), the nomination by the president of a Council on
Islamic Ideology. This body, whose role was to be no more than consultative, was
charged with ‘the total Islamization of Pakistan’, due to be completed by the 1980s.°°
The new government’s socioeconomic reform programme started with a fresh
launching of agrarian reform. The limit for large landowners was reduced to 150
acres of irrigated and 300 acres of non-irrigated land. All the same, this measure did
not lead to a very substantial redistribution in favour of the most deprived, because
the land thus acquired was often of low quality. Furthermore, the title to property
could be transferred within a family, and the owners of tractors and drilled wells had
the right to additional areas Bhutto admitted the limited success of this reform
quite frankly during the 1977 election campaign, promising the further reduction in
ceilings for holdings to 100 and 200 acres respectively. For the workers, Bhutto
announced a range of measures on 10 February 1971: the unions gained influence
thanks to the introduction of labour courts to which their disputes with bosses could
be submitted. In the factories, workers’ representatives had to be elected, and busi-
nesses were under an obligation to distribute between 2 per cent and 4 per cent of
their profits to the workforce.°’
As far as the economic reforms were concerned, the nationalizations were the
main achievement. From January 1972 Bhutto transferred to the public sector more
than 30 large organizations in a dozen industrial sectors, ranging from the iron and
steel industry to petrochemicals, and including electrical materials. It was a matter
of bringing into line the so-called ‘22 families’ who still controlled the Pakistani econ-
omy. Nationalizations extended into the financial sector — life insurance, then certain
banks by early 1974. Between 1973 and 1976 Bhutto completed his plan for the
nationalization of companies producing or distributing goods for direct consump-
tion, such as rice and cotton, but this alienated a number of small entrepreneurs and
merchants who had supported him since the 1970 elections.
Apart from a weakening of power due to these sector-based measures and to fail-
ure to keep his promises, Bhutto was suffering two major handicaps on the eve of the
1977 elections. First of all his party, the PPP, which did not have a particularly solid
foundation, had sunk into a sort of lethargy ever since its leader had been preoccu-
pied with governmental matters. Bhutto made an effort to reorganize it in December
1976, in view of the forthcoming general elections, but he put in as leaders faithful
friends of no great calibre. This only reinforced the centralization and personaliza-
tion of power — indeed the PPP experienced the same process of
deinstitutionalization as which Indira Gandhi’s party was suffering at the same time.
Secondly, Bhutto had not yet completed his programme of social reforms, as his
agrarian reforms show, and just before the 1977 elections he did not hesitate to go
against this for the sake of mere opportunism, nominating to his party a number of
property Owner.
The elections, organized in March, saw a vigorous opposition campaign. Bhutto
waited until January to announce them, to put his adversaries at a time disadvantage,
but by 11 March nine opposition parties had grouped under the banner of the
Pakistan National Alliance (PNA). This coalition ranged from traditional religious
bodies to leftist groups, including various fractions of the Muslim League. Most
observers were of the opinion that the PPP would definitely suffer in the face of a
unified opposition.*® The results, giving 155 seats out of 200 to the PPP against 36
to the PNA, were therefore regarded with suspicion abroad, and denounced by the
opposition as the inevitable result of fraud on a grand scale. The PNA organized
demonstrations in which two social groups which had supported Bhutto in the past —
the students and the small traders — also joined. Repression of the demonstration
resulted in 200 deaths over a 14-day period, and this only reinforced the opposition.
Lahore, Karachi and Hyderabad had to be placed under martial law.
Bhutto called for support from the army, which lost no opportunity to denounce
the negligence of corrupt politicians and justify a new coup d’état. This initiative was
taken by General Zia ul-Haq, whom Bhutto had appointed head of the army alittle
while before, imagining that he had acquired the services of a docile man. ‘The mil-
itary seized power — bloodlessly, even gently — on 5 July 1977. Zia immediately
announced that new elections would take place in 90 days. The leaders of the PPP,
including Bhutto, and of the PNA were arrested, but released after three weeks.
However, Zia did assume the title of administrator-in-chief of martial law and,
going back on his promises, submitted the country to a long and repressive military
regime, though not without regular announcements of impending elections.
The Zia Era: A Military Regime

in the Service of Islam
General Zia had been appointed head of the army by Bhutto in spring 1976, thus
bypassing a dozen more senior officers on the grounds of ‘his great piety, his patri-
otism and his professionalism’.°? In Pakistan, ‘patriot’ is often a synonym for
‘anti-Indian’. Zia’s hostility towards India was indeed particularly vehement — so
much the more so because, born in East Punjab in 1924, he had had to emigrate
with his family in 1947, and remained haunted by this trauma. His professionalism
and his piety were to lie at the heart of his political project: the careful construction
of an authoritarian regime in the name of Islamic ideology.
An authoritarian regime reinforced by

the war in Afghanistan
Bhutto was the Zia’s first victim. He was arrested once more on 3 September 1977,
accused of being behind an attempt on the life of one of his PPP rivals in 1974. His
wife, Begum Nusrat, whom he had appointed to head his party, contested the con-
stitutionality of the Prime Minister’s detention in court. The Supreme Court
dismissed her case on the grounds of the doctrine of ‘State necessity’, which was pre-
viously invoked in 1954. The judges further confirmed Zia in his position of
administrator-in-chief of martial law, and therefore his powers to legislate and to
amend the Constitution. The Punjab tribunal declared Bhutto guilty, and condemned
him to death on 18 March 1978. Zia remained deaf to international pressure for a
presidential pardon, and Bhutto was hanged on 3 April 1979.
Zia did not wait for Bhutto’s execution to lay the foundations for his dictatorial
regime. Although there had been no abrogation of the Constitution, and although
right up to the early 1980s he presented himself as only a temporary director of
operations who wanted to hold early elections, he ruled with a rod of iron, supported
by the army. Unlike Ayub Khan, he retained his position as Chief of Army Staff
(COAS) thanks to a constitutional amendment, and combined it with that of
President from 1978. The Council of Advisers he set up on 14 January 1978 was
directed by officers and bureaucrats: thus 10 per cent of civil administrative posts
were reserved for the military, and a large number of officers were brought out of
retirement to take up positions as governors of provinces or as ambassadors.°°
Meanwhile, Zia managed to coopt politicians from the Muslim League, the first
being Muhammad Khan Junejo, who entered the government in a ministerial
reshuffle marking the first anniversary of the putsch. Once again, members of the
Muslim League did not hesitate to compromise themselves with the military regime.
All the same, Zia banned parties and political meetings on 16 October 1978, when
censorship had also been reinforced. He completed his project at the end of 1981,
when he appointed 350 members of a purely consultative assembly, the Majlis-i
Shura, whose principal role was to guide the Islamization policy, the regime’s grand
design.
General Zia cemented his authority in a favourable context, that of the war in
Afghanistan. The Soviet invasion launched on 28 December 1979 led in effect to
the United States supporting Pakistan in its efforts to contain communist expan-
sion — a policy which Zia knew how to milk for all he was worth. Not only did he
receive a $3.2 billion hand-out from Washington over a period of six years, but he
also escaped American pressures — indeed, western pressures more widely — in
favour of a return to democracy and the defence of human rights. Zia occupied
his
too strategic a position to be upset by interference in the internal affairs of
country. Pakistan could even pursue a nuclear programme without the United
States taking any action except protestations and the customary warnings,°!
although it had vigorously criticized Bhutto’s launching of the programme.® The
army also profited from the conflict in Afghanistan in financial terms. In 1981,
military expenditure represented 6.9 per cent of Gross National Product and 29.1
per cent of the total budget.°?
Islam as state ideology

Zia typified a new social background to the Pakistan army. Officers now came more
and more from the Punjabi middle class, known for their conservative and orthodox
religious attitudes. In his first televised address, he declared with conviction:
‘Pakistan, created in the name of Islam, will only survive if it continues to adhere to
Islam’. First he enforced Islamization of the economy, forbidding the charging of
interest [ba] in 1979 as required by the precepts of Islam. Another financial mea-
sure followed on 20 June 1979 in the form of a charity tax in line with the Islamic
tradition of zakat, whereby every Muslim should make voluntary and disinterested
donations. In the statist version introduced by Zia, zakat took the form of an auto-
matic 2.5 per cent tax on all deposit accounts.®*
Islamization was then extended to education. Islamic and Koranic studies
became compulsory. In 1982, diplomas issued by Islamic seminaries became rec-
ognized as equivalent to master’s degrees in Arabic and Muslim civilization
[Jslamayat|. Students from seminaries could be entitled to government bursaries
partly financed from the zakat. In its struggle against illiteracy the Government
sought support from the madrasahs and encouraged the establishment of 12,000 of
these ‘mosque schools’.
The most dramatic effects of the Islamization policy however, were felt in the
legal system. Zia attacked judicial power, demanding that judges must swear alle-
giance to him — a decision which led some to resign and others to remain silent. At
the same time civil law was being used concurrently with martial law and — more
to the point — tribunals were charged with seeing that sharia law was respected.
From 1979, the tribunals of the country’s four provinces were placed under the sur-
veillance of other tribunals charged with flushing out laws which were contrary to
Islam. These in turn were replaced in May 1980 by a Federal Shari’ah Court,
which broke new ground a year later when it appointed ulemas as judges. From
1982, some ulemas also sat on the Shari’ah Appellate Bench of the Supreme
Court. The entire system was completed in 1984 with the creation of ‘Qazi courts’,
which ensured that sharia was followed at the local level. Here again, ulemas could
sit as judges.
This judicial apparatus was charged with administering an Islamic penal code,
introduced by regulations in 1979. These covered the punishments set out in the
Koran and the Sunna ~ as for example, beatings and amputations — to punish the those
who committed murder, adultery, perjury and blasphemy. Women convicted of adul-
tery could henceforth find themselves liable to 100 strokes of the cane, or even to being
stoned. Rapists on the other hand, were liable only to a prison sentence. In practice, a
raped woman could even find herself accused of adultery.®© Islamization of the legal
code therefore aggravated inequality between the sexes — as witness the presidential
decree of 1984 on ‘the establishment of proof’ [Qanoon-i Shahadat] under the terms of
which the testimony of one man was considered equal to that of two women.°/
The treatment of women by the regime, which also included the introduction of
a particularly strict dress code for air hostesses and television announcers, evoked
protests from the Women’s Action Forum and from the All-Pakistani Women’s
Association — founded by Liaquat Ali Khan’s widow. When their members marched
on 12 February 1983, the police dispersed the demonstrators with tear-gas bombs.
The women’s agitation underlined how far the Islamization policy had fallen out of
step with a country where women had, little by little, taken up responsible jobs in all
walks of public life, including the courts, as witness the establishment of the Women
Lawyers Association.
Privately some senior elements in the Pakistan army showed their scepticism
about the Islamization policy.®* The senior officers, most of whom had been trained
overseas in a more or less cosmopolitan atmosphere, struggled to combine their
modern identity with their Muslim faith, but were disturbed by the excesses of the
Islamization policy, which was supported mainly by middle-ranking officers who —
like Zia himself — came from the Punjabi middle classes.
Islamization was out of step with the culture of a country where Sufism was an
old tradition, one that the ulemas had always stigmatised for its heterodoxy without
lessening its popularity. Besides, for the Shi’a, who made up 20 per cent of the pop-
ulation, Zia’s policy was frankly discriminatory. <akat was never a Shi’a practice and
only Sunni sat in Shari’ah Courts. The Shi’a reaction to Islamization was the setting
up in 1979 of a new organization called the Tahrik Nifaz Figh-i Jafaria (TNEJ), the
Movement for the Establishment of Shi’a Law. With the support of Iran, this body
echoed the ideology of Ayatollah Khomeini during the 1980s, and reacted violently
against any surfacing of overradical Sunni militancy. Far from effecting the
Islamisation of Pakistan, Zia’s policy tended to nourish sectarian conflicts which
inevitably became more bitter in the 1990s.
The ultimate impossibility of democratization

By the beginning of the 1980s, the militant Shi’a and the feminists were no longer
alone in taking to the streets. The opposition began to take the initiative little by little.
of
In 1981 eleven parties came together to launch the Movement for the Restoration
to
Democracy (MRD). The Muslim League and the Jamaat-i Islami, always ready
collaborate with the authorities, did not participate in this alliance. Nor, indeed, did
9,000
the Pashtun and Baluchi separatists. The latter were grateful to Zia for freeing
ed to
prisoners captured during the Bhutto period; as for the Pashtuns, Zia continu
ment in
coopt them into the army and anyway, they approved of his involve
Afghanistan against the Soviet aggressor.
nt
The MRD was especially popular in Sind, since the architect of the moveme
gns. The
was the PPP, and Sind had always been the bastion of the party’s campai
masse for a
peasants of Sukkur, Larkana, Jacobabad and Khaipur mobilized en
founder of the
return to democracy and in the name of Sindi nationalism: Bhutto,
PPP, first political leader of the ballot box, martyred by Zia, was their symbol. It
took three divisions of soldiers to quell the disturbances. In the course of three
weeks of repression alone, the governor of Sind recorded 189 deaths and nearly
2,000 prisoners.
This was at the time when Zia seemed to want to acquire at least the semblance
of popular legitimacy. On 12 August 1983 he assured the country that there would
be elections before March 1985, and in December 1984 he organized a referendum
asking Pakistanis whether they approved of his policy of Islamization and his con-
tinued wish to transfer power to the representatives of the people — a transfer that
had in fact never started, but one that Zia announced regularly. The MRD called
for a boycott of the election, and the small numbers seen at the booths on 19
December 1984 led many observers to doubt the official results: turnout 62.15 per
cent, yes votes 97.71 per cent. Zia quickly announced legislative elections, while
stating that political parties were still proscribed. The MRD again called for a
boycott, but few took any notice and the electors were relatively enthusiastic about
this ballot.®°
The National Assembly and the regional assemblies produced by the ballot box in
February 1985 largely consisted of property owners, representatives of the business
community, and men with sufficient means to participate in an election without the
support of a political party. Zia took advantage of the first parliamentary session to
have himself enthroned as President of Pakistan and to appoint Muhammad Khan
Junejo Prime Minister. By choosing a man from Sind he hoped to nip in the bud that
province’s mobilizing behind the MRD. Martial law was eventually lifted on 30
December 1985, and the parties regained their right to exist. The Muslim League
reconstituted under the aegis of Junejo, and become the party of government once
more, but in a very different form. Above all Benazir Bhutto returned from exile in
London in April 1986, and was arrested in August for joining a demonstration in
support of free elections.
Zia never really intended to liberalize the regime. In any case, he had radically
changed the 1973 Constitution by passing the 8" amendment which allowed the
President to dismiss any government, the one in Islamabad as well as those in the
provinces; to dissolve both national and provincial assemblies and to nominate the
chief judges and the military leaders. This presidentialization of the fundamental
law of the land could only halt the democratization process, a fact to which the
forced dismissal of every Prime Minister during the 1990s bears witness. On 29 May
1988 Zia reminded everyone that he was the only captain of the ship of state when
he dismissed Junejo and pronounced the dissolution of the Assembly. He justified his
decision by citing the need to take Karachi under direct control since it had fallen
victim to Muhajir demonstrations. This pretext would be used again and again
during the years to come: authoritarian repression had reached its limit.
An air accident on 17 August 1988 relaunched the whole process. The crash
killed Zia and, notably, the US ambassador. All sorts of rumours circulated about the
possible causes of this air disaster. The Pakistani commission of inquiry concluded
sabotage, but was unable to establish who might have been its authors; while the
Americans stuck to the hypothesis of a mechanical failure.
The day after Zia died, General Mirza Aslam Beg, Chief of Army Staff, declared
that the military were withdrawing from the business of politics. He decided to
respect constitutional procedure and allowed the president of the Senate, Ghulam
Ishaq Khan, to take over as interim president. He then confirmed that the elections
Zia had envisaged for 16 November would indeed take place on that date. ‘That
ballot marked the return to a multiparty parliamentary democracy.
Democratization under influence
The Pakistani democratization of 1980 to 1990 has sometimes been seen as a good
illustration of the third wave of democracy,’° which, after leaving Europe in the
1970s, spread into Latin America and Asia.’! This analysis has not, however, been
borne out in Pakistan, where power has remained in non-elected hands: the army
and the President.
The return of the Bhuttos, or of ‘diarchy’?

In 1988 the PPP was the only organization led by a popular leader, Benazir Bhutto.
Apart from her family heritage, this woman had an emotional capital based on the
‘martyrdom’ of her father, the mysterious assassination of one of her brothers, and
the placing under house arrest of both her mother and herself. On this foundation
she developed apolitical programme with populist overtones. Its two themes were
the return to democracy and the cause of the poor, both of which had been at the
heart of Z A Bhutto’s discourse in the early 1970s.
The PPP’s return to the front of the political stage gave birth to the formation of
an opposition coalition, the Islami Jamhuri Ittehad (IJI — Islamic Democratic
Alliance),’2which brought together eight parties including Nawaz Sharif’s Muslim
League and Junejo’s Muslim League. The military and the Inter-Services
Intelligence had supported the formation of this alliance, which had to contain the
PPP in order to continue some of Zia’s policies. They did their best to set Zia up as
a martyr — and not without some success, since the commemoration of the first
anniversary of his death in the Faizal mosque in Islamabad attracted a million
people. The IJI, meanwhile, rallied Islamic groups such as theJI with an Islamic
rhetoric inherited from Zia.
Sure of her success, Benazir Bhutto withdrew from the MRD before the
November 1988 elections. In fact, far from repeating its performances of the 1970s,
the PPP won only 92 out of 207 seats, with 25.1 per cent of the votes cast. The prin-
cipal province, the Punjab, completely eluded it. The IJ], which won just 45 seats,
same
did best there, and also carried the majority in the regional elections held at the
time. The PPP was therefore forced to ally itself with the MQM, which had taken
the sup-
13 seats in the towns of Sind, while Benazir Bhutto had, of course, retained
to the
port of the countryside, where the Sindis of the old stock, who were hostile
however, the
Muhajirs, lived. The heterogeneous nature of this coalition was not,
r 1988.
only cause of the malfunctioning of the government she formed in Decembe
ution
Benazir Bhutto naturally tried to abrogate the 82 Amendment to the Constit
which General Zia had taken great care to have voted in to strengthen the power of
the president, and through him, the army. To do so she needed a two-thirds majority
in the National Assembly, and this she could not achieve.
She therefore remained dependent upon President Ishaq Khan, through whom
the army continued to exert a strong influence, notably in the conduct of external
affairs. So Benazir Bhutto had to keep Zia’s Foreign Minister, Yakub Ali Khan, in
her government. As to the management of matters to do with Afghanistan and
Kashmir, she was very much in the hands of the ISI. Benazir tried to resist it —
protesting, for example, against its right to appoint the judges of provincial tri-
bunals. She even tried to appeal against this decision before the Supreme Court
before deciding not to do so after all.
The first free elections since the 1970s therefore reestablished, under a new form,
the old ‘colonial diarchy’.’? In British times this described the mechanism put in
place during the 1919 reforms: where a protoparliamentary system had been intro-
duced in the provinces, the governors, taking their authority from the viceroy, had
control over the ministers; the executive was simultaneously under both a head of
government and a governor. So in 1988 Pakistan remained shackled to the vice-
regal dimension of their British heritage: the prime minister was responsible to a
democratically elected Assembly, but was also under the thumb of a president who
himself had not submitted to the people’s vote, and owed his authority to military
support.
The political parties, which had only limited room for manoeuvre, did not use it —
on the contrary, they bolstered the arguments of those who already doubted the ben-
efits of democracy. The long-distance duel between Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz
Sharif tended to discredit politicians as a whole. Having become head of the Punjabi
government, Sharif used this regional base to carry on a more or less daily opposi-
tion to Benazir Bhutto. For the first time in Pakistan’s history, the principal province,
which usually attracted all the resentment of the minority regions, took the lead in
the mobilization against Islamabad. Benazir had to expend most of her energy
responding to Sharif’s criticisms. Her government became bogged down — when it
was not completely paralysed by obstructionism. The PPP itself had launched hos-
tilities of this kind on 7 December 1988 by making all the deputies leave the Punjabi
assembly in response to Sharif’s plan for a corrective financial law.
If the politicians’ behaviour exasperated the military and the President, the fate
of Benazir’s government was sealed by altogether more violent disturbances in Sind.
On 2 December 1988, the PPP and the MOM had ratified a ‘Charter of Peace,
Love and Rights’ envisaging a settlement between the urban and rural populations
of Sind. The text foresaw in particular an increase in the employment quotas in
favour of the Muhajirs, facilitating their access to education and ‘repatriating’ some
250,000 ‘Biharis’ still living in refugee camps in Bangladesh. In exchange, the MQM
renounced all separatist demands. The matter of the ‘Biharis’ rapidly became a
bone of contention between the MOM and the government, since such an influx of
immigrants was unacceptable to most of the ‘old-stock’ Sindis. So the PPP failed to
keep its promise; as a result, the MQM allied itself with the IJI. The two parties drew
up a draft 17-point agreement in which the return of the ‘Biharis’ occupied a
prominent position. Thus reinforced, the opposition set down a censure motion
which almost succeeded on | November 1989. These political realignments started
an eruption of violence in Karachi and then Hyderabad, where the police opened
fire on Muhajirs at Pucca Qila on 27 May 1990.”*
This ‘incident’ gave President Ghulam Ishaq Khan afurther pretext to dismiss
Benazir Bhutto from her position as Prime Minister. In his view the government had
shown itself unable to maintain ‘law and order’. In fact, the President and the mil-
itary had been waiting for an opportunity to get rid of Benazir for a long time.”° In
support of his decision to dismiss the Prime Minister and dissolve the National
Assembly, Ishaq Khan also cited the downward slide into politics for its own sake,
exemplified flagrantly by the collapse of the alliance with the MOM.
Nawaz Sharif in power: no change
Unlike the 1988 scenario, it was from a position of weakness that the PPP presented
itself to the electorate on 24 October 1990. Benazir Bhutto had been a disappoint-
ment and could not hold on to all her allies (of which one was the MQM). The UJI
seemed to provide an alternative. In Nawaz Sharif it had an enterprising leader
who enjoyed the support of the military. Son of a Punjabi industrialist who had
been deprived of some of his wealth by Z A Bhutto’s nationalizations, Nawaz
Sharif had run the family business before entering politics. He had been a minister
under Zia, then led the government of the Punjab from 1988 to 1990; he had grad-
ually made that province the heartland of his party, the Muslim League, the
mainstay of the II, the coalition he now led. In 1990 this alliance won 92 of the
105 parliamentary seats in the Punjab, while the Pakistan Democratic Alliance —
whose mainspring was still the PPP — relied on its Sindi bastion, where it won 24
seats out of 45. Its considerable loss of seats — the PDA won only half as many seats
as the IJI — must however be contrasted with the small discrepancy in the number
of votes, 36.65 per cent compared with 32.37 per cent — a distortion linked to the
first-past-the-post system. With 92 seats out of the 198 at stake the IJI had an
absolute majority, but not the two-thirds majority necessary for a change in the
Constitution.
Appointed prime minister in December 1990, Nawaz Sharif set the country on
the path of economic liberalism demanded by the business community he came
from. In February 1991 he announced a relaxation of exchange controls and eight
months later no fewer than 89 public corporations were in the throes of privatiza-
tion. He relaunched the Islamization policy and had a ‘Shari’ah Bill’ passed in May
1991. This law, however, did not satisfy all the Islamic parties in the coalition,
because it barely extended the powers of the shariat courts, and recognized the non-
Sunni’ right to apply their version of Muslim Personal Law. This measure, intended
to mollify the Shi’a, angered the Jamaat-i Islami, which withdrew from the coalition
on 5 May 1992, after Nawaz Sharif had given his support to a United Nations pro-
in
posal concerning the introduction of an interim consensus government
Afghanistan.’°
Nawaz Sharif’s strong suit was his populist agenda. He brought in several
measures that were widely publicized, but did lead to real social improvements. For
example, he fixed a minimum wage of 1,500 rupees in July 1992, and gave permis-
sion for 40,000 households to obtain improved loans for the purchase of taxis, buses
or trucks under a ‘Self-Employment Scheme’, soon rebaptized the ‘Yellow Taxi
Scheme’.
In the meantime, Nawaz Sharif seemed to be increasingly at odds with decisions
by the military or the president. With the latter he got into a fight over the appoint-
ment of a new army chief following the retirement of General Beg and the sudden
death of General Asif Nawaz Janjua.’’ Seeking to elude the president’s supervision
without bringing up the question of the 8 Amendment, he proposedin July 1991
a 12** amendment authorizing the prime minister to take over control of the admin-
istration of a province. The IJI, however, would not follow him in this for fear of
upsetting the president. From that moment, Ishaq Khan lost confidence in his prime
minister, and that lack of confidence was exacerbated when Nawaz Sharif failed to
indicate whether or not he supported Ishaq Khan’s reelection.
Like Benazir Bhutto before him, Nawaz Sharif fell in the end over the Muhajir
question. Once again, disturbances in Karachi gave the president and the army
good grounds for taking it out of civilian rule. In May 1992, after another out-
break of rioting in Karachi and other towns in Sind ~ partly linked to the MQM’s
split into the MOM (Hagiqi) and the MOM (Altaf), the army launched Operation
Clean-Up and acted with particular vigour in Karachi, where they discovered
arms dumps and torture chambers for which they held the MQM responsible.”®
On 18 April 1993, the president dismissed the prime minister and dissolved the
Assembly, but Nawaz Sharif — who the previous day had had the nerve during a
television programme, to denounce ‘conspiracy’ on the part of Ishaq Khan —
appealed to the Supreme Court against the president’s decision. On 26 May the
judges ruled in his favour, declaring the dismissal non-constitutional. Nawaz Sharif
was restored to his post, then fought to make the High Court of Lahore reinstate
the government of the Punjab, which had suffered a fate similar to his own. The
judges followed the lead of the Supreme Court, thus confirming the judicial
authorities’ U-turn. The civil state’s legal triumph, was short-lived however. The
army corps commanders met urgently on | July to resolve the crisis — a sign that
it was they who had the upper hand in political life. On 18 July the Chief of Army
Staff produced a compromise solution whereby Ghulam Ishaq Khan and Nawaz
Sharif were both called upon to resign.
The corruption of the democratic process

The 1993 elections brought the PPP to power, even though it won fewer votes than
the Pakistan Muslim League (N) — 38.1 per cent compared with 39.7 per cent — just
because of the inherent distortions of this balloting procedure. However, Benazir
Bhutto with 86 seats out of 202 was a long way from a majority. So once again she
had to look for allies among the independents — some factions from the Muslim
League (such as the group led by Junejo) and the MOM once again. This was a cus-
tomary weakness.
Nevertheless, her position as Prime Minister looked more secure when the PPP
managed to elect one of its senior members, Farooq Leghari, to the post of president
in November 1993. This success seemed to solve the problem of the 8"
Amendment, and reinforce the parliamentary dimension of the regime. In fact
Leghari, unlike his predecessors, resolved from the start to do whatever his Prime
Minister wanted. In accordance with her wishes, for instance, he suspended the
NFWP government, substituting one from the PPP.
Nonetheless, the ‘transition to democracy’ became less and less smooth.
Parliament was truly marginalized: the prime minister, far from seeking favourable
votes from the deputies, preferred to resort to presidential orders, of which there
were already too many: 93 in 1994 but 133 in 1995.9 The government resisted the
temptation to corruption even less than it had in the past.®° Asif Ali Zardari, the
prime minister’s husband was a symbol of the degradation. He was minister of
investments, but he was better known as ‘Mr Ten Per Cent’ as a result of the com-
mission this post enabled him to pocket.®! Quite apart from corruption, the
criminalization of the state was also evident in another spate of political assassina-
tions, the most spectacular of which was that of the prime minister’s brother,
Murtaza Bhutto. On his return from exile in Syria on 4 November 1993, with the
firm intention of entering politics to take advantage of his prestigious name, he set
himself up as a rival to his sister. He had the support of his mother, which led
Benazir to dismiss her from her position as PPP vice-president. Murtaza was very
critical of Asif Ali Zardari, and some commentators went so far as to lay at the door
of the prime minister’s husband the murder of his brother-in-law in Karachi on 20
September 1996.
Corruption and criminalization in the political sphere seemed to intensify as the
war in Afghanistan developed. Contraband in arms and opium often flourished
under the protection of politicians in return for certain services from the traffickers.
These same gangs would carry on their dirty work around the polling stations, for
example, on election day to keep opponents at a distance. This drift into illegality
was also connected with the growth of religious extremism. The electoral decline of
the Islamic parties, which had been evident since democratization in 1988, went
hand in hand with the rise in power of small groups of Sunni and Shi’a which
emerged as a reaction to General Zia’s Islamization. On the sunni side, the ‘Tahrik-
i Nifaz-i Shari’ah Muhammadi (TNSM), established in 1989, came to public
attention for the first time on 11 May 1994, when they blocked the Malakand Pass
in the NWFP, demanding replacement of the civil law by the sharia. ‘The movement
was vigorously repressed as it became clear that it was sheltering Afghan fighters in
cooperation with the drug barons. The ensuing troubles led to some forty deaths,
and they did not subside until November 1994, after the NWFP government had
strengthened the judicial powers of the mullahs.
Conflicts between Sunni and Shi’a also took a more violent turn during the
1990s, especially in Jhang district, where they were spurred on by socioeconomic
rivalries.®? The rival groups were supported on the one side by Iran and on the other
by Saudi Arabia which was carrying on a long-range war for Islamic leadership on
Pakistani soil.23 Meanwhile, the Iranian Cultural Centre was the object of an attack
in January 1997, for which no one claimed responsibility. In this context of “sectar-
ian’ mobilization the state thwarted a military coup whose instigators — two colonels
and two other officers — planhed to declare Pakistan a ‘Sunni state’. Although it was
put down, this conspiracy showed how popular Islamic arguments were among
some middle-ranking officers: a legacy of the Zia era.
In the end, Benazir lost power not through some military decision but following
the president’s intervention in a sequence of events that is now common knowledge.
Benazir Bhutto’s personalization of power and growing authoritarianism had been
steadily alienating Leghari, who had at first taken kindly to her but was not immune
to a certain jealousy of her power. In 1994 Benazir made it a point of honour that
she herself should nominate eleven High Court judges including three women who
did not yet have sufficient seniority and who — according to the Constitution —
should have been nominated by the chief justice of the Punjabi tribunal. When this
news reached the Supreme Court, on 20 March 1996, it declared the nominations
illegal. Benazir carried on regardless, so lawyers in Karachi and Lahore boycotted
these ‘political judges’. On 21 September, Leghari came down on the side of the
Supreme Court. Benazir gave in and suspended the nomination of the eleven judges,
but her relationship with Leghari became strained.
Three incidents, which tarnished the prime minister’s image, gave the president
the necessary grounds to justify her dismissal. First there was the disclosure in the
London Independent that she had just purchased a luxurious villa in Surrey; then
there was the murder of her brother, Murtaza Bhutto, which some people laid at her
door because of their known political rivalry; finally, there were her attempts to buy
the votes of some deputies from the Punjab, in order to put in place a government
that would be favourable to her. Leghari decided to dismiss the prime minister and
dissolve the National Assembly on 5 November 1996. This time the Supreme Court
ratified her dismissal.
Nawaz Sharif II, or parliamentary dictatorship

The February 1997 elections took place in a climate of tension. President Leghari set
up a Committee for Defence and National Security (CDNS), over which he
presided, and which included the Chiefs of Army Staff of the four armies. This
committee, although officially it had only a consultative role, was soon perceived as
an attempt on the part of the president and the military to fence in legally elected
governments.
The low turnout at the polls, 35.92 per cent, was less a result of calls to boycott
them issued by the Jamaat-i Islami and the JUP — both of which, no doubt wished
to avoid a further electoral rout,®* — than of the disillusion of the PPP voters and the
people’s weariness with a perpetually unstable democratic process and corrupt politi-
cians.®° The elections, however, did give a crushing majority to Nawaz Sharif’s
Pakistan Muslim League (N): 134 seats out of 204 (including 107 won in the Punjab)
against 18 for the PPP, which also lost Sind due to an alliance between the PML (N)
and the MOM. The prime minister was finally in a situation where he could amend
the Constitution. On | April 1997 the two chambers passed the 13th Amendment.
This had the effect of overturning four articles of the 8th Amendment: Paragraph
58 (2) which allowed the president to dissolve the National Assembly, was annulled;
Article 101 obliged the president henceforth to consult the prime minister before
nominating governors; Paragraph 112 (2b), which gave governors the power to dis-
solve provincial assemblies was abolished; Paragraph 243 (9) (2) was modified so the
president lost his discretionary power to appoint military leaders.
Numerous observers were of the opinion that these reforms marked the first true
steps towards democracy in Pakistan.®° Nawaz Sharif nipped any such illusion in the
bud by establishing a true parliamentary dictatorship.8’ The PPP had been deci-
mated, and its leaders found themselves ensnared in judicial squabbles.**Above all,
Sharif used his authority systematically to undermine the opposition, in defiance of
the separation of powers.*?
The judiciary was the first victim in his sights as Nawaz Sharif sought to reduce
the power of the Supreme Court by reducing its members from 17 to 12. On 30
September 1990, Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah referred the matter to President
Leghari, asking him to nominate the five sidelined judges in accordance with Article
190 of the Constitution. Nawaz Sharif then had the National Assembly pass a
motion with a view to making the president dismiss the chief justice. Leghari refused
to agree to this, and on 31 October the prime minister accepted Sajjad Ali Shah’s
decision on the five judges. On 2 December however, he resigned, at the same
moment as the President. Responsibility for this sequence of events lay with Jahangir
Karamat, Chief of Army Staff since January 1995. In the first instance he had
addressed a note to Sharif which led to his decision in October, but he then came
round to the idea that the prime minister, properly elected, is thereby invested with
a superior legitimacy, and must be givena clear field. Therein hes the secret of the
double resignation.
Nawaz Sharif took advantage of this to entrench his authority by getting Rafiq
Tarar, a friend of his father and a man close to the Tablighi Jamaat, made President
of the Republic. The growing influence of the Sharifs had the effect of making the
regime look like a family business. The prime minister’s brother Shabhaz was run-
ning the Punjab, and his policies, like those of Islamabad, largely served the
Punjabis’ interests and business interests in general. Turning his back on the calls for
austerity, which the IMF had stipulated as a condition for his latest loan, Finance
Minister Sartaz Aziz in fact announced that from 28 March there would be a supply
policy based on tax concessions to the employers.
The 15th Amendment, adopted only by the lower chamber on 9 October 1998,
was submitted to Parliament by Nawaz Sharif that same year to give the government
the power to implement the sharia, to levy the zakat and to ‘order what is good and
forbid what is bad’.
The press lost no opportunity to stigmatize the dereliction of a government in
which they had placed their hopes for a complete restoration of the democratic
process. The Jhang Group — publishers of the English-language daily, The News —
was particularly critical. As a result of its audacity it suffered harassment by the fiscal
authorities, and searches accompanied by threats. In spring 1999 Sharif hardened
his tactics further following a BBC report about the corruption of Pakistan’s
politicians. The editor of the Friday Times, Naja, Sethi, was placed under provi-
sional detention for 20 days. During the summer the government stamped hard on
the Press Council, using the same’ powers as the civil tribunals to punish newspapers
considered out of line. The army alone, that most powerful of all counterpowers,
would put an end to this parliamentary dictatorship.
Musharraf’s Countercoup
General Jahangir Karamat was not absolutely and definitively resigned to the
supremacy of Nawaz Sharif. Certainly he placed the army at the service of the civil
power as a means of covering up the failings of a painfully incompetent adminis-
tration. So the census was organized, seven years late, under the overall supervision
of the military in March 1998. The management of the Water and Power Agency,
which oversaw water and electricity distribution, was also entrusted to the army —
70,000 soldiers were detailed to ensure that recalcitrant citizens paid their bills.9° In
spring 1998, 1,400 army teams were deployed to uncover the ‘phantom schools’
which got grants from the state for doing nothing at all — they found that 4,000 out
of 56,000 public schools fell into this category.?!
The army however, reaped its reward. Military expenditure remained very high —
64 per cent of the total budget — despite a grave financial crisis and a declining
growth rate (3.1 per cent) in 1997-8. The army was further authorized by the
Pakistan Armed Forces Ordinance (1998) to instigate court martials authorized to try
certain cases and to pass sentences in Sind, where the military had been complain-
ing for a long time that the law had been too soft on Muhajir militants. The military
in general took up Sharif’s rallying cry for some kind of nuclear action, answered in
1998 by weapons tests, in response to Indian ‘provocation’. However, there was
little enthusiasm in the military for involvement in the maintenance of law and
order, because this would make it look as though they supported Nawaz Sharif’s
incompetent management. Karamat resigned in October 1998 because he dis-
agreed with the Prime Minister’s policies.
Sharif then tried to complete his nepotistic — almost sultan-like — programme? by
appointing another family friend, Lieutenant General Kwaja Ziaduddin, in
Karamat’s place, but the army had so many reservations about this that he aban-
doned the idea. His lot was then cast in favour of General Pervez Musharraf,?? who
was to prove altogether more interventionist than his predecessor.
The Aftermath of ‘Kargil’ and the ‘Taliban connection’

The first signs of a rift between Sharif and the army appeared in the aftermath of
the ‘Kargil war’, so named after the Indian Kashmiri town where violent fighting
broke out in summer 1999. Some hundreds of soldiers and mujaheddin secretly infil-
trated the area. The counter attack by the Indian troops sent to dislodge the
‘infiltrators’ from the summits where they had built solid bunkers, led to a combat,
whose like had not been seen since the 1971 war (see Chapter 4 below). The Indian
forces had their first success when Sharif was literally summoned to Washington on
4 July 1999, and instructed to withdraw his Pakistani troops and any other support
they might be giving the mujaheddin. The prime minister complied — much to the
displeasure of the military chiefs, who felt betrayed: the more so because the civilian
government had not even taken the trouble to consult them before giving in to the
American demands.**
Nawaz Sharif upset the military establishment once more in September 1999,
when he reminded it that he had given his word before the United Nations General
Assembly that he would sign the nuclear tests ban treaty. He had no intention of
doing so unless India did so too, but this reminder reinforced the military impression
that Sharif might yield to American demands as a tradeoff against the lifting of the
sanctions which had weighed so heavily on the economy, already in crisis, since the
tests in 1998.
US pressure on the subject of the relationship between Pakistan and the Taliban
was a third bone of contention. Although the Americans had supported Islamist
groups waging war in Afghanistan, since it was in US interests, they also considered
them a threat once the USSR had collapsed. In 1997 Washington had put one of
them, Harkat-ul Ansar — later renamed Harkat-ul Mujaheddin — on the list of ter-
rorist groups. American vigilance was further intensified after the bombings of the
US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on 7 August 1998, whose presumed instiga-
tor Osama Bin Laden, was a Taliban protégé. Washington demanded that
Islamabad should obtain his extradition from the authorities in Kabul and that, at
the very least, Pakistan should stop supporting the Taliban. In October 1999 Sharif
did in fact seem to distance himself from these Islamic groups when he attributed to
the Afghan fundamentalists a new outbreak of sectarian conflict in the Punjab, and
announced that there would be searches in the madrasahs, which he suspected were
being used as arms stores. The Pakistani military feared that they might lose their
privileged link with Kabul, a link they considered vital to the ‘strategic depth’ of
their country.
Musharraf instigated his coup on 12 October 1999, in response to Sharif’s deci-
sion to replace him as head of the army by Kwaja Ziauddin, whom he had already
placed at the head of the Inter Services Intelligence. At that time Musharraf was
returning home on a plane from Colombo, but had been expecting to lose his job,
and had been preparing his counter-attack for some time, in collaboration with
senior officers. These officers organized on his behalf a ‘countercoup’ — to use the
term Musharraf himself would use later to emphasize that he was simply reacting
to Sharif’s decision. In less than two hours the President found himself under
house arrest, while the airports and national television were under military control.
The announcement of the coup did not provoke a single demonstration. Rather,
there were sighs of relief all round — asure sign that the Pakistanis seemed to expect
nothing of a civilian government, nor, indeed, even politicians in general.
History repeats itself
The calm — even satisfaction — with which Pakistanis welcomed Musharraf’s coup
is reminiscent of the atmosphere in the country after Ayub Khan and by Zia’s
seizure of power.’ History was to a great extent repeatiing itself. The Constitution
was in a state of suspended animation, every assembly was suspended, and no gov-
ernment was functioning anywhere — neither in Islamabad nor elsewhere. The
president however, was still in office, and martial law was not imposed, Musharraf
having contented himself with the issue on 14 October to the public of an order
declaring a state of emergency and appointing the new strong man ‘head of
executive’.
Just like his predecessors Musharraf’s first move on 17 October 1999 was to jus-
tify his actions by citing the hijacking of democracy wrought by to the
mismanagement of corrupt politicians, and the necessity of restoring order in the
country. This led him to bring legal proceedings against dozens of politicians, pre-
eminently Nawaz Sharif whose trial opened rapidly. The principal accusation
against him — that he prevented the pilot bringing Musharraf from Colombo from
landing in Pakistan — made him liable to the death penalty.
His rival, Benazir Bhutto, who had put herself forward as the herald of the
return to democracy along the lines described above, happened to be out of reach
having fled to London to escape prosecution in the matter of her home inSurrey.
The political parties were still in existence but without their leaders. The press
maintained an air of freedom, since censorship had not been introduced,”” but jus-
tice the legal system was made to toe the line. On 25 January 2000, six out of
thirteen Supreme Court judges, including the chief justice, declined to take an oath
of allegiance to the new regime. De facto they also resigned, as did nine from the
provincial tribunals. Of the 102 judges who made up the Supreme Court and the
provincial tribunals, 89 took the oath. On 12 May a reconstituted Supreme Court
approved the coup as a ‘Necessity of State’, at the same time asking Musharraf to
agree to elections within three years.
Musharraf proclaimed himself head of the executive, while retaining his position
as head of the army. He also appointed a number of soldiers to responsible posts.
The body charged with guiding government action, the National Security Council,
included in its ranks the heads of both the airforce and the navy.°* Three of the four
governors were also generals. The army thereby regained most of the positions it
had enjoyed under Zia.
Democracy in Check
The political trajectory of Pakistan gives the impression of an eternal return in a
rhythmic succession of cycles of about ten years, in the course of which democ-
ratic phases and military governments alternate. This is for the most part mere
optical illusion, since Pakistan has never really tasted democracy.’ Those episodes
termed democratic have systematically degenerated into a drift towards authori-
tarianism on the part of the person in power (as with Z A Bhutto and Nawaz
Sharif) and/or turned out to be mere illusion like the democracy of the 1990s,
when elected governments found that they could do nothing against the strength
of the army. Under these circumstances, how can we talk about a ‘transition to
democracy’?!
Pakistan seems doomed to authoritarianism not by some sort of Islamic cultural

malediction but, rather, as a result of a whole bundle of political factors: fear of
India led its first leaders to give absolute priority on the one hand to nation-building,
and on the other to the development of a powerful army. Obsession with security has
meant centralization and concentration of power in the hands of officials and the
military, all to the detriment of political parties, which, since they were already
feeble, have never really had the chance to be a prime mover on the political scene,
and even fell into disrepute throughout the 1950s. More decisive still has been the
effect of demographic power relations between the different linguistic communities
making the Punjabis — who, predominated in the army ~ afraid that the law of
numbers would mean power for the Bengali majority had there been free elections.
The Punjabis rejected the democratic logic all the more resolutely as the political cul-
ture they had acquired in the colonial period followed the viceregal model. Finally,
the army’s grip on the Pakistani state could not have been maintained without the
blessing (and financial support) of the United States, which considered Pakistan a key
element of its regional policy.
Most of these factors, which explain why Pakistani democracy was in check
during the 1950s, have continued to exercise their influence through the succeed-
ing decades. Certainly the ethnic problem was removed by the 1971 Partition, and
no doubt this was what allowed democratization of the Bhutto years. Yet the Indian
syndrome has only been reinforced by regular defeats on the battlefield. The party-
political machine is still inadequate: most parties relying on the prestige of a single
charismatic figure, or on a dynasty such as the Bhuttos, while deputies have always
changed party affiliation opportunistically. The viceregal culture has been trivial-
ized to become the reference point for the behaviour of the military and the civil
service, as Nawaz Sharif’s behaviour in his second term shows. Finally, the geopo-
litical configuration has led the United States to support the various guardians of
Pakistan’s fortunes, beginning with Zia between 1970 and 1980, as a response to the
in
Russian invasion of Afghanistan. Democracy is rarely imposed from the outside
any case.
ed?
But what are the intrinsic resources of Pakistan so far as democracy 1s concern
so few
The liberalization phases have come to nothing, because Pakistan contains
-
natural democrats and its civil society has been too feebly structured. The domina
the militar y
tion which rich landlords, the world of big business, and certainly
trade
continue to exercise over Pakistani society prevents the development of
1950s — and
unions — who never recovered from the anticommunist policies of the
to the one which has
precludes the development of a peasant movement comparable
the ‘tribal
existed in India since the Green Revolution. The property owners and
per cent of
chiefs’ — sardar in Baluchistan or khan in the NWFP — accounted for 75
ties have
the deputies elected in 1988 and 62 per cent in 1993.!°! Class solidari
that prevails
emerged far less readily than the vertical organization of caste and tribe
ed with the
everywhere in the countryside. These traditional hierarchies, combin
conservatism where
omnipresent Islamic climate, hold society in an atmosphere of
in the urban middle
women are often the first victims. Change will eventually come
is by no means
class — not so much in the merchant community, where the mindset
liberal, nor among the Muhajirs, who are still only too ready to adopt the violent
practices of the MOM, but among an intelligentsia who have found in the NGO
(Non-Governmental Organization) a promising form of organization, and whose
English language press is quick to show its critical attitude. Nawaz Sharif’s PML(N)
was not mistaken when it targeted the NGOs.!° The Islamists, too, continually
criticize their external financial support in order to undermine their influence. A
decisive battle for the conquest of social space is now being played out on this field.
PART Il
PAKISTAN’S FOREIGN POLICY

is iconpeMstoyi.tt
hie!48 wed
4
PAKISTAN IN THE GAME OF THE

GREAT POWERS
Pakistan, outcome of a Partition which was a long time sought for but in the end
came suddenly, remains affected by its antagonistic relationship with India, which
has led to four armed conflicts in which it never managed to gain the upper hand.
This difficult relationship forms the basis of its foreign policy, and explains why
largely defined. Pakistan’s position in the international power game is seen in terms
of its neighbour, and shifts with the changing personalities in power in the two
countries, and with changing geopolitical configurations; nonetheless, it seeks to
fulfil the first requirement of the Pakistani authorities: ‘strengthening the security
and preservation of the territorial integrity of Pakistan’ against what is perceived as
an Indian threat. In diplomatic language, this major concern 1s called ‘the quest for
peace and regional stability’.! Even if the country cannot always rely on solid
alliances in its effort to do this, it is still important to have ‘friends’ — if possible,
friends from whom it can buy arms. The third consideration for Pakistan's foreign
policy is the religious dimension of its national identity, reaffirmed by the name given
to its new capital in 1967: Islamabad. Pakistan proclaimed to the world its fraternal
been
goodwill towards Islamic nations (although this brotherly attitude has at times
has fallen prey to
ambivalent and compromised). In its search for allies, the country
which it
unfortunate encounters with Arab nationalism; while the Islamic card,
friend-
played against Soviet communism, has not prevented it from pledging eternal
ship to China.
its found-
Pakistan was thought of as the promised land for Indian Muslims, but
of the Nation,
ing ideology was never clearly defined. After the death of the Father
l instabil-
Muhammad Ali Jinnah, in 1948, there was a pervasive climate of politica
doctrine. ‘The
ity which was not conducive to the consolidation of a founding
sate for
importance attached to Kashmir in Pakistan’s negotiations could not compen
’s national
this weakness, even though — albeit at great risk — it was useful to Pakistan
. One sees it as
plan. There are two principal approaches to the problem of Kashmir
the other
a failure to complete Partition, and hence as the missing part of the nation;
India alone has
stresses the Kashmiris’ right to self-government, maintains that
cry against a hos-
been duplicitous on this question, and serves as a national rallying
very first year of
tile neighbour. By intervening in Kashmir, Pakistan, since its
98 PAKISTAN’S FOREIGN POLICY
existence, has therefore put incompleteness and exteriority at the heart of its national
vision — and kept them there.
The consequences of this decision are incalculable — both for the country itself
and for its foreign relations. Pakistan’s main condition for friendship with a third
country is its stance on Kashmir. But few countries — least of all the great powers —
are willing to commit themselves clearly and definitively on this bone of contention.
Thus Pakistan’s foreign policy revolves around three main entities: India, the
great powers, and the Muslim world. But in the end, it has to cope with the exigen-
cies of power relations between the great nations and fluctuations in the world
order. This chapter, therefore, takes a chronological look at Pakistan’s ambitions as
they have been embroiled in the crucible of the past half-century, and how they have
emerged.
A Nation Finding Its Feet: 1947-54

From the start, Pakistan was in a very complex situation, for two reasons. The first
involves Indo-Pakistani relations and the geopolitics of the region. Although it
decided to follow its own course, the new state was born of the greatest anticolonial
movement of the twentieth century: India’s challenge to the British Empire. But its
founders also intended to free it from another a threat, that of ‘Hindu India’ — in
their view promoted by the Congress Party, which would dominate an independent
India. The Indian leaders, mindful of the fact that the Muslim League had taken no
part in the Quit India Movement against the British in 1942, saw the clumsy
Partition of 1947 as the Machiavellian outcome of power politics. All of a sudden
London wanted to weaken its former Empire by dividing it, and stretching between
the USSR and the India of a Nehru with socialist sympathies a buffer state that was
unlikely to enjoy good relations with either of its great neighbours. This is probably
a generalization which takes insufficient account of responsibilities during Partition.
Until the end of the Cold War, however, Pakistan was a great asset to the Western
powers’ anticommunist policy — or, rather, anti-Soviet, after the 1971 rapprochement
between China and the United States — albeit with a few setbacks.
A second cause for ambiguity was the new Pakistani state’s relations with Islam
and with the wmma, the community of the faithful. Movements like the Jamaat-i
Islami, loyal to the universalistic logic of Islam, were against Partition from the
start. Nevertheless these groups eventually supported Pakistan, accepting de facto the
argument put forward so often by Muhammad Iqbal, then by subsequent leaders of
the country: as a state that willed itself into existence, Pakistan must be open to the
development of an Islamic solidarity. Still to be resolved was the contradiction
between a nationalist concept of the state and the universalizing ideal of Muslim
civil society. At the very least, the call for a brotherhood of Muslim states offered a
way out, albeit theoretical.
The more ambitious notion that Pakistan was merely one step towards the unity
of all Islamic states obviously glossed over the very real religious differences and
power struggles between Muslim nations. Nevertheless, it maintained the hope (or
the illusion) that sheer numbers would mean that the new Pakistani state would play
PAKISTAN IN THE GAME OF THE GREAT POWERS 99
a key role. In 1930 Iqbal had affirmed that Indian Muslims would be a more impor-
tant asset to Islam than all the other Muslim countries put together, and the fledgling
Pakistan was a little too boastful about having a bigger population than any other
Muslim state — the fifth-largest in the world. Such presumptuousness did not go
down well with Muslim communities in the Middle East, who were proud of their
thousand-year history; nor with Arab nationalist movements, which understood the
Indian Congress Party’s anticolonial struggle better than the secessionist arguments
that had given birth to Pakistan.
The seal of Islam was also the young state’s certificate of anticommunism: this
atheistic ideology, perceived as a monstrous, proliferating Hydra, could not live
alongside an Islamic polity which was at times willing to make common cause with
Christianity against the ‘Godless ones’. Behind their mask of Islamic identity, how-
ever, leaders of Pakistan weighed up the pros and cons, ready to play for both sides.
Liaquat Ali Khan, Prime Minister from 1947 to 1951, had at first intended to visit
the USSR, but in the end — like Nehru, the Indian Prime Minister — he opted for an
official visit to the USA in 1950. It was also in order not to let India reap all the ben-
efits of a rapprochement with Beijing that the Pakistan government decided to
recognize the People’s Republic of China in 1950 and did not send troops to Korea,
while they understood — in principle — why America was fighting there. Already the
shoots of the Realpolitik which was to characterize the love-hate relations between
India and Pakistan and the great powers were emerging. Beijing had already shown
great tolerance towards a Pakistan that would soon be called to form pro-Western
alliances. China exerted — and still exerts — a certain pressure on India, a competitor
on its southern flank.
First Links with the West: 1954-62
From the time of his visit to the USA in 1949, Nehru outlined his concept of non-
alignment: India would not be the keystone of the anticommunism which
Washington hoped to build in Asia with the help of a highly prestigious Indian
leader. America’s disappointment meant new possibilities for Pakistan. During his
American tour, Liaquat Ali Khan took full advantage of this to build up a picture of
an anticommunist Pakistan whose strategic position should be reinforced by arms
deliveries. The Korean War, which broke out in June 1950, underlined India’s lack
of dependence on Washington; moreover, New Delhi refused to be party to the 1951
Treaty of San Francisco, which inaugurated a security pact that allowed American
troops to establish bases in Japan. In both cases Pakistan took the opposing stance.
So the ground was already prepared when new administrations came to power in
1953. In the USSR, Stalin’s death led to a more favourable policy towards India,
which had hitherto been perceived as labouring under a bourgeois regime. That
same year, John Foster Dulles became the American secretary of state, and started
ident
a vigorous joint security policy. His chosen strategy — confirmed by Vice-Pres
with a
Nixon after his visit to southern Asia — involved an alliance with Pakistan,
view to hemming in communist Eurasia. When Muhammad Ali Bogra, former
that
ambassador to Washington, became prime minister in 1953, he was convinced
his country’s security depended upon the backing of a great power. The hour of the
treaties had struck. In May 1954, Pakistan and the United States signed a mutual
support and defence agreement which was not a military alliance, but marked the
beginning of American arms sales to Pakistan, and an officer training project. In
September Pakistan signed the Manila Pact, founding document of the Southeast
Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO)? and, above all, confirmed its alliance with
Washington. In 1955 Pakistan signed the Baghdad Pact — of more direct local rele-
vance — which united Muslim countries (Iraq, Iran and Turkey) with the aim of
frustrating Soviet intentions towards the Middle East and its warm seas; Great
Britain was also a member, whereas the United States was not — although it was the
moving spirit behind it. When Iraq left after the 1958 revolution, this became the
Central Treaty Organization (CENTO). Unlike NATO — and contrary to Pakistan’s
wishes — neither SEATO nor CENTO had its own military command, and did not
make provision for an immediate joint intervention in the event of an attack on one
of its member states. These treaties gave Pakistan no protection against India. At the
same time, the Pakistani leaders wanted to retain the optimum room for manoeuvre.
The Bandung Conference in 1955 offered an opportunity to do this. Strongly sup-
ported by India, this meeting, in effect, was China’s first appearance on the
Afro-Asiatic stage to the detriment of New Delhi, which subsequently took a differ-
ent tack and played the nonalignment card, thereby alienating both Communist
China and Pakistan, member of SEATO and CENTO. As the only pro-Western
representative at Bandung, Pakistan took advantage of its position to enlighten
China on the subject of its political approach, making it clear that Beijing was not
the target of its alliances. Beijing played the game: in 1956 the prime ministers of
China and Pakistan visited one another’s countries.
That year’s Suez Crisis revealed the other side of Pakistan’s reluctance to alienate
itself from Western countries. Although Pakistan approved of Nasser’s nationaliza-
tion of the Suez Canal, it wanted international control of shipping. Prime Minister
H.S. Suhrawardy condemned the intervention of French and British troops, but he
had every intention of staying with the Baghdad Pact, which did not have a good
image in Arab countries. Two years later, the bloody revolution that overthrew the
Iraqi royal family transformed the situation in the Middle East. Pakistan, sticking to
its pro-Western policy, was delighted — unlike India - when American and British
troops went into Lebanon and Jordan.
General — soon to be Marshal — Ayub Khan’s coup d’état in October 1958 rein-
forced this pro-Western line. In 1959, Pakistan — with Turkey and Iran — signed a
defence agreement with Washington which provided for possible American inter-
vention in the event of an attack by ‘international communism’. To Islamabad’s
great regret, this did not mean India, but at least the USA promised sustained eco-
nomic and military aid to Pakistan. In 1960, the affair of the U-2 spy plane which
took off from Peshawar and was brought down over Soviet territory showed that
Pakistan could be helpful to US military intelligence. It continued to be so despite
Nikita Khrushchev’s threats.
Pakistan’s Western option was also an answer to the improved relations between
Moscow and New Delhi in the post-Stalin era; all it did, however, was reinforce
them. The first aid programmes to underdeveloped countries — as they were soon to
be called — were aimed at Pakistan’s two neighbours, India and Afghanistan — the
very Afghanistan which laid claim to the whole of Pashtunistan, and hence to part
of Pakistan. Bulganin and Khrushchev’s long official visit to India at the end of 1955
gave the Soviets and the Indians the chance to criticize Pakistan’s imperialism and
military policies; however, there was no permanent hostility between the USSR
and Pakistan. Deputy Prime Minister Mikoyan’s visit to Pakistan in 1956 led to a
trade agreement, but not until 1961 did a major oil exploration project signal a
stronger relationship. Nonetheless, chaotic bilateral relations remained the norm.
The first Russian veto against reinforcements for UN forces in Kashmir in 1957 set
the tone: each great power played its own game in South Asia.
China followed the same principle: Zhou En Lai visited both India and Pakistan
in 1956, when Sino-Indian relations were at their best. China and Pakistan stated
that there was ‘no real conflict of interests’ between them. Ayub Khan, however, had
his doubts: he went so far as to suggest that his country and India should give some
thought to the defence of the subcontinent. But Beijing was able to follow a middle
path, even on the Kashmir question, calling for a bilateral agreement without com-
mitting itself — whereas in 1954 New Delhi had signeda treaty recognizing China’s
sovereignty over Tibet. So there was no payback for India.
Allin all, the pro-Western policy it had followed since 1954 did not completely live
up to Pakistan’s expectations. It is true that the country obtained the American aid
that was vital to its continued survival, but India, too, received attention from
Washington. For many US decision-makers, India was the field where the game of
Asia’s future would be played out: it was vital that India won the race for growth
against the Chinese communist system. When India was plunged into crisis in 1957,
there was a sizeable growth in American aid — much greater than in Pakistan, for
which India’s swift defeat in its war against China in October 1962 was a wonder-
ful surprise. This defeat, however, brought New Delhi immediate American support
an
of a new kind: Washington agreed to military aid for India without tying it to
agreement on Kashmir, contrary to Pakistan’s wishes. The sight of “The strength-
ening of Pakistan’s most determined foe by Pakistan’s closest ally’? caused great
bitterness in Pakistan.
Although Ayub Khan had long been in favour of the alliance with America, he
realized that it was time to revise Pakistan’s foreign policy. The outcome of this
alliance had been criticized in Pakistan itself for years. The pro-Western tack pur-
on
sued since 1954 had come to grief on three fronts: it offered no military protecti
on
against India; there was no prospect of any diplomatic pressure for a referendum
like an
Kashmir; and it compromised pan-Islamic solidarity by making Pakistan look
and
ally of imperialism against the upsurge of Arab nationalism — it was with Nehru
would take
Tito that Nasser launched the nonaligned movement. In future Pakistan
their
a more independent line, and make a virtue of necessity. Without burning
of its own
bridges with Washington, Ayub Khan’s government decided to take care
are
special bilateral relations. ‘The Sino—Soviet quarrel and the Sino—Indian conflict
partner of
excellent illustrations of this changed situation: China became a chosen
Pakistan.
China and the Dangers of Adventurism: 1962-72
Opening the diplomatic field: from Western

alliance to multilateralism
Just before the brief war between China and India in October 1962, China and
Pakistan had decided to set their border in Kashmir: Beijing, mindful of its deteri-
orating relations with New Delhi, wanted at the very least to be sure of its
Himalayan flank. The negotiations — which began a week before the war with India,
and were intensified by the result — were completed in 1963. The countries swapped
territories and redrew their border — to the great discomfiture of India, which
claimed the whole of Kashmir as its own. In 1964, during a visit to Pakistan, Zhou
En Lai stopped sitting on the fence over this issue, which should, he said, be resolved
‘in accordance with the wishes of the people of Kashmir’ : although he did not say
it in so many words, this meant adopting Pakistan’s idea of a referendum. Soon
afterwards China and Pakistan signed their first wide-ranging trade agreement;
they then — with Sukarno’s Indonesia — began to organize the second Afro-Asiatic
conference to counter the conference of nonaligned nations mooted by India, Egypt
and Yugoslavia.*
This improvement in Sino—Pakistani relations was not to America’s taste — espe-
cially since Ayub Khan was also angling for a rapprochement with Moscow, which
seized the opportunity provided by Pakistan’s newly independent spirit just at the
very moment when India was getting more Western support than ever. A trade
agreement; a more ambivalent Soviet approach on Kashmir; Ayub Khan’s visit to
the USSR: all this constituted nothing less than a reversal of alliances. Pakistan was
still a member of SEATO and CENTO — somewhat hollow alliances, if the truth
must be told. Ayub Khan did not break with Washington, but used the room for
manoeuvre provided by the rapidly changing configurations of the conflict between
the United States and the communist powers. By dubbing the USSR ‘revisionist’
from 1960 onwards, China changed the shape of international relations. The
Washington—Moscow-Beijing triangle, based on three intersecting oppositions,
opened up a whole new perspective for Pakistani diplomacy. In 1962 Muhammad
Ali Bogra, Foreign Minister at the time, had set the tone by declaring that there was
no such thing as friends for ever or enemies for ever — only the national interest
counted. In 1965, when relations between Pakistan and the USA were at their
lowest ebb, Ayub Khan observed — with Washington in mind — that Pakistan wanted
‘friends, not masters’.°
‘There was still a need to achieve autonomy in foreign affairs. In the ongoing game
of chess between the great powers, India and Pakistan could not do this: they were
mere pawns in the shifting conflicts between Washington, Moscow and Beijing.
Washington had furthered its efforts against the USSR by giving Pakistan military
aid; it did the same for India against China. The State Department’s main objective
was to drive a wedge between the USSR ~ under Khrushchev — and China. The
close ties between India and the USSR, and the tension between China and India,
furthered this project without jeopardizing the improved relations between Russia
PAKISTAN. IN THE GAME OF THE GREAT POWERS 103
and Pakistan. As for the quarrel between India and Pakistan, it was convenient for all
three countries because it meant that no major power would emerge in South Asia.
In these circumstances, the leaders of Pakistan were to make two major errors of cal-
culation: they overestimated their support from outside and underestimated their
internal weakness. These errors led to the Indo—Pakistani wars of 1965 and 1971.
The 1965 and 1971 wars: the international context
The weakness of the Indian army revealed by its defeat by China in 1962, and the
continuing troubles in Indian Kashmir — which was losing more of its autonomy as
each year went by — pushed Ayub Khan to open hostilities in 1965: Nehru had died
the year before, and an obvious strengthening of the Indian army since 1963 meant
that he had to act quickly. ‘Kashmiri brothers’ crossed the cease-fire line that had
divided the ancient kingdom since 1949 — a line which, the Pakistani authorities
maintained, had already been breached several times by Indian troops. The
Pakistani army went into action in Kashmir on | September 1965. International
opinion, which tended to sympathize with the Indians’ accusations of aggression,
soon became concerned about New Delhi’s counterattack: Indian troops marched
on Lahore, thus crossing not only the cease-fire line but also the recognized border
between the two countries. China’s military diversion — an ultimatum which India
respected by withdrawing its troops from the border between China and Sikkim —
looked threatening, and the USA and the USSR told Beijing so. On 23 September
the war ended at the express request of the UN Security Council.
The USA, adopting a position of neutrality, suspended their arms deliveries to
both countries. The USSR used its good offices to organize the Tashkent Conference
in January 1966. At this conference, India and Pakistan respectively relinquished
their territorial gains.
The leaders of Pakistan learnt some lessons from this fruitless war. The UN had
been silent on the status of Kashmir. The Americans had let them down. The
USSR had taken the unexpected role of peacemaker, rather than siding with New
Delhi. China was the only great power to condemn India out of hand, and thus risk
extending the conflict. From that time on, Pakistan was even more firmly commit-
ted to multilateralism,® a variant of nonalignment. Although it remained in SEATO
and CENTO — somewhat moribund organizations — and did not forget America’s
support in the 1950s, Pakistan intended to conduct a foreign policy that was open to
the three key powers it considered vital. Its good relations with China did not stop
official visits to Pakistan by Prime Minister Kosygin in 1968 and President Nixon in
1969 (President Liu Shao Qi had been there in 1966). But Pakistan turned a deaf ear
to Soviet and American proposals that it should get together with India to form a
joint Asian security system’ — diplomatic language for a front against China.
Without achieving anything in Kashmir, the 1965 war weakened both Pakistan
and Prime Minister Ayub Khan, who left office in 1969. His successor, General
Yahya Khan, had to deal with growing resentment in eastern Pakistan, which was
uncomfortable with a two-headed state dominated by Punjabis and Pashtuns, and
very critical of the way the 1965 war had been conducted. Sheikh Muyibur
Rahman’s Awami League won an outright majority at the 1970 elections; this should
have put the Bengalis in power. But the western military—political elite which gov-
erned the country could not accept the League’s manifesto, which envisaged
maximum autonomy and its own defence capacity for East Pakistan. An uprising in
East Pakistan and its bloody suppression by the Pakistan army gave India a unique
opportunity for military intervention without antagonizing international opinion.
Neither the arrival of the US aircraft carrier Enterprise in the Bay of Bengal — which
sent shock waves through India — nor China’s condemnation of India’s action could
save Pakistan from defeat. Contrary to Islamabad’s expectations, the Indo—Pakistani
war of 1971 did not lead to direct military intervention by the great powers, which
readily accepted a fait accompli: the secession of Bangladesh.
The Washington—Moscow-Beijing triangle was also shifting in 1971, and once
again Pakistan’s destiny was subject as much to this variable geometry as to its own
decisions. Two crucial developments led toa virtual transformation of the geopolit-
ical context in South Asia. President Nixon, in reversing United States policy
towards China before the Indo—Pakistani war, opened up to Pakistan a
Washington—Islamabad—Beijing axis which, in effect, accelerated the postwar sig-
nature of a peace, friendship and cooperation treaty between the USSR and India,
one clause of which made provision for possible joint defence in the event of attack.
The deteriorating relations between the Soviet Union and China, after China
decided to extend the nuclear power it had acquired in 1964, at least acted as a mod-
erating influence. Moscow and Beijing watched each other carefully. Once again the
risk of a wider Indo-Pakistani conflict receded, and India — which seemed to be
preparing for significant action in Kashmir, even in eastern Pakistan — calmed down,
and did not add to its neighbour’s crushing defeat.’
When Yahya Khan left office, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, foreign minister since 1963,
took over the reins of government. Known for his fiercely anti-Indian line, he nev-
ertheless made an immediate about-turn, and in 1972 he and Indira Gandhi signed
the Simla Accord, which decreed that the line dividing Kashmir should be respected.
India obviously had the upper hand in South Asia, so Bhutto intended to rethink
Pakistan’s foreign policy. He would continue his predecessors’ policy of multilater-
alism vis-d-vis the great powers, but with a new objective: a leaner, fitter Pakistan. It
was time to reaffirm the nation’s Muslim identity in a world that was soon to be hit
by the oil-price shock.
Islamic Parameters:
Z A Bhutto and Zia ul-Haq, 1972-88
Pakistan, a state created for Indian Muslims, played on its Islamic identity in shap-
ing one of the main poles of its foreign policy from two aspects. Against India, this
process of self-identity would make Pakistan less of a southern Asian country and
bring it closer to the historic Middle Eastern heartland of Islam. But in opting very
quickly for an alliance with the West — seeing this as the country’s best hope for sur-
vival — its leaders put Pakistan in a bad position at a time of anticolonial and
anti-imperialist conflict.
Part sincere aspiration, part rhetoric, this reference to ‘sister Muslim nations’
soon came up against the geopolitical realities of the time. The Indian struggle for
independence had won New Delhi a fund of sympathy from nations like Egypt and
Indonesia — with Pakistan the most densely populated Muslim countries. For many
Muslim nations, Pakistan’s difficult position during the Suez Crisis reinforced the
negative impression left by the Baghdad Pact, which was perceived as an imperial-
ist manoeuvre against Arab nationalism rather than a bulwark against the Soviets.
Even on Pakistan’s borders, tensions with Afghanistan showed very quickly that
Islam was not a miraculously strong cement. Kabul was unhappy when Pakistan
joined the United Nations in 1949, and pursued the question of Pashtunistan until
1963, when Prime Minister Muhammad Daud left office. How could Pakistan argue
for Islamic solidarity, or pledge itself to the “Muslim cause’, when its own internal
tensions had led to the secession of Bangladesh?
Nevertheless, Pakistan continued its process of Muslim self-identity — not without
bitterness, reversals and difficulties. There were some successes, even though it
sometimes had to clothe its national interest in the robes of Muslim brotherhood: an
agreement with Turkey and Iran, fellow members of the Baghdad Pact and
CENTO and, in 1964, founder members of the Regional Development
Cooperation Association mooted by Ayub Khan. Islamic solidarity was more in
evidence during the wars with India in 1965 and 1971. Some key countries, includ-
ing Saudi Arabia, provided Pakistan with arms. Since 1969, Pakistan has been able
to play a significant role in the Islamic Conference Organization — 56 member
states and four observer states.
Z A Bhutto’s ‘Islamic’ diplomacy

When Zulfikar Ali Bhutto reached the commanding heights of power in 1972, his
intention was to strengthen Pakistan’s Islamic image on the world stage, because it
served his prime purpose: to revitalize the nation after the traumatic secession of
Bangladesh. He considered that the time for this was ripe — for several reasons. His
pursuit of multilateralism as a substitute for a special relationship with the USA; his
desire to strengthen Pakistan’s links with socialist countries — especially China, but also
the USSR, North Korea and East European countries — meant that he was not in the
camp of either of the great armies of the Cold War. The rally to Islam was like a
transcendent geopolitical theme which Pakistani nationalism could adopt without
losing its identity. The oil-price shock of 1973, which gave new power to the Middle
Eastern countries, seemed to confirm such a vision in terms of both geopolitical
power games and ~ hardly less important — financial interests. Although Pakistan was
not itself an oil-producing country, economic and military growth in the Middle
East offered the prospect of plentiful work in the Gulf States, and hence foreign cur-
rency; and opportunities for military cooperation — particularly in Saudi Arabia.
Bhutto began his new term of office by making long official visits to several Muslim
countries (in the Middle East, North Africa, Sun-Saharan Africa). As a result of these
contacts he organized the Islamic Conference’s second Summit in Lahore in 1974; 35
states were represented, as was the PLO. So the humiliation of 1971 was eclipsed, to
be replaced — as Bhutto had wished — by specific international entities like the Islamic
Development Bank. Ties with Saudi Arabia grew stronger, symbolized by the great
Faisal mosque in Islamabad. Even relations with Afghanistan improved.
As far as Bhutto was concerned, the fact that the oil-producing states of the Middle
East were more powerful was no reason to abandon Pakistan’s old dream of leading
the Muslim world, even if this did ruffle a few feathers in his brother countries. After
the Indian nuclear tests in 1974, Bhutto announced that Pakistan would soon have
what he — somewhat ill-advisedly — did not hesitate to call an ‘Islamic bomb’ in an
attempt to give an international gloss to the supreme weapon. This nuclear option
was the perfect illustration of his new estrangement from the United States, which
was opposed to any nuclear proliferation. Chinese participation in Pakistan’s nuclear
programme was denied by Beijing but proved by the CIA. But Pakistan’s nuclear
policy was not prompted only by rivalry with India. Nuclear weapons, of their very
nature, have an effect on the international power game. Bhutto thought that the price
he would pay for it would be renewed American sanctions, but when he was gaoled
by Zia-ul-Haq, who overthrew him in 1977, he wondered whether the USA had engi-
neered his fall from power. Historians have not yet answered this question.
Zia ul-Haq and Afghanistan:

Islamic Pakistan and the power game
As master of Pakistan, Zia intended to be strong on foreign policy. Friendship with
Muslim countries — including Bangladesh under another putschist, General Ziaur
Rahman, who came to power in 1975 — would continue, as would cooperation with
China, which opened a direct route to Karakorum in 1978. There would be the
same continuity — albeit negative — in relations with the USA, which were still dete-
riorating — the American Embassy in Islamabad was ransacked by demonstrators in
1979. Then came the Red Army’s incursion into Afghanistan, which altered the
whole picture. Naturally, President Jimmy Carter weighed up the possibility of a
Soviet push towards the south — at the very moment when Iran, which had sent the
Shah packing a few months earlier, was no longer under American protection.
Would Pakistan prove another weak link on the southern flank, caught in a pincer
movement between the Soviet troops in Afghanistan and Indira Gandhi, who was
reluctant to condemn Moscow? It looked as if a new link between Washington and
Islamabad was needed. Zia realized this, and raised the stakes in the great power
game.
Zia, a skilful politician who could juggle several balls simultaneously, played his
hand on five fronts at once. Holding aloft the banner of Islam, he called on the com-
munity of the faithful and on Muslim leaders to support the Afghan mujaheddin,
victims of the first attack by a great power on an independent ‘brother country’. The
Afghan cause became as sacred as the national cause, but to no great effect.
Nevertheless, Zia did not take the mujaheddin position as a model for Pakistan.
Against mujaheddin advice, he also played the card of mediation with the USSR
dealt to him by the UN. While he worked for a Soviet retreat, he did not burn his
bridges with Moscow. His third front was Washington. While he solicited aid for the
Afghan mujaheddin at the request of the White House, Zia laid down conditions,
claiming massive military aid out of all proportion to the needs of his Afghan policy.
Carter refused, but when Ronald Reagan became President in 1980 he agreed
wholeheartedly, approving the sale of 16 F-16As, a fleet of fighter-bombers that
could be used against India.
The fourth front was China. Beijing, which derived a certain satisfaction from
watching Pakistan play piggy in the middle of a struggle between the superpowers,
also nurtured Islamabad, a piece on its anti-Indian chessboard. ‘The 1986 coopera-
tion treaty between China and Pakistan concerned the civil use of nuclear power, but
all the diplomats knew that Zia was continuing Bhutto’s nuclear weapons policy.
Reagan closed his eyes to this, lifting sanctions on Islamabad in April 1979 under the
terms of the Symington Amendment. The US Congress let it go: the Afghan stakes
were too high.® By the time Soviet troops withdrew, it was too late: strategic experts
considered Pakistan a ‘threshold state’ with a nuclear capacity that could very
quickly be activated. Washington — abandoning without a second thought the
Pakistan that had served its interests so well in Afghanistan — reimposed sanctions in
1990 under the Pressler Amendment. Although these sanctions blocked the sale of
the last few F-16s, they made no impression on Pakistan’s nuclear policy.
The last front was Afghanistan itself. Zia used his cards in the power game to his
best advantage, and profited from the Afghan conflict to bolster his armed forces
more effectively than ever. His Afghan policy was not dictated by Islamic fraternity
alone. He saw that channelling arms towards the mujaheddin would give him a
unique opportunity to ensure that he had asay in the choice of future leaders of a
country that had beena difficult neighbour for so long, but one which, once an ally —
even a protected one — would obtain for Pakistan the strategic depth it needed to
confront India. By choosing to single out the most radical Islamic groups, and by
entrusting the secret services of Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) with the job of car-
rying out the arms deliveries, infiltrating groups — even participating in the factional
infighting that plunged Afghanistan into civil war when the Soviets left — Zia believed
that he was furthering the interests of Pakistan. In actual fact he was sowing the
seeds of future trouble. The expansion of the Pakistani armed forces, so cleverly
pushed through the weak points of the power game, entailed two consequences of
the Afghan war which weigh heavily on Pakistan today: the rise of a radical Islam in
favour of jihad, and the ISI and the military’s strong hold on Pakistan’s foreign
policy, and on the civil state.
Pakistan After the Cold War: A Difficult Adjustment
From Benazir Bhutto to Nawaz Sharif:

an elusive foreign policy
n Zia’s
Pakistan’s eleven years of (theoretical) parliamentary government — betwee
failure.
‘accidental’ death in 1988 and the return to a military regime in 1999 — ended in
in 1999, and
Nawaz Sharif’s overthrow by his chief of army staff, General Musharraf,
s Party
the paralysis of the two principal political players — the Pakistan People’
PPP and the Pakistan Muslim League (Nacraz) PML(N) — in the absence of their lead-
ers,? give the 1990s, in retrospect, the bitter taste of a lost decade. The weakness of the
democratic process, the savage infighting of a political class mired in the futile rivalry
between the Pakistan People’s Party (in power under Benazir Bhutto from 1988 to 1990,
then from 1993 to 1996) and the Pakistan Muslim League (in power under Nawaz
Sharif from 1990 to 1993, then from 1997 to 1999) naturally led to the collapse of
Pakistan’s foreign policy.
This was not so much because of the quality of the politicians or diplomats,
more the result of a system that no one wanted and no one could reform. In the first
place, this system gave the military the deciding vote in outlining regional policy in
two sensitive areas — Afghanistan and Kashmir — and, as a result, a de facto power of
veto on the country’s strategic policy, and thus on Pakistan’s position in the power
game. It also gave the Islamic forces an increased recognition out of all proportion
to their electoral strength.
Every leader of Pakistan since 1972 bears part of the responsibility for this.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, with his Islamic rhetoric (‘Islamic socialism’, ‘Islamic bomb’ .. .)
and Zia ul-Haq, a devout Muslim who went even further, deliberately encouraging
the Islamic militants in the Afghan conflict, and cementing the alliance between the
ISI and armed partisans of jehad. After them, neither Benazir Bhutto — despite her
image as a modern woman educated, like her father, in the United States and
England — nor Nawaz Sharif — a businessman assumed to be in tune with the spirit
of the new international economy — threw off this heritage. Attempts to do so — such
as the sacking in 1989 of ISI leader General Gul, directly implicated in furthering an
Afghanistan policy that pandered to fundamentalist factions; or renewed talks
between Benazir Bhutto and Rajiv Gandhi, or Nawaz Sharif and I K Gujral — were
always sporadic, and had no lasting effect. Much more significant was the advent, in
1994, of the Taliban, trained in the madrasahs of Pakistan and a tool of the Pakistani
military, let down by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of the Hizb-i Islami and their
chosen man from the Afghan factions, who was unable to prevail in Kabul.
All in all, the Pakistan of the 1990s found it extremely difficult to cope with the
new world economic and geographic order in the wake of the USSR’s collapse.
Since India had been so close to Moscow, it seemed inevitable that India would be
affected. Independence for the Central Asian republics seemed to open them up to
Pakistani influence — especially when these republics, closely followed by Azerbaijan
and Afghanistan, joined the regional cooperation organization of which Turkey, Iran
and Pakistan were already members.!° The OEC — encompassing 7 million square
kilometres and 300 million people, and huge energy resources — could have been a
real substitute for the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC),
founded in the same year but handicapped by the conflict between India and
Pakistan. In order for this to happen, however, the OEC had to become an area of
intense economic cooperation, and today it is a long way from achieving this.
Like Pakistan, ‘Turkey and Iran had ambitions for Central Asia, and there were
three major constraints on Pakistan’s room for manoeuvre. The new republics — and
their communist apparatchiks, converted to nationalism — favoured a national,
institutionalized Islam rather than the Wahhabi fundamentalist networks so dear to
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Although Russia was on the decline, it had every inten-
tion of keeping strategic control of Central Asia: this was obvious both in Tajikistan
and in their support for the Afghan anti-Taliban forces led by Rashid Dustom and
Commander Massoud. The renewal and strengthening of the special relationship
between Moscow and New Delhi was another example. In the end, the anti-Shi’a
policy of the Taliban and their supporters in Pakistan inevitably damaged relations
with Iran. The agreement between Turkmenistan, Iran and India on transporting gas
from Turkmenistan via Afghanistan and Pakistan, rather than installing a direct
pipeline, added a definite geo-economic dimension to tensions between India and
Pakistan: the international aspects of India’s energy supplies were out in the open.
The fact that Pakistan fought on the West’s side in the Gulf War!! was not enough
to guarantee good relations with Washington, for four reasons. The USA, now free
of the Soviet threat, promulgated a non-nuclear-proliferation policy under which
India and Pakistan suffered some criticism, but stood their ground: neither country
had signed the Treaty of Non-Proliferation in 1968, and neither subscribed to its
indefinite continuation in 1995. Although Islamabad agreed in principle with the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996, Pakistan had no intention of
signing any agreement unless India did so too. India’s nuclear tests in May 1998 was
followed a fortnight later by similar tests in Pakistan, despite strong American pres-
sure. Nawaz Sharif argued that the great powers had not offered enough guarantees
in view of the deteriorating situation in the region.
Nuclearization, Islamic networks and great powers:

Pakistan and the challenges of the new world order
If the overt nuclearization of India and Pakistan meant that Pakistan could be sure
that deterrents were in place on both sides, it did not put both neighbours on an even
’s
keel, since it raised the problem of the role of China and North Korea in Pakistan
became
arms and missile development. From 1991 onwards, India’s economic policy
nt. Not only the USA but
more open to international markets and foreign investme
more
also the European Union and some Southeast Asian countries began to look
was soon call-
favourably on the country, which the US Department of Commerce
on
ing ‘a big emerging market’. On another level, the economic sanctions imposed
for Pakistan
India and Pakistan after their nuclear tests were much more onerous
than for India, even if Washington was ready to relax them a little, to prevent
— increased
Pakistan from sinking even deeper into financial crisis. A third factor
— was bother-
snternational terrorism, embodied in the figure of Osama bin Laden
together.
ing Washington, and this delicate issue brought India and the USA closer
groups
New Delhi accused Islamabad of giving protection and arms to Islamist
in Afghanis tan.
fighting in Kashmir, some of whom came from training camps
inWashington.
Fourthly, the army’s role in Pakistani politics posed new problems
House, the overt
Beyond the global nonproliferation policy espoused by the White
Kashmir, worried
nuclearization of India and Pakistan, deep in conflict over
American experts, who feared that any war could turn nuclear.
revived hopes
In spring 1999, three months after the meeting in Lahore that had
of normalized relations, the Pakistan army began Operation Kargil in Kashmir,

attracting more American criticism. In the face of this massive influx of Islamic
forces bolstered by regular troops, entrenched on India’s strategic heights, the great
powers called for calm, and praised the restraint of New Delhi, which engaged its
troops, but neither crossed the Line of Control nor opened other fronts. In the
absence of the diplomatic support from Beiing for which he had hoped, Nawaz
Sharif had to bite the bullet: on 4 July, in Washington, he called on the mujaheddin
to retreat. Thus the Kargil crisis revealed an explosive triangle: armed Islamic
groups—civilian power—military power. Sharif paid the price of yielding to American
pressure, then trying to take control of the army: he was deprived of his power and
his freedom by military coup d’état on 12 October 1999.
The army took action in Kargil partly in the hope of bringing the Kashmir ques-
tion to international attention with a military crisis between two nuclear powers,
since Pakistan diplomacy had obviously not convinced the great powers in matters
of principle (respecting UN resolutions; right to self-government). Pakistan had mis-
interpreted international feeling, and underestimated the Indian capacity to react.
The credibility of the state of Pakistan, and of its diplomats, had been undermined
by the recognized fact that an army that claimed to have no part in these incursions
was arming and using Islamic groups to its own ends.!? The international commu-
nity was not taken in, and turned to the new Indian market. Pakistan’s military
strategy failed as well: Washington’s call to respect the security line gave it more offi-
cial status, and put Pakistan squarely among the troublemakers. It is true that none
of the major powers approved of the way New Delhi dealt with the Kashmir ques-
tion. Many had tried — in vain — to help. But no country was able to impose a
solution, or to force India to accept an international forum for negotiation. So
Pakistan’s strategy of keeping the question of Kashmir in the public eye worked, but
without offering any prospect of a solution.
General Musharraf’s arrival in power did not improve Pakistan’s image, although
some foreign administrations saw the coup d’état as the last chance to get Pakistan out
of a crisis whose economic dimension was reflecting fundamental structural prob-
lems. The army was also seen as the last bastion against a collapse of the state
which could benefit only the fundamentalists. And so the great powers — wishing, for
these two reasons, to maintain contact with the new government, while asking it to
restore representative democracy as quickly as possible — ignored India’s calls to have
its neighbour condemned as aterrorist state, since this would have forced
Washington to burn its bridges with Islamabad — the worst of all worlds. They did,
however, call for a return to civilian government, and expected Pakistan to take a
clearer line on radical Islamists and the ‘Taliban. Pervez Musharraf, eager to dispel
any idea that Pakistan was in diplomatic isolation, made more visits to numerous
Muslim countries, with a view to proving — in the face of Western and
Commonwealth condemnation of his coup — that he wanted to maintain his special
relationships with ‘brother countries’. These, however, were not enough to save
Pakistan’s economy and improve its diplomatic status. China’s friendship might not
last for ever, and Moscow continued to favour India. In the power game, US
attitudes were more vital to Islamabad than ever.
PAKISTAN IN THE GAME OF THE GREAT POWERS 11]
In this context, President Clinton’s very different behaviour towards the two coun-
tries during his tour of South Asia in March 2000 (a five-day official visit to India;
a few hours of talks in Pakistan) emphasized — had there been any need to do so —
the dilemma in which Pakistan finds itself caught today. Ten years after the end of
the Cold War, Islamabad, whether under civilian or military government, has still
not changed its mind on matters of security. Pakistan is locked into a spiral of
regional tensions, symbolized by the priority it gives to the Kashmir question in its
difficult relations with India. The country’s security is still defined preeminently in
military terms, contrary to the minority view that Pakistan’s real security depends on
its capacity to develop, and to solve its domestic problems (imbalances between the
provinces, Islamic forces, health and education, social inequality, power structure,
economy). Were this to happen, it could not only reduce defence spending, but also
facilitate the establishment of normal economic relations with India.
In a changing world, Pakistan seems increasingly to be a prisoner of its fraught
geopolitical heritage, which jeopardizes any geo-economic advantages it could
acquire in a newly growing Asia. Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s dream has only partly
come true: although it has lost Bangladesh, Pakistan is genuinely part of the inter-
national community, but it does not enjoy the status for which it might have hoped.
This disappointing situation — which is readily acknowledged in Pakistan itself —
cannot be explained only by the country’s foreign policy, still less by lack of inter-
national understanding or by demonizing Islamic cabals. Certainly Pakistan should
have responded to the fundamental challenges inherited from Partition, but its diplo-
macy and defence strategies did not manage to carve out a coherent path. Face to
face with its Indian neighbour, and caught in the game of the great powers, Pakistani
leaders made choices that could not be dissociated from national considerations
and internal power structures.
As it embarks on the twenty-first century under a military regime whose room for
manoeuvre is extremely uncertain, in view of the challenges facing the country,
Pakistan needs reform. The international community cannot turn a blind eye:
Pakistan is indeed classified as a ‘pivotal state’ — that is to say, one of those develop-
ing countries ‘whose fates would significantly affect regional, even international
stability’.!3 Its potential position within the company of nations will depend on its
ability to be a positive link in the global chain rather than contributing to the strategic
maelstrom in the Middle East, Central Asia, China and South Asia. In order to
achieve this, Pakistan will need to play a cooler hand in the double game of
Afghanistan and Kashmir and, finally, call on its richest resource, its people, putting
the country at their service.
5
LIVING WITH INDIA

Relations between Pakistan and India
A bloodbath of a secession in the name of the Partition of the Indian Empire, four
wars in fifty years, the intractable question of Kashmir, a climate of suspicion and
continual accusation: the history of relations between Pakistan and India is a history
of failure. The nuclearization of both countries — official since 1998 — cannot fail to
have an effect on conflicts between them: the arms race, a drift into nuclear war or
an intensification of low-intensity campaigns behind the dubious shield of deter-
rence. Quite apart from open conflicts, ongoing bilateral tension is a handicap to
both countries, especially Pakistan, at a time when the logic of globalization calls for
closer commercial relations.
Feeling increasingly misunderstood by an international community that is cir-
cumspect about Islam, confronted by India’s growing power on the global scene,
Pakistan’s leaders — civilian, military or religious — are still, for the most part,
driven by their traditional tendency to demonize their big Indian neighbour. This
difficult relationship with India is endemic to the intellectual and political history
of the birth of Pakistan, but it is also indicative of Pakistan’s difficult relationship
with itself. Born of a feeling of insecurity and an affirmation of a fundamental dif-
ference between Muslims and Hindus, Pakistan cannot free itself from the people
it left behind. It lives in an atmosphere of tension caused by a relationship with its
Indian neighbour, which it describes by turns as hegemonic, bellicose, threatening,
underhand and stubborn — the Kashmir question encapsulates this disagreement
on both the ideological and the geopolitical front. After the 1999 coup d’état, the
new military civilian regime should have got down to the business of the eco-
nomic, political and social reconstruction of the country. In order that priority
could be given to domestic problems, they should have stabilized relations with
India, but these relations weigh so heavily on the experience of ‘being Pakistan’
that no one could change them without rethinking the ideological foundations of
the nation, its sociopolitical parameters, and the reference points of Pakistan’s
regional policy.
‘This chapter will attempt to shed light on this ideological — even psychological —
aspect of relations with India, then go on to recall the events leading up to Partition
and the bone of contention that is Kashmir, which led to the 1947-48 and 1965
LIVING WITH INDIA 113
wars; it will then consider the effects of Bangladesh’s secession in 1971, and the
subsequent Simla Accord, the start of a new phase for a smaller but more homoge-
neous Pakistan. The countries’ images of one another did not change much, but the
geopolitical context altered, leading in the 1980s and 1990s to the nuclear arms race
and a new war over Kashmir — this time, thanks to Afghanistan, branded with the
seal of Islamism on the march.
These strained circumstances are germane to a wider domestic crisis, and to a
regional framework characterized by the emergence of a more ambitious India: fac-.
tors which lead us to wonder about the nature of the dilemma challenging Pakistan
more than ever. Must it build its future in a position of opposition to India? Would
it be better to turn its back on its neighbour, and forge closer relations with its
Muslim ‘brother countries’? Or does the logic of geography force it — at the price
of a painful revision of its policies — to work for a better future based on dialogue
and cooperation? In other words, should Pakistan think of itself as opposing India,
separated from India, or with India?
Living with India: The Ideology and

Psychology of Difference
The story of relations between Pakistan and India is the story of a divorce that went
wrong, giving rise to bitterness, resentment and suspicion. The discrepancies
between India and Pakistan,' the bone of contention over Kashmir, the arguments
in the early years, continual armed conflict, the loss of Bangladesh, have fuelled, as
decade followed decade, a very different process from the one of which Jinnah
dreamed — before 1947, he believed that Pakistan, once established, would be on
good terms with India.
Since Independence, Pakistan has lived not only next-door to India but in oppo-
sition to India. Its relations with its neighbour are freighted with emotional overtones
that are difficult to pinpoint, but decisive. In the history of the young Pakistan, the
long centuries of relations between Hindus and Muslims in the subcontinent
impinge constantly upon the short lifespan of two fifty-year-old states. The well-
entrenched feeling of difference that was fundamental to Partition brings into play
identities defined as essential, almost immanent, which are in fact political con-
structions (Islam, Hinduism, with an emphatically capital I and H).
In this respect, there is a huge difference between India and Pakistan. In India
after Independence, the secularists carried the day over the Hindu nationalists of the
Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.? The 1950 Constitution,
shaped by Nehru’s vision, is imbued with secularism. In this multicultural nation,
‘religious communities’? have equal state recognition, and the state itself is not
defined in terms of any religion. This does not stop many Pakistanis from frequently
classifying the Indians as Hindus, making the Congress Party a Hindu party
(although it partly depended during its long years of hegemony on the votes of
Indian Muslims) and Nehru, an agnostic, a Hindu leader.
These simplistic labels are not symptomatic merely of a generalization — eve
a lack of understanding — of the other; such a simplification of Indian pluralism
is crucial to Pakistan’s legitimation project. After the rise and subsequent accession
to power in New Delhi (1998) of the Bharatiya Janata Party — the political branch
of Hindu nationalism — Pakistani ideologues maintain that their analysis has been
vindicated. Those who are quick to call India Hindustan, in order to emphasize its
Hindu nature, see the majority party in the Indian coalition government lay claim
to this quality (calling India by its old Sanskrit name, Bharat), having achieved
their success by fostering renewed anti-Muslim violence. But these people prefer to
forget that this Hindu nationalism was built up precisely to counter the dominant
secularist model, that it denounced Gandhi as alover of Islam — for this he paid
the ultimate price, his life — and that it was resolutely opposed to Nehru and his
followers.
In Pakistan, on the contrary, Muslim identity is considered to be the nation’s
foundation stone. Jinnah, who had no intention of founding an Islamic regime,
died too soon to be able to inspire a constitution that set out the nature of the
regime with the necessary clarity, and subsequent governments have not been able
to achieve this task. As for relations with India, characterized as they are by a history
of conflict, his successors have always given priority to the founding affirmation of
difference over hopes for harmony.
Jinnah’s famous ‘theory of two nations’ — a Hindu one and a Muslim one — in
claiming Pakistan’s right to exist in 1940 has become the essential reference point,
making religious affiliation the basis of a host of divergences covering every domain
of thought and culture. The historian K K Aziz puts it like this:
Thus Hindu—Muslim conflict was not merely religious. It was the clash of
two civilizations, of two peoples who had different languages, different lit-
erary roots, different ideas of education, different philosophical sources
and different concepts of art... when this cultural variance was combined
with diversity in social customs and modes of livelihood the emergence of a
united Indian nationalism was doomed without redemption.*
Knowing whether or not this is a valid observation, when the history and con-
temporary reality of today’s India bear witness to intricate interweavings between
the two faiths both in the strictly religious sphere and in the sociocultural field,
does not help us to understand the founding philosophy of Pakistan. This phi-
losophy chose to deny everything the two countries had in common in order to
emphasize everything that divided them, and thus to justify secession.
For the theory of difference is not the only factor here — there is also the
denunciation of Hindu/Indian hegemony. Let me quote Aziz again: “The
Muslim community . . . felt that the majority community was imposing its views
upon them, that this imposition of its will was leading to an oppression which
became increasingly unbearable as years passed.” For him, ‘Pakistan is the child
of this feeling of insecurity” evident in Jinnah’s speeches and Muslim League res-
olutions before 1947. Aziz concludes that ‘the real roots of the idea of Muslim
separatism should therefore be sought in the minds of men rather than in polit-
ical factors’.’
LIVING WITH INDIA b1S
If we cannot understand the history of relations between India and Pakistan

without considering this psychological aspect, it would be naive to leave it at that. A
number of vested interests are involved in this demonization of India, which shows
us how Jinnah’s democratic project took the path to failure, and helps to explain the
army’s decisive role. Nothing is more likely to strengthen the feeling of Muslim
identity, or to reinforce nationalist sentiments, than fear of the other and the spec-
tre of an Indian threat. In this context, the Kashmir question is extremely useful to
the predominant Pakistani attitude, since it conjures up the prospect of a secession-
ist move by a Muslim population under India’s control. The Kashmiri Muslims — a
very small minority among the Muslims of the Indian Union, but a very large
majority in their State of Jammu and Kashmir — are proof, as far as Islamabad is
concerned, both of the impossibility of peaceful cohabitation under Hindu domi-
nation and of vigorous repression by the Indian state. The fact that more than a
hundred and twenty million Muslims live in India and have no intention of leaving
does not come into it.
Once more we are faced with an obvious paradox: Pakistan has no hesitation in
sending its troops, preceded by armed groups which it claims not to support, into this
threatening India: it did so in 1947, 1965 and 1999. All these military initiatives
ended in failure, for two reasons. In the first place, the fear of Hindu hegemony
changed once Pakistan became a state and, moreover, a strongly defended one.
Another factor came into the picture, one that made the overwhelming preoccupa-
tion with defence spill over into attack: the image of India as a weak country. The
Indo—Pakistani war of 1965 followed the defeat of Indian troops in the Sino—Indian
conflict of 1962, and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto persuaded Marshal Ayub Khan to attack
before the Indian army could re-form and regain strength. The 1999 incursions into
the Indian heights of Kargil were launched when the Indian government had fallen,
and was supposed to limit itself to ongoing business until the next elections.
Nevertheless, this underestimation of Indian power was not a mere moment of
weakness or an isolated misinterpretation. There was also the feeling that Indian
troops were inherently inferior. The myth of the Muslim soldier’s superiority over his
Hindu counterpart had long been part of the mental landscape of Pakistan’s senior
officers. This presumption — partly the legacy of the colonial theory of ‘martial
races’, of the memory of successful Muslim conquests in North India, and of the
idea of Islam’s innate superiority — exacted a high price from Pakistan’s troops.®
In order to find a way out of this paradox, which arises partly from the image of
a threatening and bellicose India and partly from Pakistani activism, one thing is
necessary: to make India shoulder most of the responsibility for these conflicts —
Pakistan (if we can believe this) merely responds to its neighbour’s provocations.
Sometimes Pakistan’s rhetoric is right on target — when, for instance, it recalls the
Congress Party’s ambivalent line before Partition. India’s double speak on Junagadh®
in
and Kashmir, and its promise — which was never kept — to hold a referendum
Kashmir, also left indelible marks on the Pakistani psyche. But even if we take these
use
things into account, they do not absolve Pakistan of responsibility for repeated
sup-
of armed groups (tribes in 1947 and 1965; Islamists in the 1990s), or for direct
port of anti-Indian secessionist forces.
Anti-Indian feeling and aselective collective memory encourage an official history

which is taught in schools, and this in turn is complemented and made current by the
propaganda war conducted by the state’s Pakistan TV channel and the vernacular
press.!° Textbooks in both Urdu and English portray the history of India and
Pakistan as a one-way street without bends, a ‘murdered history’ which does not
describe the Realpolitik that actually goes on, but perpetuates ‘prescribed myths’.!!
The fact that Indian textbooks have not always succeeded in avoiding the same dis-
tortions can only intensify the image war that forms the two peoples’ concepts of one
another from an early age. All in all, the original ideological difference, magnified by
fifty years of conflictual history and by a culture of nationalist mythologies, gives
relations between Pakistan and India an undeniably psychological dimension which
jeopardizes all calls for a normal relationship and frustrates any attempt to ‘think dif-
ferently’ in both countries.
In such a context, words are of little use. It would take a spectacular change of
heart to achieve success in negotiations which turn all too often into a dialogue of the
deaf. Only statesmen or women capable of confronting popular opinion in their own
country, and turning their back on sterile political games, could turn over a new leaf.
What is more, such people would have to be in power in the two countries at the
same time.
The Partition Syndrome: Conflictual Beginnings and

the Demonization of India
As a result of the massacres that attended it — leaving nearly half a million dead in
the Punjab alone in just a few months — the forceps birth of India and Pakistan
became a tragedy. Yet again, some meaning had to be drawn from these killings to
justify Partition. The official history of Pakistan sees in this originary bloodbath not
a murderous aberration but proof that it was impossible for Hindus and Muslims to
live together in a unified India.
In that huge bloodstained migration, minorities on each side cut off their roots:
Muslims went west; Hindus and Sikhs went east. The most fervent supporters of
Pakistan came from Indian provinces where Islam was a minority faith; a number of
the new state’s leaders (such as Zia ul-Hag, Nawaz Sharif and General Musharraf)
were born in present-day India, or — like Muhammad Ali Jinnah, father of the
nation — lived there for much of their life. Countless families — especially in the
Pakistani elite — originated ‘on the other side’. Building a nation and a state, forging
a national history, could not erase everybody’s sense of a shared past. It is never easy
to be a refugee — a mohaj — even when you have chosen sucha destiny.
Before the Kashmir crisis broke out, in September 1947, the fact that the
Radcliffe Commission!” allocated most of the Muslim district of Gurdaspur, in the
Punjab, to India gave rise to vehement protest: in giving India this territory, against
the very logic of Partition, the British gave it direct access to Kashmir, thus facili-
tating future union. Before broaching the question of Kashmir, we must remember
the low-level conflicts cited by Pakistan to lay at India’s door the responsibility for a
relationship that was wrong from the outset.
LIVING WITH INDIA ps
Two technical matters relating to the sharing-out of resources after Partition poi-
soned relations between India and Pakistan from the very first months. The first was
to do with the overall command — under the British General Auchinleck — put in
place to supervise the transition and oversee the sharing-out of military resources. Its
early demise in November 1947, under pressure from India, deprived Pakistan’s
army of its fair share of equipment and munitions. Pakistan’s frustration was not
only material and strategic: there was a strong feeling that the country had been
misled by unfulfilled promises from the other party. The same Indian lack of good-
will characterized the sharing-out of financial resources: Gandhi had to threaten to
go on hunger strike on 12 January 1948 before New Delhi agreed to release money
that should by rights go to Pakistan. Eighteen days later the Mahatma was felled by
a bullet from a Hindu extremist who could not forgive him for this ‘shady deal’. So
on two sovereign questions — finance and defence — Pakistan considered itself the
victim of Indian hegemony from the beginning.
There was a third problematic resource to share out, and this was even more
crucial: the waters of the Indus, which in the plains of Pakistan nurtured the
world’s largest irrigation area, but whose upper basin belonged to India. At
the end of the arbitration tribunal’s mandate — which came on 30 March 1948,
with no agreement between the two countries — India blocked access to these
waters, forcing Pakistan to sign an agreement. Nonetheless, in 1952 India
accepted the good offices of the World Bank. Eight years later, the Treaty of
the Indus Waters was signed. Pakistan still cites this today to emphasize — in the
context of Kashmir — the necessity of involving a third party to unblock dead-
locked bilateral negotiations.
These differences, whether they have been settled or not, have left their mark
on Pakistan’s psyche, and helped to build up an image of an India that will not
accept that Partition is a fait accompli. Here, however, there are two distinct factors
to consider. When the Indian leaders finally agreed to the establishment of
Pakistan: the All India Congress Committee declared that it ‘believed firmly that
when the present passion will have abated, the problems of India will be seen in
their proper perspective, the false two-nation doctrine being then discarded
and rejected by all’.'? This way of looking at things, which sees Partition as an
aberration engineered by the machinations of Jinnah and the Muslim League, is
that of the majority in India, where there is widespread rejection of the logic of
Partition — a rejection, however, which should not necessarily entail an obstinate
denial of the resulting reality: Pakistan. To an outside observer it is clear that
India has recognized Pakistan’s existence for some considerable time — and
not merely in diplomatic terms. This argument, however, does not convince
numerous Pakistanis who still feel not only unloved but positively threatened by
their neighbour. The nub of the problem, certainly, is the fact that images of
the other have moved out of the domain of analysis and into that of belief —
everything India says, however contradictory, is used to bolster the popular
conception of an India that wants — either directly or indirectly — to drive Pakistan
off the face of the earth.
Several points are put forward to illustrate this argument; they are made in dif-
ferent ways, but they all tend in the same direction. The first point is the stance of
the Hindu nationalists, who have traditionally invoked the geographic unity of the
Indian landmass to further the concept of a united India, Akhand Bharat, rooted in
history and mythology. The Indus — even the Hindu Kush — would constitute its nat-
ural western border. This is an extreme minority view, but a united India is always
used in Pakistan to situate Indian ambitions in a millenarian, essentialist — and
hence presumably intangible — framework. In 1999, however, the Indian Prime
Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, heir to the school of thought that promoted the con-
cept of Akhand Bharat, visited the Minar-i Pakistan in Lahore, where the famous
Muslim League resolution was passed on 23 March 1940, a memorial to Pakistan’s
will to independence — a highly symbolic gesture. Three months later, the Pakistan
army went into Indian Kashmir, igniting the Kargil war. India felt betrayed:
Vajpayee’s gesture of goodwill had achieved nothing.
Further arguments are put forward as proof of India’s eternal bitterness:
Bangladesh’s secession in 1971, achieved with the help of the Indian army; hypothe-
ses that Pakistan will break up under the pressure of domestic, ethnic or sectarian
tension; or the bellicose arguments of powerful people in India such as those who
are unwise enough to consider it a good thing to establish a link between the
nuclear tests in 1998 and their impact on regional power relations. Unfortunately,
mistrust feeds even on its opposite. Brotherly or pacifist overtures are also consid-
ered suspect or dubbed hypocritical. Behind the Indians’ reminders of the former
links between the two countries, many people in Pakistan claim to discern a threat-
ening nostalgia for a united India. Anyone who puts forward the idea that at some
time in the future there could be some kind of federation in South Asia is perceived
as a conspirator in the same dastardly plot. ‘This mindset in Pakistan attributes ulte-
rior motives even to those Indian leaders who have been most in favour of
establishing normal bilateral relations, such as I K Gujral, prime minister from
1996 to 1997.
The disputes enumerated above, however, were not in themselves enough to foster
such a mindset. In this context the Kashmir question, which exploded in the very
wake of Independence, is crucial, and still not settled to this day. After four armed
conflicts, it remains the dispute that gives rise to the strongest expressions of anti-
Indian feeling.
Kashmir and the First Wars: 1948 and 1965

In 1947, although Hari Singh, Maharajah of Kashmir, was tempted by the idea of
independence, he had to choose — as did all the princes of the former Indian
Empire — whether to unite his state with India or Pakistan. As sovereign Hindu ruler
of a state with a Muslim majority, he came up against both public discontent and
two rival parties: the Muslim Conference, which wanted to join Pakistan; and Sheikh
Abdullah’s National Conference, which was more secular and more open to the idea
of joining India, as long as Kashmir would be guaranteed a considerable degree of
autonomy. While the region of Poonch rose up against the maharajah and pro-
claimed itself ‘Azad Kashmir’ (free Kashmir), from 24 October 1947 tribal armies
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from the north of the kingdom marched on Srinagar. Hari Singh vacillated, and
finally summoned India to the rescue. Nehru, the Indian Prime Minister, replied that
he could act only if the maharajah signed an act of accession uniting his state to
India; this he did on 26 October 1947. Most importantly, there was an understand-
ing between Lord Mountbatten, governor general of India, and Nehru that this
accession would be confirmed by referendum. The Indian army, swiftly deployed to
Srinagar, blocked the tribal forces’ advance. The Pakistan army went into Kashmir
officially in May 1948.
The first war between the two neighbour states ended under UN auspices on
| January 1949. In effect, the cease-fire line de facto runs between two Kashmirs. ‘To
the south stretches Jammu and Kashmir, now a member state of the Indian Union,
which the Pakistanis call IOK: India Occupied Kashmir (100,000 square kilometres;
10 million inhabitants). To the east is Ladakh, mostly Buddhist in Leh but mostly
Muslim in Kargil. To the south is Jammu — mainly Hindu, but with some predom-
inantly Muslim areas. In the centre are areas with a very strong Muslim majority
around the valley of Srinagar, heartland of kashmiriyat, a Kashmiri identity based on
a Sunni Sufi Islam with a tolerant attitude towards the Brahman pandits in this
region, which was noted for its contribution to Hinduism. '*
To the northwest of the cease-fire line, in Poonch, Azad Kashmir (13,000 square
kilometres; 3 million inhabitants) is a non-sovereign state. Its president, its govern-
ment and its assembly are under the direct control of Islamabad. To the north of the
line, the vast Northern Territories cover the former tribal lands of Gilgit and
Baltistan (60,000 square kilometres; approximately a million inhabitants), with a sig-
nificant Shi’a minority. This entire area, which India calls Pakistan Occupied
Kashmir, does not enjoy the usual status of Pakistani provinces, for Pakistan defines
the Northern Territories and Azad Kashmir, like Jammu and Kashmir, as ‘disputed
territories’ to be subjected to a referendum.
So all the original planks of a debate that is still going on were in place. It
involved several parameters at once: differing conceptions of the nation, strategic
battle stakes, conflicting interpretations of historical facts, and points of law, each
side accusing the other of blatant dishonesty. As far as Pakistan is concerned,
Kashmir should by rights belong to it — is it not right next door, and are not most
of its population Muslims? The maharajah’s choice is contested in law: did he not
leave Srinagar as a result of popular pressure, after the troops had massacred some
of his Muslim subjects? Pakistan also invokes the precedent of Junagadh, united
with India by force in September 1947 on the pretext that most of its population
were Hindus. For Islamabad, Kashmir, ‘a disputed territory’, continues to exemplify
‘the unfinished agenda’ of a Partition aborted as a result of Indian machinations.
For New Delhi, on the other hand, India is the victim of Pakistani subversion,
because the tribal armies who infiltrated in 1947 were not Kashmiris but Pashtuns
from Pakistan, sent at the instigation and with the organizational help of Pakistani
officers. New Delhi had lodged a complaint about this to the UN Security Council
on | January 1948.
The UN debated this matter for months, and passed several resolutions. The
resolution of 13 August 1948 lays down four guiding principles: (1) withdrawal of
the Pakistani troops; (2) withdrawal of the armed tribal groups; (3) interim government
by civilian authorities under the control of a United Nations Commission for India
and Pakistan, set up in 20 January and in place by July; (4) withdrawal of most of
the Indian forces after the withdrawal of the Pakistani and tribal forces; India to
maintain only ‘minimal’ forces in Kashmir until a final ruling was made. The
resolution of 9 January 1949, after the cease-fire, laid down conditions for a refer-
endum organized by an administrator appointed on 22 March, the American
Admiral Nimitz. Since the UN Commission’s official arbitration was ineffectual, the
Australian Owen Dixon was appointed as UN representative. Although Dixon
readily acknowledged that the interventions of the tribal and Pakistani troops
violated international law, he also became convinced very early on that India had
no wish either to withdraw its troops or to hold a referendum. At the end of his
term of office, in August 1950, the only solution as far as he was concerned was to
split Kashmir, on the understanding that the valley of Srinagar would itself be
split... when its inhabitants had been duly consulted: a vicious circle in which
Kashmir is still trapped fifty years later.
New Delhi averred that the maharajah’s decision to join India was not legally con-
testable. Moreover, it expressed the will of the National Conference, Kashmir’s
most representative body, since Hari Singh had put Sheikh Abdullah in power. It was
subsequently confirmed de facto by the specific 1957 constitution of Jammu and
Kashmir, then by the Kashmiris’ participation in several Indian elections which
made the notion of a referendum obsolete (needless to say, Pakistan contested this
argument). More fundamentally, India argued that it was a secular, multifaith nation,
as its 1950 Constitution confirmed. And so the Muslim majority in Kashmir serve
the conflicting arguments of two neighbours putting forward opposing points of
view — exclusive and inclusive — of the nation. It is precisely on this fundamental
question that India and Pakistan are divided.
Pakistan is quick to point out that its interest in Kashmir is not territorial but based
purely on a wish to see the Kashmiris’ right to self-government recognized.
Nevertheless, the three faces of this former kingdom’s strategic importance cannot
be ignored. Kashmir, often called Pakistan’s ‘jugular vein’, contains the upper basin
of the Indus, which is vital to the country’s irrigation system, and hence to its food
supplies. India has never disputed the Indus Treaty signed in 1958, but could still
used it to exert pressure.
The second element to consider is neighbouring China. As relations between
China and Pakistan improved, the border adjustments agreed in 1963 — vigorously
contested by India, which claimed the whole of the former kingdom of Kashmir —
allowed Beijing to consolidate the strategic axis linking ‘Tibet and Xinjiang (Sinkiang)
along a sensitive boundary. The opening of the Karakorum road in 1978 improved
links between Pakistan and Xinjiang, opened up the Northern Territories (Gilgit and
Baltistan), and also linked Pakistan to Central Asia, avoiding the troubled north of
Afghanistan. Once it had occupied the trans-Himalayan territory of Aksai Chin, at
one time part of Ladakh, then swallowed up part of Ladakh as a result of the 1962
war, China controlled the trans-Karakorum fringes of Kashmir. Although it would
not admit it, China is also an interested party in the dispute over Kashmir, it hopes —
and there is some basis for this hope — that the solution of its border dispute with
India will one day give it absolute sovereignty over these territories.
A third issue: Kashmir is not only a cause of disagreement with New Delhi; it is
the site par excellence of direct confrontation. For Pakistan it provides advance bases for
tribal groups (in 1947 and 1965) or Islamists (today) infiltrating Indian Kashmir, and
rear bases which can double up as training camps for Kashmiri militants from the
Srinagar valley. Kashmir’s continuing transitional status, and the presence of
Kashmiris on both sides of the security line — something of a generalization in view
of the ethnic diversity throughout the former princely state — offers incomparably
more room for manoeuvre here than along the international border of south
Kashmir, from the Punjab to the sea.
1965: a futile war

In a way, the 1965 war began in April in the Rann of Kutch, shared between
Pakistani Sind and Indian Gujarat, where Pakistan got the upper hand in border
skirmishes. In September there was renewed violence in Kashmir, where the situa-
tion had been deteriorating for months. Once Jammu and Kashmir joined it, India
quickly reneged on its promise of a referendum, which would entail a withdrawal —
which never materialized — of Pakistani forces from the north of Kashmir. The con-
siderable autonomy granted to Kashmir, laid down in the Indian Constitution
(Articles 306 and 370), was no longer respected after 1953, when Sheikh Abdullah
was accused of playing the independence card, and imprisoned.
So began the Indian policy of political manipulation in Kashmir, by means of
accommodating governments brought to power through dubious electoral prac-
tices, and often corrupted. In 1954, New Delhi arrogated legislative power in
Kashmir, except in three inherently sovereign domains (defence, foreign affairs,
communications). In 1957 the state Constitution announced that it would become
fully part of the Indian Union. Early in 1965, Kashmir’s status became even more
in line with the normal status of other Indian states, and Sheikh Abdullah was
arrested again. An increasingly powerful protest movement called for a war of lib-
eration. In August, armed groups from Pakistani Azad Kashmir entered the fray in
support of their ‘compatriots’. The Indian army went into action on 16 August,
crossing the cease-fire line. On 1 September, the Pakistani army, which New Delhi
accused of organizing the armed groups’ infiltration, went into action in its turn in
Indian territory. On 6 September the nature of the war changed: Indian forces out-
side Kashmir crossed the international border and marched on Lahore, capital of
the Pakistani Punjab, but did not push home their advantage. A cease-fire was
declared on 23 September, under UN pressure.
In January 1966, with the Soviets as mediators, the Conference of ‘Tashkent reached
an agreement which nullified India’s territorial gains without, however, specifying a
procedure for an international settlement of the Kashmir question — to Pakistan’s great
regret. Yet again, a war between India and Pakistan gave vent to opposing views. New
Delhi maintained that sending armed groups from Azad Kashmir — real Kashmiris or
Pakistani soldiers — smacked of dirty tricks. Pakistan had launched Operation Gibraltar
to take advantage of the situation: an India weakened by the 1962 war against China,
Nehru’s death in 1964, and the arrival in power of a successor who was not considered
to be as strong as his predecessor: Lal Bahadur Shastri.
Pakistan, for its part, continued to put forward the same arguments: the Indians
used oppression in Kashmir to put down an uprising by Kashmiris under their rule.
What could be more natural for their brothers on the other side of the cease-fire
line than coming to assist them? Anyway, how could it constitute infiltration, when
Kashmir remained a disputed territory? The Pakistan army — if we take their word
for it — acted only against the Indian invasion. There was only one obvious solution:
consult the Kashmiri people — hold a referendum . . . This indecisive war, ended
by an international conference that settled nothing, did not enhance the prestige
of Ayub Khan, who was already beset by domestic problems. Three years later
the marshal passed the baton to his chief of army staff, General Yahya Khan,
whose leadership faced even more serious problems: the partition of Pakistan, this
time soundly beaten by India, governed after 1966 by Nehru’s daughter, Indira
Gandhi.!°
The Secession of Bangladesh and the

Simla Conference: 1971-72
The Bangladesh war of secession had two major consequences for Pakistan and for
relations between Pakistan and India.!° For one thing, it was the end of a bipolar
Pakistan — a western pole and an eastern pole. The Bengali linguistic identity pre-
vailed over the religious unity that had established Pakistan in 1947, inevitably
challenging the ‘two-nation theory’. Pakistan put forward a different argument: the
specific Muslim identity — as Burke, for example, maintains — was even more strongly
asserted in that the Awami League rebels had struggled for their own country,
Bangladesh, and not to join India. In so doing they had put into practice the theory
behind the original resolution to form Pakistan, which envisaged two Muslim states
at the two extremities of the subcontinent.'’
More important still were the conclusions drawn from the Indian military inter-
vention, which carried the day within three weeks.!® The great and the good in
Pakistan saw this action as symptomatic of a will to destroy it on the part of New
Delhi, exacting revenge for the first Partition in 1947. This reading of the situation
is not entirely mistaken, but it tends to underestimate the overwhelming
responsibility of the administrative and military elite in western Pakistan for a mas-
sive alienation of eastern Pakistan. Moreover, it seeks to conceal the Pakistan army’s
bloody repression against the Bengali people. Strong international criticism allowed
India to assume a right to intervene,!? although New Delhi did not push home its
advantage either in western Pakistan or in Kashmir. Although India knew that it was
unrealistic to hope that it would regain Pakistan, it could look forward to crushing
the Pakistan army in the west and occupying the whole of Kashmir. Fear of inter-
no
national condemnation, and the emergence of a new Sino—American approach,
of
doubt explain the moderate attitude of Indira Gandhi, for whom the break-up
Pakistan already constituted a major victory.
When Yahya Khan left office, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Foreign Minister in both pre-
ceding governments, took over the reins of power. He quickly opened negotiations
with India to ensure the repatriation of more than 90,000 prisoners of war, and to
spare some hundred officers being put on trial for war crimes. The first point was set-
tled with Delhi’s agreement in 1973; the second in 1974, when Pakistan recognized
Bangladesh.
Meanwhile, Z A Bhutto and Indira Gandhi had signed the Simla Agreement on
3 July 1972. This constituted an important advance in relations between India and
Pakistan. Nearly thirty years later it is still a landmark, echoed in the Clinton—Sharif
agreement of July 1999, which ended the Kargil war.”° But it contains several ambi-
guities. It affirms a mutual wish for a ‘durable peace in the subcontinent’ and the
necessity of a ‘friendly and harmonious relationship’ between the two countries,
which — under the terms of Article | (ii) — pledge themselves ‘to settle their differ-
ences by peaceful means through bilateral negotiations or by any other peaceful
means mutually agreed upon between them’. Article 4 (ii) specifies that the 1947
cease-fire line — now, after some minor adjustments, the Line of Control — ‘shall be
respected by both sides without prejudice to the recognized position of either side.
Neither side shall seek to alter it unilaterally, irrespective of mutual differences and
legal interpretations’.
At Simla Pakistan accepted its diminished status, but made no concessions on
Kashmir. India considered it a victory in that the Accord made no reference to UN
resolutions, nor to a referendum on the territory’s future. Emphasizing the call to
settle the problem by ‘bilateral negotiations’, New Delhi still considers today that at
Simla, Pakistan gave up any notion of international involvement in this matter.
Pakistan denies this: possible ‘recourse to any other peaceful means’ opens another
door besides the bilateral negotiations so dear to India. There is a further ambigu-
ity: is the Line of Control ratified de facto, and destined to become an official border
which would confirm the division of Kashmir? The text does not go this far, since it
forbids only unilateral alteration of the line. Indian diplomats contend that during
last-minute talks on the night of 2-3 July 1972, Bhutto had promised Indira Gandhi
in private that he would move towards a partition of Kashmir, but he did not
include this in a text that would have had to be accepted by Pakistani authorities still
smarting from the secession of Bangladesh. Like Bhutto himself,?! Pakistani diplo-
mats at Simla rejected this hypothesis of a secret clause. One even denounced this
meeting — which he considered against the interests of. Pakistan — as ‘negotiation
under duress’, and thus of dubious legality.2* However, Indian hawks — citing the
‘proxy’ war conducted in Kashmir by Pakistan since 1990, in violation of Article 4
(ii) of the Accord — still condemn the perceived weakness of Indira Gandhi, deceived
by Z A Bhutto, and consider that Indian troops should have conquered the Pakistan-
controlled north of Kashmir in 1971.
So the years 1971—72 were decisive. Paradoxically, memories of Bangladesh’s
war of independence set Pakistan against India, which was accused of drastically
reducing it, rather than against the Bengali secessionists. Many also see the Indian
army’s open participation in the conflict as a precedent justifying further — more
covert — intervention by Pakistan in Indian affairs, especially in the Punjab and
Kashmir. To India’s wound in 1947, therefore, we can add Pakistan’s wound in

1971.
As for the Simla Agreement, for India it remains a landmark that can only add to
the sum total of bitterness, since Pakistan has not respected the commitment to ‘non-
interference in the internal affairs’ in each other’s (Article 1 [i]), nor the commitment
to prevent ‘the organization, assistance or encouragement of any acts detrimental to
the maintenance of peaceful and harmonious relations’ (1 [ii]). Article 2, which
affirms that ‘both governments will take all steps within their power to prevent hos-
tile propaganda directed against each other’, quickly became a dead letter. The
Simla Agreement may have restored peace after the break-up of Pakistan, but it did
not instil confidence. Since 1971 there has been no fully-fledged border war between
India and Pakistan, although Kargil came very close to it in 1999. Islamabad has not
stopped taking a hostile line towards India, based on a strategy that teeters between
denunciation of the Indian threat, and covert or overt acts of confrontation. ‘The
1970s and 1980s illustrate this logic of cold war or armed peace, affected since 1974
by the accelerating nuclear arms race.
The Nuclear Arms Race: 1972-98
On 16 October 1964, two years after its brief victorious war against India, China
carried out its first nuclear tests. India, which had been involved in nuclear research
since independence, redoubled its efforts and carried outafirst test (pretending that
it was a ‘peaceful explosion’) in 1974. This served only to confirm Bhutto’s deter-
mination — announced in 1969 and reaffirmed in 1972 — that Pakistan would have
nuclear weapons whatever the price.
Bhutto’s decision — ratified by his successors — was based on the logic of all-round
deterrence. In the face of the supremacy of India’s conventional forces — confirmed
in 1971 — only nuclear weapons could restore Pakistan’s room for manoeuvre, not to
mention its prestige in the Muslim world. Even though Pakistan boasts today that it
built ‘its’ bomb as a result of the skill of its Atomic Energy Commission, established
its
in 1956, the international community — not just Indian analysts — consider that
nuclear arms acquisition programme, which it kept secret for many years, enjoyed
widespread support: financial support from Arab countries; technological support
from China and various Western companies. The programme was kept secret
and
because the United States would have taken a dim view of Pakistan’s objective,
the
would not have believed in an entirely civilian nuclear programme. In 1977,
Symington Amendment gave the White House the option of suspendi ng American
After some
aid to countries suspected of carrying out a nuclear arms programme.
did sus-
toing and froing, American sanctions were imposed in 1979: Washington
invasion of
pend aid, but soon renewed — and increased — it after the Soviet
Afghanistan.
1977, made
General Zia ul-Hagq, instigator of the coup d’état that ousted Bhutto in
to the
great play of Pakistan’s new status as the chief channel for American support
Zia derived two
Afghan mujaheddin on the great chessboard of the Cold War.
to Pakistan’s
short-term benefits from this. First, President Reagan closed his eyes
nuclear programme, even though the Pressler Amendment, passed in 1985,

requested him to check every year that Islamabad did not possess nuclear arms.
Moreover, American military aid allowed him to send more combat aircraft, whose
main target could only be India. For India, on the other hand, there could be no
doubt: Pakistan had become a ‘threshold state’ with the capacity to build a nuclear
bomb. General Zia himself admitted in March 1987 that his country possessed the
necessary technology.
And so a second phase began, one which aimed to increase Pakistan’s nuclear
capacity, and above all to produce more and more powerful weapons, with Chinese
and probably North Korean support. In 1989 the Hatf-I and Hatf-II ground-to-
ground missiles (80-to-300-kilometre range) were tested. When the war in Afghanistan
ended, in 1989, Washington resumed its policy of sanctions against Pakistan (1990).
This was a hesitant policy, full of stops and starts and shilly-shallying on China’s abil-
ity to achieve nuclear proliferation despite the net of international controls. America’s
change of mind, however, did not stop Islamabad in its tracks. Chinese M-11 missiles,
or their components, delivered to Pakistan made headlines throughout the 1990s,
which saw the testing of Hatf-III (600-kilometre range) and, in April 1998, of Gauri-
1 (1,500 kilometres), in response to the Indian Agni missile. ‘The Indian nuclear tests on
11 and 13 May 1998 naturally prompted a reply from Pakistan, which carried out six
tests on 28 and 30 May, despite American pressure. Following New Delhi’s example,
Islamabad had not signed the indefinite extension to the Non-Proliferation Treaty in
1995; nor ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty the following year.
The overt nuclearization of South Asia in 1998 therefore marks the failure of
Pakistan’s calls for disarmament, renewed since 1974. Ever since the first Indian
tests, Islamabad had been arguing for a nuclear-free zone in South Asia. New Delhi
had always said no, because as far as nuclear weapons were concerned, South Asia is
not a region in itself but part of Asia: denuclearization of the region would make no
sense unless China was involved. Going even further, New Delhi proposed a global
disarmament according to a timetable accepted by all parties. No deal. The only
regional advances in this domain were modest: in 1989, India and Pakistan agreed
not to attack one another’s nuclear installations. Obviously Islamabad did not pledge
itself not to strike first, judging that such a decision, given its unequal position — in
terms of both its conventional armaments and its nuclear capacity — would reduce its
power of deterrence to nil. The draft Indian nuclear doctrine, put forward for dis-
cussion in August 1999, worried Pakistan, which was aware of the economic risks of
an arms race by an India seeking to compete up to a point with China.
Has Pakistan’s nuclear programme ~ secret from 1987, then open in 1998 —
changed its strategic relations with India? On two occasions the tension between the
two neighbours was so high that Washington stepped in to restore calm — India
denies that the two countries came very close to war. In 1987, the big Indian military
manoeuvres in Rajasthan known as ‘Operation Brasstracks’ were viewed in
Islamabad as likely to lead to an attack on Pakistan’s nuclear installations. In 1990
there was another crisis — this time over Kashmir, which once more became a hot —
even burning — issue.?%
Another War in Kashmir

The 1980s were difficult for India. Indira Gandhi was back in power in 1980, but
after she declared a state of emergency that lasted from 1975 to 1977, and the sub-
‘sequent defeat of the Congress Party, she no longer had the status she had enjoyed
in 1971. Her mishandling of Punjabi regionalism only fuelled the movement, which
turned secessionist; in the front line were Sikh extremists calling for the creation of
an independent Khalistan. Islamabad was quick to support this movement, plung-
ing Indian Punjab into a bloodbath of attacks and repression. Neither the
occupation of the Golden Temple of Amritsar by the Indian army in June 1994 nor
the assassination of Indira Gandhi four months later put an end to a conflict which
continued until the early 1990s, when political life resumed. By providing the Sikh
militants with bases and training camps, Zia ul-Haq, the Pakistan army and the
secret services — Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) — embarked on another kind of con-
flict with India by backing the separatist movements rising in the border states.
Pakistan engagement on behalf of the Sikh partisans of Khalistan could only, how-
ever, go so far. The border separating Indian Punjab from Pakistani Punjab is
recognized internationally, and Pakistan has no rights over Indian Punjab.
The Kashmiri context is very different, because Islamabad disputes the legitimacy
of the Indian presence there. In 1984, the Indian army’s unexpected action on the
Siachen glacier, near the Chinese border, caught Pakistan by surprise. Pakistan
claimed that this was a violation of the Simla Agreement. New Delhi rejected this
interpretation: the security line the two countries are pledged to respect ends at point
NJ 9842. Siachen stands further than this. Then New Delhi pushed the virtual line
towards the north, so that Siachen was theirs. Islamabad extended it due east, so that
Siachen was theirs as well. Since 1984, mountain troops from both sides have been
engaged in extreme weather conditions, in the world’s highest battlefield: at an alti-
tude of 6,000 metres.
In 1989, the situation in Indian Kashmir — especially at its heart, the valley of
Srinagar — took a new turn. After the death of the charismatic Sheikh Abdullah in
1982, New Delhi’s negligence and political machinations increased Kashmiri frus-
tration, which was further exacerbated by local government corruption and blatant
electoral fraud in 1987. The Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), founded
in 1977, embarked on a campaign of attack in July 1988; in 1989 they kidnapped the
daughter of the new Indian Home Minister (a Kashmiri).
This violent outbreak of Kashmiri militancy, further reinforced by Indian repres-
sion, opened the way for a new intervention by Pakistan. The chaos in Kashmir was
far more conducive to clandestine intervention than the Punjab, with its particularly
Sikh character. Azad Kashmir under Pakistan’s control would become an ideal sup-
port base for the fighters in the valley. Islamabad claimed to be giving the rebels only
moral and diplomatic support, and began its international campaigns of denounc-
ing the violations of human rights perpetrated by the Indian security forces —
without much success, despite the very real violations documented by Indian and
international NGOs. The fact was that no one believed that Pakistan was neutral in
this matter, The Soviet defeat in Afghanistan pleased the ISI, which could now
(mistakenly) dream of a second victory — this time over India. As for the collapse of
the USSR, and the subsequent emergence of independent republics in Central
Asia, these events bolstered Kashmiri hopes for freedom. After three futile wars, the
revolt by young people in Kashmir meant that Islamabad could bring up the
Kashmir question again — with renewed ardour.
Behind the democratic call for the right to self-government, reminders of Nehru’s
commitments and UN resolutions, Pakistan followed a policy of intervention in this
territory. The independently minded, secular JKLF was not really in favour. The
army and the ISI had other ambitions in Kashmir. Support for the JKLF dwindled
after 1992 and was transferred to overtly Islamist Kashmiri groups such as the
Hizbul Mujaheddin, which had Afghan connections and was known for its attacks
against moderate Kashmiris. When Indian repression began to decimate the local
rebels, from 1994 onwards, the Pakistan secret services sent in more mujaheddin
from Azad Kashmir and Pakistan, even veterans of the war in Afghanistan, all
trained for jihad in Pakistani or Afghan camps. More and more frequent artillery
exchanges between official armies, along the Line of Control, covered the move-
ments of infiltrator groups, the most notorious of which were the armed wings of
Pakistani fundamentalist organizations, preeminently the Army of the Pure,
Lashkar-i-Tayyiba, a satellite group of the Centre for Preaching, Markaz Dawa-al-
Irshad, which had been in Kashmir since 1989, and the Movement of the
Companions of the Prophet, Harkat-ul Ansar, in Kashmir since 1993 and rebap-
tized Harkat-ul Mujaheddin in 1998 (often being classified as a terrorist organization
by the American administration). These Islamic guerrilla groups increased their
attacks outside the valley of Srinagar, especially in mountainous areas of Jammu —
even, through tiny satellite groups, in New Delhi.
Pakistan’s policy in Kashmir is particularly complex, because it is the result of
more or less fluid power relations between civilian government, the army and the
ISI, and Islamic organizations. It must take into account on-the-spot developments,
including the position of parties opposed to the presence of India, which came
together in 1993 in an All-Party Hurriyat Conference (APHQ), a cross-party free-
dom group, il-assorted and without a charismatic leader. The APHC had to take a
stand against the Indian strategy, and finally to take account of opinion in the inter-
national community, especially in the United States. The events of 1998-99 showed
that American influence, strong as it might be, cannot always impose its will on
Pakistan.
The significance of Kargil: 1999

Islamist fighters from Pakistani Kashmir usually infiltrate Indian Kashmir in the
spring, when the snow melts from the mountain peaks along which the Line of
Control runs. The movements observed in May 1999 were another matter: this was
no infiltration but an occupation of territory which, while it is certainly uninhabited,
is strategic, since it dominates the route from Kargil to Ladakh and Siachen. The
action involved not only well-armed Islamist fighters but also Pakistani troops. The
Indian counterattack was belated but massive, a virtual war, with the army and
LIVING WITH INDIA ps9
aircraft joining the battle so that the Pakistani army could not gain a foothold in the
area.
What did Pakistan hope to gain from this? To alter the Line of Control de facto at
an essential strategic point, or — at the very least — to use the ensuing crisis to bring
the Kashmir question to international attention at last? To take advantage of the
screen of nuclear deterrence in order to intensify low-level conflict? India’s resolute
stance, New Delhi’s tactics of restraint — it chose to retake the Kargil heights with-
out crossing either the Line of Control or the border — and American pressure on
Nawaz Sharif caused Islamabad to abandon an operation that was in any case des-
tined to fail. Nonetheless, the ‘Kargil war’ was a shock for India, which — after the
constructive talks at Lahore — saw it as an act of treachery by Pakistan, especially
since hopes had been raised by renewed dialogue over the past few months.
In October 1999, a putsch by General Musharraf, the strategic architect of
Kargil, dealt another blow to relations between India and Pakistan and interrupted
the deals on the future of Kashmir that were being brokered behind the scenes. After
that India has tried to keep Pakistan in diplomatic isolation. It has deferred the
SAARC meeting, and obtained a Commonwealth condemnation of Pakistan’s mil-
itary regime. Above all, it has strengthened its cooperation with the USA against
terrorism, putting Pakistan in an awkward position. Obviously, General Musharraf
has to tread a narrow path: he needs the Islamic groups if he is to exert pressure on
India in Kashmir; these groups, however, jeopardize his country’s stability and cause
Washington to place Islamabad under surveillance. The military regime has called
for an unconditional resumption of talks with India. New Delhi has refused to
resume talks unless there is an end to Islamist infiltrations.
Peace, Diplomacy and Civil Society:

From Hope to Failure
Kargil has shown that there can be an endless succession of military operations and
diplomatic meetings, but ‘peace’ is nothing less than a prolonged cold war. There is
nothing new about that, for behind the story of conflict related above we must
examine a parallel history of dialogue between India and Pakistan — dialogue which
has never succeeded in establishing normal relations between the two neighbours.
This disappointing history, however, is very instructive in that it illustrates recent
trends which, unfortunately, lead us to temper the optimism engendered by periods
of comparative improvement.
Government diplomacy
After 1949, Nehru proposed a pact that the two countries would not go to war; this
suggestion was repeated on countless occasions. Pakistan’s answer was always the
same: such a pact would be viable only if the major disputes between the two coun-
tries were settled. General Yahya Khan told Indira Gandhi this yet again when she
suggested it to him in 1969. This fundamental disagreement has not precluded one-
off agreements. In 1950, a pact between Nehru and Liaquat Ali Khan put an end
to tensions affecting religious minorities in East Pakistan and eastern India. In 1958,
an agreement between Nehru and Noon set the eastern borders of the two coun-
tries. Two years later, the Indus Waters Treaty, mentioned above, settled a dispute
that was crucial to Pakistan. Even more progress could have been made. From 1946
onwards, Jinnah had envisaged a possible military alliance — even mutual protec-
tion — between India and Pakistan after Partition. This possibility was raised again
by Muhammad Ali Bogra in 1953, Malik Farooz Khan Noon in 1957, Ayub Khan
in 1959 (after China’s invasion of Tibet) — but always with one condition: that the
Kashmir question must be settled by mutual agreement.
On more than one occasion, optimism seemed to prevail. In 1953, Bogra and
Nehru met twice in two months. They seemed to be reaching an agreement on solv-
ing the problem of Kashmir bilaterally, by referendum. These hopes came to
nothing. India accused Pakistan of scuppering any agreement by joining the Western
alliance in 1954. Pakistan — not without some justification — accused India of taking
a harder line on Kashmir by imprisoning Sheikh Abdullah. Ten years later, between
December 1962 and May 1963, the two Foreign Ministers, Z A Bhutto and Swaran
Singh, met several times. India was thinking of making the Line of Control a rec-
ognized border, after a few adjustments. Ayub Khan was more inclined towards
internationalizing the valley of Srinagar for five or ten years. There was certainly no
agreement on the horizon, but the two parties showed a new flexibility. In May 1964
there was another hesitant move forward: India seemed willing to contemplate pos-
sible American or British mediation. Sheikh Abdullah had come out of prison in
April. In Pakistan, he put forward the idea that India and Pakistan should share sov-
ereignty in Kashmir, and announced that Ayub Khan and Nehru would meet on 26
May. Nehru’s illness — he died on 27 May ~ put an end to these conciliatory over-
tures. Were they to be taken seriously, or were they a mere smokescreen? After
1962, Ayub Khan rejected the old idea of a possible alliance with India against
China’s increasing hegemonic ambition: after the war between India and China,
Washington granted India military aid to the great displeasure of Pakistan, which
grew close to China before coming up against India in 1965 and 1971.
Zia ul-Haq was a master of this two-sided policy, blowing hot and cold by turns.
Even as he reinforced his military arsenal, taking advantage of the war in
Afghanistan and American generosity, Zia made a surprise visit to New Delhi in
1982 to show that his intentions were good. That same year, a joint Indo—Pakistani
commission was established. This, however, did not stop Pakistan from helping the
Sikh rebels of Khalistan in their attempt at secession in 1983. These up-and-down
relations, these contrasting attitudes, continued to be the norm. In 1985, India and
Pakistan became members of the new South Asia Association for Regional
Cooperation (SAARC), which seemed to promise a better future for the whole
region. Its charter ruled that strictly bilateral problems were not to be raised there.
This measure was totally unconvincing, and twelve years later Pakistan’s President
Leghari considered that the SAARC’s lack of progress was due precisely to the fact
that regional dynamics remained frustrated by disputes between his country and
India, without SAARC offering a forum for mediation. In 1987, the increased ten-
sion caused by Operation Brasstracks tempered the optimism aroused by the launch
of the SAARC. Zia ul-Haq’s ‘cricket diplomacy’ was purely cosmetic. ‘Ten years
later, nothing had changed. Now the young Benazir Bhutto was prime minister, and
at last Pakistan seemed to be taking steps towards democracy. In 1989 Rajiv Gandhi
went to Islamabad: the first visit to Pakistan by an Indian prime minister since 1960.
He and Benazir signed an agreement to the effect that the two countries would not
attack one another’s nuclear installations. A year later, after the 1990 crisis, the
threat of nuclear war again hung over the region.
There was no fundamental change in the 1990s; talks between Nawaz Sharif
and I K Gujral just managed to reinstate meetings between diplomats who, only too
often, could discuss only the technicalities of hypothetical negotiations. Always the
same question: where do we begin? With Kashmir, said Pakistan, since that is the
‘core issue’, and significant progress in this area will free up the whole mechanism of
bilateral relations. With everything else, said India, who thought it would be better
to start with less contentious problems: setting the border in Kutch at Sir Creek; eco-
nomic cooperation; even the Siachen glacier.
The assumption of power by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1998, and
nuclear tests by India — followed soon after by Pakistan — obviously cooled bilateral
relations and worried the international community, which was afraid that the old
conflict between India and Pakistan, exacerbated by the deterioration in Kashmu,
would lead to disaster. In this context, the visit to Lahore by Indian Prime Minister
A.B. Vajpayee, in February 1999 revived hopes considerably. ‘True optimists thought
that, after all, the Hindu nationalist party was perhaps the best bet for getting things
moving again, despite its anti-Muslim extremists. The Lahore Declaration, signed by
both Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif, called yet again for a resumption of dialogue and
for the peaceful resolution of disputes, while additional documents laid down the
_ principle of nuclear restraint on both sides. At that very moment, however, the
Pakistani military were preparing for their occupation of the Kargil heights.
Parallel diplomacy, civil society and economic interests

When diplomacy blows hot and cold, it is useful to have parallel channels that can
maintain contact between the two countries. In the 1990s, unofficial meetings pro-
liferated; they took two distinct but partly complementary forms. Parallel
diplomacy — so-called ‘second-tract diplomacy’ — was built around people with close
ties to those in power, especially former senior diplomats and former (and future)
ministers. Their role was not so much to hold discreet negotiations as to think
together. Their governments, which were kept fully informed, were not directly
involved but could, for that very reason, put out feelers. The most famous network,
the Neemrana Initiative, got down to work in 1991. Today it is in decline, but the
continuing role of Niaz Naik, a crucial Pakistani prime mover, shows how important
it is to maintain contact through experienced operators.
net-
Further from the corridors of power, and often highly critical of them, are
NGO
works more deeply entrenched in civil society: academics and journalists,
but the most high-
workers, antinuclear activists. There are several such groups,
puts
profile is the Pakistan-India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy, which
out feelers in both countries and has organized annual public meetings in both
Pakistan and India since 1995. There are also meetings of special-interest groups:
parliamentarians or feminist groups, for example. In addition there are many people
of good will of various persuasions, some more radical or anti-establishment than
others. Nevertheless, they all have the same essential role, despite some sceptical
murmurings that initiatives like this are simply preaching to the converted. They help
to lessen nationalist tensions and reduce mutual demonization. They bear witness —
as do certain articles in the Pakistani press (more in the Anglophone press than in the
vernacular, it is true) — to the necessity of new thinking and having an eye to the
future. The instigation of ‘confidence-building measures’, so dear to American the-
oreticians of conflict resolution,”* is most evident at government level, but the state
must also allow civil society to play its part.
Love of peace and idealism are not the only factors. Economic interests also have
a legitimate role. But in this domain, businesses and chambers of commerce rely
heavily on fluctuations in the political climate and the contrasting analyses at the heart
of the global economy. The logic of liberalization and the ridiculous weakness of
bilateral trade — which, restricted by the two states, enriches only smugglers and
third countries — mean that some industrialists in Pakistan want better economic rela-
tions with India, while others fear Indian competition. At the same time, political,
military or Islamist overstatements denounce those who give economic cooperation
priority over the Kashmir question. Pakistan has certainly made some concessions
under the auspices of the South Asia Preferential Trade Association, the commercial
arm of the SAARC, but the proposed objective of a free exchange zone (SAFTA)
including Pakistan seems highly improbable at the moment. As a member of the
WTO, Pakistan should give its Indian neighbour ‘most favoured nation’ status: for the
time being it refuses to do so. India, for its part, does not extend to Pakistan the
‘Gujral doctrine’ which advocates advantageous relations with its neighbours —
Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, for example — without expecting anything in exchange.
The real signs will be seen on other fronts — geopolitics of energy, for example —
crucial to Indian supplies, and for Pakistan in terms of royalties. The construction of
a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to India via Pakistan would be highly significant.
A Question of Priorities
At a time when India is playing the game of economic reform, strengthening its
diplomatic powers, publicizing its ambitions for the new century, Pakistan remains a
prisoner of a history which prevents it from realizing its great potential. The ques-
tion is easy to ask and difficult to answer: when will the leaders of Pakistan feel ready
to rethink their regional policy and restore calm to their borders — above all in
Kashmir — in order to give priority to domestic reform, without compromising the
security that is every state’s right? India is ready to recognize the security line as a de
jure border, and seems to be committed to vague negotiations with the leaders of the
Hurriyat Conference; nevertheless, its military apparatus is still very strong and
New Delhi rejects the proposal of the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly to grant back
the maximum autonomy for Jammu and Kashmir envisaged before 1953. Pakistan,
in turn, refuses any attempt to make the de facto sharing-out of Kashmir official, and
expects to be involved in any agreement between New Delhi and the people of
Kashmir. The options in Kashmir are more precarious than ever. Islamabad con-
tinues to favour the activist line of slowly ‘bleeding’ India on its northern front, at the
risk of increasing extreme Islamist militancy in Pakistan itself. The line of continued
dialogue with New Delhi, bringing in Kashmiri delegates once relative calm is
restored to Kashmir, seems, however, to be the most promising route. But if progress
is to be made in this direction, perhaps we need a statesman capable of turning the
page on fifty years of tension, frustration and suspicion.
For the moment, Pakistan is still mired in the trauma of a Partition which the
country itself fervently desired. It has to live with India, and it must take on a posi-
tive — not merely reactive — identity, and accept the fact that its neighbour will have
a more important role in the world of tomorrow. Although both countries have
acquired nuclear weapons, any impression of symmetry between them is purely illu-
sory. Pakistan may rightly reject the idea of an aggressive or surreptitiously
hegemonic India. But both sides have to recognize the reality principle which
acknowledges their unequal weight and the importance of peaceful coexistence, and
which gives Pakistan and India the same rights and the same duties, in the interests —
above all — of their people. True optimists might see something better than mere
coexistence in the future: a fully-fledged normalization of bilateral relations. At the
beginning of the twenty-first century, this still seems a long way away.
6
ISLAM AND FOREIGN POLICY
Central Asia and the Arab—Persian World
Pakistan is first and foremost an ideological concept: the Muslim state on the Indian
subcontinent. It therefore has a duty to defend and represent all Muslims in the
region, and its territorial limits are, when all is said and done, immaterial. The
choice of Urdu as the national language is an excellent illustration of this ideologi-
cal vision of identity: Urdu was the language spoken by Indian Muslims, but not by
any of the ethnic groups which settled in present-day Pakistan (while 60 per cent of
the population speak Punjabi). Naturally, Pakistan could have shaken off the condi-
tions under which it came into existence, and become a ‘banal’ nation-state; but the
conflict with India, and General Zia ul-Haq’s choice when he took power in 1977,
finally placed Muslim identity at the very heart of the concept of Pakistan, just as
Maududi had wished.
Now this choice has important implications for foreign policy: it leads Pakistan not
only to express its conflict with India in terms of jihad, but also to champion other
jihads, like the one against the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan. It adds a perma-
nent transnational dimension to domestic policy. The great religious parties and
movements in Pakistan situate themselves explicitly within a transnational perspec-
tive: they were all founded before Partition in 1947 (Ahl-i Hadith, Jamiyyat-ul
Ulama, Jamaat-i Islami, Tablighi Jamaat). Ethnic continuity also strengthens the link
between Islamic solidarity and transnationalism: Pashtun or Pashtun ulemas, on
either side of the Afghan border, are mainly — but not entirely — trained by the same
religious organization, the Deobandi school, the most recent example being the
Taliban.
‘This transnationalism is reinforced by sizeable waves of emigration — mostly to
Britain, but also to the Persian Gulf: many Pakistanis are militant members of
Islamic associations which identify closely with the wmma, the Muslim community as
a whole, and not only with the nation of Pakistan. ‘The Rushdie affair, instigated in
January 1989 by Pakistanis in Bradford, is a good illustration of the transnational
dimension of emigration from Pakistan.
The spontaneous emigration to the Gulf States, moreover, was accompanied by
‘service benefits’ from the government of Pakistan, especially in the military sphere
(pilots, technical workers, even entire corps such as the one commanded by General
ISLAM AND FOREIGN POLICY 135
Zia himself in Jordan in the early 1970s). Such activity, however, declined after
1990, because the Gulf States trained their own experts, and began to distrust the
Pakistanis in their countries, suspecting them of being sympathetic towards Saddam
Hussein during the Gulf War (and also because the Americans took over direct pro-
tection of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia). Finally, Pakistan played a key role in the
establishment of the World Islamic Conference in 1969 (the second meeting took
place in Lahore in 1974).
Pakistan’s choice of identity prompts it to become involved with a regional
Islamic body that is spread over a much wider area than the national space it was
granted at Partition. But this expansionism is reinforced by an overriding strategic
constraint: Pakistan is much weaker than India, and needs strategic depth against
its powerful neighbour, whose tanks are less than a hundred kilometres from
its cultural capital, Lahore. From the time of its birth as a nation, Pakistan’s
skill has lain in gaining two types of support: an Islamic solidarity — which calls
simultaneously on conservative Arab states like Saudi Arabia and on more militant
Muslim public opinion — and aset of alliances with the West, especially with the
USA. The Afghan war (1979-89) was the acme of this policy; while during the
next decade the Taliban’s support for Osama bin Laden, marked the inherent
contradiction between the two sets of alliances which have allowed Pakistan,
despite its economic weakness, to hold its own against India and to play amajor
role in the region’s politics.
The Weight of History

Pakistan’s reaching out towards the Middle East and Central Asia can be explained
in terms of the country’s strategic constraints and self-image, but it also has more dis-
tant roots which may be seen less as primary causes than as a symbolic ensemble
which allows us to locate the Pakistan of today in a wider historical context.
The first element here was the Ghaznevid (around ap 1000) and Ghorid (eleventh
century) empires,! both centring on Afghanistan, which were the determining factors
in the Islamization of North India. But the most important historical factor was the
Mughal Empire, founded by Babur after the seizure of Delhi in 1527. The sixteenth
century gave rise to a historical configuration that would be obscured by the arrival
of the two great Western empires, British and Russian-Soviet. In 1501 Iran suffered
a schism brought about by a Turkish-speaking dynasty, the Safavids; while Central
Asia as we know it today fell under the yoke of another Turkish dynasty, the Uzbek
Shaybanids, who drove a petty monarch (also Turkish-speaking), Babur, from his fief-
dom in Ferghana. He took refuge in Kabul, which he used as a base for conquering
North India and founding the Mughal Empire. All these empires were under ‘Turkish
hegemony, and their court and legislative language was Persian. The Mughal and
Uzbek empires were Sunnite, and both expressed their rivalry with Iran in terms of
the struggle against the Shi’a ‘heresy’. Present-day Afghanistan is therefore a bat-
tlefield for three empires: a configuration that recurred after the collapse of the
USSR and the emergence of an independent Uzbekistan. After its sixteenth-century
the Middle
schism, Iran cut off direct links between Central and South Asia and
East. A Persian-speaking Sunni religious culture then developed in these three areas,
especially around the great madrasahs of North India, which enjoyed a revival in the
second half of the nineteenth century as a reaction against English political domi-
nation. This Sunni militancy grew mainly as a reaction against the possibility of
syncretism between Islam and Hinduism, illustrated by the emergence of the Sikh
movement but also by the policies of Babur’s grandson, Akbar. The “Mughal myth’
was brought back into the picture mainly by General Zia, during the Afghan war
and when the new Central Asian republics gained their independence, at the very
moment when the Iranian revolution (1979) was emphasizing more strongly than
ever the profoundly Shi’a nature of Islam in Iran.
Present-day Pakistan’s supranational dimension can also be situated within a
long tradition of Muslim militancy in the Indian subcontinent, irrespective of the
political regime. From the early nineteenth century onwards the subcontinent’s
religious men, on their return from prolonged visits to Mecca, revived this doctri-
naire, militant, fundamentalist and rigorously Sunni Islam, which would become
the hallmark of all Islamic resurgence in the region right up to our own time.
They would be dubbed ‘Wahhabi’ both by British political agents and by Russian
rulers of Central Asia, even though at that time Mecca was not controlled by
Saudi Wahhabi.
None of these Islamic militants is struggling for the creation of a separate Muslim
state; they all reiterate the doctrine of the return of Islam’s political hegemony, but
they accept their Mughal legacy; under the Mughal Empire the Muslims were in the
minority, and lived in a predominantly ‘infidel’ environment: the idea of the “Land
of the Pure, Pakistan, was not on the agenda. They often accepted the reality of
British domination, believing that re-Islamization must come before taking power.
They defended their status of mallat, in the sense of a religious community, within an
empire which they did not question. They linked this defence to that of the entire
Muslim world community, the wmma.
So it came about that at the very moment when the Muslim countries of the
Middle East left the Ottoman Empire to form nation-states, thanks to the First
World War (Arab nationalism and Turkish Kemalism), it was the Indian Muslims
who established a movement in support of the Ottoman caliph, who was threatened
by Ataturk after 1920 (and done away with for ever in 1924): the Caliphate
Movement.” Tens of thousands of Muslims decided to leave India, now a land of
infidels, for Afghanistan, the Muslim world’s last independent stronghold. It was also
on the subcontinent that militant transnational movements emerged: the ‘Tablighi
Jamaat (1927), a purely religious movement which works for the return of an Islam
separated from all specific cultural and national traditions; and the Jamaat-i Islami
(1941), which promotes the establishment of an Islamic state — again, irrespective of
nationality or specific territory. I should also mention the establishment of the great
Deobandi madrasah near Delhi (1867), the first of an entire network of very active
madrasahs and of a political party, the Jamiyyat-ul Ulama-i Hind, which became
Jamiyyat-ul Ulama-i Islam after Partition.’
Pakistan as an Islamic State

We know that it was not militant Islamic movements that led to the creation of
Pakistan. The country’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, thought of Pakistan in
terms of a nation based on a ‘cultural community’ rather than in terms of an
‘Islamic state’. For the Muslim League, being a Muslim was not only a matter of
religious practices; it was a culture, a way of life — ‘Muslimness’ was as important
as ethnic origin (we find this stance again in the debate over the notion of the
Bosnian Muslim). Jinnah made himself very clear: ‘Hinduism and Islam are not
religions in the strict sense of the word, but rather two different and distinct social
categories.”
The Muslim League, however, could not openly promote a lay vision of
‘Islamness’, because that would have meant yielding all strictly religious legitimacy
to a party like the Jamaat, but also, no doubt, opening a Pandora’s box: if ‘Islamness’
was merely an identity asserted against Hinduism, then once the Muslims were
all together on the same territory, their basic identity would no longer be an Islam
without an adversary but would fall into an ethnic or linguistic category (Pashtuns
or Pashtuns; Baluchis, Sindis, etc.). Hence the promotion of a secular Pakistani
nationalism proved impossible. There was no debate in Pakistan on the subject of
‘Tslamization against secularism’, because those who were against deliberate
Islamization were themselves obliged to go back to the spirit of Islam, as Ayub Khan’s
period in office (1958-69) shows: then it was the state which did its best to achieve
an open-minded, modern Islam. The 1962 Constitution was the least Islamic
Pakistan had seen, but the clause stipulating that there should be no contradiction
between state laws and Islam was kept, even if the question was passed to a Council
on Islamic Ideology controlled by the president. All the state could do was make
an effort to control — even neutralize — Islamization; it could not counter it with a
positive nationalist, unique, secular ideology of its own.
Little by little, the Islamic parties ‘nationalized’ themselves — that is to say,
interpreted this concept of Pakistan in their own terms, but gave it a supranational
dimension. Under pressure from them, the Pakistan government Islamized the
country’s institutions. It was the ‘secular’ Ali Bhutto who reinstated, in the 1973
Constitution, the concept of Pakistan as a Muslim nation; it was he who declared
that the Ahmadi were non-Islamic (something the religious leaders had been
requesting for a long time), closed the casinos, prohibited alcohol, and appointed
General Zia ul-Haq as chief of army staff. When General Zia embarked on a
policy of Islamization after his coup d’état in 1977, his opponents could criticize him
only for imposing an excessively narrow vision of Islam; they could not challenge
the fundamental principle. He promoted Urdu — this time to the detriment of
English. He introduced into Parliament the Shari’ah Bill, which stipulated that any
court could pass judgement preclsely according to sharia law, taking no notice of
state legislation.
There were two consequences of this Islamization: first, it took no account of
ethnic origin, since everyone was a Muslim. But it also went beyond national sover-
eignty, since Islam transcends the logic of the state, and any non-Pakistani Muslim
should be able to join such a community. General Zia’s Pakistan might have had pro-
Western leanings, but it also fostered a pan-Islamic activism which led it to support
the Afghan mujaheddin, and also to allow into the country Islamic militants from all
over the Middle East: extreme radicals who had been banished from their own
countries.
This transnational dimension of Pakistan’s identity is reinforced by the fact that
Pakistan’s borders are still somewhat indeterminate. For one thing, they do not cor-
respond to any ethnic border; for another, along more than half their length they
do not correspond to internationally recognized borders: the northern border
with India is just a cease-fire line, and the ‘Durand Line’ which separates Pakistan
from Afghanistan has never been recognized as an international border by any
Afghan government. In addition, the presence along this border of ‘tribal areas’
where tribal custom overrides the law of Pakistan accentuates the vague nature of
these territories. After 1997, Nawaz Sharif’s government attempted to impose
federal law over tribal custom, only to be confronted by opposition from tribal
ulemas, who — on the basis that the Constitution of Pakistan provided for the insti-
tution of sharia law — took it on themselves to replace tribal custom with sharia
law — still, of course, rejecting a federal law that was not ‘shariarized’ enough for
their taste. Thus the invocation of the sharia confirmed the de facto deterritorial-
ization of the concept of an Islamic state by depriving state authority of its
legislative power, but also by reviving a very traditional ethos of territorial frag-
mentation: tribalism.
The influx of millions of Afghan refugees, the growth of smuggling on the border,
extensive use of the Pakistani rupee in Afghan territory, Pakistan’s open support of
the Afghan Taliban — all this helped to make the border between Pakistan and
Afghanistan even more vague, and led to the establishment of a new open space
where the prevailing ethos is sometimes Pashtun custom, sometimes the sharia. The
simple fact that no one in this essentially Pashtun space demands the creation of an
independent Pashtunistan, or indeed union with Afghanistan, shows — more clearly
than any affirmation of Pakistan’s authority — that even the idea of the nation-state
has given way to tribal and Islamic entities, which are more susceptible to Islamic
revivalism, transformation of the tribal system (power passed from the tribal aris-
tocracy of the khan and the malik to ulemas from modest, but still tribal,
backgrounds), and. . . the development of the drugs trade.
Two historical events were to allow Pakistan to develop a policy of regional power
based above all on Islamic supranationalism: the Afghan war and the fall of the
USSR.
The Afghan War

After the Soviet invasion in December 1979, Pakistan adopted a coherent but dan-
gerous policy based on both strategic and ideological considerations. In 1980
General Zia took the risk of supporting the Afghan resistance, despite warnings from
Western countries (especially France). He soon received support from the Americans
and the Saudis. General Zia’s idea was to become an indispensable ally in Reagan’s
strategy of rolling-back the communists, and to use this alliance to achieve his own
aims: virtually no punishment for developing an atomic bomb; support in a conflict
with India; the establishment — over the long term — of a friendly regime — even a
quasi-protectorate — in Afghanistan; and finally, an opening in Soviet Central Asia
(apparently General Zia always believed that the USSR would collapse — or, in any
case, that it would withdraw from Central Asia).° During the Afghan war, a whole
body of militant Islamic literature in Russian was printed in Peshawar and sent
secretly into Central Asia. So the war allowed Pakistan (and its military regime) once
more to mobilize Islam, the only real foundation of its national legitimacy, to force
its public opinion to accept this authoritarian policy. It was mainly English-speaking
intellectuals who had reservations about it.®
In fact, the dispute between Afghanistan and Pakistan went back to the very
establishment of Pakistan. Kabul was the only capital city not to vote for Pakistan’s
admission to the UN in 1947, on the pretext that the question of ‘Pashtunistan’ had
not been settled: Kabul made no official claim to the North-West Frontier Province,
with its Pashtun population — the main ethnic group in Afghanistan — but it
demanded a referendum and negotiations on the drawing of the border. In 1955,
when Afghanistan engineered an impressive rapprochement with the USSR (and India),
while Pakistan joined the American camp, relations became strained and the two
nations were on the brink of war in 1963, when Prince Daud (a ‘Pashtunist’) was
King Zahir’s prime minister in Afghanistan. When Daud fell from office in 1964, the
situation became calmer; but when a coup d’état restored him to power in 1973,
Pakistan gave refuge to Afghan Islamists who turned to armed opposition: trained by
the Pakistani military, flanked by the Jamaat-i Islami party, they launched an unsuc-
cessful uprising in 1975 and withdrew to Peshawar, where they lingered until the
‘Soviet invasion in 1979 gave them another opportunity.
From this time on, there were two groups of Islamic opponents to the Kabul gov-
ernment in two different networks, both centred on Pakistan. The oldest was made
up of traditional ulemas who, after Partition in 1947, refused to finish their studies
in India, as had been the custom in Afghanistan up to that time (oddly enough, there
had never been top-flight religious instruction networks in Afghanistan). They pre-
ferred madrasahs in Pakistan which had themselves sprung from the great Indian
religious schools (the Deobandi, but also the Ahl-i Hadith) and which, for the same
reasons (refusal to be part of an ‘infidel’ state), were independent of their parent
schools in India. The whole Pashtun area experienced a particularly vigorous growth
in
in the number of madrasahs, most affiliated to the Deobandi school, which taught
the various regional languages (Urdu, Pashto and Persian). The mullahs who trained
at these schools went back to Afghanistan and opened branches of the parent school
in Pakistan, sending their best students there. So a border network of madrasahs was
built up — mainly, but not exclusively, Pashtun. The teaching was fundamentalist, but
open to the traditional Muslim culture of the Indian subcontinent in its ‘reformed’
Shah Wali-ullah version.’
ent,
These networks, which were completely outside the control of any governm
the
Afghan or Pakistani, grew stronger during the Soviet occupation, because
longer
Afghan madrasahs — either destroyed or transformed into military bases — no
provided high-level education. A sort of part-time training became the norm: the
young faleb fought for a while, then went into a madrasah in Pakistan for training (and
rest) before returning to the front. During the war, these networks belonged to con-
servative religious Afghan resistance parties: the Younous Khales tendency of the
Hizb-i Islami, and above all Nabi Mohammedi’s Harkat-i Inqilab Islami. Although
they were recognized by the Pakistani authorities, Pakistan was not generous with
military aid. On the other hand, they were heavily subsidized by the Gulf States,
especially Saudi Arabia. This Saudi largesse also took the form of training grants,
gradually introducing a much more ‘Wahhabi’ influence which was quite hostile
towards local religious traditions, both learned and popular. This was the setting for
the development of the movement which became known as the Taliban.
The second network covered Islamist movements, which recruited — in
Afghanistan as elsewhere — among educated youth and the few professors of theol-
ogy trained in Egypt under the influence of the Muslim Brothers.® These militants —
who, unlike the traditionalist ulemas, were working for a real political revolution —
found two sponsors in Pakistan: the Islamist Jamaat-i Islami Party, led by Maududi
until his death in 1979; and the Pakistani army service known since the Afghan war
as the ISI (Inter Services Intelligence). This double sponsorship (Islamist networks
and secret services) would be a permanent feature of Pakistan’s regional policy on all
Islamic movements. But Pakistan was clever enough to allow most of the Afghan
resistance movements to open offices on its territory, giving them monopoly control
of refugees by allowing them to register only on condition that they belonged to a
recognized organization [fanzim].
Pakistan’s clever move was to channel international (mainly American) aid in the
direction of parties it had selected itself, while giving the impression that it was sup-
porting the entire Afghan resistance movement. The chosen party was Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar’s Hizb-i Islami. As so often, there was a double connection: ethnic as well
as ideological. ‘The Hizb-i Islami— like most senior members of the Jamaat (includ-
ing Qazi Hussain Ahmad, its emir after 1987) and the ISI — was Pashtun. It also
shared the same political ideology.
Pakistan also took advantage of the mobilization of international Islamic net-
works, particularly those under the influence of the Muslim Brothers. An office set
up in Peshawar, the Mektal-ul Khadamat — run by Abdallah Azzam, a Palestinian
Muslim Brother — was given money collected by a Saudi millionaire, Osama bin
Laden. Volunteers from the Arab world came in their thousands, mainly members
of opposition movements (Gamaat and Egyptian Islamic Jihad, whose spiritual
leader was Sheikh Omar Abdurrahman; militants who went on to form the FIS,
then the Algerian GIA, etc.). Both Saudi Arabia and the USA encouraged these
‘Islamic brigades’. ‘Thus Pakistan became the training and dispersal platform for all
these volunteers, who either returned to their countries afterwards or stayed in
Afghanistan. The Afghan war plugged Pakistan into Middle Eastern Islamic net-
works — especially Arab ones, under the influence of the Muslim Brothers — and
thereby reinforced its international dimension.
Pakistan’s Islamic activism was not limited to Afghanistan: taking advantage of the
opening of the road between Gilgit and Kashgar, in Chinese Xinkiang, thousands of
Uigurs, on the pretext of a pilgrimage to Mecca, steamed into Jamaat guest-houses

in Lahore and Karachi.
The withdrawal of Soviet troops in February 1988 marked the victory of
Pakistan’s grand strategy: to make the West endorse its vanguard role in Central
Asia’s Islamic movements. Needless to say, when the Saudis and the Americans
encouraged a jihad against the Soviet invader they were also mindful of the need to
contain Iran’s Islamic revolution. The idea was to turn against the USSR and Iran
the wave of Islamic radicalism that had been shaking the Muslim world since the end
of the 1970s — party by accentuating the anticommunist aspect of the movement by
popularizing the Afghan jihad; partly by playing on Sunni fundamentalism against
Iranian Shiism.
This plan should have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. But the with-
drawal of the Soviet army two years later, followed by the collapse of the USSR
(seriously weakened by the war in Afghanistan), opened new perspectives for
Pakistan in the direction of ex-Soviet Central Asia, but also brought back into the
jihad market thousands of Islamic volunteers who, free of their communist enemy,
found a new adversary in the West — particularly the Americans after the Gulf War.
Dreams of Central Asia
After the collapse of the USSR, Pakistan had every intention of gathering the fruits
of its policy. The aim was simple, but very ambitious: to acquire a strategic depth
against India by installing a pro-Pakistan — that is to say, as far as Islamabad was con-
cerned, fundamentalist and Pashtun — regime in Kabul, then to make every effort to
establish, through Afghanistan, a corridor into ex-Soviet Central Asia which —
among other things — could be used to secure gas supplies from Turkmenistan.
Islamabad did not expect that the governments formed immediately after inde-
pendence would last, and thought that they would quickly be replaced by more
‘Muslim’ regimes. Unlike Iran, which was eager to see a continued Russian presence
in Central Asia to counter American influence, the Pakistanis played the Islamic card
from the outset, giving indirect support to doctrinaire movements, often on their own
territory. Pakistan’s strength — its economy was always its weak point — was to solicit
foreign support and act by proxy, thus saving on men and money. It was the USA
and the Saudis who financed most of the Afghan mujaheddin war effort, but it was
the ISI which distributed the weapons and the money, giving preference to their
favourites.
The Gulf War (1990-1), however, was a turning point: the radical Islamic move-
ments became increasingly anti-West (particularly anti-American). Under pressure
from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan finally abandoned Hizb-i Islami, which had failed in its
attempt to retake Kabul from Massoud between 1992 and 1994 — not without
destroying the town with bombing raids. So Pakistan found the Taliban card (1994):
this change also showed how much Islamic fundamentalism had developed in
Pakistan, where a ‘modern’ Islamist party like Jamaat-i Islami lost out to funda-
the
mentalist and traditionalist movements likeJamiyyat-ul Ulama Islam, focused on
madrasah networks which included the Afghan Taliban.°
During the 1990s, therefore, Pakistan pursued a very aggressive regional policy.
First there was overt public support for the Taliban: after October 1994 General
Babar, Pakistan’s Interior Minister, took the American ambassador on a tour of the
Taliban zones in the west of Afghanistan without even informing the legal Afghan
government of the day (whose President was Borhanuddin Rabbani). The Pakistan
army provided materiel and logistic help. Madrasahs in Pakistan recruited volunteers,
who had no difficulty whatsoever crossing the border. ISI officers were on Afghan
territory. Some were captured or killed by Commander Massoud’s men. Relations
between Massoud and Pakistan had always been cool, but they deteriorated sharply
when the Taliban — on the advice of a Pakistani officer, Colonel Imad, consul in the
town of Herat — took this small but strategic town in western Afghanistan which was
held by Ismail Khan, an ally of Massoud (September 1995). The Pakistani Embassy
in Kabul was pillaged by Massoud’s partisans. A year later, in September 1996, the
Taliban took Kabul, and Massoud had to take refuge in his mountain fortress in the
northwest. Pakistan recognized the Taliban regime, but only Saudi Arabia and the
Arab Emirates followed suit. During the ensuing four years the Pakistanis made
every effort to help the Taliban win a decisive victory in Afghanistan. In August 1998
they took the north (Mazar-i Sharif) and the centre (Bamyan), but never managed to
bring down Massoud, whose guns were within easy reach of the capital.
This impasse continued in 2000, when the first cracks appeared in the ‘Taliban’s
ranks. They were unable to maintain in action an army which was composed mainly
of tribal recruits, and was therefore more dependent than ever on volunteers from
Pakistan. The connection with Pakistan was simultaneously ideological (conservative
Sunni fundamentalism), strategic (a protectorate in Afghanistan) and ethnic (the
principal madrasahs for recruiting volunteers were in Pakistan-controlled zones — like
the one at Akora Khattak, run by the Pakistani senator Sami ul-Haq, a member of
Jamiyyat-ul Ulama-i Islam). Ismail Khan’s spectacular escape from prison in
Kandahar in April 2000, and the fact that he reached Iran, also illustrate an ethnic
polarization and the increasing involvement of Iran, but in addition a decline in the
Taliban’s power. In fact, pan-Islamic ideology was not an adequate blanket for
increasingly ethnic alliances.
Pakistan’s Afghan policy was absolutely in line with its policy on Kashmir: first
and foremost the use of international militias composed of Islamic volunteers; direct
support for the mujaheddin; the same religious networks to train volunteers (who
pass through training camps in Afghanistan); the same implacable denial that they
are interfering, These are often the very organizations that are found in Kashmir
helping the Taliban, such as Harkat ul-Ansar. So it was indeed a policy of aggression
on all sides that Pakistan pursued.
In ex-Soviet Central Asia, Islamabad uses the same links as it uses in Afghanistan,
but it keeps more in the background. The Pakistan government plays a very indirect
role. In the early 1990s the networks involved were less political, but they still came
from Pakistan: hundreds of members of ‘Tablighi Jamaat, mainly from Lahore and
Karachi, visited the mosques which were thriving everywhere. After 1993 they were
expelled from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, but Pakistan welcomed hundreds of Uzbek
and ‘Tajik militants fleeing repression. At the end of 1992, tens of thousands of Tajik
refugees and fighters fled to Afghanistan, where they settled in three areas: Mazar-
i Sharif (held by the Uzbek General Dustom), Taloqan (held by Massoud) and
Kunduz (held by fundamentalists close to Pakistani circles, who joined the Taliban
in 1996). The Pakistani Embassy in Dushanbe was closed for a while by the new
Tajik government, which accused it of colluding with Islamists (the Iranian Embassy
remained open). The Tajik opposition movement, led by Mullah Nouri, was regu-
larly invited to important meetings of Islamist movements in Lahore.
A little later, after the Taliban’s arrival on the Uzbek border (1998), it was the
Uzbek Islamic opposition (‘the Islamic Freedom Party’ led by Taher Yoldashev and
Joma Namangani) that was sponsored and trained by religious networks based in
Pakistan.
Pakistani activism, however, soon reached its limits. First, ethnic and religious
divides predominated everywhere over militant pan-Islamic solidarity. In non-
Pashtun zones, the Taliban were seen as an occupying force. Islamists who were
Tajik in terms of national identity and ethnic solidarity preferred Massoud to the
Taliban, who took Kabul in 1996. More seriously, they began negotiations with the
government in Dushanbe — through Russian and Iranian intermediaries under UN
control — which led to an agreement on shared government, signed in June 1997.
In October the Taliban hijacked a plane taking Mullah Nouri from Tehran to
Dushanbe, and tried to force Mullah Nouri to renege on this agreement, to set up
a regime in their zone, and to resume hostilities against all the impious govern-
ments of Central Asia. He refused, and they had to release him. So a Tajik bloc
(Tajik Islamic Opposition; Massoud; the government in Dushanbe, led by
Rahmanov) was established in opposition to both the Pashtun bloc (the Taliban,
supported by Pakistan) and Uzbek hegemony (symbolized by the Republic of
Uzbekistan). Thus the logic of ethnicity and nationality prevailed over Islamic
solidarity.
Islamabad, however, had underestimated the importance of nationalism in
Central Asia, and the new regimes’ reservations about anything supranational.'?
Muslim activism in Pakistan bred a climate of suspicion that was exacerbated by the
increasingly authoritarian nature of the existing regimes and their sense of a deep-
ening Islamic radicalization, even if this was magnified to some extent by the rigours
of the situation.
In 1998 there was a mini-crisis between Pakistan and Uzbekistan. After several
officials had been murdered in the Ferghana valley (traditionally the cradle of
Islamic fundamentalism), Tashkent, in a ministerial declaration by the Uzbek
Foreign Minister in February 1998, violently denounced Pakistan’s role in the
training of radical Islamic Uzbeks around Lahore (naming the madrasahs where
the militants were). An attempt in February 1999 to assassinate President
Karimov — blamed on Islamists — led to repression against anything or anyone
a
that might seem to be connected with Islamic militancy. In August 1999,
column of Uzbek Islamic militants, based in Tajikistan, crossed the southern
part of Kirghizistan, probably with the intention of attacking Ferghana. ‘They
took
took a group of Japanese geologists hostage. Negotiations on their freedom
place in . . . Islamabad, emphasizing the close relations between Uzbek religious
militants and religious circles in Pakistan. There was a climate of distrust between
Pakistan and the Central Asian states. In May 2000 the Russians, who were stag-
ing a strong comeback in Central Asia, threatened to bomb training camps on
Taliban-controlled Afghan territory, on the pretext that there were Chechen
fighters there: heated discussions with Pakistan followed. Commander Khattab,
an Arab Islamic militant who fought with the Chechens in the second Chechen
wars (1999), had trained in Afghanistan with Osama bin Laden at the end of the
Afghan war: these very real connections contributed to the idea that an ‘Islamic
International’ was being organized from Afghan territory.
The only Central Asian state with which Pakistan enjoyed good relations was gas-
rich Turkmenistan. With no ideological overtones whatsoever, these two countries
wanted to build a pipeline linking the Daulatabad gas fields in Turkmenistan to
Pakistan via the west of Afghanistan, with an ultimate eye on the Indian market.
Unocal, an American company, made some preliminary moves but pulled out in
August 1998, worried about the growing tension between India and Pakistan, the
USA's media campaign against the Taliban’s misogynous policies, and the fact that
there was no prospect ofa political solution in Afghanistan.
Relations with Iran also deteriorated markedly. The 1990s saw an unprece-
dented rise in conflicts and massacres between Shi’a and Sunni extremists in
Pakistan. This intercommunal hatred spread to Afghanistan — the Taliban mas-
sacred Shi’a. More serious still was the fact that after Mazar-i Sharif was taken,
in August 1998, radical Sunni (probably members of Pakistan’s Sunni Sipah-i
Sahaba Pakistan) killed the Iranian Embassy staff. Iran, which had been hoping
to collaborate with Pakistan on the Afghan crisis, got nothing for its trouble:
Tehran accepted on principle that there should be a pro-Pakistan Pashtun regime
in Kabul, but wanted the Shi’a minority (the Hazaras) to have an important
place in, and relative autonomy under, a coalition government. The fall of
Hazarajat in August 1998 dashed these hopes. Afghanistan was not an overriding
priority for Iran, but Tehran did hope for stability on its eastern flank so that it
could concentrate on the Gulf, the Caspian Sea and the Middle East. Tehran
therefore felt obliged to take an aggressive stance, but had to abandon any idea
of a financially and economically costly military operation; thus Iran cooperated
with Russia in a massive rearming of Commander Massoud, the last obstacle to
total Taliban hegemony.
For the first time since the nineteenth century, Iran considered that Afghanistan
consitituted a real threat — especially Sunni fundamentalist movements directly sup-
ported by Islamabad. Quite apart from the Afghan question, the fact that Pakistan
is now a nuclear power continues to worry Iran, despite its praise for this first
‘Islamic bomb’. In fact, Iran has always been close to India, despite its fagade of sol-
idarity with Pakistan. Finally, the deteriorating situation on the shared border
between Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan has affected Iran badly: well-armed
Baluchis smuggling drugs to the West, with the barely disguised collusion of
Pakistan, are all too eager to engage in pitched battles against the Iranian forces of
law and order. There is no trust left between Iran and Pakistan.
So Pakistan’s extremely aggressive, ideological policy isolated it from all its
neighbours. Nonetheless, before September 11 Pakistan did not come under the
same Western pressure for its role in Afghanistan as it suffered for its intervention in
Kashmir. The Americans, in particular, held back. They made no bones about
putting pressure on Pakistan to withdraw its Islamic volunteers from Kashmir,
because there it was a matter of strategic stakes. The USA wanted closer relations
with India which, in Washington’s view, should be used as a counterweight against
a China that looks more menacing every day. At that stage Pakistan, which is close
to China, had lost all strategic interest, and was seen as a troublemaker rather than
an ally. But the Americans, who supported the Taliban until 1997, did not then have
the same strategic interests in Afghanistan.
In fact, Washington’s only — albeit overwhelming — problem was the presence in
the Taliban camp of Islamic ‘terrorists’ like Osama bin Laden, but this was a polic-
ing problem, not a strategic one. Hitherto, the Americans thought they could get rid
of Bin Laden by putting pressure on the Taliban. Washington wanted to separate the
Bin Laden question from the situation within Afghanistan, and prior to September
11 refused to support Massoud against the Taliban as a means of either taming or
defeating them. Washington’s bet was that once the Taliban had won, they would
have become intermediaries — difficult ones, no doubt, but responsible.
The situation was to change dramatically in the wake of the events of
September 11. The Kashmir question has been stalled for years, and it is on the sub-
ject of Afghanistan that the Americans are seeking guarantees from the government
in Pakistan. The crucial question remains whether the government in Islamabad is
able to distance itself from the radical Islamic networks which have been instru-
mental in their policy in Kashmir, Afghanistan and Central Asia.
Conservative Sunni Radicalization
Since the end of the 1980s, we have witnessed the establishment of an international-
ist Sunni sphere of influence around the Taliban and Pakistan. This is both
religiously conservative (close to Saudi Wahhabism, even though the historic origins
of this fundamentalism have no connection with the Wahhabi reform movement)
and increasingly radical politically, putting its Saudi sponsors and the Americans at
odds with each other. It combines ‘salafism’ (a determination to go back to Islam as
it was at the time of the Prophet) and ‘jihadism’ (insistence that armed action should
be taken against the enemies of Islam, at the expense of realistic political thought).
This international connection is embodied in the Taliban’s links with Osama bin
Laden’s extremist networks). However, there are similar militants in the northern
Caucasus (the Jordanian Khattab, for example); they were also active in Bosnia
until their organizations were broken up by the Bosnian government. This is not a
highly centralized network under the shadowy leadership of Bin Laden, but an
entire conglomeration of networks and people, most of whom met in Afghanistan
at the end of the 1980s.
There are numerous diffuse radical groups in Pakistan. They have various origins,
but they come together today in a fundamentalist, anti-American radicalization
movement (the sharia, the whole sharia, and nothing but the sharia). They could be
traditional movements like Jamiyyat-ul Ulama-i Islam, which represents religious

men of the Deobandi school (founded in 1867), who have become radicalized over
the last ten years; the Jamaat-i Islami, which is close to the Arab Muslim Brothers but
has adopted an increasingly anti-American stance; or indeed more recent groups —
very violent, and at first marginal — like Sipah-i Sahaba and Harkat-ul Ansar, which
have linked up with movements formed specifically to fight in Kashmir, such as
Harkat-ul Mujahiddin, Lashkar-i Tayyiba and the Al-Badar military unit. All these
groups can now avail themselves of training and indoctrination centres (in Pakistan)
and — prior to September 11 ~ military training bases (in Afghanistan). Thousands
of volunteers from the entire Muslim world have passed through these camps
(including the founders of the GIA and the FIS). They were the spearhead of the
Taliban, and of the volunteers sent to Kashmir. These networks are often still mar-
ginal in the world’s Muslim countries (except Egypt, Algeria, Yemen and
Uzbekistan), but they played — and still play — an important role in Pakistan and
Afghanistan, because they were organized and supported by more traditional cleri-
cal circles like the Taliban.
Two characteristic features of the radicalization of Islamist movements in
Pakistan distinguish it from radicalization in the Middle East: unlike radicalization
in the Middle East and North Africa (where the FIS, the Muslim Brothers, Refah,
Hizbollah, and so on, make every effort to look more moderate, and so to get into
politics), it affects the great traditionalist or Islamist movements; and it enjoys
increasing support at the heart of the state apparatus.
Here, also, Pakistan is different from other Muslim countries where, after a state-
encouraged phase of Islamization in the 1970s and 1980s, we find — in Turkey,
Algeria, Egypt, Palestine and Jordan — growing confrontation between the state
apparatus and the Islamists: purges of the army and the civil service, and a clamp-
down on religious education. In Pakistan, on the other hand, we have heard
ex-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif quote the Taliban, for example, during a debate on
the Islamization of the law in September 1998; General Hamid Gul, former head
of the ISI, has openly joined the Islamists in violently attacking the USA; there is no
state control over the spreading network of religious schools; moreover, there is an
obvious tendency towards Islamization among young army officers. This
Islamization is — as we have seen — accompanied by an increasingly aggressive for-
eign policy. In short, Pakistan — which was always officially close to the USA — is now
becoming the protector and promoter of a virulent Islamic radicalism, even if this
is still peripheral (because it has made fewer inroads in the Middle East).
Now the essential feature of these radical movements is not so much their ideol-
ogy as their activism: they advocate taking an active part in all the Muslim world’s
jihads. It is this ‘jihadism’ that is at the root of their internationalism, their indiffer-
ence towards borders, and also their prestige in the eyes of young people who often
seem to have lost both their sense of culture and their sense of direction. ‘They sup-
port the Taliban in Afghanistan so that they can go on to attack Central Asia,
particularly Uzbekistan; they are angry with India, Iran and Russia; they call for sol-
idarity with the Chechens, the Uigurs of China, the Bosnians, the Moros in the
Philippines, and so on. They obviously see the power of the USA as their chief
enemy. In a word: they are internationalizing the internal political situation in

Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The regional invocation of Islamism has allowed Pakistan to play a role that is out
of all proportion to its real power — particularly its economic power. Until 1998, the
country could play the Islamic card and the card of American support at separate
tables, but the Osama bin Laden affair has ruined that game, all the more so after
September 11.
Before September 11, General Musharraf sent out contradictory signals — some-
times talking about Kemalism in Pakistan; sometimes reaffirming his commitment
to Islam. The disadvantage of a readjustment and a toning down of Islamic ele-
ments would be that it would bring ethnic connections to the fore. Significantly, the
general declared during a press conference in May 2000 that it was in Pakistan’s
national interest to see the Taliban, ‘who represent Pashtun ethnicity’, in power in
Afghanistan; this elicited a statement from the king of Afghanistan — a very rare
occurrence.!! At the time Pakistan did not have any other card to play, since prior-
itizing ethnic and purely national questions to the detriment of an — even mythical —
Islamic solidarity would also have foregrounded the artificially multiethnic charac-
ter of Pakistan itself. The Islamic dimension is an integral part of Pakistan’s political
mindset — even if, in the end, this could limit its relations with the countries of
Central Asia.*
: Musharraf and the

* For discussion of the impact of September 11 on these issues, see ‘Epilogue
below.
Islamists: From Support to Opposition after September 11’, pp. 259-280
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PART III
THE ECONOMY AND

SOCIAL STRUCTURES
if
THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE
Pakistan is at the pivotal point between two worlds, the Iranian world and the Indian
world. The Greeks and Romans were very perceptive when they imposed this divide
on the banks of the Indus: to the west are countries and peoples who turn towards
Iran, Afghanistan, even Central Asia; to the east, India and the monsoons.
To atraveller from Europe, the Baluchi plateaus and the valleys of the northeast
belong — in terms of their landscape and their agriculture — to the Iranian—Afghan
complex. Beyond the Indus, a fairly uniform countryside stretches from the Pakistani
Punjab to the basin of the Jamuna and the Ganges.
The crucial role of these watercourses — the Indus and its tributaries, the five rivers
of the Punjab (literally, in Persian, ‘five waters’ — is reminiscent of Mesopotamia.
Paraphrasing Herodotus, we could call Pakistan ‘a gift from the Indus’. Without irri-
gation, the greater part of the basin would be a desert. Thanks to irrigation, wheat
is grown in winter, followed by cotton, rice, maize, a little sorghum and millet during
the monsoon season. An annual crop of sugarcane is cultivated between Peshawar
and Sind. Mangos, oranges, bananas and dates are also grown, especially in the
south. From very early on, raising cattle and buffalo was a very important activity. In
Sind, there is a striking contrast between the verdant countryside and the desert on
the horizon where the banks of the Indus and the canals slope away. In the Punjab,
the more extensive green area is also bordered by bare, arid land. After the thresh-
old of Rawalpindi come the beautiful irrigated plains of Peshawar and Swat.
Mountains and plateaus form the greater part of the territory. Baluchistan alone
covers 432,000 square kilometres out of a total of 775,000. Deserts of sand, gravel
and stone, inhospitable chains of black, are punctuated by a few oases. The few
inhabitants make their living mainly by raising sheep by transhumance. ‘There are
few towns; roads and railways are limited to a few main routes. Even in ancient
times, Baluchistan was a secondary channel for communication, and we know how
Alexander and his phalanxes suffered when they crossed it.
Towards the north there is higher country, rising to 3,500 metres in the Sulaiman
Mountains to the south of Peshawar. To the northwest, the Hindu Kush rises
towards the impressive crossroads of the Pamir (the bam 1 dunya, the roof of the
world), the giant Himalayas and Karakorum,, including the great K2, the world’s
second-highest peak (8,620 metres). Along the Afghan border are crops which
depend on the monsoons and the lighter winter rains, and irrigated valleys where
THE PARTITION OF INDIA

North-West Frontier _ eee
Province Hae se
oa
Peshawar e a ;
we” « § ®@Srinigar
AFGHANISTAN > <a
i=) Punjab |.
ee 56.5% °.Lahore
WEST ee
: PAKISTAN £3
)\ Baluchistan a
'y 87.4% ae
BAL: Sind *
72.8% +,
Source: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Cambridge 1989.
THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE 153
wheat is followed by rice or maize during the same year. Higher up, towards 3,000
metres, only one harvest is possible.
Pakistan is well endowed from an agricultural point of view; much less so in
terms of mineral resources: a little carbon, not much iron, copper in the west of
Baluchistan. Oil production is sufficient for only a small part of the country’s needs,
and hitherto prospecting, notably in Sind, has yielded only mediocre results. On the
other hand, the rich natural gas deposits in Baluchistan have been supplying energy
since the late 1950s. Further deposits have recently been discovered in Sind. Finally,
there are huge hydroelectricity potentials which have still not been fully exploited.
The British Legacy

The British took ona civilization which, in its more illustrious phases, had highly
developed political, administrative and economic structures. That is why Britain
wanted simultaneously to destroy, to conserve and to innovate. Although they put in
place structures and an organization that were, by and large, identical throughout
the Indian Empire — a division into provinces under direct administration, with 550
Princely States enjoying a certain degree of autonomy under a British resident —
huge differences in the exercise of power and the measures taken to develop the
country quickly became apparent.
The part of Bengal that would become East Pakistan in 1947 was neglected
under the British: a dormant economy except for jute; a lack of infrastructure; an
‘undergoverned’ territory; a severe shortage of modern elites, especially among the
Muslims. Although Bengal had been one of the most flourishing provinces in the
subcontinent for at least two thousand years, it became — especially in the east — a
vast repository of extreme poverty.
The Punjab, which had already benefited from the policies of Ranjit Singh,! was
an astonishing contrast. This province, the eastern part of which would become part
of Pakistan, received more attention, above all for strategic reasons — it was the main
component of the ‘great game’ — from the British, who, throughout the nineteenth
century, were afraid that the Cossacks would stream into the Indian Empire from
Central Asia, which was still in the grip of the tsars, Senior civil servants and high-
ranking military men watched over this province — from the Lawrence brothers to
Sir Malcolm Darling in the first decades of the twentieth century, then Montgomery
and Alfred Lyall. And once the ICS (Indian Civil Service) was opened to Indians,
some of the most brilliant civil servants after Independence won their first spurs in
the Punjab.
The formation of this solid enclave was facilitated by dividing the province into
districts much smaller than those in Bengal or Bihar, making administration more
efficient. Thus in 1872 C E Barnard, chief of a Bengali district, wrote to G R Elsmie,
his colleague in the Punjab:
The first British people who visited Sind and the Punjab before the conquest had
already realized the enormous — as yet underutilized — irrigation potential.
154 THE ECONOMY AND SOCIAL STRUCTURES
Developing the region could not fail to raise public revenue. There were also polit-
to
ical motives: after the difficult conquest of the Punjab, it was considered prudent
send demobilized Sikh soldiers there to develop the agriculture.
Gradually, the British put in place the biggest network of irrigation canals in the
world: at first in the Punjab, especially the western part; then in Sind, with the dyke
to divert the waters of the Indus at Sakkar. Other projects benefited the Peshawar
valley in the northwest. All in all, 37,000 kilometres of canals in the Punjab, 10,000
in Sind and a few thousand in the north irrigated 9.2 million hectares. The Punjab
became the breadbasket of India thanks to the development of wheat cultivation,
together with the cultivation of cotton and sugarcane. There was also tangible —
albeit less spectacular — progress in Sind.
The development of irrigation was both quantitive and qualitative. Until that time
it had mainly been a matter of flood irrigation: rivers were used when their waters
were swollen, as in Ancient Egypt. The British dug new canals. ‘The water was held
in a barrage with sluicegates which sent water into the canals, ensuring a constant
irrigation process that was more reliable and more productive. The first tubewells
driven by a diesel engine arrived in the Punjab shortly before the Second World War;
this complement to the canal waters developed rapidly after Independence.
This take-off of agriculture caused chain reactions, especially in the Punjab: the
construction of roads and railways, the development of towns and markets, flour
mills, cotton-spinning factories, a few sugar refineries, the beginning of a small,
quasi-modern mechanical industry. In 1882 the prestigious Punjab University with
its Government College, breeding-ground for new Muslim, Hindu and Sikh elites,
was established in Lahore. The town became one of the most illustrious in the sub-
continent thanks to its flourishing commerce and banks, often owned by Hindus and
Sikhs.
This process of overall development — which we also see in Europe or in China at
certain times — was due to an ideal combination of several factors: physical condi-
tions that lent themselves to agriculture, as long as there was irrigation; and a
superior political and administrative structure which, as we have seen, became
Indianized after the 1930s. Note, for example, the care with which the British civil
servants selected and encouraged the farmers in the eastern Punjab — mostly Sikhs —
who settled in the canal colonies created from nothing to the east of Lahore. In other
cases, to achieve good relations with the elites, the British favoured the big landown-
ers in all regions.
In eastern districts (the future Indian Punjab) there were fewer canals, and the
population grew relatively slowly (30 to 40 per cent between 1891 and 1941), but in
new districts its growth was spectacular: the population of Lyallpur (now Faisalabad)
went from 600,000 to 1.4 million in 1941; that of Montgomery (Sahiwal) from
417,000 to 1.3 million; that of Jnang from 402,000 to 882,000.
The people were a third, no less decisive factor. The province was home to castes
of cultivators who quickly won the colonizers’ admiration: farmers who stuck to their
task, and were shrewd, eager for innovation. The highest caste was that of the Jats,
who could be Hindus, Muslims or Sikhs. The Arains, who were exclusively Muslims,
had a lower status. The traditional artisan castes — Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims —
began very quickly to set up workshops and small industries. In the towns, the Khatris
(Hindus or Sikhs) stood out as the superior caste, usually in administration or business;
they began the development of the tertiary sector, with a few Muslims. ‘Even if a
Khatri puts ashes on his head, he makes a profit out of it’, says a Punjabi proverb.
Sind did not do nearly so well. Unlike the Punjab, there had been no Ranjit
Singh to develop it. Its physical conditions were less favourable than those of the
Punjab; sea water often infiltrated the south, and elsewhere there were briny sub-
terranean waters; there was more extensive salt encroachment than in the Punjab.
Moreover, the great works centred on the Sakkar barrage were not completed until
1932, when the world crisis — which also affected India — hindered the development
of agriculture and the export of its products — the opposite of the situation in the
Punjab in earlier decades. The British were less in evidence there, although there
were some illustrious names: in the nineteenth century Sir Bartle Frere, and that
incredible trainer of men John Jacob, artillery officer, then cavalry officer, finally a
civil administrator who gave his name to Jacobad, where he is buried. ‘There was
another handicap: Sind was part of the Bombay Presidency until 1936, when it
became an entirely separate province. Until that time, the region was partly
neglected by the authorities in distant Bombay — even more so since, unlike the
Punjab, it played only a minor role in the ‘great game’.
The human setting was in a similar mould. The towns, which were not very
important in 1941 — Karachi had only 400,000 inhabitants — were dominated by the
Hindus and a handful of Parsees. As for the countryside, it was dominated by the
great powerful landlords, the wadera, feudal lords who were not particularly interested
in developing their estates — sometimes thousands of hectares — like the gentlemen
farmers of the Punjab. Besides, there was no solid farming middle class, like the Jats
and the Arains.
Then there were the mountainous areas. In Baluchistan — except in Quetta and
certain districts under direct administration — the British limited themselves to
strengthening the great tribal chiefs. The Bolan railway linked Quetta to the Indus
plain, then went on as far as Zahidan, in Iran (for a long time there was only one
train a week on this last section; today there are two).
In the northwest were the settled districts: first the North-West Frontier Province
(NWFP), under direct administration, which had the advantage of irrigation in the
Peshawar plain; then the Tribal Areas, a stretch of territory along the border with
Afghanistan. This was the hideout for the disruptive Pashtun tribes previously chron-
icled by Herodotus — an extremely tough society plagued by vendettas, where every
dwelling was alittle castle of clay. Political representatives lived in each zone, but
acted only if there was serious tension. Until 1947, the Tribal Areas were on many
occasions the theatre for military operations where the British deployed tens of
thousands of men. The laws of the Indian Empire were not respected there. People
and goods moved freely on both sides of the border. In short, no imperium had ever
been accepted. All the invaders — from Alexander the Great to the Mughals, then the
British — had suffered bloody disappointments; hence the wise decision by the
British, followed by the Pakistanis, to keep their involvement in local affairs to a
minimum.
Then, to the north, came the little Princely States: Swat, Dir and Chitral. Swat
enjoyed a certain amount of development, thanks to an enlightened sovereign and
progressive irrigation. The other two remained marginal, only lightly ruffled by the
breezes of modernization. Stretching beyond were the territories which would be
taken from the state of Jammu and Kashmir during the troubles at the time of
Partition: Gilgit and Skardu, valleys with a great agricultural tradition thanks to their
irrigation canals carved out along the sides of the giant mountains of the Himalayas
and Karakorum. Hunza and Nagar, small principalities, continued to exist for sev-
eral years after 1947.
So the British had direct administration over part of Baluchistan as well as Sind,
the Punjab, and the NWFP. Alongside were Princely States which enjoyed consid-
erable autonomy: Khairpur in Sind and Bahawalpur in the Punjab, merged with the
two provinces after 1947. Swat, Dir and Chitral became part of the NWFP in the
1970s.
The Effects of Partition

Even before 1947, Pakistan was a mosaic. In the remote valleys of Baluchistan and
the Tribal Areas, no one had ever seen a British person. Customs had not changed.
At the opposite extreme, Lahore and the advanced areas of the Punjab were com-
pleting a first stage of modernization which was extending towards Sind. Building
a modern nation, therefore, was difficult, especially since the Indus basin had come
over belatedly to the Muslim League.
As we saw in Part I, Partition had some contradictory effects: the birth of a
national consciousness and, at the same time, the emergence of new points of ten-
sion. Sikhs and Hindus left the countryside and, above all, the towns en masse; this
greatly weakened the urban tertiary sector. Muslim peasants from India, especially
the eastern Punjab, took over abandoned land in the Punjab. The same thing hap-
pened in the Punjab’s towns, where the newcomers quickly became an integral part
of the new state. But the situation was fraught from the outset in Sind, especially in
Karachi, the country’s capital until the 1960s. Muhajirs from the north of India
spoke Urdu; those from Bombay and Gujarat spoke Urdu or Gujarati. They had few
cultural ties with the Sindis. ‘They were more entrepreneurial, and transformed them-
selves from civil servants or shopkeepers to industrialists. Karachi and Hyderabad,
too, were dominated by Muhajirs; this sowed the seeds of a discord that would inten-
sify as the years passed. Other conflicts emerged between the early leaders, who had
come from India, and local dignitaries, who asserted themselves after Jinnah’s death
in 1948 and the assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan in 1951. There was another bur-
densome British legacy: the role of dignitaries: the sardar of Baluchistan, the big
landowners of Sind and the Punjab, Pashtun leaders. None of these was the result of
colonial power, but they had enjoyed its support. The gradual establishment of demo-
cratic institutions — elections, assemblies, provincial governments — which began at the
end of the nineteenth century and culminated in the 1935 Government of India
Act — strengthened rather than weakened the ruling classes. This phenomenonis still
very much apart of life over fifty years after Partition.
As far as the economy was concerned, western Pakistan had been dealt a better
hand than India. There was less demographic pressure on the space available. In
1951 there was no district, even in the Punjab, where the population density
exceeded 250 inhabitants per square kilometre, whereas in the plain of the Ganges
it was between 300 and 500. Another advantage was that three-quarters of culti-
vated land was irrigated, as opposed to less than 20 per cent in India. Road and rail
infrastructure was comparable in Pakistan, but there was no major industry, whereas
in India there were important industrial centres like Bombay, Calcutta, Anmedabad
and the Tata steelworks in Bihar. In addition, there were many more senior managers
in India, and the Muslims paid a heavy price for the fact that their education system
had fallen a long way behind during the nineteenth century.
As far as standard of living was concerned, western Pakistan did quite well. ‘There
were pockets of poverty — agricultural workers exploited by wadera in Sind; people
eking out a precarious existence in the upper valleys of the Hindu Kush.
Nevertheless, there was not the weighty rural proletariat typical of India, especially
on the plains that stretched towards eastern Pakistan, the future Bangladesh. Because
there was less demographic pressure, there were far fewer landless peasants and very
small landowners in western Pakistan than in India.
The advanced level of development in the Punjab, especially in the canal colonies,
compared to many other parts of the subcontinent, bears out the fact that a strong
process of development does not involve only the rich. Around 1930, Jawaharlal
Nehru brought up the problem of the huge differences in living standards between
the dynamic Punjab and the central Ganges basin, where nothing much was hap-
pening. Greater population density in the second region was only part of the
explanation for this discrepancy. In 1947, in political terms, India seemed to have the
advantage; whereas in social and political terms western Pakistan was in a better
position than India and — even more so — than eastern Pakistan, which was already
one of the most difficult development areas in Asia.
Demographic Pressure: 1947-2000

How many mouths did Pakistan have to feed? How many strong right arms and
brains could it count on? These crucial questions may be asked of all developing
countries, but they have a particular meaning in a country where the rate of popu-
lation growth has been ~ and still is — one of the highest in Asia, despite — for the
most part — birth-control campaigns. This demographic pressure has grown over the
years, and today it preys on an exhausted economy, leading to rising unemployment.
The political tensions that have been at breaking point for the last ten years are
partly linked to the growing number of young people without work. Even if censuses
cannot be trusted because of faulty recording, the population has still grown very
quickly.
From 1881 onwards, the British carried out a complete census in the Indian
Empire every ten years. This custom, which has continued in India since
Independence, was disrupted in Pakistan. Because of the secession of East Pakistan,
there was no census in 1971. The 1991 census was postponed several times owing to
inter- and intraprovincial disagreements. It was held in 1998, under army supervi-
sion. The results have provoked controversy, because preliminary inquiries by poll
suggested 139 million and an annual population growth of 3 per cent — rates which
have hardly fallen since the 1981 census. According to the 1998 census, the average
annual growth rate between 1990 and 1997 was 2.6 per cent; 2.4 per cent in 1998.
In Dawn for 21 February 2000, N B Naqvi wrote:
Everyone knows that there are powerful interests opposed to the census.
The Punjab government is afraid of losing seats in the National Assembly.
In Baluchistan, the difficulty of counting Baluchis and Pashtuns because of
the rivalry between them has made the census problematic. As for the
Sindis, they are afraid that overprecise figures will jeopardize their repre-
sentation at the provincial assembly.
Table 7.1 Population of Pakistan, 1951—98 censuses (millions)
Punjab Sind NWFP Baluchistan Islamabad FATA** Total
1951 21D 6.6 4.8 le = nS 35.4

1961 26.0 8.5 5.9 1.6 - 1.7 43.7
1981 47.7 19.0 Li 4.3 0.4 2.2 84.7
1998 72.6 29.0 ES 6.5 0.8 3.1 129.5
* North West Frontier Province.

** Federal Administrated Tribal Areas.
Naqvi therefore suggests that there should be another census to give a clear pic-
ture of the population, and thus to facilitate better economic planning.
As for the average rate of urbanization, it rose from 17.8 per cent in 1951 to 32.5 per
cent in 1998 — a more rapid process than that of India or Bangladesh. Nevertheless,
there are significant variations between provinces: the Punjab 31.3 per cent; Sind 48.9
per cent; NWFP 16.9 per cent; Baluchistan 23.3 per cent; FATA 2.7 per cent.
According to the 1998 census, the death rate is 9.1 per cent and the birth rate 33
per cent, which looks like an underestimation. Infant mortality stands at 90 per cent.
Finally, the ratio between the sexes has improved slightly, although there are still
fewer women. This has been a typical feature throughout the entire subcontinent ever
since the first British censuses: 108 men for every 100 women in 1998; 110 in 1981.
‘The age profile shows that 43 per cent of the population are under 15, alittle over
53 per cent are between 16 and 64, and alittle more than 3 per cent are over 65.
Birth control
Although most Asian countries embarked on a birth-control campaign in the 1950s

or 1960s, the elites who ran western Pakistan, then the whole of Pakistan, did not do
much. This attitude is all the more disappointing given that soon after he took
power in 1958, General (subsequently Marshal and President) Ayub Khan made
family planning one of his top priorities. The authorities in East Pakistan, then of
Bangladesh, were the only ones who took note of this and promoted family plan-
ning; this partly explains the new state’s lower birth rate.
In western Pakistan, the ruling elite’s inertia and hostility in religious circles pre-
vailed. On several visits to villages in Pakistan, when I questioned the peasants in
Urdu, I got the same answer: ‘It is against the will of Allah.’ Even the great digni-
taries of Sind were no more concerned about this question than their poor farmers.
In East Pakistan, on the other hand, intelligent propaganda has shown the mullahs
that, contrary to their prejudices, family planning is not against Islamic principles.
One of Islam’s most eminent theologians, Imam Ghazali, declared as early as the
eleventh century that coitus interruptus [az/] was permitted if a woman’s beauty was
endangered by too many pregnancies, or if the family could not feed all its children.
Other theologians at many other times have echoed his words. For many years, sev-
eral of them have accepted the idea of abortion up to and including the third
month.?
As in other parts of Asia, birth control has been adopted readily by the upper
classes, where couples often stop at two children, especially if one is a boy. The urban
middle classes have also taken to the idea, albeit to a lesser extent. It was in the
1980s, and later during the return to democracy (1988), that the authorities made
particular efforts to support two hundred private family planning organizations. In
1999, 21 per cent of couples practised birth control, as opposed to 14 per cent in
1990, reducing the average number of children per couple to 5.6, as against 6.5 in
1981.4
Emigration
As well as its strong population growth, Pakistan has another distinctive feature: the
scale of its emigration.
Emigrants to the United Kingdom, who began to leave soon after Independence,
include a wide range of people from professionals to unqualified manual workers. In
the USA, the Pakistani community is made up mainly of professional and executive
workers: several thousand doctors, businessmen, engineers;? like their counterparts
in the UK, these families have settled permanently. The influx of Pakistanis into the
Middle East was caused by the boom which followed the oil-price shocks of 1973
and 1979. After reaching a peak of 3 million, their number has fallen as a result of
or
a slowdown in the local economies. Most of these migrants are people with few
no qualifications, on temporary contracts. For some time, emigration — particularly
pressure.
to the Middle East — has served asa (relative) safety valve on demographic
on worked
In the 1980s, about 10 per cent of the economically active populati
case of
abroad. The money they sent to their families at home, especially in the
workers in the Persian Gulf, was a sizeable contribution to the budget of numerous
poor households.
es, is par-
The brain drain, a common phenomenon in many developing countri
ity and the
ticularly marked in Pakistan. It is not unrelated to political instabil
inefficient functioning of institutions.
mountainous
The largest contingents of unqualified manual workers come from
areas in the north and northwest, poor districts of the northern Punjab, and
Baluchistan. There are few Sindis. As for upper-class migrants, they come from
every community and every region,
Table 7.2 Estimated number of Pakistanis abroad (1998)
United Kingdom: 750,000

United States, Canada: about | million
Middle East: 2.5 million
Europe and Southeast Asia: 50,000—100,000
Source: S.J. Burki, Dawn, 29 August, 5 September 1999.
Internal migration
While the repercussions of cross-border migration have been only economic, migra-
tion within the country has had both economic and political effects. The attraction
of towns, a universal phenomenon, is particuarly strong in poorer areas. People who
cannot go abroad leave the valleys of the Hindu Kush or the plateaus of the Punjab
for the towns. Thus Karachi has become the most important Pashtun town, while it
has also attracted a strong contingent of Baluchis and Punjabis. For decades, Sindis
have made up little more than 20 per cent of the population of the metropolis.
The particularly acute lack of modern elites in Baluchistan attracted many civil
servants and tradesmen from the Punjab. During the Afghan war, waves of refugees,
especially Pashtuns (Afghan Pashtuns), arrived; of the 3.7 million who came in
1990, about 1.5 million remain. In the NWFP they did not cause too many prob-
lems, since they belong to the same ethnic group. In Baluchistan, on the other hand,
they strengthened local Pashtun communities, arousing the hostility of the Baluchis.
Sind, for its part, witnessed an influx of Baluchis and Punjabis who were given
newly cultivated land.
All these migratory movements which followed the colossal 1947 intermingling
with refugees from India have created points of tension. The different communities
do not mix much, except the upper classes. Muslims who converted years ago have
kept the traditional caste system, forbidding out-of-caste marriages, called zat in
Pakistan. For the Pashtuns, it is the law of the tribe that is important. Even marriages
between Sunni and Shi’a are rare, except among well-off families. So national cohe-
sion is jeopardized by the lack of a melting-pot effect.
The working population and jobs

In 1998, the number of economically active people was put at 38.6 million (67 per
cent in rural areas and 33 per cent in the towns) — that is, 28.7 per cent of the total
population,
The rate of economic activity in agriculture seems low in comparison with a
country like India (about 55 per cent) or Bangladesh (more than 60 per cent). It is
even a little lower than that of China, despite China’s strong economic growth
since 1980. The number of economically active people relative to the total popula-
tion is also quite low; this is the result of a very marked population growth.
The unemployment rate is inevitably very approximate, and we must remember
that there is substantial underemployment. Nonetheless, there is no doubt whatso-
ever that the number of Pakistanis without work is growing as a result of both a fall
in the emigration rate and an economic slowdown; this has contributed to renewed
intercommunal tension and violence since the 1980s.
The Economic Survey (1998-99) finds that ‘despite a net growth in GNP over a long
period, social indicators are low’, and that they are lower than those of several
other Asian countries, except in the case of life expectancy. Even India scores higher
in these various domains, despite slower growth — except for the decade 1990-2000.
The rise in living standards is very uncertain, especially in country areas. Most
studies of the ‘poverty line’ are based on calculations taken from opinion-poll
inquiries, which are often of dubious value. There are very few field studies based on
observations gleaned from peasants or local administrations. We could make the
same observation in the context of the play of sociopolitical forces at village or sub-
district level. Despite the gaps in the available knowledge, we can advance the
hypothesis that poverty is still less acute in Pakistan than it is in India. Data on total
or per capita GNP is flimsy, but useful for basic comparisons.
Table 7.3 Working population

es
Sectors 1951 1998
Agriculture 65.3% 45.1%

Industry 9.5% 11.2%
Services, construction, various 25.2% 43.7%
r
Se a E
Table 7.4 Standard of living, education and health (1998 census)

a a S ee
ae
Literacy 45%
Life expectancy 63 years
Fertility oD
Access to drinking water 48%
Number of people per doctor 1,600
S
Se eS
ee e e
Table 7.5 Per capita GNP, 1997 (dollars) eee

Ee Neen eee SE
Exchange rate parity Buying power parity
Pakistan 500 1,580

India 370 1,660
Bangladesh 360 1,090
1,110 3,390
Indonesia
860 3,070
China raeae
\cenit ee ee Seen eS eee ear
Source: World Bank Atlas, 1999.

Primary and secondary education are inadequate from both a quantitive and a
qualitative point of view; this is true of all Asian countries. According to a World
Bank report, about half of the children in Pakistan were in primary education in
1994; this figure had risena little by 1999. As for the standard of the universities, it
has fallen. The University of the Punjab, a brilliant star at the dawn of
Independence, has lost its lustre, torn to shreds by dissension, the pernicious influ-
ence of the religious parties, and the mediocrity of many teachers. The University
of Karachi has gone down too. The twenty-three universities established since 1947
are not much better. There are 640,000 male students and 350,000 female stu-
dents. Certainly there are a few very good institutions and a few excellent business
schools, but the children of Pakistan’s intelligentsia — unlike their Indian counter-
parts — prefer to study in the USA or the UK. Despite everything — despite the
colossal brain drain, too — Pakistan, like India, is relatively well endowed with senior
managers. Multinationals in both countries do not employ many expatriates, unlike
their branches in China or Indonesia.
For many years now the newspapers have been full of articles about the terrible
state of the school and university system. Three thousand primary schools in Sind
and five thousand in the Punjab existed only on paper in 1998. As for the universi-
ties, Zia ul-Islam noted that a few years ago, anyone with an MSc or a diploma from
a medical faculty was automatically admitted to study for a doctorate in Britain,
whereas nowadays ‘no one recognizes our university degrees’. Another article com-
plained of numerous irregularities: cheating in examinations with the collusion of
important people.°®
Many newspaper articles also criticize the inadequacies of the health system.
Health provision — a total of 872 hospitals, 4,555 dispensaries, 6,155 basic health
units and 852 maternity clinics, covering the towns much better than the country
(1998-99 figures) — leaves a lot to be desired. According to a Federal Bureau of
Statistics report,’ of the 6,155 basic health units, 53 per cent have no doctor and 70
per cent have no female staff, even though in some traditional milieux a woman may
not be examined by a man.
For several years, numerous Pakistanis have been demanding greater efforts to
improve education and health. In 1993 a Social Action Programme was launched,
with the support of the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. It aims to
extend primary education and to improve primary health care, especially through
vaccination campaigns, improving access to drinking water, and encouraging birth
control. Despite these efforts, education and health spending remains at around 2.2
and 0.79 per cent of GNP respectively.
Whatever the impact of the birth-control policy, we can envisage a fall in the birth
rate simply by virtue of the modernization of society, especially in towns. For a while,
however, any such fall will be cancelled out by the numerous children born to the
young people who make up such asignificant proportion of the population. As for
another spurt of emigration, this looks unlikely, even if Pakistanis have been going
to work in eastern Asia for some years. So Pakistan will continue for a long time to
experience a population growth which it should have started to control earlier.
8
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
In 1947, there were several development options. Unlike the Congress Party —
which, prompted by Nehru, had by 1938 established a National Planning
Committee to oversee future planning — the Muslim League did not pay much
attention to the economy. This was partly because the creation of Pakistan was not
definite until the last moment and partly because all their energies were devoted to
ensuring the partition of the empire. There were further differences between the two
neighbours: India, under Nehru’s leadership, was strongly influenced by the social-
ist tendencies of the London Fabian Society. However, the Qaid-i Azam, the rich
merchants from Bombay, and the comfortably off urban classes had little or no use
for socializing ideology. For every conceivable reason, prosperous landowners, whose
political influence was decisive, were not particularly attracted by the agrarian
reforms advocated by the left wing of the Congress Party.
Moreover, thanks to Mahatma Gandhi, the Party leaders had been forced to face
the realities of life in the whole of India, including rural areas; this explains the
emphasis on rural development in India’s first five-year plan. The Muslim League
and its leaders became interested in the rural world only at the eleventh hour, just
before Partition, in order to rally the villages to their cause.
1947-90
Immediately after Partition, the leaders of Pakistan did not opt for a straightfor-
ward liberal economy. They inherited a system based on strong administration
and a firm state apparatus, deeply affected by the war economy of 1939-45. They
were also influenced by the widespread theory — with no Marxist overtones — that
the state should intervene in cases where the private sector could not or would not
act. In effect, the first five-year plan was never more than a dead letter: it did not
start until 1955, owing to the problems of establishing the new state and the polit-
ical instability which followed the assassination of Prime Minister Liaquat Ali
Khan in 1951.
Western Pakistan had the best hand where agriculture was concerned, but virtu-
at
ally no modern industry. The idea was to remedy this by measures aimed
encouraging prosperous merchants ~ mainly from Bombay and Gujarat — to become
sndustrialists. Most of these efforts were concentrated on the textile industry, because
Pakistan acquired vast cotton-growing areas, while nearly all the spinning and
weaving factories were in India. Other industries — cement, agrobiology, mechanical,
chemical fertilizers - would come later. Small semi-artisanal industries which had
grown up in the Punjab in colonial times developed rapidly, and some even went into
the export market. In contrast to these positive trends, agriculture stagnated — so
much so that the western Punjab, formerly the breadbasket of the Indian Empire,
had a shortage of wheat. In the year 1953-54 Pakistan imported a million tonnes of
wheat, prompting a deputy in the Punjab Assembly to remark that his constituents
were ‘forced to eat grass’!
All this changed in 1958, after General Ayub Khan’s coup. A practical man who
had no time for politicians and their intrigues, he surrounded himself with compe-
tent civil servants, young economists trained in the USA, and brilliant advisers,
mainly American graduates from Harvard. He concentrated on economic develop-
ment, and the second five-year plan (1960-65) was successfully implemented.
Western Pakistan exploited its assets better, while eastern Pakistan came out of semi-
stagnation thanks to government grants. People still talk about the ‘Pakistani
miracle’. South Koreans went to Karachi to learn and be inspired. Today, the pupil
has overtaken the master, as a Pakistani ambassador ironically observed recently.
The pragmatism of the early 1960s was accompanied by substantial foreign aid
(the USA, the World Bank). This aid — which, in general, was used appropriately —
financed 40 per cent of the second plan and 34 per cent of the third (1965-70), but
this ‘golden age’ proved short-lived. The war with India in 1965; the resurgence of
internal unrest; burgeoning corruption; the waning influence of Marshal Ayub
Khan, who suffered failing health and surrounded himself with sycophants; an
unstable economy ~ all this provoked the fall of the regime in 1969.
Pakistan then went through another phase of instability: the military govern-
ment of General Yahya Khan; then, in 1970, general elections which exacerbated
the tensions between the two halves of the country. From the beginning of 1971, the
secession of East Pakistan looked more or less inevitable. After ineffectual and cruel
repression from March to December 1971, the Pakistan army surrendered at Dhaka
after Indian troops had come in to support the partisans of independence. The econ-
omy was weakened bya conflict which caused the withholding of some foreign aid
and a rise in the defence budget, not to mention the costs and losses arising from the
war itself. Nevertheless, the secession appeared to be to Pakistan’s long-term advan-
tage, because public investment in the eastern province had been going up and up,
finally exceeding investment in western Pakistan in 1965-70. In addition, profits
from jute exports were falling owing to the growth of exports from the east.
A new era began for Pakistan with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s arrival in power. This bril-
liant, charismatic leader could have been Pakistan’s Nehru, but he had no respect for
democracy and perpetrated every kind of abuse of power and dubious manoeuvre,
including physically eliminating his opponents. He was hanged in April 1979.
During his term of office, internal unrest increased and Baluchistan was subjected
to repression. Economic prospects looked equally bleak. Jettisoning Ayub Khan’s
pragmatism, Bhutto implemented a populist policy which hindered growth without
bringing any attendant social benefits: he nationalized several industries, most of the
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT 165
banks and insurance companies, and cotton and rice exports. The state proved
incapable of managing and developing all the enterprises which were brought into
the public sector. Production slowed; losses accumulated. What was left of the pri-
vate sector, including the vitally important textile industry, made slow progress.
Since there were successive waves of nationalization between 1971 and 1976,
there was little private-sector investment, because no one wanted to innovate for
fear of being nationalized. Small businesses, on the other hand, continued to
flourish.
As for agriculture, there was not much agrarian reform. And as if heaven wanted
to punish men on earth, weather conditions destroyed crops on several occasions,
making the weaknesses of the planning regime even more apparent. Inflation
quickly swallowed up the workers’ pay rises. The oil price rise of 1973 raised the cost
of petrol imports. Finally, it became obvious that socialism could be as corrupt as
capitalism.
There was, however, a positive aspect to this depressing overall picture. The
Prime Minister’s impassioned speeches in both town and country, in which he exco-
riated the prosperous landowners — although he was one himself — and the
‘twenty-two families’*” who had dominated whole swathes of private industry before
the nationalizations, did not improve the lot of the general population. On the
other hand, these fine phrases did make ordinary people aware of their rights. In
Sind, farmers dared to confront their landlords; in the factories, workers were less
likely to tolerate exploitation. In 1978, a senior civil servant in the railway depart-
ment told how railwaymen had come to his office to complain — quite legitimately —
about their working conditions: ‘Before Bhutto, such a scenario was inconceivable.’
In 1977, the curtain fell yet again. After rigged elections, there were demonstra-
tions and troubles throughout the country. In July, General Zia ul-Haq took power;
he would remain in office for eleven years. He and his entourage were inclined to be
pragmatic, and the unsatisfactory economic situation reinforced this. It was the end
of ‘Islamic socialism’. There was some denationalization; the country became more
open to foreign private investment, and foreign trade was encouraged. This devel-
opment was not peculiar to Pakistan. From the end of the 1970s, the words
‘opening’, ‘liberalization’ and ‘lowering Customs barriers’ were heard from India to
China, by way of Southeast Asia. Ruling elites began to question their development
policies, and to take account of the inadequacies of the paths they had been fol-
lowing — the path of Nehru, and especially of Indira Gandhi. These reassessments,
which began in their own countries, were subsequently influenced by the liberal poli-
cies of Margaret Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan.
Two external factors helped to improve prospects for development. As a result of
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan at the end of December 1979, Pakistan again
received generous economic aid — mainly from the USA, the World Bank, and Japan.
The second factor was linked to the boom in the Middle East, where — as we have
seen — Pakistanis flocked in order to find work. In 1982-83, official cash remittances
came
reached a peak of 2.9 thousand million dollars, of which 2.4 thousand million
from workers in the Middle East (1.4 thousand million from Saudi Arabia alone).
per year.
Between 1980 and 1985, these remittances made up 9.3 per cent of GDP
Once more there was progress on the agricultural front. Little by little, Pakistan
stopped importing wheat and became an important exporter of rice. Cotton pro-
duction also rose, and this stimulated textile exports. Large industry took on a new
lease of life and diversified, although textiles still played a disproportionate role.
Although — as for many developing countries — they are approximate, GDP data
confirm these trends.
Table 8.1 GDP growth

1950-1960 + 3.00% per annum
1960-1970 + 6.77% per annum
1970-1980 + 4.84% per annum
1980-1990 + 6.24% per annum
Financial year: July—June

Source: Economic Survey, 1998-1999.
These very respectable figures are markedly better than those for India, where
average annual growth between 1950 and 1980 was 3.5 per cent, as against 5.5 per
cent for 1980-90. Obviously, had the population not grown so rapidly, the people
would have benefited more from the effects of economic expansion. We must also
take note of the low rate of savings and investments, even if they are underesti-
mated. Between 1960 and 1990, savings represented 13 to 14 per cent of GNP.
Internal investments did not vary much, fluctuating around 16 to 17 per cent of
GNP, with just over half coming from private sources. Foreign aid also comes into
this picture.
Deficiencies in the taxation system, wastage and corruption are also evident in
the form of scanty public revenue, a constant feature since the 1950s which would
become critical after 1990. Vasim Jafarey, an honest and experienced former gov-
ernor of the Central Bank, was observing in 1980 that there was no lack of money
in Pakistan, but the public coffers were empty. Total public revenue, from taxation
and other sources, was between 16 and 18 per cent of GDP between 1970 and
1990.
After 1980, alarm bells sounded from the Finance Ministry and the World Bank,
where experts deemed that the taxation system should be strengthened and
reformed in order to reduce domestic debt: between 1980 and 1990 the fiscal deficit
stood at 7 per cent of GDP a year — unsustainable over the long term. President Zia
might have been the leader of an authoritarian regime, but he did not dare bring in
the necessary reforms because of pressure from vested interests and other lobbies —
big landowners and important businessmen. In addition, national defence was more
expensive than it was in other Asian countries, because of the wars and the gener-
ally tense relations between Pakistan and its Indian neighbour. This was a constant
brake on the economy, and its influence became more pernicious as time went by.
Between 1970 and 1990, military expenditure reached 5.5 to 7.2 per cent of GNP
per year, against 6 to 8 per cent allocated to development.
The countryside
As ever, water is the key to agricultural development. Several major projects, some
of which had started before 1947, enlarged the area of cultivation by building diver-
sion dykes on the Indus and its tributaries, and new irrigation canals. There was the
Kotri barrage? on the lower Indus, the development of the Thal desert, the sluice-
gates at Gudu, Taunsa and Chasma, also on the Indus, which brought new land
under cultivation between 1950 and 1990.
In 1960, under the aegis of the World Bank, India and Pakistan reached an
agreement that settled the disputed legacy of the Partition of the Indian Empire,
which cut the Punjab’s canal system in two. India kept the three rivers in the East.
From the Indus and the two rivers in the West, the Jhelum and the Chenab, new
canals were to irrigate the zones deprived of water by India. Pakistan built the great
Tarbela barrage,’ an impressive dyke on the Indus where the mountains end, and
the barrage of Mangla, near Islamabad. Both supplied electricity and irrigation.
Around these major projects, diesel or electricity tubewells proliferated, to make up
for any inadequacies in the canal supplies.
Problems that had been apparent since the beginning of the century assumed
alarming proportions: waterlogging and salinity. In former times, the groundwater
level fluctuated in a dynamic equilibrium, rising and falling according to the seasons.
Canals that were not lined with cement lost large amounts of water to infiltration.
Where there was insufficient natural subterranean drainage, and no canal, the
groundwater level rose, leading to an excess of water which rotted the roots of the
plants. When the rising groundwater came up against salty strata it brought the salt
up to the surface, making the ground inhospitable to any cultivation. In the lower
Sind, there was a further risk of salination from the sea at high tide.
In 1960, with the help of the Americans, the irrigation authorities began to
search for answers to these problems. The best solution was to increase the number
of tubewells; these lowered groundwater and increased the potential for irrigation.
All the same, where the subterranean water was briny, as it often was in Sind, hori-
zontal drains had to be dug. The land that had been salinated had to be washed out
to eliminate the salt. These costly and complex projects have still by no means got rid
of the problem. In 1990, waterlogging affected 0.5 million hectares before the mon-
soon and 2.3 million after it; and a quarter of the canalized area was affected to
some extent by salinity.
It was between 1965 and 1970 that the Green Revolution emerged in Asia on the
initiative of the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, with aid from America and the
World Bank. The ‘Open Sesame’ of this process was water. The Indus basin, where
three-quarters of the land was irrigated, was an ideal location, all the more so in
view of the fact that the usual yields of wheat and hulled rice went from 1,000 or
1,300 kilograms per hectare to 2,000 — even with an imperfect irrigation system and
not enough chemical fertilizer.
Better irrigation prompted the farmers to replace sorghum and millet, cultivated
during the monsoon, with rice, which was more lucrative. Cotton yields went up
thanks to new varieties, chemical fertilizer, and pesticides (cotton is especially
vulnerable to parasites). Cattle-raising and tree-growing also developed, supple-

menting the revenue derived from agriculture, which was still the most important
source.
Key points of the Green Revolution
1. New seeds (wheat, rice, maize, sorghum, millet) react better genetically
to chemical fertilizer than the old ones. Short-stemmed varieties (which
avoid the problem of too much water) often ripen early, allowing for two
crops a year.
2. These new varieties, with the introduction of chemical fertilizer, need
more water than traditional varieties without chemical fertilizer.
3. The new, genetically homogeneous, varieties are more vulnerable to
parasites; hence the importance of antiparasite treatments.
4. These varieties of wheat and rice gradually decline in quality and have
to be replaced every four or five years; hence there is a continuing process
of research and an increasing number of new seeds. Hybrid varieties
(maize, millet, rice) have to be renewed every year.
5. Use of the tractor is not a crucial issue.
6. Any one variety is not necessarily suitable for all physical conditions.
It is not surprising that the Punjabis, with their rich agricultural heritage, were the
first to embrace the Green Revolution. More spectacular still was the development
of Sind. In 1967, agriculture was in a pitiful state, and even the great wadera (major
landowners) did not bother with it much. Our inquiries in 1985-86 and 1993 indi-
cated that things had changed radically: yields of wheat and rice had caught up with
those in the Punjab, or were not far short; cotton was making great strides; there
were superb cattle-raising ranches. In a word, the wadera had become dynamic.
The Green Revolution has had social consequences. For many years there was
widespread socialist-populist propaganda to the effect that ‘the rich get richer while
the poor get poorer’. In fact — albeit within varying timeframes — all the landowners,
whether they have extensive, medium-sized or small landholdings, have followed the
Revolution, so that — thanks to more abundant harvests and a low level of mecha-
nization — the income of agricultural workers has risen. There are more jobs in
transport, small shops, building . . . Labourers use tractors more, so it is easier to get
two harvests a year out of the same piece of land. The sickle is still used for har-
vesting, but wheat-threshing is partly mechanized. ‘This global development process
has led to a better life for the poorest people in Sind and the Punjab, the NWFP and
Baluchistan, but there is still gross exploitation, especially in Sind.
There is still pluvial cultivation [barani] in the North Punjab plateaus (Potwar) and
some zones of the NWFP. Here, progress is slower, because lack of water means
there can be no true Green Revolution. There is limited irrigation potential. If
there are plenty of showers in winter, with the help of a little chemical fertilizer a
peasant can harvest between 1,200 and 1,500 kilograms of wheat per hectare. If
there are not, yields fall to 500—700 kilograms per hectare at the most. As for maize,
that depends on the monsoon, which is unpredictable but more copious than on the
plains. As in colonial times, emigration and the army are still safety valves: they allow
families to send sons out in the world to help make ends meet.
There has been enormous progress, but this is being jeopardized by demographic
pressure and by serious deficiencies which became more and more apparent during
the last decade of the century: the bad state of the irrigation systems, a decline in
agronomic research, incorrect use of several chemical fertilizers . .. Despite much
greater wheat yields, imports rose from 300,000 tonnes in 1980-81 to 2 million
tonnes in 1989-90.
Table 8.2 Agricultural statistics (July—June)
1949-1950 1989-1990
Net cultivated area 11.4 15.0 million hectares

Gross cultivated area 125 19.8 million hectares
Gross irrigated area 93 15.7 million tonnes
Use of chemical fertilizers negligible 1.9 million tonnes
(nitrates, phosphates, potassium)
Main cereal crops:

Wheat 3.9 14.3 millions of tonnes
Rice 0.8 3.2 millions of tonnes
Total cereals and foodgrainses 6.8
Ginned cotton 0.2 20.1 millions of tonnes
Sugarcane 7.8 1.6 millions of tonnes
Livestock:
Buffalo 5.8 14.7 millions of tonnes
Cattle Or 17.6 millions of tonnes
Milk productioness 7.8 14.5 millions of tonnes
Beef and mutton 0.55 1.37 millions of tonnes
Poultry 0.01 0.22 millions of tonnes
* Two annual harvests from the same piece of land

** Wheat, rice, maize, sorghum, millet and legumes.
*** The first milk and meat figures are for 1971—72.
Agricultural organization
China before 1949, India, Bangladesh and Java were so densely populated that
land redistribution was not easy to contemplate, and big estates of tens or hundreds
of hectares were very rare. In Pakistan, on the other hand, such redistribution could
be envisaged, because there were vast estates of more than a hundred hectares. But
since 1947, the landlords’ influence in local councils and assemblies, at both provin-
cial and national level, has persisted throughout all the various regimes: civilian or
military, authoritarian or democratic. Despite the move to democracy after 1988,

despite the huge advances made by the urban middle classes, the business commu-
nity and the liberal professions, out of the 207 seats in the National Assembly the
major landowners occupied 156 after the 1988 elections, 106 in 1990, 129 in 1993
and 126 in 1997. The overrepresentation of the prosperous agrarian strata clearly
precludes any thoroughgoing agrarian reform.
Things have certainly moved on. Thanks to the Green Revolution, many farmers
with a little land (2 to 5 hectares) have been able to raise their yields and their
income. The landless agricultural workers are less oppressed. Nevertheless, there will
be no tangible decline in the major landlords’ influence for some time to come.
Several important people in Sind and the Punjab now consider themselves entre-
preneurs, but the feudal structures are still in place.* Since democratization in 1988,
the press has revealed some things which have been going on for years, but were
never common knowledge. For example, the ‘great and the good’ in Sind had their
own ‘private prison’ where agricultural workers in their employ who fell into debt
were reduced to bonded labour, and sometimes chained up at night.? Elsewhere, in
the Punjab, employees of the village brickyard were subjected to forced labour.®
Although some major landowners did not win seats in elections, others still influ-
enced the electorate.
Table 8.5 Agrarian profile
Number of holdings Cultivated area

distribution in Yo
below 0.5 ha 13 l
0.5-1 ha 14 3
1-2 ha 20 9
2-5 ha 34 31
5-10 ha 12 23
10-60 ha p 27
over 60 ha below 1% 7
Source: Census of Agriculture, 1990.
President Ayub Khan’s agrarian reforms (he imposed aceiling of 200 hectares of
irrigated land) and those of Prime Minister Bhutto (60 hectares) were not particu-
larly effectual, because the landowners got together and shared out their estates
artificially within their own families.
The 20,000 landowners in the last category of Table 8.3 owned on average 100
hectares of cultivated land. Of these landowners, 5,000 owned more than 100—200
hectares. ‘There was another special feature: out of 5.07 million farmers, 3.5 million
were landowning farmers, 600,000 were both smallholders and agricultural workers,
and 954,000 were simply agricultural workers. This last category was especially preva-
lent in Sind. In other cases, since the Green Revolution, a number of landowners had
taken back the task of farming their own land, depriving their workers of employment.
Those with very small holdings sold their plots and went to work in the towns.
The relation between people and land was still better than it was in India and
Bangladesh, despite strong demographic pressure. Since three-quarters of culti-
vated land was also irrigated land, at least a third of which produced two harvests a
year (wheat—rice, wheat—maize, wheat-cotton), even those who owned only half a
hectare to a hectare were able to — or had the opportunity to — make a basic living.
Those who owned more than a hectare were less likely to be poor, and with 2
hectares or more a family did not do too badly, especially if there was a son or two
working outside in business, transport, small industry or the army.
Industry
The introduction of modern industry followed a pattern similar to the one that
began in the second half of the nineteenth century in the India of the time: initially
very localized, dominated by a few small communities, then spreading further and
further in spatial and social terms.
The starting signal was given in the 1950s. ‘Taking advantage of government
incentives, merchants — mostly from Bombay and Gujarat — became industrialists
and launched the textile industry — mainly in Karachi, the capital city at that time.
These small minorities — we could call them castes — were Khoja and Bohra Shi’a
and Memon Sunni , all descended from former Hindu merchant castes. The
Chinioti, whose name derives from the little town of Chiniot, were Punjabis, tradi-
tionally leather specialists. In around 1965, about ten families controlled 50 per
cent of modern industry, and in the 1960s in general, it was generally believed that
major industry was in the hands of twenty-two all-powerful families.
Gradually, other Pakistanis went into major industry — including the father of ex-
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, from Amritsar in the Indian Punjab, who established
a big iron-and-steel works at Lahore. The towns of the Punjab were industrialized,
just as Pashtun entrepreneurs were making their mark in Peshawar. Ginning facto-
ries, new mills and weaving companies grew up as a result of cotton cultivation. The
clothing industry began in the 1970s. Sugar refineries were established as the culti-
vation of sugarcane took off. There were several firms making chemical fertilizers
using gas from Baluchistan; there were also cement works, engineering companies,
machine-tool makers, manufacturers of vehicles, tractors and bicycles, often in part-
nership with Western or Japanese industry.
Despite the lack of iron ore and coking carbon, the authorities succumbed to the
temptations of heavy industry. In 1970 a steelworks was established in Karachi with
the aid of the Soviet Union. This project swallowed up alot of capital which could,
no doubt, have been better used in other branches of industry. Public-sector involve-
ment increased strongly during Bhutto’s regime; this led to the difficulties
enumerated above.
Small industry gradually broadened its scope: diesel engines, threshing machines,
agricultural tools, sports goods, small surgical instruments, leather goods, clothes,
carpets .. . By 1999, this sector accounted for 80 per cent of industrial manpower
and 30 per cent of exports. Small enterprises, which were not affected much by the
socialist policies of the 1970s, were not well supported by the banks, but
resourcefulness and family connections compensated for this with some success.
Their contribution made up about 5 per cent of GDP. This system had its flaws,
starting with the use of child labour — in the manufacture of carpets and sports
goods, for example — which is condemned regularly by international organizations
and numerous Western countries. Private bodies in Pakistan campaign bravely
against abuses which the government is trying to curb. Some progress has been
made, but we must realize that such matters are very complicated, and require a
judicial and policing system that can reach beyond the larger towns. Above all they
require health and safety inspectors anda police force that is not in league with small
businessmen and other influential local people.
As far as infrastructure is concerned, until about 1980 roads and electrification
projects were not much in evidence in rural areas; this hindered the development of
agriculture, commerce, and small industries. In due course the situation improved.
Despite some progress, main through roads were reaching saturation point between
1980 and 1990. As for electricity, after a phase of rapid expansion in urban areas,
such efforts ceased to keep up with the overall rhythm of development: an inade-
quate power supply, frequent and lengthy power cuts, badly maintained lines, and
lack of new investment were the norm during the 1980s. Power stations were run
mainly on natural gas from Baluchistan and imported oil, as were the big barrages.
Nuclear power played a very small part.
Finally, the banking system — which was very weak at first, because it had been
emasculated when the mainly Hindu managers left — grew stronger. Several private
banks have emerged in the main towns. Before the spate of nationalizations, the state
had already opened banks which were intended to support industrialization.
Table 8.4 Industrial production*
Cotton Cotton Chemical fertilizers

thread JSabric (active ingredients) Cement Sugar Steel
1949 8.4 See nil 0.4 0.017 negligible

1990 912 294.8 1.5 720 1.86 0.8
* In millions of tonnes, except for textiles; cotton thread in millions of kg; fabric in millions of square
metres.
Other industries, which had started from virtually nothing in 1947, achieved
these results in 1989-90: bicycles, 530,000; sewing machines, 107,000; vehicle tyres.
915,000; paper, 33,000.
Production of crude oil, which was negligible in 1947, reached 3.1 million tonnes
in 1989-90, while imports rose to 4.1 million tonnes of crude oil and 4.5 million
tonnes of refined oil. Power-station capacity rose from 1,862 megawatts in 1971—72
to 7,777 megawatts in 1989-90.
The rail network grew by only 200 kilometres between 1960-61 and 1990-91,
when it covered 8,775 kilometres. During these same years, road construction grew
appreciably: from 66,236 to 171,000 kilometres, half of these being hard roads,
mostly asphalted.
External economic relations and foreign aid

Between 1950 and 1990, Pakistan — unlike the East Asian tigers, but rather like
India — did not manage to promote its exports with the necessary force. The numer-
ous customs barriers, both tariff and non-tariff, started to be reduced between 1980
and 1983, but the balance of trade remained negative throughout this entire period.
For many years, the authorities have been worried about the prominence of
cotton textile and raw cotton exports (60 per cent of total exports). Leather comes
next, followed by rice and synthetic textiles. In 1947, nearly all exports were of raw
materials: raw cotton, skins, wool, rice for western Pakistan, jute for eastern Pakistan.
Gradually this situation changed: the proportion of raw materials in exports fell to
33 per cent in 1970 and to 20 per cent in 1990. During this time, the proportion of
manufactured products rose from 44 to 56 per cent, while semi-manufactured goods
remained stable (24 per cent). In 1990-91, the principal export markets were the
USA (10.8 per cent), Germany (8.9 per cent), Japan (8.3 per cent), the UK (7.3 per
cent) and Hong Kong (6 per cent). Among Pakistan’s main imports were equipment
goods (52 per cent in 1970-71; 33 per cent in 1989-90), consumer goods (11 and 19
per cent) and industrial raw materials (40 per cent). As for the main suppliers, they
were Japan (13 per cent), the USA (11.8 per cent), Germany (7.3 per cent) and Saudi
Arabia (6.2 per cent).
Table 8.5 Balance of trade (millions of dollars)
1980-1981 1990-1991
Exports aI 3S 5,902
Imports 5,008: 8,385
Foreign aid increased markedly between 1960 and 1965, then reduced because
American aid (except food aid) was suspended during the conflict between India and
Pakistan in 1965, and again in 1971. The level of foreign aid was kept down under
the Bhutto regime, but there was a strong rise between 1980 and 1990. ‘Then the
USA again suspended economic and military aid, because it suspected that
Islamabad was in the process of acquiring nuclear weapons. Other external sources
of finance (the World Bank and the IME the Asiatic Bank, Japan, Germany, for
example), however, still gave generously. In 1989-90, external aid funded 25 per cent
of investments: 80 per cent came from international institutions, Western countries
and Japan, the remainder from Middle Eastern countries and China.
The Finance Ministry raised the alarm as early as 1991: in ten years the level of
aid had doubled, as had debt servicing which, combined with domestic debt,
threatened Pakistan with an impossible dilemma. Of the 2.2 thousand million
dollars worth of aid given in 1989-90, 1.2 thousand million went in debt servicing,
leaving a net transfer of 970 million. With an optimism that would be rudely shat-
tered, ministry experts put forward a solution to this problem: achieving 10
thousand million dollars worth of exports in 1993 (the actual level was 6.8 thousand
million).
As well as credits — generally on favourable terms — Pakistan received grants —
especially from Japan, the USA and Arab countries — worth between 500 and 650
million dollars a year between 1985 and 1990. As for private foreign investment, this
reached an average of 66 million dollars a year between 1978 and 1985, and 166
million between 1985 and 1990. This was quite a respectable total compared to that
of India, as a result of a less restrictive policy. Nonetheless, these amounts were too
small to have much of a beneficial effect on the balance of payments.
Between 1950 and 1990, the economy showed signs of remarkable vitality on sev-
eral occasions. Quite apart from these fluctuations, the economic landscape had
changed considerably, thanks to the development of major industry and the strength
of the small business sector, particularly in the Punjab. If we take Asia as a whole,
Pakistan’s industrial sector came after those of China, India and South Korea —
which had started out at a higher level with the first five-year plans — and belonged
to a middle-ranking cluster of countries including Indonesia, Thailand and the
Philippines. It was ahead of that of countries like Bangladesh. ‘There was a notice-
able modernization process in the countryside with the advent of the tractor, new
seeds, chemical fertilizers. Equally important was the improving infrastructure: roads
and power supplies. ‘The development of the service sector (banks, commerce)
spread from Karachi and Lahore to a growing number of medium-sized towns in
Sind, in the Punjab, in the NWFP. Very few regions were left out of this overall eco-
nomic development process — mainly in Baluchistan and the FATA.
Any assessment of the years 1980-90, when there was relatively strong growth,
must, however, be qualified, because financial abnormalities gradually took root, or
increased, in both agriculture and industry. Around 1990, red warning lights were
flashing everywhere on the economic dashboard.
Economic Deadlock
The last decade of the twentieth century opened with a fanfare: the launch of a
reform programme which — as in India six months later — went much further than
the ‘small steps’ taken in the 1980s. Liberalization, opening up, deregulation, priva-
tization — these were the goals announced by Nawaz Sharif after his election victory
in autumn 1990. There were grounds for hoping that Pakistan would make better
use of its advantages, and be able to resolve the problems that were beginning to
undermine the economy.
Public-sector companies were privatized, and bureaucratic shackles on the private
sector were loosened. Measures were taken to attract foreign investment. Certain
subsidies (for pesticides and fertilizers) were abolished or reduced. But after an
encouraging start, the process seized up. Frequent changes of government, domestic
problems, pressure from lobbies which blocked tax reforms, corruption, and all
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT i793
kinds of other misuses of power held up development.

Nine years later, in a speech on 15 December 1999, General Musharraf gave a
sobering account of the economy. A whole series of blockages had made their mark.
Some of these arose from domestic economic and political factors; others were
linked to the international situation. The underlying difficulties outlined above
assumed unprecedented dimensions between 1990 and 2000. Never, since 1947, had
the economic future looked so bleak. Nevertheless, Pakistan still had some human
and material assets. Would the country be capable of making better use of them?
The political burden

In a world that is becoming more open to foreign investment and trade, it stands to
reason that the hostile relations between Pakistan and India — whichever party might
be to blame — are not compatible with strong economic expansion. Nuclear tests by
the two neighbours in 1998 led to stiffer penalties for Pakistan, even if some of the
sanctions were gradually lifted, because its economy was much more vulnerable than
that of India. The mini-war in Kargil in spring 1999 did not improve Pakistan’s
image; nor did the hijacking, in December 1999, of an Indian Airlines plane by
Islamic militants demanding freedom for mujaheddin prisoners in Indian Kashmir.
In 2000, relations between the two countries were at their lowest ebb, full of mutual
bitterness and mistrust.
Pakistan’s international status looks increasingly precarious. After the Russian
withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, relations between Washington and Islamabad
became strained; military and economic aid stopped in 1990. During abrief visit to
Islamabad in March 2000, President Clinton made his position quite clear in a
rather chilly atmosphere. In his speech, which was broadcast on radio and television,
he emphasized Pakistan’s increasing isolation, and the need to combat international
terrorism, to cease violence in Kashmir and to get back to democracy without delay.
His exhortations did not seem to make much impact over the next few months.
Relations with China had cooled; relations with Iran were difficult. In both cases the
major reason was Islamabad’s support for the Taliban in Kabul. Iran was very hos-
tile to this, and China was worried that an upsurge of fundamentalism in the region
would encourage the Muslim Vigurs in Xinjiang (Sinkiang).
Since the beginning of the Afghan wars there has been an explosion of madrasahs
in Pakistan — there are now 5,900 with 500,000 pupils, thanks to funding from Saudi
Arabia, direct or indirect CIA support until 1989, and the encouragement of the Zia
government. In many madrasahs, religious instruction is followed by training in the use
of kalashnikovs, rocket launchers and explosives. At the same time there has been a
proliferation of extremist movements, with military training camps for Pakistanis
and foreigners. Here the holy war in Kashmir and ‘anywhere else’ in the world is
fomented — including war against the USA. This worries China, Western countries,
India (naturally), the Central Asian republics and Russia. The Americans are putting
pressure on the ‘Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden, the Saudi millionaire
accused of international terrorism, who is very popular with Pakistani militants.
This proliferation of extremist movements also has its effects within the country;
people are afraid that the state and society will be “Talibanized’. As for young
Pakistanis who go to fight in Kashmir or Afghanistan, they do not serve as a calming
influence on their return.
Naturally, problems inside the country have had economic repercussions. Since
the late 1980s, Karachi, home of 35 per cent of major industry, has been racked by
violence: murders, politically motivated criminal gangs, struggles between groups of
Muhajirs and Pashtuns, trouble between Sindis and other communities. Some indus-
trialists have transferred their factories to the Punjab, where there are fewer
disturbances; others are sitting tight, waiting for things to settle down. As for foreign
investors, they are in no hurry to set up in Karachi. Bloody clashes between Sunni
and Shi in several big towns and in rural areas (Jhang in the Punjab, Parachinar in
the FATA, Gilgit in the North) aggravate the situation.
The trade in heroin from Afghanistan and Pakistan’s Tribal Areas is a further
complication. Heroin production, which rose during the war against the Soviets, shot
up under the Taliban. Another consequence of the Afghan wars is arms trafficking,
because arms consignments from the USA, Arab countries and China have not
crossed the border. Breaches of common law, extortion by every kind of gang,
clashes between Pashtun tribes, and rural violence in Sind and the Punjab complete
this picture. Is it any wonder that Pakistan’s industrialists are reluctant to invest? Is
it surprising that foreign firms and foreign financial backers — of commercial invest-
ment or public development aid — hang back?
Since its creation, Pakistan has been trying to achieve a satisfactory balance
between central government and the provinces — a task made all the harder by
Punjab and Punjabi influence over politics and the army. This question is still not
settled. For example, Pakistan urgently needs to increase its water resources. For
thirty years, a planned barrage on the Indus at Kalabagh has been blocked by
squabbles between the Punjab, which is in favour, and Sind and the NWFP, which
are against.
Finally, public services are crumbling rapidly. The ranks of good, honest and
competent public servants — and there have been many — have been depleted by
political and bureaucratic manipulation: arbitrary sackings under Ayub Khan or
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto; biased recruiting with no regard for qualifications by Bhutto
senior and his daughter, and by Nawaz Sharif. One senior civil servant has regret-
ted the fact that it is ‘very difficult to find honest, experienced senior managers’.
‘This problem is accentuated by the fact that some civil servants prefer to remain in
their province and take advantage of a not particularly savoury situation.’
Democracy and development

Despite the margin for error, GNP figures are more or less accurate indicators.
Between 1990 and 1995, GNP grew on average by 4.6 per cent a year, falling to 3.5
per cent between 1995 and 1999 and recovering to about 4 per cent in 1999-2000.
During the Zia years (1977-88) there was an average annual growth rate of 6.24 per
cent — almost as good as during Ayub Khan’s term of office in the 1960s.
It would be simplistic to conclude from this that democracy and development are
incompatible. The governments of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz had inherited the dis-
tortions that emerged under General Zia — or before, if we remember the low tax
revenue and the relatively low level of savings. Nevertheless, the seeds of political trou-
ble were sown during the Zia era. The two leaders, each in their own way, made
mistakes and handled matters badly, but such things do not have much to do with
democracy. As for the fall in cash remittances from workers in the Gulf, that, of
course, is not directly linked with politics. It is not democracy itself which is the
main reason for the economic deadlock, but the way it works. Pakistan — like
Bangladesh in a different context — is proof that democracy is not the magic remedy
which many development strategists consider it to be. Between 1950 and 1970, they
were playing a completely different tune: ‘Underdeveloped countries are not ready for
democracy; what they need is a benevolent dictatorship.’ This judgement looks as
reductive as the one put forward today — on the one hand we have the economic and
social success of South Korea and Taiwan long before they became democracies in
the late 1980s; on the other we have the many failing dictatorships in Africa and the
Middle East.
Financial difficulties
The deep-rooted defects in the financial system have finally led to a disastrous situ-
ation where the combination of domestic and foreign debt constitutes a double
trap. Some of the sanctions imposed after the 1998 nuclear tests have been lifted; this
has restored foreign aid and facilitated negotiations with the World Bank, leading
Western countries, Japan, and various international commercial banks. In this way
Pakistan has secured a rescheduling of 2.9 thousand million dollars (public and
commercial credits). These measures are welcome, but they have only afforded
some breathing space. Negotiations with the IMF with a view to new debt resched-
uling arrangements have proved difficult.
After the nuclear tests, the government froze sums held in foreign currency in the
country by the Pakistanis, obliging them to be paid in rupees to make up for the
shortfall in foreign currency resulting from the sanctions. This measure, which would
be revoked by General Musharraf’s government, undermined savers’ confidence
and jeopardized subsequent money transfers.
Table 8.6 Debt

ee
e ee e ee
1990-1991 1999-2000
Domestic debt 448 1,622 billion rupees*

Foreign debt L529) 38 billion dollars (March 2000)
a TG
* 1999: 1 dollar = 51 rupees; 2000: 1 dollar = 54 rupees.
-
Foreign debt includes six thousand million dollars’ worth of short-term commer
state
cial credits. The cost of servicing both debts accounts for 65 per cent of
cent
revenue as against 48.6 per cent in 1994—95, while tax receipts fell from 17.2 per
of GDP in 1993-94 to 16.2 per cent for 1997—2000. In view of this general stagna-
tion, it is not surprising that rates of saving and investment, which were already low,
fell further. Between 1960 and 1990 the rate of saving averaged 13-14 per cent of
GDP; the rate of investment 16-17 per cent. In 1998-99 they were estimated to be
12 and 14.8 per cent respectively. There was one positive factor: inflation, which had
risen sharply, fell from 8 per cent in 1997—98 to 6 per cent the following year, then to
3 per cent at the end of 1999. Thanks to foreign aid, foreign currency reserves
emerged from their nadir of 400 million dollars in June 1998 to reach 1.5 thousand
million dollars in April 2000, although this level cannot be relied upon.
Other exterior sources of capital also dried up. Foreign currency remittances
from workers outside the country, which had already been dropping for many years,
continued to fall. Between 1980 and 1985 they stood at an annual rate of 9.3 per
cent of GDP; this fell to 3 per cent for 1990—96. This fall accelerated after 1998-99:
1,060 million dollars compared with 1,490 million for 1997-98. It fell again the fol-
lowing year.
Disagreements between Nawaz Sharif’s government and foreign electricity com-
panies which had begun to build power stations also had a negative effect on future
private foreign investment (see below).
Moreover, some foreign companies, banks and factories shut up shop and left
Karachi. Others played a waiting game: putting their expansion plans on hold, or
cancelling them. Nevertheless, as we shall see, some multinationals continued to do
good business.
For all these reasons, foreign private investment, which had been encouraged by
the reforms of 1990, fell back. After a flood of 3.4 thousand million dollars between
1992 and 1997 — which was excellent — things wound down. Portfolio investments
collapsed: between 1997-98 and 1998—99, 9 million dollars compared with 204;
direct private investment went down from 436 million to 296 — a trend which inten-
sified in 1999-2000.
A Supreme Court ruling at the end of 1999 forbidding the charging of interest
on loans, since this is against the laws of Islam, did not make domestic or inter-
national financial agreements any easier. Hopes — aroused by the 1990 reforms — that
development could be fuelled by exports, have not been fulfilled. The financial
crisis in East Asia has certainly did not helped matters, but the prime movers go
deeper, and originate within the country itself. Between 1995 and 1998, exports
went up on average by only 2.1 per cent a year, and imports fell.
A rise in exports in 1999-2000, owing to strong performances by cotton and
rice, did not make up for the rise in the price of imports, which rose in the wake of
oil prices — by about a thousand million dollars.
A marked influx of contraband goods from Afghanistan (from cars to refrigera-
tors, televisions and other semi-durable consumer goods) harmed local economies.
For the Taliban this, like heroin, was a way of getting hold of foreign currency.
‘These goods come mostly by plane from Dubai via Kabul. Losses of public revenue
rose to as much as a thousand million dollars a year. International sanctions imposed
on the Kabul government in late 1999 put an end to air trafficking from Dubai, but
other channels opened up — for instance, ground routes via Turkmenistan and Iran.
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT L79
Table 8.7 Foreign trade (millions of dollars)
Exports Imports
1997-1998 8.6 10.1

1998-1999 Toh 9.3
1999-2000 8.4 10.5
An economy of wastage
Pakistan, like China and India, suffers from what is called an economy of wastage,
which goes much further than corruption alone. It is a matter of mismanaged allo-
cation of public funds due to political and administrative weakness, to overt or
covert grants which owe more to political opportunism than to a concern for social
justice, squandering money, lack of essential public investment, not enough spent on
infrastructure. Then there is loss of revenue: tax fraud, smuggling, non-collection of
taxes. Finally there is corruption, in all its various forms.
Rough estimates from local sources can provide some ballpark figures. Even if we
bear in mind that these amounts overlap to some extent, they reveal sizeable losses.
Table 8.8 An economy of wastage
Smuggling: 3-5 billion dollars per annum

‘Tax evasion: 2 billion dollars per annum
Bad bank debts*: 4 billion dollars (cumulative; 1999)
Unpaid electricity bills: nearly 2 billion (cumulative; 1999)
Theft of electricity from KESC**: 35% of production (1998***)
Losses to the state due to corruption: 2.5—5 billion dollars
e
eS eS e eee
* Arrears rose from 80 billion rupees in 1993 to 220 billion rupees in 1999. The list of defaulters
includes prominent figures from the administrations of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, and
numerous other politicans.
** Karachi Electricity Supply Corporation.
**« About 450,000 illegal connections; 46,000 rigged meters.
The black economy represented 50 per cent of GDP in 1998 as against 20 per
cent in 1973. This does not include income from drugs. The size of this economy
explains — and we will come back to it — why the economic situation is not as bad as
official statistics seem to indicate. Obviously, if this situation were rectified it would
free up huge capital sums which, if they were used better, would set the economy on
a more solid footing.
A new lease of life for agriculture?

Big irrigation projects, the growth in the number of tubewells and the Green
Revolution held the promise of agricultural progress; nevertheless, the alarm bells
began to sound long before Nawaz Sharif’s reforms in late 1990. These reforms
made little impact on the rural world — this also happened in other Asian countries,
including China and India.
The same applied to international cooperation, which had been so active at the
beginning of the Green Revolution. State agricultural aid to developing countries fell
after 1980. According to John Mellor, ‘In American aid programmes, the number of
specialists has fallen by 81 per cent over the last decades. ‘The attitude of European
donor countries has followed this pattern.’
Since ancient times, irrigation has been of paramount importance in Pakistan. At
the present time it is the greatest obstacle to agricultural progress. The canal system
has been deteriorating for decades owing to lack of maintenance and investment —
not to mention the declining quality of the irrigation authorities, and the spread of
corruption and other abuses. Barely more than 35 to 40 per cent of the water in the
canals reaches the plants, and this deficit is only partially compensated for by tube-
wells. Systems which are dependent on electricity still experience power cuts due to
faulty supplies.
Bringing the system up to scratch would be a herculean task: there are 61,000
kilometres of canals, 88,000 outflows, numerous diversion barrages in a state of
disrepair and 1.6 million kilometres of watercourses. As far as watercourses are
concerned, there was progress in the 1980s: the restoration of these small, partly
cement-lined canals, which reduced water loss, in return for a modest investment
to which the farmers themselves contributed. Since 1990, however, there have
been fewer such initiatives. In 1995, a World Bank report noted that the irrigation
system was at ‘breaking point’. Two years later, Manzur Ejaz elaborated: ‘The
system has deteriorated to such a point that it will be impossible to restore it in a
few months. This is why it does not seem realistic to count on a rapid recovery for
agriculture.”®
As for the Kalabagh barrage project, it is still deadlocked. Nonetheless, it is more
of a priority in view of the fact that the Tarbela barrage upstream is less effective
because it is silted up — this problem has haunted these major constructions for many
years. Even if an agreement is reached, where will the necessary 12 thousand mil-
lion dollars come from?
Waterlogging and salinity are also problems for the future. Both seem to be on the
rise, despite drainage works.’ Salinity can reduce harvests by 25 per cent — up to 40
or 60 per cent in the worst-affected parts of Sind. Again there must be a two-
pronged attack: better maintenance of pumps and drains, and new projects.
Basic research also leaves a lot to be desired. In early 2000, Kauser Abdulla
Malik, President of the Agricultural Research Council, noted that the rich seams of
research opened up between 1960 and 1970 had run dry. Funds were inadequate,
and overall budgets allow for four or five civil servants for every researcher.!° The
development and popularizing of new seeds also suffered from a lack of public
funding. Finally, the system of credit from banks or cooperatives had been
inadequate and inefficient for many years. Lack of liquidity, nonrepayment of loans,
and abuses of the system by big landowners made it less effective.
In addition, there were technical problems. Until 1991, thanks to research and
popularization programmes (the propagation of new techniques), cotton production
had done very well, especially in the Punjab. Since that time, Pakistan has been
dogged by bad luck: the dangerous leafcurl virus struck in 1992, and the usual pes-
ticides had no effect on it.
Before the Green Revolution, farmers grew wheat from November to April [radi]
and during the monsoon [kharif] sorghum, millet, even maize, part of this crop for
animal feed. Other farmers grew mainly cotton, sown in May and harvested in two
or three stages until December or early January. Yet others concentrated on rice
during the monsoon and contented themselves with growing secondary crops
between November and April. Today, a number of farmers grow wheat after cotton,
but they cannot sow their wheat in November, the ideal month, because the cotton
harvest is still going on; this holds up the sowing and leads to lower yields. It would
be better to create new varieties of wheat with a shorter growth cycle. Rice tends to
replace the traditional monsoon crops because it is more profitable; this, too, delays —
albeit for a shorter time — the sowing of wheat.
In the last decade of the twentieth century, the weather turned nasty; after 1987,
while India enjoyed moderate monsoons, Pakistan had to face up toa series of nat-
ural catastrophes. On several occasions it was abnormally excessive rains battering
Sind and the Punjab; they ruined the cotton, which is vulnerable to both drought
and too much water, and very much at the mercy of the parasites which multiply if
there is heavy rain. Over the last few years, too, scanty winter showers have also held
up the harvesting of wheat which was already insufficiently irrigated, especially that
of wheat which is completely dependent on rain.
In 1991-92, cotton production reached its peak: 2.2 million tonnes. Its decline was
matched after 1995 by a modest growth in wheat production, while the growth in
rice production was more sustained. Sugarcane production grew even more rapidly
until its steep fall in 1999-2000. Between 1980 and 1984, wheat imports fell to
350,000 a year. After 1988-89 they fluctuated between 2 and 2.5 million tonnes,
reaching a peak of 4.1 million in 1997-98, then falling back to 2.5 million in
1998-99. Rice exports rose from 1.2 million tonnes in 1990-91 to 1.8 or 2 million
tonnes in recent years.
In 1999-2000, things began to look brighter. Rice and cotton had favourable
monsoons in 1999, and wheat production continued to grow, to the point where
Pakistan became an exporter. Favourable government measures, a bigger growing
area, timely winter rains and better fertilizer distribution go some way towards
explaining this success.
Other sectors of the rural economy have shown greater dynamism over a decade
by
or so. Cattle-raising by big and middling landowners — even, in some areas,
ent
smallholders — is developing rapidly. By 1992 or 1993 there were already magnific
cows
ranches in Sind and the Punjab where, in well-maintained stables, lived rows of
whose milk
crossbred from both local and foreign breeds (Holstein, Frisonne, Jersey)
and
production was better than that of pure local breeds. The raising of male
43.6
female buffalo, cows and bullocks flourished: 35.5 million animals in 1990-91;
to raise fewer bul-
million in 1998-99. The growing use of tractors made it possible
locks and more cows and she-buffalo.
transport
In recent years, better country roads have made it easier to collect and
Table 8.9 Agricultural statistics (millions of hectares)
Cultwated surface Irngated surface

(net) (gross) (gross)
1989-1990 15.0 19.8 boty

1999-2000 16.7 229 18.0
Agricultural Cotton Total cereals

year Wheat Rice (ginned) Sugarcane and vegetables
1989-1990 14.3 SZ 1S 35.5 19.9

1995-1996 16.9 Bye 1.8 45.2 23D
1997-1998 18.8 43 1.6 53.1 24.9
1998-1999 18.1 4,7 1S SD 20,3
1999-2000 21.0 ae Re) 46.3 26.8
milk, even if there is still some way to go. Nestlé, for example, collects milk from
2,000 villages for it two centres — at Sheikhupura, near Lahore, and Kabirwala,
near Multan. The company buys 170 million litres (the figure for 1999) direct from
the farmers, for which it pays cash, thus avoiding the middleman and benefiting
producers. Turnover went from 800 million rupees in 1992 to 5.5 thousand million
rupees in 1998 — a tripling in real terms, allowing for the rupee’s fall in value.
Fruit and vegetable growing are making progress, as is flower growing; here, a
small farmer can make abig profit on less than half a hectare of well-irrigated land.
Here and there little ponds destined for fish farming have sprung up; these, too, are
profitable.
Table 8.10 Growth of production (thousands of tonnes)
Meat
Milk (beef and mutton) Poultry Eggs Skins
1971-1972 7,800 554 14 583 millions 21

1991—1992 16,280 1,500 169 4,490 40
1999-2000 25,560 1,635 322 8,463 45
‘To be sure, the figures in Table 8.10 are approximate, especially the number of eggs
(!). Nevertheless, they are interesting because they are indicative of trends. The
number of goats and sheep rose more slowly: 47 and 24 million respectively in
1999-2000. Fruits such as oranges, mangos, apples and apricots are also grown in
large numbers, and many are exported: 42 million dollars’ worth in 1990; 71 million
in 1999,
As for tools, rustic locally made threshing machines and new forms of transport
have made their mark. In the Punjab in 1992 there was astriking proliferation of
barrows with tyres pulled by a donkey. Until that time, donkeys had been used
mainly with packsaddles. The new method was cheaper than an oxcart or a horse-
drawn cart, even if it carried lighter loads. Who knows who came up with this
bright idea? Six years later, in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, six hundred kilo-
metres from Pakistan, the same carts were in use.
The diversification of the agricultural sector and of cattle-raising has an impor-
tant social dimension, because it creates more jobs in both upstream and
downstream areas: more intensive work on the land, packaging, transport, and the
use of several products for industrial purposes. It is quite an experience to see little
boxes of tomatoes piled up by the roadside ready for the lorries in the NWFP, the
potato seeds which go by lorry from Gilgit to the Punjab, or the milk-collectors who,
with half a dozen cans tied to their little motorbikes, go between the villages and the
milk-processing plants.
These trends, which are common to several Asian countries, have by no means
realized their full potential. They do not need too much help from the state — just
research, road maintenance and reliable power supplies. The small plots of irrigated
land they need are coming on stream, and can be watered by sprinklers or drips
installed by the farmers themselves. The advantage of these new methods is that
they use less water. A typical example is the apple orchards in the northern and
northwestern valleys, and in Baluchistan. Production rose from 130,000 tonnes in
1980 to 580,000 tonnes in 1998; 100,000 tonnes were exported to the Middle East,
but even this was not enough to satisfy the demand. Raising production levels and
quality could double exports and bring ina further 80 million dollars.
An overview of agriculture betwen 1990 and 2000 reveals some positive aspects
which could become more prominent. We must also take note of the resourcefulness
of these farmers, especially those who have a son or two helping the family by
working in town. At first sight, then, the situation in the countryside does not look
too bad. If you talk to the farmers, however, you get a flood of complaints: abuses
of the system, corruption, poor-quality fertilizer, sugarcane that withers away
because a power cut has stopped the tubewell and so on. Other farmers complain
about the government’s pricing policy for agricultural produce.
The problems that plague the rural economy are not going to cause a serious col-
lapse of production. Recoveries like the one in 1999-2000 are still possible.
Nevertheless, enormous public investment is called for, especially for projects involv-
ing water. It is not clear where this is going to come from.
The industrial sector
There has been a perceptible slowdown: the industrial production indicator went
from 100 in 1980-81 to 202 in 1990-91, but was only 270 in 1998-99. Large indus-
try was the worst affected: a 2.5 per cent annual growth rate between 1995 and 2000
compared with 8 per cent between 1980 and 1990. Small industries account for 30
per cent of exports and 5 per cent of GDP, and absorb 80 per cent of industrial
manpower. The Punjab is still ahead, but several small enterprises have been
established in the northwest and in Sind. The small industrial sector has also been
affected by the downturn, with a 5 per cent annual growth rate compared with 8 per
cent between 1990 and 1995.
Despite longstanding efforts at diversification, the cotton industry’s share has not
shrunk much: 27 per cent of industrial production, 60 per cent of exports (includ-
ing raw cotton) and 38 per cent of large-industry employment.
These global figures mask differences within each branch. In 1990 there were
already completely refurbished textile factories in Karachi. New mechanical engi-
neering and car firms sprang up. But a thousand firms were classified as ‘ailing
companies’ — badly managed and on the verge of bankruptcy, although some of
them had the benefit of bank loans on favourable terms. General Musharraf’s gov-
ernment is trying to find 400 million dollars in aid to revive some of them. Because
of the economic climate, many factories — including Karachi’s steelworks — are
operating at 50 to 70 per cent capacity.
Table 8.11 Industrial production
Cotton fabric Cotton thread Cement Nitrate fertilizer

(millions of (millions of kg) (millions of (millions of
square metres) tonnes) tonnes)
1990-1991 293 1,040 7.76 2.05

1997-1998 340 1,530 9.36 3.30
1998-1999 384 1,540 9.60 3.40
Source: Economic Survey, 1998-1999; 1999-2000.
Non-nitrogenous fertilizers are not growing much. The same goes for many con-
sumer goods: bicycles, sewing machines, tyres. At the Karachi steelworks, production
of cast iron for steel fluctuates around the million tonnes mark. The vehicle indus-
try — jeeps, cars, lorries, tractors — is having a difficult time. Then there is the
privatization programme. Between 1991 and 1992, 70 companies were taken out of
the public sector, followed by 40 more before 1998; these included companies in the
car, cement, fertilizer and food industries, and five banks. Further privatization of
gas, oil and big electricity companies is being discussed or under way. Even if it
seems to lead to irregularities which are not to the state’s advantage, the reduction
of the public sector cannot fail to benefit the economy as a whole. The fall-off in for-
eign aid and private investment has also had a negative effect on Pakistan’s
industrialists. Although industrial production rose slightly in 1999-2000, there is no
prospect of a real recovery.
The energy sector

As we have seen, the discrepancy between supply of and demand for electricity
became critical in 1990, with a 15 per cent shortfall in supplies, reaching 33 per cent
in peak hours. In order to remedy this situation, in 1993 Benazir Bhutto’s
government set up a Task Force on Energy. At that time, India was in the same sit-
uation, and is still, as a result of indecision and bureaucratic foot-dragging which are
hardly likely to tempt investors. Pakistan began by finding out what other countries
ike Chile, Argentina, Thailand and the Philippines were doing. The country needed
an extra 3,000 megawatts as quickly as possible.
Thanks to an arrangement that was extremely favourable to foreign partners, the
Independent Power Projects (IPP) were started: private power stations produced
electricity which was bought by the WAPDA (Water & Power Development
Authority) or the KESC (Karachi Electricity Supply Corporation). As a result of
complex agreements, government borrowing from international banks, foreign pri-
vate investment and the participation of the World Bank, sixteen new power stations
were started. Once they were completed, they would provide 4,650 megawatts at a
cost of about 5 million dollars. The first few began to function.
This apparent success is misleading, for political as well as economic reasons. After
its return to power in February 1997, Nawaz Sharif’s government accused Benazir
Bhutto of receiving generous ‘under-the-table’ payments, and the IPP of corruption,
and demanded that the contracts should be renegotiated. An editorial in the daily
Dawn on 25 September 1999 spoke of ‘a witch-hunt which harasses foreign investors
and undermines the country’s image abroad’.
Table 8.12 Power stations
Hydroelectric Thermic Nuclear Total (mw)
1990-1991 2,890 5,741 LSI 8,768

1993-1994 4,726 6,456 137 11,319
1997-1998 4,825 10,655 137 15,617
1998-1999 4,825 10,763 137 729
1999-2000 ~ = = 16,764
Sources: Economic Survey, 1998-1999; 1999-2000.
The government supplied no proof, so the question remains open. On the eco-
nomic front, the situation is clearer. Since 1991 the two electricity companies have
become less efficient. Partly because supplies are being stolen, 45 per cent of pro-
duction is lost, and the sum total of unpaid electricity bills amounted to 2 thousand
million dollars at the end of 1999. It is not surprising that the companies are on the
verge of bankruptcy, and that they are unable to afford electricity at the price agreed
with the IPP. The IPP agreed to reduce the price, but the whole dispute was still rum-
bling on in October 2000.
Although it is difficult to disentangle all the threads of this intrigue, certain facts
are clear. Today, Pakistan, which at one time did not have enough electricity, now has
a surplus. At the same time, the parlous state of the older networks leads to frequent
breakdowns and power cuts. There is one consolation, and it is an important one: if
an economic upturn does materialize, it will not be frustrated by lack of electricity.
What about other power sources? The search for oil deposits is not making much
progress: annual production remains at about 3.26 million tonnes. In 1998-99,
crude oil imports stood at 4.7 million tonnes, and imports of oil products at 1] mil-
lion tonnes.
Pakistan is well endowed with natural gas; new deposits have recently been found in
Baluchistan and Sind, taking production from 14 thousand million cubic metres to 20
(1990-98). For many years there has been a project to install gas and, possibly, oil
pipelines from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan, or from Iran. The first idea was frus-
trated by the ongoing civil war in Afghanistan; the second is still under discussion.
Hydroelectricity is also a promising option: huge barrages on the Indus (Tarbela down-
stream, Kalabagh upstream), and small power stations in the upper northern valleys.
Transport
The rail network is still 8,775 kilometres long. The service is heavily criticized
because it is badly maintained and has not been modernized; today, roads account
for 90 per cent of the movement of people and goods.
The road network comprises 139,000 kilometres of main roads and 110,000 kilo-
metres of secondary roads. The 7,144 kilometres of trunk roads take 63 per cent of
road traffic; 3,000 kilometres of them are in a poor state. According to a World Bank
study, it would take 450 million dollars to keep the trunk roads and local roads in a
decent state of repair. A magnificent toll motorway has been opened between
Lahore and Islamabad via Sargodha. There are other major construction projects all
along the Indus, including a direct route between Peshawar and Karachi.
Table 8.15 Methods of transport
cars, jeeps lorries, buses motorcycles, tricycles other vehicles*
1991 765,000 196,265 1,430,000 507,000

1998 1,167,635 251,000 2,130,000 714,000
1999 1,206,000 382,000 2,220,000 732,000
* tractors, horse-boxes, etc.

The overall number of motor vehicles is rising rapidly, placing a heavy burden on
the main roads. ‘Table 8.13 shows how important the black economy is: the number
of motor vehicles has gone up by 64 per cent in eight years — that is, by almost 8 per
cent a year: this is much higher than the official growth rate of GDP.
General Musharraf: a first assessment

General Musharraf’s coup was popular at first, but ten months later there was gen-
eral gloom and disappointment. Pakistan has become even more isolated
internationally, and many enlightened citizens consider that domestic problems
should take precedence over Kashmir. Military and religious organizations have
not been brought into line. As for public order, it remains precarious.
It is taking a long time to clean up public finances, so negotiations with the IMF
and the World Bank on foreign debt and new credits are delicate. Attempts to raise
taxes and reduce smuggling attracted strong opposition — from small shopkeepers to
Pashtun tribes who threatened to resort to arms if their profitable ‘business’ with
Afghanistan was jeopardized. Despite some success with better tax collection and the
fight against corruption, the financial situation is still shaky.
We are a long way from the situation that prevailed after General Ayub Khan’s
coup in 1958. As soon as he came to power, he tackled the economy with a series of
sensible and vigorous measures. No doubt he had an easier time than General
Musharraf, because smuggling, corruption and religious parties were much less in
evidence than they are today, and the Kashmir question was less burning than it has
been for the last ten years. We must admit that the future is uncertain.
Plus points
Despite all these doubts, there are positive factors in Pakistan which should stop the
country from falling apart. First, a resolute government that inspires confidence
could claw back some — if not all — of the millions of dollars that are wasted every
year; this would allow it to tackle the problems of the agricultural sector, fight
against environmental degradation, and boost industry with a well-run credit system.
Industry could forge ahead, because at the moment its capacity is underutilized.
Moreover, expansion would not be hindered by lack of electricity, as it is in India.
There would be more money for education and health. A rise in the consumption of
meat, fruit and milk, increased trade, and other signs like sales of domestic appli-
ances, whether they were smuggled in or not, confirm that large amounts of cash are
‘spread about’ throughout the country — the prosperous middle classes are not the
only ones with money. We must also consider something that eludes statistical and
economic analysis: sheer human resourcefulness, which makes up for gaps and
weaknesses in the system.
The contempt for politicians of every hue that is voiced everywhere, from the
depths of the countryside to the best districts of Karachi or Islamabad, should not
lead us to forget the more wholesome aspects of society: farmers with a few hectares,
craftsmen and small industrialists, business leaders who are consolidating their posi-
tion, eminent intellectuals, the many Muslims who are religious but not bigoted,
sickened by the fundamentalists’ hypocrisy and intolerance. The new middle classes,
both urban and rural, bear witness to profound changes whose political implications
are still not clear.
Despite an accelerating brain drain since 1999, there is no shortage of young
people with a good education, often obtained abroad; and not all of them are moti-
vated only by the desire to make money. Many multinationals, for instance, employ
very few expatriates; they have no difficulty in finding very competent executives in
Pakistan. In this respect, Pakistan, like India, has a big advantage over countries like
Indonesia or China, where the average cost of an expatriate and his family can be
as much as 250,000 dollars a year. In 1997, Nestlé employed 10 expatriates in
Pakistan compared to 102 in China, where its turnover was only four times greater
than its turnover in Pakistan (the population of China is nearly ten times bigger than
the population of Pakistan).
Although some multinationals are now reluctant to go to Pakistan, others are con-
fident of a bright future. Nestlé is counting on increasing its milk collection by 10 or
20 per cent a year, and dominates the growing market for bottled mineral water.
Novartis, which is heavily involved in pesticides and pharmeuticals, continues to do
business, and sees no reason to leave.
Ordinary people, who had no voice for many years, plumped for democratization
between 1988 and 1999. Nongovernmental organizations, brave and honest men
and women, roundly condemn abuses of the system, from the exploitation of chil-
dren to the treatment of women, and speak out against political scandal. ‘These same
people constitute a counterweight to the surge of fundamentalism, to which they are
totally opposed. Finally, there are politicians and senior civil servants who are known
to be honest and experienced. Some of them serve in General Musharraf’s Cabinet.
Afterword (July 2000)

Since 1999 there has been some improvement in the economy. Substantial external
aid came in following September 11, providing Pakistan with some debt relief.
Foreign exchange reserves have reached a fairly comfortable level, partly due to
higher remittances. The fight against corruption has made some progress. Yet the
fiscal deficit remains serious. Private investments fell in the past few years from 16%
to 14% of GDP, partly due to the law and order situation, partly due to political
uncertainty. Exports have remained at the same level in 2001/02 as in the previous
year, i.e. $9.2 billion. As for public funds available for development, they remain well
below the requirement for economic and social tasks. When we add the conse-
quences of a severe drought, there is no wonder why the growth rate in 2001/02 is
somewhere between 3% and 3.5% of GDP.
o
BETWEEN CASTE
AND TRIBE
When you take the Khyber Pass out of Afghanistan and discover the ‘world of
the plains’ — the great valleys that open out on to the immense valley of the
Indus — you wonder whether the human universe you are about to encounter,
which wants to be freed from Hindu influence, is not still, in some way, part of the
old hierarchical traditions described by Louis Dumont.! In Afghanistan itself —
contrary to the custom in Iran and Central Asia — people call one another sahib,
as if the culture of ‘rank’, familiar to us through the work of Rudyard Kipling,
had permeated the fiercely Muslim, warlike and egalitarian culture codified in the
Pakhtunwali. Does not this title acquire deeper and deeper undertones as you go
east and south?
Were there castes during the Indus civilization? This is a legitimate question inas-
much as we often find a distribution of socioeconomic functions between several
groups, all of which claim a common ancestry and practise endogamy, in societies
where one privileged group sets up its own relations of interdependence with those
it dominates. Archaeological evidence? suggests that the founders of the Indus civi-
lization, having acquired more wealth, technical ability and power than those from
more ancient cultures, made good use of their skill and their ability to work in
order to dominate other groups.
As Sir Denzil Ibbertson has observed,’ it would be rash to concentrate on the cre-
ation of hierarchical and functional relations between the subcontinent’s groups
according to a Hindu — and, more specifically, Brahman — view of a social order
linked to a cosmic order. In fact, a group’s identification with its lineage, as well as
its recognized or acquired role, is the result of practical necessity: wealth production;
the prevention of conflict. This identification — be it secular* or, on the contrary,
sanctified by religion — is proof against political and religious upheaval.
The Indus basin acquired its population by a process of sedimentation. In
other words, it was formed by successive layers of invaders who overcame for-
merly dominant populations. Throughout the past millennium, Muslim
conquerors have imbued present-day Pakistan with their personality, imposing
themselves on — or simply juxtaposing themselves to — societies organized along
lines sanctioned for many years by Hindu traditions, lines which go back to pre-
Aryan times.
At the end of this long maturation process, how is society organized in Pakistan?
More speciifically, what are the regional differences which must exist in such a
varied and densely populated country?
The Common Feature: The Importance of Blood Ties

(BIRADARI and QAUM)
The overriding importance of blood ties (real or mythical) seems to be common to
all population groups in Pakistan. This primary solidarity and pride in identity
which, together, allow an individual to claim his place in the social structure are
expressed in the word biradan or biraderi. This word, which defines a concept similar
to phratry, comes from the Persian word biradar, meaning ‘brother’.° In broad terms,
the biradari is the community of descendants from an ancestor who is still present in
the elders’ memory; hence it brings together about four generations: grandparents,
parents, brothers, uncles, and cousins of both sexes, and female partners. The fact
that this concept is expressed in a Persian word leads us to believe that it acquired
greater importance at the time when, under Persian conquerors, vast communities
were rearranged and scattered, while the simple extended family became the privi-
leged site of human relationships.
The biradari unites against adversity and adversaries. However, it is subject to
internal rivalry, generally between two of its branches. It is strongly cohesive in an
unstable or hostile environment — that is to say, when interethnic, sectarian or tribal
quarrels mean that it has to be on asort of war footing. But while social relations are
governed by tradition, and there is relative security and prosperity, rivalries rage at
the heart of a single biradan. They can be quite extensive, and attempts by certain
members to set themselves up as privileged heirs of the family tradition sometimes
give rise to implacable jealousy that can degenerate into violence.
The notion of the extended family is at the heart of all the ethnic groups in
Pakistan. Naturally, there are different words for it. The Pashtuns, for example,
speak of farbur, ‘cousins’, a word that sometimes has the sense of enemy, as if to show
how fatal rivalries that strike at the heart of a group which includes collaterals. In
other regions of the Punjab they use khandan, ‘family’, to denote this same social
group, while they use biradan for a much wider group of blood relatives.®
‘The gaum is a group descended from one ancestor — often eponymous, usually dis-
tant, and of some status. As with most of the languages spoken in Pakistan, this word
is of Arab origin. It is equivalent to the Latin natio: people who are linked by birth.
In its wider sense, gaum encompasses all those who are united by some kind of
common destiny — this could be a nation in the modern sense, an ethnic group based
on a linguistic community, a network of related tribes, a single tribe or even one part
of a tribe. Nevertheless, in many regions such parts are given specific names, such as
the Punjabi zat, which also means ‘caste’ (as we have seen, a caste is often simply a
tribe or an ethnic group with a certain status or function).
Every Pakistani is proud of his or her gaum. They identify with it even if it has suf-
fered reverses of fortune. They marry within it, and always hope that their gawm will
keep or recover a status that is worthy of its founding fathers, thanks to the diligence,
BETWEEN CASTE AND TRIBE 191
effort and intelligence of its members. In earlier times it was common practice for
the grandees of the same gaum in a given region to meet regularly to discuss ques-
tions of common interest. This does not happen so often these days, except in the
case of certain business gawm like the Memon.
The Millennial Substratum

Over the course of hundreds of years, blood communities organized themselves in
such a way as to keep the minimal level of peace that was indispensable to their
cooperation and, thereby, to their prosperity. To that end, they formed pacts or
enshrined their mutual relationships in statutes. In general, wherever an authentic
and solid tribal group came across groups that were less close-knit and less commit-
ted to defending their characteristics as a group, there was homogenization by
means of progressive assimilation.’
So, when these opposing groups were very homogeneous, relations between
groups linked by even nominal kinship, who were incapable of considering each
other as strangers, followed, after their own fashion, the biradari logic of social struc-
ture. In other words, when members of the same vast community were not fighting
a threat from the outside, they experienced internal conflicts — mainly over land, but
sometimes over influence or prestige. These struggles normally took place between
tribes or parts of tribes. This tribal culture in the midst of a homogeneous ethnic
group was prevalent in the west and north of the country.
Things were very different when heterogeneity prevailed, and was so pronounced
that any unity made up of several groups, even religious ones, seemed impossible.
When the conquering group was so small that their assimilation into one of the erst-
while dominant communities would have deprived them of all their ascendancy, they
formed an aristocratic or tutelary group superimposed on or juxtaposed to the pre-
existing one. This enabled them to bring out the differences and inequalities that
affected the people, and thus to strengthen their dominant role. Heterogeneity
became a stabilizing factor insofar as every clearly identified gaum — and even, in the
Punjab, every zat — had its function within society. Moreover, social ranks within
communities led to a certain collective social mobility — in a downward or upward
direction (this was usually a slow, surreptitious process).
Among the various conquering peoples, the Rajputs made a big impact on the
social landscape, creating a social order whose remnants are still present today in the
plains, the most densely populated area. The Rajputs — whom some have linked to
the fifth-century Hephtalite conquerors, while others say that they go back much fur-
ther in time — contributed to the creation of a stable social order which they
controlled with the Brahmans. The Rajput system — with its rules of chivalry and eti-
quette, its hierarchy of groups in strict ‘castes’ — played a major part in shaping the
king’, and
social mindset of the Indus civilization. Their name means ‘sons of the
they set themselves up as members of the ‘old nobility’ — kshatriya in Sanskrit.
Although their legitimacy was confirmed by the Brahmans, it owed more to arms
than to religion. They had no hesitation in treating the Muslim conquerors as equals
as soon as they had to deal with them; when they were islamized, they kept their
status and most of their ancestral customs. In short, for the most part they took on
the role of nobles and made it a dominant one, leaving the Brahmans to carry out
priestly duties.
Under Rajput suzerainty, other communities — albeit almost their social equals —
had a domainal function. The Jats were landowner-farmers with estates of various
sizes. On occasion the Jats and the Rajputs fought for preeminence; the Jats secured
and maintained it at the time when, and in regions where, Sikhism was triumphant
(the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, from Amritsar to Peshawar and
Bannu). Together with other, smaller, wealthy and warlike communities who also
spoke Indian languages — like the Gakkhar in the western Punjab — the Jats and
Rajputs vied with aristocratic groups from the west, who spoke Iranian languages:
the Baluchis and the Pashtuns (or Pashtuns).
Although there was some initial resistance, they brought their hierarchical social
vision to areas where heterogeneity was the rule. Thus there are still communities
who are allotted specific activities and, no doubt, the further back in time they were
subjugated, the lower their social rank. Even today, they are divided into categories
which correspond to a greater or lesser extent to the great stratification system of the
Hindu social vision: landless peasants, market gardeners, craftsmen, dustmen and
gravediggers — each of these categories including multiple subdivisions (especially
where craftsmen are concerned).
Can we call such an organization a caste system? Partly, inasmuch as these com-
munities are to some extent prisoners of their place in society, even if a modicum of
limited mobility is possible. Nevertheless, the endogamy they practise does seem to
be linked to origin, not rank. Thus communities from different stock do not marry,
even if they are on the same hierarchical level. These differences, however, are not
ritual differences; they are not concerned with categories like ‘pure’ and ‘impure’, as
in Hinduism — only with social hierarchy. Moreover, modern perceptions, influ-
enced by Western cultures, tend to merge the notion of caste to that of tribe, as the
use of the word gaum shows.
In general, everyone takes a pride in his ancestors and has reason to believe that
some of them, at a given moment, were eminent — even extremely important. Even
today there are communities which consider themselves Rajput, even though they
are confined to fairly menial jobs in their villages.® No one is surprised by this,
because in such a compartmentalized, hierarchical world, any group can, in one way
or another, believe that it is descended from fallen princes. If we simply observe the
hieratic pose of roadsweepers, for example, we can easily imagine that they are
descended from the people who brought the Indus civilization to its peak. This was
how the society in which the Rajput princes were able to follow their vocation as
leaders for many years was organized. ‘Today, this social space corresponds to the
densely populated regions of the Punjab and Sind.
Nonetheless, this is not the major part of Pakistan. Vast stretches in the west and
northwest are part ofa tribal (or other) regime where social functions are carried out
not by rigid groups but indiscriminately by any member of the clan, following a
random logic (in former times there was a system of taking turns, organized by coun-
cils of elders). So one’s rank is fortuitous, and its fluidity is not hindered by tradition —
quite the opposite. This tribal world played an important part in building the dom-
inant edifice of the Indus valley throughout the last millennium as it became
islamized. At the same time, Islam introduced its own hereditary elites: the descen-
dants of the Prophet, or Sayyid; those of his family, the Qureshi; those of the first
Arab conquerors of Sind and the Punjab in the eighth century, the Abbasi, and
other ‘Arabs’; finally, descendants of saints and holy hermits, the purzada. There are
also some remainders from epics of Iranian and Turkish conquests. All in all,
Pakistani society is characterized by structures which owe a great deal to the tribe but
also to the caste, and to the religious influence of Islam.
These structures, however, have changed over the last two centuries — first as a
result of an ancient evolutionary process which gradually speeded up in the days of
the British Empire; later as a consequence of the brutal shock of Partition. In order
to respond to the demands of royal or imperial power, the function of the nobleman
or leader gradually merged with the exploitation of land, because it was natural to
consolidate the military aristocracy by directing it towards agriculture. The British,
for their part, favoured the emergence of big latifundia, because this meant that they
could exercise a form of indirect administration through the medium of rich noble-
men — notably for taxation purposes. From that time on, the jagirdar and the
lambardar, general farmers, and — in atribal context — the khan and the sardar could
overtake the zamindar (landowner-farmers) in terms of income generated by their
purely agricultural activities. Simultaneously, a kind of hierarchy of autonomous
principalities emerged, vassals of the British Empire. Shortly before Partition, the
British entrusted a few big landowners with the cultivation of cash crops (cotton,
rice, sugarcane).
Later, there was a rigorous religious — but not social — process of standardization.
All in all, landholdings and other means of production remained in the hands of
people of the same social rank. The trend towards developing vast, modern, com-
petitive agricultural holdings, already present in colonial times, became stronger. So,
during the 1960s, Pakistan became one of the world’s major cotton producers with-
out experiencing major social change; this did not exactly promote social mobility.
If there were ‘nouveaux riches’ in the rural world, there were very few ‘parvenus’.
For the most part, the status quo prevailed.
Nonetheless, Partition brought into the country Muslim elites from the east, who
would take over responsible jobs and be leaders of the commercial, industrial and
banking worlds. They were mainly city people who sometimes acquired some land-
holdings in order to take their place in society, and put down roots.
This picture of social relations includes complex networks of solidarity between
genuine tribes, between semi-castes and between city-dwellers brought to the coun-
try by Partition. It does not take account of religious solidarities, which were mainly
characteristic of minority groups — Shi’a, Zhikri, Ahmadi, Christians, Parsees,
Hindus and Sikhs — nor the links between members of the same Sufi brotherhoods.
Finally, there were very strong ethnic and linguistic solidarities. Apart from the
major languages (Punjabi, Sindi, Urdu, Pashto, Baluchi), there were some ancient
and venerable ones like those spoken in the upper valleys, and some highly respected
ones like Saraiki, which is close to Punjabi and has a poetic literary tradition.
The social fabric, however, is the most obvious — and maybe the most determin-
ing — factor. The best way of looking at it is to take it from west to east, following the
trajectory of invasions and conquering elites over the centuries. In this way we can
situate the origins of large and important communities as they journeyed eastwards,
joining elites like the Rajput—Jat as they went.
The World of the Tribes

The genuine tribes have various origins, but are mainly Baluchis or Pashtuns. Most
often they are the result of the fragmentation of older tribes whose name lives on in
their memory.
In general, these tribes identify with an eponymous ancestor, who has bequeathed
his name to his direct descendants through the line of the eldest son. Some — but
very few — tribes are named after the ancient tribe from which all their kin are
descended. This ‘witness’ tribe does not necessarily have a leading role. Tribes and
their subgroups often bear the name of the eponymous ancestor, followed by an
ending — a simple 2, or az, zai or khel (the last two are more specifically Pashtun). ‘The
extended family is the tribes’ basic social unit. It is not always called a biradan, and
seems to be less plagued by internal conflict than more heterogeneous circles.
In the Indus basin — and sometimes even in the Ganges basin and in the Deccan —
the tribes have provided dynasties which had power over lands of very different
dimensions, from a small principality to an empire. Most of these dynasties no
longer speak their ancestral languages, and have even lost all ties with their original
ethnic group.
The Baluchis
The Baluchis, who came from Iran — more precisely, from the region of Kerman —
at the beginning of the fifteenth century, after a journey about which there are
many legends, spread pastoral and agricultural communities from the oases, who
had been under Persian influence for years, through all the coastal and mountain
regions from the Makran to the Sulaiman Mountains, by way of Afghanistan. They
have imposed a linguistic — even an ethnic — unity throughout the territory where
they have settled, including the previous occupants within their own tribal system.
Only one community who speak a Dravidian language but are Muslims, the Brahuis,
have preserved their own character. They were probably brought into the Baluchi
system in about 1490, to stop them in their conquering tracks and respect their pact
with Delhi, but they are integrated in real terms, since they have produced a dynasty,
the khans of Kalat, who arbitrate in tribal disputes, ensure the Baluchis’ cohesion,
and act as their representatives in neighbouring communities or states.
The Baluchi tribes made many incursions into Sind and the Punjab, where they
formed dominant communities, even princely dynasties. They were subdivided into
big groups, each group named after one of the four great ancestors — Rind, Hot,
Lashar orJato (the last name is a woman’s name). This form of membership is useful
mainly as a reference point in the study of tribal history; it was of little consequence
in the life of the tribes, whose affinities were dictated purely by self-interest.
According to the principle that the eponymous ancestor’s name was passed down
through a single male line, smaller tribes have the name Rind orJatoi; this is con-
sidered completely normal.
The tribe — twman’ in Baluchi —is led by a chief, the tumandar— the suffix dar implies
both responsibility and ownership. So the world of the Baluchis is a world of chiefs,
with all the rivalries, disputes over succession and forms of power that this implies.
The tuman are subdivided into para, and these in turn form phall, or clans. ‘Tribal
political problems often arise at the level of the para, for the simple reason that the
tumandar tends to favour his own para, while the others are inclined to disagree. This
emphasizes the important role that an outsider like the Brahui khan of Kalat can play
in settling conflicts. The name of the tribes — and especially of the para — is none
other than that of an ancestor, followed by an.
The westernmost part of Baluchi country, the Makran, is a mosaic of different
clans: some have broken away from tribes which remained on the Iranian side;
others, who came from the east, were attracted by the transit possibilities afforded by
the double border (Iran and Afghanistan) and the ports of Gwadar and Pasni. Of
this group on the road to integration, the Rind and Bil near the border, and the
Ghishki around Turbat, seem to enjoy a kind of good-natured supremacy.
Further east, we come to the world of the Brahui, where the family of the khan of
Kalat are traditionally dominant. This family had its hour of glory in the eighteenth
century when its head, Nassir Khan, managed to raise an army, representing all the
Baluchi tribes, which contributed to the conquering march of Ahmad Shah Abdali
(later Durrani), the last emperor, who came down from the mountains of present-day
Afghanistan (after several others, including Alexander the Great). The authority
exercised over the tribes by the /han of Kalat has been through periods of eclipse and
renaissance. It is now simply a kind of moral leadership and a capacity for benevo-
lence which are no equal for the importance that has gradually been acquired by
Pakistan’s central and provincial government. In order to strengthen their power, the
khan of Kalat welcomed into their ranks several Hazaras from central Afghanistan,
who are now well settled in urban areas, notably in Quetta.
In the eastern mountains, the social landscape is full of contrasts. This is an area
where rival tribes which have made their mark on Pakistan’s history and society
occupy adjoining territories. Going from north to south — that is, from the Pashtun
territory around Quetta to the Arabian Sea — the tuman concerned are: the Qasrani,
Drishak,
Bozdar, Sori, Lund, Khosa, Khetran, Leghari, Tibbi Lund, Gurshani,
Marri, Raissani, Bugti, Mazari and Bizenjo. 10 Their chiefs have the non-Baluchi title
—
sardar or nawab, and exercise real political authority. Power stakes — or mere prestige
can lead to endless conflict.
Rivalries between these tribes sometimes take the form of successive armed retal-
are even
‘ations and vendettas. But at the heart of each tribe, quarrels between para
Thus, for the
more compelling, and unite families which support the various factions.
the hostil-
Marri, sardar Kheirbakhsh belongs to the Ghazani clan; he must oppose
and, it is said,
ity of the Bijarani, who question both his authority and his policies
support of the two
have government support. For each faction, the idea is to gain the
other clans, the Loharani and the Mazarani. For the Bugti — according to the same
logic — nawab Akbar must grapple with periodic revolts by the Kalpar clan.
It is beyond the Derajat, a piedmont region that stretches along the right bank of
the Indus and includes Dera Ghazi Khan and Dera Ismail Khan, that we begin to
come across minority but dominant Baluchi tribes, which have been both superim-
posed on the oldest inhabitants and set alongside Pashtun groups. These tribes were
established at the end of their migration around the areas [derra] founded in about
1480 by Baluchi warlords, whose names they took. Some went as far as the Salt
Range in the north, to Muzaffargarh and Multan in the west (with some Rind trav-
elling to Lahore); others settled in the south, going as far as Shikarpur (with some
Leghari travelling to Hyderabad, and some Khosa reaching Bahawalpur). This
migration was facilitated by an alliance between the great Baluchi military leader
Mir Chakar and Emperor Houmayoun in 1555.
Nevertheless, these are still minority tribes. According to an Indian Empire census
at the end of the nineteenth century, they account for only 13 per cent of the pop-
ulation of Dera Ismail Khan, 9 per cent at Dera Ghazi Khan, 15 per cent at
Muzaffargarh and 19 per cent at Multan. Numerous Baluchi communities no longer
speak their native language; they speak Punjabi or Sindi dialect. They were super-
imposed on the Jat community, and seem to have absorbed some elements of their
culture. For the most part they are farmers, but in the semi-desert regions they are
still camel-drivers and caravaneers.
Among these tribes are several which also live in and around the Sulaiman
Mountains, notably the Leghari. We also find — going from north to south — the
Mihrani, Djiskani, Korai, Gopang and Sanghia, and tribes which have kept the
names of their great ‘founding fathers’: Hot, Jatoi, Rind, Lachari. Finally — but in
smaller numbers — the Chandia, Nutkani, Goshra and Mirani, to name but a few.
The importance of the Baluchi tribes is obvious when we look at the family
names of Pakistani politicians from almost every province — names are often the
names of tribes: Jatoi, Khosa, Leghari, Mazari, Mirani. Certain princely families
also originate from these tribes — for example, the rajahs of Dera Ghazi Khan, who
were Leghari.
This situation tends to temper the grievances of Baluchi leaders who claim that
their community has been subjected to ‘Punjabi colonialism’. In effect, several of
these so-called ‘colonizers’ are none other than Baluchis who, having carved out fief-
doms in the neighbouring province, have to a greater or lesser extent ‘gone native’,
and have finally ‘come home’.
In any case, the solution of continuity between the Baluchi world and the
Rajput—Jat world is by no means a violent one.
The Pashtuns
The advent of the Pashtuns is shrouded in legend, and provides much food for
thought. Given that Herodotus mentions names of ethnic groups or tribes that are
very close to those used in the same places today, it is tempting to conclude that they
have been in the region for a very long time. Their settlement process, however, was
patchy: some of their communities, called Kutchi or Powinda, are nomadic societies
which still practise a widespread transhumance — between the Central Asian plains
and the Indus basin, across the Hindu Kush.!!
The Pashtuns (the word probably comes from the adjective pakhtana) are also called
Afghans — some of them consider that this is the only way they should be referred to.
This is an ambivalent concept, because ‘Afghan’ refers both to members of an ethnic
group and to members of a multiethnic nation, Afghanistan. More than one inhab-
itant of Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province has no hesitation in calling himself
Afghan’, to the amazement of his foreign questioner, who wonders — sometimes
with some justification — if this is some kind of pun which emphasizes the ‘artificial-
ity’ of the Durand Line (which is, nevertheless, a hundred and ten years old).
In fact, Pashtuns and Pashtuns along various parts of this border have similar
social characteristics, and speak the same language, Pashto,!* which, however, does
vary, because it has been influenced by Persian on the one side and Urdu on the
other.
The Pashtun tribe, or gaum, is a less homogeneous social unit than its Baluchi
counterpart. The closer you get to the Indus, the more the Pashtuns accept members
of the artisanal community as hamsaya (see Note 8). This useful labour force forms an
integral part of the tribe, but for several generations its members have been kept in
a dependent position which means they cannot own land or marry out of their own
community.
Even further east, the Pashtuns are segregated from other, larger groups who
have the generic — vaguely pejorative — title of Hindkis orJats. In fact, although the
Pashtuns do not follow the caste system, they, like the Baluchis, cannot bring them-
selves to assimilate too many foreign elements. In places where they form only a
dominant and leading minority, they try to occupy a rank equivalent to that of the
Rajputs, and to make the Jats work for them.
Tribal life is governed by a complex power mechanism and by a way life that is set
down ina precise tradition, the Pakhhtunwali. The body at the heart of the tribe, with
supreme authority over communal life and the settling of disputes, is the deliberative
council, or jirgah. Management and external relations are entrusted to a chief, the
khan, who often comes from a group whose special function is to lead; this, in prin-
ciple, guarantees his legitimacy and impartiality. Collective life is mainly organized
at the level of the tribal fraction, who live in the same valley or, at the very least, in
a homogeneous demarcated territory. There, the representative of the community is
the malik, assisted and vouched for bya local jergah. ae
The tribes and tribal fractions take the names of their eponymous ancestors, fol-
lowed by endings: i, zai, khel or — rarely — ani (as in Baluchi) or échi (as in Turkish). ‘The
leading tribes or fractions are called khankhel, and their members are traditionally
respected.
The khan’s functions seem to have developed in colonial times, as principalities
were established or great estates grew up in a wave of land privatization. So the title
khan was assumed by sovereigns, autonomous nobles, feudal lords and important
landowners, and became hereditary. The Mongol and British empires largely relied
on khan of Pashtun stock to administer their territories. In the Pashtun context there
seems to be some kind of power game between khan and malik, settled with varying
degrees of skill by the jizgah and government authorities.
In Afghanistan, as in Pakistan, the Pashtun world split — especially after the eigh-
teenth century — into two big groups, each formed of related or simply allied tribes:
the Ghilzai and the Durrani. The Ghilzai were famous for the short-lived dynasty
founded by Mir Wais in Kandahar in the early eighteenth century; the Durrani for
the dynasty founded fifty years later in the same town (after the Afshar years) by
Ahmad Shah Abdali, later called Durrani — a dynasty which, after many vicissitudes,
consolidated the present-day Afghan border.
Although this relatively recent split was only one among many others, its impli-
cations for the Pashtun mindset over the years are undeniable. Thus, according to
some traditions, the Ghilzai were Mahmud of Ghazni’s chief supporters in his con-
quests, which took him as far as Delhi and beyond — they took their name from a
Turkish word which the sultan applied to them. Related groups are the Sarwani (or
Sarbani), and the Lodi, who founded two dynasties which occupied the throne at
Delhi between 1450 and 1555: one which bears their name, and the Suri. Moreover,
most of the Kutchi (or Powinda) tribes have connections with the Ghilzai.
As for the Durrani (formerly Abdali), their legends say that they are descended
both from a tribe of Israel and from the Companions of the Prophet. ‘They consider
that they are the only people who are worthy of the name Afghans, and they are
related to Shahab ud-Din of Ghor, who established the first sultanate in Delhi at the
dawn of the thirteenth century.
The Durrani are not the only ones who have ancestors from outside the Pashto-
speaking world. Indeed, there are several tribes in this position, and they all consider
themselves to be part of one or other of the two great groups. There are the Kakar,
who are said to have Kuchan ancestry; and the Waziri, who are reputedly Rajputs,
The Karlanri— who, with their numerous ramifications, could almost be considered
a tribal group in their own right — are of Turkish origin, and their ancestors were
brought to the region by ‘Tamburlaine.
These historical backgrounds — some recent and authenticated, others the stuff of
hypothesis or legend — show how constant the west-east migration was in the middle
Indus valley. Most of these population movements began in the tenth century, with the
Ghaznevids. They gathered momentum from the end of the twelfth century with the
arrival of Shahab ud-Din of Ghor; then — after the Mongol and Timorid agonies of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries — the Lodi and Sur dynasties, in their turn, encour-
aged Pashtun expansion. ‘The Great Mughals who came after them had no intention of
losing the advantages thus afforded to the consolidation of their empire. It was the
same — even more so — under Ahmad Shah Durrani in about 1750. From then on,
throughout Pakistan’s territory — especially in the big Punjabi towns — we find repre-
sentatives of an oligarchy of Pashtun origin, who no longer speak Pashto but cherish —
in a world passionately interested in genealogy — the memory of their ancestors.
‘These movements played a decisive role in the distribution of Pashtun commu-
nities. Around Quetta, the migratory waves of Pashtuns and Baluchis became
settled — all the more so in view of the fact that both reached their highest point at
the same time: in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. There is also a process of
osmosis in this region: a given tribe can gradually come closer to its neighbouring
ethnic group, and eventually become a permanent part of it. So the Khetran, who
are generally recognized to be Baluchis, may be of Pashtun origin; and among the
Pashtuns there are completely integrated tribes who are nevertheless called
‘Baluchis’. Opposite the Khetran, the Qasrani, and other Baluchi tribes from the
northeast of their ethnic territory are Pashtun tribes from the southwest of theirs: the
Tarine, close cousins of the Durrani; the Atchekzai from the same group, and —
more important in numerical terms — the Kakar. There do not seem to have been
big population displacements in this region, but only about a hundred kilometres to
the northeast you find yourself in the tracks of the great invasions.
If we look at Pashtun settlement from south to north, we see that the major
routes which enabled them to spread to the Indus basin were not uniformly open to
them, and that the Khyber Pass was not the most important path.
The Gomal Valley and the Zhob Pass, which both come out at Dera Ismail Khan,
seem to have been the preferred routes for numerous tribes — especially the Ghilzai,
many of whom subsequently formed part of ruling elites throughout the subconti-
nent. So did the Lodi (subdivided into the Prangi and the Suri), who, as we have
seen, put two dynasties on the throne in Delhi. The Sarwani and the Niazi, who set-
tled in neighbouring regions, became important feudal lords in Muslim kingdoms
and empires. The Niazi became governors of Lahore, and — in alliance with the
Ghakkar — challenged the authority of the Suri sultans.
To this prestigious number we can add the Sulaimankheil, Lohani, Marwat and
‘Tator — important in numerical terms. Less prevalent in Pakistan, but famous for
their members’ deeds, especially in Afghanistan, are the Hotaki, Kharroti, Kosar,
Nurkhel and Malekhel. Apart from these twelve or so tribes from the Ghilzai group,
there are two from the opposing group: the Shirani and the Ushtarani. The first
group were made famous by one of their outstandingly active and ambitious groups,
the Babar. The second are said to be descended from the Prophet and were instru-
mental in promoting the Babar, their longstanding allies.
Further north, in the regions of Kohat and Bannu — at the opening of the
Kurram, another important migration route — are Pashtuns who belong to the
Karlanri group. They may be less tribally diverse, but their historical role — and
hence their rise at the very heart of Pakistani society — are noteworthy. They are the
Mangal, the Bannutchi, the Daur, the Orakzai, the ‘Turi, the Jaji and, above all, the
.Khattak.
The Khattak, urged on by the waves of successive migratory movements typical
of the Pashtuns, went north and came to the right bank of the Kabul, where the
Emperor Akbar entrusted their chief, Akor, with the task of guarding the route
between Attock and Peshawar. From their capital, Akora, they dominated — and still
dominate — a goodly portion of the Kabul basin, in Pakistani territory. One branch,
the Bangikhel, seceded and withdrew to Bannu, showing how fatal internal dissen-
sion can be for any victorious tribe.
Finally, and even further north — around the Khyber Pass, and therefore in the
vast region that surrounds Peshawar — are well-entrenched mountain tribes which
settled many years ago, like the Afridi and the Shinwari.
As for the neighbouring plains, they are inhabited by Pashtuns from the Durrani
group, chiefly the Yussufzai, old adversaries of the Khattak for dominion over the
hills, plateaus and valleys around Peshawar, and, still further north, the
Ghoriakhel, origin of the famous Mohmand, a tribe which lives in territory
through which runs the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. From all these
tribes come great families like the Durrani, the Khattak, the Babar, the Niazi and
other khan.
In the High Northern Mountains

The influence on Pakistani society of the many and varied ethnic groups in the
mountains has not been particularly significant, but it cannot be ignored, since
these groups live close to the lines of communication which connect Pakistan with
Afghanistan, Tajikistan, China and India. These people have always been fascinat-
ing to researchers and tourists because of their unusual and ancient culture, and the
beauty and grandeur of their surroundings.
On the whole, their social structures emphasize the strength of blood ties, which
more or less correspond to kinship within the village. Their communal life is ruled
by fairly strict rules of honour and arbitration by authorities — either religious bodies
or deliberative councils.
If we look west, we find the Kalash, who have preserved their ancient polytheis-
tic religion, and their neighbours, the Koh. Then there are the Kohistani, whose
reputation as rough — even savage — people seems to be exaggerated; the Hunza,
Shi’a of both persuasions, who receive aid from their coreligionists (notably the
Aga Khan Foundation);and the Balti, also Shi’a, who live at the foot of the
Karakorum. Further south, the Kashmiris and Tanaoli live in the central pre-
Himalayan mountains to the north of the Punjab. We are all aware of the
Kashmiris’ political importance. The integrity and diversity of this archipelago of
cultural and linguistic social entities, all of which want to be independent and free
of destabilizing influences, are nevertheless under threat as a result of the economic
and political importance of Pashtun and Jat-Rajput communities.
The Punjab and Sind: Predominantly Rajput and Jat

The Punjab and Sind still bear the hallmarks of the former Rajput—Jat supremacy.
Over the course of history relations between them were hierarchical, but today
they share supremacy.
After decolonization, Partition and the establishment of an Islamic republic, the
nobleman was out of a job. Henceforth, the gawm whose members had the best
chance of achieving respect and wealth would be that of the landlords, the zamindar.
The Mongol and British empires encouraged a limited number of latifundia, but
there are many people with smaller landholdings who could be called farmers. They
may be landowners, ‘mixed’ farmers (those who work on other people’s land as well
as their own), or just ordinary farmers. All these people — who enjoy high status but
are not necessarily rich — think that cereal production is their best bet; market
gardening is considered less prestigious. On the other hand, raising animals, espe-
cially cattle, is regarded with favour.
Relations between members of the same gaum or zat in the villages were tradi-
tionally based on a system of solidarities — if not sanctified, then at least established
by dint of long usage.'*
Here, the biradari play a major role; members mark their unity in the face of other
extended families in various ways. The most spectacular is the Vartan Bhanji, which
bears some similarity to the Amerindian potlatch described by Marcel Mauss.
Whenever there is a major family event (a birth, a circumcision, a wedding, a funeral),
members of the diradan give presents — in principle, more valuable than those given
by the recipients on similar occasions. This establishes relations of indebtedness
which the biradari is supposed to cement. Someone who wants to break the ties of
family solidarity gives a present of exactly the same value as the one he received last
time; this immediately causes trouble. Nevertheless, since everyone is not equally
wealthy, richer people give poorer people generous presents, but do not expect equally
valuable ones in return; in this case the debt is one of gratitude — thus one can
appear to be a ‘benefactor member’ of the dzradari. This principle of indebtedness
between equals, but also between strong and weak, is — in economic terms — a driving
force of social life in the Punjab and Sind. Once a biradar is not threatened by chal-
lenges from another diradan in the race for supremacy in the village or the district,
internal disagreements and rivalry can have free rein. These are usually between patti,
or branches of the same biradan (the role of the patti was strengthened under the
British, who used them as a kind of taxation base). In some urban areas the word is
used to describe a district.
Relations between landowners and farmers are governed by two systems of shar-
ing out the harvest, called thakka and /ussa. The first 1s a kind of contract which allows
the farmer to choose what to plant, but he has to pay for the materials. The second
divides costs and profits equally between landowner and farmer, but there are vari-
ations linked to the provision of water for irrigation (according to which this is
provided by the landowner, the farmer, or a third party).
Other economic actors in the village are the agricultural workers or craftsmen
who are paid in kind, according to a system of functional interdependence, called
seypi, which lays down reciprocal obligations. These people come from different
communities (gaum or zai) to the farmers, known by the generic name kammi. In the
seypi system, the kammi is dependent on the zamindar’s biradan, which provides him
with the necessities of life in return for his work. He works on its behalf — if neces-
sary, against the interests of his own biradan. At elections, for example, he votes as
‘his’ zamindar tells him to. In other words, this system maintains the subordination to
the landowner of people from many artisan gawm or Zat .
There are many of these gaum or zat, and they correspond to very precise fields of
activity which, in turn, are classified according to a certain scale of worthiness.
Modern economic conditions have brought changes which have sometimes put
these classifications to the test, but for the most part they are still intact. Craftsmen,
for example, have moved to the villages with considerable savings behind them; there
they manage to get hold of and cultivate some irrigated Jand, but their change in
fortunes does not mean that they immediately acquire a higher status. They remain
as they were, and although they own land, they are not recognized as zamindar— they
are still compelled to fulfil their obligations under seypv. '5 They therefore have a ten-
dency to behave as much like rich zamindar as possible — that is to say, they live like
Rajputs so that their children and grandchildren — and, if possible, their own patti or
biradari — will, in the long run, attain a higher status. This means that their wives must
observe purdah, and that they have to give generously at a Vartan Bhanji. In fact,
this social mobility strategy means that a considerable portion of their assets goes on
prestige spending rather than on productive investment that would benefit the vil-
lage. Despite all this, they would not think of disowning their gaum; they would
merely like it to have a better public image.'© This process is reminiscent of the
Sanskritization of the Hindu world, and proves that there are many similarities
between the Rajput—Jat model and the caste system.
Another classic case is that of Christians, many of whom are from zat with a par-
ticularly menial image. In the villages they have managed to reach the rank of kammi
~a lowly rank, but one which is part of the seypi system. Some, through education
and professional training organized by their diocese, make a career in town, then
manage to buy some land. In countless villages, social climbing like this is considered
too outrageous to be allowed. People say that repeated abuses of the ‘law of blas-
phemy’ are committed for the specific purpose of punishing them. If this is really so,
true ‘blasphemy’ would affect not Islam but, rather, an old Hindu residue which no
one dares acknowledge.
The Rajputs
At one time the Rajput community was concentrated in present-day Indian
Rajasthan; from there it spread — mainly north and northwest, hence following the
course of the Indus and its tributaries.
The Rajputs are divided into two big groups: one is said to be ‘solar’; the other
‘lunar’. These distinctions are connected to the founding myths of their emergence
as an ethnic group: one group descended from Ram, the other from Krishna.
Some great Sindi families, like the Bhuttos and those with the title ‘Jam’, share
these origins, as do those descended from the Kalhora dynasty, which ruled over this
region. In this province, as in the Punjab, there are also islamized descendants of the
great Chauhan and ‘Tunwar groups which founded dynasties in Delhi at the end of
the first millennium.
Much more numerous, but highly localized in the Punjab, are the Bhatti and the
Punwar, who for many years dominated the inner valley of the Sutlej up to the
Rajasthan desert — like the Noon, the famous Bhatti clan of Multan. Further north,
all along the Sutlej, we find the Wattoo, Jaja, Khishi and Dhidi. In the Chenab area
are the Hira and the Sial. Some of these ancient tribes are (like the Pashtuns)
simply individual clans from older communities. The Wattoo, for example, probably
originated from a Bhatti clan.
In the Jhelum region we find the Rajha, Gondal, Mekan and Tiwana. In the
mountain regions, starting with the Salt Range, we begin with the illustrious name
of Janjua; then there are the Dhund, Kahut and Mair. Near the Jammu border are
the Manhas, Chibh, Jhakar, Salahria and, further west, the Rajbhansi.
‘Towards the west, to the north of the Salt Range and further north still, despite
a Bhatti hegemony which at one time made itself felt as far as Kashmir, come clans
which belong to the big Rathore community, of which — in some opinions — the
Janjua are merely a branch. We also find the Dhund, Kahut, Jodra and Gheba.
Other warriors
Although they have not merged with them, several communities are traditionally
allied with the Rajputs and occupy the same rank. In the high northern hills and the
Hazara, there are the Thaka. Finally, and above all, in the Potohar are the Ghakkar,
who founded an independent — even conquering — principality between Rawalpindi
and Wah. Despite their alliance with the Niazi, they eventually had to submit to the
royal power of the Suri in 1470. You can still see their fortified castles and palaces
not far from Islamabad. They had close links with the Karral of Hazara.
The Awan deserve close attention, because of their historical importance and,
above all, because they settled in the west, right up to the edge of Baluchi and
Pashtun territory. Legend has it that their origins go back to Imam Ali and his
second wife, Hanafiya. Historians describe them as valiant warriors and farmers who
imposed their supremacy on the Janjua in part of the Salt Range, and established
large colonies all along the Indus to Sind, and a densely populated centre not far
from Lahore. They are related to the Khattar, who are to be found mainly in the
plains between Attock and Rawalpindi; the British described them as fierce and
unscrupulous. Historians believe that they have links with the peoples who arrived at
the time of the Kuchan conquest in the early centuries AD.
Another important community is that of the Meo, who gave their name to
Mewat. These quasi-Rajputs, who made their home near Delhi, converted to Islam;
after Partition, large numbers of them took refuge in the Pakistani Punjab.
As for the Dogar, or Dogra, they settled north of Lahore right up to Sialkot, and
claim to be of Rajput origin.
In the southern Punjab and northeastern Sind, a princely community with mys-
terious origins played an important role: the Daudpotra, the founding family of the
reigning dynasty in Bahawalpur. They came from the Sindi Kalhora dynasty, but
also acknowledge an Arab ancestor, Abbas, who was supposedly the Prophet's uncle.
In terms of numbers, apart from the Rajput commmunity, the largest pastoral and
agricultural community are the Gujjar. A longstanding legend links them with the
Kuchan invaders. Most of them seem to live in Gujarat, around Bombay. They also
live in other places with their name: Gujranwala in the central Punjab, and Gujarat
further north. The distance that separates these population enclaves gives an idea of
the sheer extent of their migrations. We find them from India to Afghanistan, by way
of Sind and the Punjab. They consider themselves people of high status, but their
station in life varies from one place to another. In Afghan Nuristan, for example, they
work as shepherds on the mountain pastures. Their community is divided into
several subgroups.
Communities of Arab origin

There are communities which have no connection with those which established
local domains and became major landowners before the arrival of Islam, but con-
sider that they are at least of equal social rank because their origins have an
undeniable prestige conferred by this religion. This is true of the Sayyid, Qureshi,
Ansari, Muhajir, Sheikhs and Arabs. These communities do not practise endogamy;
they marry into communities of ‘honourable’ rank.
The Sayyid are supposedly descended from the children of Ali and Fatima —
hence from the Prophet himself. They form oligarchies, which in general received
considerable wealth from the successive Muslim dynasties in the region. They have
a particular kind of influence inasmuch as their forebears include holy men who
brought peace and moral authority to whole swathes of territory such as the Kagan
Valley to the north of Hazara. The Guilani orJilani (the different spellings corre-
spond to different regional pronunciations) are descended from the founder of the
Qadiriyya, and are Sayyid on two counts: among their ancestors are the children of
Hassan as well as those of Hussain. We find them among the Pashtuns, the Punjabis
and the Sindis.
Two other large Sayyid groups are the Zaidi, who are descended from Hussain’s
grandson (the last imam, in the opinion of a few Shi’a minority groups), and the
Bukhari, who identify with a family descended from Hussain which formerly lived in
Bukhara. Some of the Sayyid are Shi'a — notably those around Jhang and Sargodha,
where they have extensive landholdings. All in all, the Pashtun Sayyid, not subjected
to any spiritual dogma, are more inclined to work in the tertiary sector, while the
others are more inclined to work the land.
The Qureshi are thought to be from the Prophet’s tribe. In Multan they are
sometimes called Sheikh Qureshi. Some of them are particularly well respected
because they are descended from Baha ul-Haqq, a holy man whose mausoleum is in
the town. Among the other Qureshui, the Siddiqi are descended from Caliph Abu
Bakr and the Farooqi from Caliph Omar.
As in nearly all other Muslim countries, in Pakistan we find the Ansari, descendants
from the Propher’s companions in Medina. There are also a number of Muhajir,!’
whose ancestors were men from Mecca who followed the Prophet to Medina.
‘The Sheikhs are, in principle, descended from Arab tribal chiefs. In reality, it
seems that this title of respect was assumed by converts who wanted to conceal their
local origins.
Finally, the Arabs say that they are from the tribes which, after 711, helped to found
Muslim emirates in Sind and at Multan. In fact, it is probable that many families who
identify with this community are actually descended from Arab merchants who came
later and settled in the important trading centres of Bombay and Peshawar.
Groups of Turkish and military origin

As weil as Pashtun tribes, warlords from the west came with members of their own
ethnic groups, who put down roots in their empire, especially in the Indus valley.
Thus in various parts of the region there were communities which should by rights
have played a leading role, but were in fact relatively ineffectual. ‘They are all of
Turkish origin. Some bear the name Mughal, because they came with Babur. They
tend to become part of Rajput or Jat zat. Others have the name Turk, and are
descended from senior imperial functionaries who came from Central Asia in the
seventeenth century. Yet others, the Qizibach and the Afshar, came with Nadir
Shah in the eighteenth century. This last community of Iranized Turks still speak
Persian.
The Jats: landowning farmers

There are more Jats than Rajputs, and they are spread out over virtually the whole
of Sind and the Punjab; they are a fundamental feature of Pakistan’s social land-
scape, because these great experts in arable farming have been able to keep their
land over time, through all the waves of migration and political vicissitudes. For cen-
turies they have been owner-farmers, raising a few animals asa sideline.
By clinging tenaciously to their social rank, in some places they have eclipsed the
Rajputs, who have ‘been brought down a peg or two’ by economic problems or polit-
ical reversals. As a result, there is a lot of assimilation between Rajputs and Jats, and
several communities could be put into either category. What with landlords becom-
ing farmers, and farmers aspiring to be or succeeding in becoming landlords, the
threads are not easy to disentangle.
The Jats are particularly in evidence in Sind, where they form the majority of the
population. Further north, along the right bank of the Indus, they have relied on the
Awan to keep going and maintain their landowner status in the face of Baluchi and
Pashtun invaders. Their status in the Derajat, however, has been reduced by warriors
from the west. Their related communities, which are like tribes, naturally claim an
illustrious ancestry. I cannot name them all, nor provide an exact list of their terri-
tories, because they have moved constantly as a result of a century of economic
change in the region.
The Tahim live in the western Punjab and the north of Sind. They claim descent
from one of the Prophet’s companions in Medina, and also seem to be related to the
Bhuttos.
The Langah, who dominated Multan shortly after the Timurid invasion and ful-
filled a princely function, have settled along the lower reaches of the Chenab and the
Indus, and are concentrated around Multan and Muzaffargarh. ‘The Tchhina are
further north, along the Chenab; we do not know if they are the same people as the
Tchima of Sialkot and Gujranwala, a very large community.
The Sumro can also call themselves Rajputs; they founded a reigning dynasty in
Multan. For many years, however, they have predominantly been farmers. They
of
live mainly between Leiah and Dera Ismail Khan, along the Indus to the west
Jhang.
The Nol, Bhanga, Harral and Marral live between Jhang and Sialkot. ‘They seem
to have lived there for a very long time — as have the Langrial, who for many years
have worked as nomadic shepherds in the steppes to the east of Multan.
In the plains, and on the high plateaus governed by the Sikhs in the early nine-
teenth century, there are many Jat communities. Their members are divided in
varying proportions between Sikhism and Islam. As a result, some (the Virck,
between Lahore and Gujranwala) are present in large numbers in Pakistan; others
(the Bal and Pannun) less so.
In the Himalayan piedmont, the Jats have resisted Sikh proselytism. They are
Hindus (who left in 1947) and Muslims. From east to west, we find the Tarar, who
claim to be of Rajput origin; the Varaich, the Chatta, the Sarai, who are related to
a Sindi princely dynasty, and the Hinjra.
This picture of the world of the Jats emphasizes — should such emphasis be
needed — how far they have spread, and how closely they are linked with other
landowning communities. All these great landowing and elite groups have made
their mark on the politics and government of the country. Once again, family names
are revealing. The current president of the republic is a Tarar. The names Chatta,
Sumro, Khakar, Wattoo, Guilani, Farooqi, Sheikh and Qureshi — to mention just a
few — are very familiar to any follower of political events in Pakistan. This reveals the
aristicratic nature of Punjabi and Sindi society, emphasized by the more modest
status of less ‘moneyed’ communities whose names are not often in evidence in the
corridors of power, and are rarely used as patronyms. Despite the social mobility
brought about by modernization, there is still a strict relationship between social
status and position in life.
Low-status farmers
In Rajput—Jat regions, certain agricultural activities, because of the nature of the
work they entail, are considered impure and left to specific communities.
In essence, this applies to gardening and market gardening. Many of the growers
for whom these are statutory occupations raise various crops, including cereals. By
dint of their tried and tested working methods and their disciplined approach, their
standard of living often belies their social status. Such communities — mindful of
their longstanding presence in the region, and their links with ancient dynasties —
strive to climb the social ladder. These gardeners, who go by the Hindi-Urdu name
mali or the Persian name baghban, prosper on the outskirts of towns, where there is
plenty of animal fertilizer of all kinds, and a high demand for horticultural products
(flowers, fruit, vegetables).
‘The biggest gardening community in Pakistan are the Arains, who probably came
from Sind and the Multan region, and spread rapidly upstream along the principal
tributaries of the Indus. ‘They are very industrious and take great pride in their work;
in some places they have managed to form agricultural working groups. Some of
them have discovered that they have Rajput origins; others say that they belong to
farming communities which were displaced as a result of extensive Muslim con-
quests. Now that they have become rich, they are increasingly proud of their origins,
which they trace back to Arab ancestors. !8
‘These people are related to the Kamboh, who, before Partition, were concen-
trated to the east of the Sutlej but also much in evidence around Lahore, where they
concentrated on and excelled in cereal-growing. After 1947, all those who had
embraced Islam went to Pakistan. The Kamboh are proud to be able to include
among their ancestors a general by the name of Shahbaz Khan, who performed
great deeds under Emperor Akbar.
Merchants and shopkeepers

Established tradesmen belong to endogamous communities who observe the restric-
tions imposed by the rules of their profession. For example, they leave transport,
animal-selling, market and travelling salesmanship to others.
In colonial times, the merchants in regions that are now part of Pakistan were
Hindus who also had a crucial role as moneylenders. Before 1947, the geographical
distribution of their related groups was fairly clear. Since Partition, migrations which
have replaced Hindus with Muslims have complicated the picture.
The Banya, who are predominantly retailers of various descriptions, comprise the
8 per cent of Muslims in their community, and a few Hindus who stayed on. In the
NWF? and Baluchistan, they are called Kirar. The Bohra are a community of some
importance in Pakistan, because many spread throughout the whole country, espe-
cially Sind, from their heartland in the Bombay region. They are Isma’ili Shi’a who
do not recognize the authority of the Aga Khan but that of a ‘great master’
descended from the Prophet — hence a Sayyid — whose spiritual teachings and
instructions on how to conduct themselves socially and economically they follow
scrupulously. Historians have traced their conversion back to the thirteenth century,
but they claim an Egyptian ancestry linked to the Fatimid Empire. Wise and careful
people with a reputation for being very strict in all their dealings, they are not only
tradesmen, but businessmen in a wider sense.
Their chief and most fearsome competitors are the Khoja and the Piracha (or
Paracha). The Khoja — who are also longstanding Shi’a Muslims — are divided into
Twelvers and Isma’ilian disciples of the Aga Khan. In Pakistan, the Khoja were orig-
inally Khattri and Arora (Hindu merchant castes) who became Shi’a Muslims. ‘The
name Khoja, which comes from a Persian word meaning ‘master of one’s art’, has
for several years been given to any tradesman in the subcontinent who becomes a
Muslim. These Khoja were joined shortly before Partition — but above all after it —
by Khoja from Bombay who had the reputation of being good businessmen. There
are sizeable groups of Khoja in Karachi, Lahore, Jhang and in the Derajat.
As for the Piracha, they, too, are Khattri who converted to Islam very early, but
they are mainly Sunni . They claim to be the oldest-established tradesmen in the
region. Some of them are travelling salesmen, while others are successful in inter-
national trade, even in industry. So they are socially diverse, but their community is
bound together by endogamy and by pride in its ancient origins. Some claim royal
forebears, and add the title Rajah to their name. One of their most important cen-
tres is at Mukhad, near Rawalpindi. There are many in the Salt Range and from
Attock to Peshawar, but also in the Indus basin.
Transport workers and pedlars

There are communities which have traditionally worked for many years in transport
or as minor travelling salesmen. They have suffered from competition from the rail
network, from farmers who take their own produce to market, and from bigger
tradesmen (Bohra, Khoja and Piracha) who are willing to play the part of forward-
ing agents. Nevertheless, they seem to keep going, notably by becoming lorry drivers
or mechanics; in this field, however, certain Afghan Pashtun tribes, mainly Kutchis,
are equally — even more — in evidence.
These communities of transport workers, who comprise enough Muslims to
remain solidly entrenched in Pakistan, seem to be Banjara and Kabana. The
Banjara — under the direction of their leaders, the naik — are particularly well
organized.
There are also groups who specialize in the distribution of fruit and vegetables,
and their name simply denotes their activity: kuyjra in the languages of the subcon-
tinent, and sabziforouch in Persian. Then there are the tamboli, who are meant to sell
only betel nuts but in fact hawk all kinds of light merchandise.
Technicians
In addition to people who hold important assets like land, goods, wealth, and means
of transport temporarily or permanently, in accordance with tradition, there are
others whose place in society results from their skill and know-how, handed down
and improved over the course of generations — that is to say, their ‘art’ in the old
sense, or their ‘technical competence’ in today’s terms. ‘There is a certain hierarchy
to these communities — some trades are considered more worthy of respect than
others. It is easiest to list them in terms of this hierarchy — or, at least, attempt to do
so.
‘The barbers, or Nai, take the generic name of their profession, but they are sub-
divided into various clans with Rajput names — those of their former patrons, or of
ancestors who fell on hard times and were forced to take up a trade. Most of the
barber clans fall into one of two categories: the Turkia, who arrived with the
Ghaznevid conquerors; and the Gangrel, converted Hindus. Apart from the activi-
ties entailed by their station in life, barbers also perform minor surgical operations
(notably circumcisions). ‘They also help to broker arranged marriages between fam-
ilies, and help to organize wedding ceremonies.
‘The Bhat and Dum-Mirasi are genealogists-rhapsodists who maintain the histor-
ical memories of many related communities of every social rank by means of highly
rhythmical songs with musical accompaniment. They perform at every kind of
family and communal celebration. They call themselves Chunhar or Kanet — names
which seem to imply a Rajput connection. A related group are the Naqgal, story-
tellers and travelling actors, who go from village to village in the service of rich
landowners.
All these activities involving music, song and narrative must not be confused with
those which, while they employ similar arts, ultimately have a religious purpose.
These are the province of brotherhoods, and above all of the famous Qawwal,
singers of mystic songs, who form a separate and respected group, even though they
come from a modest social background.
Singing boatmen, dancers, and animal-handlers, on the contrary, are more or less
excluded from the social edifice, because the amusements they provide are consid-
ered inferior. As for trades which have some practical use, these seem to be classified
according to the double criterion of degree of difficulty and the ‘nobility’ of the
materials they use. At the very bottom of the ladder are trades which are considered
downright impure.
It is tempting to list the communities which pursue these activities in descending
hierarchical order, but this order — which has no religious overtones in Pakistan — is
not absolutely strict.
In the first place, we could mention people who use physical or chemical methods
to produce particularly important substances. The Nungar and Shoragar are skilled
at gathering saltpetre, or soda from a plant which grows in arid aones. The Agari
produce salt by evaporating briny water in a kind of pan [agar].
The Sunar (or Zargar), goldsmiths and pawnbrokers constitute an endogamous
community that is subdivided into clans. They are ranked alittle lower than shop-
keepers and are assisted by the Nyaria, smelters of precious metals, who are skilled
at gathering up, sorting and recycling the goldsmith’s ‘scraps’.
The Tarkhan seem to include several groups of building workers, such as the Raj,
stonemasons and builders, and the Barhai, who are carpenters.
The Lohar — or smith — community are very much apart of life in both villages
and towns, but they are looked down on because of the dark, dull metal with which
they work. The Siqligar, or armourers, belong to the same community but have a
better image. In any case, metallurgists are becoming more important as they
acquire the skills of the modern craftsman.
Fishermen and boatmen live in separate groups, and their commercial relations
with the villagers do not normally involve money. They are called Mallah, or
Mohanna. You find them on the great rivers in Sind and the Punjab. Much has been
written about the picturesque nature of their daily life.
River fishermen are members of the Jhinwar community. Sometimes they catch
quail or waterfowl, and they are tied directly into village life under the seypz system.
They also work in the fields, and as woodcutters, basket makers, water-carriers and
cooks, as occasion demands. Their wives often fulfil the role of midwife. Members
of this community have various names: Men, Machhi, Machhara, Sammi.
Professional cooks belong to the same community and, under the name Bhatyara,
stick to their speciality. They work in towns, near markets, and wherever there are
plenty of clients, often providing a mobile catering service. They should be distin-
guished from the Khansama, who work as cooks in big houses and often enjoy
better living conditions, although they have lower status.
Weavers, called Julaha or Paoli, are not a very coherent community, because by
origin they can be former landowners who now work in the textile trade or, on the
other hand, people of menial status who have chosen to be weavers in the hope of
climbing the social ladder. This combination might explain why members of this
profession are proverbially thin-skinned and unusually proud. Nevertheless, the

development of the textile industry in Pakistan has completely transformed their
lives: most of them are now tailors in urban areas, or skilled factory workers. They
also work as supervisors in the carpet industry (where most of the work is done by
poor people of humble status).
In many villages, where the seypz system still exists, textile workers still make sheets
and bedcovers. Weavers and tailors in general claim to be descended from presti-
gious communities: the Janjua, the Khokar, the Bhatti.
The Dhobi are a complex community of laundry workers and dyers who work
mainly in the towns or on great estates.
The Chamar and Mochi are shoemakers and saddlers — that is to say, they work
with leather but do not process it. There are several communities, but their names,
which are reminiscent of Jat names, tell us nothing about their history. They seem to
have ancient and distinct origins, because they constitute a recognizable pheno-
type. Over and beyond their professional duties, they work in the fields and in
building in various capacities. Their work is part of the seypi system.
‘Tanners and leather-dyers — the Khatik and Tchamrang — are considered inferior
to shoemakers. In fact their community is thought to belong to that of the dustmen
and cleaners. ‘Their status — but not their income ~—has risen as a result of the devel-
opment of the leather and leathercraft industry in Pakistan.
The Chuhra are consigned by tradition to ‘unclean’ jobs — paradoxically, that
means jobs that ensure cleanliness. They make brooms, rubbish baskets and cereal
baskets. They clean public areas, clear out places reserved for human waste, and
gather cow dung to make round bricks which, when dried, are used as fuel. They
also wash corpses and perform various tasks connected with funerals. In short, they
do ‘impure’ work in terms of a traditional schema inspired by Hinduism. The name
Chuhra is no longer used. They are sometimes called mehtar, ‘sweeper’, a name
which describes their profession; most often, however, they are given the simple title
kammi, or artisan. ‘There are several names for this community, according to the
places where they settled. In Sind and the Indus basin, they are called Kutana.
Elsewhere they are called Musalli or Dindar — names which reflect their conversion
to Islam — and Massih if they are Christians. So they are referred to in euphemistic
terms. It is believed that they have been in the country for a very long time, but it is
difficult to reconstruct the history of their community because until recently they
have welcomed into their ranks members of wandering groups who wish to become
part of village society.
Wanderers
‘Toa greater or lesser extent, wandering communities are exempt from the principles
which rule urban or village life. ‘They observe few dietary, religious or, quite simply,
traditional taboos. ‘They are willing to hunt wild boar, porcupine, lizards — even croc-
odiles if they can find any; they are even prepared to eat carrion. According to rules
which vary from one group to the next, their wives prostitute themselves; finally,
there are groups which are prepared to steal, or even to launch armed attacks.
BETWEEN CASTE AND TRIBE Zi
These communities can be parasitical to varying degrees, and therefore vary in

terms of their potential for integration into settled societies. Some of them are
skilled infrastructure workers, or practise traditional medicine. Others are simply
entertainers: musicians, dancers, wild-animal handlers. Since they are the least
attached to any specific area but the most internally cohesive of any group, they
travel continually — just like those (possibly related) communities which left the sub-
continent at the beginning of our Middle Ages to go west, a movement which is still
going on. They include the Od, who are also called Beldar; the Changar, who are
travelling artisans; and the Nats, highly organized musicians and boatmen who are
notorious for their plundering expeditions.
In the Towns
The tribal systems and the — related but separate — systems of superposition and jux-
taposition of endogamous communities seem, on the basis of the evidence, to be
linked to the acquisition and handing down of territories or land. In the Rajput-Jat
tradition, the keystone of the social edifice seems to be ownership of cultivable land.
At first sight, therefore, these systems seem to be part of the rural world, and we may
well wonder how urban life — where tradition seems to play a less obvious part — is
organized. We may think of Pakistan as a rural country, but it has huge urban centres
like Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Rawalpindi, and large towns — beginning with
the capital, Islamabad — which are mainly in the Indus basin and indicate their
often very ancient — founding principle by names ending in abad, pur or pura.
In fact, the social organization of the countryside gives us an idea of what its
urban counterpart is like. Thus communities from several ethnic groups, or certain
bodies with tribal origins, contribute to urban life: those which specialize in building,
craft and artisanal work, and trade. It is natural, for example, for the Sabziforoush
to run vegetable markets, the Lohar to do metal and mechanical work, and the
Sunar to be jewellers. As throughout the East, the community or corporate nature
of these activities is emphasized by the fact that members of a given profession live
in their own district, notably in the bazaars. Only the general shops are mixed,
although there are still roads reserved for Kirar or Banya. Naturally, these city-
dwellers gradually lose their village or tribal allegiances as the economy becomes
strictly monetary. Finally, the towns are places where all the country’s ethnic and
tribal groups live together, without losing their distinctive identities.
On what system of wealth creation or distribution is this urban economy based?
big
Certainly the state and its various agents are major employers and clients. The
landowners, too, have urban residences where they spend part of the year so that
they can supervise their affairs and be close to the centre of power. They therefore
— trade
contribute to the urban economy. The interregional — even international
ion:
which often led to the development of these towns also makes its own contribut
works. The private
sncome from it is used to buy durable goods and to finance public
ive contribution,
sector, however, does not make much of a decisive or construct
So the dominant
except to invest in the industrial, commercial or service sector.
figure in the urban landscape is, in effect, the major investor.
Curiously enough, business leaders in Pakistan are usually from that country,
except for Muhajirs who came from Uttar Pradesh at the time of Partition. These
natives, however, come from a community which left the Indus basin some centuries
ago to come together and make their fortune in three main regions of the subcon-
tinent: Gujarat, Maharashtra and Bengal. In the second half of the eighteenth
century, and to consolidate the stability created by the British, these communities
spread widely throughout the subcontinent, even the Empire — including London.
Rather like the Pashtun tribes, some of them played a polarizing role by including
within their sphere of influence numerous associates and subcontractors. Each of
them observes the strict rules of endogamy, emphasizing yet again the primordial
importance of family relationships.
The great ‘pole communities’

It is customary to distinguish four endogenous ‘pole communities’ which are
extremely coherent internally: the Memon, the Chinioti, the Khoja and the Bohra.
‘Iwo other less closely integrated but quite distinct groups are also very influential
investors: on the one hand, the mohajirs of Karachi; on the other, families from aJat,
Rajput, Baluchi or Pashtun landowning background.
The Memon were originally Lohana Hindus from ‘Tatta, near Sind. They were
converted to Islam by a Sufi member of the Qadiriyya in the fifteenth century. This
holy man, known as Sayyid Yussuf Sindhi, called the new converts ‘mumin’, or
people of faith — this name was subsequently slightly distorted and became Memon.
It is said that in order to escape the harassment — even vindictiveness — of their
former coreligionists, these people emigrated en masse to Saurashtra, and especially
to Gujarat. After the eighteenth century, many of them made money in the
import-export business, then in processing. The Memon rose fairly rapidly up the
ranks of the great investors of the British Empire, opening industrial concerns and
branches in Bengal, Burma and Hong Kong.
Their major business leaders also founded dynasties which played a crucial in the
spectacular take-off of Pakistan’s banking and industrial sectors. Well-known names
include Habib, Adamjee, Dawood, Bawany, Rangoon-wala, Haroon, Djaffer and
Younous. These are mostly first names; there is only one more recent surname,
Rangoon-wala. This shows that the Memon identify exclusively with their own
community, whose name certain families still bear, Their communal ties are strongly
institutionalized; several bodies — like the All India Memon Foundation and the
United Memon Jamaat of Pakistan — are like caste councils with a well-defined
economic role. ‘These bodies preside over every aspect of marriage unions, includ-
ing issues of patrimony. Since Partition, they have played an instrumental role in the
creation of a modern economy in Pakistan. They were badly affected by the seces-
sion of Bangladesh, and by Z A Bhutto’s subsequent nationalizations of key
industrial sectors. As a result, they diverted their investments to more hospitable
countries. Nevertheless, they still play an important part in the Pakistani economy
although they have diversified and reduced the scale of their activities. T hey are par-
ticularly prevalent in Karachi.
The Chinioti are Sheikhs from the medium-sized town of Chiniot, on the
Chenab, halfway between Sargodha and Faisalabad. For some of them, Sheikh is
also their family name. We should not confuse them with the Sayyid and Qazi
who, by tradition, dominate the town. The Chinioti community have modest ori-
gins. They emigrated to present-day India, especially to Calcutta, in the nineteenth
century, and specialized in the leather and skin trade. At the beginning of the
twentieth century, some of them made profitable investments in the agro-
alimentary, textile and rubber industries, then transformed their industries to the
Indus basin, especially to Multan. At the time of Partition, the Sheikh family,
heads of the Colony group, and the Monoo family were very prominent investors
in the textile industry in the Punjab; these groups subdivided by taking the first
names of the various heirs. So the Kaiser group took its name from Qaiser
(Caesar) Sheikh. Another very important family, the Saigol, is connected — albeit
tangentially — to the Chinioti group. They are Sheikhs who came originally from
Chakwal, but it seems that some of their ancestors lived in Chiniot in the sixteenth
century. The Chiniot’s efforts at endogamy have not precluded marriages between
the Saigol and the Monoo. In general, their factories and head offices are in big
towns in the Punjab, such as Lahore.
The Chinoiti’s firms were by no means badly affected by Z A Bhutto’s national-
ization programme, because they were not in strategic sectors and were not so big as
to raise fears of monopoly. So the Chinioti filled the gap left by the Memon, and
expanded their activities considerably between 1970 and 1980. Crescent and Nishat
became holding companies. Later, the close relations they had been able to establish
with Mian Nawaz Sharif when he was head of the Ettefaq group, leader of the
Punjab’s provincial government, and finally served two terms as prime minister
made them even more important economic actors. They benefited particularly from
a privatization programme that was begun with great determination in 1992 and
vigorously renewed in 1997.
General Musharraf’s regime regards the Chinoiti with suspicion because of their
blatant collusion with recent governments, above all the preceding one. No doubt the
Karachi,
Memon now have an opportunity to take their revenge, especially since
n and a
where most of their business and holdings are, has experienced a downtur
Crescent,
chronic lack of productive investment. The main Chinoiti groups are
Ruby, and
Nishat, United, Saphire, Sargodha, Colony, Sunshine,J S K Chenab,
~ are called
Khurshed. Their great business leaders — some of whom are women
Monoo, and
Fazal-Ibrahim, Arshad, Fatima, Nagina, Jahanghuir Elahi, Ayesha,
them.
Mian Habibullah; Yusuf and Naseem Saigol are related to
The Khoja — who, as we know, are all Shi’a — are divide d into Twelvers and
d great amounts of
Isma’ilians. The first group, who do not seem to have amasse
been able to take over some
wealth, are nevertheless skilled businessmen who have
origin — in the big coastal
of the activities of the Twelver diaspora — often of Iranian
are much more promi-
towns of the Gulf and the Indian Ocean. The second group
built up a considerable
nent: some of them, such as the Hashwani brothers, have
in — or even control over —
fortune in direct investments, but also by taking a share
are part of the very close
the hotel, oil exploration, and cotton trades. The Khoja
community of the Aga Khan’s followers, who are known to be spread over several
countries.
All the Bohra are Isma’ilians. It is known that they do not recognize the Aga
Khan’s authority but that of a Sayyid. Although they are not among the country’s
forty-five biggest investors, some of them are highly respected members of the busi-
ness community. ‘They are businessmen of varying importance who know how to
make their guiding principles, their solidarity and their presence work for them on
all five continents.
Major individual investors

There are some business leaders who have no ties with any specific organic group.
They may seem to be isolated individuals, but in fact they do fall into identifiable
social categories and are prepared, where necessary, to defend their common
interests.
The Muhajirs, who come from Uttar Pradesh and speak Urdu, have settled in the
two great southern towns, Karachi and Hyderabad. They came to Pakistan after
Partition, bringing with them their professional skills and some capital. They have set
up numerous businesses — mainly small or medium-sized, but some on a national
scale, taking advantage of potential demand in sectors abandoned by the big busi-
nesses communities. They have become increasingly important economically,
especially in Karachi — to the point where their obvious success threatened to make
them a dominant community, since they were very much in evidence both in indus-
try and in every trade that is required for the development of a great urban centre,
and equally prevalent in the liberal professions and, above all, in administrative cir-
cles. Discriminatory measures against them prompted them to unite under the
auspices of a well-known political party, the MQM, whose bursts of violence and
separatist tendencies have brought undeserved opprobrium down on this enterpris-
ing, energetic group of citizens. They seem to have attracted the hostility of
communities with strong family ties without having been able to form such a com-
munity themselves. ‘They are now inclined to criticize Pakistani society for its archaic
nature ~ symbolized, in their opinion, by the influence of ‘feudal groups’.
There are several Pashtun families whose wealth has enabled them to launch a
wide range of business activities. Two groups deserve particular attention: the heirs
of Habibullah Khattak, and the Seifullah family of Bannu. The first group, who
own numerous foreign companies and subsidiaries, appeared at first to fall within the
Memon sphere of influence. Like the Memon, they were badly affected by the
nationalization programme. The second group, which has done very well over the
last decade, is linked to the Memon Younos group.
The Sharif family, who were originally from Kashmir, are a special case.
Extremely close, but with no family ties to any other business community, they set up
the first large foundries in Pakistan, and built up the highly diversified Ettefaq group.
We know that Nawaz Sharif combined his career as a business leader with a politi-
cal career culminating in two terms as prime minister. The Ettefaq group is known
to have formed alliances with businessmen from the Chinioti community.
The Zoroastrians, or Parsees, are a close but not strictly endogamous community.
Like their coreligionists in Bombay, the Parsees of Karachi are enterprising busi-
nessmen who inspire confidence. From their ranks came the founders of the thriving
Avari hotel and services group.
Finally — and naturally — we must consider the part played by descendants of
Rajput and Jat families in the formation of financial and industrial elites. Most of
these families invested in sectors allied to agricultural production, and considerably
increased the fortune they had acquired through the great monocultures. These
families have also become involved in politics, and several of their members have
been given government posts. Like the Seifullah and Sharif familites, they have
helped to maintain a close link between the business world and the corridors of
power — all the more so by forming alliances with great Memon or Chinioti fami-
lies. These great business leaders and men of politics from a landowning
background include Jam Mashoog Ali, Manzoor Watto, Khalid Ahmed Kharral,
Nawaz Khokar, Chaudry Shujaat Hussein, and several members of the Noon,
Jatoi and Sumro families.
Outlines of a pyramid
Can we say — with Mahboob ul-Hagq, a respected economist and former finance
minister — that twenty-two families manipulate Pakistan’s economy in their own
commercial interests? If certain British analysts are to be believed, are there not
more like forty-five such families? Must we go even further, and put the number at
two hundred — even two thousand, if we include owners of latifundia? In any event,
it is clear that there do not seem to be many actual or potential investors for a coun-
try with a population of 140 million.
In both town and country, the overall structure is remarkably like that of a pyra-
mid. In every sphere of production and exchange, the Pakistanis seem to find it
difficult to attain a balanced relationship between the multitude of small business-
people and the few families or communities who have the most decisive capacity to
invest, via those who have access to modest or average wealth. Contrary to Z A
Bhutto’s hopes, this trend was accelerated by the nationalization of the big banks. In
fact, most loans went to entrepreneurs, businessmen and landowners who were
going to be successful anyway, and were willing to provide political support. The
resulting distortions are even more harmful than the creation of monopolies: eco-
nomic immunity — any industrial, commercial or agricultural concern which
supports the state or the party in power benefits from ‘handouts’ in the form of low
interest payments or tax breaks. In other words, the seypi system has taken on
national dimensions: the holding and exchange of wealth favour not so much its cre-
ation as the weaving of enhanced networks of solidarity.
The majority of economic actors are in a situation of dependency or
indebtedness. There are the same relations between the small trader, the carrier and
the wholesaler as there are between the wholesaler and the bank, the bank and the
government, but above all friends and patrons, who are themselves in an unequal
s.
relationship with those who are richer and more powerful than themselve
This situation also exists in the country, where poor smallholders, patrons and
exploiters of the kammi, needed the help of latifundia owners and the government.
In short, the country has got into debt because — among other reasons — most of
its people were in debt — even deeply in debt, as the system of child labour shows.
Are the Communities Changing?

It seems that in Pakistan there is one salient feature: the strength of communities
linked by blood ties, and their struggle to the death to defend and, if possible,
improve their social rank. This seems to apply as much to the Baluchis and
Pashtuns as to the Rajput—Jats; as much in the towns as in the countryside. The
greatest inequalities in the countryside are those of land distribution, especially in
the Punjab and in Sind; the sheer numbers of small farmers have not brought
about any progress — on the contrary: they constitute a powerful brake on a social
mobility which might threaten their traditional privileges. Who can blame these
farmers for wanting to protect the prestige of their ‘community’ — that is to say,
their family line?
This is where an ambiguity arises. The word ‘community’ is used as the occa-
sion demands to describe something that is not — or is no longer — an ethnic
group, a tribe, or even a caste, but a related group not linked to any particular ter-
ritory. Modern language also takes account of completely different kinds of
community — those of a village or a district, for example, where solidarity is a
matter of necessity. So Pakistani society seems to be torn between two kinds of
communitarian solidarity: that of the gaum (that of blood) and that of communal
life (of the soil). There is nothing surprising about this; the same applies in many
other countries. In Pakistan, however, the situation is particularly painful because
it is so unbalanced.
When we take into account the fact that reciprocal relations between landowners
and politicians, disputes between diradan, and dependencies linked to the seypi system
mean that, in a given constituency, elections are often decided in advance, we real-
ize that real politics in Pakistan is in fact ‘parallel’ and ‘informal’, as is much of its
economy. We must recognize, however, that such traditional — even ‘unequal’ — rela-
tionships help to ensure the survival of many groups of people in times of economic
stagnation and serious underemployment. The hierarchical structure can therefore
look like a ‘structure of poverty’.
So — can economic actors ‘get anything out of ‘ all this? If they are to fly in the
face of the logic of rivalry, and the resulting chains of indebtedness and waste, they
must choose between local ties and blood ties, and give priority to whichever serve
their most compelling interests — that is, their social interests. The present govern-
ment has pledged to work towards encouraging such a choice. This is an immense
task, fraught with one enormous danger: resorting to clear but illusory simplifica-
tions. In fact, in Pakistan the system of social hierarchies is in the realms of the
implied and the unspoken, and of practices that are beyond any attempt at precise
definition. At the present time, a campaign like the one instigated by Dr Ambedkar!9
in India, a country where the castes are willing to speak their names, is inconceivable.
There are, however, some changes under way not only in the towns, where inter-
mingling is undermining the cohesion of consanguinous communities, but also in
the countryside.
In the towns, ancestral pride is giving way to the need for some modicum of eco-
nomic success, while credit and social institutions — and interpersonal relations — are
taking over from a system of handouts based on personal solidarity, which perpetu-
ates dependency. Here there are stirrings of class consciousness — or, at the very least,
an awareness that wealth is not fairly distributed. The trade unions are marred by
artificiality in that they, like politicians, are influenced by clientelism. The position of
leader is not an easy one for someone who is not from a background that encourages
taking the initiative, speaking in public, and gaining access to knowledge. Gradually,
however, there are growing hopes that collective initiative is more likely than
recourse to clientelist expediency to achieve a decent standard of living.
In the countryside, class sentiment is probably more closely linked to a weakening
of blood ties and hierarchical structures. We can see this from Muhammad Azam
Chaudhary’s reports from a village in the Punjab.”° He notes that his interviewees
now tend to have only a rough idea of their got, which in other places is called their
gaum, and that ties between villages belonging to the same zat (sometimes called a
biradan) are rare. Hazy descriptions of the various social ranks within a blood com-
munity show that they no longer have the relevance they had in the past. The
dominant factor now seems to be the local tie — that of the pind or village commu-
nity — rather than the continuation of hereditary ranks. This is obvious when we
note the growth of the deciding body called the panchayat, or council of elders; it is
confirmed by the fact that social prestige is beginning to depend more on personal
integrity and wisdom than on the extent of one’s landholdings. If the tendency
towards emphasizing local interests rather than considerations of birth continues,
then there will be further scrutiny of the relations between poor villagers and rich
landowners, who will have to understand that their own self-interest compels them
to behave like ‘good princes’ if they are to maintain their status.
Finally, there is some interaction between town and country insofar as the farm-
ers — connected by necessity with markets in the towns, and gradually becoming
educated — are being imbued with urban culture; while collective movements, which
began in the towns but are now active in the country, are revealing blatant inequal-
ities and extravagant practices. Finally, the most deprived sections of the population,
who are from a rural background, and poor people in the countryside could find
common cause as members of the same proletariat. In today’s Pakistan, however, ties
to blood communities are still too strong to allow us to talk about the ‘labouring
masses’, except in the most conventional rhetorical sense.
The focal meeting-point between town and country is elsewhere: in a factor that
reveals the limits of the old caste system. The ‘rejects’ of an economy which, in
becoming monetary, causes many individuals to go bankrupt will not, as in the past,
join wandering parasitical communities but will be concentrated on the outskirts of
the towns, as elsewhere in the Third World. In the districts euphemistically called
kachhi abadi (houses made of unbaked bricks’ — other countries call them shanty-
towns) congregate social outcasts whose sole aim is survival, and who are less
concerned with social ties than with basic human existence. These people disrupt
social and economic relations; they lower the price of labour and have a dampening
effect on urban planning and the development of social services, even as they show
how great is the need for them. They have no stable allegiances, but could constitute
a powerful force which could easily be won over by a clever government. This could
be a major social player waiting on the sidelines. Two urban groups in Pakistan have
broken free of the ties of consanguinity: the Muhajirs, who came from India and
now constitute a middle class; and the underclass in the kachhi abadi. Were these two
forces to unite, this could be the beginning of a renewed and accelerated breaking
down of the system of tribal or ‘communitarian’ elites.
The road to change is still very long, despite the current government's stated
policy of empowering the impoverished. This would involve loosening the ties of
clientelism that are an important part of life for so many people in Pakistan, and
strengthening solidarities based on relations other than the traditional ones of birth;
it therefore entails not only institutional reform, but a genuine change of attitude.
PART IV
A PLURAL CULTURE?
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10
THE DIVERSITY OF ISLAM
One of the principal characteristics of Islam in Pakistan is its extraordinary sectar-

ian and ideological diversity. As elsewhere in the world, the main demarcation line
is between Sunni and Shi’a. Shi’a in Pakistan are divided in turn between Twelvers
and Isma’ilians; Isma’ilians themselves fall into two distinct groups: Nizari and
Bohra. There is a third, separate group: the Ahmadiyya.
The Sunni have their own internal divisions, which relate more to ideological
developments: there are the modernists, the traditionalists and the fundamentalists;
they all came into existence in the nineteenth century as a reaction against the pres-
ence of the British, and are a continuing influence in the Indian subcontinent,
especially in Pakistan.
This religious diversity was relatively peaceful (except for the anti-Ahmadi move-
ment) during the first few years in the life of the young nation of Pakistan. Since the
1980s, however, it has led to conflicts characterized by an unprecedented violence.
The Sunni
The majority of Pakistanis (between 75 and 80 per cent, according to which statis-
tics you consult) say that they are Sunni . As elsewhere in the Muslim world, they
consider themselves the upholders of Islamic orthodoxy, and differ fundamentally
from the Shi’a in that they recognize the legitimacy of the first four caliphs who
came after the Prophet Mohammed. The overwhelming majority of Pakistan’s
Sunni Muslims belong to the Hanaphite school of religious law [mazhab].
There are several diverse Sunni tendencies in Pakistan which can be traced back
to the collapse of the Mughal Empire and the gradual domination of the British,
which began in the eighteenth century. Each tendency reacted to this in a different
way.
Traditionalists
The Deobandi. — The biggest Sunni school for ulemas (doctors of the law) is the
Deobandi school. It takes its name from the town of Deoband in India, to the north
of Delhi, where their biggest madrasah was founded in 1867 by Muhammad Qasim
Nanautawi (1833-77) and Rashid Ahmad Gangohi (1829-1905). In reaction against
222 A PLURAL CULTURE?
the colonial presence — although they took their inspiration from British education
methods — the ulemas of Deoband dropped English and ‘Western’ sciences from the
education curriculum, and promoted instead the study of the Koran, the Hadith,
and Islamic law and science. They followed the tradition of certain Sufi orders and
emphasized individual spiritual discipline acquired through instruction fromaspir-
itual master, but they strongly opposed the worship of saints — like the Wahhabi, by
whom they were influenced.!
Believing that Islam was a universal religion, the Deobandi advocated a notion of
a composite nationalism according to which Hindus and Muslims constituted one
nation. Indian Muslims therefore had a duty to join the Hindus in the struggle
against the British. After 1919 they came together in the Jamiyyat-ul Ulama-i Hind,
and opposed the Movement for Pakistan. The Muslim League of Muhammad Ali
Jinnah (1876-1948) attracted only a dissident minority group; its leader, Shabbir
Ahmad Usmani (who died in 1949), founded the Jamiyyat-ul Ulama-i Islam (JUI) in
1945. Today this organization represents the Deobandi in Pakistan, but since the
1980s it has been divided into several factions (there seem to be at least eleven’),
some of which are extremely militant. Some 50 per cent of the ulemas belong to the
Deobandi school.
By tradition, the Deobandi are influential in Sind (with both the Sindis themselves
and the Muhajirs, Muslims who emigated to Pakistan after Partition). A number of
eminent Deobandi leaders chose to make their headquarters in this province. Sind’s
Dar ul-Ulum Ashrafabad — a seminary established at Ashrafabad in 1949, and con-
sidered the Deobandi school in Pakistan — has produced many of the country’s
most prominent learned men. The Deobandi are also influential among the
Pashtuns of the NWFP and Baluchistan, owing to the historic links between the
town of Deoband in India and the Afghan capital, Kabul. Since the 1980s, the
Deobandi have been trying to extend their sphere of influence to the Punjab, where
they have established madrasahs. Whereas in India, before Partition, they drew their
membership from comfortably off urban circles, in Pakistan the Deobandi attract
people — especially students — from more traditional social strata, most particularly
from rural and tribal communities.* They demand that sharia law should be applied
both in personal law and in the country’s wider legal system.
The Ahl-i Hadith. —'The other group which shares the Wahhabi legacy is that of the
Ahl-i Hadith ( people of the Tradition), founded in 1864; their emblematic figure
was Nazir Hussain (1805-1902). The Ahl-i Hadith are more radical than the
Deobandi and reject the teachings of the Hanaphite school, acknowledging only the
Koran and the Sunna as authoritative sources of Islamic law. There are fewer of
them — because of their small proportion of ulemas (20 per cent) and few disciples —
and they are found mainly in the northern Punjab and in Karachi. Their member-
ship base is very much as it was in India in the nineteenth century: predominantly
the urban merchant class.
The Barelun or Ahl-i Sunnat wa Jamaat. — The Barelwi movement, in contrast, is the
embodiment of popular Sufi traditions in the Indian subcontinent. Unreformed in
this sense (unlike the movements described above), it takes its name from Bareilly in
THE MANY FACES OF ISLAM 223
present-day Uttar Pradesh, the birthplace of its founder, Ahmad Riza Khan
(1856-1921).
There are several features typical of the Barelwi: the great importance they attach
to the Prophet Muhammad (an object of genuine veneration to them); the role of
saints and spiritual teachers as their intercessors before Allah; and the celebration of
popular festivals (especially méléd, which commemorates the Prophet’s birth). They
also embody popular religion as experienced by the masses. All this notwithstanding,
they are scrupulously orthodox and consider themselves true Sunni — hence the
other name they use, ‘Ahl-i Sunnat wa Jamaat’ (the Sunni party). They are the
Deobandi’s main rivals in Pakistan, and the Deobandi condemn both their worship
of saints and the quasi-divine status they confer on the Prophet.
Unlike the Deobandi, the Barelwi were unequivocal supporters of the Movement for
Pakistan. After Partition, in 1948, they formed their own representative association in
Pakistan, the Jamiyyat-ul Ulama-i Pakistan (UP). They are dominant in the Punjab and
in regions of Sind where the worship of saints is particularly popular — especially in
rural areas; but since 1947 their influence has also made itself felt among newly urban-
ized and relatively deprived sectors of the population. Like the Deobandi and the Ahl-i
Hadith, Barelwi ulemas fight for sharia law to be applied throughout the country.
The modernists
In addition to these traditionalist groups, another important tendency came into the
picture in the nineteenth century in reaction to the British presence: the modernists.
They refused to submit to the ulemas’ authority, and made an effort to consign Islam
to the private sphere. They looked on the English as guarantors of their rights against
the Hindu majority, and accepted their presence. Their leader, Sayyid Ahmad Khan
(1817-98), who did not see any incompatibility between Islamic law and the study of
English and the sciences, took it on himself to form a Muslim elite on the Western
model. In 1875 he established the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh,
in present-day Uttar Pradesh (in 1920 it became the Aligarh Muslim University). This
university produced generations of Westernized intellectuals. The other important
modernist leader, and follower of Sir Sayyid, was the poet and philosopher
Muhammad Iqbal (1876?-1938). He was critical of the taglid, the passive acceptance
of the answers provided by schools of religious law, and favoured a reconstructed reli-
gious thought based on the third source of law after the Koran and the sunna: the
ima’— consensus. According to Iqbal, the yma, which is traditionally controlled by the
ulemas, should be handed over to a representative assembly, as it was in Turkey.°
The thought of Sir Sayyid and Iqbal inspired young urban educated Muslims like
Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who, subscribing to Iqbal’s theory of two nations, used the
notion that Islam was in danger in order to mobilize the Muslim masses to demand
the formation of Pakistan; nevertheless, he believed that Pakistan should be a secu-
lar state where religion was relegated to the private sphere. Many groups in Pakistan
as a
subscribed to his notion of modernism, notably parties which have emerged
result of the break-up of the Muslim League: the modern Pakistan Muslim League
(PML) and the Bhutto family’s Pakistan’s People’s Party (PPP).
The neofundamentalists
The Tablight Jamaat. — The Tablighi Jamaat (‘the preaching party’) was founded in
1927 by a religious scholar influenced by the Deobandi school, Muhammad Ilyas
(1885-1944), at the height of the Hindu—Muslim rivalries. In the north of British
India, the first half of the twentieth century was a time of competitive proselytizing
in an effort to gain or win back converts. Ilyas became a missionary, starting in
Rajasthan villages, where local Islamic practices were strongly influenced by
Hinduism. His self-imposed task was to encourage Muslims to ‘purify’ their religious
practices, and to create a totally Islamic environment.
So the principal objective of this basically pietist movement is re-Islamization.
The life of a believer is based on six principles: the profession of faith; canonical
prayers; the knowledge and remembrance of Allah; mutual respect; sincerity of
intention; and proselytism.
The Tablighi Jamaat flourished under the leadership of Ilyas’s son, Muhammad
Yusuf (1917-65), who refused to leave for Pakistan in 1947 and kept the headquar-
ters of his organization in Delhi. There is, however, a branch in Raiwind, near
Lahore. In Pakistan, as elsewhere in the subcontinent and in other regions where it
has spread (the ‘Tablighi Jamaat and the Ahmadi are the most transnational organi-
zations in South Asia), it has a remarkable capacity to mobilize: its annual assembly
in Pakistan attracts nearly two million people and is believed to be the second-
largest Muslim gathering after the pilgrimage to Mecca.
As the followers of the Tablighi Jama’at are supposed to concentrate on deepen-
ing their faith, they are not permitted to engage in religious controversy or discuss
politics within the movement. This apolitical stance — which has always been the offi-
cial line — is now being questioned by several scholars: Marc Gaborieau, for instance,
holds that its ability to mobilize millions of people worldwide, as a result of its strat-
egy of active proselytism, could conceal a political agenda and/or foster political
ambitions in the longer term.°
In Pakistan, the Tablighi Jamaat is particularly influential among the Pashtuns, the
Muhajirs and the Punjabis. It draws its members essentially from the petty bour-
geoisie (tradesmen, junior civil servants, etc.) and from some wealthier social circles
(liberal professions, businessmen, etc.).
The Jamaat-i Islami. —'The Jamaat-i Islami (‘Islamic party’), founded in 1941 by Abul
Ala Maududi (1903-79), is the fundamentalist party par excellence in the sense that it
advocates a return to Islamic doctrine in its original form. Its ideology is in line with
that of the major international fundamentalist movements, especially the Muslim
Brotherhood.’
Maududi held that Islam should govern every aspect of life. He was virulently crit-
ical of the traditional ulemas, maintaining that they limited themselves to a passive
reading of the sacred texts, rather than exercising their faculties of reasoning. He
agreed with them on the question of Islam’s legislative tradition (the supremacy of the
Law ~ that is to say, the sharia — imposed by Allah, sole lawgiver and sole sovereign
lord), but his system of thought gave them no institutional status, and deprived them
of their traditional prerogatives. Maududi also disagreed with the ulemas on the ques-
tion of mysticism and popular religious devotion; he wanted to retain only the juridical
and political aspects of Islamic thought. He proposed that the Islamic state should be
based on sharia law as the defining law of the country, which should apply to every
aspect of the legal system (constitutional, civil, criminal); the state should be led by
morally and religiously upright men who modelled themselves on the first Companions
of the Prophet. Thus he established the Jamaat-i Islami in 1941. Although Maududi
rejected all Western ideology, he drew inspiration from both fascist and communist
parties, as we can see from the extremely centralized structure of his organization. He
did not have much consideration for mysticism, but he did admire Sufism as an orga-
nizational model: the pivotal role of the spiritual master [fzr] corresponded very closely
with his own concept of the role of the amir (leader) in the Jamaat-i Islami.
According to the Maududian ideal, the disciplined elite who constitute his orga-
nization must work for the creation of an Islamic state which would gradually take
over social and political affairs. The main difference between the Jamaat-i Islami and
the Tablighi Jamaat, therefore, lies in the fact that the former is aiming for an
Islamic revolution via control of the state apparatus (Islamization ‘from above’),
whereas the latter considers that Islamization on an individual level is a necessary
precondition for the building of an Islamic state (Islamization ‘from below’).
Maududi was against the Movement for Pakistan at the outset, arguing that the
Muslim League’s nationalism was, in principle, contrary to Islam. He believed that
nationalism was a threat to the cohesion of the Muslim community, and would
have a divisive effect on the umma which would hinder the spread of Islam’s univer-
sal message. He also believed that the movement for the creation of Pakistan was led
by people who rejected any notion ofa religious state, and favoured the establish-
ment of a liberal democracy along Western lines. Nevertheless, Maududi came to
Pakistan after Partition;® thereafter he adapted himself, in both thought and action,
to the evolution of Pakistani politics.
The Jamaat-i Islami is strong in the Punjab, in Sind (especially in Karachi) and in
the NWFP, where most of its madrasahs are situated (mainly concentrated near the
Afghan border); its membership base, which is similar to that of the Ahl-i Hadith, is
predominantly middle-class, mostly the urban petty bourgeoisie who have had a
modern education.
The Jamaat-i Islami played a crucial role in the Islamization of the Pakistani state,
especially under Zia ul-Haq (1979-88), but it is too doctrinaire and elitist to attract
real popular support. It usually fares poorly at elections, but it is still capable of
mobilizing in the streets and the universities, where its student branch (Islami Jamiat-
i Tulaba) always seems to be ready to resort to violence.
The Shi’a
Twelver Shi’a
and
Shi’a (literally ‘partisan’) doctrine is based on its specific concept of the imam
ant
the imamate: the legitimate political leader of the community must be a descend
of the Prophet, whereas for the Sunni , the imam or caliph can come froma less
restricted background. The Shi’a believe that after the Prophet’s death, leadership of
the community should have gone to his cousin and son-in-law, Ali. Hence, they do
not recognize the three caliphs who came before Ali as legitimate. Moreover, accord-
ing to their doctrine the imam’s position as religious and political leader of Islam has
a superhuman — even miraculous — dimension.
The biggest Shi’a group are the Twelvers? [zthnd’ashartyya], so called because they
recognize the line of the twelfth imam, whereas the Isma’ilis, also known as Seveners,
believe that the seventh imam is also the final.
In terms of ritual, there are no major differences between Shiism and Sunnism,
except that as well as the pilgrimage to Mecca [hay], also visit Ali’s tomb at Najaf
and the tomb of Shi’a Hussain (Ali’s son, and the third imam) at Kerbala [zzyard]
in Iraq. The month of muharram, which commemorates Hussain’s martyrdom at
Kerbala, is of capital importance; it is the most widely celebrated Shi’a festival.
More fundamentally, because of the events that marked the birth of this sect, the
Shia extol martyrdom and persecution. The death of Hussain, one of the founding
moments of Shiism, imbues this sect with strong emotional overtones, and its devo-
tees with an intense feeling of guilt that is absent from Sunnism. Hussain’s
martyrdom is also the catalyst for a strong sense of religious identity, especially
when the Shi’a are in the minority. From time to time, when their community is
under threat, they are forced to resort to tagtya — that is, dissembling their faith; at
such times they usually adopt Sunni rituals.
It is estimated that Twelver and Sevener Shi’a make up between 15 and 25 per
cent of the population of Pakistan. They are to be found mainly in Sind (Karachi),
the Punjab, and the Northern Territories (Gilgit and Baltistan).
Nizari Isma’ili Shi’a, or Khoja’®

Isma’ilism — also called Sevener Shiism — originated in a question of succession: that
of Imam Jafar al-Sadiq (who died in 765). As well as according primordial impor-
tance to the imamate (the imam is endowed with an inherited charisma), Isma’ili
doctrine oppose to the exoteric aspect of the religion [zéhi] an esoteric reality
[ddtn|. The zahir represents the apparent and generally accepted meaning of
revealed texts which set out rites and precepts; the bdtin corresponds to the hidden,
transcendent and immutable truths which the disciple must seek beyond texts, rites
and precepts. These truths are interpreted by the imam, who is master of the
Scriptures and therefore very important. In terms of ritual, the symbolic meaning of
the rites is often more important than their performance.
Isma’ili missionaries from Fatimid Egypt settled in Sind in the tenth century, win-
ning numerous Hindus over to their faith.'' Further schisms caused by disputes
over the succession followed, and in the second half of the fifteenth century two dis-
tinct groups emerged: the Muhammad Shah, whose line of imams came to an end
about two centuries ago; and the Qasim Shahi, from whom modern Aga Khans are
descended.
Aga Khan I’s installation in Bombay marked the beginning of the modern period
for Nizari Isma’ilism. After nearly seven centuries in Persia, the headquarters of the
Nizari imamate were transferred to Bombay in 1848.
The second Aga Khan, who took office in 1881, laid the basis for a modernization
of the Nizari community which would culminate in the long reign of Sultan
Muhammad Shah, Aga Khan III (1885-1957). He introduced socioeconomic
reforms aimed at making the Nizari a modern, educated and wealthy community.
He abolished the system of parda,!2 encouraging women to get an education and
practise a profession. As for politics, he helped to form the Muslim League in 1906,
and gave large sums of money to the Movement for Pakistan. The founder of
Pakistan, Jinnah, was himself a Khoja.
The Khoja of Pakistan have settled mainly in urban areas of Sind (especially in
Karachi, which has taken over from Bombay as their biggest population centre) and
in mountain regions of the Northern Territories. Although there are only about half
a million of them, they are influential, especially in trade and industry, and very
much involved in the country’s development. Most Nizari in the North make thetr
living as farmers.
Mustali Isma’ili Shi’a, or Bohra
The Mustali Isma’ilians broke away from the Nizari in 1094. In 1130 there was a
further division in their ranks between the Tayyibi and the Hafizi.'? The former
would become the ‘Bohra’.
The Tayyibi, who lived in Yemen in the early days, have preserved several Fatimid
Isma’ili traditions. They consider the exoteric [zéhir] and esoteric [bdtin] dimen-
sions of religion equally important, but they have introduced some innovations
which have given this branch of Isma’ilism its distinctive character (cosmological
doctrine; the system of the ten intellects, etc.).
The first da’— or! Isma’ilian ‘propagandist’, Abdallah, arrived in India in 1067.
Hindus who converted were called ‘Bohra’.!° The arrival of Jalal, the twenty-fifth
spiritual leader, or dai muilag (‘supreme propagandist’), marked the end of the sect’s
Yemeni phase and the beginning of its leaders’ establishment in India. When the
the
twenty-sixth d47% mutlaqg, Daud (1567-91), died, a quarrel over succession split
Bohra yet again. Daud Burhanuddin (1591-1612) was enthroned as da’/in India; the
Yemeni Bohra were informed of this. Four years later, however, Sulayman, grandson
of the twenty-fourth da’ and Daud’s ‘vice-dé7?, claimed the succession for himself
— and
and went back to India to secure his rights. The great majority of the Bohra
twenty-
some Tayyibi Isma’ilians in Yemen — recognized Daud Burhanuddin as the
— mostly
seventh da’é mutlag and were thenceforth known as Daudi. A minority
and
Yemenis, with a few Indian Bohra — accepted Sulayman as their spiritual leader,
were thenceforth called Sulaymani.
,
The Daudi Bohras’ religious practices are very similar to those of other Muslims
added two
especially the Shi’a. They observe the five pillars of Islam, and have
ion to be pure
more: submission to the ‘hidden imam’ [waldya] and a strict obligat
they pray.'°
[tahdra| which means that they have to wear special garments when
during the
The Daudi are organized along the lines of the model developed
Yemeni phase of Tayyibi Isma’ilism. The dé% mutlaq, sole representative of the
hidden imam, has all the prerogatives entailed by his position. He has absolute
authority over his community, and rules autocratically. The recalcitrant are excom-
municated — they are not only excluded from any religious premises, either mosque
or sanctuary, but also forbidden to organize ceremonies like weddings or burials; they
are also subjected to a total social and professional boycott.
Unlike the Nizari, who emigrated to Pakistan in their thousands, four-fifths of the
Bohra remained in India; their headquarters are still in Surat, in Gujarat. There are
only about 33,000 Bohra in Pakistan today, 25,000 of them in Karachi alone. They
are mainly tradesmen, and they are still under the authority of the dai mutlaq.
The Sulaymani Bohra are very different from the Daudi — they are said to be one
of the most progressive South Asian Muslim groups. Their spiritual leader lives in
Saudi Arabia, near the border with Yemen; the sect’s headquarters for the entire sub-
continent are in the Indian town of Baroda. There are a few thousand in Pakistan;
like the Daudi, they are concentrated in Karachi.
The Ahmadiyya
There is a third sectarian current in South Asian Islam: the Ahmadi movement,
founded in the Punjab in 1889 by the eponymous Mirza Ghulam Ahmad
(1838-1908) mainly as a reaction against the Arya Samaj Hindu revival movement
and Christian missionaries. Prophetology lies at the heart of Ahmadi doctrine, and
is also the major cause of hostility from anti-Ahmadi Muslims. Ghulam Ahmad
believed that he was endowed with the spiritual qualities of a prophet, and therefore
considered himself to be one. This claim went against a sura in the Koran (33, 40)
which declares that Muhammad was the ‘seal of the prophets’ [Ahdtam al-anbiya’].
The second distinguishing feature of Ahmadi doctrine is its belief in the ‘human’
death of Jesus, and his burial in Kashmir. This allowed Ghulam Ahmadi to argue
with Christian missionaries who maintained that their religion was superior to Islam
by emphasizing that — according to both Christian and Muslim belief — Jesus’ death
on the cross was only apparent, and that he still lives as an ontological principle. The
Prophet Mohammed, on the other hand, died and was buried like other mortals.
Ghulam Ahmad sought to propagate the notion that Jesus escaped crucifixion and
went to India, where he died a natural death in Srinagar, Kashmir, at the age of a
hundred and twenty.
Finally, Ghulam Ahmad pronounced a new theory of the jihad — his third point of
difference from other Muslims. He saw it as a purely defensive war, or a war waged
with the pen; this was his response to attacks from Christian missionaries who
accused Islam of being a warlike religion.
If Ahmadiyya religious thought differs somewhat from orthodox Islamic thought,
there is nothing particularly new as far as religious practice is concerned — this still
draws its inspiration from Hanaphite rites.
In 1914, when Ghulam Ahmad’s successor — a man called Nuruddin — died, the
sect divided into two groups, the Qadiani and the Lahori. The Qadiani (so named
after Qadian, Ghulam Ahmad’s birthplace) perpetuate the doctrine of their spiritual
guide as he preached it, and see him as a prophet [nabi!’], condemning as kGfir
(unbelievers) those — including fellow Muslims — who do not subscribe to this view.
The Lahori!® revere Ghulam Ahmad as a mujaddid (reformer), and are opposed to
a break with the rest of the Muslim community. Nevertheless, as we shall see, they
are no more immune than the Qadiani to attacks from Muslim ‘orthodoxy’ in
Pakistan.
Since the Ahmadi movement began in the Punjab, the Ahmadiyya became citi-
zens of Pakistan after Partition. Qadian became part of the Indian Union, and the
(majority) Qadiani branch moved its headquarters to Rabwah, in the middle of the
Pakistani Punjab. The Ahmadiyya (Qadiani and Lahori) make up 0.12 per cent of
the population; they are one of the most educated groups in Pakistan, and have by
tradition held senior posts in government, the army, and industry.
Sufism
Sufism! is the mystic, esoteric face of Islam. It complements the sharia, or external
law, and reveals the inner meaning of Reality (Allah). It was first brought to the sub-
continent by individual saints, then, after the thirteenth century, by whole
congregations. Its many brotherhoods — which also illustrate the diversity of Islam
in Pakistan — include the Chistiyya (from Afghanistan), the Suhrawardiyya (from the
Near East), the Qadiriyya (which came from Iraq in the fifteenth century) and the
Naqshabandiyya (brought from Central Asia by the Mughals in the sixteenth cen-
tury).
In Pakistan — especially in Sind and the Punjab — Sufism, a vehicle for the expres-
sion of popular religiosity, usually takes the form of the worship of saints, who are
said to have the power to intercede with God. Sanctuaries [dargéh| managed by
descendants of the pir (spiritual master) — there are many all over the country — con-
tain the tombs of saints, and are pilgrimage sites [ziydrd]. Some are said to contain
relics (hairs belonging to the Prophet, for example); this adds to their prestige. True
centres of worship, they are visited by the faithful (Muslims as well as Hindus; Sunni
and Shi’a alike), who come to receive the saint’s blessing. Visitors make propitiatory
gifts of food (tabarruk, the equivalent of prasdd in Hindu temples), brought to the
sanctuary as offerings or tokens of gratitude. These dargah ceremonies are reminis-
cent of popular Hinduism, just as the relationship between the pir (spiritual master)
and the murid (disciple) recalls the relationship between the guru and his chela (the
Hindu equivalent of disciple). The anniversary of the saints’ death [‘urs] is the
crowning moment of life at the dargdh; it draws big crowds — sometimes several
hundred thousand people. One of the most regularly visited mausoleums in Pakistan
is that of Data Ganj Bakhsh, the patron saint of Lahore.”°
The influence of the pir, whose position is always inherited by a family member
(preferably a son), is due to the belief that they inherit the baraka, the religious
charisma passed on bya saint to his descendants. Since they tend to receive many
donations from the pious as if they were personal gifts, many of them are immensely
rich and own vast estates. As a result of their religious and social duties (weddings,
t networks.
services, etc.), they have strong links with their disciples in close clientelis
This is why the dargdh are a political force to be reckoned with: they represent an
essential component of Pakistan’s political life.
Intergroup and Group-State Relations

Thus Islam in Pakistan covers a myriad of groups and subgroups, and is fraught with
divisions which can lead to conflict. Truly enough, the Sunni do not present a united
front, but the divisions between the different subgroups are above all doctrinal;
these differences have led to rivalries (notably between the Deobandi and the
Barelwi), but not necessarily violent confrontations. Moreover, the Sunni move-
ments, over and beyond their ideological allegiances, share a common
appropriation — or an attempt at appropriation — of Islam by virtue of which they
claim to be the only true Muslims; some of them — either together or separately —
put pressure — sometimes violent pressure — on the state to purify Pakistani society by
eliminating other sects. Hence there is a complex triangular dynamic which sets the
state and Sunni groups against non-Sunni groups and/or non-Muslims (such as the
Christians, who are victimized both by the state and by Islamic groups). In this con-
text, the relationship between the first two groups seems to be unassailable: it
conditions the destiny reserved for the third group — a destiny which, in the Pakistan
of today, increasingly takes the form of exclusion.
The Anti-Ahmadi movements”! of 1953 and 1974

The anti-Ahmadi movements of the 1950s were a prelude to contemporary sec-
tarian conflicts. They were started by the Ahrar?? (not by the Jamaat-i Islami, as
is often believed, even if they played their part?’, who wanted the Ahmadiyya to
be declared a non-Muslim minority. This move certainly did not succeed — not
only did the state refuse to give in to this pressure, but several Islamic leaders
(including Maududi) were imprisoned, and the Constituent Assembly of the day
took advantage of the disturbances to exclude the religious leaders from the
drafting of the Constitution. Nevertheless, it showed how hostile Pakistan’s Sunni
groups were towards sectarian and religious minorities — a relentless hostility
which was to increase over the following decades. Some of the most prominent
Shi’a leaders, however, also took part in this move against the Ahmadiyya, some-
times in league with the very Sunni leaders who were to become the most
vehement anti-Shi’a.**
‘The Ahmadi question, which was pushed into the background when a military
regimes were in power, resurfaced during Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s period in office
(1971-77). In 1973 there were violent anti-Ahmadi riots accompanied by rumours,
propagated by Islamic parties, to the effect that Bhutto was not only a bad Muslim,
but also enjoyed the financial and organizational support of the Ahmadi commu-
nity. This combination of riots and rumours forced him to declare them a
non-Muslim minority by constitutional amendment in 1974. Their leader, Hazrat
Mirza Tahir Ahmad, fled to London; from where he continues to lead his
community.
The Zia years: Islamization and sectarianism in Pakistan

Zia ul-Haq (notably under the influence of the Jamaat-i Islami, to which he was
close) took his own measures against the Ahmadiyya in 1984: he added an article to
the penal code which forbade them to call themselves Muslims, to preach their
faith, to use Islamic terminology, or to practise Muslim rites.
Since the introduction of these discriminatory laws, the Ahmadiyya have regularly
been subjected to persecution in Pakistan — as much by the state and Islamic groups
as by society in general, which takes a dim view of their financial clout and their
excellent organization. The anti-Ahmadi laws sometimes serve as a pretext for
resolving personal disputes. Today, individual attacks and riots against the
Ahmadiyya are still going on; as a result, some of them have gone into exile.
The main effect of Zia’s Islamization policy, however, was to create a chasm
between Sunni and Shi’a.”° Of course there had been differences between these two
main sects throughout the entire history of Islam, but they were mainly doctrinal. In
the subcontinent at the beginning of the twentieth century, a dispute that went
beyond mere religious differences set Sunni against Shia: hitherto, the communities
had lived together relatively peacefully, but in Lucknow, which was known to have a
large Shi’a population, there were increasingly violent confrontations between sup-
porters from both sides. This violence sprang from socioeconomic as well as political
causes: its roots lay in the decline and impoverishment of the Shi’a aristocracy,
while some Sunni groups were fairly prosperous. It was accentuated by the fact that
the British imposed a legal aspect on the rift between the two sects (by arbitrating dis-
putes, authorizing or forbidding religious commemorations, controlling processions,
etc.), thereby politicizing the conflict.”°
In Pakistan, it seems to have been Zia’s Islamization policy which played the role
of catalyst in this conflict. Following a narrow Sunni interpretation of Islamic law,
he tried to make the payment of zakdt (canonical alms) obligatory for Shia, thus
going against the Shi’a tradition according to which such payments are voluntary. In
1979-80, the Shi’a expressed their opposition to this measure with a campaign of
violence, even defying the martial law which prohibited demonstrations. In the end
Zia gave in, much to the chagrin of the army and Sunni Islamists. ‘The military did
not approve of the Shi’a’ show of force — they had dared to defy martial law, and
hence their authority. The Shi’a’ activism was also a strategic problem for'the army,
because it was supported by Tehran at a time when Pakistan was very worried
about Khomeini’s international ambitions: Iran was obviously trying to spread its
internal revolution to other countries? As a matter of fact, Iran did play an impor-
tant part in politicizing the Shia of Pakistan.
As for the Sunni Islamists, they considered that Zia’s capitulation constituted a
blow against Islamization — all the more so as some Sunni were pretending to be
Shi’a in order to avoid paying the new compulsory tax. The Sunni Islamists began
to think of the Shi’a as a major obstacle on the road to the Islamic state of which
Shi’a
they dreamed. As a result, Zia’s government, in an attempt both to contain
Sunni
violence and to limit Iran’s influence in Pakistan, made an effort to strengthen
institutions — notably by choosing to set up new Sunni madrasahs.
This spectacular proliferation of madrasahs — the other major effect of Zia’s

Islamization policy — has become a fundamental characteristic of Islam in Pakistan.
These Koranic schools have a major impact not only on the conflict between Sunni
and Shi’a in Pakistan but also on relations between the various Islamic movements
and the state. Before Zia came to power, there had been few religious schools [dint
madéris| — only 137 when the country was created — and their influence was negligible.
From 1979 onwards, Zia implemented a reform programme which would allow the
madrasahs to be an officially recognized part of Pakistan’s education system, just like
secular schools, on condition that they included ‘modern’ subjects (English, social sci-
ences, arithmetic, etc.) in their curricula. The General used the proceeds of the zakat
to finance existing madrasahs and set up new ones. He hoped that this policy would
enable him not only to strengthen Sunni institutions and make the ulemas accept his
leadership, thereby stamping his regime with the seal of Islamic legitimacy, but also
to exercise some control over these schools, and hence to temper the zeal of clergy,
teachers and students alike. Now, these schools were affiliated to the main Islamic
currents in Pakistan (Deobandi, Barelwi, ‘Twelver Shia, the Jamaat-i Islami and the
Ahl-i Hadith, in order of numerical importance?’). This strategy was at least tem-
porarily effective, because — with the exception of the Shi’a — Islamic movements in
general supported Zia’s regime in the early days (as a result, they were later dis-
credited in the eyes of the Pakistani people).
The combined policy of financing through the zakat and official recognition of
their qualifications led to an explosion in the number of madrasahs: in 1974 they
accounted for 18 per cent of all educational establishments in Pakistan; by 1983 this
proportion had risen to 40.3 per cent. In 1999 the total number of madrasah, of all
sectarian persuasions combined, was put at 7,000.2 Thus hundreds of thousands of
young people have been educated in these schools, but the government never
attempted to implement a policy that would have enabled them to find jobs; this
sowed the seeds for future problems.
The Deobandi and the Shi’a were the two schools of thought whose number of
affiliated madrasahs grew most rapidly. It was the Deobandi madrasahs, some of which
also provided military training, that were the breeding-ground for talk and literature
about sectarian violence. The main Sunni party involved in the anti-Shi’a cam-
paigns — the Sunni Sipah-i Sahaba Pakistan (SSP, the Pakistani Army of the
Companions of the Prophet), founded in 1985 — was originally a branch of the
Deobandi party, the JUI, from which it soon broke away but with which it still
maintains relations. Its Shi’a equivalent is the Tahrik-i Jafaria Pakistan (TJP, Pakistani
Shi’a Movement), founded in 1979.9
Not only did the madrasahs receive state funding, they were also financed by foreign
powers — the Shi’a schools by Iran; the Sunni schools by Iraq and Saudi Arabia, two
countries which are very anxious to make sure that Pakistan remains a predomi-
nantly Sunni nation. ‘The war in Afghanistan made matters worse, because a power
struggle was also being waged there between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Moreover, the
Pakistani state used the madrasahs to bolster Sunnism in strategically important places
like the NWFP, because from there they would be able to start a jihad in Afghanistan.
The 1990s: an explosion of sectarian violence

As a result of the Islamization policy and the intensifying rivalries between foreign
powers on Pakistani (and Afghan) soil during the 1980s, the sectarian conflict
between Sunni and Shi’a assumed tragic proportions during the following decade,
leaving several hundred dead and thousands wounded. This violence, which has
become ubiquitous in some parts of Pakistan, explodes with particular force during
muharram processions which commemorate the tragedy of Kerbala. Sunni and Shi’a
pursue their respective traditions of maddhe sahaba and tabarri: the first takes the form
of a recitation glorifying the first three caliphs recognized by Sunnis; the second that
of attacks against them. The month of Ramadan can also be violent: religious fer-
vour reaches a peak at this time of year, so it is easy for sectarian organizations to
manipulate their militants into committing acts of terrorism against members of the
rival sect.
The scale of this violence has continued to grow during the 1990s. Support from
the Gulf states has radicalized Sunni groups; everyone is trying to raise the stakes by
violent means, physical as well as verbal, in order to obtain the biggest share of the
funds. As for the war in Afghanistan, not only has it transformed militant organiza-
tions into paramilitary organizations won over to the ‘kalashnikov culture’ and
influenced by Taliban militancy, it has also fostered the emergence of criminal net-
works living off the drugs trade and smuggling. Now these traffickers have
established links with sectarian militants: the former see sectarian violence as a
cover for their criminal activities; the latter obtain money and training that helped
them to continue their terrorist acts. The participation of the Mafia and other crim-
inal organizations probably explains this escalating violence — such groups have
fewer scruples about killing people while they are praying in mosques or at ceme-
teries (in January 1998, for example, 25 Shi’a attending a funeral were murdered at
the cemetery in Mominpura, Lahore, setting off a cycle of violent episodes which
left 150 dead in various parts of the country).°”
The state finds it very difficult to control these sectarian organizations, since they
claim to be acting in the name of Islam. Since sectarianism itself is considered to be
an ‘Islamic’ problem, these organizations have enjoyed the tacit support of Pakistan's
leading political parties, both secular (the PPP, the PML) and religious. Religious par-
ties have used their influence to stop sectarian militants being arrested, in the hope
that this tactic will gain them the support of pro-Islamist voters. ‘The police are too
incompetent and corrupt to be able — or even willing — to stem the tide of violence
between Sunni and Shi’a. As for the army and the secret services, they are suspected
of taking advantage of the trouble caused by sectarian conflict to put pressure on
governments during democratic interludes. Finally, the sectarian movements still
have the support of the Taliban and ‘jihadist’?! organizations like the Harkat-ul
Ansar (HUA), now the Harkat-ul Mujahiddin (HUM) ~ a‘subsidiary’ of the SSP,
which is waging a guerrilla war in Kashmir.”
The madrasahs, an element of society which the government promoted with a view
to being able to control it better, also presents it with a problem. Those which it
finances itself are still in a dependent position, and few of these propound extremist
ideas. But the others — especially those that are funded from abroad — are another
matter. Several times since 1995 the government has tried to prevent foreign financ-
ing of madrasahs that preach sectarianism, but to no avail — they simply falsify the
source of their funding, presenting it as income from gifts or all kinds of business
activities (such as publishing). Moreover, militant teachings do not necessarily appear
in their textbooks: they are often disseminated orally, which makes it more difficult
to control them. Young people usually start attending these schools at a very early
age, so they are easily indoctrinated into believing that they are the only genuine
Muslims. They often find it impossible to get a job; hence they have no alternative
but to struggle for a ‘true’ Islamic society from which other sects would be
excluded.*?
There is another reason why the government is finding its struggle against sec-
tarian organizations difficult: the biggest parties, such as the SSP, seek to recruit
members mainly from those who are excluded from society, the victims of the break-
down of traditional communities; however, the bulk of their support comes from
certain middle-class circles, especially those which are vying for power with big
Shi’a landowners. One of the SSP’s objectives is precisely to fight the big rural
magnates, many of whom — in the Punjab, the principal sectarian battleground — are
not only Shi’a, but Sufis as well:3* since the SSP has strong ideological links with the
Deobandi, it is also trying to fight against the influence of the pzr.
The roots of the conflict between Sunni and Shi’a also lie in urbanization and the
changing social status of certain sectors of the middle class: they have either become
poorer or suddenly become spectacularly rich, like the workers who have returned
from the Persian Gulf; in fact the emergence of sectarian organizations coincided
with the return of large numbers of these workers in the mid-1980s. In general these
people are from deprived rural backgrounds, but they have seen their income rise by
600 to 800 per cent, and when they came home they settled in the urban areas. Thus
the rise of the sectarian organizations has satisfied the need of whole categories of
people (migrants, but non-migrants as well) for an urban religious identity, and has
also provided an alienated middle class with a sense of status.°°
So Islam in Pakistan has a very peculiar complexion. It may be the official ideol-
ogy that unites the country, but it is nevertheless extremely diverse, at a crossroads
between the Arab~Iranian and Indian worlds. For the most part, ordinary people
express their religious sentiments through Sufism, which in this corner of the world
means the worship of saints. ‘Today, however, the composite nature of Islam in
Pakistan is in jeopardy more than ever. There are many deep-seated causes of sec-
tarian conflict: quite apart from mere doctrinal differences, there are economic,
social and political factors to consider. But above all, such conflict is a symptom of
an ideological confusion which means that both the state and the Islamist parties feel
a need constantly to reiterate the fact that Pakistan is a Muslim country, and to define
the ‘true’ Muslim in ever narrower terms.
11
ISLAM AND POLITICS
Many Westerners were shocked when General Zia ul-Haq, soon after he took power
in 1977, brought in flagrantly ‘Islamic’ punishments like public floggings, and com-
pared Pakistan to Saudi Arabia, where Islamic law controls every aspect of life.
Nevertheless, Islamist disciples of Abul-Ala Maududi, who served in Zia’s first gov-
ernment, soon joined the opposition on the grounds that this Islamization of the law
was a mere ‘cosmetic’ facade, and that there was still a long way to go before
Pakistan could really be called an ‘Islamic state’. Whom are we to believe?
If we are to understand the extent of Islam’s influence over political life in
Pakistan, we must go back to the events that surrounded the country’s foundation.
The decrees issued in the late 1970s were themselves the result of what happened
during Pakistan’s first ten years of life — especially the long constitutional debate,
begun in 1948, which finally produced the 1956 Constitution. This first text - which
was the result of hard-won compromise, and for the most part is still valid — imposed
limits on Islam’s role within the state.
The Significance of Islam at the Time of Partition

Pakistan, which was created in 1947 to unite regions of the Indian subcontinent
where the Muslims were in the majority, could not dodge the question of religion’s
role in politics: Islam had figured prominently in the process which led to Partition.
First, the demand for such a state was based on two premisses which were spelled out
in the 1940 Lahore Resolution, which put forward the Muslim League’s ideological
agenda: inasmuch as Islam embodied a civilization which was diametrically opposed
to and incompatible with Hinduism, the Muslims of the subcontinent constituted a
separate nation; as a small minority (24 per cent of the population of British India)
they would not be able to protect their rights in elected institutions in the event that
colonial domination was supplanted by a united India. For its advocates, the creation
of Pakistan was essential for the protection of the religious identity of the subconti-
nent’s Muslims. In addition, in the campaign for the 1945-46 elections the Muslim
League consistently used religious arguments: they employed men of religion (gen-
uine or spurious) for propaganda purposes: ulemas (doctors of religious Law) and,
above all, pir (Sufi masters), who were especially influential in the countryside; the
League was therefore in their debt. This call to religion explains the Muslim voters’
massive support for the League’s programme — even in regions where the Muslims
were in the minority, which were destined to remain part of India.
Partition left hundreds of thousands dead (they are considered martyrs [shahid])
and millions of refugees, known as Muhajirs [muhajir], after the first Muslims who
followed the Prophet into exile at Medina and established the first ‘Islamic state’ in
622. In the early years Pakistan found it difficult to forget these religious associations,
the tremendously powerful emotions they had aroused and the suffering and sacri-
fice to which they had given rise.
Finally, there was the sheer weight of an increasingly overwhelming Muslim
majority. Massacres and population movements on both sides of the border at the
time of Partition had constituted a thorough ethnic ‘cleansing’ [safa’7] (a phrase
already in use at that time), since high-caste Sikhs and Hindus had fled from both
halves of Pakistan. Only 3 per cent of the population in the west were non-Muslims
in 1971: apart from a few high-caste tradesmen who stayed in Sind, Baluchistan and
the NFWP, and a few well-educated Parsee (Zoroastrian) businessmen, they were
mainly Untouchables who were still Hindus or had become Christians. Only in
eastern Pakistan (which became Bangladesh in 1971) was there still a significant
minority (25 per cent) of Hindus, mainly low-caste: with conflicts and riots, the
number of non-Muslims continued to decrease — today, Hindus and a few Christians
make up only about 10 per cent of the population of Bangladesh.
Once the eastern part of the country had seceded, minorities — now only 3 per cent
of the total population — became demographically negligible. Nevertheless, two groups
were ideologically significant — albeit in a negative sense — because they were the
indispensable scapegoats of those who wanted a scrupulously pure Islamic state: the
Christians (about 1.5 per cent of the population) and the tiny heterodox Ahmadiyya
or Ahmadi sect (well below 0.5 per cent), which originated in a breakaway Sunni group
at the end of the nineteenth century, led by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (who died in
1908). ‘This visionary, who regarded himself as a modern-day prophet, surrounded
himself with a strong community of educated and influential believers who were
deeply committed to missionary activity on a worldwide scale. From the start the
Ahmadiyya clashed with orthodox Sunni theologians who considered belief in any
prophet after Muhammad to be a form of apostasy punishable by death; in 1974 the
Parliament of Pakistan would pronounce them non-Muslims.! In 1947, however, non-
Muslims could make their voices heard in the constutional debate, because they made
up about 15 per cent of the total population, and held 15 of the 68 seats in the
Constituent Assembly as a result of the system of separate electorates.
Even this Muslim majority, however, is — as we have seen — by no means homo-
geneous, even though it had to present a united front against the Hindus at the time
of Partition. If we are to understand the first riots of the 1950s, and above all the
sectarian conflicts which broke out in the 1980s, we must remember that the great
majority of Pakistan’s Muslims — 75 per cent or more (there are no reliable statistics)
~ are Sunni, or orthodox, Muslims; they follow the Hanafi school of religious law —
the predominant school in the Indian subcontinent — which entails a plethora of
spiritual concepts and political options. The Sunni will always be politically
dominant, and will lead debates on the Islamic constitution.
ISLAM AND POLITICS 27
Alongside them is a significant Shi’a minority — estimated at between 15 and 25

per cent — whose wealth gives them influence. As we have seen, the Shi’a are divided
into two main subsects. On one side are the Twelvers, who — as in Iran — await
the return of the twelfth imam; they own estates around Jhang, in the Punjab,
and in Sind — Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1928-79) belonged to this group. On the
other are the Isma/ilis, distant heirs of the Fatimid caliphate of Cairo, who
recognize only seven imams; they are the great traders of India’s western coast,
from Hindu merchant castes, and have themselves been divided from the outset
into two rival sects: the Khoja, led by the Aga Khan — including Muhammad Ali
Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan — and the Bohra, whose leader, the Sayyedna, is
in Bombay. Some of these Isma’ilis, who moved from Bombay to Karachi with
Jinnah at the time of Partition, were members of the twenty-two great families
who dominated Pakistan’s economy until Bhutto took power in 1971. Each sect
retains its own family laws on marriage, divorce and inheritance, as codified by
the British under the title Anglo-Muslim law. The other very tiny sect is the
Ahmadiyya, which — as we have just seen — was pronounced a non-Muslim
minority in 1974.
It was Jinnah, a member of the Isma’ilian Shi’a minority, who took the initiative
in the constitutional debate. He was both governor general of the new dominion of
Pakistan and president of the Constituent Assembly; his assistant was his Prime
Minister, Liaquat Ali Khan (1895-1951), ex officio president of the Muslim League.
Like their Indian counterparts, these men had to prepare and gain acceptance for a
constitution as quickly as possible, in order to establish the country’s political insti-
tutions and define the role which would be played by religion. Would Pakistan be
simply a country with an overwhelming Muslim majority, but no special constitu-
tional niche for Islam? In other words, was Pakistan moving towards a ‘secular’
constitution, like the one that would be promulgated in India in 1950, under whose
terms religion — at least in principle — is a personal matter, and all religions are rec-
ognized to have equal status? Or, on the contrary, should Islam and the Muslim
majority be accorded special favour by making Pakistan a religious state, thereby
conducting a constitutional ‘experiment’ (this, too, is a term used at that time) com-
parable — in its own way — to the one Israel was conducting at the time (to make a
now-classic comparison)?
Jinnah — who had not hesitated to exploit Islam’s vote-winning potential — now
tried to calm things down, and to confine religion to the private sphere. At the first
meeting of the Constituent Assembly, on 1] August 1947, he said: ‘In the course of
not
time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims,
in the religious sense, because this is the personal faith of each individual, but in the
political sense as citizens of the state.”
This flew in the face of modernist politicians and men of religion, who could not
of their
do without some kind of Islamic legitimation. Jinnah soon became aware
, he
significance. Ignoring his initial declaration, which was subsequently censored
on Islamic
promised on 25 January 1948 that the law of the country would be based
fundamen talists, ‘enraged
religious law, the shana. Four days later, galvanized by
women —
Amazons’ — according to the newspapers, they were in fact veiled
demonstrated in front ot the Punjab’s Legislative Assembly, demanding that when

farmland was handed on, women should be entitled to the portion laid down under
Muslim law (about half of what the man got); under the customary law approved by
the British, they had been deprived of their share.* Their apparently progressive
cause was well chosen, but in fact this demonstration had been fomented by the men
of religion.
So was Islam on the way to becoming the official religion in 1948? Was Pakistan
destined to become an Islamic state? These terms had not yet been defined in con-
stitutional form, and nothing had really been decided. Before we examine the ins
and outs of the constitutional debate, and its outcome, we must understand the var-
ious protagonists’ points of view.
Protagonists in the Constitutional Debate

We can divide the protagonists into three unequal camps: as well as a secularizing
elite, which tried with varying degrees of success to play a mediating role in the
debate, the main protagonists fell into two other camps — the modernists and the
men of religion. They in turn had conflicting points of view which divided them fur-
ther: secularizers and modernists followed a Western model; men of religion
opposed this with a — supposedly — traditional model.
The secularizing elite

Jinnah’s first option, a secular state, was favoured by two groups of people. First
there were the non-Muslims — essentially the Hindus of East Bengal — who consis-
tently fought for their secular option during the constitutional debates, but had no
real chance of affecting the final decision. In the same camp — but with far more
influence — was a secularizing Muslim elite from the three major state institutions: first,
the administrators who took over from the Indian Civil Service; they included Ghulam
Muhammad and Iskander Mirza, who succeeded Jinnah as governors general and
tried to promote the idea of a secular constitution after the troubles in 1953. Then
there was the army, which was champing at the bit throughout the constitutional
debate — apart from the isolated example of the Rawalpindi conspiracy in 1951. Not
until 1958 did Ayub Khan, who had worked closely with Ghulam Muhammad and
Iskander Mirza, cross the Rubicon with the first military coup, and soon started to use
religion for his own ends by switching to the modernist camp. Third, there were sec-
ularizers in the ranks of senior lawyers; it was these people who put forward the
secular point of view most succinctly in judgements and writings such as those of A K
Brohi, and above all Judge Muhammad Munir after the anti-Ahmadiyya riots of
1953.* For public servants, technical competence and the responsibility for maintain-
ing the continuity and effectiveness of the state were sufficient guarantees of
legitimacy; they had only to draw attention to the somewhat dubious religious pre-
tensions of the modernist politicians, and espoused a declaration by Iskander Mirza,
Interior Minister when the Constituent Assembly was dismissed in 1954, to the
effect that ‘religion and politics could and must be kept separate’.°
The modernists
The modernists, united around the Muslim League, believed that Islam was an
indispensable ingredient of their political legitimacy. They were, however, reluctant
to abandon their own political culture — that of a Western-style democracy on the
British model, where laws are made by elected assemblies. They simply wanted to
impart an Islamic legitimacy to their own institutions.
To this end they drew on an important authority: the poet, philosopher and
politician Muhammad Iqbal, who was himself part of the early-twentieth-century
Arab modernist tradition. Iqbal linked medieval political institutions to those of
the modern world by means of the Arab concept of yma’: ‘consensus’.
Traditionally, the consensus of the community — which is believed to be the third
source of the law after the Koran and the Sunna (the Tradition of the Prophet) —
allows Islam to be adapted to historical circumstances; however, the definition of
consensus is a matter for the ulemas. For the modernists, with Iqbal at their
head, the definition of consensus should be a matter for a much wider elite which
should interpret public opinion. From there they moved on — imperceptibly — to
the idea — hinted at by Iqbal and sanctioned by thinkers such as Fazlur Rahman
(1919-88) — that directly elected assemblies could be the forum where consensus
could emerge. Finally, it was explicitly acknowledged that the modern interpre-
tation of Islamic Law, which would be the law of the country, would be the task
of elected Muslim members of these assemblies; they would explain the consen-
sus of the community and give it the force of law, without feeling that they were
bound by the letter of medieval Muslim law. In this way Pakistan would become
a Muslim state, and the assemblies, which would hold legislative power, would
have Islamic legitimacy.
This clever hypothesis, however, came up against both theoretical and practical dif-
ficulties. The elected Muslims would find a consensus that was valid for them as
believers. What about elected non-Muslims in a country where — since East Pakistan
was still part of it— they made up more than 15 per cent of the population? This ques-
tion was raised by modernist theoreticians of the time such as Khalifa Abdul Hakim,
an
who had an official position, and the lawyer Kemal Faruki. ‘They concluded that in
in
Islamic state, non-Muslims cannot take part in defining a consensus, and hence
role,
making laws which would be binding on Muslims. They must have a separate
—
preferably with separate electorates; those they elect would be second-rate members
was the
even second-class citizens, as the men of religion would want them to be. This
of non-
first formulation of the — subsequently recurrent — problem of the status
s nor the
Muslims in an Islamic state: a problem which neither the modernist
of this type of
fundamentalists could avoid, because it has to do with the very nature
at the time).
‘ideological state’ (to use the kind of language that was much in vogue
The men of religion

ed to the past. ‘They
The men of religion identified with political models that belong
on the basis of medieval
wanted to reform — even replace — Western-style institutions
precedents. They had their disagreements, but they agreed on at least three points.
First, they affirmed the supremacy of the Law revealed by God, which it was their
sole mission to interpret — as opposed to the modernists, who had lawmaking aspi-
rations; so the men of religion found common cause in the edifice of medieval law.
Second, they believed that religious communities should be kept separate, and that
they fell into a natural hierarchical order: in a Muslim state, non-Muslims could not
enjoy the same prerogatives as Muslims. Finally, they were suspicious of Western
democracy and the multiparty system. These three points of agreement constituted
the point of departure for the differing approaches of the traditionalists and the fun-
damentalists.
The first approach was that of the ulemas, with their traditional religious knowl-
edge — especially religious law, which they studied in books written in Arabic. The
ulemas lived according to the medieval model: the sharia, the Law revealed by God
and interpreted by the ulemas, should apply to every aspect of social life. Muslim
sovereigns applied it through the intermediary of the ulemas — all teachers and
Judges were in fact ulemas. The ulemas did not have any novel ideas about how
Pakistan should be governed. They wanted the modern state to be like a medieval
caliphate, and their first priority was to make the government recognize their ele-
vated status and restore them to their previous position.
The most dynamic among them, who belonged to the Deobandi school, had
been recruited before Partition to campaign for Pakistan.® Jinnah had taken them
from the Indian Association of Ulemas (the Jamiyyat-ul Ulama-i Hind, JUH), which
fought alongside the Congress Party for an undivided India. Their leader, Shabbir
Ahmad Usmani (who died in 1949), had formed an organization in Calcutta in 1945
in order to state the claim for Pakistan, the Association of Ulemas of Islam
(Jamiyyat-ul Ulama-i Islam, JUI), which moved to Karachi after Partition and was
immediately granted official recognition: Usmani became a member of the
Constituent Assembly. He sought the assistance of two important people who played
a part in the constitutional debate, Mufti Muhammad Shafi and his disciple Ihtishamul
Haqq Thanavi, and also relied on the good offices of two great Indian authorities:
Sulaiman Nadwi, who settled in Karachi, and Muhammad Hamidullah, who worked
as a researcher at the CNRS in Paris. Another group, affiliated to the rival Barelwi
school,’ the Association of the Ulemas of Pakistan (Jamiyyat-ul Ulama-i Pakistan,
JUP), was set up by Abdul Hamid Badauni in Karachi in 1948, but it played a minor
role. ‘These ulemas’ associations, which became political parties in 1956, were a
unique feature of Pakistan’s political culture, which encouraged religious parties.
The fundamentalists, however, who had more definite ideas and strategies,
snatched the initiative from the ulemas. Two personalities came to the fore. One was
Muhammad Asad, born Leopold Weiss (1900-92), an Austrian convert who worked
for the Punjabi government, devised a draft constitution, and became an intellectual
model for the Egyptian Islamist Sayyid Qutb (1906-65). The fundamentalists’ true
guiding spirit, however, was the dynamic Abul-Ala Maududi (1903-79). Although he
was schooled in the traditional disciplines of the ulemas — contrary to the popular
hagiography, which says that he was self-taught — he wanted to re-erect the entire
edifice of Islamic thought in a way that would adapt it to the modern world. He
began with the supremacy of God and the transcendence of the revealed Law. An
Islamic state should be completely orientated towards putting this Law into practice.
To this end, it needed an authoritarian government led by the most worthy Muslims;
there was no need for political parties, since the ‘ideology’ — this is the word he uses —
which is Islam is indivisible; the Consultative Assembly around the head of state, and
the head of state himself, should be elected on merit alone, with no partisan electoral
campaign. If such an Islam — which should influence every aspcect of Muslim life —
were put in place by state authority, all citizens would have to be good Muslims, and
there would be no further problems. Maududi started to formulate this model of the
Islamic state® in 1939. His ‘Islamic revolution’, however, would be a slow process,
because upright leaders would have to be trained to take over from politicians who
served corrupt regimes.
Even in this maximalist concept (I hesitate to call it utopian) there was still room
for compromise and strategic skill. In 1942, Maududi — mindful of the possible cre-
ation of Pakistan — had set up his own religious and political organization in India,
the Jamaat-i Islami (JI), thus surrounding himself with a small, close-knit group of
disciples. He was against the Muslim League and its plans for Pakistan, because he
did not consider that modernist politicians had the requisite Islamic qualities. He
was, however, capable of adapting to new circumstances: in 1947 he went to
Pakistan with his supporters and set up his headquarters in Lahore; here he held
court with both modernist politicians and ulemas, and became the ‘catalyst’ for
debate on the Islamic state.”
To this list we must also add alast and less important debating partner, the Ahrar
party (the ‘free’ Muslims), a kind of armed militia set up in 1931 to defend the
Muslims against attack from Hindu paramilitaries. ‘This small party was obsessed
with two ideas: it wanted some form of Islamic socialism; and it wanted the
Ahmadiyya excluded from the Muslim community. Originally allied with the
the
Congress Party, and won over to Pakistan only in 1949, the Ahrar would be in
news when they began the anti-Ahmadi movement.
Towards a First Compromise: The 1956 Constitution

their
India had voted in its Constitution in 1950, but to the Pakistanis’ great shame,
complex-
constitutional debate went on for eight years: from 1948 until 1956. The
ments had
ity of the subject was not the main reason for the delay. Pakistan’s govern
Kashmir; the
to deal with a number of urgent matters: the unresolvable dispute over
two halves of the
no less thorny problem of the institutional balance between the
esh; economic
country, which would finda tragic solution in the secession of Banglad
mention the political
crises and the lack of foreign currency; poor harvests — not to
was tortuous. Until
instability caused by the institutional vacuum. The debate itself
Minister, Liaquat Ali
his death in September 1948, Jinnah — followed by his Prime
League in order to push
Khan — tried to reorganize and strengthen the Muslim
the way for this on 12
through a modernist constitution; Liaquat Ali Khan paved
the Constituent Assembly —
March 1949, when a majority of Muslim members of
Resolution which would
opposed by the Hindu deputies — passed an Objectives
feature at the head of all Pakistan’s constitutions: a compromise according to which

Western democratic elements would be preserved, while the Islamic nature of the
state would be guaranteed. After the assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan in 1951,
however, and the political troubles that followed, the Muslim League was in a weaker
position: for more than a year, the constitutional initiative had been with its religious
opponents.
The ulemas had made great efforts to set themselves up as religious experts: in
1948 Usmani had drawn upa detailed plan for a Ministry of Religion andJustice,
and decided whom to put in the various posts. But they had no constitutional doc-
trine, and they had let their fundamentalist opponent Abul-Ala Maududi, who was
much better at this kind of thing, act first.
In January and February 1948, Maududi, who held court with both modernists
and traditionalists, had delivered two lectures at Lahore’s College of Law, in which
he revealed his plans for making Pakistan an Islamic state. He was ready to go over
the ulemas’ heads and strike a deal with Westernized politicians: if they agreed to a
gradual introduction of the sharia into existing institutions, Parliament could discuss
interpretation of the Divine Law. If this process was followed, he said optimistically,
Pakistan could become an Islamic state within ten years! Inspired by Maududi, the
ulemas raised the stakes during 1948, forcing the government to pass the famous
Declaration of Objectives, which guaranteed the Islamic character of the future
Constitution, in 1949.
A commission made up of ulemas, the Board of Talimat-i Islamia, was then
given the task of informing members of the Constituent Assembly about the ‘Islamic
teachings’ which would be enshrined in the Constitution. In 1950 it presented a
somewhat medieval picture in which the head of state would hold office for life: he
should be a male Muslim, a kind of caliph who would use Islam as an ‘ideological’
(this was the very word they used) cement to unite a country where non-Muslims
would be sidelined. Finally, this head of state would be chosen by the ulemas them-
selves, not by an elected Assembly; with the aid of a council of ulemas, he would
have the power to define and interpret Islamic law, and would be responsible for dis-
pensing justice.
Such a programme, which deprived the democratically elected modernist politi-
cians of all legislative power, and negated all the validity of the consensus they were
supposed to represent, could not, of course, be enshrined in the Constitution. The
unequal treatment of non-Muslims would damage Pakistan’s image in India and the
West. After an interim report on the constitutional debate, therefore, Liaquat Ali
Khan buried the ulemas’ recommendations for the time being. Then, during 1952,
an idea came to light which subsequently became very popular: remove Parliament’s
ultimate legislative authority, and give the courts — especially the Supreme Court —
the job of deciding whether or not a given law conformed to the demands of Islam.
Muhammad Asad had devised this notion in 1948; Maududi took it over and pro-
moted it in 1952, getting the ulemas to accept it. It was not enshrined in the early
constitutions, but it was implemented under Zia ul-Haq’s regime.
Then, for political reasons, the debate became public. The ulemas made a mis-
take. Pulled in the wake of the Ahrar, with the clandestine encouragement of Mian
Mumtaz Daultana, head of the provincial government of the Punjab, and sup-
ported by the most radical fringe of the JI, which enlisted Maududi against his will,
they launched an anti-Ahmadi campaign, demanding that the Constitution should
pronounce the Ahmadiyya non-Muslims. In early 1953, this campaign led to mur-
derous riots in Lahore, which gave the secular government an excuse to be ruthless.
Maududi — who had eventually jumped on the bandwagon — was arrested and con-
demned to death (he was subsequently pardoned). This was when Judge Munir
wrote his famous report. Immediately afterwards, Muhammad Ali Bogra’s govern-
ment sketched out a secular Interim Constitution — this was never made public, for
it collapsed in the face of opposition from both the modernists and the men of reli-
gion. The secularizing elite’s final effort, in October 1954, was dissolution of the
Constituent Assembly by the governor general, Ghulam Muhammad, who wanted
both to resolve an internal political crises and to reduce the pressure from the men
of religion. The secularizing project, however, could not succeed: the politicians
needed Islamic legitimacy.
The debate went on for another two years with another Constituent Assembly,
without much in the way of new advances. It finally produced the 1956
Constitution, which represented the final balancing act between the modernists and
the men of religion. The latter had their way on various points: Pakistan was pro-
claimed an ‘Islamic republic’; the President had to be a Muslim; at the head of the
Constitution was the ‘Declaration of Objectives’ which affirmed the sovereignty of
Allah and guaranteed Muslims the right to live according to the Law of Islam; it also
included ‘Principles of Policy’ which stipulated that links with other Muslim coun-
tries should be established, and that the necessary measures for the religious
instruction of Muslims, together with the promotion of their religious institutions
and the standards of Islamic morality, should be taken. The head of state must set
a
up a teaching and research organization to ‘help rebuild an Islamic society’, and
ensur-
Consultative Commission on Islamic Ideology which would have the duty of
the
ing that the laws passed by Parliament were in conformity with the Koran and
Tradition (Sunna) handed down by the Prophet: members of this Commission
would be chosen by the government.
um demands:
These Islamic clauses fell well short of the men of religion’s minim
ensuring that
the word sharia was carefully avoided; the Commission charged with
only a consultative
laws were in conformity with the Koran and the Tradition had
theologians but the
role; and the ulemas were in the minority on it. It was not the
ely favoured the
state which would have the last word. This compromise definit
us groups.
modernists, who had made only token concessions to the religio
JI) had not been able
Since these groups (that is to say, the JUI, the JUP andthe
ed themselves into politi-
to achieve a special place in the state apparatus, they chang
This decision went against
cal parties so that they could promote their ideas in public.
be no parties in an Islamic
their declared principle according to which there should
ous parties, which are a unique
state, where political truth was indivisible. These religi
ty parties (their best perfor-
feature of Pakistan’s political landscape, may be minori
election in 1970), but they have
mance was 15.5 per cent of the vote in the first general
strategy of outbidding: they
an incalculable influence because of their continuing
always support the conservatives and give their demands religious overtones, so that
their opponents have to do the same. Ayub Khan might have known how to escape
this trap, but Bhutto — as we shall see — fell right into it. Finally, the most powerful of
these religious parties — powerful not in terms of number of votes but in terms of
enterprise and nuisance-causing capacity — is the JI: it has a coherent political doc-
trine, and if it needs back-up it can call on the terrible Students’ Association (Islami
Jamiat-i Tulaba, IJT), which is only too willing to resort to violence, imposing a reign
of terror in campuses and often in the streets.
How the Compromise Changed

Would the 1956 compromise remain throughout all the changing regimes, or would
it be fundamentally altered by subsequent constitutions: Ayub Khan’s in 1962, and
the one drawn up by Bhutto in 1973 — which, thanks to subsequent amendments, is
still in force? In fact, these constitutional changes led the country in various different
directions.
Ayub Khan’s modernism

General Ayub Khan, who took power with the first military coup d’tat in 1958, had
modernist inclinations. He had worked closely with the secularizing elite during the
constitutional debate, and he was prepared to grant the men of religion only the min-
imal concessions to guarantee Islamic legitimacy. He had other concerns: anxious to
govern effectively, and to encourage development, he sought to depoliticize society
and impose an authoritative regime of guided democracy, on the lines of the military
dictatorships that were much in vogue at the time in the Third World (Egypt, Nepal,
Indonesia . . .). Quite apart from its other effects, this banished the question of the
Islamization of the state from the scene. Ayub Khan took advantage of this situation
to renege on the concessions made to the men of religion in 1956.
His first — highly symbolic — attempt failed. He tried to adapt the 1962
Constitution — which increased the authority of the head of state by establishing a
presidential regime, and depoliticized society by implementing a pyramidal voting
system — to suit himself by proposing to remove the adjective ‘Islamic’ from the coun-
try’s official name, describing it as the ‘Republic of Pakistan’ rather than the ‘Islamic
Republic of Pakistan’. This caused uproar among the men of religion, and the
General had to retreat and restore the adjective ‘Islamic’ by a 1963 amendment. He
therefore had to subscribe — at least with token gestures — to the Islamic nature of the
state: from that moment on, Islam was the indispensable ingredient of political
legitimacy. This was the final nail in the coffin of Pakistan as a secularizing state.
Nevertheless, Ayub Khan refused to give in. He kept his sights fixed on mod-
ernism, come hell or high water — notably with the proclamation in 1961, after six
years of hard bargaining with the men of religion, of the Muslim Family Law
Ordinance, which restricted polygamy and protected women’s rights. Under Ayub
Khan, therefore, changes in the compromise tended to take a modernizing direction.
Bhutto opens the floodgates of fundamentalism

Ayub Khan’s fall from power in 1969, and the troubles attendant upon the secession
of Bangladesh, led to a repoliticization of the country, and raised fresh legitimation
problems. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who came to power in 1971, devised a new constitu-
tion in 1973; its distinctive feature was the reestablishment of a parliamentary
regime. At that time, the Islamic clauses were not altered much: the Consultative
Commission on Islamic Ideology became a Consultative Council on Islamic
Ideology, but there was no significant change in its composition: its members were
still appointed by the government, and the ulemas were still in the minority. The real
changes in the compromise under Bhutto were of another kind, or came later.
Where ideology was concerned, Ayub Khan’s paternalism was replaced by ‘social-
ism’, which in fact meant populism, for Bhutto owed his power to the way in
which he had exploited the legitimate grievances of the working classes. But he did
not stop at profane language: he flagrantly and deliberately used religion to whip
up the crowds, as Liaquat Ali Khan had done for a while before he was killed. An
impassioned public speaker, Bhutto praised the merits of ‘Islamic socialism’, which
was quickly rebaptized ‘Mohammedan equality’ [musawat-1 Muhammadi|. Ending
Pakistan’s isolation, he gave himself international legitimacy in the name of Islam
by playing a dominant role in the Islamic Conference Organization, the Muslim
countries’ federal body, summoning it to a meeting in Pakistan. The outbidding
tactics of the religious parties, which criticized his nationalization policy on behalf
of the wealthy, gradually drew him on to the terrain of laws and the Constitution;
paradoxically, it led him to change the compromise not in a modernizing direction,
as Ayub Khan had done, but in the direction of fundamentalism. This was done
in two stages. First, he yielded to the men of religion’s demands by pronouncing
had
the Ahmadiyya non-Muslims, whereas preceding conservative governments
pushed this demand firmly into the background after the 1953 riots. This conces-
sion, fraught with danger for the future, was agreed in 1974 by a socialist
line of
Parliament which was completely under Bhutto’s thumb. By thus drawinga
approval to
demarcation between Muslims and non-Muslims, Bhutto gave full
whose con-
the division between full citizens, the Muslims, and the non-Muslims,
They were
stitutional status was thereby lowered to that of second-class citizens.
elections; and although
debarred from high state office and had to hold separate
whereas
they were free to practise their religion, they could not proselytize,
floodgates for the
Muslims were encouraged to do so. Thus Bhutto opened the
the Ahmadiyya but
persecution which would increasingly be the lot not only of
the animists), as we shall
also of the Christians (and, incidentally, the Hindus, even
see below.
red by a right-wing
The second stage marked the end of Bhutto’s regime. Corne
him in the 1977 elections,
coalition which he — mistakenly — believed would defeat
law. ‘This term — hitherto
he proclaimed that the law of the country was now sharia
too, is fraught with danger,
carefully avoided in official texts — is imprecise; it,
medieval Islamic law. Was Bhutto
because it covers every domain that is codified in
wanted? Had his regime survived,
going to give the men of religion everything they
it would soon have found itself ina legislative, political and constitutional impasse.
So Bhutto, in taking a direction that was diametrically opposed to that of Ayub
Khan, set the compromise on a path that was no longer modernist, but led straight
into the clutches of the men of religion.
Zia ul-Haq puts fundamentalism into practice

Paradoxically, General Zia ul-Haq, who is usually held uniquely responsible for the
Islamization of Pakistan’s legal system, restored matters by setting limits on the
Islamization of the country. As a conservative and JI sympathizer, he must have har-
boured fundamentalist convictions, but his behaviour was by no means fanatical; in
fact it was coolly reasonable. Taking advantage of Bhutto’s concessions, he made a
great show of declaring that he was in favour of the Islamization of state institutions,
producing a programme that was very much like that of the JI. The JI, falling
straight into the trap, provided ministers who served in Zia’s first government. It
quickly realized that this had been a mistake, and joined the opposition.
If we examine the decrees promulgated at this time closely, we see that they actually
place very strict limits on the application of the sharia, confining it to a few prominent
domains of criminal law. First there is the meting out of Islamic punishments: stoning
or whipping for adultery; amputation for theft; whipping for the use of intoxicants;
prison or the death penalty for blasphemy. As for criminal proceedings, only the rules
of evidence were changed: the worth of a woman’s evidence was reduced by half, so
that it took two female witnesses to equate to one man. Another decree introduced two
canonical religious taxes, which were added to existing state taxes and would be used
to finance religious institutions: compulsory alms [zakdf] and land tax [ushr]. Finally,
there was an innovation that would have far-reaching consequences for the rampant
Islamization of the legal system: the establishment of special shariat benches in provin-
cial courts and the Supreme Court which would repeal laws that were contrary to
Islam (this initiative was reminiscent of Maududi’s suggestion, described above). These
decrees were only partially enforced: thieves did not have their hands amputated, and
there were no stonings; in general, the only such punishment used was whipping;
nevertheless, some people were condemned to death for blasphemy.
Allin all, these decrees covered only a small — albeit very public — part of the legal
system. Anglo-Indian law was still in force, and ordinary courts continued to sit; the
power of the shariat benches, attached to provincial courts to ensure that laws were
in conformity with the sharia, was limited to certain aspects of the law, mainly crim-
inal law. Outside their remit were family law (where the sharia had an elective status,
as a result — strangely enough — of Ayub Khan’s modernist ordinances in 1961), tax
and financial legislation, and most procedural codes.
In effect, Zia had established a dual system dominated by Anglo-Indian-type
modernist law, where Islamic law was relegated to a minor — albeit symbolic and
spectacular — role. The problem of the intellectual and juridical coherence of this
juxtaposition has not yet been solved.
After Zia: No Change, or Back to Fundamentalism?

Would there be no further concessions to the men of religion after General Zia’s
death in 1988, and the restoration of democracy? This seemed likely, and those who
voted for Benazir Bhutto certainly hoped so. In fact, if we look at the two prime min-
isters who alternated between 1988 and 1999 — Benazir Bhutto (1988-90; 1993-6)
and Nawaz Sharif (1990-3; 1997-9), we cannot be so sure. Over the course of
those ten years, Islamic legislation made great strides, and there was an unprece-
dented increase in intercommunal violence. But does this mean that the fortifications
against the encroachments of the men of religion had fallen into disrepair?
Five time bombs
The advance of religious legislation can partly be explained by the lingering effects
of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Zia ul-Haq’s Islamization policy. They started a process
that went on after they had gone: some of the institutions they had set up, like the
Islamic courts or the funding of religious education, continued to have (often unde-
sired) effects. Finally, and above all, in a system where minority religious parties won
concessions through a process of tactical outbidding that came close to moral black-
mail, governments could not renege on their predecessors’ concessions for fear of
being considered bad Muslims. In such circumstances, the previous regime’s deci-
sions still functioned like time bombs, strengthening Islam’s hold on institutions and
society in general.
The first time bomb was the Islamization of the legal system, which did not stop
when General Zia died. Where criminal law was concerned, the 1990 Qissas and
Diyat Ordinance organized and regulated, on the basis of medieval models, recourse
to private vengeance for murder and personal injury. A Shari’ah Act — which Zia
had not managed to push through — was voted in in 1991: it was couched in very
vague terms, but it strengthened the hold of medieval models on the interpretation
and application of the law. The most egregious measure, however, was surely the
1991 amendment to the 1986 law on blasphemy: hitherto, the penalty for blas-
phemy had been death or imprisonment. The Shari’ah Federal Court, deeming
imprisonment an inadequate penalty, demanded that blasphemy should always
in
carry the death penalty; the victims of this amendment, which was implemented
1991, were mainly members of religious minorities — notably Christians — some of
whom were executed on the basis of false accusations brought by Muslims.
This brings us to the second time bomb: the discriminatory measures against non-
Muslims. Since the historic vote to exclude the Ahmadiyya under Bhutto im 1974,
and above all since the restoration of democracy after Zia’s death, Muslim activists
they
have used this discriminatory legislation as an excuse to harass non-Muslims;
accused
have spread false rumours of sacrilege (burning the Koran, for example),
death penalty since
them of blasphemy (which, let us remember, has carried the
there have
1991), and burned down churches and houses belonging to Christians;
animists
been forcible attempts at converting the Hindus of Sind and the Kalash
around Chitral, in the northeast, along the Afghan border.
It is not only non-Muslims who have suffered the consequences of Islamic laws.
Two groups of Muslims are also affected: women, and minority sects. ‘The third per-
verse effect of Islamization has been to revive a medieval ruling according to which
not only non-Muslims but women, too, are inferior to male Muslims. So, in
Pakistan’s new application of criminal law, as we have seen, the testimony of two
female Muslims (or two male non-Muslims) is equivalent to the testimony of one
male Muslim; by the same token, in cases of private vengeance, injuries inflicted on
a woman are compensated at half the rate of injuries inflicted on a man. Finally, and
above all, the application of the ordinance on adultery — which, in theory, should
punish men and women equally — imposes a heavier penalty on women: consenting
(even raped) women are condemned to a whipping, while guilty men are acquitted
for lack of proof; it is by no means unusual for families to resort to false accusations
of adultery so that they can get rid of daughters or daughters-in-law whom they con-
sider to be a burden on them.
The fourth time bomb is sectarian conflict. Zia had given a special place to the
Sunni version of Islam, especially where the collection of compulsory alms was
concerned. This prompted the Shi’a to become religiously and politically active; in
answer, the Sunni became more radical and created militias. Over the last decade,
armed conflict between Shi’a and Sunni militias left hundreds dead. The discrimi-
natory institutionalization of religion has brought in its wake a politicization and
radicalization of sectarian divides, which from now on will be a basic ingredient of
politics in Pakistan.!°
The fifth and final time bomb is unemployment among students of religion. By its
massive funding of traditional education in the madrasahs, the government has
thrown on to the employment market thousands of young people who have acquired
a traditional religious knowledge which will not help them to find a suitable job. This
is a huge army of disaffected people who can readily be brainwashed for political
ends; they are by no means harmless, since some madrasahs — notably among those
which are affiliated to the Deobandi school ~ are only too willing to spread the doc-
trine of holy war (jihad) openly, even to provide paramilitary training. Their former
pupils fought in Afghanistan and Kashmir; the Taliban, who now control
Afghanistan — Afghans for the most part, but some of them of Pakistani origin — also
come from madrasahs in Pakistan. It is quite feasible that something very similar
could happen in Pakistan itself.
Limiting religious encroachment

Is there no end to the insidious advance of religious legislation? It seems that there
is. Despite increasing pressure from the men of religion, Pakistan’s constitution and
legal system are still based on a compromise between modernist institutions and
religious appendages which, although they are significant, are nevertheless limited in
effect. During Nawaz Sharif’s second term in office there was another attempt — skil-
fully frustrated by political obstructionism — to promulgate a second Shari’ah Bill to
succeed the one passed during his first term. The fact is, however, that periodic ref-
erences to the supremacy of the sharia have not led to a widening of its application,
because there are enough guardrails to prevent this application from straying outside
the limited domains to which it is restricted. Since Zia’s time, Pakistan’s legal system
has been a dual system where Western-type Anglo-Indian law is still the norm.
Moreover, despite the religious parties’ fervent rhetoric and ability to mobilize in
the streets, they seem to have lost some of their self-confidence, because they have
not done very well in elections over the past ten years. The JI did not put forward a
single candidate at the last general election in 1997, and the JUI did very badly (1.6
per cent of the votes — that is, 2 seats out of 204). Will these political parties retreat
to the political fringe? Or will they reenter the political fray when General
Musharraf’s military regime is over? For the moment — despite the residues of past
decisions over the previous twenty years — the compromise between the state and the
men of religion is still very much as it was. The guardrails — for which Zia is chiefly
responsible; we tend not to give him the credit he deserves — are still in place. Islam’s
role in Pakistan’s institutions and politics may attract a lot of public attention, but it
is still limited: the state still has the last word, and has been adept at setting up a
system of checks and balances to maintain its sovereignty.
12
LANGUAGES AND EDUCATION
In Pakistan, the language question involves numerous paradoxes and reflects many
social and political tensions. This is a multilingual state whose official language is
English, the tongue of its former colonizers, and whose native language, Urdu, is the
mother tongue only of the Muhajirs, who make up a mere 6 per cent of the popu-
lation. During its brief history,! Pakistan has seen the growth of many ethnic
movements based on linguistic claims. One of these movements, the Bengali move-
ment of 1948-52, developed into a genuine ethnonationalism which played a crucial
role in the 1971 Partition. At about the same time — in January 1971 and July
1972 — there were Muhajir—Sindi riots, which reached such a pitch that the Muhajirs
subsequently established nationalist organizations (see Chapter | above). Other
ethnic groups — the Pashtuns and the Baluchis, for example — chose language as their
identifying feature. Nevertheless, we should not look at the language question solely
from an ethnic point of view. It is an integral part of class relations, because it also
involves government, education, business, the media — in short, every domain of
national and social life. Both political and social stakes are involved.
Multilingualism Prevails, Despite

the Urduization Policy
As a result of the 1981 census, which contained a question about the language
‘normally spoken in the home’, we can quote some figures on language distribution.
Table 12.1 Languages spoken, 1981 census (%)
Punjabi 48.17
Pashto 13.14
Sindi ee
Seraiki 9.83
Urdu 7.6
Baluchi 3.02
Hindko 2.43
Brahui 24
Others* 2.81
* This category includes fifty languages and dialects, mostly non-written.

LANGUAGES AND EDUCATION 231
The census does not ask about English, Arabic or Persian, since these languages are
not widely spoken in private life. English is above all the key to responsible jobs in both
the public and the private sector. Twenty years earlier, according to the 1960 census,
only 2.7 per cent of Pakistanis had some knowledge of that language. No doubt such
a figure would be an underestimation today, if we go by the expansion of the middle
class — or, more precisely, of the salaried classes and other fields of employment
which entail a knowledge of English.? In 1981, according to matriculation results —
an examination in which English is compulsory — 19.56 per cent of the population
spoke English. In practice, most of those who qualified could barely read the English
textbooks, which they often tried to learn by heart. The total proportion of the pop-
ulation of Pakistan who really speak English is probably about 3 to 4 per cent.
Urdu is much more widely spoken — not only by those who have matriculated but
also by madrasah pupils, the military (whatever their rank), and unskilled workers who
can learn the language on the job. Another reason for the development of Urdu is
that it is the language of communication between the provinces, and the language
of television, the radio and the press. It is widely spoken by the middle classes,
except in Sind (with the exception of the major towns).
Urdu is the most ideologically significant language in Pakistani society. It is an
‘Islamic’ language par excellence, for it was adopted in colonial times by the ulemas
(doctors of Islamic law) and clerks [maulvi] to disseminate Islam.? It is also the lan-
guage of examinations taken in madrasahs recognized by the national Ministry of
Education, like those affiliated to the Deobandi, Barelwi, Ahl-i Hadith and Shi’a
schools.‘ Finally, it is the language of religious tracts and sermons, and of the most
reactionary newspapers. Most of the literature urging people to fight in Kashmir, to
combat ‘Western hegemony’ or to support Islamic fundamentalism is in Urdu. ‘Thus
an educated person is much more exposed than the average Pakistani to such liter-
ature, which is aimed at encouraging antidemocratic, pro-militaristic attitudes.
Classical Arabic is understood only by a handful of men of religion in the
madrasahs, and by a few university academics and researchers who practise Islam.
Although all Muslims are supposed to have a knowledge of the Koran, according to
the 1981 census only 18.37 per cent of the population could read it. The rest are
barely able to understand modern Arabic, even though the Arabic alphabet is vir-
tually the same as that of Urdu. As for Persian, only experts understand it. A few
students choose this language when they study for government competitive exami-
nations, thinking they are taking the easy option, but for the most part they simply
memorize certain passages.
In colonial times, the vernacular languages of the territories that became Pakistan
sn 1947 were not official teaching languages, but books in Punjabi, Sindi, Pashto,
the
Baluchi and Brahui were used in academic establishments. These books glorified
also told of
Prophet of Islam, the saints, and purification rituals, but some of them
end
legendary lovers like Heer and Ranjha. Most of these books were read until the
despite their lack of
of the eighteenth century; this proves that these languages,
s today
official recognition, had their own literary tradition. This tradition continue
of legends or
in chapbooks in the vernacular languages which also speak of religion,
stories of love, or of astrology, magic and sorcerers.
Since 1947, these regional languages have undergone several changes of fortune:
they are not taught at all (like Punjabi, which has been sacrificed to Urdu on the altar
of national integration; this means that the Punjabis can claim to be highly patriotic,
and to justify their domination’); they are taught to some extent (like Pashto, which
is used up to fifth grade in certain schools, then relegated to an option in higher
grades); or they are taught only in some regions (Sindi, for example, is taught in
Sind). Whatever the case, some people learn these languages on their own initiative,
because the chapbooks are available in all Pakistan’s major towns. William Hanaway
and Mumtaz Nazir reckon that there are 940 chapbooks in Punjabi, Seraiki, Hindko
(Hindi), Khowar, Pashto, Sindi, Persian and Urdu.® Films and songs in Punjabi and
Pashto are especially popular.
Thus Pakistan is still a multilingual country. It is true that English dominates the
national elite, and the Urduization policy is beginning to have an effect. But the ver-
nacular languages are in good shape — including Punjabi, which — even if it is no
longer taught — is still the majority language. Nonetheless, the influence of the edu-
cation system is very strong.
The Education System: The Rise of the Madrasahs

English-language schools — that is, schools where the teachers really teach in English,
and the pupils are from privileged Anglophone backgrounds — are too expensive for
middle- and working-class families. Most Pakistani families, however, can afford
public schools where the teaching is in Urdu and Sindi, and the few which teach
Pashto to younger pupils. But the madrasahs are even more attractive, because board
and education are free. Moreover, these Koranic schools have established national
bodies to assess their pupils’ knowledge of Urdu and Arabic. Nevertheless, in Pashto-
speaking regions they teach in Pashto; while in Sindi-speaking regions they teach in
Sindi. In the Punjab and Baluchistan, teachers often use the local languages in the
classroom even though Urdu is the traditional language of education.
We do not know exactly how many madrasahs there are. Some very precise figures
are given in the press: the periodical Nawa-t-wagt suggests that there are 6,761
Koranic schools (October 1999); while in 1995 the government was talking about
3,906. ‘The madrasahs teach Islamic Arabic as a symbol of continuity with the past,
and of Islamic identity, but most of their graduates cannot speak it properly.
Language and Power: The Ethnic Dimension

Urdu, heavily influenced by Persian, introduced into the education system by the
British,’ became a symbol of the Muslim elite in nineteenth-century India.® Thanks
to the support of the British, it has become the language of government, law, edu-
cation and business in regions once dominated by Muslims (particularly in Uttar
Pradesh). As the struggle for work and power between Muslim and Hindu white-
collar workers intensified, each community identified with its language, and
‘cleansed’ it of outside influences.? The battle between Urdu and Hindi in British
India therefore followed, for the most part, the pattern of the power struggles
between Hindus and Muslims.'? Urdu was an essential feature of Muslim separatist
ideology in India, and immediately after Partition the government sought to make this
language a force for national integration. Since the federal government was in west-
ern Pakistan, and the administration and the army were dominated by Punjabis and
Muhajirs, it came to be associated with central government hegemony. Nationalists in
East Bengal, Sind, Baluchistan and the NWFP reacted by setting up ethnic affirma-
tion movements based mainly on the defence of their languages. The most powerful
linguistic movement, Bhasha Andolan ~literally ‘linguistic agitation’ (that is, for the
defence of Bengali) — was active between 1948 and 1951,!! but it remained very influ-
ential until the second Partition in 1971. It rose up against the official ideology, and
sought to make Bengali the symbol of a counterideology (see Chapter 2 above).
As for the pro-Pashto movement, it declined as the Pashtuns climbed the social
ladder. Their business network has spread through the whole country, and they have
joined the salaried classes in their thousands, especially the army. Nevertheless, the
Awami National Party continues to criticize Punjabi hegemony in the name of a spe-
cific Pashtun identity, and wants Pashto taught at every level of the education system.
The Punjab, too, is riven with linguistic tensions which have socioeconomic ori-
gins. The Seraiki movement is a response to the economic underdevelopment of the
southern Punjab. It may be limited to the region’s intelligentsia, but the Seraiki
label tends to bring together linguistic groups which have hitherto identified with dif-
ferent local idioms: Multani, Dereweli or Riasati. This movement shows very clearly
how a local (Multani or Riasati) identity can become a wider ethnic identity
(Seraiki).!? In Baluchistan, Baluchi and Brahui are the languages of a literature of
resistance against the domination of Urdu, the Punjabi elite, and the Mughlai cul-
ture (in the Indo-Gangetic plain).
Language and Social Status

The wish to learn a language is linked with the desire to climb the social ladder.
People who speak minority languages are especially eager to learn another lan-
guage if it is a prerequisite for a government job.
Some classes — landowners, for example, or so-called ‘tribal leaders’ in Baluchistan
or the NWEP — enjoy a social influence that has nothing to do with their linguistic
abilities. This also applies to political or religious leaders who need speak only a local
own
language, since their power is based on the loyalty of their supporters and their
towns —
charisma. However, the greater part of the population — particularly in the
and Urdu. No
derive at least part of their power from their ability to write English
in Sind,
one who cannot read English or Urdu can get a white-collar job — except
language.
where native-born Sindis have had their idiom recognized as the official
English, can get
In every province of Pakistan, anyone who can write Urdu, but not
only menial jobs.
s ruled
This situation is a legacy of colonial history. When the Great Mughal
to learn it and to
India, Persian was the language of power; this forced the Hindus
ed an attack on the
“slamize’ their culture.!? Later, when the British launch
rs of power, both Hindus
supremacy of Persian and installed English in the corrido
and Muslims learned English, and the influence of Persian declined.'* Still later,
leading strata of the intelligentsia, who were also the most Westernized, were unwill-
ing to substitute either Urdu or any other Pakistani language for English. Thus the
supremacy of English is a reflection of very specific social interests.
Contrary to popular belief, Persian and English were never imposed by the gov-
ernment — quite the opposite: ordinary people were not allowed to learn them.
Government mechanisms for learning the languages of power are highly discrimi-
natory. Although most teaching is in Urdu, Sindi is used in primary schools in
Sindi-speaking regions, and Pashto in the NWFP. These vernacular schools are
mainly for the poor. For military and civil service elites, the state has created a par-
allel system where all subjects (or sometimes only scientific subjects) are taught in
English. The military schools, which are directly or indirectly controlled by the
army, are even more prestigious. There are also schools run by charitable military
institutions like the Fauji Foundation (the army), the Bahria Foundation (the navy)
and the Shaheen Foundation (the air force).
Other public services — the railways, Customs, telecommunications, the police, et
cetera — run their own schools. The federal government also runs ‘experimental’
English-speaking schools. These establishments, their teachers and their facilities are
of a much higher calibre than ordinary public schools, but they are cheaper for the
sons and daughters of civil servants than for children from outside. Thus Pakistan’s
elite betray their declared commitment to provide state-financed teaching in ver-
nacular languages.
As well as these public institutions, there is a network of private schools called
‘English Medium’ schools which provide an education in English. They are often
extremely expensive: a place at a Froebel, Beaconhouse or City School System
school can cost from 1,500 to 3,500 rupees a month. Families with modest means
who know how important English is often make huge sacrifices to send their children
to an English Medium school — hence the proliferation throughout Pakistan of
schools which claim to teach in English. They cost between 50 and 100 rupees a
month, and the quality of their teaching varies enormously. A number of these
schools are run by religious organizations which claim to want to combine Islamic
culture, modern technical subjects, and English. The wealthiest families send their
children to study abroad or at the International American School, where a year’s
school fees are 10,000 dollars.
So Pakistan’s elite maintains an education system where the majority of the pop-
ulation are either left in ignorance, or educated in the vernacular and thus at a
disadvantage compared with those who control the government or the business
world. Moreover, not only does this elite make no investment in its own education
system, it subverts it by spending its money on a parallel model of education which
is entirely for its own benefit.
Language Textbooks and Ideology

It is a well-known fact that there is an ideological dimension to language,'® and the
state’s promotion of Urdu is a first indication of this. A second is the way languages
have developed in Pakistan. The modernization process has entailed the invention of
new terms to express new concepts — scientific facts, for example. These new terms
are being created in accordance with very specific ideological criteria. The state uses
Arabic and Persian roots, for instance, to make up new Urdu words, because it
wants ordinary people to feel a sense of Pakistani (rather than ethnic) and Muslim
(rather than secular) identity. At the same time, ethnic nationalists are creating new
words on the basis of the ancient roots of their vernacular languages.
Language textbooks make their own contribution towards indoctrinating stu-
dents. Although this indoctrination is mainly the province of books on history and
sociology, it is furthered by books on linguistics. This propaganda — which can be
subtle or blatant — is predominantly on behalf of Islam, nationalism and militarism.
It finds expression in poems, essays, exercises, and so on, and appears equally in
Urdu, English and Arabic books, and in textbooks in regional languages.
Religious education revolves around the fundamental principles of Islam, and
around the illustrious personalities or events in its history. Lessons on nationalism,
where the leaders of the movement for the creation of Pakistan are praised and
revered, are aimed at strengthening a sense of nationhood and Pakistani identity.
Language textbooks glorify war, and celebrate the heroes of conflicts between India
and Pakistan. These three ideological themes complement one another: Islam
encourages nationalism, and the most profound expression of nationalism happens
to be militarism. The principal aim of this indoctrination process is to create a
favourable climate for the state’s anti-Indian policy.'°
The state saw Urdu as a mark of Pakistani identity and a force for national inte-
gration in a country with five major ethnic groups, each with its own language and
literary tradition. These groups, in turn, have endeavoured to resist this ‘colonialism
from the inside’. In this struggle, the elites of the ethnic groups have used their lan-
guages as symbols of an identity under threat.
As well as ethnic identity, social class plays an important part. English is associated
with the upper middle classes and the elite; Urdu with the lower middle classes; while
the vernacular languages are spoken mainly by farmers, unskilled workers, and the
working class in general. This is borne out by relations with officialdom, especially
sn the towns. Nevertheless, there are places in Sind where Sindi is the accepted
formal language in contexts where Urdu would be used in other regions of Pakistan.
is
Moreover, in Sind and in certain parts of the Pashto-speaking area, ethnic pride
strong enough to curb the advance of Urdu, which is used purely for pragmatic
purposes.
English is still thought of as the mouthpiece of Western liberal values, and Urdu
lar lan-
as the Islamic and nationalist language par excellence, whereas the vernacu
s and
guages are associated with ethnic identity and nationalism. Nonetheless, Islamist
learn English,
members of less powerful social classes are increasingly eager to
world. Thus
because they see it as a way of climbing the social ladder in the modern
the distribution
language is a key to understanding such complex political matters as
between individuals.
of power within ethnic groups, between social classes, and even
CONCLUSION
A Country in Crisis
Pakistan is not merely an artificial construction. There is not much risk that the
country will break up, since the secession of East Bengal, the region where it was
most difficult to achieve integration. But the country is still in pursuit of a national
identity on which it can build to counter that of India — just at the very moment
when it is going through a time of crisis on several fronts.
The coup of October 1999 plunged the country into an increasingly claustrophic
and anachronistic spiral of military dictatorships. Like his predecessors Ayub Khan,
Yahya Khan and Zia ul-Hagq, the putschist General Pervez Musharraf put himself
forward as someone who would be capable of restoring order and dignity in his
country. In his first public speech, he announced that his aim was not to implement
martial law, but ‘only another path towards democracy. The armed forces have no
intention to stay in charge any longer than is absolutely necessary to pave the way for
true democracy to flourish in Pakistan .. .”!
Six months later, he announced that between December 2000 and July 2001
there would be local elections which would bring about the reestablishment
of town and village councils that were no longer appointed but elected,” albeit
without any participation by political parties. Thus Musharraf repeated Zia’s
tactics: in 1985 Zia organized ‘non-partisan’ elections as part of the move
towards democracy, which was short-lived. Moreover, Musharraf took care
to point out that he was implementing the Supreme Court ruling that general
elections must be held between now and 2002, but that he retained the right
to postpone them if he had not fulfilled his objectives.? Now, the seven-point
programme which the regime set itself the day after the coup is — to say the least
~ ambitious: to restore the nation’s confidence; strengthen its cohesion; stimulate
the economy; reestablish law and order; depoliticize the country’s institutions;
decentralize power; and fight corruption.
Putting the economy of Pakistan to rights is no easy matter. The country’s foreign
debt rose to 38 thousand million dollars; about 50 per cent of the national budget
goes on debt servicing. Even though Musharraf has announced a freeze on military
expenditure — still 45 per cent of total expenditure in 1999-2000 — he is unlikely to
make substantial cuts in the army’s budget at a time when relations with India are
CONCLUSION 257
still extremely tense.* Since he cannot cut costs, he is forced to bring in more
revenue by fighting fraud. He averred that the guiding principle behind his coup
was the battle against parasitism and corruption, announced that 22,000 civil
servants would be dismissed — a purge reminiscent of those of his predecessors —
and declared war on borrowers who ‘neglected’ to repay their bank loans. This
operation recovered only about 15 to 20 per cent of the 211 thousand million
rupees owed to the banks.° Musharraf attached even more importance to fighting
tax fraud. Noting that only 1.2 million of his fellow citizens paid their taxes, he
decided to get an idea of the value of undeclared income in the black economy —
the estimate was 60 thousand million dollars (that is, equivalent to GNP) — by
conducting a draconian investigation into the assets and income of tradesmen and
industrialists. This somewhat demagogic measure immediately aroused the hostility
of the All Pakistan Organization of Small Trade and Cottage Industries. “Close
down the town’ campaigns paralysed the country in May-June 2000. The improved
tax revenues hoped for as a result of better information about the employers’
resources could still not be relied upon, and in any case would not be enough to
solve the short-term financial problem.
So Pakistan has been forced to seek the support of international lenders — notably
the IMF, whose decisions are strongly influenced by US foreign policy. ihe
Americans will not let their former ally go to the wall, if only because they want to
avoid further instability in a part of the world where there is already trouble enough.
The IME which has suspended payments, will no doubt end up bailing Pakistan out;
Paris and London reschedule the country’s debts at regular intervals. In exchange for
this support, however, Washington is putting strong pressure on Islamabad to rethink
its regional policy. Not only does the US administration want to see Pakistan distance
it is
itself from the Taliban (while continuing to ask them to hand over Bin Laden);
also worried about its activities in Kashmir at a time when the USA itself is forging
in
a stronger relationship with New Delhi, epitomized by Bill Clinton’s visit to India
year.
March 2000 and A B Vajpayee’s visit to Washington in September of that same
not
Musharraf does not have much room for manoeuvre, because the army will
it
readily give up on Kashmir, nor will it willingly sacrifice the ‘strategic depth’
gains from its presence inAfghanistan.
training
By way of compromise, the government has asked the Taliban to close
h student s
camps for Pakistani jihadists in Afghanistan, and to discourage madrasa
especially
from crossing the border.® It has also decided to disarm Pakistani society,
Moiuddin
madrasahs which have close links with Islamist groups. In spring 2000,
This operati on,
Haider, Interior Minister, suspended the issuing of gun licences.’
gton but also to
whose effects were limited, was designed not only to oblige Washin
involved in innu-
show that Pakistan was willing to act against undercover groups
the value of this alone
merable shady deals, including smuggling consumer goods —
’s Customs service. It
is 2.5 thousand million dollars, a considerable loss to Pakistan
a harder line on the
is therefore very much in the country’s economic interest to take
Taliban and on Islamists with links to the Afghan government.
y caused by the
The struggle against criminal groups also reveals the anxiet
is not confined to
increasing violence throughout the country. This phenomenon
258 CONCLUSION
Karachi, nor even to Sind, because today it is the Punjab which has the worst
record: more and more clashes between Shi’a and Sunni (they caused 79 deaths in
1998 as against 57 in Sind) and frequent murders put Lahore ahead of Karachi (998
as against 662 in 1998) and the Punjab ahead of Sind (4,358 as against 3,562), with
an average of 15 deaths a day.® This violence is a symptom of a serious social crisis,
in addition to the country’s political and economic failures. It has become so com-
monplace that it is now a ‘legitimate way of settling disputes’,? as a result of
intensifying social inequalities.
Pakistan’s economic crisis has impoverished ordinary people: a third of the pop-
ulation now live below the poverty threshold.!° Their feelings of resentment are all
the stronger by virtue of the fact that at the same time, nouveaux riches who have often
come by their fortune through dubious means make ostentatious display of their
opulence. “Society has lost its value system’ because of the rise of materialism and
the corrodification of social relationships today ‘Pakistanis often compare their
country to France before 1789’.!!
This comparison is even more apt in that the ‘feudal lords’ are not prepared to
loosen their stranglehold on their country estates. But is Pakistan really in a prerev-
olutionary situation?
There are three leading actors in the political arena: the army faces some momen-
tous challenges; the political parties lack leadership, and have been discredited by
their frequent involvement in corruption; the Islamists — whether they belong to tra-
ditional organizations like the Jamaat-i Islami or to militant groups like the Lashkar-i
‘Tayyiba — form the third point of the triangle. Their popularity has risen as a result
of the Kargil war in spring 2000, and they put themselves forward as the revolu-
tionary alternative to a military regime with undesirable Kemalist tendencies.!2
According to Ahmed Rashid, one of the leading experts in this field:
‘some 80,000 militants have trained and fought with the Taliban since
their emergence in 1994, providing a huge militant fundmentalist base for
a Taliban-style Islamic revolution in Pakistan.’!%
Is this the harbinger of an even more radical political shift than the 1999 coup —
one which could set the seal on the failure of a military government embroiled in
crisis?
EPILOGUE
Musharraf and the Islamists: From Support to Opposition
after September 11
Since autumn 2000, when the first French edition of this book was published, both
the internal political situation in Pakistan and the country’s international position
have changed dramatically. In both cases, the impact of September 11 was decisive:
from the moment when Islamic networks — especially those linked to the Taliban,
like Al-Qaeda — became the prime target of the antiterrorist coalition, Pakistan
could no longer either retain its links with Afghanistan or remain indifferent to the
growth of Islamist movements on its own territory.
This impression of a break, however, belies a certain element of continuity:
General Musharraf was fully aware of the potential danger of these movements, even
though he failed to translate this awareness into action. September 11 was a climac-
tic catalyst whose impact on Pakistan’s position in the world may be summed up in
two courses of action: withdrawal from Afghanistan (even, to a much lesser extent,
from Kashmir), and a return to the international fold; while its impact within the
country itself has been — to put it briefly — a clampdown on Islamists (how effective
this is we do not yet know) and the consolidation of Musharraf’s power base.
Challenging Jihadist Strategy
Awareness and ambivalence

s the
From the moment he came to power, Musharraf worried about the problem
ons resulting
Islamists were causing in his country — especially public order disrupti
October
from clashes between Shi’a and Sunni groups. Between his coup on 12
— left 220
1999 and August 2001, sectarian violence — 83 riots involving 30 towns
y Adminis tered
dead and 2,000 wounded. Most seriously affected were the Federall
dead), followed by
Tribal Areas (FATA), especially the Pashtun Tribal Areas (61
mainly by two mil-
Karachi (54 dead).? These outbreaks of violence were fomented
the Sipah-i Sahaba
itant Sunni organizations: the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LJ) and
Pakistan (SSP).°
mned to death for
In February 2001, when the execution of an SSP militant conde
reaction from his
murdering the Iranian consul general in 1990 provoked a violent
launched a heavily
comrades-in-arms — eight people died after the perpetrators had
260 EPILOGUE
armed anti-Shi’a attack — the Musharraf government decided to take repressive

measures. In Jhang, a part of the Punjab known for violent confrontations between
Sunni and Shi’a, the army arrested several SSP militants. Significantly, on 14
August — that is to say, about a month before September 1 1 — Musharraf decided to
ban the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi and, for good measure, the Sipah-i-Muhammad Pakistan,
a Shi'a movement. At the same time, however, he freed Azam Tariq, the SSP leader,
who had been arrested during the violence in February. This proved that Musharraf
had no appetite for a head-on confrontation with the Sunni party.
Musharraf was equally careful to handle the Islamists tactfully over the contro-
versy surrounding the blasphemy law. This law, introduced by Zia, is often invoked
against Christians who are accused — usually without any real grounds — of showing
the Prophet insufficient respect and, as a result, are liable to imprisonment. In April
2000, Musharraf had decided to reform this law by ruling that charges of blasphemy
had to be substantiated by a Deputy Commissioner before the police could be called
in. The Islamist movements went into action, and Musharraf had to backtrack. The
Islamists hailed his retreat as another victory to add to the one they had enjoyed six
months earlier, in December 1999, when the Supreme Court had declared interest-
bearing loans [riba’] ‘non-Islamic’.
At the request of the Islamist parties, Musharraf also promulgated a Provisional
Constitution (Amendment) Order, 2000, which included in the Provisional
Constitutional Order of 14 October 1999 — Pakistan’s temporary written
Constitution — the Islamic measures which featured in the 1973 Constitution, which
had been suspended since his coup. This Order restored the validity of Articles 203A
and 203J (on the Federal Shari’ah Court) and Articles 260(a) and (b) (which laid
down definitions of a ‘Muslim’ and a ‘Non-Muslim’.
Musharraf’s ambivalent attitude towards the Islamists was partly a reflection of
his own deep personal ambiguity. He is quite happy to be seen as a ‘Kemalist’ — not
only because he has the modernizing approach of an Atatiirk who wants to make
the ‘sick man of Europe’ (a diagnosis that could be transposed to Pakistan within
South Asia) into a nation worthy of respect, but also because he has seen himself
from the outset as the defender of the state — and that includes defending it against
Islamists who threaten public order. At the same time, he had a distinguished career
as an artillery officer under Zia, whose Islamization policy and strategy of forming
links with the Islamists exerted a certain influence over him. The Jamaat-i Islami
mentioned his name to Zia in the 1980s, and the strong man of Pakistan immediately
entrusted him with the task of recruiting and training mujaheddin for the war
against the Soviets in Afghanistan. He subsequently won considerable fame for
suppressing a Shi’a uprising in Gilgit in 1988; during this operation his men acted
with exceptional cruelty.* Not only had the army he led cooperated with the Islamists
eleven years later, in the Kargil war in Indian Kashmir, but this collusion was even
more in evidence in December 1999, when supporters of Maulana Masood Azhar,
a Harkat-ul Ansar leader whom the Indians had detained in prison in Kashmir,
hyacked an Indian Airlines plane from Katmandu to Kandahar in order to obtain
his release. As soon as he was free, Azhar settled in Pakistan and set up a new move-
ment to pursue the jzhad in Kashmir, Jaish-i Muhammad (the Army of Mohammed),
EPILOGUE 261
with the support — and this was common knowledge — of the ISI, headed by one of
Musharraf’s close collaborators, Lieutenant-General Mahmood, who had been
among the officers who helped him to seize power in October 1999.
Quite apart from their common interests in Kashmir, Musharraf found that the
Islamists were his allies against the political parties — including the MQM in
Karachi, which saw the growth of the madrasahs as a power mechanism aimed
against the Muhajir movement. Musharraf allowed the Islamists to take to the
streets, while PPP or PML(N) demonstrations were crushed. The tone was set on 3
November 1999, when Musharraf allowed the Lashkar-i-Tayyiba to hold a meeting
at Lahore attended by about half a million people. There was a comparable show of
force in spring 2001, at the Aalmi Deoband Conference organized by Maulana
Fazlur Rahman, leader of the Jamiyyat-ul Ulama-i-Islam (JUD), in the NWFP: again,
500,000 people were present — a sign that the Islamists were well and truly part of
public life, with Musharraf’s blessing. Rahman took advantage of this platform to
confirm his support for the Taliban and their leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar,
whose words were relayed on tape.°
Musharraf’s attitude towards the Jihadists hardened a few weeks before
September |1, after the resurgence of sectarian violence mentioned above, because
the Jihadists and the sectarian groups appeared to have developed close relations. In
these circumstances he promulgated an Anti-Terrorism Amendment Ordinance
2001, which included measures against jihadist organizations like the Jaish-i
Muhammad and the Lashkar-i-Tayyiba, whose offices were boarded up; these mea-
sures, however, were mainly confined to Karachi.
At the same time — summer 2001 — there was severe controversy over the madrasah
issue. These Koranic schools, the birthplace of some of the most violent Islamic
movements — the Taliban, of course, but also the Harkat-ul Mujahiddin in Kashmir,
and the Sipah-i Sahaba — had proliferated rapidly since the time of Zia, whose
Islamization policy had allowed them to receive official recognition: in 1947 there
had been 150; by 1950 there were 210. By 1971 there were 563, but today there are
This
between 10,000 and 15,000, at least a tenth of which train militant jihadists.
success is due in no small measure to the ‘charitable strategy’ of these schools,
which educate pupils free, and provide board and lodging for a very modest sum.
After vacillating for some time, Musharraf took the decision to promulgate a law
affecting the madrasahs on 18 June 2001: the Pakistan Madrasah Education
2001
(Establishment and Affiliation of Model Deeni Madaris) Board Ordinance
only
allows for these schools to be brought into the public education system — not
on their sources
must their curriculum conform to official standards, but from now
spon-
of finance must be revealed to the state; this is one way of identifying foreign
general —
sors. Immediately, senior madrasah staff — and all the Islamic groups in
indication
rejected this measure, which has mainly remained a dead letter: one more
of Musharraf’s reluctance to confront the Islamist movement.
to disarm
The consolidation of his government’s power should have enabled him
spring 2000
madrasahs which are in league with Islamist groups. It is true that in
s licences,
Moiuddin Haider, Minister of the Interior, froze the issuing of weapon
lay their hands too
with a view to preventing sectarian groups from being able to
262 EPILOGUE
readily on weapons of all kinds. However, the government did not enforce this
policy with any great consistency either.
Musharraf himself has admitted that his madrasah reforms are being implemented
slowly: “There are about 10,000 of them [madrasahs] and there are about | million
poor students getting free board and lodging. These madrasahs are doing a welfare
service to the poor. The negative side is that most of them are only teaching religion,
so my belief is that we need to carry out reforms to reinforce their strengths and
eliminate their weaknesses.”
Everything changed during the war in Afghanistan in autumn 2001, which
marked Musharraf’s break with the Islamists, and the simultaneous ending of the
partnership between the army and paramilitary Islamists in Afghanistan and
Kashmir.
Pakistan after September 11

After the attacks of September 11, the Bush administration quickly realized that
it could not pursue its campaign in Afghanistan — both to break up Bin Laden’s
terrorist networks and to put an end to the Taliban regime — without Pakistan: not
only because of the country’s key geopolitical position, but also because it could
provide information. Perhaps Musharraf thought at the beginning that cooperat-
ing with the USA against ‘Islamic terrorism’ would not necessarily mean that he
had to stop supporting the Taliban and jihadist movements in Kashmir, but
Pakistan’s weak economy and diplomatic isolation did not give him much room for
manoeuvre.
A Vulnerable Economy
As soon as he had taken power, General Musharraf put the economic crisis at the
top of his agenda, accusing ‘the politicians’ — not without some justification — of
ensnaring the country in a spiral of debt: between 1995-96 and 1999-2000, its total
debt rose from 1,877 billion rupees to 3,096 billion — 97.5 per cent of GDP. As for
foreign debt (48.4 per cent of the total in 2000), over the course of a veritable ‘lost
decade’ from 1990-91 to 1999-2000, it went from 20.66 billion dollars to 37 bil-
lion.’ As a result, debt servicing represented 45 per cent of budget spending (and 63
per cent of receipts) in 2000. At the Development Forum organized by the World Bank
in 2000, the president of the committee on debt management and reduction pre-
sented his report and its conclusions: the level of Pakistan’s debt was unsustainable;
its value corresponded to 293 per cent of Pakistan’s annual receipts of foreign
currency, whereas the sustainable level as defined by the IMF is 150 per cent. As far
as the World Bank was concerned, the stock of this debt, and its servicing, repre-
sented 610 per cent and 60 per cent respectively of state revenue. The report put this
debt down to a chronic shortage of current and public accounts: notably because of
the level of military expenditure, which has certainly fallen — from 26 per cent of
budget spending in 1996-97 to 21 per cent in 2001-02, if we can believe the
Finance Act passed in June — but is still very substantial. The World Bank
EPILOGUE 263
spokesman considered that in order to get out of the debt trap — and, quite simply,
to continue to service its debt — Pakistan would need international financial assis-
tance to the tune of 6 billion dollars until the year 2004.
Musharraf therefore set himself the task of reducing public debt and reassuring
international lenders. He took some painful measures which every government
before him had refused to take because they would be unpopular: he brought in an
oil-price mechanism which led to significant price rises of 7.5 to 22.5 per cent,
depending on the product in question; he abolished fuel subsidies; he imposed a
General Sales Tax on electricity and abolished some wheat subsidies. He announced
that 40,000 public-sector jobs would go: 12 per cent of the total. He also turned his
attention to the defaulting borrowers who were becoming a greater and greater
burden on the economy. The Finance Minister estimated the value of dubious
loans — that is, loans where payment of interest or principal was more than ninety
days late — at more than 4 billion dollars. Musharraf allowed tardy borrowers time
to put their affairs on a legal footing, promising them an amnesty, but once the 16
November deadline had passed, the police made some spectacular arrests involving
not only prominent businessmen but politicians — nine of those imprisoned had
served in Nawaz Sharif’s Cabinet, or belonged to his family. On 17 November,
through President Tarar, Musharraf promulgated an ordinance to set up a National
Accountability Bureau to oversee the legal proceedings already begun against the
guilty parties. The Bureau had the power to conduct an accelerated investigation
over a maximum of 75 days, after which the files had to be passed to special courts
in each province; these courts, in turn, had only 30 days in which to give a ruling. For
Musharraf, these people were ‘white-collar criminals’, because although they were
often caught red-handed avoiding their financial obligations, they had substantial
savings: paying one’s debts featured in the civic code of ethics which Musharraf
intended to restore. His first target was corrupt politicians, but he also had in his
sights tradesmen and industrialists, who often had political connections — in a word,
it was ‘racketeering’, embodied for several years by Nawaz Sharif, that was in the
firing line.
Finally, and most importantly, Musharraf tackled the tax problem. Many sections of
the population in Pakistan evaded tax by more or less legal means — in agriculture, in
service industries and in business. The number of taxpayers is put at 1.2 million out of
a population of 140 million. Musharraf brought in a tax on agricultural income and
a Sales Tax on services. He came down especially hard on tradesmen who were sus-
pected of large-scale tax fraud, when in fact they were already undertaxed. In May
9000 he launched a tax investigation which began with tradesmen in thirteen towns;
the idea was to subject them to a 2 per cent turnover tax. This decision immediately
prompted a tradesmen’s strike which led to a spate of ‘Close down the town’ cam-
paigns. Emotions ran even higher by virtue of the fact that this investigation was
conducted in tandem with anticorruption inquiries which were also aimed at indus-
trialists and tradesmen. In the face of this opposition, Musharraf made a partial
quite
retreat, pointing out significantly that files on defaulting borrowers — those who,
before
simply, were not paying their debts — would be submitted to the Central Bank
(possibly) being passed on to the anticorruption unit.
264 EPILOGUE
All in all, the tax take for the whole year 2000-01 increased by only about 14 per
cent, against a forecast of 25 per cent, taking the ‘tax revenue/GDP’ ratio from 10.9
per cent to 11.7 per cent. This represented some progress, but did not reduce the
budget deficit significantly; moreover, other engines of economic policy were at a
standstill. The privatization programme, for example, seemed to be incapable of get-
ting under way, first and foremost because potential buyers have proved reluctant to
take on concerns with huge deficits.
Thus the budget deficit was reduced by only about one percentage point — from
6.5 per cent to 5.4 per cent of GDP — between 1999-2000 and 2000-01; another
factor was the terrible drought which hindered growth. The growth rate fell from 3.9
per cent to 2.6 per cent (below the growth rate of the population) over the same
period, because of the poor performance of the agricultural sector:? a negative
growth rate of 2.5 per cent, while industry achieved 6.8 per cent. Nevertheless,
Musharraf succeeded in convincing Pakistan’s financial backers of his determina-
tion, and so began to establish normal relations with them. At the end of the 1990s,
Pakistan had in fact been penalized by the IMF through international sanctions
which followed the nuclear weapons tests of 1998 and the military coup of 1999. For
example, the IMF had frozen the final instalment of the 1.56 billion dollars’ worth
of credit which had been allocated to Pakistan in 1997. In late 2000, the IMF
Administrative Council, in recognition of Musharraf’s efforts, voted a ‘standby’
allocation of 596 million dollars — unanimously, except for the USA, which was still
suspicious of Pakistan. This paved the way for the Club of Paris to sign an agree-
ment to reschedule Pakistan’s external public debt on 22 January 2001. In August of
that same year, the Finance Minister, Shaukat Aziz, was assured by Christina Rocca,
Undersecretary of State responsible for South Asia, that from then on the United
States would support Pakistan at IMF meetings but things really changed after
September 11.
Pakistan in diplomatic isolation

Despite all this, Pakistan was still very isolated indeed on the international front. By
the end of the 1990s it had become a pariah nation. The nuclear weapons tests in
spring 1998, which followed those of India, had prompted both the USA and Japan
to impose draconian sanctions. The attacks on American embassies in Dar es
Salaam and Nairobi the following summer, for which Osama bin Laden was held
responsible, had tarnished Pakistan’s image even further, since it was one of the three
states which had recognized the regime of the Taliban, self-appointed protectors of
the man who was known at that time as ‘the Saudi millionaire’. Finally, General
Musharraf’s military coup on 12 October 1999 had added to the country’s isolation:
he had been subjected to further American sanctions and suspended from the ex-
British Empire club, the Commonwealth. In effect, Pakistan had only two important
allies left: China and Saudi Arabia.'° Musharraf had only a few talks with the
Western leaders who attended the UN’s Millennium Summit. In March 2000 Bill
Clinton spent only five hours in Pakistan — whereas he had spent five days in India,
the first visit to India by an American President for twenty-two years — and the main
EPILOGUE 265
purpose of that flying visit was to ask Musharraf to spare Nawaz Sharif’s life. The
European troika paid him a visit on 20 and 21 November 2000, just to show that the
states of the European Union were eager to keep the dialogue going, but their main
purpose was to drive home the fact that they wanted to see a return to democracy
in Pakistan.
All Musharraf did to mollify the West was to visit India. The Americans were
eager for the two countries to renew their discussions, because this might reduce the
risk of nuclear escalation and further military conflict in Kashmir. Musharraf told
the Indians on several occasions that he was ready to resume the dialogue. New
Delhi, which had declared that it would have no dealings with the new regime in
Pakistan on the morning after the military coup — to the extent of paralysing the
SAARC, whose meetings were suspended —finally agreed to receive him. ‘This was
the moment Musharraf had been waiting for: he ‘promoted’ himself to the position
of President, arguing that a general would bealess legitimate interlocutor for an
Indian Prime Minister, and the discussions at the Agra Summit marked the begin-
ning of his return to the international stage. He also derived some internal political
advantage from them, because he had dared to put Kashmir at the heart of the
agenda — to the great displeasure of the Indians who wanted him simply to condemn
cross-border terrorism. This, however, was a very modest success for Musharraf in
his efforts to reduce country’s diplomatic isolation, a development which occurred
only after 11 September 2001.
Pakistan withdraws from Afghanistan

Musharraf’s lack of room for manoeuvre because of the economic crisis, and his
diplomatic isolation, explain the fact that the day after September 11 he pledged him-
self to help the USA in its fight against Bin Laden and the regime of Mullah Omar,
even if that meant shelving his alliance with the Taliban. On 12 September, he
assured the USA of his ‘unstinted cooperation in the fight against terrorism’. But
Musharraf probably still thought that he could play a double game: be rewarded for
his good conduct by the antiterrorist coalition and keep some kind of link with mod-
erate Taliban who might take power once the Americans had left.
Musharraf wanted to maximise his benefits, just as General Zia ul-Haq before
him had gained the maximum financial and strategic advantages from supporting
the Americans against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, while he played his own
a
pawns on the region’s political chessboard. Like Zia, Musharraf immediately put
price on his support — opening up Pakistan’s airspace; providing ‘informat ion’ and
logistical backup — in both financial and political terms.
The diplomatic dividends for Pakistan’s good conduct did not take long to mate-
lor, the
rialize. The British and Dutch Prime Ministers, the German Chancel
y, and
President of Turkey, the American Secretary of State and Defense Secretar
Arabia came
the Foreign Ministers of France, the Federal Arab Republic and Saudi
which took him
to Islamabad in rapid succession. As for Musharraf, he made a tour
and New York,
to (not necessarily in this order) Tehran, Istanbul, Paris, London
on 12
where the General-President addressed the UN and had his hour of glory
266 EPILOGUE
November, by George W Bush’s side, as the two men issued a joint communiqué
which emphasized the strength of the friendship which had united their countries
‘for fifty years’. Pakistan’s return to the UN’s favour had been heralded alittle ear-
lier by a joint statement by 54 Asian countries to the effect that the country would
acquire a seat in the Security Council when the next rotation of nonpermanent
members takes place in 2003.
At every stage of this readmission into the international community, Musharraf
has reminded the world of the price his country is paying for the crisis in
Afghanistan, emphasizing that this burden has a significant humanitarian element
which was imposed on him by the influx of refugees — in mid-October 2001, the
HCR estimated that 2,000 Afghans were crossing the border every day — and that it
was dealing a body blow to an economy that was already in a very poor state of
health.!!
Musharraf’s speeches prompted the richest partners in the antiterrorist coalition
to rally round with financial support: some new rescheduling plans were negotiated
under the aegis of the Clubs of Paris and London; Britain and the Netherlands have
cancelled debts totalling £20 million and 14 million euros respectively; Canada has
converted 282 million dollars’ worth of credits into development aid; Germany has
done the same to the tune of 51 million euros. On 14 November 2001, Pakistan’s
creditors promised to fill the financial gap to the tune of 3.2 billion dollars for the
year 2000-01. As for bilateral aid, that exceeds a billion dollars; the USA heads the
list, with 673 million dollars — in the context of a global project that could reach a
billion dollars — followed by the United Kingdom (170 million dollars), Germany (75
million euros) and Japan (300 million dollars, preceded by 6 million dollars’ worth of
emergency aid). On the multilateral front, the European Union has offered — quite
apart from 50 million euros’ worth of aid — commercial concessions on textile
exports: Customs duties on such exports (which account for 60 per cent of Pakistan’s
exports to the European Union) have been abolished, and import quotas have been
raised to 15 per cent. As for the IME it has allocated Pakistan funds from the Facility
for the Reduction of Poverty and for Growth, including 1.3 billion dollars’ worth of
credit and 300 million dollars from the World Bank. All in all, in three months
international support went up to 6billion dollars of promises, if we take into account
direct aid, economic support programmes, and commercial deals. What remains to
be seen is whether this support remains immaterial or is effectively delivered. But it
is very important to note that it was agreed unconditionally: both structural reforms
and democracy went out of the window.
Moreover, the USA lifted its sanctions on Pakistan. The first sanctions to go were
those connected with nuclear weapons: from the 1978 Symington Amendment to
the Pressler Amendment in 1990 and the Glenn Amendment in 1998. The sanctions
imposed after the military coup were also reconsidered after a visit to Islamabad by
a military delegation from the Pentagon and an emergency debate in the Senate
during which Pakistan had to be awarded a certificate of democracy. The lifting of
these sanctions means that soon Pakistan will not only be able to obtain loans from
America, but also send soldiers to the USA for military training — something that has
been impossible since 1990,!*
EPILOGUE 267
However, Pakistan’s establishment certainly did not think that the country’s return
to international favour would be incompatible with the continuation of its policy in
Afghanistan — albeit in a different form.
On 16 September 2001, Musharraf sent Mullah Omar a delegation whose mis-
sion was to obtain the handing over of Osama bin Laden. It included the director
of the Inter Services Intelligence (the secret services which have supervised Pakistan’s
Afghanistan policy since the early days), Lieutenant-General Mahmud, and Mufti
Nizamuddin Shamzai, head of the most eminent Deobandi madrasah in Pakistan,
Binori Town in Karachi, who at that time was very close to Bin Laden. However, this
man, far from encouraging Mullah Omar — and he must have been one of the last
Pakistani visitors to see him — to hand over Bin Laden, fuelled his anti-Americanism:
a sentiment which he himself had expressed a week earlier, when he had exhorted
all Muslims to start a jihad against the USA if it attacked Afghanistan.' However
once the American air strikes began, on 7 October, Musharraf and his army could
no longer hope to retain their privileged links with a country ruled by the Taliban,
but some officers found this difficult to accept, as we saw from the fact that provi-
sions, fuel, and maybe even weapons continued to be taken across the border and
delivered to Mullah Omar’s followers; and, moreover, from the fact that everyone
was still keen on including ‘moderate Taliban’ in a government of national unity
which would thus elude the clutches of their deadly enemy, the Northern Alliance.
For some time, the USA gave the impression that it was receptive to Pakistan’s
approach, and, above all, that it would keep the Northern Alliance at bay. On 12
November, during their famous meeting in New York, President Bush, in
Musharraf’s presence, asked the Northern Alliance forces not to enter Kabul, even
if that meant leaving the Afghan capital alone when they took over the rest of the
country. The next day, the town fell into the Alliance’s hands, and people watching
television in Pakistan saw that special American forces on the ground were advising
their fighters on survival strategies. To add to Pakistan’s frustration, at the very same
moment the USA was failing to support Islamabad’s efforts to find a Pashtun alter-
native to the Taliban, whose fate seemed to be sealed. It was as if the United States,
behind its apparently friendly attitude to Musharraf, did not trust him further than
it could throw him.!* In a sense, the Pakistanis had met their masters in the art of
doublespeak — unless (and this seems quite plausible) the decision to take Kabul was
part of the Pentagon’s strategy: the American strategists wanted a military victory at
any price, while Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, was more inclined to fall in
the
with Pakistan’s wishes. Whatever the truth of the matter, the Pakistanis saw
seizure of Kabul as an American betrayal, considering that the USA had used them
just as it had used them in the 1980s, when it needed them to drive out the Soviets,
then lost all interest in their problems — especially the problem of refugees from
Afghanistan.
When the Taliban fell, Pakistan lost its famous ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan: its
India.
rear base which, in theory, gave the country more clout in its dealings with
This marked the complete failure of Pakistan’s strategy in the region, as imple-
mented by Zia and pursued by his successors. It is true that relations between
under the
Islamabad and Kabul became more difficult once the Taliban came
268 EPILOGUE
influence of the ‘Arabs’ and Bin Laden, weakening Pakistan’s grip on a movement
which was largely its own creation. Islamabad’s inability to persuade the Taliban not
to destroy the Bamiyan Buddhas, and above all its failure to secure the handing over
of the Laskhar-i-Jhangvi commandos who were crossing the Durand Line to cause
trouble in Pakistan, had borne witness to this loss of control, and the radicalization
of the Taliban which had led to it. But even if the Taliban were discarding their
Pakistani connections — mainly, we must stress, because of their military victories
over the Northern Alliance, which led them to think that they could do without
Islamabad’s support — as far as Pakistan was concerned, they were still valuable allies:
even more so in view of the fact that Kabul’s fall at the hands of Commander
Massoud’s forces had allowed Islamabad’s enemies to take power in the region.
Since the Northern Alliance enjoyed Delhi’s support, Pakistan even felt that it had
good grounds for developing an ‘encirclement syndrome’.
The process of putting new institutions in place in Afghanistan — which began at
the Bonn conference, but dragged on for months — did not augur well for Pakistan.
It had no powerful, reliable allies among the delegates facing each other at the
negotiating table. The United Front was dominated by ‘Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras
from the Northern Alliance; the group from Cyprus was made up of exiled Afghans,
and was closer to Iran; the Pashtuns from the Loya Pakhtia movement supported the
king; the only pro-Pakistan group was that of Pir Sayed Gailani, a Pashtun based in
Peshawar. Gailani, son of a mujaheddin commander who led the struggle against the
Russians, chose to settle in Peshawar, where he formed the National Islamic Front of
Afghanistan. In October 2001 he tried to establish a Pashtun alternative to the
‘Taliban, with Pakistan’s support, by creating an Association for Peace and National
Unity in Afghanistan. In this context, he set up a meeting on 24—25 October 2001
attended by 1,500 Pashtun delegates, including several Afghan tribal chiefs: the
Pakistani authorities not only allowed them into the country, but also provided them
with an official vehicle. Islamabad wanted Gailani to have an important position in
the next Afghan government — maybe even to be Prime Minister.
But the Bonn conference established an interim authority in which the Peshawar
group were given only three ministerial posts out of twenty-nine, and there was no
Pashtun majority. It is true that the President, Hamid Karzai, is a Pashtun, but he is
no friend of Pakistan.!° India, on the other hand, has allies in this government, start-
ing with Dr Abdullah, Minister for Foreign Affairs, whose family live in exile in
Delhi.
So Pakistan, a prime mover in the Afghan crisis, has emerged battered and
bruised from the most recent war in the region. Musharraf has implied that he real-
izes he should have ditched the policy initiated by Zia in the 1970s. On 7 October
2001, when the American air strikes began, he ousted the members of his junta who
had collaborated most closely with the Taliban, despite the fact that these men had
supported his coup: Lieutenant-General Usmani and Lieutenant-General Mahmud
(head of the ISI) left the presidential entourage; while General Mohammad Aziz
Khan, who is also close to Musharraf, was promoted to the largely honorary post of
President of the Committee of the Armed Forces Chief of Army Staff.
Before reaching this decision, Musharraf took care to consult all the important
EPILOGUE 269
officers. A considerable part of his power lay in the fact that he was close to his
‘corps commanders’, and liked to think of himself simply as ‘primus inter pares’.
This very collegiate course of action meant that his policy was backed by the
most influential and senior military men, who probably shared his ‘Kemalist’ atti-
tudes.
However, among officers further down the ranks there were probably people who
were more in tune with the Islamist message, as a result both of the Islamization
policy that started in General Zia’s time, and of increasing army recruitment from
the rural middle classes in the Punjab and the NWFP, whose conservative social atti-
tudes are all of a piece with a certain predilection for Islamist thinking. It might be
one m >re reason explaining why today Musharraf’s chief political preoccupation is
to bring the Islamists into line.
Bringing the Islamists into line

Musharraf’s decision to support the USA against the Taliban put the final seal on his
break with the Islamists. This break was more or less on the cards, if we remember
the government's harder line with sectarian movements and the madrasahs in summer
2001 (see above): the Islamists were too popular with the general public, and
indulged in violent activities which jeopardized public order; they threatened to
become too powerful, and the military government — with some justification — feared
for its own survival. The war in autumn 2001 precipitated Musharraf’s break with
the Islamists. At first, the General-President tried to placate the USA by putting the
most anti-American leaders — like Maulana Fazlur Rahman, leader of the Jamiyyat-
ul Ulama-i Islam, one of the most pro-Taliban parties — under house arrest; he then
turned his attention to those who were against not only the Americans but himself
as well — like Qazi Hussain Ahmed, leader of the Jamaat-i Islami, who was sen-
tenced to a month in prison on 5 November for making an antigovernment speech.
The government then stepped up the repression by arresting militants on their
return from Afghanistan — they had gone there to fight alongside the Taliban.
The Islamists’ reaction was weak, partly because of their lack of unity.'® The
Jamaat-i Islami and the various JUI factions, for example, have been longstanding
rivals, and have been eager to emphasize their ideological differences. Qazi Hussain
Ahmed always said that he did not model himself on the Taliban, whereas the JUI
in
had always been close to this school of thought, which it had been instrumental
creating: in 1999, eight ministers in the Kabul government had been trained at the
Darul Uloom Hagqgania school run by Sami ul-Haq, one of the party’s leaders.
emo-
During the weeks when the Afghan war was going on — weeks of heightened
when
tions in Pakistan — the best-attended Islamist demonstrations took place only
for this
all the different groups made common cause. ‘They even set up a movement
which brought
purpose: the Pakistan—Afghanistan Defence Council (PADC),
to mobilize
together twenty-two Islamist movements. However, it was only able
largest pro-
about 40,000 people in Karachi in October 2001, for what remains the
Taliban demonstration.
of a
Even when they were united, the Islamists did not seem to constitute much
270 EPILOGUE
threat to Musharraf, given that they had been traumatized by the shock of the
‘Taliban’s military defeat. This rout, which was more thorough than anyone had
expected, had an immediate effect on Pakistan’s Islamists: completely demoralized,
they gave up demonstrating, even for the release of their leaders. Had they done so,
they would have seen that they had little capacity for mobilization. The Islamists’
reputation was damaged by this crisis: not only because they lost, but because the
Pakistani people believed — rightly or wrongly — that the Afghans had betrayed
them: the volunteers who went to help the Taliban fought alone, while the Afghans
surrendered or went over to the enemy according to a logic that no longer had any-
thing to do with Islamic ideology, but everything to do with the Pashtun tribal ethos.
In this state of defeat, the Islamist project lost a great deal of its prestige, especially
since large numbers of Pakistani militants died on Afghan soil.
There, the T'SNM’s seedbed for growth is by no means insignificant, especially in
the famous Tribal Agencies of the FATA, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas,
whose culture is Pashtun, although they are not under the control of Peshawar; they
are administered directly by Islamabad, but in practice they enjoy considerable
autonomy and even aspecial legal system, in so far as the FATA are divided up into
several ‘agencies’ controlled by discrete clans. This area has constituted a refuge for
the ‘Taliban and become a new sanctuary for the Arabs of al-Qaeda — even more so
in view of the fact that the TSNM militants immediately made common cause with
their Pashtun brothers in Afghanistan during the war. As soon as the
Anglo-American air strikes began, thousands of militants — some plausible estimates
put the figure at 10,000 — crossed the border to come to the aid of the Taliban.
Pakistani and Afghan Pashtuns came together on the terrain of an ethnic national-
ism tinged with Islamism — the Pashtun ethos has obvious affinities with Taliban-style
Islam, notably over the question of a woman’s place in society.!’
The TSNM militants and the Pashtuns in general, however, did not escape the
demoralization suffered by other Islamists: they were the first to be affected by the
collapse — indeed, the defection — of the Afghan Taliban. In the Pakistani press,
many parents of young militants accused the Taliban of being responsible for the
death of their sons because they did not fight fiercely enough: their ‘irresponsible
attitude’ at Mazar-i-Sharif and Kunduz caused a lot of resentment.
Moreover, the ANP completely dissociated itself from the Taliban during the
crisis, believing that they were paying the price for their extremism and their unnat-
ural alliance with Bin Laden. The party declared itself in favour of an Afghan
policy based on noninterference, and gave implicit approval to Musharraf’s policy
after September 11. The ANP even left the Alliance for the Restoration of
Democracy, and agreed with the Bonn compromise. In Baluchistan, a province
where the Pashtuns constitute a sizeable proportion of the population as a result of
the influx of Afghan refugees, the Pakhtoonkwa Mili Awami Party also backed the
Bonn agreement, and decided to support King Zahir Shah.
In this context, Musharraf can see his way towards clipping the wings of the
Islamists in Pashtun areas without having to face a united front of opponents.
Indeed, the fact that the TSNM leader has been sentenced to three years in prison
has not caused much ofastir.
EPILOGUE 271
The generally weakened state of the Pakistani Islamists opened the way for forceful
government action. The Americans urged Musharraf to finish them off once and for
all. The head of the CIA, George Tenet, went to Islamabad in early December 2001
to encourage him to do this, and even to put a name to the most dangerous people,
who should be placed under close surveillance. Musharraf remained very cautious,
however, till the attack in New Delhi on 13 December, just as the conflict between
India and Pakistan over Kashmir came to the fore again, in the wake of the Afghan
crisis.
Towards a break with the Kashmir jihadists’?

In the 1980s and 1990s Indian Kashmir had become a favoured theatre of opera-
tions for ‘jihadist’ groups, prominent among which were the Hizbul Mujahideen, the
Al Badr Mujahideen, the Harkat-ul Mujahiddin (also known as the Harkat-ul Ansar)
and the Lashkar-i-Tayyiba, a movement formed under the auspices of the Dawat-
ul-Irshad madrasahs (an organization set up in 1987 by two Punjabi teachers and an
Arab preacher). These groups of ‘mujaheddin’ (the Indians call them ‘mercenaries),
most of whom acquired their paramilitary skills in training camps in Pakistan, were
in the habit of crossing the Kashmir line of control as soon as winter was over in
order to continue their campaign.
For a long time it has been public knowledge that there are links between the main
jihadist movements in Kashmir and Afghanistan. ‘The founders of the four move-
ments mentioned above — Hizbul Mujaheddin, Al Badr Mujaheddin, Harkat-ul
Mujahiddin and Lashkar-i-Tayyiba — are all ‘Afghanistan veterans’, mujaheddin
who fought against the Russians. The fact is that Afghanistan and Kashmir were two
favoured jihad areas. Once Afghanistan was neutralized, after autumn 2001, there
was only Kashmir, whose symbolic and strategic significance — as if this needed
repeating — is much greater for the Pakistanis than that of Afghanistan. Taking
to
action in Kashmir could, in effect, be a good way for Pakistan-based Jihadists
of the
show what they were capable of, despite the disastrous effects of the defeat
in Afghanist an. This
Taliban and the deaths of hundreds of Pakistani Islamists
especially
hypothesis seems to have been borne out by the attacks in Srinagar, and
in Delhi, in winter 2001.
Kashmir
On 1 October 2001, a suicide bomber attacked the Jammu and
bility, but the
Assembly in Srinagar, killing forty people. No one claimed responsi
mad and the
method used was in effect a signature, because only the Jaish-1 Muham
rly 2000,
Lashkar-i-Tayyiba carry out this kind of suicide bombing. In late 1999-ea
similar attacks
Jaish-i Muhammad and Lashkar-i-Tayyiba militants had carried out
13 December
against the Indian army in Indian Kashmir. The attack in Delhi on
was far greater
9001 may have killed fewer people — fifteen in all — but its impact
was infiltrated with
because it was aimed at the Parliament in New Delhi, which
astounding audacity by five activists. They gained access to the premises in an offi-
cial car, armed with explosives, grenades and assault rifles, while a debate involving
several government ministers was about to take place. The security services frus-
trated their attempt to kill these ministers, who were almost certainly their main
oie EPILOGUE
target, but they shot several people, and the very fact that activists were able to per-
petrate a suicide attack in the National Assembly made the people of India — who
were in a state of shock — realize that kamikazes like this could strike at the very high-
est offices of state. The Indian government quickly traced this ‘terrorist network’ —
at least, so they claimed — back to the Lashkar-i-Tayyiba, the Jaish-i Muhammad and
the ISI, acting in concert.!®
Bolstered by the general climate of opinion in the wake of September 11, the
Indian government reacted to the attacks in Srinagar and Delhi with unprecedented
force. As far as the Indians were concerned, the attacks on New York were a wind-
fall: the world’s greatest superpower had been the victim of the same ‘Islamic
terrorism’ as India: for ten years New Delhi had been applying this label to the trou-
bles in Kashmir, but no one had listened.! After the Srinagar attack, the Indians
pursued this line with even more determination. They insisted that Pakistan should
extradite Maulana Masood Azhar, leader of the Jaish-i Mohammed, to India, and
made stronger demands than ever on the Americans to add Islamist groups who are
active in Kashmir, like the Lashkar-i-Tayyiba and the Jaish-i Mohammed, to the list
of Foreign Terrorist Organizations drawn up in the aftermath of September 11.
Initially, only the Harkat-ul Mujahiddin appeared on this list; as a result, its offices
had been boarded up and its assets frozen from the end of September 2001. The
USA agreed to consider this request, but took their time about it. On 1 November,
the Justice Department recommended to the State Department that the LT and the
JM should be added to the list of terrorist groups.
‘The attack of 13 December brought an even stronger Indian reaction. New Delhi
arraigned Islamabad publicly, implying that the government of Pakistan had had a
hand in it. The Indian government demanded the extradition of twenty terrorists,
including Masood Azhar, Syed Salahuddin (leader of the Hizbul Mujahideen), and
several of their henchmen, who had been responsible for the 1999 hijacking; but also
the gangsters involved — according to New Delhi —in the attacks in Bombay in 1993,
like Daud Ibrahim and the Sikh separatists whom Pakistan had supported at the
height of the struggle for Khalistan in the 1990s. Islamabad replied that Pakistan’s
involvement in the 13 December attack had yet to be proved, and that in any case,
none of the twenty people accused by New Delhi was in the country. In response to
this totally foreseeable prevarication, India made a show of force, prompted by the
international situation in the wake of September 11 and also by the situation in
India itself: the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP — Party of the People of
India) could not risk looking weak, because it was preparing for important regional
elections in Uttar Pradesh, one of the biggest States in the Indian Union. George
Fernandes, the Indian Defence Minister, announced an unprecedented troop
deployment ~ even greater than in 1971 — along the border with Pakistan. On 26
December he also announced that Indian missiles — except Agni II, the latest addi-
tion to the arsenal — were poised for attack.
It was in this extremely tense situation that the USA formally added the LT and
the JM to the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. It now contains the names of
five movements based in Pakistan — no other country is so ‘well’ represented in this
list of thirty-nine names. At the same time, the USA put pressure on General
EPILOGUE OTS
Musharraf to follow the same policy in his own country. Washington was eager for
him to do so, in order to defuse the situation with New Delhi. The Americans were
keen to avoid any conflict, however limited, between India and Pakistan, because
such a conflict could lead Pakistan to remove its troops from the Afghan border,
where their mission was to capture Taliban and Al-Qaeda people retreating to
Pakistan — and, if possible, Osama bin Laden. The warlike noises coming from
New Delhi strengthened Washington’s pressure on Islamabad to the point where,
on 12 January 2002, Musharraf made an hour-long speech to the Pakistani nation
which was, in reality, aimed at the USA too. On the pretext of going back to the
original ideology behind Pakistan, as expressed by Jinnah, he railed against the rise
of intolerance and fundamentalism. He spoke in the Kemalist tones which he had
already adopted in his attacks on sectarian movements in 2000 and 2001: ‘Sectarian
terrorism has been going on for years. Every one of us is fed up of it . . . Our peace-
loving people are keen to get rid of the Kalashnikov and weapon culture ... The
day of reckoning has come. Do we want Pakistan to be a theocratic state? Do we
believe that religious education alone is enough for governance or do we want
Pakistan to emerge as a progressive and dynamic welfare state?’ Of course,
Musharraf had his own political reasons for making such a speech. He held that the
Islamists had set up a ‘state within a state’, and he intended to act against the
threat this constituted. On this point, he went so far as to say: “Today Pakistan is not
facing any real threat from outside. But the real threats are posed from within . . .’.
‘I
Understandably, however, the nub of his speech concerned external affairs:
would request that we should stop interfering with the affairs of others ...’.
This combination of domestic and foreign concerns explains the measures
with the
Musharraf announced on 12 January 2002: all madrasahs had to register
d of
authorities by 23 March, just as foreign students were obliged to; those suspecte
so-calle d
‘nvolvement in terrorist acts or sectarian violence would be dealt with in
a, Sipah-i
speedy trial courts; above all, the Jaish-i Mohammed, Lashkar-i-Tayyib
Shariah-i
Sahaba Pakistan, Tehrik-i Jafria Pakistan and Tanzim Nifaz-i
were imme-
Mohammadi were dissolved. Militant members of these movements
activists were
diately targeted: according to Ministry of the Interior officials, 1,900
days. However,
arrested and 600 organizational headquarters closed down in four
serious Musharraf
most of them were freed soon after and it remains to be seen how
is so far as the fight against Islamism is concerned.
r. But he did
Musharraf asked the ISI to stop supporting Islamist action in Kashmi
rs in Kashmir’.
not put into question Pakistan’s involvement alongside their ‘brothe
the setting up of a
On 10 January, two days before his speech, he had overseen
te Muhammad
National Kashmir Committee under the presidency of the modera
r; the purpose of this
Abdul Qayyum Khan, former President of Azad Kashmi
his speech on 12 January,
committee was to continue the struggle by new means. In
single Pakistani citizen
Musharraf not only ruled out the possibility of handing one
ri cause was ‘in his
over to India, but also emphasized the fact that the Kashmi
Indian control ‘morally,
blood’, and that he would support the Kashmiris under
embroiled in this regional
diplomatically and politically’. So Pakistan will remain
conflict for the foreseeable future.
274 EPILOGUE
Even if Kashmir is still a central plank in Pakistan’s foreign policy, this policy can
no longer include state collusion with jihadist groups: Islamism will no longer con-
stitute part of Musharraf’s regional policy in either Kashmir or Afghanistan as
centrally as before. He also has to get a grip on the situation within his own country.
‘The moment he came to power, he made Sunni and Shi’a groups a specific target for
action; hitherto, however, he has not come down on them particularly hard, for two
main reasons: they have been useful foreign policy tools, and they have been quite
capable of fomenting trouble on the streets. In the altered circumstances after
September 11, however, Musharraf was able to seize the opportunity to crack down
on organizations that had set upa ‘state within a state’, and thus reinforce his power.
Overall, September |] has helped the General-President to consolidate his position
and institutionalize his authoritarian regime.
Institutionalizing Authoritarianism
General Musharraf’s political game plan

General Musharraf did not simply institute a military regime and leave it at that. It
is true that he has proclaimed himself Chief Executive, and then President, of
Pakistan, while remaining head of the army and has given several military men gov-
ernment posts: the heads of the air force and the navy are members of his National
Security Council — that is to say, his government. But Musharraf is no Zia — notably
in his reluctance to impose martial law: he allowed President Rafiq Tarar to remain
in office until spring 2001. Above all — like Ayub Khan, who invented the concept of
guided democracy, and brought in a system of indirect elections designed to keep
himself in power — Musharraf hasa plan: even, perhaps, a political vision. He sub-
scribes to the mindset of the military men who governed Pakistan before him in the
sense that he shares their aversion to ‘the politicians’, but he parts company with
them insofar as he is eager to establish a new political order which is not totally dom-
inated by the military. The previous Martial Law Administrators ‘put a military
superstructure over the civilian structure, when they left the [original] civil structure
as it was. I do not want this.’
In February 2000 he assumed control of the legal system, obliging judges to swear
allegiance to the 14 October 1999 Provisional Constitutional Ordinance. On 12 May
2000 the Supreme Court put his coup on alegal footing, investing him with legislative
and constitutional powers. Nevertheless, the facade of a separation of powers
remained: Pakistan’s Chief Executive agreed to abide by the Supreme Court ruling of
12 May which enjoined him to hold a general election within three years of his coup.
The rebuilding of the state to which Musharraf aspires entails a total rethink of
all institutions; their channels of power would have to be both the army and a pres-
ident directly linked to a network of local representatives in a decentralized political
system. His plan also involves bringing the political parties into line: they would be
under military supervision, and Musharraf would like them to compete with a new
political class which he is trying to bring into existence. He has taken two steps
towards putting his plan into practice:
EPILOGUE 275
1. First, he has implemented some local reforms: he has replaced the all-powerful
district commissioners, who exercised both executive and judicial functions — a
legacy of the colonial era — with district coordination officers, under the super-
vision of local representatives sitting on district and municipal councils. With a
view to implementing this reform, Musharraf organized local elections, hoping
that they would bring about a change of political actors, since he had decided
that they would be non-partisan (the political parties could neither put forward
candidates nor support any candidate officially).
2. Secondly, he proclaimed himself President of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan for
an indefinite period in June 2001 — the Succession Order 2001 states: “The Chief
Executive will hold the office of President until his successor takes over that office.’
These two measures — Musharraf’s elevation to the office of President and the
appointment of local representatives who, as far as possible, are not connected
with the old political parties — in effect constitute a system, because it is from the
relationship between the military state superstructure and the popular (not party-
political) base that a new state structure must emerge. In April 2001, Musharraf
told the important English-language monthly The Herald: ‘After October 2001, I
will be dealing with 106 [district] nazims and I think I will motivate every one of
them. I will take them forward to serve the nation.”*! Musharraf is also calling on
the army to play a role in his political game plan — simply because, he says,
Pakistan’s history shows that the country cannot be governed without it. He
proposes that, rather than having to take part in regular coups, it should have
its own place in the political system, acting as a kind of bodyguard — hence his
concept of a National Security Council, ‘which ought to address all possible issues,
all possible political crises, all possible diplomatic, international and security
issues... Maybe it is out of time and out of place in the developed world but
certainly not in ours.’
The local reforms in 2001 immediately revealed the army’s separate role: their
and
cantonments, which are a prominent feature of most towns in both spatial
councils ; they are
financial terms, are not under the control of the municipal
autonomous.
One implicit aim of this reform was to short-circuit the traditional political per-
n of the
sonnel. This institutional plan was part and parcel of the marginalizatio
political structures that had allowed the politicians to gain power.
Musharraf takes on the political parties and the politicians

ly, to bring the
One of Musharraf’s primary objectives after his coup was, natural
to his govern-
politicians into line, particularly those who constituted a threat
he had just
ment — beginning with Nawaz Sharif, the Prime Minister whom
overthrown.
Act debarred from
In August 2000, an amendment to the 1962 Political Parties
ng situation; at the
public office all those politicians who were in a legally compromisi
did not treat Sharif as Zia
top of this list was Nawaz Sharif. Nevertheless, Musharraf
276 EPILOGUE
treated Bhutto, who was executed two years after being ousted. On 10 November
1999, the former Prime Minister faced a charge — lodged by a colonel in the
Pakistani army — of treason and attempted assassination, because he had issued
orders aimed at preventing the plane bringing General Musharraf from Colombo
from landing at Karachi. He was arrested on 18 November, and formally charged on
19 January 2000. His trial started on 26 January and lasted until 6 April; he was sen-
tenced to life imprisonment, and all his assets were confiscated. In the meantime, on
25 March, Bill Clinton had paida brief visit to Islamabad to ask Musharraf to spare
Sharif’s life. Sharif also stood trial on a charge of corruption — especially tax eva-
sion — in spring 2000, as part of a more general campaign of denouncing the
political methods of former regimes. On 22 July he was given afine of 20 million
rupees and fourteen years in prison. In October these penalties were commuted on
appeal: henceforth, there is a 500-million-rupee limit to the value of Sharif’s assets
that can be seized.
This legal soap opera, however, came to an unexpected end a few weeks later,
when Musharraf decided to let Sharif out of prison. He did this partly because he
was afraid that Sharif’s party would come back into politics — a fear prompted by
the fact that Sharif had recently joined the ARD (see below). Sharif’s release
was also the result of pressure from the USA — Bill Clinton, who was coming to
the end of his presidency, had promised Sharif’s family that he would secure
his release — and Saudi Arabia: Sharif was particularly close to Prince Abdullah,
especially since the 1998 nuclear weapons tests, which had gone down very well in
Saudi Arabia. Sharif was allowed to go to Saudi Arabia with his family under an
arrangement which stipulated that he would not leave that country, would stay
out of politics for at least ten years, would make no statement against the military
government, and that his assets would be confiscated, together with 300 million
rupees’ worth of bank deposits — this would prove difficult to achieve, for legal
reasons. ‘That rid Musharraf of the two political heavyweights of the 1990s, Nawaz
Sharif and Benazir Bhutto. In view of the latter’s entanglements with the law, she
was liable to immediate arrest if she set foot in Pakistan again (her husband, Asif
Zardari, is still in prison).
Musharraf, however, did not emerge from this business completely unscathed. It
is true that he had rid himself of his former rival, who, had he stayed in prison in
Pakistan, could in the long run have been hailed as a martyr, or at the very least
fomented political action by the PML(N). Nonetheless, in asking President Tarar to
‘pardon’ Sharif, so that he could be released, Musharraf ran the risk of undermin-
ing his campaign against political corruption — it was clear from all those millions of
confiscated rupees how profitable this could be. The effect on public opinion was not
improved when Sajjad Ali Shah, former president of the Supreme Court, chose this
moment to announce that the President did not have the right to exonerate Sharif
without the sanction of this body, the highest court in Pakistan’s legal system.
Musharraf’s decision had obviously been prompted by the fact that Sharif’s PML
and some other major political parties had come together to form the ARD, a
united front which threatened to scupper the Chief Executive’s carefully prepared
plans for political reform, simply because it foreshadowed the lesson that was to be
EPILOGUE 277
drawn from the local elections, namely that the political parties were down but not
out.
Musharraf decided to call local elections in 2000 — partly to win favour with the
international community (in fact the first wave of elections took place on 31
December of that year, in order to fulfil his promise that elections would be held
during the year after the coup), and partly to prepare for the 2002 transition: he
hoped that these elections would not only prepare the ground fora less centralized
political-administrative system, but also — and above all — produce a new political
group which would promote his regime in towns and villages throughout Pakistan.
That is why these were non-partisan local elections. In reality, the president of the
National Reconstruction Bureau, Tanvir Navi, had to admit that only ‘25 to 50%
of elected people had never been involved in politics in the past’.*? In actual fact,
the political parties played a very active part in the election campaign, and got
several of their members elected.
At the same time, seventeen political organizations combined to form a Grand
Democratic Alliance, which became the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy
in December 2000, when Nawaz Sharif’s PML(N) joined the seventeen parties that
had already formed a coalition around the PPP, the MQM (which soon left), the
ANP, and so on.
Then Musharraf attempted to divide the ARD by favouring a section of Nawaz
Sharif’s party, the Pakistan Muslim League (N awaz).2* In December 2000, he began
by encouraging the rebellious stirrings of Mian Muhammad Azhar, a PML(N)
leader who was hostile towards Nawaz Sharif. Then in February 2001, once Nawaz
Sharif had gone off to Saudi Arabia, ‘anti-Nawaz’ elements close to Azhar took con-
trol of the Punjabi branch — that is, the main branch — of the party, with the
approval of the junta. The following month, Mian Muhammad Azhar was power-
ful enough to form a new party, the PML (Like Minded), with the support of Ejaz
ul-Hagq, son of Zia ul-Haq. Both men supported Musharraf, who had played a key
role in this split. In fact, all these events seemed to indicate that the General-
view of
President was trying to equip himself with a one-party political machine in
the elections due in 2002.
have
Musharraf’s idea of establishing a new political system where he would
involving
direct relations with a network of locally elected representatives, without
parties
the political parties, could not stand the test of time. It is true that the
raf himself was
remained weak, but they adapted to their new status, and Mushar
d that the 2002
obliged to come to terms with them. In August 2001 he promise
political parties
general election would be on a ‘partisan basis’, thus allowing the
ber 11.
to expand their activities. However, the situation changed after Septem
himself and forget
Musharraf then thought that he was in a position to assert
and unity were at
about the subtleties of democracy, because national security
he would remain
stake. He therefore explained that, given the circumstances,
2002 elections.
President of Pakistan whatever the results of the October
an official visit in
Interestingly, he made this announcement while he was on
the USA.
278 EPILOGUE
President Musharraf: with American blessing, but without

popular support
If the Americans were keen on the idea of reestablishing democracy in Pakistan
before September 11, they seemed to forget all about it thereafter.
There were no democratic strings attached to the financial support granted to
Pakistan by the antiterrorist coalition led by the USA. When Musharraf himself
pledged in late 2001 to hold elections in 2002, the Americans did not make their aid
conditional upon respecting this promise — had they done so, this would have given
some encouragement to an intelligentsia caught in a stranglehold between the mil-
itary government and Islamist fundamentalism. One can understand the bitterness
of the editor in chief of Pakistan’s leading magazine, for whom ‘the problems of
democracy and human rights have very clearly been relegated to a lower level while
the USA returns to its cold war philosophy, according to which “our dictator is a
good dictator”’.°
‘The General-President took full advantage of this situation by declaring in New
York, on 13 November, that he would remain in office whatever the result of the
2002 poll. Western countries made no reaction whatsoever to this announcement.
So in actual fact it was General Musharraf, even more than Pakistan as a whole,
who made his big comeback on to the international stage. Newsweek breathed a sigh
of relief as it told us, in its own inimitable way: ‘We should certainly be happy that
Pakistan is run by a military dictator friendly towards us, rather than that the coun-
try be a democracy that could have been hostile’.”°
The events of September 11 made a twofold impact on Pakistan. On the domes-
tic front, they enabled Musharraf to consolidate his position institutionally but led
him to move against the Islamists, using repressive measures which may be hard to
implement. They have already triggered a series of bomb attacks against Western
interests in Pakistan: 14 Frenchmen working on a submarine in Karachi were killed
by suicide bombers on 8 May, 2002. Islamist groups related to Al-Qaeda have
obviously tried to destabilize Musharraf and force him to give up his collaboration
with the anti-terrorist coalition. On the external front, September 11 has been a
watershed, not only because it enabled Pakistan to be readmitted into the interna-
tional community, but also because it forced the country to withdraw
from Afghanistan and, to a lesser extent, from Kashmir. However, the internal and
external dimensions must not be looked at separately, especially because one of the
strengths of Musharraf as a Pakistani leader stems from outside support and more
specifically from the USA. Now, this support must be justified and may not be
sufficient.
Musharraf pushed his advantage further by organizing a referendum recalling the
one Zia had held in 1985. On 30 April, 2002, the citizens of Pakistan were asked
whether they wanted to entrust President Musharraf with a fresh five-year mandate
to implement fully the reforms (whatever these were) he had Just started. According
to the official results, Musharraf received a huge endorsement of 97% of the vote:
even Musharraf himself had to admit that such an incredible figure had been pos-
sible only because of fraud, which he attributed to the Election Commission.
EPILOGUE 279
However, he was nevertheless responsible for the style of his referendum campaign,
which was replete with populist slogans and highly personalized. This episode, in
fact, alienated large sections of Pakistani society. The low turnout (not reflected in
the official figures) was a clear indication of this new development.
The referendum results enabled Musharraf to claim that he had enough
legitimacy to distort further the democratic agenda. During the summer of 2002
he prepared the October 2002 elections by restoring the spirit — if not the letter
— of the infamous Eighth Amendment. Once again, the President was giving him-
self the right to dismiss the Prime Minister and to dissolve assemblies. History was
indeed repeating itself, with the blessing of the USA and at the expense of
democracy.
Conclusion
The Pakistani army was able to stomach the loss of Afghanistan in exchange for
the lifting of American sanctions and financial largesse from the international
community, because they hoped that these two things would lead to military
collaboration with the USA and a supply of American arms. Washington, however,
does not seem to see its cooperation with Pakistan in the same light. On 1
December 2001, during a visit to Iskamabad, Donald Rumsfeld reaffirmed that the
USA had every intention of reestablishing its military cooperation, but for the
moment it was not particularly inclined to meet Musharraf’s demands. It dodged
the issue of his request for a delivery of F-16s — Pakistan had paid for them, but not
yet received them, and in the end the money was refunded, because of the sanc-
tions — by simply agreeing to provide spare parts for the F-16s Pakistan already had.
At the same time, the USA was discussing strategy closely with India. On 3 and 4
December 2001, the Defense Policy Group — of which Douglas Feith, American
Under Secretary for Defense, was a member — announced joint military exercises,
especially by the respective navies; this development worried Islamabad.” Should
the USA pursue a pro-Indian policy — which was highly probable, given that they
were already moving in that direction, and that the Americans probably considered
India a stabilizing force in South Asia - Musharraf might be accused by some of
his officers of bungling his support for Washington during the war in Afghanistan,
and the joint anti-Al-Qaeda operations with the FBI in Pakistan. These operations,
which enabled the Americans to capture one of Bin Laden’s lieutenants,
on
Zubaydah, in Faisalabad, are indeed resented because of the encroachment
national sovereignty they represent.
The consolidation of Musharraf’s power and the pursuit of his policy also
would
depends on the fact that the foreign aid that had been promised to Pakistan
materialize, saving the country’s failing economy at a stroke: the war has stopped
ional
Pakistan’s industry in its tracks, just as it was heading for recovery, and internat
the cost
aid, totalling only 1.7 billion dollars to date, will not go far towards covering
that to defuse
of the conflict: about 2.5 billion dollars. It will take more money than
below
resentful feelings in Pakistan, where 34 per cent of the population already live
per cent of the
the poverty threshold, while the wealthiest 10 per cent get 28
280 EPILOGUE
(declared) income, and social spending fell from a meagre 9.2 per cent of GDP in
1979-80 to a microscopic 3.1 per cent in 1998-99.
Economic aid is even more necessary in view of the fact that Pakistan is afraid that
it will be left to its own devices once the war is over: should such feelings of aban-
donment take root in Islamabad, not only would Musharraf’s regime be weakened,
but the entire Pakistani establishment — including Musharraf himself — could fall
under the spell of an extremely dangerous campaign to go it alone, in Kashmir or
elsewhere — by way of revenge, but also in protest against marginalization.
Musharraf himself remains convinced that his main assets are his geostrategic posi-
tion and his nuclear arsenal.*°
GLOSSARY
Ahmadi or Ahmadiyya heterodox Muslim sect founded by Mirza Ghulam

Ahmad in about 1890.
Ahrar literally ‘free’: an Islamic group with socialist tendencies formed in the
Punjab in 1930 by Mazhar Ali Khan and Maulana Ataullah Shah Bukhari.
anjuman meeting or assembly.
ashraf literally ‘nobles’; a generic term used in India to describe all Muslims of
foreign origin — Arabs, Turks and Afghans — who, with high-caste converts, con-
stitute a social stratum that is superior to the ashlaf, or low-caste converts.
barani land that is dependent on rainwater irrigation.
biradari or biraderi _ literally ‘fraternity’; clan, community.
Bohra a Muslim group from Indian Gujarat, mostly members of the Mustali
wing of Isma’ili Shia.
Brahmans | the highest caste in the Hindu social system. Traditionally, they have
a monopoly on the teaching of sacred texts and religious practices.
chela pupil or disciple of a Hindu guru.
cipaye Frenchified form of sipahi, soldier or person entrusted with the mainte-
nance of order.
da’i literally ‘missionary’; spiritual leader of the Bohra.
dargah literally ‘door’ or ‘threshold’; sanctuary of a Muslim saint.
dini madari religious school.
diya _ literally ‘price of blood’; monetary compensation paid by the guilty party to
stave off vengeance. See qisas.
hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.
to
hijra _ literally ‘migration’; the Prophet’s Hegira, or migration, from Mecca
Medina in 622. It marked the official beginning of the Muslim religion
Hindko an Indo-European language spoken in the north of Pakistan, especially
in the Kaghan and Indus valleys. Hindko could mean ‘Indian language’ as
opposed to Pashto, which belongs to the Iranian group.
Koran
ijma__ literally ‘consensus’; this is the third source of Muslim law after the
and the Sunna, normally the result of a consensus among the ulemas. For mod-
ernists, this consensus is that of the people’s elected representatives.
religious edu-
Islamayyat or Islamayat _ literally ‘Islamity’; the name given to
cation courses after Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s regime.
282 GLOSSARY
jagirdar the beneficiary of a remuneration system for government and military

executives in Muslim states and their vassal states since the time of the Delhi sul-
tanate. Instead of a salary, the jagirdar are given an estate on which they can levy
tax (and keep a portion of it). The erosion of the authority of the Mughal
Empire allowed the jagirdar to establish hereditary fiefs where they dispensed jus-
tice and functioned as police. This system lasted throughout colonial times,
especially in the Princely States.
Jat a large middle caste of farmers in the Punjab.
jirgah a meeting of tribal leaders [sardar].
kafir miscreant or infidel.
kashmiriat or kashmiriyyat ‘Kashmirity’.
khan atitle widely used among the Pashtuns. It is also a very common surname
in the Indian subcontinent, in other communities as well. In the Afghan world
it is generally applied to a landowner at the head of a large cognate or client
group, whom he supports by providing food and other benefits; leader of a clan
or tribe.
kharif autumn; autumn harvest.
khel clan, or subdivision of a Pashtun clan.
Khoja a Muslim group from Indian Gujarat, mostly members of the Nizari wing
of Isma’ili Shi’a.
Kshatriya a high Hindu military caste. There are many Ashatriya among the
landowning classes.
lambardar village chief.
maddhe sahaba arecitation in praise of the first three caliphs recognized by
Sunni Muslims.
mansabdar literally ‘a man of rank’; traditionally, a dignitary of the Mughal
Empire. A local leader in the Tribal Areas.
mazhab =alaw school. Sunni Islam has four major law schools: the Hanafi school
(to which most Muslims in the Indian subcontinent, together with the Muslims
of Central Asia and the Turks, claim allegiance); the Hanbali school (in Saudi
Arabia); the Maliki school (which predominates in Africa, apart from Egypt);
and the Shafei school (represented in Arab countries, Southeast Asia and
South India). The Twelver Shi’a also have a law school, called theJafari school.
mehfil an assembly.
millat _ literally ‘religious community’; by extension, nation. According to nation-
alist ulemas, a Muslim religious community within the Indian nation in the
context of British India; in the Afghan context, the nation as opposed to the
state.
Muhajir a Muslim of Indian origin who left India for Pakistan after Partition.
mujaddid reformer.
murid a disciple in a Sufi order.
musawat-i muhammadi literally ‘Mohammedan equality’; the official name
for Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s brand of Islamic socialism.
nawab honorific plural of naib, a provincial governor; more specifically, governors
who became independent after the disintegration of the Mughal Empire.
GLOSSARY 283
parda or purdah literally ‘veil’ or ‘curtain’; a system that keeps women segre-
gated in the traditional Muslim elite.
pir aspiritual master in a Sufi brotherhood; a living or dead Muslim saint with
miraculous powers.
pirzada the son ofa pur.
prasad Hindu propitiatory dishes; food offered to an idol.
qaum = any subdivision of the universal Muslim community; in British India it was
used more specifically to describe the Muslim community of the subcontinent
as opposed to the Hindu community. The Muslim League considered this com-
munity to be a nation when it formed the movement for the creation of
Pakistan. See millat.
qisas private vengeance for a murder or aserious injury, which takes the form of
inflicting the equivalent punishment on the guilty party.
Qureshi an honorific title for people who are said to be descended from the
Arab Qureish, the tribe of the Prophet Mohammed.
rabi springtime; the spring harvest.
Rajput a warrior class; members of the Ashatriya caste.
riba’ interest-bearing loans; usury.
safa’i literally ‘cleansing’; a word used at the time of Partition to describe the
ethnic cleansing that took place on both sides of the new border between India
and Pakistan.
sajjada nashin literally ‘he who sits on the prayer mat’; the guardian of a Sufi
sanctuary.
sardar the Persian word for commander; a tribal chief.
sayyid or seyyed someone who is said to be descended from the Prophet.
Sunna_ the Prophet’s behavioural precepts, which lay down a code of conduct for
Muslims. They are set out in the Traditions [hadis] passed down by the
Companions of the Prophet, and constitute the second source of Muslim law
after the Koran.
tabaruk propitiatory dishes.
tahar purity.
talaq al-ahsan =a man’s repudiation of his wife by repeating the talag phrase (‘I
repudiate thee’) three times during the twhr or ‘clean’ time (that is, the time when
the woman is not menstruating), and abstaining completely from sexual inter-
or a
course during the iddat (the three-month period during which a widow
may be
divorced woman is not allowed to remarry). This form of divorce
revoked during the zddat.
wife by repeat-
talaq al-bid’a a man’s instant and irrevocable repudiation of his
ing the ¢alag phrase (‘I repudiate thee’) three times.
or madrasahs.
taliban | students of religion who are educated in seminaries
tanzim organization.
otection (a Shi’a
taqiyya concealing one’s religious faith as a means of self-pr
tradition).
s of jurisprudence. In
taqlid a passive acceptance of the law as taught in school
connotations.
the language of modernist Muslims, this word has pejorative
284 GLOSSARY
umma the universal community of Muslims, as opposed to national communities

(qaum and millat).
ushr literally ‘tithe’; a religious tax on harvests, in principle at a rate of 10 per
cent.
wadera major landowners in Sind.
walaya submission to the hidden imam (among the Bohra).
waz a sermon; preaching.
zahir obvious; exoteric.
zakat areligious tax on harvests, in principle paid annually at a rate of 2.5 per
cent of capital.
zamindar a Mughal Empire official, responsible for collecting land taxes in a
given area. It has gradually acquired the wider meaning of ‘landowner’.
zat aterm, of Arabic origin, used by Muslims as a name for the caste. See Jat.
Ziyara a (non-canonical) pilgrimage.
CHRONOLOGY
23 March 1940 In Lahore, the Muslim League pass a resolution demanding

the formation of a country called Pakistan, which they intend
to establish as a union of independent sovereign states.
14-15 August 1947 The Independence and Partition of British India. Regions
with a Muslim majority (the western Punjab, the North
West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan to the west;
East Bengal to the east) form Pakistan.
30 September 1947 Pakistan joins the United Nations Organization.
27 October 1947 Under attack from Pashtun tribes, the maharajah of
Jammu and Kashmir asks India for help; this is provided
on condition that his province becomes part of India.
29 January 1948 Under Indian pressure, the United Nations Security
Council issues a recommendation that a referendum
should be held in Kashmir.
11 September 1948 The death of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan’s founder
and first head of state.
14 December 1948 Maulvi Tameezuddin is elected president of Pakistan’s
Constituent Assembly.
1 January 1949 Cease-fire in Kashmir.
6 January 1949 The Constituent Assembly passes a law authorizing the
governor general to disqualify from public office anyone
charged with corruption (the Public and Representation
Office Disqualification Act, or PRODA.
22 February 1949 Rana Liaquat, wife of Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan,
sets up the All Pakistan Women’s Association (APWA).
27 July 1949 India and Pakistan sign a cease-fire agreement.
4 January 1950 Pakistan recognizes the People’s Republic of China.
8 April 1950 Liaquat Ali Khan and Jawaharlal Nehru sign the Delhi Pact
on the protection of minorities in their respective countries.
17 January 1951 General Ayub Khan replaces the British General Gracey
as commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
16 October 1951 Assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan. He is succeeded by the
governor general, Ghulam Muhammad.
286 CHRONOLOGY
26 January 1952 In Dhaka, Prime Minister Nazimuddin makes an

announcement to the effect that Urdu will be Pakistan’s
national language. ‘The Bengalis, who make up 54 per cent
of the population, organize street protests. ‘Three people
die in a student protest on 21 February. On 7 May 1954,
the Constituent Assembly declare Bengali the second
national language.
6 March 1953 Anti-Ahmadi riots in Lahore lead to the imposition of mar-
tial law.
April 1953 Governor General Ghulam Muhammad dismisses Prime
Minister Nazimuddin.
30 May 1953 Ghulam Muhammad dismisses Faz ul-Huq, leader of the
government of East Pakistan.
March 1954 The Awami League defeat the Muslim League in provin-
cial elections in East Pakistan.
May 1954 Pakistan joins the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization
(SEATO), a military alliance inspired by the USA.
24 July 1954 The Communist Party is declared an illegal organization.
24 October 1954 Ghulam Muhammad dissolves the Constituent Assembly.
3 January 1955 The Princely States of Baluchistan join the province of
Baluchistan.
11 August 1955 Chaudhary Muhammad Ali becomes Prime Minister.
19 September 1955 Iskander Mirza succeeds Ghulam Muhammad as governor
general.
23 September 1955 Pakistan joms CENTO, another strategic alliance inspired
by the USA.
14 October 1955 Central government, dominated by Punjabis, decides to
combine the provinces of West Pakistan (the Punjab, the
NWFP, Sind and Baluchistan) into one entity, ‘West
Pakistan’, in order to achieve a population that can rival
East Pakistan in numerical terms. The ‘small’ provinces
are not at all happy about this so-called ‘One Unit
Scheme’.
29 February 1956 The Constituent Assembly pass _ Pakistan’s first
Constitution.
4 March 1956 Mirza, the only candidate, is elected President of Pakistan.
23 March 1956 After nine years of debate, the Constitution is officially
proclaimed. It establishes an Islamic republic anda politi-
cal regime that is officially parliamentary and federal, but
in fact highly centralized.
12 September 1956 Hussain Shaheed Suhrawady is appointed Prime Minister.
25 July 1957 The formation of the Pakistan National Party, an opposi-
tion party which subsequently became the National Awami
Party (NAP).
18 October 1957 I I Chundrigar is appointed Prime Minister. On 16
CHRONOLOGY 287
December he is forced to resign, and is succeeded by Feroz

Khan Noon.
6 October 1958 The khan of Kalat is deposed on a trumped-up charge of
sedition.
7 October 1958 President Iskander Mirza imposes martial law. Marshal
Ayub Khan leads a military coup; he becomes chief
administrator of martial law, then (on 24 October) Prime
Minister. The National Assembly is dissolved; political par-
ties are banned. On 27 October, Mirza is forced to resign.
Politicians convicted of corruption are debarred from
public office until 1 January 1966.
October 1959 Introduction of a system called ‘basic democracy’, which in
effect allows the President to select his own electoral body.
14 February 1960 Ayub Khan is elected President of Pakistan.
2 March 1961 The Family Law Ordinance outlaws polygamy and allows
wives to ask for a divorce.
1 July 1961 Rawalpindi becomes Pakistan’s capital city. The former
capital, Karachi, becomes part of the province of Sind. A
new town, Islamabad, is to be built a few kilometres from
Rawalpindi; it will become Pakistan’s capital city in 1967.
28 April 1962 The National Assembly is elected by the so-called ‘basic
democrats’ . The ban on political parties is still in force.
8 June 1962 Martial law is replaced by the second Constitution, drawn
up under the auspices of the military, which establishes a
presidential-style regime.
16 July 1962 The National Assembly legalize political parties.
January 1963 Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, former minister of ‘basic democracy’,
takes over the Foreign Affairs portfolio.
7 January 1963 Ayub Khan promulgates a Political Parties (Amendment)
Ordinance, which threatens politicians convicted of cor-
ruption who try to regain public office with two years’
imprisonment.
2 March 1963 Pakistan signs a border agreement with China, which — in
the context of the Sino-Indian war — marks asignificant
rapprochement.
20 April 1963 Z. A Bhutto lays the foundation stone for Pakistan’s first
nuclear reactor at Nilor, near Islamabad.
| January 1964 Protest demonstrations in Pakistan against the mysterious
disappearance of the relic — one of the Prophet's hairs —
from Srinagar’s Hazrat Bal mosque.
18 September 1964 An opposition alliance takes the form of the Combined
Opposition Parties in order to fight the presidential election
campaign. Its candidate is Fatima Jinnah, Qaid-i Azam’s
sister.
2 January 1965 Ayub Khan is elected President.
288 CHRONOLOGY
4 January 1965 Ayub Khan’s victory procession, which includes a number

of Pashtuns, causes intercommunal riots.
21 March 1965 The ‘basic democrats’ elect the National Assembly.
April 1965 The second war between India and Pakistan breaks out;
the first phase takes place in the Rann of Kutch, on the
border between Gujarat and Sind. Asa result of mediation
by the British Prime Minister, a cease-fire is declared there
on 30 June.
24 July 1965 Pakistan’s military launch Operation Gibraltar, aimed at
provoking an uprising by Indian Kashmiris around
Srinagar. This aim was not achieved.
6 September 1965 The Indian army marches on Lahore, crossing the border
without issuing a preliminary ultimatum.
19-20 September 1965 Ayub Khan pays asecret visit to China for talks with Zhou
En Lai, who pledges to support him.
22 December 1965 Pakistan’s first nuclear reactor comes on stream.
10 January 1966 Ayub Khan and Lal Bahadur Shastri sign a peace treaty at
Tashkent.
5 February 1966 During a meeting in Lahore, Mujibur Rahman, president
of the Awami League of East Pakistan, demands the
implementation of the 1940 Lahore Resolution, and hence
the formation of a genuinely federal Pakistan.
30 December 1966 Z A Bhutto forms the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).
1 January 1967 Politicians who were debarred from public office for cor-
ruption — which was not proved in every case — are free to
resume political activity.
18 January 1967 Mujibar Rahman is arrested on a charge of conspiring
with India against the national security of Pakistan (the
so-called ‘Agartala Conspiracy’).
October 1967 The Planning Commission acknowledges that twenty-
two families control 66 per cent of Pakistan’s industrial
assets and 87 per cent of the banking and insurance
sector,
November 1967 Z A Bhutto and Wali Khan are arrested for criticizing
Ayub Khan’s regime after a student is killed by the police
on 7 November.
17 February 1968 Bhutto and Wali Khan are released.
22 February 1968 Rahman is acquitted of the ‘Agartala Conspiracy’.
24 March 1969 Ayub Khan resigns over the social unrest and violent
demonstrations in East Bengal, abrogating the Constitution
under whose terms he should be succeeded by the presi-
dent of the National Assembly. He hands over to General
Yahya Khan, who — rumour has it — brought about his
resignation.
26 March 1969 Yahya Khan imposes martial law.
CHRONOLOGY 289
28 November 1969 Yahya Khan announces the winding-up of the One Unit
Scheme, and cancels the elections.
28 March 1970 Yahya Khan promulgates the Legal Framework Order,
which will be used as a framework for constitutional pro-
cedure. It stipulates that 169 out of the 313 seats in the
National Assembly will be allotted to East Pakistan.
1 July 1970 The One Unit Scheme is wound up: Pakistan’s western
provinces regain their autonomy.
7 December 1970 Pakistan’s first free elections are won by the Awami League,
whose success in East Pakistan is overwhelming; in West
Pakistan, on the other hand, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s Pakistan
People’s Party (PPP) wins the most votes.
17 December 1970 Elections for the provincial assemblies.
14 February 1971 Yahya Khan announces that the Constituent Assembly will
meet in Dhacca on 3 March to draw up a new constitution.
27 February 1971 Bhutto asks for this meeting to be postponed; Yahya Khan
agrees.
3 March 1971 The Awami League organizes a week-long general strike.
25 March 1971 The army launches a large-scale military operation in East
Pakistan; the Dhaka University campus is its main target.
6 December 1971 India recognizes Bangladesh’s government-in-exile.
7-16 December 1971 The Indian offensive gets through the Pakistani army in a
few days. With India’s help, the Bengalis of Pakistan
manage to secede and form Bangladesh (16 December).
20 December 1971 Yahya Khan hands over power to Bhutto, who becomes
civilian martial law administrator.
2 January 1972 The Bhutto government announces that it will nationalize
whole swathes of industry — from iron and steel to chemi-
cals, including the electrical industry.
10 February 1972 It is made more difficult for bosses to sack their employees.
Workers must be allowed some involvement in management.
1 March 1972 An agrarian reform measure stipulates that no one indi-
vidual may own more than 150 acres of irrigated land and
300 acres of nonirrigated land.
19 March 1972 Insurance companies are nationalized.
20 April 1972 The interim Constitution is put into effect, and martial
law is lifted.
1 May 1972 Sardar Ataullah Mengal becomes leader of the Baluchistan
government.
2 July 1972 Indira Gandhi and Z A Bhutto sign the Simla Accords,
which terminate the 1971 war.
8-16 July 1972 The vote on the Sindi Language Bill causes intercommunal
riots in Sind.
94 December 1972 The Pashtun leader Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan returns
from eight years’ exile in Kabul.
290 CHRONOLOGY
13 February 1973 Baluchistan’s government collapses; this provokes civil dis-

order in the province. The NWFP government resigns in
protest.
12 April 1973 The third Constitution is proclaimed, with the agreement
of the major political forces.
July 1973 Daud deposes King Zahir Shah and takes power in
Afghanistan.
22-24 February 1974 An Islamic Conference Summit in Lahore confirms
Pakistan’s full integration into the Arab—Muslim world.
18 May 1974 India carries out its first nuclear weapons test in Rajasthan,
on the border with Pakistan.
June 1974 Fresh anti-Ahmadi riots in the Punjab — more violent than
the 1953 riots.
10 February 1975 ‘The National Awami Party is banned; Wali Khan is put in
prison.
15 August 1975 Mujibur Rahman, founding president of Bangladesh, is
assassinated.
1 March 1976 Bhutto appoints Zia ul-Haq Chief of Army Staff (COAS).
8 April 1976 The sardar system is abolished in Baluchistan, but the tribal
chiefs retain their influence.
26-30 May 1976 Bhutto goes to China, where he strengthens the military
ties between the two countries.
15 July 1976 Bhutto announces that cotton factories and flour mills are
to be nationalized.
8 January 1977 Opposition parties join together to form the Pakistan
National Alliance (PNA) in order to campaign for the 1977
elections.
8 March 1977 The PPP wins 155 of the 200 National Assembly seats.
28 March 1977 Bhutto becomes Prime Minister for the second time.
9 April 1977 ‘The police open fire on Pakistan National Alliance demon-
strators protesting against government ballot-rigging.
21 April 1977 Bhutto calls on the army to restore public order.
5 June 1977 The Punjabi court rules that it is illegal to maintain martial
law; two days later martial law is lifted.
June 1977 Bhutto reaches a power-sharing agreement with the PNA.
4 July 1977 General Zia ul-Haq has Bhutto arrested.
5 July 1977 Zia suspends the 1973 Constitution and dissolves both cen-
tral and provincial governments. He imposes martial law,
claiming ballot-rigging by the PPP government. He
promises new elections within ninety days.
3 September 1977 Z A Bhutto is accused of murdering a PPP dissident.
September 1977 The USA suspends military and economic aid to Pakistan
because it suspects the country of having a nuclear
weapons programme.
18 March 1978 Bhutto is condemned to death by the Punjabi court.
CHRONOLOGY 201
11June 1978 Altaf Hussain, a pharmacy student at Karachi University,

launches the All Pakistan Muhajir Student Organization.
6 February 1979 The Supreme Court confirms the Punjabi court’s verdict
and sentence on Z A Bhutto by four votes to three; all the
four judges concerned are Punjabis.
10 February 1979 The Hudood Ordinance introduces ‘Islamic’ punishments
for drinking alcohol, theft and adultery.
23 March 1979 Zia announces elections for 17 November; they are never
held.
4 April 1979 Bhutto is executed. Many nations disown Pakistan, but not
for long, because after the invasion of Afghanistan,
Washington sees Pakistan as a bulwark against Soviet
expansionism.
6 September 1979 Pakistan joins the Movement of Non-Aligned States.
25 September 1979 Non-partisan municipal elections.
27 December 1979 The Soviet army invades Afghanistan.
26 February 1980 Formation of a Federal Shari’ah Court.
20 June 1980 The Zakat and Ushr Ordinance brings in an Islamic taxa-
tion system.
4—5 July 1980 A Shi’a convention protests against the zakat because it is a
Sunni tradition.
February 1981 The Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD)
is formed.
March 1981 Benazir Bhutto is put under house arrest.
September 1981 The USA gives Pakistan forty F-16s and 3.2 thousand mil-
lion dollars’ worth of military aid.
December 1981 Press censorship is relaxed.
July-August 1983 MRD demonstrations against the military regime and for
more regional autonomy are suppressed by the army.
September 1983 More non-partisan political elections.
10 January 1984 Benazir Bhutto leaves Pakistan for Europe.
18 March 1984 The state breaks up the student organizations; Altaf
Hussain launches the Muhajir Qaumi Movement (MQM).
October 1984 The Pakistani, Iranian and Turkish Ministers of Foreign
Affairs form the ECO, which is launched officially on 28
January 1985.
19 December 1984 A ‘yes’ vote in a referendum on Islamization allows Zia to
announce that he has been ‘elected’ President for a five-
year term.
25 February 1985 Non-partisan legislative elections are organized.
94 March 1985 General Zia appoints Muhammad Khan Junejo Prime
Minister.
March 1985 The 8th Amendment to the 1973 Constitution strengthens
the President’s powers; notably, he has the power to dismiss
the Prime Minister.
292 CHRONOLOGY
8 December 1985 The South Asia Association for Economic Cooperation is

formed.
30 December 1985 Martial law is lifted, and the 1973 Constitution — exten-
sively amended ~ is reinstated.
10 April 1986 Benazir Bhutto returns to Pakistan after two years’ exile in
England.
15 October 1987 Qazi Hussain Ahmad is elected leader of the Jamaat-i
Islami.
30 November 1987 Non-partisan municipal elections. Unofficial MQM can-
didates win most of the seats in Hyderabad and Karachi.
29 May 1988 Zia dismisses Junejo from his post and dissolves Parliament:
all pretence of being acivilian government is dropped.
15 June 1988 Zia promulgates the Shari’ah Ordinance, which elevates
the Mufti to the status of councillors in civil courts.
17 August 1988 Zia dies in a plane accident.
6 October 1988 Eight political parties, including M K Junejo’s Pakistan
Muslim League, combine to form the Islami Jamhoori
Ittehad (IJI) coalition; the Jamaat-i Islami join on 10 October.
16 November 1988 The PPP wins the general election.
2 December 1988 Benazir Bhutto becomes Prime Minister.
12 December 1988 Ghulam Ishaq Khan is elected President of Pakistan.
5 February 1989 The last Soviet troops withdraw from Afghanistan.
June 1989 Wali Khan’s National Awami Party joins the JJI.
1 October 1989 Pakistan becomes a member of the Commonwealth, from
which Z A Bhutto had withdrawn it.
27 May 1990 The Muhajirs of Hyderabad’s Pucca Qila district are vic-
tims of police violence — which they might have provoked —
as a result of which about sixty people die.
6 August 1990 President Ghulam Ishaq Khan dismisses Benazir Bhutto’s
government. Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi becomes interim
Prime Minister.
September 1990 Pakistan sends men to Saudi Arabia.
October 1990 The USA suspends aid to Pakistan.
24 October 1990 The IJI wins the general election.
27 October 1990 Fresh elections for the provincial assemblies.
6 November 1990 Nawaz Sharif becomes Prime Minister.
| January 1991 Pakistan fights alongside the USA in the Gulf War.
7 February 199] The Sharif government announces liberalizing economic
reforms.
April 1991 Nawaz Sharif announces a National Finance Award
Committee to share out national resources between the
four provinces, and Indus Water Apportionment Awards to
share the river water out between them.
| January 1992 Altaf Hussain, leader of the MQM, goes into exile in
London.
CHRONOLOGY 293
17 January 1992 G M Syed is arrested once more, at the age of eighty-nine,

for acting as spokesman for an independent Sind.
May 1992 The army launches an offensive against the MQM in
Karachi.
8 January 1993 General Asif Nawaf Janjua, army chief, dies suddenly and
is replaced by General Abdul Waheed Kakar.
18 April 1993 President Ghulam Ishaq Khan dismisses Nawaz Sharif
from his post.
25 April 1993 Nawaz Sharif appeals against this decision in the Supreme
Court, which rules in his favour and restores him to his
position on 26 May. On 27 May Sharif wins a vote of con-
fidence in the National Assembly.
18 July 1993 General Kakar secures the resignation of Ghulam Ishaq
Khan and Nawaz Sharif.
6 October 1993 The PPP wins the general election.
9 October 1993 Fresh elections for the provincial assemblies.
19 October 1993 Benazir Bhutto becomes Prime Minister again.
13 November 1993 Farooq Leghari is elected President of Pakistan.
5 December 1993 Benazir Bhutto takes over the leadership of the PPP from
her mother, who now supports her son Murtaza in his bid
to become Prime Minister.
October 1994 The Taliban take over Afghanistan.
November 1994 The Shi’a Sipah-i Muhammad movement is formed.
November 1994 Operation Clean-up fails and the army withdraw from
Karachi, which is racked by intercommunal violence.
15 March 1995 Murtaza Bhutto launches the PPP (Shaheed Bhutto).
18 June 1995 The TSNM incites its supporters to civil disobedience.
1] February 1996 General Jahangir Khan becomes chief of army staff.
April 1996 The Pakistani government cannot manage to make the
four provinces agree on a plan for allocating federal
resources based on the National Finance Commission’s
proposed budget scheme. The three smaller provinces want
90 per cent of the money to be distributed on the basis of
each region’s population; this suggestion is rejected by the
Punjab.
September 1996 Violent clashes between Sunni and Shi’a in the Parachinar
leave about a hundred dead.
4 November 1996 President Leghari dismisses Benazir Bhutto.
12 December 1996 Leghari announces that the tribes of the FATA (Federally
Administered Tribal Area) will be granted direct universal
suffrage at the next elections.
6 January 1997 Leghari appoints a Council for Defence and National
Security, composed of the head of Inter Services
Intelligence (ISI) and the heads of all the armed forces, to
supervise the political process.
204 CHRONOLOGY
19 January 1997 A plastic bomb is planted in Lahore’s Iranian Cultural

Centre, probably by Sunni extremists.
3 February 1997 The Pakistan Muslim League wins an overwhelming
majority in the Assembly. Its leader, Nawaz Sharif,
becomes Prime Minister on 17 February.
1 April 1997 The National Assembly pass the 13th Amendment to the
Constitution, which removes the presidential powers
granted by the 8th Amendment, thus reinstating a parlia-
mentary system.
25 May 1997 Pakistan recognizes the ‘Taliban government in
Afghanistan.
2 December 1997 The chief justice of the Supreme Court, Sajjad Ali Shah,
is forced to leave office. President Leghari resigns.
1 January 1998 Rafiq Ahmed Tarar becomes President.
6 April 1998 Experimental launch of a missile with a 1,500-kilometre
range.
11-13 May 1998 India carries out fresh nuclear weapons tests, twenty-four
years after its first test.
June 1998 Pakistan carries out nuclear weapons tests which give rise
to economic sanctions, especially by the USA.
28 August 1998 Nawaz Sharif announces the introduction of the Shari’ah
Bill.
7 October 1998 General Jahangir Karamat resigns from his post as chief of
army staff. He is succeeded by General Pervez Musharraf.
February 1999 Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the Indian Prime Minister, goes to
Lahore to meet his Pakistani counterpart.
May-July 1999 War in Kargil, in Indian Kashmir.
4 July 1999 Nawaz Sharif goes to Washington, where Bill Clinton puts
pressure on him to withdraw Pakistani troops from Kargil.
12 October 1999 General Musharraf’s coup d'état.
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
This expression was used by a British official in a work relating to the Partition (P Moon,
Divide and Quit, Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, University of California Press, 1962). For
a general survey of the official position of the Congress Party, see the book by Rajendra
Prasad, one of Gandhi’s lieutenants who presided over the Constituent Assembly of
Independent India, later the Indian Union, as President of the Republic (R. Prasad, India
Divided, Bombay, Hind Kitab, 1947).
_ For more details about Partition, see C Markovits (ed.), Histoire de l’Inde moderne, Paris,
Fayard, 1994, ch. xxv.
_ This idea is still alive, even in the Pakistani press. In May 2000, Mubarak Ali wrote in
Dawn, the newspaper started by Jinnah: ‘Since the beginning Pakistan has been con-
fronted with the monumental task of formulating a national identity distinct from India.
Born out of a schism of the old civilization of India, Pakistan has debated over the con-
struction of a culture of its own, a culture which will not only be different from that of
India but one that the rest of the world can understand’ (M Ali, ‘In Search of Identity,
Dawn Magazine, 7 May 2000).
_ New Delhi had settled this matter as early as 1950, whereas five years later Pakistan still rec-
ognized the States of Bahawalpur and Khairpur, and those of Baluchistan, grouped
together as the Baluchistan States Union. Karachi, too, enjoyed a separate establishment.
All these administrative entities were welded together under the single organization One
Unit Scheme in 1955, but the Princely States of Dir, Swat and Chitral were not amalgamated
within the North-West Frontier Province until 1969; in 1973 they were regrouped ina col-
lective body bearing the name PATA (the Provincially Administered Tribal Areas) — not to
be confused with FATA (the Federally Administered Tribal Areas), which were themselves
a regrouping of the Tribal Agencies, that portion of Kashmir conquered by Pakistan in
1948-49 (Azad Kashmir — Free Kashmir) and the Northern Territories.
See, for example, A Hussain, ‘Ethnicity, National Identity and Praetorianism: The Case
of Pakistan’, Asian Survey, no. 16 (10), October 1976, p. 919.
S J Burki, Pakistan, Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1999, p. 14.
Some Pakistani authors say that this movement harks back to Shah Walihullah
Islam,
(1703-63), a theologian who spent his time reestablishing the purity of orthodox
as opposed to the cult of the saints, and reconquering the lands won by the Marathas
is,
with the help of the Afghan sovereign, Ahmad Shah Abdali. Such an interpretation
of course, improper. See, for example, S M J Zafar, Founders of Pakistan, Lahore,
Publishers United, 1968.
G Etienne, Le Pakistan, don de P’Indus: Economie et Politique, Paris, PUF, 1989.
without a
P. Lafrance, ‘And yet, Pakistan exists’, in C Jaffrelot (ed.), Pakistan: Nationalism
Nation?, London, Zed Books, 2002, pp. 337-348..
The military chiefs head a powerful 520,000-strong army.
296 NOTES
1 ISLAMIC IDENTITY AND ETHNIC TENSIONS

. T Amin, Ethno-National Movements of Pakistan’s Domestic and International Factors, Islamabad,
Institute of Political Studies, 1993, p. 73.
. Cited in R Raza (ed.), ‘Constitutional Development and Political Consequences’, in
Pakistan in Perspectwe, 1947-1997, Karachi, Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 4.
. F Robinson, Separatism among Indian Muslims, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,
1974.
. This mistrust cost the Muslims dear: for example, whereas they occupied 72 per cent of
the posts in the judicial system in 1850, they occupied no more than 46 per cent in 1885.
. The Muslim elite had already suffered the replacement of Persian by the Indian vernac-
ular languages in 1837, a measure which applied throughout British India. T Rahman,
Language and Politics in Pakistan, Karachi, Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 37, 69.
In what was called ‘the uncovenanted civil service’, which covered those parts of the
administration not subject to contract. On these matters, see P Brass, Language, Religion
and Politics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1974.
. This report, published in 1871, marked the beginning of a change in the British analy-
sis of the situations of the Muslims in India. Hunter describes with some emotion how,
through the fault of the English, they had lost the virtual monopoly they had enjoyed in
the administration and the country, thus finding themselves ina pitiable position.
- D Lelyveld, Algarh’s First Generation: Muslim Solidarity in British India, Princeton, NJ,
Princeton University Press, 1978.
. This social coalition is not surprising, since the Muslim intelligentsia of the United
Provinces is to a large extent descended from the dignitaries of the Mughal Empire and
of the states which succeeded it — like Sayyid Ahmad Khan himself.
G Minault, The Khalifat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilization in India, New
York, Columbia University Press, 1982.
- He was besides little concerned about Islamic prohibitions, particularly those of a dietary
nature.
. Extract from a speech by Jinnah, President of the Muslim League, during a session in
Lahore in March 1940, quoted in Syad Sharifuddin Pirzada (ed.), Foundations of Pakistan —
All India Muslim League documents: 1906-1947, Karachi, National Publishing House, 1970,
pp. 337-8.
. Neither Iqbal nor Rehmat included Bengal in their plans. This was the first sign of the
marginalization of this province.
14. Pirzada (ed.), Foundations of Pakistan, p. 341.
15. I Talbot, Punjab and the Raj, 1849-1947, Delhi, Manohar, 1988, p. 89.
16. Y Samad, A Nation in Turmoil: Nationalism and Ethnicity in Pakistan, 1937-1958, New Delhi,
Sage, 1995, p. 72.
. D Gilmartin, Empire and Islam: Punjab and the Making of Pakistan, Berkeley, CA, California
University Press, 1988.
18. I Talbot, Pakistan:A Modern History, London, Hurst, 1999, p. 78.
19; MS Korejo, GM Syed: An Analysis of his Political Perspectives, Karachi, Oxford University
Press, 2000.
20. Cited in Harun-or Rashid, The Foreshadowing of Bangladesh: Bengal Muslim League and
Muslim League Politics, 1936-1947, Dhaka, Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1987, p. 181.
Palle The trading communities (particularly of Gujarat), the Memons, the Bohras, the
Khojas — from which Jinnah is descended — and the Chiniotis, saw Pakistan as a means
of escape from their Hindu competitors. In the 1940s they embarked on a massive
financing of the Muslim League (S A Kochanek, Interest Groups and Development: Business
and Politics in Pakistan, Karachi, Oxford University Press, 1983, ch. 1).
a Having failed to make his voice heard during the Round Table conferences, Jinnah
remained in England on apolitical semi-retirement which ended only on his return to
India in the mid-1930s.
NOTES 297
Zt Jinnah ordered this ‘day of direct action’ on 16 August 1946 to prove to Congress his
ability to mobilize masses behind him. In Calcutta the demonstrations took a violent
turn — to Jinnah’s great surprise, it seems — under pressure from Hussain Shaheed
Suhrawardy, head of the government of Bengal and leader of the Muslim League, who
hoped thereby to establish his influence within the party.
pas Samad, A Nation in Turmoil, pp. 90-125.
2 Pirzada (ed.), Foundations of Pakistan, p. 341. By deliberately sounding ambiguous, Jinnah
managed for a long time to avoid saying whether he foresaw two states or a single
Pakistan. For the debate about the ‘Lahore Resolution’, see I A Malik (ed.), Muslim
League Session 1940 and the Lahore Resolution, Iskamabad, National Institute of Historical and
Cultural Research, 1990.
DS: Noted that it was at that very moment that the idea of an independent Bengal, advo-
cated by H S Suhrawardy, received Jinnah’s assent (Samad, A Nation in Turmoil, p. 95).
21 After the’1938 reform, Punjab had 90 representatives, Bengal 100, the United Provinces
70 and the Bombay Presidency 30. Added together, the two first regions mustered only
40 per cent of the voters.
28. H Khuhro, ‘The Capital of Pakistan’, in H Khuhro and A Mooraj (eds), Karachi: Megacity
of our Times, Karachi, Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 95-111.
29: F Ahmed, Ethnicity and Politics in Pakistan, Karachi, Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 95.
30. K B Sayeed, The Political System of Pakistan, Boston, MA, Houghton Mifflin, 1967, p. 132.
Although they represented only 3.5 per cent of the population in 1947, the Muhajirs of
Sind occupied 21 per cent of the posts in the Pakistan Civil Service (R Braibanti, Asian
Bureaucratic Traditions Emergent from the British Imperial Tradition, Durham, NC, Duke
University Press, 1966, p. 263).
oh. See the personal testimony of Afak Maydar, “The Muhajirs in Sind: A Critical Essay’, in
J Henry Korsen (ed.), Contemporary Problems of Pakistan, Boulder, CO, Westview Press,
1993, p.EN7:
Bye Rahman, Language and Politics, pp. 230-31.
oO5 S P Cohen, ‘State Building in Pakistan’, in A Banuazizi and M Weimer (eds), The State
Religion and Ethnic Politics: Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan, Syracuse, NY, Syracuse University
Press, 1986, p. 318.
34. C Dewey, ‘The Rural Roots of Pakistani Militarism’, in D A Low (ed.), Political Inheritance
of Pakistan, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1991, pp. 255-83.
35. CH Kennedy, Bureaucracy in Pakistan, Karachi, Oxford University Press, 1987, p. 194.
. I Talbot, ‘Le poids du Punjab’, in C Jaffrelot (dir), Le Pakistan, carrefour de tensions régionales,
Brussels, Editions Complexes, 1999, p. 92.
Bik L Binder, Religion and Politics in Pakistan, Berkeley, CA, University of California Press,
1961, p. 205.
the
38. Liaquat Ali Khan has stressed elsewhere that establishing a theocracy was out of
question. He draws a radical difference between such a regime and the necessity for the
Muslims of Pakistan to follow ‘the Islamic way of life’ (Liaquat Ali Khan, Pakistan: The
Heart of Asia, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1950, pp. 6, 10).
the
Oo; In promulgating the Land Alienation Act (1901) the British Raj had protected
s who were
indebted farmers of the Punjab from the covetousness of merchant-insurer
land.
ready to take their land in repayment. Only farmers could purchase agricultural
Press, 1999,
40. Shahid Javed Burki, Pakistan: Fifty Years of Nationhood, Boulder, CO, Westview
mao;
servant from
41. There seems to have been no plot behind this murder. The killer was a civil
among the
the NWEP who had been employed to propagate an anti-Afghan tract
have been
Pashtuns. He thought himself badly paid for his services, and his act may
prompted bya desire for vengeance.
ng’ Hindus was given
42. In other cases, particularly in East Pakistan, the property of ‘departi
the Indian side after the
to ‘arriving’ Muslims, and the same transaction occurred on
obtained.
value had been decided and the migrants’ agreement had been
298 NOTES
AS: R Raza, ‘Constitutional Development and Political Consequences’, in Pakistan in

Perspective, 1947-1997, pp. 1-60.
Bae The 1961 census revealed that the population of East Pakistan was 50.8 million, while
that of West Pakistan was 42.9 million. The quotas were therefore not proportional to
the demographic figures.
45, M Rashiduzzamun, ‘East-West Conflicts in Pakistan: Bengali Regionalism, 1947-1970’,
in A Jeyaratnam Wilson and D Dalton (eds), The States of South Asia: Problems of National
Integration, London, Hurst, 1982, p. 117.
46. Raza, ‘Constitutional Developments and Political Consequences’, p. 18.
. S Wolpert, Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan: Mis Life and Times, New York, Oxford University Press,
19935 ppal45—6,
48. R Sisson and Leo E. Rose, War and Secession: Pakistan, India and the Creation of Bangladesh,
Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 1990.
49, A Jalal, Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, 1985, p. 188.
50. Ibid., pp. 188-199.
pile M G Chitkara, Jiy-e Sind G.M. Syed, New Delhi, APH Publishing Corporation, 1996;
MS Korejo, G.M. Syed: An Analysts of his Political Perspectives, Karachi, Oxford University
Press, 2000.
a2. S P Cohen, The Pakistan Army, Karachi, Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 44; Khalid B
Sayeed, “The Role of the Military in Pakistan’, inJvan Doorn (ed.), Armed Forces and
Society, The Hague/Paris, Mouton, 1968.
58: Quoted in Wolpert, Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan: His Life and Times, op. cit., p. 139.
of, The four Punjabi judges of the Supreme Court found him guilty, while the others, all
originating from a different province, acquitted him (O Noman, Pakistan: Political and
Economic History since 1947, London, Kegan Paul International, 1992, p. 193).
D0: As for the senior national civil service, it contained 55.8 per cent Punjabis, 11.6 per cent
NWFP, 20.2 per cent urban Sindis (mostly Muhajirs), 5.1 per cent Sindis from rural areas
and 3.1 per cent Baluchis in 1983. In public-sector enterprises the proportion of Punjabis
was estimated at 41 per cent, and that of urban Sindis at 47 per cent, against 6 per cent
from the NWFP, 3.5 per cent from rural Sind and | per cent of Baluchis (Jalal, Democracy
and Authoritanansm, pp. 190 and 195).
56. Noman, Pakistan, p. 196.
. SS Harrison, ‘Ethnicity and the Political Stalemate in Pakistan’, in A. Banuazizi and M.
Weiner (eds), The State Religion and Ethnic Politics, pp. 281-2.
58. For more details, see K B Sayeed, Politics in Pakistan: The Nature and Direction of Change,
(n.d.), in particular in the excellent Chapter 6, entitled ‘Pakistan’s Central Government
versus Baluchi and Pashtun Aspirations’, pp. 113-38.
O29: ‘Tehran — which perhaps incited Bhutto to launch this scheme — also tried to persuade the
Afghan authorities to recognize the Durand Line, at the very moment when Daud, who
in 1973 had just seized power in Kabul, was supporting Pakistanis revolting in the name
of a free ‘Baluchistan’. (See C Jaffrelot, ‘Interpreting Ethnic Movements in Pakistan’, The
Pakistan Development Review, 37 [4], Winter 1998, pp- 153-75; Rasul Bakhsh Rais,
‘Comments’, ibid., pp. 176—9.)
60. U Phadnis, Ethnicity and Nation-Building in South Asia, Delhi, Sage, 1989, p. 183; Harrison,
‘Ethnicity and the Political Stalemate in Pakistan’, p. 274.
61, Ibid., pp. 274-5.
. In 1975 the government even passed a law envisaging a seven-year prison sentence for
any Pakistani maintaining that more than one nationality existed in the country.
63. A 1999 study showed that the level of literacy among Baluchi women does not exceed
2 per cent (The News, 3 May 1999).
64. Economic Survey 1996--1997, Islamabad, Government of Pakistan, LOOT palOw.
65. The News, 20 February 1997, p. 1.
NOTES 299
66. At the moment of his resignation, Mengal had declared that he was doing this to defend
Baluchi identity.
67. The size of the ‘yes’ vote — 99 per cent — bears witness to the popularity of the Pakistani
project, but Khan’s boycott prevents us from drawing definite conclusions. As everywhere
else, the exacerbation of the conflict between Hindus and Muslims, and Muslim League
propaganda on the Islam-in-danger theme, had rallied the Muslims of the NWFP enthu-
siastically to Jinnah’s plan (I Talbot, Provincial Politics and the Pakistan Movement: The Growth
of the Muslim League in North-West and North-East India, 1937-1947, Karachi, Oxford
University Press, 1999, p. 110).
68. They represented a fifth of the effective strength immediately after Independence
(Cohen, The Pakistani Army, p. 44).
69. This amounts to slightly more than the PPP at 14 per cent and less than the Jamiyyat-ul
Ulamaz-i Islam at 23 per cent.
70. Daud had already set himself up as the champion of Pashtun irredentism when he was
Prime Minister of Afghanistan (1953-63). See Chapter 6.
Use Noman, Pakistan, p. 198. Wali Khan considered that the Durand line had disappeared
during the war in Afghanistan (Frontier, 21 February 1998).
ie Y Samad, ‘Pakistan on Punjabistan: Crisis of National Identity’, International Journal of
Punjab Studtes, 2 (1), 1995, p. 30.
TS: M G Weinbaum, ‘The Impact and Legacy of the Afghan Refugees in Pakistan’, inJ H
Korson (ed.), Contemporary Problems of Pakistan, pp. 133-9.
. M Waseem, Politics and the State in Pakistan, p. 437.
The News, 29 April 1999.
. If 70 per cent of the inhabitants of the NWFP speak Pashto, those in the Nowshera and
Kohat regions speak Hindko, those in Mazra the Harazwal and Kohistani dialects,
those in Chitral use Khwar and those in Dera Ismail Khan speak Seraiki.
. The recognized leader of the ANP, Wali Khan’s wife Begum Nasim Wali, justified the
split from the PLM (Nawaz or N) on an emotional basis: “I want an identity — I want
a name change so that the Pashtuns may be identified on the map of Pakistan’ (The
News, 1 March 1998). This militant speech shows that the Pashtuns are no longer
motivated merely by separatist sentiments, since they claim territorial recognition
within the borders of Pakistan.
78. Muhajirs were close to the JI not only because they saw themselves as part of its Islamic
ideology but because the JI has also given humanitarian aid to the victims of the 1947
Partition (S V R Nasr, The Vanguard of Islamic Revolution: The Jama‘at-t Islami of Pakistan,
Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 1994, pp. 88-9).
19: Samad, ‘Le Probléme mohajir’, in Jaffrelot (dir), Le Pakistan, carrefour de tensions régtonales,
ADD
80. § Akbar Zaidi, ‘Sindi vs Muhajir in Pakistan: Contradiction, Conflict, Compromise’,
Economic and Political Weekly, 18 May 1991.
81. They have, it would seem, benefited from the support of Zia, whose politics of
Islamization policy was appreciated by the Muhajirs. He saw in the MOM as a means
of countering the strong return of the PPP in Sind, where the movement for the restora-
tion of democracy was then at its height.
V
82: F Shaheed, “The Pashtun—Muhajir Conflicts, 1985-1986: A National Perspective’, in
Das (ed.), Mirrors of Violence: Communities, Riots and Survivors in South Asia, Delhi, Oxford
University Press, 1990, pp. 194-214.
Legal
83. J Rehman, ‘Self-determination, State-building and the Muhajirs: An International
tional
Perspective of the Role of the Indian Muslim Refugees in the Constitu
Development of Pakistan’, Contemporary South Asia, 3 (2), 1994, pp. 122-3.
84. Altaf Hussain has also used means of communication like the telephone
in conjunction
of
with loudspeakers to hold mass meetings at a distance, thus introducing a new form
transnational mobilization.
42.
85. Interview with Altaf Hussain in India Today, 15 July 1995, p.
300 NOTES
86. An opinion poll conducted at the end of 1996 suggests that fewer than half of Karachi’s
inhabitants, 46.7 per cent, are in favour of the creation of new Pakistani regions (leaving
53.3 per cent against). All the same this is far higher than the number of favourable opin-
ions obtained in other towns: Lahore 15 per cent, Islamabad 16.1 per cent, Peshawar 21.7
per cent, Quetta 25.6 per cent, Multan 26.7 per cent and Sukkur (no doubt due to the
high proportion of Muhajirs) 34.4 per cent. The Herald Annual, January 1997, p. 160.
87. Sharif’s government was composed of over 85 per cent Punjabis (The News, 24 October
1999).
88. M ae Zahab, ‘Islamabad: L’armée du salut?’, Politique internationale, 86, Winter
1999-2000, p. 379.
89. Dawn, 13 July 1998.
90. The Seraiki movement, at first linguistic and literary, took shape in the 1970s, when the
speakers of Riasti at Bahawalpur, of Multani at Multan and of Derajati at Dera Ghazi
Khan considered that they all spoke the same language.
One Dawn, 3 October 1998.
S Minhaz, The Friday Times, 11 August 2000.
93: The religious minorities protest regularly against the system of separate electorates, a
legacy of the colonial era which exacerbates their political marginalisation by denying
them the right to vote for candidates from outside their community.
OF: See C Jaffrelot (ed.), Pakistan: Nationalism without a Nation? op. cit.
2 EAST BENGAL
. R Ahmed, The Bengal Muslims, 1871-1906: A Quest for Identity, New Delhi, Oxford
University Press, 1981, pp. 5-27.
R Ray, Change in Bengal Agrarian Society circa 1760-1850, New Delhi, Manohar, 1979, pp.
27-9.
R Ahmed, The Bengal Muslims, 1871-1906, pp. 39 fF
. Ibid., pp. 101-5.
. T Maniruzzaman, The Bangladesh Revolution and its Aftermath, Dhaka, University Press
Ltd, 1980, 2nd edn, 1988, pp. 36-52.
. MNurul Islam, Bengal Muslim Public Opinion as Reflected in the Bengali Press (1901-1930),
Dhaka, Bangla Academy, 1973, pp. 218-47.
. Amader bhasa samasya, Dhaka, Renaissance Publications, 1947, pp. 34-5.
oni . SSen, Muslim Politics in Bengal, 1937-1947, New Delhi, Impex India, 1976, p. 251.
. MS Qureshi, Etude sur V’évolution intellectualle chez les musulmans du Bengale, 1857-1947,
Paris/The Hague, Mouton, 1971, p. 116.
Harun-or-Rashid, The Foreshadowing of Bangladesh: Bengal Muslim League and Muslim Politics,
1956-1947. Dhaka, 1987, pp. 386-406; Sen, Muslim Politics in Bengal, pp. 238-9.
1 B Umar, Purba Banglar Bhasa Andolan 0 Tatkalin Rajniti, Dhaka, 1968, pp. 437-73.
12. Ibid., p. 439.
13s R Jahan in Pakistan: Failure in National Integration, New York, Columbia University Press,
1972, pp. 38-40.
14. Ibid., p. 12.
Ds M Ansari, Bangladeser Itthas, Sirajul Islam (ed.), Dhaka, Asiatic Society of Bangladesh,
1993, vol. 1, p. 504.
16. Jahan, Pakistan: Failure in National Integration, p. 12.
i On the movement for the language, see Umar, Purba Banglar Bhasa Andelan 0 Tatkalin
Rajniti.
18. Ibid., pp. 38-48.
19. Ibid., pp. 23-38; K B Sayeed, Politics in Pakistan: The Nature and Direction of Change, New
York, Praeger, 1980, p. 40.
20. H Zaheer, The Separation of East Pakistan: the Rise and Realization of Bengali Muslim
Nationalism, Karachi/New York, Oxford University Press, 1994, pp. 49-57; Rehman
NOTES 301
Sobhan, History of Bangladesh, Sirajul Islam (ed.), Dhaka, Asiatic Society of Bangladesh,
Ist edn 1992, 2nd edn 1997, vol. 2, pp. 722-94.
. Enayetur Rahim, History of Bangladesh, Sirajul Islam (ed.), p. 583.
. Jahan, Pakistan: Failure in National Integration, p. 62.
. Ibid., pp. 85-6.
. Rahim, History of Bangladesh, p. 592.
.- Ibid: pea527.
. Sobhan, History of Bangladesh, pp. 722-94.
. Tbid., pp. 604-5.
. Maniruzzaman, The Bangladesh Revolution and its Aftermath, p. 79.
. Jaan, Pakistan: Failure in National Integration, p. 193.
. Ibid., p./195; T: Maniruzzaman, The Bangladesh Revolution, p. 80.
. Ibid., p. 620.
. Zaheer, The Separation of East Pakistan, p. 157.
. Rahim, History of Bangladesh, p. 622; Jahan, Pakistan: Failure in National Integration, p. 197.
. Maniruzzaman, The Bangladesh Revolution, p. 31.
e Ibictp lA:
. ‘The Lessons of February 21’, The Wave, 1969, quoted by Maksud, History of Bangladesh,
vol. 3, p. 335. -
The News International, Pakistan, 19 December 1999.
3 A FRUITLESS SEARCH FOR DEMOCRACY

. See, for example, L. Ziring, Pakistan: The Enigma of Political Development, Boulder, CO,
Westview Press, 1980, p. 97.
. The theory according to which Jinnah embodied the viceregal tradition of British colo-
nialism was first put forward by Khalid Bin Sayeed.
_ A McGrath, The Destruction of Pakistan’s Democracy, Karachi, Oxford University Press,
1998, p. 42.
Ww bidsips43
wibidsypwa5
_ The Muslim League had a majority in the Constituent Assembly which served as the
Parliament, but constitutional debates went on unceasingly, in particular over ethnic
community issues.
_ He also served as a minister in the government of Liaquat Ali Khan, his Prime Minister,
whose members he chose himself. He held the portfolios designated Evacuation and
Refugees Rehabilitation, and State and Frontier Regions.
_ From his real name, Abdul Jabbar Khan, Dr Khan Sahib can be identified as the brother
of Abdul Gaffar Khan.
. One day Jinnah said these words about the newly born Pakistan: (quoted in K B Sayeed,
‘The Heart of the Pakistan Crisis’, Dawn, 14 August 1998).
the
. As early as July 1948 Liaquat Ali Khan had obtained an amendment to
Government of India Act authorizing central government to dismiss a provincia l gov-
ernment, on the model of the prerogative enjoyed by the Viceroy of India by virtue of
Section 93.
the
. KB Sayeed stresses that they ‘were not courageous enough to take a stand against
bureaucracy or the government of the day when some of their leaders were removed
of
from office arbitrarily by the government’ (quoted in K B Sayeed, The Political System
Pakistan, Boston, MA, Houghton Mifflin, 1967, p. 83).
_ McGrath, The Destruction of Pakistan's Democracy, p. 67.
302 NOTES
. SVR Nasr, Mawdudi and the Making of Islamic Revwalism, New York, Oxford University
Press, 1996.
. See CJaffrelot, La Démocratie en Inde: Religion, caste et politique, Paris, Fayard, 1998, chs I and
Il.
. A Jalal, The State of Martial Rule: The Origins of Pakistan’s Political Economy of Defence,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990, p. 300.
. K Callard, Pakistan:A Political Study, London, G Allen & Unwin, 1957, ch. VIL.
. C Jaffrelot, La Démocratie en Inde, op. cit., ch. I.
. Moreover, the British created the province of Baluchistan during the Second Afghan
War (1878-80) and the North-West Frontier Province in 1901 the better to assure the
defence of their colonial territory.
. PR Newberg, Judging the State: Courts and Constitutional Politics in Pakistan, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 43.
20. P R Newberg, Judging the State: Courts and Constitutional Politics in Pakistan, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 66-7.
Dalle Sind, the rural notables benefited in 1947 from the exodus of the Hindus, who, though
they were mostly city-dwellers, owned considerable estates. They helped themselves to
800,000 out of the 1,345,000 acres abandoned.
22: Although 20 out of 40 of those elected in the eastern part of the country were lawyers —
yet another indication of the East-West divide (Mushtaq Ahmad, Government and Politics
in Pakistan, Karachi, Pakistan Publication House, 1959, p. 115).
23% Deprived of victory by central government intervention in 1954, the United Front was
once more invited to form a government in September 1956, but its members soon pulled
it to pieces; thus the Awami League was reduced to a sort of government which appeared
and disappeared depending on whether the two chiefs, Huq and Suhrawardy, came to an
understanding.
24. Isabelle Cordonnier, The Military and Political Order in Pakistan, Geneva, Programme for
Strategic and International Security Studies, 1999, p. 16.
25) Jalal, The State of Martial Rule: The Origins of Pakistan’s Political Economy of Defence, p. 42.
26. That year the defence budget absorbed practically the whole of the state revenue (ibid.,
p- 99).
2s H A Rizvi, The Military and Politics in Pakistan (1947-1986), New Delhi, Foundation
Books, 1988, pp. 44-5.
28. Abdul Sattar, ‘Foreign Policy’, in Rafi Raza (ed.), Pakistan in Perspective, 1947-1997,
Karachi, Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 74. At the end of the 1950s the military aid
received by virtue of the different alliances concluded by Pakistan represented $500 mil-
lion and the economic aid $750 million (Y Samad, A Nation in Turmoil, p. 169).
2. S Cohen considers that in the years 1950 to 1960 an ‘American generation’ succeeded
the ‘British generation’ which sprang from colonization (S Cohen, The Pakistan Army,
Karachi, Oxford University Press, 1998, pp:55=70):
30. ‘Today, an overwhelming majority of the military come from just three districts of the
Punjab (Rawalpindi, Jhelum and Campbellpur), and two of the NWFP (Kohat and
Mardan): Cohen, The Pakistan Army, p. 44.
Si, J Rosselli, “The Self-Image of Effeteness: Physical Education and Nationalism in
Nineteenth Century Bengal’, Past and Present, no. 86, 1980.
BZ. I Talbot, Pakistan: A Modern History, London, Hurst, 1999, p. 149.
. He wrote a circular on these lines when he was appointed to this post in 1951
(H Feldman, Revolution in Pakistan: A Study of the Martial Law Administration, London,
Oxford University Press, 1967, p. 35).
34. Ibid., p. 74.
30% M Waseem, Politics and the State in Pakistan, Islamabad, National Institute of Historical
and Cultural Research, 1994 (2nd edn), p. 149.
36. A Weiss, Culture, Class and Development in Pakistan: The Emergence of an Industrial Bourgeoisie
in Punjab, Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1991, p. 34,
NOTES 303
Sik Jalal, The State of Martial Rule, p. 306.

38. Ayub Khan eliminated the epithet ‘Islamic’ — hitherto added to the word ‘Republic’ —
from the 1962 Constitution, and erased the references to the Koran and the Sunna
which featured in the 1956 text. He was, however, forced to retract the first of these deci-
sions after 1963, when the First Amendment to the Constitution reestablished the
designation ‘Islamic Republic of Pakistan’.
Ne The organization also served, perhaps, as a model for the establishment, under the 1962
Constitution, of an Advisory Council on Islamic Ideology, whose members, all nomi-
nated by the President, had the job of advising those in power, at regional as much as at
the national level, how they might make it possible for Muslims to live according to the
requirements of the Koran, and to check the conformity to Islamic principles of laws
passed prior to 1962. Ayub Khan was careful to appoint modernists to the Advisory
Council. This aroused indignation among the Jamaat-i Islami, in whose opinion it was
the ulemas’ vocation in life to supervise the Council (J Malik, Colonization of Islam:
Dissolution of Traditional Institutions in Pakistan, Delhi, Manohar, 1996, p. 35).
40. His autobiography — Ayub Khan, Friends not Masters: A Political Autobiography, New York,
Oxford University Press, 1967 — gives us an excellent insight into his political style.
41. However, the Assembly was called upon to vote only on new public expenditure; exist-
ing funding was renewed automatically.
AD Sayeed, The Political System of Pakistan, p. 106.
. In 1963, Ayub Khan even had an amendment to the Constitution — the first — voted
which reduced the judges’ control over laws, the conformity to the Fundamental
Principles of the Constitution. The courts nonetheless struggled to resist pressure. In
of
October 1964 the High Court of West Pakistan ordered the immediate release
earlier with
Maududi, the leader of Jamaat-i Islami, who had been arrested ten months
been
43 other party officials when the party had been declared illegal. The press had
al regulatio ns of 1963, which gave
submitted to an iron law contained in two presidenti
rs and printroom s considere d guilty
the executive the power to take control of newspape
, or liable
of publications likely ‘to arouse hatred or bring the government into contempt’
to stir up rivalry or hatred between the two halves of the country.
Press, 1969.
44. Z A Bhutto, The Myth of Independence, Karachi, Oxford University
, The End of the Beginning: Pakistan
45. On the two years of his reign, see H Feldman
1969-1971, Karachi, Oxford University Press, 1976.
of Bengali Muslim
46. H Zaheer, The Separation of East Pakistan: The Rise and Realization
Nationalism, Karachi, Oxford University Press, 1995.
47. Talbot, Pakistan:AModern History, op. cit., p. 195.
Socialism is our economy’
48. His slogan was ‘Islam is our faith. Democracy is our polity.
(Z A Bhutto, Pakistan and the Ailiances, Lahore, Pakista n People’ s Party, 1969).
and Bangla A
desh: Political and Historical Analysts
29: R WJackson, South Asia Crisis: India, Pakistan
of the 1971 War, New York, Praeger, 1975.
York, Oxford University Press,
50. S Wolpert, Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan: His Life and Times, New
Press, 1979.
1993; S Taseer, Bhutto:A Political Biography, London, Ithaca
986, Lahore , Progressive, 1986, pp.
DI Rizvi, The Military and Politics in Pakistan, 1947-1
198-9.
Publishing House,
. He explains this himself in Jf Jam assassinated . .., New Delhi, Vikas
IS79:
_ Cohen, The Pakistan Army, op. cit., p. 73.
an, p. 32.
- Cordonnier, The Military and Political Order in Pakist
rsity Press, 1987, p. 89.
_ C Kennedy, Bureaucracy in Pakistan, Karachi, Oxford Unive
_ Malik, Colonization of Islam, p. Be
Bhutto’s ranks, but he alienated them
_ These measures brought numerous communists to
against the workers’ demon-
soon after by his repressive measures in Baluchistan and
ia, ‘Past, Present and Future of the
strations in Sind during the summer of 1972 (F Sulehr
h, 26 May 2000).
Left Movement in Pakistan’, South Asia Citizens Web Dispatc
304 NOTES
58. M G Weinbaum, “The March 1977 Elections in Pakistan’, Asian Survey, no. 17(7), July
1977, pp. 599-618.
oo: Talbot, Pakistan: A Modern History, p. 255.
60. In 1982, of 42 Pakistani ambassadors in post abroad, 18 were retired military men. See
K L Kamal, Pakistan: The Garrison State, New Delhi, Intellectual Publishing House, 1982.
61. F Grare, Le Pakistan face au conflit afghan (1979-1985), Paris, L’Harmattan, 1997, p. 180.
62. Bhutto also considered that the Americans slackened their guard to Zia’s benefit for just
this reason (Z A Bhutto, From My Death Cell, New Delhi, Orient Paperback, n.d., p. 65).
63. In the long term, the war in Afghanistan weakened the democratic process by giving new
clout to the Pakistani secret services within the Inter Service Intelligence (ISI). This insti-
tution was, in effect, charged with distributing Western aid to the Afghan resistance, and
even with playing up to Pakistan’s Afghan policy. The ISI’s hostility towards the return to
civilian power postponed liberalization of the regime (I H Malik, State and Civil Society in
Pakistan: Politics of Authority, Ideology and Ethnicity, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1997, ch. 5).
64. A M Weiss (ed.), Islamic Reassertion in Pakistan: The Application of Islamic Laws in a Modern
State, Syracuse, NY, Syracuse University Press, 1986.
65. ‘Talbot, Pakistan:A Modern History, op. cit., p. 279.
66. This was the case with the blind servant girl Safia Bibi, who received 15 strokes of
the
cane for falling pregnant after being raped by a man who escaped any sentence for lack
of proof.
67. In fact this decree was applied only to financial transactions, not to every area of the
law,
following the establishment of feminist movements (A M Weiss, ‘Women’s Position in
Pakistan: Sociocultural Effects of Islamization’, Asian Survey, no. 25 (8), August 1985,
p.
870).
68. Cohen, The Pakistan Army, p. 90.
69. WL Richter, ‘Domestic Politics in the 1980s’, in Craig Baxter and Syed Razi
Wasti (eds),
Pakistan Authoritarianism in the 1980s, Lahore, Vanguard, 1991, p: 79.
70. S Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Twentieth Century, Norman,
University
of Oklahoma Press, 1991.
Vik C Jaffrelot, ‘Comment expliquer la démocratie hors d’Occident’,
in C Jaffrelot (dir),
Démocraties d’ailleurs: Démocratie et démocratisation hors d@’Occident, Paris,
Karthala, 2000.
ioe Sayyed Vali Reza Nasr, ‘Democracy and the Crisis of Governability
in Pakistan’, Asian
Survey, no. 32(6), June 1992, p. 523.
to M Waseem, ‘Pakistan’s Lingering Crisis of Dyarchy’, Asian Survey,
no. 32 (7),July 1992,
pp. 612-34.
ees On that day, some Sindi police officers, who were carrying out
investigations in search of
arms, opened fire on civilians killing some 40 Muhajirs, including
women and children;
they explained their action by alleging sniper attacks — an allegat
ion which could not be
substantiated since there was no independent inquiry. Several times
the army demanded
full powers to restore public order in Sind (by this method they
would have been able to
bypass the power of the judges). Benazir Bhutto refused
to set up such an arrangement,
which could have given rise to a veritable parallel government.
dob After 6 October 1989, ‘the night of the jackals’ had united
two senior official of the ISI,
IJI deputies and PPP dissidents in a conspiracy to overthrow
the Prime Minister. Benazir
Bhutto replaced the leader of the ISI, General Hamid
Gul, by General Shamsur
Rahman Kallue, but his organization more or less boycot
ted him.
. The JI’s unease was also caused by its rivalry with anothe
r member of the coalition, the
MQM, which also held Islam to be the symbol of the nation
and found a foothold in the
Muhajir middle class, among whom the JI had already enjoyed solid support.
- Malik, State and Civil Society in Pakistan, p. 36.
. This party then withdrew from the II, thereby reducing
its parliamentary majority.
M Waseem, ‘Dix ans de démocratie au Pakistan?” in Jaffrel
ot (dir.), Démocratie d’ailleurs, p-
477, M Waseem, The 1993 Elections in Pakistan, Lahore,
Vanguard, 1994.
. In 1991, the JI government had already been accuse
d of guaranteeing borrowing
NOTES 305
amounting to 1,200 million rupees, illegally agreed by state cooperatives, in favour of the
Ittifaq Industrial Group, owned by the Sharif family. This group, just like that of the
Minister of the Interior, had borrowed millions of rupees from the National Industrial
Credit Financial Corporation (NICFC), although the Cooperative Societies Act 1925
forbade such loans to limited companies. This diversion of funds was at the bottom of
the successive bankruptcies of numerous cooperatives, and losses amounting to 17,000
million rupees, not to mention the problems of two million shareholders.
81. Khalid Bin Sayeed, ‘The Three Worlds of Democracy in Pakistan’, Contemporary South
Asia, no. 1 (1), 1992, p. 62.
82. Muhammad Qasim Zaman, ‘Sectarianism in Pakistan: the Radicalization of Shia and
Sunni Identities’, Modern Asian Studies, no. 32 (3), 1998, p. 707; S V R Nasr, ‘The Rise of
Sunni Militancy in Pakistan: The Changing Role of Islamism and the Ulama in Society
and Politics’, Modern Asian Studies, no. 34 (1), 2000, pp. 139-80.
83. Mariam Abou Zahab, ‘The Regional Dimension of Sectarian Conflicts in Pakistan’, in
C Jaffrelot (dir), Pakistan: Nationalism without a Nation? London, Zed Books, 2002, pp.
115-30.
84. The only Islamic party to confront the electorate, the JUI, won just two seats in the
National Assembly.
85. The turnout had continued to fall from 54 per cent in 1970 (in East Pakistan) to 43.07 per
cent in 1988, 45.46 per cent in 1990, 40.92 per cent in 1993 and 35.92 per cent in 1997.
86. Mohammad Waseem, ‘Pakistan Elections 1997: One Step Forward’, in C Baxter and
G H Kennedy (eds), Pakistan: 1997, Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1999.
87. Conscious of the fact that all his power emanated from his parliamentary majority,
Sharif tried hard after the spring to have a law voted to prevent deputies from crossing
alter
the floor in the course ofalegislative term, a standard practice with the potential to
te such a law, but
power relations significantly. President Leghari refused to promulga
Sharif achieved his ends thanks to the 14th Amendment.
out of
88. Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir Bhutto’s husband, was arrested as soon as she was
was accused — among other
power in November 1996. His trial began in gaol, where he
things — of the murder of Murtaza Bhutto.
police, espe-
89. Sharif had no compunction about having the PPP leader harassed by the
of Human Rights n 1997,
cially in Sind (Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, States
Lahore, 1998, p. 174).
90. This operation lasted until July 1999 (The News, 26 July 1999).
. Talbot, Pakistan: A Modern History, p. 364.
IP because of his luxuri-
92. Meanwhile, the press had dubbed him ‘Emperor Shah Jahan
his numero us trips abroad in his
ous lifestyle, which was, particularly noticeable during
24 October 1999).
special Boeing ‘on loan’ from the national airline (The News,
since he appoin ted Musharraf
93. This choice, which he lived to regret, was made twice,
head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee only in April 1999.
94. Cordonnier, The Military and Political Order in Pakistan, p. 50.
to the USA under Benazir
95. See the heated reaction of Maleeha Lodhi, ambassador
Mushar raf (M Lodhi, ‘Back to
Bhutto, who agreed to accept the same post again under
the Future’, The World Today, November 1999, pp. 4-7).
moves in her direction, froze her
96. The Swiss government, which has also made some legal
bank accounts and those of her husband.
ie Jean-Luc Racine, “Le Pakistan apres le coup d’Etat
militaire’, Critique Internationale, no. 7,
April 2000, p. 25.
98. To these must to be added four civilians whose
nomination on 25 October 1999 disap-
faces in positions of authority:
pointed Pakistanis who had been hoping to see some new
usly worked with Zia.
Sharifuddin Pirzada, serving as Minister of Justice, had previo
a ‘formal democr acy’ tending towards
99: Ayesha Jalal’s thesis according to which India — gence has remained
to conver
political centralization — and Pakistan were on the path
tarianism).
unsubstantiated by facts (Jalal, Democracy and Authori
306 NOTES
100. On this point see P Schmitter and T L Karl, ‘What Democracy is . . . and is not’, in L
Diamond and M Plattner (eds), The Global Resurgence of Democracy, Baltimore, MD, Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1993, p. 45.
101. S Shafqat, ‘Political Culture of Pakistan: A Case of Disharmony between Democratic
Creed and Autocratic Reality’, in S Shafqat (ed.), Contemporary Issues in Pakistan Studtes,
Lahore, Gautam, 1995, p. 71.
102. In May 1999 the Punjabi government dissolved 1,941 NGO groups, accusing them of
having no other aim but to accumulate grants (The News, 10 May 1999). At that very
moment, Nawaz Sharif was preparing an NGO Bill which was never submitted to the
deputies.
4 PAKISTAN AND THE POWER GAME

1. Government of Pakistan, Minister of Foreign Affairs website, Pakistan and theMajor
Powers, 1999.
2. The other member states are Thailand, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, France,
Great Britain and the United States.
3. SM Burke, in S M Burke and L Ziring, Pakistan’s Foreign Policy: An Historical Analysis,
Karachi, Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 241.
4, The crushing of the communist uprising by the Indonesian army in 1965 caused China
to abandon the idea of a new Afro-Asiatic conference.
5. Ayub Khan used this as the title of his autobiography, Friends not Masters, published in
1967.
6. Leaders of Pakistan preferred the word ‘bilateralism’ as a description of their bilateral
relations on all fronts.
7. ‘The Kissinger Transcripts, published in 1999, revealed how Henry Kissinger warned China
about a possible Indian victory in East Pakistan within two or three weeks of the 197]
victory (W Burr, The Kissinger Transcripts, New York, The New Press, 1999).
8. ‘The Symington Amendment, passed in 1977, gave the White House the
power to
impose sanctions on any state that Congress suspected of buying or selling
nuclear
weapons technology. The Pressler Amendment (1985) required assurances from
the
American President that Pakistan had no nuclear missiles as a precondition for
contin-
ued aid to Islamabad. For the duration of the war in Afghanistan, the White House
affirmed without batting an eyelid that Pakistan was not a nuclear power;
however, Zia
had let it be understood since 1987 that Pakistan had the atomic bomb.
9. Benazir Bhutto, leader of the PPP (Pakistan People’s Party), was in semi-exi
le in London
in order to escape corruption charges by the Sharif government. Nawaz Sharif
himself,
leader of the PML(N) (Pakistan Muslim League [Nawaz]), was sentenced to
life impris-
onment in April 2000.
10. The Organization for Economic Cooperation (OEC), founded in 1985
but not fully
operational until 1991, took over from the Association for Regional Cooperat
ion, a not
particularly active development project involving Pakistan, Iran and Turkey
(1 964-79).
The OEC changed ~ without necessarily becoming more effective —
with the entry of the
five Central Asian republics (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan,
Kirghizstan and
Tajikistan) and Azerbaijan, rapidly followed by Afghanistan. The
SAARC members
were Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and
the Maldives.
11. Several thousand Pakistani troops were indeed sent out to
the Gulf, but they played no
part in the liberation of Kuwait.
12. One of these groups, Harkat ul-Mujahiddin, is labelled ‘terrori
st’ by Washington. The
latest American government report (Patterns of Global Terroris
m: 1999, Washington,
Department of State, 2000) took a firm stance on this questio
n, clearly calling on
Islamabad to stop supporting groups that trained in Afghan
istan and operated in
Kashmir, and to close ‘certain madrasahs or religious schools, that
actually serve for con-
duits for terrorism’.
NOTES 307
13: R Chase, E Hill and P Kennedy (eds), The Pivotal States: A New Framework for US Policy in
the Developing World, New York, Norton, 1998, p. 4.
5 LIVING WITH INDIA

. India: 3.2 million square kilometres; a thousand million inhabitants; GNP: 1,500 thou-
sand million dollars; armed forces: 1.1 million men. Pakistan: 803,000 square kilometres;
135 million inhabitants; GNP: 215 thousand million dollars; armed forces: 590,000
men. The only thing they have in common is the baseline indicator of human develop-
ment, which puts the two neighbours in the same area in relation to the world
community: Pakistan 138th, India 139th. The fact that Pakistan has a better per capita
GNP does not make up for this asymmetry.
. In India, secularism is defined as the characteristic of a state with no religious preference.
This principle does not by any means preclude the protection of specific minority reli-
gions. Organizations opposed to Nehru’s secularist line — the Great Hindu Assembly
(Hindu Mahasabha), which no longer exists. the Association of Servants of the Nation
(Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS), the Universal Hindu Assembly (Vishva Hindu
Parishad) and its political wing, the Bharatiya Janata Party — are, on the contrary, orga-
nizations which affirm the Hinduness of the Indian identity. This identitarian affiliation,
which verges on communalism, sees other communities as a potential or real threat
which must be limited or fought.
In the South Asian context, the concept of ‘religious communities’ applieds to the major
generic affiliations: Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, and so on.
nN_ KK Aziz, The Making of Pakistan: A Study in Nationalism, London,
Chatto & Windus, 1967,
pals:
_ Tbid.,
p.151.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 153.
Cohen calls
On this important matter of images of the other, which leads to what Stephen
ONAM
of the superiori ty of Pakistani martial classes over “Hindu
‘the grotesquely inflated belief
Army, Karachi, Oxford Universi ty Press, 1988, pp. 41-2).
India” (S.P. Cohen, The Pakistan
there was a Hindu
_ The Muslim sovereign of the little principality of Junagadh, where
majority, had chosen to join Pakistan . India was opposed to this, on the basis of the dom-
forward the same argumen t in the case of Kashmir, since
inant religion, but did not put
this would have legitimized its union with Pakistan.
avidly watching
This did not prevent the majority of television viewers in Pakistan from
films on Indian channels.
in Pakistan, Lahore,
_ KK Aziz, The Murder of History: A Critique of History Textbooks Used
fact that this criticis m of school textboo ks is the work of an
Vanguard Books, 1993. The
not detract from its
author who defended the two-nations theory in an earlier book does
importance.
the borders between
The Radcliffe Commission was under urgent instructions to set
India and Pakistan on the eve of Partition.
Princeton University Press,
_ VP Menon, The Transfer of Power in India, Princeton, NJ,
1957, p. 134.
— Amarnath, for
There are still important places of Hindu pilgrimage in Kashmir
example.
— provisionally, as they
_ Powerful people in the Congress Party brought her to power
nce. After 1969,
thought — after Shastri’s sudden death during the Tashkent Confere
. When she faced the uprisin g in East Pakistan, she
Indira Gandhi got rid of her advisers
was in complete control.
following the 1970 elections and the
16. For the events leading up to the war of secession —
refusal of the elites in eastern Pakista n to give power to Mujibur Rahman’s Awami
League, which won those elections, see Chapte r 2.
308 NOTES
7 S M Burke and L Ziring, Pakistan’s Foreign Policy: An Historical Analysis, Karachi, Oxford
University Press, 1990, p. 401. Burke, trained by the Indian Civil Service before
Partition, was a Pakistani diplomat — and ambassador — before becoming a respected his-
torian.
The Indian army went into Pakistan on 21 November 1971. The Pakistan army went
into Dhaka on 16 December. India then proclaimed a unilateral cease-fire, ratified the
next day by General Yahya Khan, Pakistan’s chief of army staff, who left his post on 20
December.
. The arrival of the US aircraft carrier Enterprise in the Gulf of Bengal simply intensified
Indian nationalist feeling. The Indians saw this intrusion as a pro-Pakistan act of intim-
idation.
20. The joint declaration of 4 July 1999 by the American President and the Prime Minister
of Pakistan mentions the Simla Accord twice in a dozen lines and states that ‘it was vital
for the peace in South Asia that the Line of Control in Kashmir be respected by both
parties in accordance with their 1972 Simla Accord.’
2 Z A Bhutto, Reshaping Foreign Policy: Articles, Statements and Speeches, Lahore, Classic, 1979,
p- 130.
22. Abdul Saltar, ‘Simla Agreement: Negotiation under Duress’, Regional Studies, Islamabad,
1995, 13:4, pp. 28-55.
23. This is the theme developed by William Burrows and Robert Windrem in their famous
book Critical Mass: The Dangerous Race for Superweapons in a Fragmenting World, New York,
Simon & Schuster, 1994, challenged in India by Jagjit Singh, director of the Institute for
Defence and Strategic Analysis.
24: For an example of a Washington think-tank that was especially active in this context, see
M Krepon and A Sevak (eds), Crisis Prevention, Confidence Building and Reconciliation in South
Asia, Washington, DC, Henry L Stimson Center, 1996.
6 ISLAM AND FOREIGN POLICY

. These names have been given to the nuclear missiles Pakistan has developed.
Gait Minault, The Khalifat Movement, New York, Columbia University Press, 1982.
For the Deobandi school, see B Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India, Princeton, NJ,
Princeton University Press, 1982.
Hafeez Malik, Moslem Nationalism in India and Pakistan, Lahore, People’s Publishing House,
1980, p. 255.
This is how Pakistan organized raids into the interior ofastill-Soviet Tajikistan in 1987;
see a book by a member of the Pakistani services at the time: M Yousaf and A Mark,
The Bear Trap: Afghanistan’s Untold Story, London, Mark Cooper, 1992.
. For an analysis and critical appraisal of Pakistan’s policy on the Taliban, see A Rashid,
Taliban, London, Tauris, 2000. For an overall analysis of the ‘Taliban, see W Maley (ed.)
Fundamentalism Reborn: Afghanistan and the Taliban, London, Hurst, 1998.
>
See Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India.

oS See O Roy, L’Afghanistan. Islam et modernité politique, Paris, Le Seuil, 1985.
On this slide from revolutionary Islamism into conservative neofundamentalism, see
O Roy, L’échec de l’Islam politique, Paris, Le Seuil, 1992.
10. O Roy, La Nouvelle Asie centrale, Paris, Le Seuil, 1997.
. Azadi Afghan Radio News Release, 30 May 2000.
7 THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE

- Under Ranjit Singh (1780-1839), the Punjab was a powerful kingdom which
eventually
annexed Kashmir and Peshawar, which it seized from the emir of Kabul. Several
French
officers who fought in the Napoleonic Wars helped Ranjit Singh to establish a modern
army which would make life difficult for the conquering British. See J-M Laffont,
La
NOTES 309
Présence francaise dans le royaume sikh du Pendjab, 1822-1849, Paris, Ecole frangaise
d@’Extréme-Orient, 1992.
. GRElsmie, Thirty-Five Years in the Punjab, Lahore, Al-Biruni, 1975 edn, p. 168.
NO. See the analysis by A R Omran of Al-Azhar University, Family Planning in the Legacy of
oo
Islam, London, Routledge, 1992.
. Newsline inquiry, March 2000.
A Mohammad, Salam New York, Paris, Presses du CNRS, 2000.
. Dawn, 12 June 1997, 25 June 1998, 28 August 1999.
. Dawn, 15 September 1998.
8 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
. As early as 1968, Mahabub ul-Haq, Chief Economist of the Planning Commission,
revealed the fact that twenty-two families dominated 66 per cent of modern industry, 79
per cent of insurance companies and 80 per cent of assets in private banks. See I Talbot,
Pakistan: A Modern History, London, Hurst, 1998, p. 181.
_ Here in the sense of the English word barrage: a dyke with sluicegates which holds the
water in order to release it into the canal.
_ This time I mean a dam — that is, a barrage which creates a vast basin full of water.
00. Akbar Zaidi disputes the increasing use of the word ‘feudal’ to refer to what he calls ‘cap-
italist agriculture’. See his Issues in Pakistan’s Economy, Karachi, Oxford U niversity Press,
1999.
. See, for example, Dawn, 11 April 1999, 8 February 2000.
Dawn, 13 June 1999.
Dawn, 22 December 1999.
Dawn, 20 May 1997.
. Arjmand Zahra, Dawn, 12 January 2000.
_SOONAY
. Ibid.
9 BETWEEN CASTE AND TRIBE

. L Dumont, Homo hierarchicus.,Paris, Gallimard, 1966.
. J-F Jarrige, Mehrgarh, Karachi, Government of Sind Culture Department, 1995.
of
_ Sir Denzil Ibbertson, a British administrator, was one of the most acute analysts
Punjabi society. See his The Punjab Castes, Lahore, Sang-e-meel Publications, 1997 edn.
_ Saharan and Sahelian West Africa show that in practice, if not in law, Muslim societies
can include castes. See Abdul Wedoud Oul Cheikh, Nomadisme, islam et pouvoir polinque dans
castes
la société maure, sociology thesis, Paris-V, 1985; C Hames, Les Maures ou le systéme des
Y Wane,
hors de VInde, Paris, Cahiers internationaux de sociologie, vol. 46, 1969;
Toucouleurs, stratification sociale, Dakar, IFAN, 1969.
arches on
_ This is different from the Urdu term biradari, which describes a villa with three
each fagade.
_ Azam Chaudhary, Justice in Practice, Karachi, Oxford University Press, 1999.
g to a system
_ This was still going on recently, especially in the west of the country, accordin
under the
also known by a Persian name, hamsayagut. A foreign element, by placing itself
(that 1s, shar-
protection of a given community, attained the status of hamsaya or ‘neighbour’
from its
ing the same shade). This element could be a small group that had broken away
several gen-
tribe of origin, or a community that belonged to a different ethnic group. After
y if their ties
erations — but sometimes fairly rapidly — the hamsaya were assimilated, especiall
some inventive
with the protecting tribe had been reinforced by marriage. Thanks to
was unearthe d and this integrati on became complete.
genealogists, a shared ancestry
Curzon Press, 1999.
_ A Lefebvre, Kinship, Honour and Money in Rural Pakistan, London,
of Tumen, the name of a Mongol legion. Perhaps the
_ This name is oddly reminiscent
era.
Baluchis came under Mongol influence during the Ikhanid
310 NOTES
10, Ibbertson, The Punjab Castes.

. LDuprée, Afghanistan, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 19973.
12. This language belongs to the Iranian group which includes Kurdish, Persian and
Baluchi.
U3: The word khan is Mongol; the word malik is Arab; jirgah, however, is a genuine Pashto
word. This leads us to speculate that ‘chiefhood’ had been established for only a few cen-
turies, whereas the deliberative council was part of a more deeply rooted tradition.
ee Lefebvre, Kinship, Honour and Money in Rural Pakistan.
Ibid.
16. This was noted on more than one occasion by Mariam Abou Zahab, a teacher in Inalco
and one of the keenest observers of Pakistani society.
. This should not be confused with the socioethnic category of the same name, made up
of Urdu-speaking immigrants.
18. Mariam Abou Zahab made aspecial note of this.
. C Jaffrelot, DrAmbedkar, Presses de la Fondation nationale des Sciences politiques, 2000.
20. Ibid.
10 THE DIVERSITY OF ISLAM

The word ‘Wahhabi’ derives from the name of the group’s founder, Muhammad ibn
Abdulwahhab (1703-92); inspired by the work of the Damascene theologian Ibn
‘Taimiyya (1263-1328), he condemned any act of veneration which was not directed
towards Allah (this is the monotheist doctrine).
. S Shafqat, ‘Religious Groups: Rise of Dawat-ul-Irshad/ Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and the
Problem of Democratic Framework in Pakistan’, paper presented at the ‘Islam and
Politics in Pakistan’ conference, Paris, CERI, December 1999.
D Matringe, ‘L'Islam au Pakistan’, in F Lenoir and Y Masquelier (eds), Encyclopédie des reli-
gions, Paris, Bayard, 1997, p. 808.
- J Malik, Colonization of Islam: Dissolution of Traditional Institutions of Learning, Delhi,
Manohar, 1996, pp. 235-44.
A Schimmel, Islam in the Indian Subcontinent, Leyden, Brill, 1980.
M Gaborieau, ‘Renouveau de I’Islam ou stratégie politique occulte? La Tablighi Jamaat
dans le sous-continent indien et dans le monde’, in C. Clémentin-Ojha (dir), Renouveau
religieux en Asie, Paris, EFEO, 1997.
M Gaborieau, ‘Le néo-fondamentalisme au Pakistan: Maududi et la Jama’at-i Islami’, in
O Carré and P Dumont (dirs), Radicalismes islamiques, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1986, p. 72.
There is still, however, a branch of the Jamaat-i Islami in India There are also branches
in Bangladesh, Kashmir, England and the USA. They are all officially independent of
one another.
‘Twelver Shiism was established in several regions of India; in the Deccan it founded
kingdoms which were strongly influenced by the Iranian Safavids from the sixteenth cen-
tury onwards. However, it was in the north of India, after the collapse of the Mughal
Empire, that the Shi’a became a powerful minority. In 1722 they established a Shi’a state
in the Awadh principality, between Delhi and Benares; its capital city was Lucknow.
The word khgja — from the Persian khwéja (lord or master) — is equivalent to the Hindu
thakur, which also means master. Members of the Lohana caste, who converted
to
Isma’ilism in large numbers, were known by this name. After their conversion they took
the name Khoja.
. According to Nizari tradition, the first da’i— Nuruddin, who is known in India as Satgur
Nur — was sent to Gujarat.
Literally ‘veil’ or ‘curtain’. This term now implies the segregation of women, because
they are obliged to wear the veil, especially among the Indo-Muslim upper classes.
The Hafizi, who spread their message through Egypt and Syria by means of the official
Fatimid da’wa, did not survive the dynasty’s fall in 1171.
NOTES S11
14. Da’: literally, ‘the one who calls’, ‘summons’ people to the one true faith. In its wider
sense it means a missionary or preacher, but the word does refer specifically to Isma’ilian
propagandists.
Ld. According to the classic etymological explanation, this term comes from the Gujarati
word vohorvu, meaning ‘trade’. In fact most Isma’ili converts were urban tradesmen or
merchants. A less common explanation holds that the Bohra took this name from their
original Hindu caste, the ‘Vohra’. See F Daftary, The Isma’ilis: Their History and Doctrine,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990, p. 299.
16. For men, a ungi (a long loincloth), a white muslin kurid (tunic), and a skullcap woven from
gold thread and cotton. Women traditionally wore a /ehangé ( a long gathered skirt), a
blouse and an aurhni (a veil worn round the shoulders or over the head). See AA Engineer,
The Bohras, Delhi, Vikas Publishing House, 1993 [1980], pp. 150-51.
Lees A nabi is a prophet who does not make law, as opposed toa rasiil, a legislating prophet
(that is to’ say, one who lays down a new law).
18. It was in Lahore that two future members of this branch of the Ahmadiyya,
Kamaluddin and Ahmad Husain, launched their daily, Paygham-i sulh (“Message of
Peace’), in 1913 — that is, a year before the definitive break with the Qadiani. Their
leader, Muhammad Ali, left Qadian for Lahore with his supporters; in that city he estab-
lished the headquarters of his breakaway branch, known from then on as the Lahori. See
Y Friedmann, Prophecy Continuous: Aspects of Ahmadi Religious Thought and its Medieval
Background, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1989, pp. 20-22.
LQ: This word might come from the Arabic siif ‘wool’, referring to the coarse woollen robe
worn by the first ascetics as a token of simplicity.
20. D Matringe, ‘Les dargah dans les pays de l’Indus’, in M A Amir-Moezzi (dir), Lieux d’1s-
lam: cultes et cultures de VAfrique a Java, Paris, Editions Autrement, 1996, pp. 255-73.
21. Here this term includes both the Qadiani and the Lahori, since the latter were as much
objects of Islamist attacks as the former.
22: The Ahrar are an Islamic group with socialist tendencies, formed in 1930. They began
their anti-Ahmadi activities in 1934.
23. See S V R Nasr, The Vanguard of Islamic Revolution: The Jama’at- Islami of Pakistan, London
and New York, Tauris, 1994, pp. 131-2.
2a: See M Q Zaman, ‘Sectarianism in Pakistan: The Radicalization of Shi’i and Sunni
Identities’, Modern Asian Studies, 32 (3), 1998, p. 692.
2. Here I mean Twelver Shi’a only. Hitherto the Isma’ilians have not been subjected to vio-
lence (although one of their leaders was murdered in Karachi in December 1998).
Nonetheless, even though they direct their attacks at the Twelvers, the Sunni Islamists,
who want the Shi’a to be pronounced a non-Muslim minority, want — according to this
same logic — to see all non-Sunni Muslims, including the Isma’ilians, considered as non-
Muslims.
26. In the nineteenth century there were mixed marriages, especially in the more elevated
echelons of Muslim society; Shi’a and Sunni came together to celebrate the commem-
oration of Hussain’s martyrdom.
2h: Teaching methods in the madrasahs vary according to the school of thought with which
they are affiliated. The Barelwi and the Deobandi, for example, use more or less the
same textbooks, but have different ways of teaching: the Barelwi favour discussion, while
the Deobandi lay stress on following the teacher’s instructions to the letter. There is a fur-
ther difference: the Barelwi tend to accept the status quo, and are willing to submit to
earthly authority, while the Deobandi are more inclined to oppose the government. See
Malik, Colonization of Islam, p. 173.
28. The News, 10 October 1999.
ion of the
29: The SSP was originally called the Anjuman-i Sipah-i Sahaba (the Organizat
Army of the Companions of the Prophet); the TJP used to be called the Tahrik Nifaz
the
Figh-i Jafaria (the Movement for the Protection of the Shi’a Law). In the 1990s,
bloodiest exploits of these two parties were supported by the Lashkar-i Jhangvi (theJhangvi
312 NOTES
Army, founded in 1990) (for the SSP); and the Sipah-i Muhammad (Muhammad’s Army)
(for the TJP).
30. S VR Nasr, ‘Islam, the State, and the Rise of Sectarian Militancy in Pakistan’, paper
presented at the ‘Islam and Politics in Pakistan’ conference.
Oils A jihadist organization is an organization which considers that jihad is an essential and
integral prerequisite for an Islamic revival. See Shafgqat, ‘Religious Groups’.
32. Herald, November—December 1998.
OSs B Picquard, ‘Efficacité symbolique et effets pervers de la politique d’islamisation au
Pakistan’, in G Heuzé and M Sélim (dirs), Politique et religion en Aste du Sud, Paris, Karthala,
1998, pp. 223-50.
BAL Zaman, ‘Sectarianism in Pakistan’, p. 701.
. Ibid., pp. 708-9.
11 ISLAM AND POLITICS

For more about the Ahmadiyya, see Chapter 10.
Quoted in L Binder, Religion and Politics in Pakistan, Berkeley, University of California
Press, 1961, p. 100.
. The 1937 Shari’ah Act, which provided for Islamic rulings to prevail over normal cus-
toms in matters of personal law, had explicitly excluded the passing on of farmland from
these provisions: women were still not allowed to inherit land. See M. Gaborieau,
‘Islamic Law, Hindu Law and Caste Customs: A Daughter’s Share of Inheritance in the
Indian Subcontinent’, Annales islamologiques, vol. XXVII, Cairo, Institut francais
d’archéologie orientale, 1993, pp. 157-68.
The famous Munir Report, whose full title is Report of the Court of Enquiry into the Punjab
Disturbances of 1953,, Lahore, West Punjab Government Press, 1954.
See K Callard, Pakistan:A Political Study, London, Allen & Unwin, 1957, p. 230.
This reformist seminary, which was against populist devotions and the worship of saints,
was established in 1867 in the town of Deoband. After 1919 it was in the vanguard of
the Muslims’ struggle against the British.
. A theological school established at the end of the nineteenth century, which followed the
teachings of Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi (1856-1921): unlike the Deobandi school, it
encouraged populist veneration of the Prophet and the saints. For more details, see
Chapter 10.
The Political Theory of Islam, Pashtunkot, Dar-ul-Islam, 1939.
Binder, Religion and Politics in Pakistan, pp. 70 ff.
For more about these sectarian clashes, see Chapter 10.
12 LANGUAGES AND EDUCATION

. T Rahman, Language and Politics in Pakistan, Karachi, Oxford University Press, 1996.
H Alavi, ‘Politics of Ethnicity in India and Pakistan’, Pakistan Progressive, 9, 1 (Summer
1987); reprinted in H Alavi andJ Hariss (eds), Sociology of Developing Countries, London,
Macmillan Education Ltd, 1987, pp. 222-46.
B Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband 1860-1 900, Karachi, Royal Book
Company, 1989 (first published 1982).
A H Nayyar, ‘Madrasah Education: Frozen in Time’, in P Hoodbhoy (ed.), Education and
the State: Fifty Years of Pakistan, Karachi, Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 215-50; T
Rahman, Language, Education and Culture, Karachi, Oxford University Press, 1999, ch. 5.
Hence the development of a small movement for the defence of Punjabi, confined to
intellectual circles, especially in Lahore. These intellectuals maintain that the state uses
Urdu and English so that the Punjabi elites can retain their power, to the detriment of
the cultural integrity of the Punjabi people.
W Hanaway and M Nasir, ‘Chapbook Publishing in Pakistan’, in W Hanaway and W
NOTES 313
Heston (eds), Studies in Pakistani Popular Culture, Lahore, Sang-e-Meel, 1996, Appendix A,
pp. 441-615.
. Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India.
A Rai, A House Divided: The Origin and Development of Hindi-Urdu, New Delhi, Oxford
University Press, 1991 (first published 1984).
CR King, One Language, Two Scripts: The Hindi Movement in Nineteenth-Century North India,
Bombay, Oxford University Press, 1994.
Rahman, Language and Politics in Pakistan, ch. 4; P R Brass, Language, Religion and Politics in
North India, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1974, pp. 119-81; J D Gupta,
Language Conflict and National Development: Group Politics and National Language, Berkeley and
London, University of California Press, 1970.
. S Alam, ‘Language as Political Articulation: East Bengal in 1952’, Journal of Contemporary
Asia, 21, 4, 1991, pp. 469-87.
12. C Shackle, ‘Siraiki: A Language Movement in Pakistan’, Modern Asian Studies, 11, 3,
19775 ppyo79-403.
WE R Farugi, ‘Unprivileged Power: The Strange Case of Persian (and Urdu) in Nineteenth-
Century India’, The Annual of Urdu Studies, no. 13, 1998, pp. 3-30.
14: Ibid.; T Rahman, ‘Decline of Persian in British India’, South Asia, vol. 22, no. 2, June
1999, pp. 47-62.
. BL Whorf, Language, Thought and Reality, ed. John B de Coroll, Cambridge, MA, MIT
Press, 1956.
. R Saigol, Knowledge and Identity: Articulation of Gender in Educational Discourse in Pakistan,
Lahore, ASR Publications, 1995.
CONCLUSION
_ General Musharraf’s address to the nation, 17 October 1999, reprinted in The Herald,
November 1999, p. 25.
In 1998, the government of the Punjab — which had been democratically elected — fol-
lowed the country’s centralizing tradition by appointing the members of village councils
in accordance with a new Punjab Local Government (Amendment) Ordinance.
The News, 26 May 2000.
A Rashid, ‘Pakistan’s Coup: Planting the Seeds of Democracy?’, Current History,
December 1999, p. 414. The 2000-2001 Budget envisaged continuing the 44.35 per cent
expenditure on foreign debt servicing and 19.4 per cent on defence, but these were
underestimations, mainly because they were based on over-restrictive definitions of these
items.
M Abou Zahab, ‘Islamabad: l’armée du salut?’, Politique internationale, no. 86, Winter
1999-2000, p. 371.
The Nation, 6 February 2000.
The News, 28 March 2000.
The News, 11 January 1999.
Abou Zahab, ‘Islamabad: l’armée du salut?’, p. 368.
a SOBND
As for members of the middle class, who have also suffered a reduction in income exac-
erbated by the continuing depreciation of the rupee, they want to leave the country — the
long queues outside the consulates of Western countries bear witness to this. Among
them are many tradesmen and industrialists; their departure could weaken the country’s
economic potential (I am grateful to Mariam Abou Zahab for this information).
Lelie Abou Zahab, ‘Islamabad: l’armée du salut?’, p. 369.
coup — Qazi
1 On 20 October 1999 — that is to say, a week after General Musharraf’s
Hussain Ahmad, leader of the Jamaat-i Islami, declared that he was against the new gov-
ernment’s ‘Kemalism or secularis m’ (Dawn, 21 October 1999).
Rashid, ‘Pakistan’s Coup’, p. 413.
314 NOTES
EPILOGUE
. See Saeed Shafqat, ‘From Official Islam to Islamism: The Rise of Dawat-ul-Irshad and
Lashkar-i-Tayyiba’, in C Jaffrelot (ed.), Pakistan: Nationalism without a Nation, New Delhi,
Manohar, 2002, pp. 131-47.
These figures are taken from a remarkable inquiry whose results were published in The
Herald.
. The LJ is an offshoot of the SSP, but it has adopted a strategy of violence, whereas the
SSP has taken a different path, becoming a political party (see Chapter 10).
. M Beletski, ‘Pervez Moucharraf: un itinéraire trouble’, Moskovie Novosti, reprinted in
Courrier international, no. 576, 21 November 2001, p. 42.
. It is true that Qazi Hussain Ahmad’s Jamaat-i Islami was in the forefront (with the
tradesmen) of the protests against the tax inquiries mooted in 2000, but it was an isolated
element within the Islamist organizations. Other parties, such as the JUI, did not obey
Qazi Hussain Ahmed’s calls for antigovernment protests in late 2000. They had realized
that the struggle against the traditional political parties was one of Musharraf’s priori-
ties, and that he would handle the Islamists carefully.
. Interview in the Financial Times Survey, 6 March 2001.
. The country’s main creditors at the time were Japan (4,827 million dollars), the USA
(2,702 million), Germany (1,280 million) and France (1,276 million).
In fact, the 6.9 per cent reduction in military expenditure in the 2000-01 budget — and
their subsequent stabilization — was achieved by transferring military pensions to a sec-
tion called ‘General Administration’. In reality, military expenditure rose by 11.4 per cent
in 2000-01.
. The drought which affected Sind and Baluchistan spread to the whole country in 2001,
reducing the flow of the major watercourses to 18 per cent below the average between
1980 and 1997; this also severely affected the production of hydroelectric power.
The diplomatic links between the two countries went hand in hand with transnational
relations, largely because of the many Pakistanis who emigrated to Saudi Arabia: in
1999-2000, Saudi Arabia was Pakistan’s main external source of finance — mostly expa-
triate workers sending money home: 310 million dollars; followed by the United Arab
Emirates (148 million) and Kuwait (135 million).
. Musharraf set out four main demands for economic support:
1. A substantial part of Pakistan’s debt should be wiped out, so that it could reduce its
debt service from 1.6 billion dollars to 400-500 million.
2. The country should be given easier access to Western markets, especially textile mar-
kets.
3. The Facility for the Reduction of Poverty and for Development (FRPC), a pro-
gramme devised by the IMF and the World Bank, should be implemented, allowing
Pakistan to receive long-term loans at low interest rates.
4. ‘The expenses of the war in Afghanistan should be covered.
During a visit to Islamabad in October 2001, Colin Powell assured Musharraf

of
America’s intention to resume military cooperation, probably seeing it as a way
of even-
tually turning Pakistan’s officers away from the Islamist path.
. S Hussain, ‘Clerics Violated Official Brief during Visit to Afghanistan’, The
Friday Times,
7 October 2001. This is confirmed by a former ISI agent who, under
cover of
anonymity, revealed in an interview with The Herald that the delegation
had simply
asked Mullah Omar to bear in mind the gravity of the situation (The Herald,
November
2001, p. 25).
See Ahmed Rashid’s excellent analysis, ‘Post-Taliban Order is a Source
of Concern for
Pakistan’, eurasianet.org, 25 October 2001.
. One must recall that his father had been murdered by the Taliban.
NOTES S15
16. The first thing to stress is the extent of the divide between Deobandi and non-Deobandi,
even within jihadist movements which claim to be fighting in the name of Islam. To take
just one example: the Harkat-ul Mujahiddin explicitly bans non-Deobandi from its
ranks. Even among the Deobandi there are deep divisions. During last spring’s Aalmi
Deoband Conference, Maulana Fazlur Rahman did all the talking, although leaders of
other Deobandi movements — from Qazi Hussain Ahmed to Maulana Fazlur Rahman
Khalil; from the Harkat-ul Mujahiddin to Hamid Gul, former chief of the ISI — were
present. Moreover, the prospect of elections could rekindle the tensions between rival
groups.
17. The American air strikes and the Northern Alliance artillery caused numerous casualties
among the Pashtuns — especially in Kunduz, where there were some 1,300 Pashtuns. So
the TSNM fighters tried to withdraw to their home territory. Musharraf attempted to
close the border, making them even angrier, but in vain. These groups are capable of
imposing ‘their own law in this region, and thus challenging the state’s authority in part
of the country. Pashtun tribes, obeying orders from the PADG, blocked the strategic
Karakorum Highway, which links Pakistan to China and the Siachen glacier, at about ten
points. These ‘insurgents’ then freed about fifty common-law criminals. The inhabitants
of Gilgit, cut off from the rest of Pakistan, called on the Pakistani state for help; the fact
that it made haste slowly is an indication of the importance of these Islamists, who could
also step up the conflict with the Shi’a, their ‘enemy within’, especially in the Punjab.
18. According to the authorities in New Delhi, the leader of the Fidayeen — a word which
appeared in the Indian press on several occasions after the attacks — was one of those
responsible for the hijacking of the Indian Airlines plane in December 1999. These same
authorities hold that Pakistan’s involvement was proved by the brand name of the explo-
sives (Wah Nobel): the detonator was found at the scene.
. According to Indian government statistics, 884 of the 1,027 mercenaries killed in
Kashmir over the last twelve years were Pakistanis.
_ Interview with Musharraf, Financial Times Survey, 6 March 2001.
_ Interview with Musharraf, The Herald, April 2001, p. 57.
Abid... 04:
The Herald, August 2001, p. 55.
. Musharraf told Raja Zafar, one of the dissidents: “You are the horse; sideline Nawaz and
take away the party’, but only a small minority followed him (The News, 13 February
2001).
_ Zaffar Abbas, ‘Pakistan’s Great Gamble’, The Herald, October 2001, p. 22.
. Quoted in Robert Fisk, ‘Farewell to Democracy in Pakistan’, The Independent, 26 October
2001.
. It is probably Pakistan’s apprehensiveness about India — notably its fear of being encir-
cled, now that Afghanistan is no longer the ally it once was, and India has begun
the
negotiations with Iran — that explains the Pakistani military’s early dialogue with
Iranian authorities: on 4 December 2001, Musharraf held meetings with the Tranian
links.
Foreign Minister and Deputy Defence Minister, with a view to developing military
28. www.eurasianet.org, 8 November 2001.
[all this is duplicated verbatim in the text, on the same page as this note]
have faith in
30. In March 2001, he declared: ‘India’s strategy is certainly to isolate us. But I
power; we have a
this country. This is a country of 140 million people; we are a nuclear
Central Asia and
geostrategic importance; we lie at the crossroads of the Middle East,
the Financial
South Asia. Nobody can ignore us; we cannot be sidelined’ (interview with
Times Survey, 6 March 2001).
INDEX
Abdullah, Sheikh 120, 121, 122, 127, 130 Ali, Chaudri Rehmat 13
Abdurrahman, Sheikh Omar 140 Ali, Muhammad and Shaukat 11, 12
Achaemenids 5 Ali Khan, Liaquat
Action Committee for the National Language anti-communism 99
44, 47 assassination 65
Afghanistan Islamization policy 242
post-Taliban 268 and language question 44
relations with Pakistan 4-5, 79-80, 106-7, and Mujahirs 17, 19
138-41, 265-9 as prime minister 63—4
resistance movements 139-40 Ali Khan, Yakub 84
Soviet invasion (1979) 79-80, 106 Ali Shah, Sajjad 89
Aga Khans 226-7, 237 Aligarh, Muslims in 10-11
Agartala trial’ 24, 52 Aligarh Muslim University 223
Agricultural Research Council 180 Aligarh Scientific Society 10
agriculture All-Pakistan Muhajir Student Organisation
Punjab 18, 168 (APMSO) 33, 34
Sind 168 All-Pakistan Organization of Small Trade and
Ahl-i Hadith 134, 139, 222 Cottage Industries 257
Ahl-i Sunnat wa Jamaat 222-3 All-Pakistani Women’s Association 81
Ahmad, Abdul Mansur 15 All-Parties National Language Action
Ahmad, Hazrat Mirza Tahir 230 Committee 47
Ahmad Khan, Sayyid 10, 223 All Parties Students’ Action Committee
Ahmad Shah Abdali 195, 198 52
Ahmad Shah Durrani 198 All-Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC) 128,
Ahmadi 37, 137, 224, 228-9, 236 133
anti-Ahmadi movement 230-1, 241, 243, All-Party Muslim Conference 12
245 Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy
Ahmed, Qazi Hussain 140, 269 277
Ahrar 230, 241, 243 Amar Sonar Bangla 55
Ahsan, Admiral 54 Ambedkar, Dr 216
Akbar 136 Amin, Nurul 47, 48, 52, 54
Akhand Bharat 118 Amritsar 127
Aksai Chin 122 Anjuman-i Taraqi-i Urdu 18
al-Azad, Alauddin 58 ANP see Awami National Party
Al-Badar 146 Ansari 204
Al Badr Mujahideen 271 Anti-Terrorism Amendment Ordinance 2001
al-Mulk, Muhsin |] 261
Alexander the Great 5 APHC see All-Party Hurriyat Conference
Ali, Jam Mashoog 215 APMSO see All-Pakistan Muhajir Student
Ali, Maulana Ataha 47 Organisation
INDEX be
Arabic 251 Bahria Foundation 254

Arains 154, 206 Baluchi People’s Liberation Front (BPLF)
Arora, General A S 57 29
Arya Samaj Hindu 228 Baluchi Students’ Organization (BSO) 29
Asad, Muhammad (Leopold Weiss) 240-1, Baluchis 194-6
243 Baluchistan
Association for Peace and National Unity in insurrection 29
Afghanistan 268 languages 253
Association of Ulemas of India 12 nationalism 28-30
Attlee, Clement 2 refugees in 30
Auchinleck, General Claude 117 Baluchistan National Alliance 30
Awami League (League of the People) Baluchistan National Movement 30
arre:t of leaders 50 Baluchistan National Party (BNP) 30
and bast Bengal 56, 57, 60, 63, 75 Bamiyan Buddhas 268
foundation 23 Bandung Conference (1955) 100
and language question 47 Bang-i Islam 41—3
six-point programme (1966) 24, 51, 52, 53 Bangladesh
tendencies 49 foundation 4, 25, 123-5
see also National Awami Party independence 56, 59-60
Awami Muslim League 46, 47 see also East Bengal
Awami National Party (ANP) 32, 253, 270 Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) 60
Awan 203 Banya 207
Ayodhya mosque 38 Barelwi 222-3, 240
Ayub Khan, General Muhammad Barelwi JUP 74
agricultural policy 170 Barnard, C E 153
birth control policy 158-9 Basic Democracies Order (1959) 71
centralism 23 Basic Principles Committee (BPC) 21
and the constitution 71—2 Beg, General Mirza Aslam 83, 86
coup (October 1958) 50 Bengal
and divorce laws 71 independence 41-3
and East Bengal 50, 51, 52, 53, 58 Muslim League in 14—15, 39, 40
economic policy 164, 187 Muslims in 39-41
foreign policy 100-1, 102 proposed division of 2
industrial policy 70 under the Raj 153
Islamization policy 9, 137, 238 see also East Bengal
land policy 70 Bengali 4, 41, 43-6, 47, 49, 58
modernism 244—5 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) 114, 131, 272
resignation (1969) 73, 104, 123 Bhasani, Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan 46,
support for Punjabis 19 47, 49, 53, 54, 59
and war with India (1965) 72 Bhasha Andolan 253
Azad Kashmir 120, 122, 123, 128 Bhutto, Benazir
Azhar, Maulana Masood 260-1, 272 and corruption 87, 88, 185
Azhar, Mian Muhammad 277 dismissal 85, 88
Azhar, Muhammad Masud 92 exile 276
Aziz, K K 114 and Muhajir nationalism 34
Aziz, Sartaz 89 and PPP 83
Aziz, Shaukat 264 as prime minister 84, 86-8
and Sindi nationalism 27
Aziz Khan, General 268
Bhutto, Mumtaz 27, 29
Azzam, Abdullah 140
Bhutto, Murtaza 87, 88
Bhutto, Shah Nawas 14
Babar, General 142
Bhutto, Begum Nusrat 79
Babur 135
Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali
Badauni, Abdul Hamid 240
agricultural policy 170
Baghdad Pact (1955) 100, 105
and Ahmadi question 230
Baha ul-Haqq 204
318 INDEX
Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali — continued China

and army 76 and Kashmir question 122
and Baluchistan 29 relations with India 121—2
and Bengal 54 relations with Pakistan 102, 107, 175
and civil service 76 Chinioti 213, 214
economic policy 164—5 Chistiyya 229
and elections (1977) 78 Chitral 156
execution (1979) 79 Chowdhury, Moffazal Haider 59
foreign policy 106 Chowdhury, Munier 59
Islamization policy 9, 137, 245-6 Chundrigar, I I 19, 68
and PPP 24, 73, 74 Clinton, Bill 92, 175, 257, 264, 276
and Sindi nationalism 26 Committee for Defence and National Security
Biharis 34, 35, 60, 84 (CDNS) 88
bin Laden, Osama Committee for the Official Language 18
and Afghan war 140, 144 Committee of Fundamental Principles 64, 66
‘handing over’ of 267 Communist Party of India 40
and September 11, 2001 265 Complete Test Ban Treaty (1996) (CTBT)
and Taliban 135, 145, 147, 175, 268 109, 126
and US embassy bombings (August 1998) Congress Party
91, 264 and elections (1937) 12
Binori Town, Karachi 267 and elections (September 1945) |
bwadan 190, 191, 194, 201, 202, 216, 217 Muslims in 11
Bizenjo, Ghaus Bux 29 Constituent Assembly 1—2, 21, 64, 66
BJP see Bharatiya Janata Party Consultative Commission on Islamic Ideology
BNP see Baluchistan National Party; 245, 245
Bangladesh Nationalist Party Council of Common Interests 25
Board of Talimat-i Islamia 242 CTBT see Complete Test Ban Treaty
Bogra, Muhammad Ali 19, 49, 66, 99-100,
102, 243 Daud, Prince 139
Bohra 207, 214 Daudi Bohras 227-8
Bohra Ismailism 227-8, 237 Dar ul-Ulum Ashrafabad 222
Bose, Sarat Chandra 42 dargah 229-30
- BPC see Basic Principles Committee Darling, Sir Malcolm 153
BPLF see Baluchi People’s Liberation Front Darul Uloom Haqgqania 269
Brahmans 191, 192 Data Ganji Bakhsh 229
Brahui language 28, 251, 253 Daultana, Miam Mumtaz 68, 70, 243
Brahuis 194 Dawat-ul-Irshad 271
British East India Company 65 Declaration of Objectives (1949) 242, 243
British government Defense Policy Group 279
Afghan policy 18 Delhi, suicide bombing (December 2001) 271
plan for Indian federation | Deobandi JUI 74
Brohi, A K 238 Deobandi madrasah (1867) 136
BSO see Baluchi Students’ Organization Deobandi school 134, 139, 146, 221-2, 232,
Bugti, Nawal Akbar 30 240, 248
Bush, George W 266, 267 Dera Ghazi Khan 196
Dera Ismail Khan 196
Carter, Jimmy 106 Derajat 196
CDNS see Committee for Defence and Dir 156
National Security Dixon, Owen 121
Central Committee for the Caliphate 12 Dulles, John Foster 99
Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) 69, Dumont, Louis 189
100 Duodeciman Shi’a 225-6, 237
chapbooks 252 Durand Line 15, 28, 138, 197, 268
Chaudhary, Muhammad Azam 217 Durrani 198
Chechen wars (1999) 144 Dustom, Rashid 109, 143
INDEX 319
East Bengal Gandhi, Rajiv 131

administration 21, 23 Gangohi, Rashid Ahmad 221
armed struggle 56-8, 104 Ghaffar Khan, Abdul 15, 31, 63
culture and literature 58-9 Ghakkar 203
defence 51 Ghazali, Imam 159
economic autonomy 50 Ghaznevids 135, 198
elections (1954) 47-50 Ghilzai 198
elections (1970) 53-4, 75 Ghorid empire 135
foundation 43 Ghulam Ahmad, Mirza 228, 236
language movement 43-6, 47 Glenn Amendment (1998) 266
non-cooperation movement 54 Golden Temple, Amritsar 127
and Six-Point Programme (1966) 51—5 Goldsmid Line 28
see also Bangladesh Government of India Act (1935) 12, 61, 62
East Bengal Regiment 56 Green Revolution 18, 33, 167—9, 170, 180
East Pakistan Guyar 203
economy 23 Gujral,
I K 60, 118, 131, 132
foundation 21 Gul, General Hamid 146
military operation against (March 1971) 25, Gulf War (1991) 109, 141
164 Gurdaspur 117
population 20
self-government movement 24 Haider, Moiuddin 257-8, 261
East Pakistan Rifles 56 Hakim, Khalifa Abdul 239
East Pakistan Students’ League 51 Hamidullah, Muhammad 240
East Pakistan Youth League 47 Hanaway, William 252
Ejaz, Manzur 180 Hari Singh (Maharaja of Kashmir) 120,
Ejaz ul-Haq 277 12)
Elective Bodies (Disqualification) Order (1959) Harkat ul-Ansar (HUA) 142, 146, 233, 271
(EBDO) 70 Harkat-i Ingilab Islami 140
Elsmie, G R 153 Harkat-ul Mujaheddin (HUM) 91, 92, 128,
English language 251, 253-4, 255 146, 233.2615 27 22
English Medium schools 254 Hashim, Abul 40
Ershad, General H M 59, 60 Hassan Khan, General Gul 76
Ettefaq group 214 Hayat Khan, Sikander 13
Hekmatyar, Gulbuddin 108, 140
Farakka Dam 60 Herodotus 196
Faruki, Kemal 239 Hizbollah 146
Fauji Foundation 254 Hindu Mahasabha 11, 42, 113
Fazl-i-Hussain, Miam 13, 18 hussa 201
Federal Shari’ah Court 80, 247, 260 Hizb-i Islami 108, 140, 141
Hizbul Mujaheddin 128, 271
Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA)
259, 270 Houmayoun, Emperor 196
Feith, Douglas 279 HUA see Harkat ul-Ansar
Ferghana valley 143 HUM see Harkat-ul Mujaheddin
Hunter Report (1871) 10, 14
Fernandes, George 272
‘feudal lords’ 67-8, 258 Hug, A K Fazlul 15, 23, 24, 41, 42, 47, 48, 49,
Frere, Sir Bartle 155 63, 66
Hussain, Altaf 33, 34, 35
Hussain, Nazir 222, 226
Gaborieau, Marc 224
Gailani, Pir Sayed 268 Hussein, Chaudry Shujaat 215
Ganatantri Dal 47-8
Ibbertson, Sir Denzil 189
Gandhara civilization 5
ICS see Indian Civil Service
Gandhi, Indira
IJI see Islami Jamhoori Ittehad
and East Bengal 57
IJT see Islami Jamiat-i Tulaba
and Punjabi regionalism 127
Ilyas, Muhammad 224
Gandhi, Mohandas K |
320 INDEX
Imad, Colonel 142 Jagudar 193

imamate 225-6 Jahan, Rounag 50
Independent Power Projects (IPP) 185 Jaish-i Muhammad 260-1, 271, 272, 273
India Jamaat-i Islami (JT)
economic growth 166 and East Bengal 56
Hindu nationalism 114, 118 and elections (1970) 74
Muslims 10 and elections (1997) 249
as nuclear power 125 Islamism 136, 139, 140, 141, 146, 224-5,
partition 1-2, 116-18, 156-7, 235-8 231, 241, 243, 244, 246, 269
relations with China 121-2 and Muhajirs 33
relations with Pakistan 112—33, 175 and Musharraf 258
relations with USSR 101 repression of 63
war with China (October 1962) 102 Jamhoori Watan Party (JWP) 30
war with Pakistan (1948) 120 Jamiyyat-ul Ulama-i Hind (JUH) 136, 222,
war with Pakistan (September 1965) 72, 240
103, 115, 122-3 Jamiyyat-ul Ulama-i Islam (JUI) 28, 134,
war with Pakistan (November 1971) 25, 136, 141, 146, 222, 240, 243, 249, 261,
57-9, 75-6, 104 269
‘India-Occupied Kashmir’ (IOK) 120 Jamiyyat-ul Ulama-i Pakistan (JUP) 56, 223,
Indian Civil Service (ICS) 21, 153 240, 243
Indian Independence Act (1947) 61 Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (J KLF)
Indian Mutiny (1857) 10 127
Indus civilization 189 Janjua, General Asif Nawaz 86
Indus River 5, 117, 151, 167 Jats 154, 192, 197, 205-6, 215
Indus Treaty (1958) 117, 121, 130 Jhang Group 89
Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) 107, 127, 140, JI see Jamaat-i Islami
141, 146, 261 Jinnah, Fatima 50, 72
‘Interim Report’ (September 1950) 64—5 Jinnah, Muhammad Ali
International American School 254 background and early career 11
IOK see ‘India-Occupied Kashmir’ centralism 62
IPP see Independent Power Projects death 19
Iqbal, Mohammad 13, 223, 239 Islamness 137, 237-8
Iran, relations with Pakistan 144, 175 and language question 45
Ishaq Khan, Ghulam 34, 83, 84, 85, 86 and liberal democracy 62
ISI see Inter Services Intelligence and Muslim independence 1, 9, 13
Islam religion 237
arrival in Sind 5 two-nations theory 114, 223
Islamic groups 221—34 sees Congress Party as threat to Muslims
and Pakistan 4, 6, 9, 16-17, 98-9, 104-5, L213 06
134-47, 235-49 Jugahs 197
see also Muslims JKLF see Jammu and Kashmir Liberation
Islam, Kazi Nasrul 58 Front
Islamabad, becomes capital 20 JUH see Jamiyyat-ul Ulama-i Hind
Islamabad—Lahore motorway 36, 186 JUIsee Jamiyyat-ul Ulama-i Islam
Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI) 32, 34, 83, 85 Junagadh 116, 121
Islami Jamiat-i Tulaba (IJT) 225, 244 Junejo, Muhammad Khan 79, 82
Islamic Chhatra Sangha 56 JUPsee Jamiyyat-ul Ulama-i Pakistan
Islamic Development Bank 106 JWPsee Jamhoori Watan Party
Islamic Jihad 140
Ismailism 226-8, 237 Kabor (Munier Chowdhury) 59
Ispahani 40 Kalabagh barrage project 33, 180, 186
‘kalashnikov culture’ 35, 233
Jacob, John 155 Kalat 28
Jafa al-Sadiq, Imam 226 Kamboh 206-7
Jafarey, Vasim 166 kammi 201, 202
INDEX 321
Karachi Leghari, Farooq 86-7, 88, 89

industry 184 Loya Pakhtia 268
migration to 33, 160 Lyall, Alfred 153
population 17
university 162 madrasahs 136, 139-40, 142, 143, 175, 222,
violence 176 231-2, 233-4, 248, 251, 252, 261—2,
Karachi Electricity Supply Corporation 273
(KESC) 185 Magsi, Zulfigar Ali Khan 30
‘Karachisuba’ 34 Mahboob ul-Haq 215
Karakorum road 122 Mahmud, Lieutenant-General 267, 268
Karamat, Jahangir 36, 89, 90 Mahmud of Ghazni 198
Kargil war 90-1, 110, 115, 129, 258 Majlis-i Shura 79
Karim, Abdul (Prince of Kalat) 28 Malik, Kauser Abdulla 180
Karzai, Hamid 268 Manegla barrage 167
Kashmir Manila Pact (1954) 100
and Indo-Pakistan war (1965) 122-3 Manzilgarh 14
origins of dispute 117, 120 Marri, Khair Buksh 29
relations with Pakistan 97-8, 102, 103, 104, Massoud, Commander 109, 142, 143, 144,
110, 115, 257, 265 268
and terrorism 127-8, 271—4 Maududi, Abul Ala 224-5, 230, 235, 241,
UN resolutions on 121 242, 243
war over (1948) 120 Mauss, Marcel 201
KESC see Karachi Electricity Supply Mektal-ul Khadamat 140
Corporation Mellor, John 180
Khalistan 127 Memon 212, 214
Khan, Ahmad Riza 223 Mengal, Akhtar 30
Khan, Ismail 142 Mengal, Attaullah Khan 29
khans 193, 194, 197-8 Meo 203
Kharral, Khalid Ahmed 215 MELO sce Muslim Family Laws Ordinance
Khatris 155 Minto, Lord 11
Khattab, Commander 144 Mir Chakar 196
Khattak, Ajmal 31, 37 Mir Wais 198
Khattak, Habibullah 214 Mirza, Iskander 19, 49, 67, 68, 70, 238, 239
Khoja 207, 213-14 Mogul Empire 5, 39, 135, 136
Khoja Ismailism 227, 237 Mohenjo-Daro 5, 26
Khokar, Nawaz 215 Monem Khan, Abdul 52
Khudai Khidmatgar (‘Red Shirts’) 15, 31 Mookerjee, Shyamprasad 42
Khuhro M A 62, 70 Mountbatten, Lord Louis 2, 120
Kipling, Rudyard 189 Movement for Pakistan 222, 223, 225, 227
Kotri barrage 167 Movement for the Defence of the Bengali
Krishak Proja Party 14-15 Language 58
Krishak Sramik Party 23, 47, 63 Movement for the Oppressed Nationalities of
kshatriya 191 Pakistan (PONM) 37
Movement for the Restoration of Democracy
Ladakh 122 DOD Oe
Lahore Declaration (1999) 131 MOM see Muhajir Qaumi Mahaz
MOM Hagiqi 35
Lahore Resolution (23 March 1940) 16, 28,
41-2, 235 Muhajir Qaumi Mahaz (MQM) 34-6, 83, 84,
Lahori 228-9 86, 214
lambardar 193 Muhajirs 17-18, 19-20, 25-6, 33-6, 116, 156,
204, 214, 236, 250
Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LJ) 259, 260, 268
203 Muhammad, Ghulam 19, 21, 63, 65-7, 238,
Lashkar-i Tayyiba 146, 258, DOI 2 Te 2H,
243
League of Sind 14
Muhammad Ali, Chandri 19
League of the Muslim Students of East
Pakistan 47 Muhammad Shah (Aga Khan III) 226, 227
322 INDEX
Muhammedan Anglo-Oriental College 10, Nanautawi, Muhammad Qasim 221

223 Nagqshabandiyya 229
Muhammedan Educational Conference 11 Nassir Khan 195
Mukti Bahini 56, 57, 60, 75 National Accountability Bureau 263
Munir, Judge Muhammad 238, 243 National Awami Party (NAP) 28, 31, 49, 63
Musharraf, General Pervez National Conference (Sheikh Abdullah) 120,
domestic policy 274-5 121
early career 260 National Democratic Front 72
economic policy 263—4 National Islamic Front of Afghanistan 268
and elections 277, 278 National Kashmir Committee 273
foreign policy 110, 264—6, 278 National Reconstruction Bureau 277
and Islamist groups 259-62, 269-71, 273 National Security Council 92
Islamism 147 Navi, Tanvir 277
and Kashmir 129 Nazimuddin, Khwaja 19, 39, 42, 43, 44-5, 47,
and madrasahs 261-2, 273 63, 65-6
and political parties 275-7 Nazir, Mumtaz 252
and referendum (2002) 278-9 Neemrana Initiative 132
and regional minorities 37 Nehru, Jawaharlal
seizure of power (October 1999) 36, 91-2, becomes prime minister (September 1946)
98 2
seven-point programme 256-7 and Constituent Assembly 1—2
Muslim Brothers 140, 146, 224
and Kashmir 120
Muslim Conference 120 non-alignment policy 99
Muslim Convention League 72
Nestlé 182, 188
Muslim Family Laws Ordinance (1961) Niazi, General A A K 57
(MFLO) 71, 245 Nimitz, Admiral Chester 121
Muslim League Nixon, Richard 99
in Bengal 14-15, 39, 40 Nizam-i Islami 47, 56
and “day of direct action’ (16 August 1946) Nizari Ismailism 227
2, 16, 41 Noon, Malik Firoz Khan 19, 68, 70
decline 67 Non-Proliferation Treaty (1968) 109, 126
and elections (1937) 12 Northern Alliance 267, 268
and elections (1945-46) 1, 235-6 Northern Territories 120, 122
foundation 1] North-West Frontier Province (NWFP)
Islamism 137
economy 3]—2
Lahore Resolution (23 March 1940) 16, 28 Muslim League in 15
>
Ale 285 under the Raj 155
and Liaquat Ali Khan 63
Nouri, Mullah 143
and Muslim ‘homeland’ 9, 13
Novartis 188
in North-West Frontier Province 15 NWEP see North-West Frontier Province
in Punjab 13-14
in Sind 14 Omar, Mullah Muhammad 261, 265, 267
Muslims ‘One Unit Scheme’ 21, 28, 63, 66, 73
in Congress Party |] Operation Brass Tacks 127, 131
desire for independent territory | Operation Clean-up 34, 35, 36, 86
in Punjab 18-20 Operation Gibraltar 72, 123
in United Provinces 10 Operation Kargil 90, 110, 115
see also Islam Operation Searchlight 56, 75
Mustali Ismailism 227 Osman, Saokat 58
Mutahedea Qaumi Mahaz 35
Osmany, Colonel M A G 56
Ottoman caliphate 11, 12, 136
Nabi Mohammedi 140
Nadwi, Sulaiman 240
PADC see Pakistan—Afghanistan Defence
Naik, Niaz 132
Council
Namangani, Joma 143
Pakhtunkhwa 33
INDEX B23
Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party 30, 270 fundamentalist organizations 128, 145-7,
Pakhtunwali 189, 197 175-6
Pakistan gardeners 206-7
and Afghan resistance movements and Gulf War (1991) 109
139-40 health care 162
agriculture 165, 166, 167-71, 180-3 heroin trade 176
anti-communism 99 history 5, 135-6
Arab communities 204 immigration to 2, 17-18
arms trafficking 176 industrial ownership 70, 171
army 69, 90 industry 163-4, 171-3, 174, 183-4
‘artificiality’ of 2, 4 infrastructure 172
banking system 172 internal migration 160
Bengali/ Punjabi relations 64-7, 73 irrigation 151, 167, 180
birth control 158-9 Islam 4, 6, 9, 16-17, 98-9, 104-5, 134-47,
blood ties 190-1 235-49
borders 138 Islamic groups 221-34, 259-62, 269-71
budget deficit 264 and Kashmir question 97-8, 102, 103,
business community 212-16 104, 110, 115, 120-3, 128, 130, 133,
caste system 192, 236 257209
censuses 36, 157-8 land ownership 170
child labour 172 languages 4, 6, 9, 18, 21, 26, 26-7, Sie
Christians 202, 236 43-6, 47, 64, 134, 156, 193, 250-5
constitution 9, 20-1, 64-5, 67, 82, 83-4, legal system 247-8, 249
86, 88-9, 137, 235, 238-49 loans, interest on 178, 263
contraband goods 178-9 merchants 207
crises 256-8 military expenditure 166
crops 151, 181 mineral resources 153
cultures 4 multinationals 188
debt 177-8, 256-7, 262-3 as nuclear power 5, 106, 109, 125-7
democracy 93-4, 177 origin of name 13
deregulation 174-5 pedlars 208
diplomatic isolation (1990s) 264-5 persecutions of ‘others’ 37-8, 247-8
diplomatic relations with India 130-1 pole communities 212
economic development 163-6 population 20, 37, 157-8, 162
economic growth 161, 176 poverty 258
economic prospects 187-8 professions 208-10
economic wastage 179-80, 187 public services 176
education 162, 254 Punjabi hegemony 18-20, 36
elections (1970) 73-5 relations with Afghanistan 4-5, 79-80,
elections (1977) 78 106-7, 138-41, 265-9
elections (1984) 82 relations with China 102, 107, 175
elections (1988) 83 relations with India 112-33, 175
elections (1990) 85 relations with Iran 144, 175
elections (1993) 86 relations with Turkmenistan 144
elections (1997) 88 relations with USA 93, 94, 99-100, 101,
emigration 134, 159-60, 165 102, 104, 107, 109, 110, 125-6, 175,
employment 160-1 257 200-05 278
relations with USSR 101
energy sector 184-6
exports 173, 178 religious groups 193
‘feudalism’ 67-8, 258 religious students, unemployment of
financial system 177-9 248
foreign aid 164, 165, 173-4, 177, 264, 266, and September 11, 2001 278
279-80 shopkeepers 207
Sindis rise to power 25-8
foreign investment 178
foundation 1—2 social structures 192-4, 216-18
324 INDEX
Pakistan — continued Political Parties Act (1962) 72

Sunni/Shi’a conflict 81, 87-8, 135, 144, PONM see Movement for the Oppressed
176, 231-2, 233-4, 248, 258, 259-60 Nationalities of Pakistan
and the Taliban 4, 91, 141-2, 257-8, Powell, Colin 267
267-8, 269, 270 PPP see Pakistan People’s Party
taxation 166, 257, 263-4 Pressler Amendment (1985) 126, 266
terrain 15] Principles of Policy (1956) 243
trade with India 132 Public and Representative Officers
tradesmen 208-10 (Disqualification) Act (1950) (PRODA)
transport 186 64
transport workers 208 Punjab
tribes 194—203 agriculture 18, 168
Turkish communities 204—5 and Barelwi 223
urban communities 211—16 castes 154—5
urbanization 158, 234 and Deobandi 222
violence 162, 258 linguistic tensions 253
wandering communities 210—1 1 Muslim League in 13-14
war with India (1948) 120 Muslims in 18-20
war with India (September 1965) 72, 103, proposed division of 2
115, 122-3 under the Raj 65, 153-4
war with India (November 1971) 25, 57-9, University 154, 162
75-6, 104 wheat shortages 164
Western alliances 99-100 Punjabi 4, 251, 252
see also East Pakistan; West Pakistan
Pakistan—Afghanistan Defence Council Qadiani 228-9
(PADC) 269 Qadirriyya 229
Pakistan Armed Forces Ordinance (1998) Qaid-i Azam 163
90 Qasim Shahi 226
Pakistan Democratic Alliance (PDA) 85 qaum 190-1, 192, 200, 216, 217
Pakistan—India People’s Forum for Peace and Qayyum Khan, Abdul 73
Democracy 132 Qayyum Khan, Muhammad Abdul 273
Pakistan Madrasah Education Board “Qazi courts’ 80
Ordinance (2001) 261 Qureshi 204
Pakistan Muslim League (PML) 32, 86, 88, Qutb, Sayyid 241
228; 261, 276; 277
Pakistan National Alliance (PNA) 78 Rabbani, Borhanuddin 142
Pakistan National Party 29
Radcliffe Commission 117
‘Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir’ 120 Rahman, Fazlur 239, 261, 269
Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) 24, 26, 27, 54,
Rahman, Mujibur
73, 74, 83, 84, 223, 261 assassination 59
Pakistani Communist Party 44 and East Bengal 46, 49, 52, 54, 55, 56
panchayat 217 as prime minister 58
Parsees 215 and six-point programme (1966) 24, Z5o
Pasha, Anwar 59 53575
>
Pashto language 15, 251, 252, 253 Rahman, Ziaur 56, 59, 106
Pashtun ‘Tribal Areas 259 Rahman Khan, Ataur 49, 54
Pashtunistan 31, 62, 138, 139 Rajagopalichariar, C 62
Pashtuns 4, 15, 29-30, 32, 197 Rajputs 191-3, 202-3, 205, 215
Pathans 4, 15, 31, 156, 196-200, 222
Ram, Chhotu 13
PDA see Pakistan Democratic Alliance
Rann of Kutch 122
People’s Party (Baluchistan) 28 Rashid, Ahmed 258
Persian language 251, 253-4 Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh 113
Piracha 207 Rawalpindi 20
PML see Pakistan Muslim League Reagan, Ronald 107, 126
PNA see Pakistan National Alliance ‘Red Shirts’ see Khudai Khidmatgar
INDEX 325
Refah 146 Sheikhs 204

Regional Development Cooperation Sherpao, H M 31
Association 105 Shia
Republican Democratic Party 52 conflict with Sunni 81, 87—8, 135, 144, 176,
Rocca, Christina 264 231-2, 233-4, 248, 258, 259-60
Round Table Conference (1930) 12 tendencies 225—9, 237
Round Table Conference (1969) 24 Siachen 127
Roy, Kiran Shankar 42 Simla Accords (1972) 104, 124-5
Roy, Tridiv 54 Simon Commission 12
Rumsfeld, Donald 279 Sind
Rushdie, Salman 134 agriculture 168
arrival of Islam in 5
SAARC see South Asia Association for and Deobandi 222
Regional Cooperation language 26-7, 251, 252
Saeed, Hakim 36 Muslim League in 14
Safavids 135 nationalism 25-8
Sahib, Dr Khan 62, 63, 66 under the Raj 154, 155
Salahuddin, Syed 272 Sind Baluch Pashtun Front 29
Samad, Yunas 16 Sind National Front 27
Sami ul-Haq 142, 269 Sind United Party (SUP) 14
sardar 28, 29, 30, 67, 156, 193 Sindi Desh 27
Sayyedna 237 Singh, Ranjit 153
Sayyid 204 Sipah-i-Muhammad Pakistan 260
SEATO see Southeast Asia Treaty Sipah-i Sahaba 146
Organization Sipah-i Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) 232, 233, 234,
Seifullah family 214 259-60, 261, 273
Septiman Shiism 226-7 Six-Point Programme (1966) 24, 51-5, 75
Seraiki movement 253 South Asia Association for Regional
Seraiki province 37 Cooperation (SAARC) 4, 108, 131
Sethi, Naja 89-90 South Asia Preferential Trade Association 132
seypt 201, 202, 216 Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO)
Shafi, Mufti Muhammad 240 69, 100
Shahab ud-Din 198 Srinagar 120, 121, 127, 271
Shaheen Foundation 254 SSP see Sipah-i Sahaba Pakistan
Shahidullah, Muhammad 41, 45, 46 Suez Crisis (1956) 100
Shamzai, Mufti Nizamuddin 267 Sufism 229-30, 234
sharia law 138, 223, 224, 246, 247 Suhrawardiyya 229
Sharif, Nawaz Suhrawardy Hussain Shaheed 23, 24, 39-40,
background 85 41, 42, 46, 49, 50, 63, 68, 72, 100
and Baluchistan 30 Sulaymani Bohra 228
economic policy 174 Sunni
and Islamic groups 91 conflict with Shi’a 81, 87—8, 135-6, 144,
Islamization policy 9, 85, 249 176, 231-2, 233-4, 248, 258, 259-60
and Kashmir 110 dominance in Pakistan 236
and Muhajir nationalism 35-6 extremism 145
opposition to Benazir Bhutto 84, 185 tendencies 221—5
and Pashtun nationalism 32-3 SUP see Sind United Party
as prime minister 85-6, 88-92 Swat 156
resignation 86 Syed, G M 14, 25-6, 63
trial and imprisonment 276 Symington Amendment (1978) 107, 125-6,
and tribal law 138 266
Sharif, Shabhaz 89
Sharif family 214 Tablighi Jamaat 134, 136, 142, 224, 225
Tagore, Rabindranath 55, 58
Shastri, Lal Bahadur 123
Shaybanids 135 Tahrik Nifaz Fiqh-i Jafaria (TNEJ) 81
326 INDEX
Tahrik-i Jafaria Pakistan 232, 273 Vajpayee, Atal Behari 118, 131, 257
Tahrik-i Nifaz-i Shari’ah Muhammadi Vartan Bhanji 201, 202
(TINSM) 87, 270
Tajikistan, refugees 142-3 wadera 155, 157, 168
Taliban Wahhabi 136, 140, 145, 222
American support for 145 Wajed, Sheikh Hasina 60
and contraband 178 Wali Khan 31, 32, 63
and heroin production 176 Waliullah, Syed 58
Islamism 146 Water and Power Agency 90
relations with Pakistan 4, 91, 141-2, 257-8, Water & Power Development Authority
267-8, 269, 270 (WAPDA) 185
rise to power 143 Watto, Manzoor 215
training 108, 134, 140 Wavell, Lord 2
Tamaddun Majlis 43-4 West Pakistan
Tanzim Nifaz-i Shari’ah-i Mohammadi economy 23, 157
273 population 20
Tarar, Rafiq 36, 89, 274, 276 Women Lawyers Association 81
Tarbela barrage 167, 180, 186 Women’s Action Forum 81
Tariq, Azam 260 World Islamic Conference 104, 105, 135, 245
Tashkent, peace of (1966) 72, 73, 123
Task Force on Energy 185 Yahya Khan, General Agha 24-5, 53, 54, 55,
Tebhaga movement 44, 48 56
Tenet, George 271 and East Bengal 104
Thaka 203 and elections (1970) 73-4
thakka 201 and Operation Searchlight 75
Thanavi, [htishamul Haqq 240 resignation 76
Tibet 122 Yoldashev, Taher 143
Tikka Khan, General 54, 56, 76 Younous Khales 140
TNEJ see Tahrik Nifaz Figh-i Jafaria Yusuf, Muhammad 224
TNSM see Tahrik-i Nifaz-i Shari’ah
Muhammadi Xinjiang 122, 140, 175
Turkmenistan, relations with Pakistan 144
two-economy theory 23 Zahir Shah 270
zakat 80, 81, 89, 231, 232, 246
Uigurs 141 zamindars 15, 39, 193, 201, 202
Umar, Badruddin 58 Zardari, Asif Ali 87, 276
umma 134, 136, 225 Zhou En Lai 101, 102
Unionist Party 13-14 Zia ul-Haq, General
United Front 23, 48, 67 and Afghanistan 79-80, 106-7, 126, 136,
United Front (Afghanistan) 268 138-9
United Nations, and Kashmir 121 and Ahmadi question 231
United Provinces (Uttar Pradesh) death (1988) 82
Muslims in 10-11 economic policy 165
Unocal 144 hostility to India 78-9
Urdu 4, 6, 9, 18, 21, 27, 31, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, Islamization policy 9, 79, 80-1, 137-8, 225,
47, 64, 134, 137, 250-1, 252-3, 255 231-2, 235, 246-7
USA and referendum (1984) 82
relations with Pakistan 93, 94, 99-100, 101,
and Sikh separatists 127
102, 104, 107, 109, 110, 125-6, 175, support for Pashtuns 32
257, 265-6, 278 support for Punjabis 27
Usmani, Lieutenant-General 268 Ziaduddin, Lieutenant General Kwaja 90, 91
Usmani, Shabbir Ahmad 222, 240, 242 Zoroastrians 215
Uzbekistan
Islamic groups 143
refugees 142
About the Editor:
Christophe Jaffrelot is Director of

CERI (Centre d'Etudes et de
Recherches Internationales) and a
Researcher at CNRS (Centre
National de la Recherche
Scientifique), France. Among other
works, he has also edited Pakistan.
Nationalism without a Nation?
(2002) and BUP — The Compulsions
of Politics, (co-edited, 2001).
Contributors:
France Bhattacharya;
Gilbert Etienne;
Marc Gaborieau,
Pierre Lafrance;
Aminah Mohammad;
Jean-Luc Racine;
Tariq Rahman;
O)IV(cim wena
_ Anthem South Asian

Studies
Series Editor: Crispin Bates PhD,
Department of History, University of
Edinburgh.
Anthem South Asian Studies

provides comprehensive coverage
of all aspects of the region, past
and present. Guided by a team of
leading academics and thinkers
from around the world, the series
Kool kX hoo]A CoN mSIo10(>So am](01S
ranging from economics and
politics to history and the arts,-and
will appeal to academics, students
and general readers alike.
|
ISBN 1-643351-030-4
| Anthem Press
|843"310303 9781843310303 22
08/13/2019 10:40-2

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D ITS ORIGINS

Born in turmoil barely half a century

This edition first published by

© LIBRAIRIE ARTHEME FAYARD 2000

All rights reserved.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

ISBN 1 84331 030 9 (hbk)

List of Maps vil

1 Islamic Identity and Ethnic Tensions

3 A Fruitless Search for Democracy 61

4 Pakistan and the Power Game 97

5 Living with India: Relations between Pakistan and India ri2

6 Islam and Foreign Policy: Central Asia and the

7 The Country and Its People 131

8 Economic Development 163

9 Between Caste and Tribe 189

10 The Many Faces of Islam 224

11 Islam and Politics Zan

12 Languages and Education 250

Conclusion: A Country in Crisis 256

Epilogue: Musharraf and the Islamists: from

The Partition of India

4 Mate mad Rae ; at

France Bhattacharya, Professor at INALCO: Chapter 2.

0Gweaek ostit-l ty peemne! phd Pogues

@ State capital (4 Territory under Pakistani administration

© _ Provincial capital Territory under Indian administration

steeeereee Line of control

pte iss race ace oar bs

A Creation of the Muslim ‘Minorities’ of the Raj

From the School of Aligarh to the Muslim League

Some supported the Association of Ulemas of India (Jamiyyat-ul Ulama-i Hind),

The reticence of Muslims in ‘majority’ areas toward the

Islam and Urdu: Forces for Unity or Domination?

Pakistan: A state of immigrants?

The beginning of Punjabi hegemony

Table 1.1 Population and income, 1951 (by province)

Population Income Per capita income

The Punjab 18,815 24.9 246.2 12

Total 75,636 100

* These figures include the ‘North West Frontier Agencies’ territories.

The Bengalis of East Pakistan — victims of the underdevelopment of their

Political centralization and separatism:

. East Pakistan demanded at least equal representation in the democratic institutions

From linguistic confluct to a ‘One Unit Scheme?

___'| Territories ceded by

----- Limit of Pakistani province or Indian state

seeeneees Line of control (1949) ye Non-

The two-economy theory

The Six-Point Programme

Discontent among Bengalis was reflected in the increasing number of opposition

The Sindis rise to power

The awakening of Sindi nationalism

Bhutto’s arrival at the head of the government was accompanied by a political

Provinces Quotas General Senior public — General Senior public

The Punjab 50 49.2 53.5 54.9 55ch

Total 90 100 100 100 100

Winning power on the back of Sindi nationalism

The Baluchi Self-Determination Movement