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Pakistan
Introduction
PAKISTAN BECAME AN INDEPENDENT STATE in 1947, the realization
of a yearning by India's Muslims, who feared domination by the
Hindu majority in a postcolonial India. As the British made their
final plans to surrender the "Jewel in the Crown" of their empire,
the earlier, elite "Two Nations Theory," premised on the notion
of a separate homeland for the subcontinent's Muslim minority,
had broadened its popular appeal and evolved into a collective
vision championed by Muslims of all backgrounds. After independence,
a debate commenced among contending groups over further refinement
of that vision. Agreement on what system of government the new
nation should adopt--a critical aspect of the debate--was never
fully reached. Indeed, few nations have in so short a period undergone
as many successive political and constitutional experiments as
has Pakistan. This irresolution contributed, in the decades following
independence, to a recurrent pattern of crisis: repeated coups
and extended periods in which martial law replaced civilian government,
violent deaths of several national leaders, periodic strife among
ethnic groups, and, most traumatically, a civil war that divided
the country in two.
The struggle over the character and soul of Pakistan continues.
Although democracy returned to Pakistan in 1988 after a long lapse,
it is on trial daily, its continuation by no means certain. Definition
of the vision of what Pakistan represents is still being contested
from many opposing quarters.
Pakistan's status in the world has changed dramatically in the
nearly one-half century of its existence as an independent state.
In the twilight years of the Cold War, it achieved international
stature as a "frontline" state during the Soviet occupation of
neighboring Afghanistan. With the Soviet departure from Afghanistan
in the late 1980s and the end of the Cold War, Pakistan's role
in the world arena has become less visible, and its voice has
diminished to the level of many other developing states competing
in the new world order. Yet, during the years it spent in support
of the Afghan struggle against Soviet domination, Pakistan impressed
upon the world community a new appreciation of its standing among
Islamic nations and of its ideological commitment to causes it
champions.
In terms of its military and economic development, Pakistan is
a "threshold" state. The world's first Islamic "de facto" nuclear-weapon
state, it has long been at loggerheads with its larger and more
powerful neighbor, India, which, like Pakistan, denies having
built nuclear weapons but not its ability to do so at the "turn
of a screw." A nation well positioned to serve as an economic
model for other developing countries in the post-Cold- War era--especially
the Islamic states of the former Soviet Union--Pakistan has shown
steady and impressive long-term economic growth and is successfully
making the transition from an overwhelmingly agricultural to an
industrial economy. Yet, despite its considerable achievements
in technology and commerce, Pakistan confronts many of the same
problems it faced at its birth. The nation has one of the world's
highest population growth rates, making it difficult for the government
to address the problems of poverty and attendant ills that affect
so many in its society. Indeed, social development has lagged
behind economic gains. Quality of life indicators--literacy rates,
especially among women, human rights, and universal access to
heath care--have shown Pakistan to be a country with serious deficiencies.
Throughout history, Pakistan has been strongly affected by its
geostrategic placement as a South Asian frontier located at the
juncture of South Asia, West Asia, and Central Asia. Scholars
have called Pakistan the "fulcrum of Asia" because since antiquity
invaders have traversed this frontier carrying with them the seeds
of great civilizations. The armies of Islam came to South Asia
through the same mountain passes in the north-west of Pakistan
that the Indo-Aryans, Alexander the Great, the Kushans, and others
had earlier entered.
Present-day Pakistan has been shaped by its rich history, pre-Islamic
as well as Islamic, but colored in particular by the exigencies
of its troubled and bloody birth as a nation in 1947. The partitioning
of British India into India and Pakistan was preceded and accompanied
by communal riots of unprecedented violence and scope that forced
millions of Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh refugees to flee across the
new international borders.
The partition plan that led to the separate states of India and
Pakistan was drawn up in an atmosphere of urgency as a swell of
religious and ethnic unrest shook India. Under guidelines established
with the help of Britain's last viceroy in India, Lord Louis Mountbatten,
the perplexing task of establishing the new boundaries of Pakistan
was accomplished. Most Indian Muslims lived either on the dusty
plains of Punjab or in the humid delta of Bengal. Contiguous Muslim-majority
districts in Punjab and Bengal were awarded to Pakistan under
the plan's guidelines. The additional task of deciding the status
of the more than 500 semiautonomous princely states of India still
remained. All but three of these quickly acceded to either Pakistan
or India. But the two largest princely states, Jammu and Kashmir
(ususally just called Kashmir) and Hyderabad, and one small state,
Junagadh, posed special problems. Hyderabad and Junagadh were
located within territory awarded to India but were both Hindu
majority states ruled by a Muslim leader. These states hesitated
but were quickly incorporated by force into India. The status
of the third state, Kashmir, which had borders with both India
and Pakistan, proved especially problematic. Unlike Hyderabad
and Junagadh, Kashmir had a Muslim majority and was ruled by a
Hindu. Kashmir's maharaja was reluctant to accede to either Pakistan
or India, but when threatened by a Muslim uprising (with outside
support from Pakistani tribesmen) against his unpopular rule,
he hurriedly signed the documents of accession, in October 1947,
required by India before it would provide aid. Pakistan then launched
an active military and diplomatic campaign to undo the accession,
which it maintained was secured by fraud. Kashmir was subsequently
divided by the occupying armies of both nations, the Indians holding
two-thirds of the state, including the Muslim- dominated Vale
of Kashmir and the Hindu-majority region of Jammu to the south,
while the Pakistanis controlled the western third, which they
call Azad (Free) Kashmir. India and Pakistan would fight two major
wars to maintain or seize control over this state: in 1947-48
and in 1965. Kashmir's contested and indeterminate status continues
dangerously to complicate relations between South Asia's two most
powerful states.
The bifurcated Pakistan that existed from August 1947 to December
1971 was composed of two parts, or wings, known as East Pakistan
and West Pakistan, separated by 1,600 kilometers of Indian territory.
Observers pointed out, however, that the people of the two wings
were estranged from each other in language and cultural traditions:
that the Bengali "monsoon Islam" of the East Wing was alien to
the "desert Islam" of the West Wing. The East Wing, notable for
its Bengali ethnic homogeneity and its collective Bangla cultural
and linguistic heritage, contained over half of the population
of Pakistan and sharply contrasted with the ethnic and linguistic
diversity of the West Wing. The West Wing consisted of four major
ethnic groups--Punjabis, Pakhtuns, Sindhis, and Baloch. The muhajirs
(see Glossary) constituted a fifth important group. The political
leaders of Pakistan, however--particularly those of West Pakistan--asserted
that the Islamic faith and a shared fear of "Hindu India" provided
an indestructible bond joining the two societies into one nation.
This assertion proved flawed, however. A culture of distrust grew
between the two wings, fueled by imbalances of representation
in the government and military. Furthermore, Bengali politicians
argued that the economic "underdevelopment" of East Pakistan was
a result of the "internal colonialism" of the rapacious capitalist
class of West Pakistan. In the final analysis, real and perceived
iniquities would fray this "indestructible" bond holding the country
together. Less than a quarter century after the country's founding,
Pakistan would fission, the eastern wing becoming the independent
nation of Bangladesh.
It was not Pakistan's precarious security nor even its cultural
and ethnic diversity, but rather characteristics deeply rooted
in the nation's polity that most impeded its early democratic
development. The essentials for such a process-- disciplined political
parties and a participatory mass electorate--were missing in Pakistan's
first years as an independent state. The All-India Muslim League,
the party that led the struggle for Pakistan, failed to mature
into a stable democratic party with a national following capable
of holding together the nation's diverse ethnic and cultural groups.
Instead, it disintegrated into rival factions soon after independence.
Lack of a consensus over prospective Islamic provisions for the
nation's governance, Bengali resentment over the West Pakistanis'
initial imposition of Urdu as the national language, and the reluctance
of West Pakistani politicians to share power with politicians
of the East Wing--all were factors that delayed the acceptance
of Pakistan's first constitution until nine years after independence.
The nation was also dealt a severe psychological blow when in
September 1948, only thirteen months after independence, Mohammad
Ali Jinnah--known reverentially as the Quaid-i-Azam (Great Leader)--died.
Jinnah's role in the creation of Pakistan had been so dominant
that it has been observed that he had neither peers nor associates,
only lieutenants and aides. Jinnah's primary lieutenant, Liaquat
Ali Khan, the nation's first prime minister, was assassinated
in October 1951.
Jinnah's and Liaquat's leadership, so critical to the nation
in its infancy, was replaced in the early and mid-1950s by the
generally lackluster, often inept performances of the nation's
politicians. Those few politicians who were effective were all
too willing to play upon the emotions of an electorate as yet
unaccustomed to open democratic debate. The ethnic and provincial
causes championed by these politicians too often took precedence
over national concerns. The government was weak and unable to
quell the violence and ethnic unrest that distracted it from building
strong parliamentary institutions.
Believing that Pakistan's first attempt at establishing a parliamentary
system of government failed, in the late 1950s the military ousted
the "inefficient and rascally" politicians. During this period,
however, the belief that democracy was the "natural state" of
Pakistan and an important political goal was not entirely abandoned.
Mohammad Ayub Khan, Pakistan's first "soldier-statesman," regarded
himself as more of a reformer than an autocrat and, as chief martial
law administrator, early on acknowledged the need to relinquish
some military control. In his unique governmental system called
the "Basic Democracies," Ayub Khan became the "civilian" head
of a military regime. Ayub Khan's "democracy from above" allowed
for controlled participation of the electorate and was supposed
to capture the peculiar "genius" of Pakistan. To his critics,
however, Ayub Khan's political system was better characterized
as a form of "representational dictatorship." In 1969 an ailing
Ayub Khan was forced to resign following nationwide rioting against
his regime's perceived corruption, spent economic policies, and
responsibility for Pakistan's defeat in the 1965 Indo-Pakistani
War over Kashmir. Ayub Khan was briefly succeeded by his army
commander in chief, General Mohammad Yahya Khan, who would best
be remembered for presiding over the two most traumatic and psychologically
devastating events in the country's history: the humiliating defeat
of Pakistan's armed forces by India and the secession of East
Pakistan.
The East Wing of Pakistan had not benefitted greatly from Ayub
Khan's "Decade of Progress," with its gains in agricultural production
and trade. Bengali politicians wanted to improve what they considered
to be the second-class political and economic status of their
province vis-à-vis West Pakistan, just as they had earlier agitated
for greater cultural and linguistic recognition. The country's
first nationwide direct elections were held in December 1970.
The East Pakistan-based Awami League, campaigning on a platform
calling for almost total provincial autonomy, won virtually all
the seats allotted to the East Wing and was thereby assured a
majority in the national legislature.
The results of Pakistan's first nationwide experiment in democracy
were not honored. Fearing Bengali dominance in the nation's political
affairs, West Pakistani politicians, led by Pakistan People's
Party (PPP) leader Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and supported by senior
army officers, most of whom were Punjabis, pressured Yahya Khan
to postpone the convening of the National Assembly. When the Bengalis
of East Pakistan revolted openly at this turn of events, the Pakistani
military banned the Awami League, arrested its leader, Sheikh
Mujibur Rahman, and began a massive military crackdown. In the
savage civil war that followed, tens of thousands of Bengalis
were killed, and an estimated 10 million people took refuge in
India. In early December 1971, India entered the war and within
weeks decisively defeated the Pakistan military. From the aftermath
of the war and the dismemberment of Pakistan came the birth of
a new nation: Bangladesh.
To most Pakistanis, the news of Pakistan's defeat came as a numbing
shock--their military was disgraced and condemned for its brutal
crackdown in East Pakistan. Literally overnight, the country had
lost its status as the largest Muslim nation in the world. Gone,
too, were any illusions of military parity with India.
Pakistan soon recovered under the charismatic leadership of Zulfiqar
Ali Bhutto, who launched a forceful campaign to restore the people's
self-confidence and to repair Pakistan's tarnished image abroad.
Initially, Bhutto was sworn in as president and chief martial
law administrator, the two positions he took over from Yahya Khan.
Although he soon revoked formal martial law, he governed autocratically
until he was overthrown in 1977.
A man of contradictions, a product of a privileged feudal background,
the Western-educated Bhutto nonetheless expounded populist themes
of shared wealth, national unity, and the need to restore political
democracy under the slogan "Islam our Faith, Democracy our Polity,
Socialism our Economy." Bhutto nationalized a large number of
the most important manufacturing, insurance, and domestically
owned banking industries--actions that substantially slowed economic
growth.
By the mid-1970s, Bhutto's autocratic tendencies were interfering
with his ability to govern. His determination to crush any and
all potential opposition had become obsessive. Bhutto purged his
party of real or imagined opponents, created a praetorian security
force answerable only to himself, brought the prestigious civil
service under his personal control, and sacked military officers
who possessed what he described as "Bonapartist tendencies." Fatefully,
Bhutto then named General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq--a relatively junior
and obscure general--to hold the top army post. Most observers
had predicted that Bhutto's PPP would retain control of the National
Assembly in the elections of March 1977, but the margin of the
PPP's victory was so overwhelming that charges of fraud were immediately
made, and riots erupted throughout the country. General Zia was
well positioned to act against Bhutto. He abruptly informed the
nation that he had taken over as the chief martial law administrator
but assured the people that the military desired only to supervise
fair elections, which he said would be held in ninety days. This
was the first of many promises Zia did not keep. As election time
approached, Zia announced that criminal charges were being brought
against Bhutto and postponed the elections until after Bhutto
had been tried in court. Bhutto was found guilty of complicity
in murder of a political opponent, and later hanged. The memory
of Bhutto and the circumstances surrounding his fall became a
rallying cry for his daughter, Benazir, who, during the 1980s,
embraced the politics of revenge as she began her political ascent
in steadfast opposition to Zia and martial law.
Zia ul-Haq's eleven years of rule left a profound--and controversial--legacy
on Pakistani society. Zia's military junta differed in important
aspects from the earlier military regime of Ayub Khan. Like Zia,
Ayub Khan had been contemptuous of politicians; his style of governing
was autocratic in the tradition of the British Raj and its Mughal
predecessors. Nevertheless, Ayub Khan welcomed Western influences
in his quest for economic development, and he introduced various
reform measures, such as the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance, which
provided protection for women within their families. Moreover,
early in his rule, Ayub Khan isolated the army from the governmental
decision-making process and instead relied heavily on senior civil
servants and a few conservative politicians.
Zia's rule, by contrast, was notable for the high visibility
of a small number of army officers and for his fervent advocacy
of a more stringent version of Islamic orthodoxy. Zia made clear
his desire to supplant the prevailing legal system with Islamic
law, the sharia (see Glossary), and championed a role for Islam
that was more state directed and less a matter of personal choice.
He proclaimed that all laws had to conform with Islamic tenets
and values and charged the military with protecting the nation's
ideology as well as its territorial integrity. His establishment
of the Federal Shariat Court to examine laws in light of the injunctions
of Islam further involved the state in religious affairs.
The crucial and perplexing question of the role Islam should
play in Pakistan existed before the creation of the nation and
remains unresolved today. Jinnah, himself, supplied a historical
reference to the dilemma, stating in his inaugural address, "You
will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus
and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense,
because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in
the political sense as citizens of the State." Although each of
Pakistan's indigenous constitutions has defined Pakistan as an
Islamic state, determining what this means in practice has usually
been left open to individual preference. Zia elevated the tempo
of the debate over the role of Islam in Pakistani society by directly
involving the state with religion.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 and its nine-year
occupation of that country not only had a direct impact on Pakistani
society in general but also held vital importance for Zia's leadership,
influencing his domestic and international image as well as the
survivability of his regime. From the beginning of his rule, Zia
was regarded by much of the world community as a usurper of power
and as something of an international pariah. He furthered his
isolation by deciding, early in his regime, to pursue the development
of nuclear weapons, a program begun earlier by Bhutto. Building
on the long and close relationship between the United States and
Pakistan dating from the early years of the Cold War, United States
president Jimmy Carter and his administration worked energetically
but unsuccessfully to discourage Pakistan's nuclear program, and
finally suspending all economic and military aid on April 6, 1979.
The execution of Bhutto two days earlier that month had added
to United States displeasure with the Zia regime and Pakistan.
Relations with the United States soured further when a Pakistani
mob burned down the United States Embassy in November 1979.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan abruptly ended Pakistan's
estrangement from the United States. Within days, Pakistan once
again became Washington's indispensable frontline ally against
Soviet expansionism. Massive military and economic assistance
flowed into Pakistan despite Zia's continued pursuit of nuclear
weapons technology. Pakistan's nuclear program made major advances
in the 1980s. Moreover, the change in geostrategic circumstances
following the occupation of neighboring Afghanistan allowed Zia
to postpone the promised elections repeatedly while he consolidated
his position. Foreign assistance provided a stimulus to the economy
and became an important means by which Zia neutralized his opponents.
The war, depicted by Zia and the Afghan resistance as a holy war
of believers versus nonbelievers, facilitated Zia's efforts to
transform Pakistan into a state governed by Islamic law.
The war in Afghanistan had many profound and disturbing residual
effects on Pakistani society. Pakistan absorbed more than 3.2
million Afghan refugees into its North-West Frontier Province
and Balochistan. The influx of so many displaced people threatened
to overwhelm the local economies as refugees competed with Pakistanis
for resources. With the refugees came an arsenal of weapons. Domestic
violence increased dramatically during the war years, and observers
spoke dismally of a "Kalashnikov culture" asserting itself in
Pakistani society.
By the time of Zia's death in an airplane explosion in August
1988, an agreement had been signed signaling the end of Soviet
military intervention in Afghanistan, and the Soviet pullout had
already begun. Domestic politics in Pakistan were surprisingly
tranquil as Pakistan prepared for a transition of power and elections
for the National Assembly, which Zia had earlier dissolved. An
era seemed to have ended and a new, more promising one to have
begun. The prospect for genuine democracy in Pakistan appeared
to have dramatically improved, and Pakistan appeared to have reached
a watershed in its political development.
After her party won a plurality of seats in the parliamentary
elections of November 1988, Benazir Bhutto formed a fragile coalition
government and assumed the position of prime minister. She became
the first freely elected leader in Pakistan since her father was
deposed and the first woman to hold such a high position in a
Muslim country. Confronted by severe disadvantages from the start,
Benazir soon discovered that the art of governance was considerably
more difficult than orchestrating opposition politics. An experienced
politician but an inexperienced head of government, she was outmaneuvered
by her political opposition, intimidated by the military, and
diverted from her reform program. Benazir was also frustrated
by her inability to control the spreading social disorder, the
widespread banditry, and the mounting ethnic violence between
Sindhis and muhajirs in her home province of Sindh. A
prolonged struggle between Bhutto and the provincial government
of Mian Nawaz Sharif in Punjab culminated in bureaucrat-turned-
president Ghulam Ishaq Khan's siding with Nawaz Sharif against
Benazir. Empowered by the Eighth Amendment provisions of the constitution--a
direct legacy of the Zia ul-Haq regime, which strengthened the
powers of the president at the expense of the prime minister--Ishaq
Khan dismissed Benazir in August 1990 for alleged corruption and
her inability to maintain law and order. He also dismissed her
cabinet and dissolved the National Assembly as well as the Sindh
North-West Frontier Province provincial assemblies and ordered
new elections for October.
The elections brought Nawaz Sharif's Islamic Democratic Alliance
(Islami Jamhoori Ittehad--IJI) coalition to power, and for a brief
period there appeared to be a workable relationship between the
new prime minister and the president. Yet this alliance soon unraveled
over policy differences, specifically over the question of who
had the power to appoint the top army commander. In charges similar
to those Ishaq Khan had before brought against Benazir, Nawaz
Sharif was accused in early 1993 of "corruption and mismanagement."
Nawaz Sharif, like Benazir before him, was dismissed and the Parliament
dissolved--without a vote of confidence ever having been taken
in the legislature. This time, however, the Supreme Court overturned
the president's action, declaring it unconstitutional. The court
restored both the prime minister and the parliament. The Supreme
Court's ruling, which served as a stunning rebuke to Ishaq Khan,
succeeded in defusing his presidentially engineered crisis and,
more important, allowed Ishaq Khan's opponents to boldly challenge
the legitimacy of the civil-military bureaucracy that had so often
interrupted the process of democratic nation building.
The crisis in government continued as Ishaq Khan, still resolved
to undermine the prime minister, brazenly manipulated provincial
politics, dissolving the provincial assemblies in Punjab and the
North-West Frontier Province. Fears of military intervention and
the reimposition of martial law loomed as the ongoing feud between
the president and prime minister threatened to bring effective
government to a standstill. Although the army ultimately intervened
in mid-1993 to break the stalemate and convinced both men to step
down, fears of a military takeover were unfounded. The army proved
sensitive to the spirit of the times and exercised admirable restraint
as it assumed a new and benign role as arbiter rather than manipulator
of the nation's politics.
A caretaker government led by World Bank official Moeen Qureshi
was installed in July 1993, with the mandate to preside over new
elections for the national and provincial assemblies. The caretaker
government surprised everyone by its vigor and impressed Pakistanis
and international observers alike. During his three-month tenure,
Qureshi earned the accolade "Mr. Clean" by initiating an impressive
number of reform measures. Qureshi published lists of unpaid debts
and prevented debtor-politicians from running for office. He also
devalued the currency and cut farm subsidies and public-service
expenditures. Because the Qureshi caretaker government was temporary
and not much constrained by the realpolitik of Pakistani society,
observers doubted that any succeeding government would be able
to match its record and boldness of action.
In October 1993, Qureshi fulfilled his primary mandate of holding
new elections for the national and provincial assemblies. The
contest was now between two staunch adversaries--Nawaz Sharif
and Benazir Bhutto--and their respective parties. Although Benazir's
PPP received less of the popular vote than Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan
Muslim League (PML-N), it won a narrow plurality of seats in the
National Assembly, enabling Benazir to form a government. Presidential
elections were held in November and Farooq Leghari, a member of
Benazir's party, won, thereby strengthening her position.
In a political culture that traditionally placed great emphasis
on the personal characteristics of its leaders and considerably
less on the development of its democratic institutions, the personality
of these leaders has always been of paramount, and many would
argue exaggerated, importance. The case of Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's
prime minister in mid-1995, is no exception. Benazir's return
to the pinnacle of Pakistani politics in October 1993 was portrayed
with great theater as a redemptive second coming for the country's
self-proclaimed "Daughter of Destiny." Benazir pledged this time
to fulfill some of the promises she had failed to keep during
her first tenure as prime minister. These included calming the
potentially explosive ethnic problems in the country, strengthening
a treasury overburdened with debt, reconstructing a financial
system weakened by corruption, managing a burgeoning population
with inadequate access to social services and one making heavy
demands on the country's fragile ecology, enforcing women's rights
in a decidedly male-dominated society, and forging a consensus
on the role of Islam in contemporary Pakistani society. Above
all, Benazir promised to steer Pakistan further along the road
to democracy--a difficult and sensitive task in a country whose
power structure has traditionally been authoritarian and whose
politics has been socially divisive and confrontational.
As before, Benazir faces a continual challenge from Nawaz Sharif's
Punjab-based PML-N, which appears to be pursuing the same strategy
of zero-sum politics that succeeded in paralyzing her first government.
For a short while, following Benazir's return to power, her public
rhetoric and that of her opponent seemed less confrontational
than before and tended to stress themes of political stability,
cooperation, and accommodation. This period of détente was short-lived,
however, as a familiar pattern in Pakistani politics soon reasserted
itself, with vigorous opposition attempts to bring down the Benazir
government. Unrestrained and sometimes chimerical criticism fueled
opposition-orchestrated general strikes, which continued unabated
throughout 1994 and into 1995. In response, Benazir branded her
opposition as traitorous and "antistate." By the end of the first
half of 1995, relations had become so vitriolic between Benazir
and Nawaz Sharif that in June, Nawaz Sharif accused Benazir of
being "part of the problem" of the escalating violence in Karachi,
and Benazir, for her part, leveled an accusation of treason against
the former prime minister and chief rival, only months after her
government had arrested Nawaz Sharif's father for alleged financial
crimes.
Promising to be true to her reform agenda, Benazir unveiled a
government budget in June 1994 that called for lowering import
duties, making the rupee convertible on the current account, broadening
the tax base, and holding down defense spending. These measures
will be strengthened by Pakistan's receipt of most of the US$2.5
billion in aid that it requested at a meeting of international
donors in 1994. In order to receive US$1.4 billion in preferential
International Monetary Fund (IMF--see Glossary) credits, Pakistan
agreed to a three-year structural adjustment program of fiscal
austerity and deficit cutting. Under guidelines set by the IMF,
Pakistan hopes to raise its gross domestic product (GDP--see Glossary)
growth to an average of 6.5 percent per year while eventually
bringing down inflation to 5 percent. Whether this goal can be
reached depends largely on raising Pakistan's export earnings,
which suffered in the past few years primarily as a result of
a drought, a major flood, and a plant virus "leaf curl" that has
devastated cotton production.
Most observers believe that Pakistan's greatest economic advantage
is its people: the country possesses the reservoir of entrepreneurial
and technical skills necessary for rapid economic growth and development.
The textile industry is especially critical to Pakistan's development.
This dynamic sector in the economy--a major producer of cotton
cloth and yarn--should benefit from the phaseout of textile import
quotas under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).
By late 1994, Pakistan's official foreign-exchange reserves had
risen from below US$300 million the previous year to more than
US$3 billion. The government's continuing strategy of privatizing
state-owned enterprises appears to be invigorating the economy
and attracting substantial foreign investment in the country's
stock exchanges. An optimistic Benazir stated that "Pakistan is
poised for an economic takeoff" and noted that in the "new world
of today, trade had replaced aid."
Although Pakistan's recent economic gains are encouraging, the
country faces a number of long-term impediments to growth. The
most serious of these are rapid population growth, governmental
neglect of social development, continued high inflation and unemployment,
a bloated and inefficient bureaucracy, widespread tax evasion
and corruption, a weak infrastructure, and defense expenditures
that consume more than 25 percent (some estimates are as high
as 40 percent) of government spending.
Benazir will also need to address Pakistan's most pressing social
problems if her reform program is to have a lasting effect. Many
of these problems are caused by the skewed distribution of resources
in Pakistan. Although the middle class is growing, wealth has
remained largely in the control of the nation's elite. Agitation
caused by the unfulfilled promise of rising expectations is fueled
by sophisticated media, which extend a glimpse of a better life
to every village and basti (barrio).
Pakistan must also work to protect its international image. In
mid-1995 human rights violations continued to be widely reported,
including arbitrary arrest and detention, torture of prisoners,
and incidents of extrajudicial killings by overzealous police,
most often in connection with government efforts to restore law
and order to troubled Sindh. The government, faced with unprecedented
levels of societal violence, has been forced to take strong action.
Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto pledged to use "ruthlessness" where
necessary to confront and to root out ethnic and religious militants.
Pakistan is also challenged by pervasive narcotics syndicates,
which wield great influence in Karachi, as well as in Peshawar
in the North-West Frontier Province. Pakistan has, along with
Afghanistan, become one of the world's leading producers of heroin,
supplying a reported 20 to 40 percent of the heroin consumed in
the United States and 70 percent of that consumed in Europe. Pakistan
also has an expanding domestic market for illicit drugs--a scourge
that is having a devastating effect on Pakistani society. The
Pakistan government estimates that there are 2.5 million drug
addicts in the country--1.7 million of them addicted to heroin.
A particularly worrisome problem is Pakistan's unwanted role
as a base for Islamic militants. These militants come from a wide
range of Arab countries, including Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Iraq,
Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan, as well as nations in Central
Asia and the Far East, and are mostly based in the North-West
Frontier Province. Many of these militants participated in the
war in Afghanistan but now serve other, often extremist, causes.
An attack that killed two American employees of the United States
consulate in Karachi in March 1995 has drawn international attention
to the growing terrorist activity in Pakistan.
Pakistan's most pressing foreign relations problem is still Kashmir.
India routinely accuses Pakistan of supporting a Kashmiri "intifadah"--a
Muslim uprising in Indian-controlled areas of Kashmir. The rebellion,
which is centered in the Vale of Kashmir, a scenic intermontane
valley with a Muslim majority, has claimed 20,000 lives since
1990. Pakistan claims only to have lent moral and political support
to Muslim and Sikh separatist sentiments in Kashmir and the Indian
state of Punjab, respectively, while it accuses India of creating
dissension in Pakistan's province of Sindh. The Kashmir issue
has now broadened in scope and has taken on a new and ominous
dimension. In February 1993, then Central Intelligence Agency
Director James Woolsey testified before Congress that the arms
race between India and Pakistan represented the "most probable
prospect" for the future use of nuclear weapons. These sentiments
were echoed the following year by United Nations Secretary General
Boutros-Ghali, who cautioned that an escalation of hostilities
between Pakistan and India could lead to an accident, with "disastrous
repercussions." Tensions on the military Line of Control between
Pakistani-controlled Azad Kashmir and Indian-held Kashmir remained
high in mid-1995.
In August 1994, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif made an announcement
calculated to showcase his hardline stance on Kashmir, embarrass
Benazir's government, and further complicate its relations with
the United States over the two countries' most sensitive bilateral
issue--Pakistan's clandestine nuclear weapons program. He stated,
"If India dares to attack Azad Kashmir, it will have to face the
Pakistani atom bomb. I declare that Pakistan is in possession
of an atom bomb."
Nawaz Sharif's statement fortified the position of United States
supporters of the Pressler Amendment of the Foreign Assistance
Act, which has suspended United States aid and most military arms
sales to Pakistan since October 1990. Under the amendment, the
president must make the required annual certification to Congress
that Pakistan does not possess a nuclear weapon. The last certification
had been given, guardedly by President George Bush in November
1989.
The timing of Nawaz Sharif's statement also threatened to undermine
President William J. Clinton's earlier South Asian nonproliferation
initiative: a proposal to Congress to authorize the release to
Pakistan of twenty-eight F-16 fighter airplanes (purchased before
the aid cutoff) in return for a verifiable cap on Pakistan's production
of fissile nuclear material. In mid- 1995, following a visit to
the United States by Benazir Bhutto, the Clinton administration
and Congress appeared to be moving toward agreement to significantly
relax the Pressler Amendment and other "country specific" sanctions
that Pakistanis believe unfairly penalize their country for its
nuclear program while overlooking India's program. Relaxation
of the sanctions could yet be derailed as new accusations by United
States intelligence officials surfaced in the United States press
in early July 1995 alleging that Pakistan had surreptitiously
received fully operable medium-range M-11 ballistic missiles from
China. The Clinton administration, however, maintains that there
is no conclusive proof that the missiles have been delivered,
and until there is, there will be no change regarding sanctions.
Events in Pakistan point to a nation undergoing profound and
accelerated change but one very much indebted to its past. Change
in Pakistan is perhaps most turbulent in the metropolis of Karachi--Pakistan's
economic hub and a city whose well-being may offer a glimpse of
the future prospects of the nation. In mid- 1995 Karachi continued
to be plagued by a volatile combination of sectarian, ethnic,
political, and economic unrest. The city of more than 12 million
seems, in the words of one Pakistan watcher, to have fallen almost
into a Hobbesian state of "all against all," as religious, political,
and criminal gangs--many well armed--wage a battle for control.
In a city that is growing by more than 400,000 people a year and
has an unemployment rate as high as 14 percent, recruits for feuding
religious and political factions are easily available. The violence
left as many as 1,000 dead in 1994 and showed little sign of abating
in 1995. The army, ordered to provide a measure of security for
the city, pulled out in December 1994 after a two- and one-half-year
presence, tiring of its policeman role and mindful that Karachi's
streets were becoming too dangerous for its troops.
There are many explanations for the lawlessness and disorder
in Karachi. Economists cite rampant economic growth. Sociologists
cite problems arising from Sunni (see Glossary) and Shia (see
Glossary) divisions in Islam and from linguistic and ethnic competition,
primarily between Urdu-speaking muhajirs and native Sindhis.
The government complains of unruly political parties that are
sometimes too willing to include criminal and drug-trafficking
elements in their ranks, and it even raises the specter of the
"hidden hand" of Indian agents provocateurs intent on destabilizing
Pakistan.
In the final analysis, Karachi may present the greatest risk
as well as the greatest potential for the nation's future. Some
observers are predicting that the success or failure of Benazir's
leadership will ultimately rest on how she manages or fails to
manage the crisis in Karachi. On the one hand, if the city continues
to be mired in anarchy and violence, its reputation as a cosmopolitan
symbol of the new Pakistan will be tarnished. If security does
not improve, foreign investors are likely to stay away, delaying
Pakistan's much-anticipated economic takeoff. On the other hand,
if the situation in Pakistan's largest "urban laboratory" improves,
the lessons learned can be applied elsewhere in the nation.
Benazir's father, former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto,
in 1977 wrote, "Politics is not the conversion of a flowering
society into a wasteland. Politics is the soul of life. It is
my eternal romance with the people. Only the people can break
this eternal bond." These words high lighted his philosophy of
bringing politics to the street and deriving strength from the
masses. This philosophy served his daughter well during her years
as an opposition figure but considerably less so during her first
term as prime minister. Whether or not Benazir can keep the allegiance
of the people while presiding over the maturation of Pakistan's
democratic institutions will largely depend on her understanding
of her nation's complex political legacy.
July 10, 1995
Peter R. Blood
Data as of April 1994
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