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Pakistan

Pakistan was carved out of British India in 1947 as a homeland for South Asian Muslims. Historically, the military has exercised great political influence, even during periods of civilian rule. Though nominally secular, the state has long appealed to Islam as a bridge over the country’s complex ethnic, linguistic and sectarian divides. Repeated geopolitical crises have diverted the state’s attention from severe problems of poverty and public health.

The regime of Gen. Zia ul Haq, who staged a 1977 coup, has left particularly enduring legacies. Pakistan has always sought a malleable Afghanistan, both to gain “strategic depth” in the perennial rivalry with India and to dilute cross-border solidarity between ethnic Pashtuns, who in Pakistan are a large, impoverished minority. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, US and Saudi aid helped Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate to train Communist-fighting mujahideen (many of them Pashtuns). At the same time, Zia undertook an extensive domestic “Islamization” program that slowly transformed society. Among the remnants of this program are the well-funded madrassas that produced the Taliban and harsh “blasphemy” and “anti-adultery” laws used to persecute religious minorities and women. After 1990, Pakistani governments also backed Islamist insurgents in Indian-controlled Kashmir.

Civilian rule was last interrupted in 1999, when Gen. Pervez Musharraf overthrew the elected government. The US had imposed extensive trade sanctions in 1998, after Pakistan conducted tests of nuclear weapons in response to Indian tests. These sanctions were lifted when Washington required Pakistani cooperation in Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

A sham referendum in 2002 extended Musharraf’s self-declared presidency for five years. That December, a constitutional restoration stipulated that Musharraf would resign as army chief, yet in 2004 he announced that he would retain that role as well. The coalition of Islamist parties that came to power in the heavily Pashtun Northwest Frontier Province in 2002 has so far acquiesced in the extension of military rule. Meanwhile, Pakistani security services are believed, once again, to be supporting the Taliban across the Afghan border.


Facts and Figures »