Establishment of All India Muslim League [1906]

On December 30 1906, the annual meeting of Muhammadan Educational Conference was held at Dhaka under the chairmanship of Nawab Viqar-ul-Mulk. Almost 3,000 delegates attended the session making it the largest-ever representative gathering of Muslim India. For the first time the conference lifted its ban on political discussion, when Nawab Salim Ullah Khan presented a proposal for establish a political party to safeguard the interests of the Muslims; the All India Muslim League. Three factors had kept Muslims away from the Congress, Sir Syed's advice to the Muslims to give it a wide berth, Hindu agitation against the partition of Bengal and the Hindu religious revivalism's hostility towards the Muslims. The Muslims remained loyal to Sir Syed's advice but events were quickly changing the Indian scene and politics were being thrust on all sections of the population.
But the main motivating factor was that the Muslims' intellectual class wanted representation; the masses needed a platform on which to unite. It was the dissemination of western thought by John Locke, Milton and Thomas Paine, etc. at the M. A. O. College that initiated the emergence of Muslim nationalism.

Allama Muhammad Iqbal [1877-1938] THE POET-PHILOSOPHER

Iqbal, great poet-philosopher and active political leader, was born at Sialkot, Punjab, in 1877. He descended from a family of Kashmiri Brahmins, who had embraced Islam about 300 years earlier. Iqbal received his early education in the traditional maktab. Later he joined the Sialkot Mission School, from where he passed his matriculation examination. In 1897, he obtained his Bachelor of Arts Degree from Government College, Lahore. Two years later, he secured his Masters Degree and was appointed in the Oriental College, Lahore, as a lecturer of history, philosophy and English. He later proceeded to Europe for higher studies. Having obtained a degree at Cambridge, he secured his doctorate at Munich and finally qualified as a barrister.
He returned to India in 1908. Besides teaching and practicing law, Iqbal continued to write poetry. He resigned from government service in 1911 and took up the task of propagating individual thinking among the Muslims through his poetry.

He returned to India in 1908. Besides teaching and practicing law, Iqbal continued to write poetry. He resigned from government service in 1911 and took up the task of propagating individual thinking among the Muslims through his poetry.

1928, his reputation as a great Muslim philosopher was solidly established and he was invited to deliver lectures at Hyderabad, Aligarh and Madras. These series of lectures were later published as a book "The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam". In 1930, Iqbal was invited to preside over the open session of the Muslim League at Allahabad. In his historic Allahabad Address, Iqbal visualized an independent and sovereign state for the Muslims of North-Western India. In 1932, Iqbal came to England as a Muslim delegate to the Third Round Table Conference.
In later years, when the Quaid had left India and was residing in England, Allama Iqbal wrote to him conveying to him his personal views on political problems and state of affairs of the Indian Muslims, and also persuading him to come back. These letters are dated from June 1936 to November 1937. This series of correspondence is now a part of important historic documents concerning Pakistan's struggle for freedom.
On April 21, 1938, the great Muslim poet-philosopher and champion of the Muslim cause, passed away. He lies buried next to the Badshahi Mosque in Lahore.

allama iqbal

Students of Minhaj University visit the shrine of Allama Muhammad Iqbal (RA)

Translated by: Amanat Ali Chaudhary

On behalf of Chairman Board of Governors of Minhaj University, Shaykh-ul-Islam Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri, a delegation of its students led by Deputy Registrar G.M. Malik visited the shrine of the poet of East Dr Allama Muhammad Iqbal (RA) on the occasion of his 70th death anniversary. The delegation also comprised of central leaders of Pakistan Awami Tehreek namely Deputy Secretary Sohail Ahmad Raza, Deputy Director Protocol to Shaykh-ul-Islam Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri, Imtiaz Ahmad Awan, Deputy Director Foreign Affairs Shakeel Ahmad Tahir, Protocol Officer DFA Rana Muhammad Nafees, Nadeem Ahmad Awan and others. Later on grandson of Allama Iqbal, Muhammad Muneeb Iqbal, Chairman of Nazria Pakistan Trust and prominent journalist, Majeed Nizami, former Vice Chancellor Punjab University Dr Muhammad Rafeeq, Prof Muhammad Muzaffar Mirza, Prof Dr Sarfraz Hussain Mirza, President of Central Iqbal Association Justice (r) Sardar Muhammad Doager joined the delegation. The members of delegation from COSIS included Prof Abbas Naqisbandi, Rana Muhammad Ikram, President Bazm-e-Minhaj Khurram Shahzad, Mumtaz Shakir Sabri, Hafeez Kiyani and other students.

The delegation of Minhaj University laid the wreath of flowers on the grave of Allama Iqbal (RA) on behalf of the Chief Executive of Minhaj University Shaykh-ul-Islam Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri. A special meeting was also arranged at this occasion where the students recited the 'Kalam' of Allama Iqbal (RA). Talking to media at this occasion Deputy Registrar G.M. Malik said that the passion for freedom which Allama Muhammad Iqbal ignited is still existent in the Pakistani nation today. It is the person of Allama Iqbal to whom we as a nation owe our freedom and achievements. He said the students of Minhaj University visited his shrine that day to pay him tribute for his services in the cause of Islam and Pakistan. He also said we resolved to leave no stone unturned to translate Iqbal's dream into reality. Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri has called Allama Iqbal 'guide and mentor'. Allama Iqbal (RA) has derived his thought from the holy Quran, the Holy Prophet (saw) and his spiritual mentor Maula e Roum. He said Allama Iqbal (RA) saw a dream, which the Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah turned into reality but its accomplishment still remains to be achieved for which Shaykh-ul-Islam Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri was making strenuous efforts. At the end of the programme, Principal Secretary to Shaykh-ul-Islam G.M. led the prayers.

WAS MUHAMMAD ALI JINNAH A FREEMASO?

WAS MUHAMMAD ALI JINNAH A FREEMASO?

There are ongoing speculations nowadays on the Internet, regarding the issue whether the Quaid (Muhammad Ali Jinnah) was a Freemason. And believe me, I myself have been doing extensive thorough research on this topic for quite some time now.
It is a fact that during his teenage youth the Quaid had gone to the U.K. for higher studies. And he graduated with distiction from Lincoln's Inn, later to be called to the bar at 11 Kings Bench Walk during his stay at Hampstead. The Quaid, while still in the U.K., had also eagerly joined the notorious "Fabian Society", a reformist-Socialist party whose members included Freemasons George Bernard Shaw and Annie Besant, to name a few. In fact, the official Theosophical Order of Service in Pakistan records that the Quaid was so deeply inspired and influenced by Besant that he called her as "Amma" (mother) [Source: The Theosophical Order of Service, Karachi, Pakistan. Managed by Jamshed Mirza]
Annie Besant was world-renowned Theosophist and the founder of Co-Freemasonry, an irregular branch of Masonry which included participation of women equally with men in all the rituals and rites that the Order possessed. Annie Besant was herself influenced by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, the "Black Woman" (black in the sense of character) who wrote the esoteric voluminous works such as "Isis Unveiled" and "The Secret Doctrine".
I believe that the Quaid, being a man of great knowledge and repute as we do consider him to be, must have known about the gathering in which he was. But it is notable to mention here that he soon parted ways with Besant, some years after she had formed the Home Rule League in India, an exact subcontinental replica of the Irish Home League which she also very repeatedly supported.
Did the Quaid not know what sort of woman Annie Besant was? Probably he realised this later and hence, as mentioned earlier, parted ways with her.
We'll go a little bit more back in history from here to the time when the Quaid was struggling to get Dadabhoy Naoroji elected as an MP at Central Finsbury. Naoroji was not only an orthodox Parsi priest ("Athurman") but also had written various volumes of work on Zoroastrian history and wisdom [Source: Wikipedia]. He was also a Freemason, member of both Lodge Southern Brotherhood No. 3311 E.C. and the Lodge South Cannanore No. 234.
There's little chance of the Quaid having known of Naoroji's Masonic connections because even in those days, such identities were extremely hidden and secret, away from public knowledge, only to be rarely discovered in the same years or in the coming future.
The Quaid included among his friends Mr. Ebrahim Currimbhoy, another Freemason and member of the Lodge Cannanore No. 234.
It is a little known fact that the Quaid was a Khoja Ismaili by birth, which means his spiritual leader i.e. Imam was the Agha Khan. In those days, it was Sir Sultan Muhammad Shah Agha Khan. And again interestingly enough, the Agha Khan of that time was a member of the Grand Lodge of India A.F. & A.M. (Bombay). Though accounts of the Quaid's driver Abdul Hayy do state that he was not a very religious Muslim, there is a good reason to believe that somehow or the other the Quaid must have been influenced by his "Imam". There was a case upon which I stumbled a few months ago, wherein it was stated that upon the Quaid's death, Fatima Jinnah had gone to the Court to get the Quaid's wealth divided according to Ismaili Law. She was assisted by Liaquat Ali Khan. But like the present Iqbal Waljee, some other Waljee (probably the present's ancestor) at the time had rejected such an act because according to him "Jinnah had converted to Sunni Islam in 1901" and hence his Will could not have been announced according to Jafari jurisprudence. Allah Knows Best!
This case alone is interesting because we all know that the Agha Khan was the only Muslim leader who was given the Guard of Honor and the Royal Salute by the British Army because of his countless services to the British Raj. So then why would a faithful Britisher want to, on the other hand, help in the formation of Pakistan which was totally against the British interests? What benefits did he foresee which led to his being elected as the first President of the Muslim League and as the Chairman of the team that went to meet Lord Minto? Allah Knows Best.
When the Ali Brothers (Maulana Johar Ali & Maulana Shaukat Ali) started the Khilafat Movement in 1919, with the 'helpful assistance' of Mohandas Gandhi, the Quaid was personally opposed to the "religious fanaticism" that followed and though he still admired the British progress, he in part remained neutral because at the end it was a matter of the Muslim Ummah as a collective whole, not just a nation-state (Turkey) that was at stake, with the "Hijaz-e-Muqaddas" (Sacred/Holy Sites) in danger of being controlled or demolished (Allah forbid) by the Imperialist regime of Britain and her Allies.
It was Allama Sir Dr. Muhammad Iqbal who had written quite many letters of persuasion to the Quaid to come to India:"I know you are a busy man but I do hope you won't mind my writing to you often, as you are the only Muslim in India today to whom the community has right to look up for safe guidance through the storm which is coming to North-West India and, perhaps, to the whole of India."
The Quaid's repeated links with the Zoroastrians of India is also interesting. His wife Rattanbai was a Parsi who had converted to Islam before marriage. The man who the Quaid had helped for a long time was a Parsi intellect (Dadabhoy). And it was the Quaid's own daughter Dina who had married Dinshaw Vadia, the son of a renowned Parsi industrialist of India.
Anyways, whatver the cases filed may be, no one can disprove the facts that not only countless Muslims had to go through lots of troubles and bloodshed, even the Quaid himself along with his family had to endure seams of harassment and criticism because they were destined to create an Islamic state of Pakistan.
We can never truly realize or feel the immense amount of pressure and blackmail that the Quaid must have faced form the Britishers and the West, especially from the Israeli lobbies and the Jews. Lord Balfour must have surely gone mad when an Islamic state by the name of "Pakistan" came into formation a year before that of a Jewish state!
And it was the Quaid himself who said that Israel was "the illegitimate child of the West". Such was the Quaid's passion. Similarly on Liaquat Ali Khan, this is what Wikipedia has to say:
According to a document declassified in 2006, USA was involved in the killing of Liaqat Ali Khan, then prime minister of Pakistan. Liaqat Ali Khan had refused to dance on US tunes. The type of bullet used to kill the Pakistani prime minister were in "use by high-ranking American officers", and were "not usually available in the market" [Reference: "Declassified Papers Shed Light on US Role in Liaquat's Murder" by Syed Rashid]
Furthermore, when Liaquat Ali Khan had gone to the States and had been given a lavish reception by the Jewish leaders and also great offers and invitations, he straight-forwardly refused and rejected all of them.
Even though I'm a Sunni Muslim and the Quaid was an Ismaili and Liaquat Ali Khan was also a Sunni, I believe in Allah's Potency to do anything whenver He Wants. Thorugh the astound personalities of the Quaid and Liaquat Ali Khan, Allah gave a sea of blessings to the Muslims of the time, even to us. It is Allah Who let us create a nation state in the name of Islam, so that in the future the Army of Imam Mahdi can rise from here too, apart from Afghanistan (Allah Knows Best). That age was surely one in which sectarian outlook was not the sight of the leaders... the true "General" Islam was the light by which those men saw.
And as far as I'm concerned, to be very honest, I have not come across a single source which has definite provocative proof that the Quaid was a Freemason. He had truly felt motivated to furthermore spearhead the Muslim Community's aims to establish a nation state in the name of Islam. All the Masonic hierarchies are bound to the Grand Masonic Arch in Israel i.e. Zionists. And if the Quaid were a Freemason, would his fellow "Obedient Brothers" have allowed him to create a state that was fundamentally opposed to Zionist interests? I don't think so.

best pic pakistan

Car with Pakistani Flag on the hood, passing through British roads, showing the LOVE for PAKISTAN and realizing the British rulers that We The NATION are now strong, Powerful and Emerging in the world.

She is too happy with Pakistani Flags, watching the festivities and saying “I LOVE YOU PAKISTAN”

This girl with flags painted on her face was among the crowds watching the festivities.

Most beautiful School girls with the Pakistani flags all around their faces.

A man wearing a garment with Pakistani colours and the words "Long live Pakistan" raised the flag at the crossing.

Ceremonies are taking place across Pakistan as the nation celebrates 61 years since the end of British colonial rule.

Notice the LOVE and Patriotism for Nation on his Innocent Face

World’s Largest Flag (340 x 610)

Women?s Role in Pakistan Movment

Pakistan is a great blessing for all of us. Our forefathers struggled hard for the achievement of Pakistan under the dynamic leadership of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah

Great leaders from all over the sub-continent were in the forefront in the fight for freedom and our women stood side by side with them. They went from house to house to raise funds for the Pakistan Movement, to prepare and encourage their men to make sacrifice for the attainment of Pakistan and to organise meetings and processions to attract the attention of the world to their great cause of independence.
In Punjab, Lady Maratab Ali formed Women?s Committee and enrolled hundreds of women as its members. Fatima Begum, a very brave and learned educationist was General Secretary of this Committee. The committee organised many meetings in the Punjab, some of which were addressed by Quaid-e-Azam personally.
Miss Fatima Jinnah made untiring efforts in looking after Quaid-e-Azam and helping him in every way. Miss Fatima Jinnah, Begum Muhammad Ali Johar, Begum Shah Nawaz, Lady Haroon, and Begum Salma Tassadduque Hussain addressed huge meetings throughout the province to educate the common man about freedom movement. Begum Rana Liaqat Ali Khan, the wife of the first Prime Minister of Pakistan, was another prominent leader. She travelled far and wide in the country to organise and address meetings to encourage the political workers.
The following interesting incident will show how bravely and courageously, women fought for independence.
When Pakistan Movement was in full swing a brave Muslim girl "Sughra Bi Bi", jumped over the seretariat gate and hoisted the Muslim League flag.
During the civil disobedience movement women like Begum Shah Nawaz, Fatima Begum, Begum Kakaa Khal, Miss Hassan Ara Hafeez Ullah and others were lathi charged and tear gassed and put behind the bars. When they were released from jail on 29th February, 1947. When they were protesting on the railway bridge in Peshawer, the driver of the train did not stop the train. The women lost their balance, fell down from the bridge and were seriously injured.
We cannot forget these brave women who put up a heroic fight for the achievement of Pakistan and without their active participation it would not have been possible to realise the dream of Pakistan that the grat poet Allama Dr. Muhammad Iqbal had seen many years before.

500 Rupees 2006 (Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah)

500 Rupees 2006 (Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah)

10 Rupees 2006 (Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah

10 Rupees 2006 (Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Khyber Pass Peshawar)

20 Rupees 2005 Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah;

20 Rupees 2005 Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah; Back Mohen-Jo-Daro, Larkana.

A Thousad Words: Aftershocks in Balochistan

Khaaki Pakistan, News and Media, Pakistan Newspapers, Baluchistan, History of Pakistan Saturday, November 1st, 2008
These pictures from the Associated Press need no commentary. They demand our attention. Our empathy. And, wherever we can, our action.

Mian Nawaz Sharif

The rise of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto created an opposition force. The families of those who suffered from his program of nationalization adamantly opposed him and his family's political careers. One of those was Mian Nawaz Sharif. Nawaz Sharif's family were major industrialists in the Punjab province, having moved there from Kashmir at Partition. With the loss of their traditional businesses in Punjab to Bhutto's nationalization the family became more entrepreneurial seeking new businesses to replace their losses.
Mian Nawaz Sharif Mian Nawaz Sharif went into local politics in the city of Lahore to represent the business class who sought moderation in government policy. He and his constituency adhered to a right-of-center politics with moderate Islamization. He stressed the maintaining of law and order and the encouragement of economic development through moderate governmental programs.
He rose to power at the provincial level. He first became the minister of finance for Punjab and then chief minister for Punjab. Punjab is the most populous province and about two thirds of Pakistan consider themselves Punjabi. About 60 percent have Punjabi as their native language. Therefore Punjabi politicians have a substantial political power base in national politics.
The political party that Nawaz Sharif belonged to and for which he was a major leader was the Pakistan Muslim League (PML). In the elections of 1990 that came after the death of Zia ul-Haq, the PML joined in a right-of-center coalition called the Islamic Democratic Alliance (ISI). The major opposition was the left-of-center coalition headed by Benazir Bhutto called the Pakistan Democratic Alliance (PDA). The principal force in the PDA was Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP).
In the 1990 election the IJI coalition won 105 seats in the National Assembly of the total 207 possible. Benazir Bhutto's PDA coalition won only 45. Mian Nawaz Sharif was allowed to form a government. He chose nine representatives from Punjab for his cabinet of 18. Six others came from the Sindh province.
Nawaz Sharif emphasized a program of economic development to deal with the crucial problem of unemployment. He tried to reform Pakistan's stultifying economic regulations and carry out the denationalization (privatization) of firms and industries that had be nationalized by the regimes of the Bhutto family. In addition to privatizing industries he promoted policy changes that allowed new firms to enter industries that had been previously closed to private business.
Nawaz Sharif extended Zia's program of Islamization. In 1991 the government passed the Shariat Law the required the laws of Pakistan to be consistent with the Koran and Islamic precepts. There were more fundamentalist parties which were members of his coalition that demanded such measures. Nawaz Sharif led his government to create a National Highway Authority (NHA) to physically link the country together and this NHA did carry out a billion dollar highway building program.
There were some financial scandals which took place during the regime of Nawaz Sharif. Benazir Bhutto in 1992 was organizing street demonstration to destabilize the country and force Nawaz Sharif from power. In 1993 the president of Pakistan under the power granted to him by the infamous Eighth Amendment to the Constitution dissolve the National Assembly and dismissed Nawaz Sharif's government.
About six weeks later the Supreme Court of Pakistan ruled that the dismissal of the National Assembly by the president of Pakistan was unconstitutional. Although Nawaz Sharif was ostensibly again prime minister he and the president both, in a political compromise, resigned their offices. In the October election Benazir Bhtto's party won enough seats in the National Assembly to allow her to become prime minister.
In February of 1997 the Pakistan Muslim League party headed by Nawaz Sharif won an overwhelming majority of the seats in the National Assembly and Sharif was made prime minister. With the legislative majority he commanded Sharif had passed a thirteenth amendment to the constitution which removed the power granted under the eight amendment for the president to dismiss the National Assembly. Sharif also had a fourteenth amendment passed that imposed party discipline on the legislators, meaning that a party leader could any members of the Assembly who failed to vote the way they were instructed.
When India detonated several nuclear device in 1998, Pakistan under the direction of Nawaz Sharif detonated one about two weeks later. These detonations did not mean that either nation had the means of delivering a nuclear bomb against the other. Nevertheless Nawaz Sharif was hailed within Pakistan for having restored Pakistan's national pride and prestige. India had first achieved a nuclear explosion in 1974 and so for about 24 years Pakistan had not faced this disparity with its major rival.
Although Nawaz Sharif's action was popular within Pakistan it resulted in severe repercussions with economic sanctions were imposed upon Pakistan by other countries, particularly the United States. Nevertheless Sharif used his popularity to justify the passage of a fifteenth amendment to constitution by the National Assembly that would have permitted him, as prime minister, to assume dictatorial powers in achieving an Islamization of the Pakistan's government. The amendment had to also be passed by the Senate of Pakistan for it to become law. Other political events intervened in this process.
The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan judged the thirteenth amendment to be unconstitutional and thus that the president to still have the power to dismiss the National Assembly. Other members of the Supreme Court disagreed with the Chief Justice. Supporters of Nawaz Sharif attacked the Supreme Court building. Thus a real constitutional crisis was imminent. The army chief of staff, General Jahangir Karamat, was asked to mediate the dispute. Karamat sided with Prime Minister Sharif and the President Leghari resigned.
Having defended his political power against the presidency and the Supreme Court Sharif then decided to take on the only other potential rival to his power, the military. Sharif in 1998 summarily dismissed General Jahangir Karamat as chief of staff of the army. Ostensibly the reason for the dismissal was Karamat making political statements in a public speech. The Pakistan military was displeased with the arbitrary dismissal of their leader without just cause. In the place Karamat, Sharif appointed Pervez Musharraf as army chief of staff. Sharif told Musharraf that a major factor in his selection was that Musharraf was the only one of the top army officials who had not sought the appointment. Pakistan leaders seem to always be looking for a military leader without political ambitions and to always be disappointed in their quest.
The relationship between Nawaz Sharif and Musharraf was soured by the Kargil Conflict. In 1999 India charged Pakistan with violations of the Simla Agreement for intrusions across the line separating Indian and Pakistani forces in the 1971 War over Kashmir and Jammu. Economic sanctions were imposed upon Pakistan and Nawaz Sharif was put under pressure by U.S. President William Clinton to withdraw Pakistani forces. The incident put Nawaz Sharif in the position of not having the army under his control. Perhaps at that time Nawaz Sharif decided to replace Musharraf as chief of staff of the army. But the head of the army must be deposed very carefully.
The opportunity for Nawaz Sharif to replace Musharraf came when Musharraf was flying on a commercial plane from Colombo, Sri Lanka to Karachi and thus out of touch with his military commanders. Nearing the Karachi airport the pilot of the plane found that he was being denied permission to land and ordered to leave Pakistan airspace immediately. There were 200 passengers on the plane and the attempt to land elsewhere on the limited fuel the plane contained would put the lives of those passengers at risk. When the pilot announced he was going to land the plane without permission the air-controller told him that there were three fire trucks blocking his landing. However about that time the Pakistan army gained control of the Karachi airport and cleared the plane for landing.
Musharraf found that Nawaz Sharif had announced that Musharraf had retired and another officer had been made chief of staff. Musharraf refused to accept his firing and declared martial law making himself chief administrator of Pakistan. Musharraf's takeover of the government took only about three hours. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his hand-picked President were arrested.
Nawaz Sharif was charged with the attempted hijacking of Musharraf's plane. In the year 2000 Nawaz Sharif was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. The Army however, at the request of Crown Prince (and now King) Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, commuted the sentence to exile in Saudi Arabia. Sharif was banned from political involvement for 21 years. Later Nazam Sharif was charged with corruption and given an additional sentence of 14 years.
In 2006 Sharif appealed to Musharraf to be allowed to leave Saudi Arabia and go to London to visit his seriously ill son. Musharraf granted his permission and Sharif went to London and did not return to Saudi Arabia. He also violated the terms of his agreement and began to engage in political commentaries concerning conditions in Pakistan. In September of 2007 Sharif attempted to return to Pakistan by air from London. He was not allowed to enter Pakistan and was sent back into exile in Saudi Arabia. At the end of November after former-prime minister Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan Sharif was allowed to enter Pakistan and engage in political activities.
(To be continued.)

Benazir Bhutto

From her family background and her education she was clearly destined to be a political leader in Pakistan. She was born in 1953 in Karachi, the first child of her parents. Her early education was in Christian schools because the Christian schools in Pakistan were the best schools for education. This early acquaintance with Western influence would beneficial in understanding the world outside of Pakistan.
To begin her higher education she was sent by her family to Harvard University (technically to Radcliffe College, the adjunct college for females of Harvard University). She did extraordinarily well at Harvard. She majored in comparative goverment and graduated cum laude and became a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the honorary society for academic excellence. After her four years (1969 to 1973) at Harvard she went on for graduate education at Oxford University in the United Kingdom. She pursued studies in philosophy, economics, politics, international law and diplomacy. Clearly she was preparing herself for leadership in Pakistan. She spent four years at Oxford (1973-1977) and was elected the president of the Oxford debating society.
She returned to Pakistan to political turmoil. Her father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, had been made Prime Minister in 1971 after the debacle of the separation of Bangladesh. That separation was caused in large part by the intransigence of Ali Bhutto. He ruled as Prime Minister until 1977 when he was deposed as a result of the military coup of Zia ul-Haq. Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan and was placed under house arrest. Her father was arrested and put on trial by Zia and ultimately hanged in 1979. For a period of time around the time of the execution of her father, Benazir and her mother were imprisoned by the Zia government.
In 1984 Benazir Bhutto was allowed to leave Pakistan and migrate to Britain. She later returned to Pakistan and in 1987 she married Asif Ali Zardari in Karachi. When elections were held in 1988 after the death of Zia ul-Haq, the People's Party of Pakistan (PPP) which Benazir Bhutto now controlled was able to form a government with Benazir as the Prime Minister. She tried to bring about reforms but that was not an easy task in Pakistan where any change is suspected of being Westernization.
In 1990 the President of Pakistan exercised his power to dismiss the government of Bhutto and the Punjabi leader, Nawaz Sharif, became Prime Minister. Sharif's government lasted until 1993 when new elections were held. Benazir Bhutto's PPP was again made prime minister. In 1996 another president again exercised the presidential power to dismiss a government and took Benazir Bhutto out of power. She served thereafter as the opposition leader until 1998 when she went into exile.
There were numerous charges of corruption placed against her for events occurring during the time she was in office. In 2007 the charges were dropped and she returned to Pakistan in October of 2007. She campaigned for the election to be held in early 2008. After a PPP rally in Rawalpindi on December 27th, as she was leaving she had her vehicle stopped to recognize a group of her supporters. She stood up through the sun roof to acknowledge the support of the crowd. Shots were fired and a bomb was detonated killed about twenty bystanders. Benazir Bhutto incurred a skull fracture in the incident and died in the hospital shortly afterwards.

General Zia ul-Haq

Mohammad Zia ul-Haq was chosen by Ali Bhutto to command the army in 1976. He was selected on the much the same basis as was Ayub Khan two and half decades before; i.e., that he did not belong to a major tribal-ethnic group and did not seem to have political ambitions. Zia was chosen over some more senior generals, probably in hopes that the passed-over generals would resent Zia's promotion and keep him in line out of jealousy. Bhutto was wrong, disastrously wrong.
Pervez Musharraf gives an insightful description of the events that led to Zia ul-Haq's deposing of Ali Bhutto.
Throughout this period the political scene became more and more murky. Bhutto's despotic, dictatorial, suppressive rule led to nation-wide discontent. He set up a Gestapo-like force called the Federal Security Force (FSF) that was much hated and feared. His interpersonal dealings with friends, colleagues, and foes were so arrogant and degrading that people hated him but were too frighten to express their feelings openly. He set up concentration camps in a place called Dalai where opponents were "fixed." […]
In this environment Bhutto ventured his first election, in 1977, to prove his legitimacy. The opposition formalized its unity into a political alliance called the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA). Either Bhutto became unnerved during the election campaign or he was bent on winning two-thirds of seats in the National Assembly to enable him to change from a parliamentary system to a presidential system by making a constitutional amendment, as some of his former colleagues now assert. The ballot was grossly rigged -- so rigged, in fact, that the people loosttt their fear and came out into the streets to protest, often violently. The PNA, of course, led the protest demonstrations. The army was called out in Lahore to quell the disturbances. Bhutto imposed martial law in Lahore, but the high court struck it down. On one occasion the situation got so far out of control that the army was ordered to fire at the demonstrating civilians. Three brigadiers commanding the troops were bold enough to refuse the orders to fire and opted to resign their commissions instead. These honorable and principled officers were brigadiers Ashfaq Gondal, Niaz Ahmed,and Ishtiaq Ali Khan, who were then retired from service.
Finally the situation came to a head. General Zia ul-Haq removed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's government in July 1977.
Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire, pp.60-51.
To gain control of Pakistan Zia only had to declare martial law. Zia then became the chief martial law administrator. Zia asserted that he had taken control of the government solely to administer new elections for the national and provincial offices. The March 1977 elections administered by the Bhutto government were held to be invalid. Zia promised new elections within ninety days but that promise was broken and the other repeated promises that replaced it.
In many ways Zia was a more skilled politician than Bhutto whom he deposed. Bhutto had the oratorical charisma but tended to lack finesse in achieving his goals. Zia could and did wield brute force but he also could achieve his ends through negotiation and compromise.
The most significant policy program of Zia ul-Haq was the Islamization of Pakistan. In 1978 he decreed that all law, old as well as new, must be consistent with Islamic sharia law. Religious conservative parties under Bhutto were campaigning for such principle. There was the complication that there were several interpretations of sharia law among Sunni religious groups and a drastically different interpretation for the Shi'ia. Under Islam those holding wealth are supposed to contribute alms to take care of the poor. Zia decreed that the government would collect these alms as a tax.
In 1979 Zia established sharia courts to try cases involving the violation of sharia law. Islamic punishments were to be imposed for crimes such as theft, drinking alcoholic beverages and adultery.
Charging and paying of interest is forbidden under sharia law and Zia started to convert the financial institutions of Pakistan to Islamic rules.
Although the principle that Pakistan law had to conform to sharia law was established in 1978 that was not enough for the religious fundamentalist. In 1985 there was an attempt to assert the principle that sharia law was more fundamental than the constitution. This in part would have prevented the verdicts of the sharia courts from being appealed to the regular courts including the supreme court of Pakistan. The legislature did not approve this principle, due in part, to the national and provincial legislatures being dismissed for other reasons. Zia tried to establish this principle by fiat in 1986 but the Zia's action did not come up for ratification by the national assembly while Zia still ruled the country.
Perhaps the most significant political change created by Zia was the Eighth Amendment to the constitution which gave the president the power to arbitrarily dissolve the National Assembly thereby removing the prime minister from power. This completely altered the power balance between the president and the prime minister.
Zia encouraged religious education and the creation of madrassas (religious schools). Islamic religious schools are not like Western religious schools in which the participants retreat from the world. Islamic religious schools are more like boot camps for Marines. The participants do memorize the Koran but they are basically being prepared to be soldiers for the religious leaders. This has been true for centuries.
Zia's program of Islamization fortunately did not involve the destruction of the little progress that had been made on the status of women.
Islam and sharia law are socially totalitarian. Not much technical or economic progress comes out of a totalitarian societies. It takes societies with individual freedom to create the social progress that characterizes the modern world. Most of the muslims of the world today would not exist without the medical advances that could only be achieved in a free society. Their great grandparents would have died in infancy.
The true God of human beings is not some tribal leader writ large who worries about whether his subject show obediance five times a day. The true God of humans is not a person but the phenomenon of communication, language and writing which creates human culture. Human culture is a dynamic evolving phenomena. The social rules that made sense in the desert 1400 years ago do not make sense in the urban societies of the present. This is particularly true of the social regulations concerning women and the family.
Pervez Musharraf is also critical of Zia ul-Haq and his period of rule.
President Zia, in the 1980's, completed what Bhutto had started in the dying phases of his regime-- the total appeasement of the religious lobby. Zia did not have a political base or lobby. By hanging Bhutto, he turned Bhutto into a martyr and his political party--the PPP--into a greater force. Zia found it convenient to align himself with the religious right and create a supportive constituency for himself. He started overemphasizing and over participating in religious rituals to show his alignment with the the religious lobby. Even music and entertainment became officially taboo, whereas I am told that in private he personally enjoyed good semiclassical music.
Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire, pp. 66-67.
The era of Zia with its tumultuous political and institutional changes, international as well as domestic, did not end until his assassination in 1988. Someone planted a device, either involving explosives or poison gas, on Zia's plane killing him and about thirty others including the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan and most of the top generals of Pakistan.
(To be continued.)

Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto

Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was what might be described as a populist politician, although that American term would be hard to justify for any Pakistani politician. His life was one of success and tragedy.
Bhutto was born in the Sindh province of British India in 1928 to an aristocratic Rajput family that had converted to the Shi'ia version of Islam. His family was influential in the politics of the time. Ali Bhutto received his highschool education in Bombay (Mumbai) but traveled the United States for his university education at the University of California at Berkeley. This university was effectively the Harvard of the Pacific Rim and Bhutto completed his bachelor's degree there in 1950. Bhutto was thus away from India during the troubled time of the partition and the formation of Pakistan.
Bhutto went on to graduate education at the University of Oxford where he studied law. After the completion of his degree he practiced law and lectured a short time before returning home in 1953 to the new nation of Pakistan. He settled in Karachi and practiced law there. He developed some political ties and was appointed to Pakistan's delegation to the United Nations.
His wife, Nurat, was also of a Shi'ia Islamic faith and but with an Iranian Kurdish heritage.
Politics in Pakistan took a new turn in 1958 when the military leader Mohammad Ayub Khan carried out a coup d'etat. The Bhutto family was of feudalbackground and Zulfiqar Bhutto was well enough connected that he was appointed to head the Ministry of Commerce. Appointments to other cabinet post followed. Finally he was made foreign minister in 1963. He then began to develop his own policy program. He felt he should try to promote ties with China as a counter-balance to the militant relation which had developed between independent India and Pakistan.
In 1965 a war with India broke out over the issue of Kashmir and Jammu. Pakistan was overwhelmed militarily by India and had to sue for peace. Bhutto objected to the peace treaty with India that ended the war and in protest he resigned from his position as foreign minister.
After leaving the administration of Ayub Khan, Bhutto began organizing his own political party. It was founded at the end of 1967 and he called it the Pakistan People's Party (PPP). Out of office and head of his own political party, Bhutto began to denounce the Ayub Khan regime as a dictator and, as a result, the regime put him into prison for the years 1968 and 1969.
The Ayub Khan regime was terminated by Khan's resignation and control of the government was assumed by another general, Mohammad Yahya Khan, and national elections were permitted in 1970. At that time Pakistan consisted of two wings. The West Wing consisted of the Indus River Valley and so forth plus Balochistan, the province on the coast south of Afghanistan. The East Wing was what once had been East Bengal. The East Wing had a greater population and more important export industries than the West Wing. However, the capital and political control was in the hands of the West Pakistanis. The East Wing was providing more taxes but was getting the smaller share of federal government funds.
Bhutto went on a speaking tour of the West Wing espousing noble ideals of democracy and reform. Campaigning among the people was something Pakistan had not seen before. Bhutto was an impassioned orator and his rhetoric inspiring. He was charismatic.
Bhutto's PPP received overwhelming electoral support in the West Wing but the Awani League, a political party of the East Wing had the greater number of representatives. Since the vote was divided between the Awani League and Bhutto's PPP the legislative government might have had to involve both the Awani League and Bhutto's PPP, but Bhutto refused to enter into a coalition with the Awani League which would allow the Awami League's leader to become the prime minister. This created a political crisis which spun out of control. When the Pakistan army under the control of West Wing commanders tried to put down the rebellion there was great bloodshed and atrocity. Many residents of the East Wing fled across the border into India creating a severe problem. The army of India came to the aid of the rebels and defeated the West Wing's attempt to suppress the rebellion. The East Wing of Pakistan declared it independence as the new nation of Bangladesh.
The military regime of Yahya Khan failed miserably and political control was turned over to Ali Bhutto at the end of 1971. Bhutto was able to rule largely by decree.
Bhutto began immediately to consolidate his power and move toward a socialist economy. He nationalized key industries and began to tax the land property of the richer families. Bhutto in 1973 used his political power to install a new constitution which further enhanced his power. He created a Federal Security Force which functioned as a palace guard outside of the control of the military.
In power the rhetoric of Bhutto's rise to power was ignored. He ruled as an autocrat. His regime reminds one of the American politician Huey Long of Louisana during the period 1928 to 1936. Long was immensely popular and claimed to champion the interests of the poor. In practice Long ruled as a dictator, a populist dictator but still a dictator.
Zulfiqar Bhutto used his popularity to rule as an autocrat if not an outright dictator. After ruling as an autocrat for about five years, Bhutto decided to hold a new election in 1977. His party apparently won the election but there was enough suspicion of voting fraud that riots broke out. Bhutto prohibited assemblies for political purpose hoping to throttle the protest movement. Bhutto had shifted the political focus of his regime from the urban poor and middle class to the rural poor. He lost the support of the politically active urbanites because of the ineffectiveness of his regime to achieve the goals he promised. Anwar Hussain Syed in his book The Discourse and Politics of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto quotes a note Bhutto sent to his ministers:

There are shortages everywhere… The Agricultural Development Bank has not come out with any new scheme to assist the common man, the poor man … The rural works program and the rural integrated program remain disintegrated. I have not seen the face of a single Agroville of which we talked a great deal. The low cost housing schemes are coming up on paper only. The drainage schemes have not seen the light of day. Crime is rising without fear … In other words, where is our revolution? There is no change. We are supposed to be the harbingers of a new order, but where is the new order? … The truth hurts and it hurts me the most.

The military under the leadership of General Zia ul-Haq took control of the government and imprisoned Bhutto. Bhutto was uncooperative with the military regime and Zia ul-Haq, tiring of Bhutto's intransigence, had Bhutto charged with arranging the assassination of a political opponent in 1974. Bhutto had used force to suppress many of his political opponents and there was a good deal of gangsterism in the PPP so the charges had a certain plausibility. Anwar Hussain Syed in his book The Discourse and Politics of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto says:

In his discourse, and in his covenant with the people, Bhutto undertook to maintain civil rights and democratic freedoms. In his actual practices as a ruler, he did the opposite. His regime insulted, humiliated, harassed, assaulted, imprisoned and, in some cases, tortured critics and opponents. He had vowed to cultivate respect for the law, but his agents used lawless force against his adversaries. Even old comrades, who had become critics, were not spared. Meraj Mohammad Khan languished in jail, and Mukhtar Rana almost died under torture. Men from the Federal Security Force broke into J.A. Rahim's house and beat him so severely that he had to be hospitalized.

Bhutto was tried in Lahore in the highest court of Punjab which meant that there could be one appeal of the verdict to a higher court, the Supreme Court of Pakistan. He was found guilty in a trial in 1978 and sentenced to death. The court's decision was a split 4 to 3. An appeal was filed for Bhutto in the Supreme Court but that court chose not to review his case. Within a period of about ten days Bhutto was executed by hanging.
Zia ul-Haq was a relentless enemy. Bhutto was informed that he would actually be executed only seven hours ahead of time instead of the seven days required by law. Pakistan was left with the legacy of its most popular leader having been martyred, the victim of political-judicial murder by a military junta. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was a flawed individual and he did not serve Pakistan well but his death was tragic on many levels.
Here is Pervez Musharraf's assessment of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto:

With East Pakistan gone, to become Bangladesh, Bhutto's largest number of seats in what was left of Pakistan gave him a dubious legitimacy. He became president of Pakistan, but he also used the absence of a basic law as a pretext to become chief martial law administrator. There was nothing to stop Bhutto from reverting to the constitution of 1956, with amendments to the clauses that pertained to East Pakistan, but he chose raw power instead.
At first I admired Bhutto. He was young, educated, articulate, and dynamic. He had eight years' experience in government under President Ayub Khan. But as time passed, my opinion of Bhutto started to change. My brother Javed, who was principal secretary to the chief minister of the North-West Frontier province, told me that Bhutto was no good and would ruin the country. My brother was right. I saw how the country, and particularly the economy, was ravaged by mindless nationalization. Its institutions were destroyed under his brand of so-called Islamic socialism. Bhutto took control of virtually all the nation's industries--steel, chemicals, cement, shipping, banking, insurance, engineering, gas and power distribution, and even small industries like flour milling, cotton ginning, and rice husking, as well as private schools and colleges -- the start of the destruction of our educational system. Mercifully, he did not touch textiles, our largest industry. Bhutto ruled not like a democrat but like a despotic dictator. He threw many of his opponents, including editors, journalists, and even cartoonists, into prison. He was really a fascist -- using the most progressive rhetoric to promote regressive ends, the first of which was to stay in power forever. It was a tragedy, because a man of his undoubted capability could have done a lot of good for his country. By the time his regime ended, I had come to the conclusion that Bhutto was the worst thing that had yet happened to Pakistan. I still maintain that he did more damage to the country than anyone else, damage from which we have still not fully recovered. Among other things, he was the first to try to appease the religious right. He banned liquor and gambling and declared Friday a holiday instead of Sunday. This was hypocrisy at its peak, because everyone knew that he did not believe in any one of these actions.
Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire, pp. 57-58.

Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was a complex person and has a complex role in Pakistan political and cultural history. Pakistanis seem to be divided into those who love him for his political rhetoric and those who hate him for his political action. For more on this man see Bhutto.

Yahya Khan and the Separation of Bangladesh

Although it was undoubtedly best for Pakistan and Bangladesh to have separated the actual sequence of events that brought it about in 1971 was a great fiasco accompanied by enormous hardship and atrocities for the Bangladesh people.
Ayub Khan had promised fair elections and Yahya Khan intended to fulfill that promise. In late 1969 Yahya Khan announced that elections were to held in October of 1970 to chose delegates to a National Assembly that would write a new constitution for civilian government.
Near that designated election time a tropical cyclone hit East Pakistan, a storm in North America would have been called a hurricane. Much of the devastation of a tropical cyclone comes from the storm surge, the rise in the water level due to the lower pressure in the cyclone center and the winds driving the water against a shore. East Pakistan with its low altitude throughout the country is particularly vulnerable to a storm surge. The cyclone of 1970 was terrible for East Pakistan and the government could do little to ameliorate the situation. Nevertheless the people of East Pakistan were resentful at how little the national government in West Pakistan was able to do.
Because of the cyclone the national election was postponed until December of 1970. There were to be 300 delegates selected for the National Assembly. In addition there were to be 13 places filled by appointment of women, seven from the East Wing and six from the West. In this election the seats were to be apportioned strictly on the basis of the population. East Pakistan would elect 162 delegates and West Pakistan 138. In the past elections the apportionment was equal numbers of delegaltes from the East and the West.
Since the creation of Pakistan the country had been dominated by politicians and military leaders from the West Wing despite the significantly larger population and economy in the East Wing.
The dominant political party in the East Wing was the Awami League headed by Mujibur Rahman. Rahman, popularly known as Mujib, and his Awami League had been campaigning for some years for a six point program that consisted of
that the government of Pakistan be parliamentary and in the nature of a federation
that members of the national legislature be elected on the basis of universal adult sufferage with the distribution being strictly on the basis of population
that the power and responsibility of the national government be limited to foreign affairs and national defense
that each wing have its own fiscal budget and circulate its own currency
that taxes be imposed and collected on a provincial level and the national government rely upon levies imposed upon the provinces without any powers of direct taxation of the people
that each province have control of its own foreign exchange earnings
that each province raise its own military and paramilitary forces.
Clearly the Awami League was promoting a political change of Pakistan to a confederation of nearly autonomous provinces. Such autonomy appealed not only to the East Wing but to the Northwest Frontier Province and to Balochistan as well.
In Punjab and Sindh provinces the dominant political party was the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) founded and led by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, a charismatic politician who had been minister of foreign affairs in the government of Ayub Khan. Bhutto's program was nationalistic democratic Islamic socialism. In the election campaign he promised bread, clothing and shelter for everyone but he also promised a thousand year war with India.
In the election held December 7, 1970 the Awami League won 160 out of the 162 seats allocated to East Pakistan. An affilate of the Awami League, the National Awami League was the most popular party in the Northwest Frontier province and Balochistan winning the most seats there. Thus Mujib had won an outright majority of the seats in the National Assembly and would have the right to form a government and dominate the writing of the new constitution.
Ali Bhutto's PPP won heavily in the provinces of Punjab and Sindh. The PPP had significant representation in the National Assembly but not enough to guarantee Bhutto and the PPP an important role in an Awami-led government. Most politicians acquieced to an Awami East Wing-oriented government. Yahya Khan referred to Mujib as the next prime minister of Pakistan. But Ali Bhutto was not willing to let the rules of parliamentary democracy prevail. He declared that Pakistan had two majorities. He found a ploy that would prevent the Awami League from forming a government. He announced that the PPP delegates would not join the National Assembly and thus deprive it of a quorum. In his intransigence Ali Bhutto destroyed the fragile ties between the East and West Wings of Pakistan.
Yahya Khan tried conscientiously to get Bhutto and Mujib to reach some compromise. Yahya Khan brought Ali Bhutto, Mujib Rahman and himself together in Dakha to try to resolve the impasse, to no avail. The tragic sequence of political chaos, death and destruction can be laid at the feet of Ali Bhutto.
The political impasse led to protests and demonstrations in the East Wing which were interpreted as rebellion against the martial law government of Yahya Khan. Mujib Rahman was arrested and flown to West Pakistan to be tried for treason. Yahya Khan then declared the Awami League illegal and and banned political activity. Censorship was imposed upon newspapers throughout Pakistan. This definitely escalated the protests into outright rebellion. The government in the West flew in troops to the East by way of Sri Lanka. The local militias and police units in the East joined actively in the rebellion.
The West Wing troops suppressed the rebellion at the cost of many thousands of casualties. The atrocities committed indicated that the West Pakistani troops had very little empathy for the culturally alien Bengalis despite the fact that they were fellow Muslims.
Refugees started pouring across the border to where the people were fellow Bengalis who had empathy for them. An army officer, Major Zizur Rahman, declared East Pakistan to be the independent nation of Bangladesh and a government in exile set up in Calcutta. The number of refugees in India soon reached ten million and the government of India announced support for the rebellion and the new nation of Bangladesh. Indian troops invaded the territory occupied by the West Pakistani troops and soon defeated them, capturing about ninety thousand. Other nations around the world besides India began to recognize the sovereignty of the new nation of Bangladesh. Pakistan, however, did not recognize Bangladesh until 1976, five year after its creation.
Bhutto, the agent of the debacle, blamed Yahya Khan for the military defeat of the Pakistani army by the Indian army and the loss of the East Wing. Yahya Khan resigned and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was declared president and chief martial law administrator of Pakistan in December of 1971.

Ayub Khan

After the creation of Pakistan, its military forces were for a few years still commanded by the British officer who commanded those troops when they were part of the army of British India. The transfer of command to a Pakistani officer was a matter of a great deal political importance and substantial political danger. It was recognized that the commander of the army could easily assume political control. The political leaders looked over the top military officers and saw too much danger of such a usurpation of power. They instead chose a younger, lower level officer, Ayub Khan. Ayub Khan came from a relative minor Pashtun tribe and thus could not command the allegiance of a powerful domestic faction the way a Punjabi might. Being a non-Punjabi Ayub Khan might be distrusted by the Punjabi majority of the armed forces. Having been selected over more senior officers there was reason to expect those officers to be resentful of Ayub Khan. Ayub Khan also had a reputation for being an efficient administrator. So the political leaders of Pakistan had good reason in 1951 to believe that they were turning the army over to an efficient military bureaucrat rather than to a Bonaparte. They thought that without an ethnic power base he would not dare to seek political power and that if he should even try his military rivals would hold him in check. They were quite wrong.
From 1951 to 1958 Ayub Khan continually increased the power and political prerogatives of the military. In 1954 Ayub Khan was the minister of defense in the government as well as commander of the army. Finally in 1958 he carried out a bloodless coup d'etat and ruled Pakistan for the next decade. His justification for his coup was that the politicians were inefficient and corrupt.
On his own Ayub Khan initiated major policy programs and shaped the direction of Pakistan politics permanently. The most important of these policy program was the development of alliances with the powerful neighboring countries of Pakistan and India; i.e., China and the Soviet Union. He also development a political alliance with the United States. These alliances were primarily to offset the imbalance between the power of India with respect to Pakistan.
Another major change for Pakistan initiated by Ayub Khan was the creation of a new capital. At independence Pakistan's capital was situated in Karachi. In 1959 Ayub Khan decided to build a new capital that could be better defended from possible attack by India. He chose a site near the Margalla Hills and near Pakistan's third largest city, Rawalpindi. The new capital was to be named Islamabad (home of Islam). By 1963 the transfer of the capital from Karachi to Islamabad was complete.
Within Pakistan Ayub Khan imposed martial law to suppress what he considered the evils of black marketeering and hoarding. He also carried out a campaign against the corruption of politicians and bureaucrats. One of the punishments he imposed upon politicians was a prohibition against anyone convicted of corruption from participating in politics for fifteen years. This was a very effective means of destroying his political opposition. Ayub Khan also amended the laws concerning newspapers thus giving himself the power to suppress or close down newspapers that opposed him or his policies.
Ayub Khan carried out a program of confiscation of land from the landed aristocracy and selling it. This had the effect of creating a class of land owners with medium sized holdings and reduced the power of the large land holders who opposed him. The peasants on the other hand participated very little in this land redistribution scheme.
Ayub Khan did carry out some programs of changes in social and political institutions which were beneficial to the lower classes. He created political representation at the local level in regional councils for groups of villages having a combined population of about ten thousand. He supported revisions in the more archaic elements of marriage and family law. He tried to rebalance the distribution of political power between the east and west wings of Pakistan by designating Dhaka in East Pakistan as the site of the legislature while the administrative capital remained at Islamabad in West Pakistan. He negotiated a resolution with India of the problems concerning the division of the waters of the Indus River Valley system. The negotiations culminated in the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960. These measures were enough to give Ayub Khan the reputation as being a statesman as well as a dictator.
By 1962 Ayub Khan was ready to lift martial law and allow the election of government officials under a new constitution. He formed a political party based upon the old Muslim League which was named the Pakistan Muslim League (PML). Opposition parties formed and showed some effectiveness in political organization. Ayub Khan and the PML won the election of 1962 but the result showed that his political opposition despite years of suppression and persecution was not dead.
As an elected leader Ayub Khan was able to strengthen Pakistan's alliance with the United States. This turned out to be important when war broke out with India in 1965 over Kashmir and border disputes elsewhere. The war changed little and a cease-fire was arranged through the United Nations. In 1966 Ayub Khan and the prime minister of India signed a treaty called the Tashkent Declaration. The Pakistan public, not being well informed about the relative imbalance of Pakistani military power with respect to that of India, treated the Tashkent Declaration as Ayub Khan's surrender to India.
Political protests to Ayub Khan's rule and by 1968 he was on the defensive. In 1969 it was necessary to declare martial law again. Ayub Khan resigned in 1969 turning the power in Pakistan to the administrator of the martial law, Yahya Khan.

A Deeper Look at Pakistan, the West, and Benazir Bhutto

A Deeper Look at Pakistan, the West, and Benazir Bhutto
If I could make one political wish for the New Year, it would be for westerners to become better informed about Middle-, Near-Eastern and South Asian politics, culture, religion and history. The recent death of Benazir Bhutto is a case in point: was she the attractive, English-speaking, champion of democracy portrayed sympathetically in the western press? Or a more complex player in the violent and corrupt struggle for power that is modern Pakistan, with hands that were perhaps not quite as snowy as the white gauze veil she always wore in public?
(at left: a stamp from Pakistan's first series after independence, 1947.)
I've spent some time during the last week reading various articles about Bhutto and Pakistan, all stemming from a link I found on Nancy Ghandi's Under the Fire Star. Just before Christmas, I finished the final book in the Raj Quartet, which ends with the detonation of the atomic bomb in Japan, abandonment of hopes for a united India after independence, and the inevitability of the partition of India and Pakistan into Hindu and Muslim states, accompanied by terrible violence. This complex legacy of western influence and religious and cultural conflict continues, of course, along with underlying political intrigue.
The picture is murky at best. What we do not hear much of in the west is how General Musharraf still protects his friend Khan, who sold Pakistan's nuclear secrets to Iran and Libya. We do not hear how Benazir Bhutto's government supported the Taliban takeover of Kabul, or the allegations of her role in the murder of her brother, with whom she quarreled politically. And we do not understand that the reason for the rise of support for Islamic governments in many of these countries is because -- unlike the generals, or wealthy aristocratic ruling families -- the Islamic parties are perceived as helpers and champions of the poor.
Here are some links; I hope you will take a look and find them as informative as I did, not only about foreign politics, but about our own pre-conceptions.

William Dalrymple in the Guardian, "Pakistan's Flawed and Feudal Princess":
For the Americans, what Benazir Bhutto wasn't was possibly more attractive even than what she was. She wasn't a religious fundamentalist, she didn't have a beard, she didn't organise rallies where everyone shouts: 'Death to America' and she didn't issue fatwas against Booker-winning authors, even though Salman Rushdie ridiculed her as the Virgin Ironpants in his novel Shame...However, the very reasons that made the West love Benazir Bhutto are the same that gave many Pakistanis second thoughts...
Jason Burke in the Observer:
The day I spent on the campaign trail with her this month was vintage Benazir. At first I interviewed her in a relatively formal fashion. Then I put my notebook away and we simply talked - about her ambitions, Pakistan, the coming elections and, of course, the various threats against her. As ever, I was impressed by her intelligence and courage and depressed by her delusions and ego...
Robert Fisk in the Independent:
Of course, given the childish coverage of this appalling tragedy – and however corrupt Ms Bhutto may have been, let us be under no illusions that this brave lady is indeed a true martyr – it's not surprising that the "good-versus-evil" donkey can be trotted out to explain the carnage in Rawalpindi...
Tariq Ali's, "Daughter of the West," in the London Review of Books,is a prescient in-depth look at the life and political fortunes of Benazir Bhutto, published just a few days before her death. (The title is a play on that of Bhutto's own memoir, Daughter of the East.) If you really want to know more about Pakistani politics and the history of the Bhutto family, read this piece. It is long but fascinating, and details Benazir Bhuttos's long road from her days as a young, courageous political idealist trying to keep her father alive, to her falling-out with her brothers, her marriage to a corrupt businessman with whom she made millions, and her transformation into a power-seeker no longer truly concerned with reform, and largely out-of-touch with the people of her own country.
Finally, here is an article by Omar Waraich in Karachi, written from photographs and eyewitness accounts of Bhutto's assassination and burial which proves, to me at least, that she died the way we were originally told: shot in the head and neck by an assassin before the suicide bomber detonated his device. Not generally a method used by Al-Quaeda.
Pakistani politics are complex, with their share of corruption and violence, and the Bhutto family has been on the receiving end as well as causing, indirectly or not, the deaths of many other people. Who killed Benazir Bhutto? Many had their reasons. Robert Fisk believes the assassination was ordered by General Musharraf and carried out by the ISI, the Inter Services Intelligence, Pakistan's powerful secret police.
This vast institution – corrupt, venal and brutal – works for Musharraf...But it also worked – and still works – for the Taliban. It also works for the Americans. In fact, it works for everybody. But it is the key which Musharraf can use to open talks with America's enemies when he feels threatened or wants to put pressure on Afghanistan or wants to appease the " extremists" and "terrorists" who so oppress George Bush. And let us remember, by the way, that Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter beheaded by his Islamist captors in Karachi, actually made his fatal appointment with his future murderers from an ISI commander's office. Ahmed Rashid's book Taliban provides riveting proof of the ISI's web of corruption and violence. Read it, and all of the above makes more sense.
Bhutto herself, speaking to Jason Burke, described "a cabal of retired senior military officers and intelligence agents in league with radical Islamic militants 'embedded in the country' who, she said, formed a secret parallel state of immense power." She may, of course, have been talking about the same people.
Whoever it was, the fact is that Musharraf remains in power, elections have been delayed, Washington's power-brokering deals are off, and Bhutto lies in her family's tomb.

Pakistan

chevrolet in pakistan

Chevrolet enjoys a long and distinguished history in Pakistan which pre-dates partition. The first Chevrolets came to British India in the early 1920s, and were sought after by nawabs, maharajas, and the social elite as part of their automobile collections. Chevrolet established an office in pre-partition India in 1928. An office was set up in Bombay with an assembly plant constructed in Sewree. General Motors (GM), Chevrolet’s parent company, was the first automobile company to open an assembly plant in India.

Production started in 1928 with the National Series AB Touring. The AB series came with Chevrolet’s well proven and reliable 171 cubic inches, 24.7hp four-cylinder engine. It featured Chevrolet’s first four-wheel mechanical brakes and wooden wheels. In the first year of production, 13,903 GM cars and trucks were built at Sewree, including products from other GM brands.

Source: GM India

The Chevrolet brand quickly proved trustworthy and dependable. As a result, a large amount of Chevrolets were imported between 1918 and 1928. The Chevrolets imported during these years mainly consisted of small four-cylinder Tourers, because they delivered the most impressive fuel economy and were simple to run. Even the Nizam of Hyderabad (Dakkan) – considered the richest man in the world at the time – used Chevrolet Tourers as official cars.

In 1930, the Indian market became even more competitive as Ford introduced the popular Model A, whose all-steel body made it a great success. Chevrolet replied with a revolutionary six-cylinder engine that developed 46 horsepower. And it was this very car that gave Chevrolet its highest sales in India in 1931.

Chevrolet also played its role in the Pakistan movement. Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah – an avid collector of fine automobiles – drove a Chevrolet, and also had other General Motors cars such as Cadillac in his collection (this vehicle is still on display at Mohatta Palace in Karachi). A little known piece of trivia is that Jinnah and Louis Chevrolet shared the same birthday – December 25 th – although Chevrolet was nine years younger than Jinnah.

Chevrolets were sold in Pakistan well into the 1970s, after which the automotive regime was changed and Chevrolet gradually withdrew to its home market in the United States .

Military history of Pakistan

The military history of Pakistan can be viewed as the history of modern-day Pakistan, as the military of Pakistan has played and continues to play a vital role in the establishment and shaping of the country since its inception in 1947. Although Pakistan was founded as a democracy after the partition of the Indian sub-continent, the military has remained one of the country's most powerful institutions and has on occasion overthrown democratically elected governments on the basis of mismanagement and corruption. Successive governments have made sure that the military was consulted before they took key decisions, especially when those decisions related to the Kashmir Conflict. Political leaders[who?] know that the military has stepped into the political arena before at times of crisis, and could do so again.
The Military was created in 1947 by division of the British Indian Army and was given units who had a long and cherished history during the British Raj such as the Khyber Rifles, and had seen intensive service in World War I and World War II. Since independence, the military has fought three major wars with India and several minor border skirmishes with Afghanistan. It has also fought a limited conflict at Kargil with India after acquiring nuclear capabilities. After 9/11, the military is engaged in a protracted low intensity conflict along Pakistan's western border with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants, as well as those who support or provide shelter to them.
In addition, Pakistani troops have also participated in various foreign conflicts usually acting as United Nations peacekeepers. At present, Pakistan has the largest number of its personnel acting under the United Nations with the number standing at 10,173 as of 31 March 2007.[2]