View source for Pakistan History: Civilian Rule Restored (1988-1999)

=Civilian Rule Restored (1988-1999)=
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This article is an extract from <br/>
''' A Brief History Of Pakistan ''' <br/> 
'''JAMES WYNBRANDT '''<br/> 
Foreword by Fawaz A.Gerges <br/> 
Copyright © 2009 by James Wynbrandt;  <br/> 
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wynbrandt, James. <br/> 
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=Pakistan History: Civilian Rule Restored (1988-1999)=
General Zia ul-Haq's unexpected death in 1988 brought about a 
return to civilian rule in Pakistan. Over the next decade a series 
of leaders struggled to establish firm control over the government. Two 
rivals came to dominate the political landscape during this period: 
Benazir Bhutto (1953-2007), daughter of the executed former prime 
minister, and Nawaz Sharif (b. 1949). Bhutto became the first woman 
to lead a modern Muslim nation. But her rule, as her father's had 
been, was marred by charges of corruption, and she was dismissed 
from office, only to rise once more as prime minister before suffering 
another tumble from power. Sharif, scion of one of Pakistan's wealthi- 
est families, whose power base was among the landless lower class, 
also lost and regained his office. Under his leadership the Pakistan 
Muslim League, the 1962 successor to the disbanded Muslim League, 
reemerged as a powerful political party. But political infighting again 
began to immobilize the machinery of state. Fearing another military 
takeover Sharif attempted to forestall a coup, but, instead, his efforts 
accelerated it. Once again Pakistan came under martial law and a 
general's rule, this time in the person of General Pervez Musharraf (b. 
1943). Also during this period the still-unsettled Kashmir question 
again brought Pakistan and India to the brink of war, only this time 
the presence of nuclear weapons escalated the stakes in the standoff 
between the countries. 
==Benazir Bhutto's First Government==
On August 17, 1988, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, former chairman of the Senate, 
succeeded General Zia ul-Haq and became interim president, as stipulated 
by the constitution. Ishaq Khan established an emergency council of 
advisers and directed general elections be held in November 1988. 
PREPARING FOR DESTINY 

The following excerpts from Benazir Bhutto's 1989 autobiography, 
Daughter of Destiny, reveal Bhutto's hopes and fears during the 
final years of the Zia regime. As Pakistan moved toward elections 
scheduled for November 1988, a nervous Zia announced a new law 
that called for nonparty elections. The law was to have been imple- 
mented too late for the opposition to challenge it in court. But Zia 
and 30 others, including the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan and an 
American general, died in a plane crash while returning to Islamabad 
from a military base in eastern Pakistan. 

I felt confidant as 1987 dawned. . . . [A]fter the long ban on 
political activities, we were building the PPP as a political institu- 
tion. Launching a membership drive, we enrolled a million mem- 
bers in four months, a remarkable figure for Pakistan, where 
the literacy rates are so low. We held party elections in the 
Punjab — an unheard of phenomenon in the subcontinent — in 
which over four hundred thousand members voted. We opened 
a dialogue with the opponents of the Muslim League in the 
Parliament and continued to highlight the human rights viola- 
tions of the regime. . . . 

On May 29, 1988, General Zia abruptly dissolved Parliament, 
dismissed his own handpicked Prime Minister, and called for 
elections. I was at a meeting . . . with party members from 
Larkana when the startling message was passed to me. "You 
must be mistaken," I said to the party official who had sent 
me the note. "General Zia avoids elections. He doesn't hold 
them.

Regardless, the mood throughout the country was ebullient. 
Zia's own constitution called for elections within ninety days of 
the dissolution of the government, and to many it seemed that 
victory was within reach. . . . "No one can stop the PPP now," said 
one supporter after another. . . . 

On June 15th, Zia announced the installation of Shariah, or 
Islamic law, as the supreme law of the land. . . . Many thought 
that the timing of Zia's latest exploitation of Islam was directed 
at me. The Urdu press was speculating that he could use the 
interpretation of the law by Islamic bigots to try to prevent me, a 
woman, from standing for election. 

Source: Benazir Bhutto, Daughter of Destiny, New York and London: 
Simon and Schuster, 1989. 

Benazir Bhutto, the daughter of former prime minister Zulfikar 
Bhutto, who had taken over the leadership of the Pakistan People's 
Party (PPP) after her father's execution in 1979, returned from exile 
when martial law was lifted in 1986. 

After a decade of authoritarian military rule, the return of a Bhutto to 
Pakistan's political landscape helped energize the democracy movement. 
Benazir Bhutto was born in Karachi and educated at Radcliffe College 
in the United States and Oxford University in England. She returned to 
Pakistan in June 1977 with the intention of entering the foreign service. 
Two weeks later General Zia ul-Haq staged his coup and arrested Prime 
Minister Zulfikar Bhutto. Benazir Bhutto spent the next 18 months in 
and out of house arrest. The execution of her father in 1979 served 
only to intensify her efforts to coordinate opposition to Zia's regime. In 
the summer of 1981 she was imprisoned for five months under solitary 
confinement in Sind. She was released in 1984 and went into exile in 
London. Her return to Pakistan in 1986 was greeted by a welcoming 
crowd of hundreds of thousands in Lahore. She began organizing the 
opposition and calling on Zia to resign and hold national elections. 

Had Zia not perished it is possible that the elections he had sched- 
uled would have been canceled or the state apparatus would have been 
marshaled to ensure his electoral victory. But without him the 1988 
election campaign proceeded as planned. The PPP remained unaligned 
and independent of other political parties. In the November elections 
the PPP won a majority in Sind, but no party gained a majority in any 
other province. Nonetheless, the PPP was the only party to have a 
significant following in all four provinces. Moreover, it was the largest 
party in the National Assembly, with 94 seats, one of them occupied by 
newly elected Benazir Bhutto. 

Under the Revival of the Constitution of 1973 Order enacted by Zia, the 
president could appoint any member of the National Assembly as prime 
minister. With the backing of both the PPP and the Islami Jamhuri Itehad 
(IJI, or Islamic Democratic Alliance), a coalition of nine parties formed 
that year to oppose the PPP in elections, Ghulam Ishaq Khan won the 
legislative election for president on December 13, 1988. Following tradi- 
tion as well as privilege, Ishaq Khan chose Benazir Bhutto, leader of the 
dominant party, to form a new government and serve as prime minister. 

In order to form a government, Bhutto had to jettison the PPP's non- 
aligned stance and forge a coalition with the Muhajir Qaumi Mahaz 
(MQM, or Muhajir National Movement), which represented the muha- 
jir (refugees from India following partition) community and several 
other parties. The MQM agreed to back the PPP at both the national 
[[File: Baynazer buttho.PNG | Benazir Bhutto became the first woman to head a modern Islamic nation when she was sworn in as Pakistan's prime minister on December 2, 1988. (Courtesy Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation)|frame|500px]]
and the provincial assemblies. Both parties pledged equal protection to 
all people of Sind, important to the muhajirs as they often felt discrimi- 
nated against by native Sindis. 

In her first address to the nation as prime minister, Bhutto presented 
her vision of a Pakistan that was forward-thinking and democratic but 
guided by Islamic principles. She announced the release of political pris- 
oners, restoration of press freedoms, and the implementation of stalled 
educational and healthcare reforms. The ban on student unions and trade 
unions was lifted. She promised increased provincial autonomy, greater 
rights for women, and better relations with the United States, Russia, and 
China. Improved relations with India were pursued in December 1988 at 
the fourth SAARC Summit Conference, where the path was cleared for 
the acceptance of three peace agreements between Pakistan and India.
==Bhutto's Foreign Policy==
The end of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, which occurred in the 
last days of Zia's rule, signaled a change in Pakistan's foreign relations. 
The Geneva Accords, which ended the war, were signed in April 1988, 
and the following month Soviet forces began their withdrawal. Border 
skirmishes continued as mujahideen attacks went on, some staged from 
Pakistan. But Pakistan had lost its strategic importance in the cold war. 
Without the cold war, whose end was marked by the collapse of the 
Berlin Wall in November 1989, the economic and military blandish- 
ments both sides had offered Pakistan and other emerging countries 
had come to an end. 

Benazir Bhutto had been a persistent critic of Zia's alliance with the 
United States and had denounced him for allowing Pakistan to be used 
as a base for the mujahideen. But after taking office, she attempted to 
strengthen the country's alliance with the United States. Like her father, 
Benazir Bhutto was an indefatigable traveler, making frequent trips to 
meet with heads of state around the world. In June 1989 Bhutto visited 
the United States to allay fears of Pakistan's nuclear capabilities. She 
told the administration that Pakistan had no nuclear weapons, but 
defended her nation's right to pursue its nuclear program. In an address 
to a joint session of Congress she proclaimed Pakistan's willingness to 
make a pact with India declaring the subcontinent a nuclear-free zone. 
Bhutto tried to ease tensions with India while seeking solutions to the 
disputes — primarily Kashmir — that had bedeviled relations since the 
birth of the two nations. In 1989 Rajiv Gandhi (r. 1984-89), India's 
prime minister, visited Bhutto in Islamabad. In talks Bhutto reiterated 
Pakistan's willingness to make the region a nuclear-free zone, a pro- 
posal Gandhi declined to consider. 

Bhutto succeeded in gaining readmission to the Commonwealth in 
1989, making Pakistan eligible for trading privileges with other domin- 
ions, which the country desperately needed. Previous efforts to rejoin 
had been blocked by India on the grounds that Pakistan was not a 
democracy, as it was under military rule. With a civilian again in charge 
of the nation, that objection was voided. 

==Bhutto's Domestic Policy==
Bhutto championed a Western secularist, socialist agenda, eschewing 
the pro-Islamic policies of the Zia regime. Women's social and health 
issues were staples of her campaigns. However, her stated policies were 
rarely translated into action. No legislation to improve welfare services 
for women was proposed. Campaign promises to repeal Hudood and 
Zina ordinances, which called for punishments such as amputations for 
theft and stoning for adultery, went unfulfilled. To be sure, Bhutto faced 
significant obstacles in advancing any legislative agenda. 
Much of the decision making remained in the hands of the military 
and the intelligence agencies, where Zia had placed it. Bhutto was reluc- 
tant to challenge these powers, since the military had time and again 
demonstrated readiness to take over the government when threatened. 
Perhaps she was fearful as well — the army, after all, was the institution 
responsible for the execution of her father. 

She had also inherited many political enemies of her father's, and 
Pakistani politics remained as focused on personal power and games- 
manship as on advancing the national interest. A major PPP adversary 
was Nawaz Sharif, leader of the PML and chief minister of Punjab, the 
most populous province. The PML and PPP were natural enemies; PPP 
founder Zulfikar Bhutto had nationalized industries to break the power 
of Pakistan's wealthiest families, and one of those families was Nawaz 
Sharif's. Moreover, Nawaz Sharif was a protege of Zia, the military 
ruler who had Zulfikar Bhutto hanged. Benazir Bhutto spent an inor- 
dinate amount of time and effort trying to oust Nawaz Sharif from his 
post in the Punjab. Another problem Bhutto faced was in the person 
of President Ghulam Ishaq Khan, with whom she clashed repeatedly, 
especially over military and judicial appointments. 

Just as significant, Bhutto was unable to parlay the electoral success 
of the PPP coalition and her own popularity into creating a cohesive 
domestic policy for Pakistan. Bhutto's alliance with the MQM, while put- 
ting the PPP over the top in the national elections, proved an obstacle 
when it came to parliamentary action. Furthermore, her alliance with 
the rival political bloc weakened her credibility within the PPP (though 
it never threatened her leadership of the party), especially among the 
Sindi nationalists who had been among her strongest supporters. One of 
Bhutto's notable shortcomings during this and her second administration 
as prime minister was her failure to follow through on her announced 
campaign initiatives to improve women's health care and other social 
issues concerning women. In fact, "the PPP government's performance 
was lacklustre, with not a single new piece of legislation being passed or 
even introduced, apart from two annual budgets" (Jacques 2000, 170). 

Another, but no less important, domestic issue where Bhutto floun- 
dered regarded Islam. Like her father, Benazir Bhutto was a secular- 
ist who, as an opposition leader, had denounced Zia's move toward 
Islamization of Pakistan. As prime minister she altered this stance for 
political expediency but discovered that other groups and leaders were 
farther ahead than she was in this approach. Nevertheless, her hard-line 
stance in early 1990 regarding the ongoing Kashmir dispute with India 
gained her credibility with the religious party Jamaat-i-Islami. 
Despite these problems Bhutto's first term as prime minister was not 
completely ineffectual. During her 20 months in power, she ended a 
ban on unions in Pakistan and, as part of her program to modernize 
Pakistan, she pushed for rural electrification. She also attempted to 
encourage private investment in the Pakistani economy. 

However, her efforts were hampered by the ethnic violence that 
pervaded Sind and would ultimately cause the MQM to remove itself 
from the ruling coalition, paralyzing Pakistan's Parliament and further 
destabilizing Bhutto's domestic program. 

==The Political Landscape of Sind==
Following partition in 1947 Urdu-speaking Muslims from India, called 
muhajir, "migrant," in Urdu, settled in Sind's urban centers of Karachi, 
Hyderabad, and Sukkar. Concurrently, many Hindus left for India. The 
shift profoundly changed the dynamics of Sind's economy and politics. 
Muhajirs were generally nationalists, believing in the ideal of a united 
Islamic country, and opposed ethnic identification. Primarily middle 
class and better educated than native-born Pakistanis, muhajirs came 
to dominate the Civil Service of Pakistan (CSP) and formed a powerful 
administrative class. With muhajir support, efforts were made to adopt 
Urdu as Pakistan's national language as a way to unify the country and 
forge a national identity. But Sindis, whose language is called Sindi, felt 
their culture threatened, and when Urdu was made a compulsory sub- 
ject in primary schools in 1962, Sindis called a strike in response, one 
of the first large-scale manifestations of Sindi-muhajir conflict. 

During Ayub Khan's reign the Punjabi-Pashtun-dominated military 
took increasing charge of the state bureaucracy, reducing muhajir con- 
trol over the CSP. The move of the capital from Karachi, the center of 
muhajir power, to Islamabad also diminished the emigres' influence. 

Sindis saw Zulfikar Bhutto, scion of a Sindi family of feudal land- 
owners, as empowering Sindi nationalism and were core PPP support- 
ers. The muhajir, on the other hand, rightly viewed Zulfikar Bhutto 
as an adversary. He made the study of Sindi compulsory in school, 
provoking language riots in 1972 as Sindi and muhajirs battled over 
the compulsory instruction. In the 1973 constitution Bhutto also 
introduced a quota system reserving 1.4 percent of posts in the central 
administration for rural Sindis. At the time, muhajirs held 35.5 percent 
of the civil service posts, although they constituted only 8 percent of 
the population. Bhutto also instituted a quota policy mandating that 60 
percent of state jobs be reserved for rural residents and 40 percent for 

urban residents and a similar quota for admissions to state-owned uni- 
versities. These quotas were enacted to improve the lot of rural popula- 
tions, which represented the majority of Sindis. Bhutto also reformed 
the CSP, further reducing muhajir power. More language riots erupted 
in 1972 after the Sind assembly made Sindi the province's official lan- 
guage, while Urdu was adopted as the official language in Baluchistan, 
NWFP, and Punjab. 

In 1978 growing feelings of muhajir disenfranchisement led Altaf 
Hussain (b. 1963) to form the All Pakistan Muhajir Student Organization 
(APMSO). The group quickly won converts from Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba 
(UT), the student wing of Jamaat-i-Islami, making the muhajir move- 
ment an adversary of the UT from its inception. The two groups clashed 
on college campuses in the early 1980s during Zia's rule. Following 
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Pashtun refugees settled in 
Karachi. Many went into transportation and moneylending businesses 
and into housing, a market previously controlled by Punjabis and muh- 
ajir s, leading to tensions between Pashtuns and their muhajir tenants. 
In the mid-1980s Pashtun-owned minibuses, called the yellow devils, 
were causing an average of two deaths per day. In 1985 a Pashtun bus 
driver in Karachi ran a red light and plowed into a group of students 
from Sir Syed College. The accident triggered a protest by muhajir stu- 
dent activists, which was joined by muhajir renters and soon erupted 
into pitched battles called the transportation riots, between muhajirs 
and Pashtuns. In their aftermath, the Pashtuns formed an alliance with 
the Punjabis, with whom they already had dealings through their arms 
trade with the Punjabi-dominated military. 

Muhajir ethnic consciousness overcame its nationalist impulses in 
1984 with the rise of the Muhajir Qaumi Movement (MQM), now 
officially known as Muttahida Qaumi Movement, or United National 
Movement, which had its origin in APMSO. MQM quickly gained 
power in the urban centers of Sind, winning the mayorships of Karachi 
and Hyderabad in 1988. Government efforts to weaken the party led 
to its splintering into two factions: the main party, MQM (A), led by 
Altaf Hussain, and an offshoot, the MQM(H), for Haqiqi (or "truth") 
faction, which appealed to religious fundamentalists and was under 
the influence of the Pakistani government. Fighting between the two 
factions and with police and security agencies has claimed many lives 
in Karachi. 

In the 1988 elections the MQM allied with the PPP, now headed by 
Benazir Bhutto, and emerged as the third-largest party in the National 
Assembly. To win their support, Bhutto had pledged to protect and safe- 
guard the interests of all the people of Sind, regardless of language, reli- 
gion, or origin of birth, as well as to stamp out violence and to support 
the rule of law. But tensions between the Sindis, the PPP's traditional 
base, and MQM supporters continued. In October 1988 hundreds of 
Sindis were killed during a protest in Hyderabad, for which the muha- 
jir were blamed, triggering ethnic riots between the communities. In 
August 1989 MQM officially ended its alliance with the PPP, claiming 
the ruling party had failed to live up to its agreements. From May of 
that year to the following June, hundreds more died in ethnic violence 
between the two groups. 
==President Ishaq Khan Dissolves the Government==
Bhutto was eager to reinstate the constitution of 1973, voiding the 1985 
Zia amendments that allowed the president to dismiss the government 
and dissolve legislative assemblies, and to return the country to a parlia- 
mentary form of government. It would also assure she could not be dis- 
missed from office. Failing to gain sufficient support, she soon dropped 
the effort. On August 6, 1990, President Ghulam Ishaq Khan, invok- 
ing the Eighth Amendment of 1985 and Article 58 2(b), dismissed the 
Bhutto government, alleging corruption and incompetence; dissolved the 
National Assembly; and declared a state of emergency. One of the nation's 
best-known journalists wrote at the time, "The scenario presented has 
become depressingly familiar — like repeat performances of a B grade 
movie. A well-rehearsed procedure is carried out, even the words used by 
the person in high authority to justify his action are paraphrases of what 
has been heard before, including the charges of corruption and ineptness 
leveled against the targeted incumbents ..." (Khan 1998, 466). 

Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, leader of the Combined Opposition Parties, a 
second coalition party opposed to the PPP, was named caretaker prime 
minister (r. Aug.-Nov 1990) after the dismissal of Benazir Bhutto's 
government. A native of Sind and one of Pakistan's largest landowners, 
Jatoi had been a PPP veteran and was in the first cabinet of Benazir 
Bhutto's father. But he was removed as head of the PPP in Sind upon 
Benazir Bhutto's return in 1986 and left the party. The partisanship 
behind selecting a member of the opposition rather than a member 
from the leading party magnified the sting of Ishaq Khan's action. Ishaq 
Khan soon dissolved the provincial assemblies as well and scheduled 
new elections for October 1990. Benazir Bhutto's husband, Asif Ali 
Zardari (b. 1956), was arrested on charges of blackmail and imprisoned 
for more than two years. 

Mustafa Jatoi was also in charge of the accountability proceed- 
ings aimed at investigating and bringing to justice members of the 
national government accused of corruption and malfeasance. Bhutto 
was charged and testified before the accountability tribunals, but she 
remained free to conduct her political activities. 
==1990 Elections==
Nawaz Sharif campaigned on a platform of conservative government 
and ending corruption. The elections for national and provincial 
assemblies were held on October 24 and 27, respectively. The caretaker 
government, chosen for its partisanship, took an active role in assist- 
ing the Islamic Democratic Alliance (IJI) in winning the elections. His 
Pakistan Muslim League (PML) had the backing of the IJI as well as 
the MQM. Evidence exists that the ISI, the state intelligence agency, 
engineered the IJI's initial support for Sharif during the 1990 election. 
During his second term as prime minister he was to lose the support 
of the IJI after he took a more secular course during his second term as 
prime minister. Despite widespread complaints of election irregulari- 
ties, outside observers declared the 1990 election generally fair. More 
than 40 deaths were linked to election violence. 

About 45 percent of the 47 million registered voters cast ballots. In the 
National Assembly 217 seats, 10 of which were held by non-Muslims and 
20 of which were reserved for women, were to be chosen by the elected 
members. The principal parties were the Pakistan Democratic Alliance 
(PDA), dominated by the PPP, and the IJI, dominated by the PML. The 
PDA campaigned on the issue of the illegal dismissal of the government. 
The IJI stressed the incompetence of the Bhutto government as well as 
the corruption charges against it. The IJI trounced the PPP-led alliance, 
taking 105 seats to the PDAs 45 seats. The MQM won 15 seats, while the 
Awami National Party (ANP) and Assembly of Islamic Clergy QUI) split 
a dozen seats between them. Independents and others took 30 seats. 

Benazir Bhutto continued her opposition efforts during Sharif's rule, 
including attempts to mount large-scale antigovernment protests. In 
1992 Sharif banned her from the nation's capital and had her confined 
to Karachi though she was not placed under house arrest. 
==Nawaz Sharif's First Government==
On November 1, 1990, Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif, finance min- 
ister under General Zia and chief minister of Punjab under Bhutto, 
[[File: nawaz shariff.PNG | Nawaz Sharif, a protege of Zia ul-Haq and foe of Benazir Bhutto, became prime minister of Pakistan for the first time on November I, 1990. In this photo he addresses Parliament during his first term. (Courtesy Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation|frame|500px]]

became prime minister for the first time (r. 1990-93, 1997-99). He 
was a native of Lahore and scion of one of Pakistan's most prominent 
families. 

In his first address to the nation he promised a comprehensive 
national reconstruction program and to increase the pace of industri- 
alization. His leadership, after that of Bhutto and Jatoi, whose families 
were rooted in the rural aristocracy, represented the ascending impor- 
tance and power of the industrial class. Identifying unemployment as 
the nation's primary problem, Nawaz Sharif saw industrialization as 
the cure. 

Nawaz Sharif was a political moderate, but he was also a religious 
conservative and a Zia protege, comfortable returning the country to 
a more Islamic course. And from a political and pragmatic perspec- 
tive, his coalition included the Islamist JUI party, whose support was 
needed to maintain the coalition. Sharif's backing for a conservative 
religious agenda would cement their allegiance. In May 1991 his gov- 
ernment passed the Shariat Bill — the bill that Zia had tried but failed 
to push through the National Assembly in 1985 — which made the 
Qur'an and the Sunna the law of the land provided that "the present 
political system . . . and the existing system of Government, shall not be 
challenged" and provided that "the right of the non-Muslims guaranteed 
by or under the Constitution" shall not be infringed upon (Enforcement 
of Shari'ah Act, 1991, Act X of 1991, Section 3). The act was unpopu- 
lar with both secularists and fundamentalists, the former fearing that 
Pakistan was becoming a theocracy, the latter angry that the law did 
not go far enough. Although a government group whose task it was to 
assist Islamization recommended several immediate steps, the act was 
never enforced. For example, in November 1991 the nation's supreme 
religious court, the Federal Shariat Court, declared a score of federal and 
provincial laws repugnant to Islam and therefore void, including one 
pertaining to the payment of interest. However, bans on interest on all 
loans would have been an impediment to Nawaz Sharif's industrializa- 
tion plans. The ruling was appealed and never implemented. 

==Sharif's Economic Policy==
A conservative industrialist whose family "owned the biggest industrial 
empire in the country" (Bennett Jones 2002, 231), Sharif supported 
an economic policy focused on restoring to the private sector indus- 
tries that had been nationalized by Zulfikar Bhutto. This was as much 
personal as it was domestic policy to increase tax revenue: In 1972 
Zulfikar Bhutto had nationalized the Sharif family's Ittefaq Foundary 
(The company was denationalized in 1979, around the time Nawaz 
Sharif was beginning his political career.) Sharif also went farther than 
Benazir Bhutto in enticing foreign investment by opening Pakistan's 
stock market to foreign capital, and foreign exchange restrictions 
were loosened during this time. (However, in his second government 
Sharif inexplicably reversed this trend when he voided contracts signed 
between foreign power companies and the Bhutto government.) Having 
no ties to the landowning aristocracy, Sharif also undertook targeted 
land reform efforts in Sind, where land was distributed to the poor. 
He also "had a penchant for costly projects of questionable economic 
value" (Kux 2001, 44). Large development projects, such as the Ghazi 
Barotha Hydro Power Project on the Indus River in Punjab, the Gwadar 
Miniport in Baluchistan, and, in his second government, a superhigh- 
way connecting Lahore and Islamabad, were commissioned. Perhaps 
Sharif's most controversial economic program involved the distribution 
of "tens of thousands of taxis" to towns and villages. Technically, the 
government subsidized the purchase of the imported taxis by young 
men with the agreement that these "loans" would be repaid, but well 
into the Musharraf regime few of the loans had been paid off. 
Sharif's economic policies placed him in good standing with the 
World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The latter 
especially played a role in Pakistan's economic life during the 1990s, 
as the country under changing leadership, struggled to remain sol- 
vent. However, IMF assistance was contingent upon debt reduction by 
Pakistan. Pakistan's national debt impeded Sharif's economic policies, 
and this was compounded by the suspension of the United States's 
military and economic assistance program (in response to Pakistan's 
nuclear- weapons program), and the end of the Soviet-Afghan War. 
Because of the fear of a Soviet threat on its border, Pakistan was able 
to garner foreign aid amounting to as much as 2.7 percent of its gross 
national product, equal to $10 per capita in 1990. Within seven years 
the per capita amount had fallen to half that amount (Kux, 2001, 44). 
Exacerbating Pakistan's dire economic situation during this time was a 
decline in worker remittances from the Persian Gulf. 

The damage to the economy done by the unpaid taxi loans actually 
paled in comparison to the unpaid loans of various Pakistani politi- 
cians, including Sharif himself. These unpaid loans contributed to the 
destabilization of Pakistan's banking system so that by the late 1990s it 
was on the verge of collapse. 

==Foreign Policy and Kalashnikov Culture==
In foreign affairs Nawaz Sharif strengthened relations with Central Asia's 
Muslim republics that had formed in the wake of the Soviet Union's col- 
lapse in 1991. Pakistan also joined the international coalition to drive 
Iraq out of Kuwait during the Gulf War (1990-91), although the largest 
religious party in the IJI coalition, the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI, or Islamic 
Assembly), opposed the policy, as a defeat of Iraq would strengthen the 
Shi'i regime in Iran. 

Across the border to the west, Afghanistan was disintegrating 
into chaos. After the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 and the fall of the 
Communist government in 1992, warring factions carved the nation 
into fiefdoms, and law and order broke down. Nawaz Sharif attempted 
to broker a peace among the competing factions with the Islamabad 
Accord, negotiated under his direction, but the violence continued. The 
lawlessness spread into Pakistan. Fueled by ethnic and political rivalries 
and easy access to weapons, crime and terrorism in the country grew 
rampant. Pakistanis labeled this outbreak of violence "the Kalashnikov 
culture," after the ubiquitous Soviet-made automatic weapon that made 
the carnage possible. 
==Bank Of Credit And Commerce International (Bcci)==
Prime Minister Zulfikar Bhutto nationalized Pakistan's privately 
owned banks in 1974. However, foreign banks could still oper- 
ate in the country. One of the most important was BCCI, the 
Bank of Credit and Commerce International. Though chartered in 
Luxembourg, BCCI had three major branches in Pakistan and was 
founded by a well-connected Pakistani banker, Agha Hasan Abedi 
(1922-95). Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's family business was a major 
borrower. In 1991, the year that banking was opened to Pakistan's 
private sector under the government's economic liberalization pro- 
gram, the BCCI collapsed in what was called the biggest bank fraud 
in history, estimated to have involved losses of between $10 billion 
and $17 billion. A U.S. Senate report completed in 1992 concluded 
BCCI was "a fundamentally corrupt criminal enterprise" (Kerry and 
Brown, 1992, I). In addition to fraud, money laundering, and bribery, 
the report also charged the bank with "support of terrorism, arms 
trafficking, and the sale of nuclear technologies; management of pros- 
titution; the commission and facilitation of income tax evasion, smug- 
gling, and illegal immigration; illicit purchases of banks and real estate; 
and a panoply of financial crimes limited only by the imagination of its 
officers and customers" (ibid., I). The Pakistani branches were con- 
duits for significant parts of these activities. BCCI received additional 
attention in the United States for two reasons: The bank was found to 
have secretly acquired 25 percent ownership of a large U.S. bank, First 
American, without regulatory approval, violating U.S. law; and it was 
found that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had been aware for 
several years of BCCI's activities, but had not informed other agen- 
cies, prompting speculation that the spy agency itself may have been 
among those taking advantage of the bank's lax controls and illegal 
practices. Most of the financial losses had mundane roots: poor busi- 
ness practices and bad lending decisions. In the years since, most lost 
funds were recovered through forfeitures, fines, and settlements. 

The roots of the violence lay in the cultural heritage of the Pashtun, 
for whom carrying a gun has long been a tradition born of necessity 
Defense of tribal lands, banditry blood feuds, and pursuit of badal, or 
revenge, all required firearms. The availability of weapons increased 
dramatically in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion. Black market 
Soviet weapons and guns intended for the mujahideen swept into 
Pakistan. So did heroin. Afghan warlords, who managed the fight 
against the Soviets, financed arms purchases in part by the trafficking 
of heroin, refined from Afghanistan's abundant opium crop at hundreds 
of small labs. A culture of smuggling and drug trafficking grew. Arms 
were also needed to protect the heroin. 

The Pakistani towns of Sakhkot, which had a gun market boasting 
more than 200 gun dealers, and Darra Adam Khel, 25 miles south of 
Sakhkot, where townspeople craft working imitations of almost any 
handgun or rifle, became symbols of the Kalashnikov culture. 

Pakistan had virtually no drug culture prior to the Afghan war. The 
number of heroin addicts went from fewer than 10,000 to 12,000 in 
1979 to more than 500,000 by the mid-1980s and as many as 3 million 
to 4 million by 1999. Many refugees from the war resettled in urban 
areas of Pakistan, particularly in Karachi. The cycle of guns, addic- 
tion, and violence took root here too. By the late 1980s, Karachi and 
Hyderabad were being compared to Beirut for their level of violence. 

Adding to the problem of violence is the police force, whose members 
are typically regarded as corrupt and ineffective. Those who want justice 
seem compelled to seek it for themselves, and taking the law into one's 
own hands rarely carries consequences from law enforcement agencies. 

In an effort to stem the chaos the Sharif government ordered citi- 
zens to turn in weapons, with little success. To deal quickly with those 
sowing the mayhem the legislature passed the Twelfth Amendment, 
which allowed for the quick establishment of trial courts to dispense 
summary justice. 

Pakistan's legislative bodies mirrored the chaos. Dissension grew rife 
in the IJI coalition, particularly within the Pakistan Muslim League, 
the IJI's largest party. The right-of-center and religious parties compris- 
ing the coalition had been united in their opposition to the PPP, but 
with their primary adversary defeated, their unity splintered. Relations 
between Nawaz Sharif and President Ishaq Khan were also souring. In 
1993 the prime minister and president began trying to oust each other 
through behind-the-scenes maneuvering. 

As he had once before, on April 19, 1993, President Ishaq Kahn 
invoked the Eighth Amendment, dismissed Nawaz Sharif and his gov- 
ernment for corruption, and dissolved the National Assembly. Ishaq 
Khan named Balakh Sher Khan Mazari (r. April-May 1993), head of a 
clan of landowners, as the caretaker prime minister. General elections 
were scheduled for July 1993. However, in May the Supreme Court 
overturned the presidential order ousting the government, and Nawaz 
==Law Enforcement==
The basic structure of Pakistan's police force was defined in 
Article 23 of the Indian Police Act of 1861. The police were 
responsible for preventing crime and detecting and arresting criminals, 
executing orders and warrants, and gathering and reporting informa- 
tion concerning public order. Other than revisions to the act dating 
from 1888 and the adoption of the Police Rules of 1934, the document 
still defines the role of Pakistan's police. The mission or approach 
changed little after partition. Each of the four provinces has its own 
police force, and traditionally there has been little integration of their 
operations. The senior positions are staffed by members of the Police 
Service of Pakistan, an organization similar to the Civil Service of 
Pakistan. Members are relatively well paid and have a greater degree 
of power than other civil servants; therefore, it is often the first 
choice of high-ranking students seeking entry to government service. 
Each provincial force is headed by an inspector general, aided by 
a deputy inspector general and an assistant inspector general. They 
oversee the work of a division, or range, which coordinates police 
activity within areas of each province. Most police work is conducted 
at the district level, under the direction of a superintendent, and at 
the subdistrict level, headed by an assistant or deputy superintendent. 
The great majority of police personnel are assigned to subdistrict 
stations. The lowest rank is constable, then, in ascending order, head 
constable, assistant subinspector, subinspector, sergeant, and inspec- 
tor. Larger cities have their own police forces, but these are under the 
direction of the provincial police forces. Police in Pakistan are gener- 
ally unarmed. They frequently use a lathi, a five-foot wooden staff, for 
crowd control, used to hold back throngs or as a club. Traditionally 
provincial police were almost exclusively male. Under Benazir Bhutto 
women were inducted into the police force as part of a campaign for 
equal rights for women. 

Sharif was reinstated as prime minister. He and the president remained 
at odds, bringing the government to a standstill. 

Benazir Bhutto's Second Government 

In July 1993, after two weeks of negotiations, both Nawaz Sharif and 
Ishaq Khan resigned their positions, and the national and provincial 
assemblies were dissolved once again. Moeenuddin Ahmad Qureshi 
(r. July-Oct. 1993), a senior World Bank official, was named caretaker 
prime minister, and Wasim Sajjad (r. July-Nov. 1993), Senate chair- 
man, the caretaker president. Though he served only a few months, 
Moeenuddin Qureshi undertook important reforms. Without concern 
that he would be voted out of office, he made tough decisions that 
would have been difficult for an ambitious politician. Qureshi devalued 
the currency, cut farm subsidies, slashed public sector expenditures, 
and eliminated 15 ministries. He also raised the prices of critical items, 
including wheat, gasoline, and electricity. Qureshi also published the 
names of individuals with unpaid loans from state banks totaling some 
$2 billion; the list included many prominent politicians. Those who 
failed to repay their debts were barred from running for office in the 
upcoming October 1993 elections. 
==Bhutto's Return==
New national and provincial elections were held October 6-7, 1993. The 
PPP campaigned on the platform of an "Agenda for Change," focused 
on improvements of social services. The MQM boycotted the election. 
Turnout was low, with only about 40 percent of those eligible voting. The 
Pakistan Muslim League (PML) led by Nawaz Sharif won 72 seats. The 
PPP won a plurality, with 86 seats in the National Assembly, but failed 
to win a majority. Yet the party did well in all four provinces. Bhutto, 
through a coalition with minor parties and independents, achieved a 
majority, earning the right to form a new government. In November, the 
national and provincial assemblies elected as president Farooq Ahmed 
Khan Leghari (r. 1993-97), a young PPP party loyalist. Hailing from a 
family of hereditary chiefs of the prominent Leghari tribe, Leghari began 
his career in the civil service after earning a degree from England's Oxford 
University. His service as government appointee and elected official was 
interrupted by four years in prison during the martial-law years after 
1983. In his first address as president, Leghari pledged to revoke the 
Eighth Amendment, which had previously been used to dissolve govern- 
ments at presidential whim. He also supported weakening the power of 
religious courts and expanding women's rights. With the prime minister 
and president from the same party, many hoped the continual warring 
between these offices would end. But Leghari was soon embroiled in 
scandal and controversy, dooming his push for reforms. 

Bhutto and the opposition, particularly the MQM, continued to be 
at loggerheads. In the fall of 1994 Nawaz Sharif embarked on a "train 
march," traveling by rail from Karachi to Peshawar to dramatize their 
opposition to the Bhutto government. The "march" drew massive 
crowds along the route in a display of the agitational and confronta- 
tional tactics that characterized both Pakistani politics and these two 
bitter rivals. In September a general strike was declared, and Nawaz 
Sharif called for another demonstration of resistance in October. Bhutto 
arrested several opposition leaders who took part in the protests, draw- 
ing widespread condemnation. 
==Relationship with the United States==
Throughout the late 1980s Pakistani officials made statements indicat- 
ing the country had achieved a nuclear capability, as intelligence reports 
continued to describe advances in its weapons program. Since 1990 
the United States had been withholding delivery of 28 F-16 fighter jets 
Pakistan had ordered — and paid for at a cost of $1.2 billion — under 
the terms of the Pressler Amendment, enacted by the U.S. Congress 
in 1985. The amendment required that before the president could 
authorize foreign aid to Pakistan, he had to certify that the country 
was not developing and did not possess nuclear weapons. President 
Ronald Reagan had waived the requirement, as allowed by the law, in 
1988, when Pakistan's assistance in the U.S. fight against the Soviet 
occupation of Afghanistan seemed crucial. However, the Soviets had 
withdrawn in 1989, and in 1990 President George H. W. Bush (r. 
1989-93) did not certify Pakistan as a nuclear-free nation, thereby 
triggering an aid embargo. At the time, Pakistan was the third largest 
recipient of U.S. military assistance — after Israel and Egypt. In 1986 the 
United States and Pakistan had agreed on a $4 billion economic devel- 
opment and security assistance program that Pakistan would receive, 
paid out from 1988 to 1993. Pakistan was in the midst of an ambitious 
program to refurbish its armed forces, looking across the border at its 
bigger, nuclear-armed enemy, India. In addition to depriving Pakistan 
of material it needed to have a credible defensive force, the Pressler 
Amendment targeted only Pakistan, though other nations were known 
to have nuclear weapons programs that violated the terms of the UN 
nuclear nonproliferation treaty. Moreover, India had started the nuclear 
arms race and had escaped all penalties of the Symington and Pressler 
amendments. Relations between Pakistan and the United States deterio- 
rated sharply from 1990 through 1993, as issues of weapons develop- 
ment, terrorism, and narcotics caused a growing rift between Islamabad 
and Washington. In 1992 the United States almost declared Pakistan 
a state sponsor of terrorism, primarily due to its support for Kashmiri 
militants. In the summer of 1993 the United States placed more sanc- 
tions on Pakistan, charging it with receiving prohibited missile technol- 
ogy from China. 

In late 1993 U.S. president Bill Clinton (r. 1993-2001) proposed 
revising the Pressler Amendment, citing the unequal treatment 
of Pakistan and India over their respective nuclear programs. But 
Clinton faced strong objections from legislators and withdrew his 
proposal in early 1994. A few months later his administration pro- 
posed a one-time sale of F16s, contingent upon Pakistan pledging to 
cap the production of weapons-grade uranium. This proposal paral- 
leled a liberalization of Pakistan's economy to a more market-based 
system, which the United States was eager to encourage. In January 
1995, the thawing relationship between the two nations was under- 
scored by a visit to Pakistan by U.S. defense secretary William Perry 
(r. 1994-97). Following the visit, Perry proclaimed that the Pressler 
Amendment had failed in its objective to halt Pakistan's nuclear 
program and had actually been counterproductive. Benazir Bhutto 
traveled to Washington, D.C., in April, and in early 1996 the Brown 
Amendment was passed, which removed nonmilitary aid from the 
purview of the Pressler Amendment and gave the president a onetime 
waiver to permit the release of the military equipment embargoed 
since 1990. President Clinton authorized the release of some $368 
million in military equipment. Though the F-16s were not among the 
approved items, Clinton pledged to reimburse Pakistan for the money 
it had already paid for the jets. Meanwhile, Pakistan continued to 
make progress in its nuclear program. 

A visit to Pakistan by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and her 
daughter, Chelsea, in 1995 helped project to the world an image of 
Pakistan as a modern, progressive country. Bhutto's visit to the United 
States the previous year had already helped raise the country's visibility. 
International investment in Pakistan increased. 
==Bhutto's Central Asia Policy==
Benazir Bhutto continued to pursue the country's long-standing policy 
of seeking influence and power in Afghanistan to balance the threat 
felt from India. During her first term as prime minister, training camps 
for mujahideen had remained open, and Pakistan had issued visas for 
thousands of militants from more than 20 countries traveling to the 
camps. The goal, many observers believed, was to maintain an army of 
jihadists who could be deployed to wage proxy wars against Pakistan's 
rivals in Kashmir and Central Asia. 

Bhutto had accompanied her father to Simla when he signed the 
agreement with India in 1972 that ended the war triggered by East 
Pakistan's declaration of independence and laid down the blueprint for 
future peaceful relations between the two signatories. But it was evident 
Bhutto intended to keep a force of militants available to use as a weapon 
against India in Kashmir. 

When Bhutto was reelected for a second term as prime minister in 
1993, she was eager to encourage trade with Pakistan's neighbors in 
Central Asia. As part of that initiative she backed a pipeline running 
from Turkmenistan through southern Afghanistan to Pakistan, pro- 
posed by an Argentinean oil company, rather than a rival route cham- 
pioned by U.S. oil company Unocal. However, the region had become 
less stable in the aftermath of the war against the Soviets, even as the 
Taliban began to emerge as a power in Afghanistan in 1993. Rather 
than support a wider peace process in Afghanistan, Bhutto backed the 
Taliban, who she saw as a force that would provide security to protect 
the proposed pipeline and give stability to their country. 

Her policy was influenced by the ISI, whose stature had risen during 
the Soviet occupation. After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, 
the ISI sought to extend Pakistan's regional control across Afghanistan 
and the Central Asian republics. The ISI began funding the Taliban 
("students"), a Pashtun Islamic student movement in Kandahar. Using 
bribery, guerrilla tactics, and military support, the ISI helped install the 
Taliban as rulers in Kabul in 1996 and eventually extend its control 
over 95 percent of the country. 

During the same time that the Bhutto government backed the Taliban 
in Afghanistan, the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam QUI), a strict religious party, 
began to gain power in Pakistan: Bhutto welcomed the party into her 
ruling coalition. Meanwhile the proxy war in Kashmir was heating up, 
again with government support. Thus, it was under Bhutto, and with 
her encouragement, that the Taliban rose to power in Afghanistan and 
the power of religious fundamentalists grew in Pakistan. Bhutto would 
come to regret these decisions. In a 1998 address Bhutto said that these 
policies had created a strategic threat to Pakistan and led to Islamic 
militancy, suicide bombings, weaponization of the population, the drug 
trade, and increased poverty and unemployment. And in an interview 
with the Council on Foreign Relations a few months before her death in 
2007, Bhutto said, "I remember when the Taliban first came up in neigh- 
boring Afghanistan. Many of us, including our friends from the U.S., 
==Deobahd And Barelwi Sects==
A variety of schools of Islamic thought, or sects, exist among 
Sunni Muslims on the subcontinent. In Pakistan, Deoband and 
Barelwi are the two primary sects. Deoband is a town 100 miles (160 
km) north of Delhi. A madrasa established there in 1867 became the 
headquarters for virulently anti-British Muslims who believed Western 
influence was corrupting Islam and who swore allegiance to religion 
over state. This became the model for other madrasas established 
throughout Pakistan after independence. Deoband is often linked to 
the spread of religious extremism, most notably as a seedbed for the 
Taliban in Afghanistan. To some degree this influence is real, as stu- 
dents, or talibs, from these Deoband madrasas provided the grassroots 
strength that gave birth to the Taliban in 1996. However, the author- 
ity inherent in the name Deoband is invoked to legitimize all kinds of 
Islamic conservatism; it is estimated some 15 percent of Pakistan's 
Sunni Muslims consider themselves part of the Deoband movement. 

The Bareiwi sect, to which some 60 percent of Pakistan's Sunnis 
belong, was founded by a Sufi scholar, Mullah Ahmad Raza Khan ( 1 856— 
1921), in the town of Barelwi in northern India. He is not related to 
the military and religious leader Sayyid Ahmad Barelwi (1786-1831). 
Ahmad Raza Khan taught that Islam is compatible with the subconti- 
nent's earlier religions, and Barelwis are apt to pray to holy men, or 
pirs, both living and dead. This practice is an abomination to orthodox 
Sunni Muslims, though Shi'i Muslims engage in similar rites. 
initially thought they would bring peace to that war-torn country. And 
that was a critical, fatal mistake we made. If I had to do things again, 
that's certainly not a decision that I would have taken" (Bhutto 2007). 
==Internal Feuds==
Internal feuds had long been part of the Bhutto family legacy. Zulfikar 
Bhutto had feuded with family members as he rose to power, and his 
children followed in his footsteps. After Zulfikar's death, Benazir fought 
with her mother, Begum Nusrat Bhutto (b. 1929), for control of the 
PPP. Nusrat favored Benazir's brother, Mir Murtaza (1954-96), as heir 
to the Bhutto political mantle. Murtaza, meanwhile, went into exile in 
Kabul, Damascus, and Libya, and formed a militant breakaway PPP fac- 
tion called al-Zulfikar Organization. From beyond Pakistan's borders he 
accused Benazir of betraying their father's ideals. Murtaza also strongly 
opposed Benazir's husband Ali Zardari's involvement with the PPP, due 
to concerns about corruption. 

Murtaza's supporters had been implicated in violence, including the 
hijacking of a Pakistan International Airline aircraft as a display of pro- 
test against the Zia regime, responsible for executing Murtaza's father 
and their political leader. 

In the 1993 election Mir Murtaza had won a seat as an anti-Bhutto 
candidate. When he returned from Damascus after years of exile, he 
was jailed on the longstanding terrorism charge. Benazir Bhutto also 
removed her mother from leadership in the PPP. The internecine 
conflict was perceived as another blot on Benazir Bhutto's image. In 
September 1996 Mir Murtaza Bhutto was killed in a police ambush in 
Karachi with six companions. None of the police involved in the kill- 
ing were arrested, and some were subsequently promoted. A judicial 
review of the killings concluded it could not have occurred without the 
approval from the highest levels of government. 

Throughout the first half of the 1990s relations between Bhutto 
and Leghari deteriorated. Despite earlier pledges to revoke the Eighth 
Amendment, Leghari instead invoked it. On November 5, 1996, Leghari 
[[File: bb.PNG | Benazir Bhutto's policies were widely criticized and provoked large opposition rallies, such as the protest in this photo. (AP Photo/K. M. Choudary)|frame|500px]]
dismissed the Benazir Bhutto government, alleging crimes including cor- 
ruption, mismanagement, and murder. The National Assembly was also 
dissolved. Bhutto's husband, Asif Ali Zardari (b. 1956), who held the 
cabinet post of investment minister, was accused of taking bribes, receiv- 
ing kickbacks on government contracts, and sponsoring extrajudicial 
killings in Karachi. Bhutto labeled the charges politically motivated and 
went into voluntary exile. She and her husband were tried in absentia in 
1999 and convicted. In 2001 the Supreme Court ordered a retrial. She 
was tried in a separate trial in absentia and convicted and sentenced to 
three years in prison. Facing arrest and incarceration if she returned to 
Pakistan, Bhutto remained in exile through the middle of the first decade 
of the new century. After Bhutto's dismissal, Malik Meraj Khalid (r. 1996- 
97), rector of the International Islamic University, was named caretaker 
prime minister. In the February 1997 elections the Pakistan Muslim 
League (PML) won a two- thirds majority in the National Assembly and 
Nawaz Sharif was reelected prime minister (r. 1997-99). 
Nawaz Sharif's Second Government 

Ever since the passage of the Eighth Amendment in 1985 during Zia 
ul-Haq's regime, it had played havoc with Pakistan's political stability. 
During his second term in office Sharif made overturning the Eighth 
Amendment a priority, and in April 1997, with the support of all the 
political parties, the Thirteenth Amendment to the constitution was 
adopted by the National Assembly. It gave the prime minister authority 
to repeal Article 58 (2)(b), the Eighth Amendment article that allowed 
the president to dismiss the prime minister and the National Assembly, 
thus restoring the original powers of the prime minister and returning 
the presidency to its ceremonial role. The Thirteenth Amendment also 
transferred the power to appoint the three chiefs of the armed forces 
and provincial governors from the president to the prime minister. 

Nawaz Sharif also attempted to rein in the political practice of 
switching parties and alliances that had over the past few decades 
stalled progress and encouraged corruption. Because the parties and 
prime ministers depended on shaky coalitions to provide them with 
the majorities they needed to rule, politicians could threaten to aban- 
don their party and shift their support to rival politicians. This was 
mostly done to win favors or gather power, rather than to promote the 
public's agenda. Ministry posts, bank loans, and other benefits had been 
extracted by politicians as a price for continued party loyalty or for 
switching allegiances. Attempting to redress the problem, Nawaz Sharif 
introduced the Anti-Defection Bill, which the Senate and National 
Assembly passed overwhelmingly in July as the Fourth Amendment. 
==Growing Repression==
However, Sharif's support for the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amend- 
ments was accompanied by an increasingly autocratic political style, 
and thus many saw the amendments as part of his attempt to stifle 
opposition to his rule. Sharif arrested journalists who wrote critical arti- 
cles about him, including respected figures Majam Sethi and Hussain 
Haqqani, and turned tax investigators on the editors who published 
their work. When the Supreme Court presided over a corruption case 
in which Nawaz Sharif was a defendant in 1997, his supporters attacked 
the court building, forcing proceedings to be suspended. No longer 
concerned about dismissal from his position, Nawaz Sharif let his rela- 
tionship with President Leghari, his primary political foe, deteriorate. 
The chief justice of Pakistan, Syed Sajjad Ali Shah (served 1994-97), 
had become embroiled in judicial disagreements with the Sharif gov- 
ernment, and Leghari threw his support behind Ali Shah. Sharif had 
party enforcers storm the Supreme Court in November and remove 
Chief Justice Ali Shah from office. Unable to dislodge him by dissolv- 
ing the government, as he had with Benazir Bhutto, President Leghari 
resigned on December 2, 1997. 

The new president would be indirectly elected by the two houses 
of Parliament, the National Assembly and the Senate, along with the 
four provincial assemblies. On December 31, 1997, the PML candidate, 
Muhammad Rafiq Tarar, a senator and former Supreme Court judge, 
was elected to replace Leghari, having beaten the PPP and Jamiat 
Ulema-i-Islam candidates by a 10-to-l margin. The nation's ninth presi- 
dent, Tarar (r. 1998-2001) took office on January 1, 1998. 
==Nuclear Tests and the Economy==
Early in May 1998 India's new government under Prime Minister Atul 
Bihari Vajpayee (r. May-June 1996, 1998-2004), leader of the Hindu 
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), tested a nuclear device, thereby con- 
firming that it possessed nuclear weapons. Two weeks later, on May 
28, Pakistan conducted its own tests of five nuclear devices, with a 
reported yield of up to 40 kilotons, at a nuclear test facility at Chaghi, 
in Baluchistan. On the same day the Sharif government proclaimed an 
emergency, suspending basic rights and freezing all foreign-currency 
accounts in Pakistani banks. The nuclear tests brought international 
condemnation, but Pakistan claimed it needed the weapons for self- 
defense against India. The United Nations passed a unanimous resolu- 
tion calling on both Pakistan and India to end their nuclear weapons 
programs, and UN secretary-general Kofi Annan (r. 1997-2007) urged 
both countries to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Pakistan 
expressed willingness to sign the treaty if India did the same, but India 
declined. In June 1998, Pakistan declared a moratorium on future test- 
ing and India made a similar declaration. 

By the time of the 1998 nuclear tests, Pakistan's nuclear program 
(both military and domestic) had been functioning for more than two 
decades with assistance from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, 
the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), France, and China. 
The United States's response to Pakistan's nuclear program during this 
period swung between cutting off foreign aid to reinstituting assistance. 
Following Pakistan's nuclear tests of late May and early June 1998, 
the United States reimposed sanctions (excluding humanitarian assis- 
tance), which had been eased in 1995, against Pakistan. The U.S. sanc- 
tions included a "ban on financing from the Trade and Development 
Agency, Overseas Private Investment Corporation, and the Export- 
Import Bank, restrictions on U.S. exports of high-technology products, 
opposition to loans from international financial institutions, and a ban 
on U.S. bank loans to the government of Pakistan." Japan joined the 
United States, freezing most of its development aid to Pakistan and 
withdrawing support for new loans for Pakistan in international bodies 
(Peterson Institute, 2007). 

The nuclear tests temporarily bolstered Prime Minister Sharif's popu- 
larity among Pakistanis, despite the fact that the effects of the sanctions 
on Pakistan's economy were felt immediately and that he had earlier 
declared a state of emergency curtailing human rights. Nevertheless, 
Pakistan's fragile economy, buffeted since the beginning of the 1990s, 
faced potential collapse. The Sharif government had to negotiate bank 
loans in July 1998 to cover the budgetary shortfall caused by the sanc- 
tions, while increasing the price of nondiesel gasoline. That same 
month Standard and Poor's downgraded Pakistan's rating, predicting 
imminent bankruptcy. 

Although some of the restrictions against Pakistan were eased by the 
end of the year and in early 1999, Nawaz Sharif's hold on power grew 
ever more precarious. The poor economic situation was but one factor. 
Since the death of Zia, the military had been an ever-present threat to 
Pakistan's feeble democracy. Furthermore, "Sharif had to look over his 
other shoulder ... at the militant Islamists who were a powerful force 
in Pakistan" (Talbott 2004, 107). The latter were given support by the 
neighboring Taliban in Afghanistan, even as a cash-strapped Pakistan 
provided financial aid to the Taliban government in 1998. Sharif exac- 
erbated Islamists' fears (and conservative concerns) when he canceled 
the traditional Friday holidays. But the failure of his economic program 
during a period of worldwide economic growth and, especially, his 
attempt to exert control over the military would ultimately lead to his 
undoing. 

After the army chief of staff, Jehangir Karamat, suggested that the 
military leadership be given a role in the National Security Council of 
Pakistan, Sharif forced his resignation in early October. Karamat had 
warned that Pakistan was facing grave problems, namely, an economy 
that was on the brink of collapse. He said Pakistan "could not afford the 
destabilizing effects of polarization, vendettas, and insecurity-expedi- 
ent policies" (quoted in Abbas 2004, 166). He was replaced by General 
Pervez Musharraf (b. 1943). 

To strengthen his hold on power, Nawaz Sharif oversaw passage of 
the 15th Amendment of the constitution in the National Assembly in 
late October. Once passed by the Senate, it would have made sharia the 
supreme law of Pakistan and given the prime minister the unfettered 
right to rule by degree in the name of Islamic law. But unsure of the 
level of support in the Senate, where a two-thirds majority was needed 
for passage, Nawaz Sharif never brought the legislation for a vote 
within the 90 days required for ratification. 
==The Kargil Conflict==
After the two countries tested nuclear devices, tensions between India 
and Pakistan steadily increased. In February 1999 Sharif and Vajpayee 
attempted to de-escalate the situation. Vajpayee traveled to Lahore 
by bus and was met by Sharif at the Wagah border crossing on the 
Grand Trunk Road. The two leaders issued the Lahore Declaration, 
defining the measures the countries would each take to stabilize rela- 
tions. The religious party Jamaat-i-Islami, a partner in Sharif's coali- 
tion government, opposed the visit, but all other political groups 
welcomed the effort to promote peace between Pakistan and India. 
However, Kashmir remained a flashpoint between Pakistan and India, 
ever threatening to plunge the two countries back into war. India had 
refused to hold the plebiscite mandated by a UN Security Council reso- 
lution in 1948, and Muslim Kashmiri fighters, supported by Pakistan, 
continued their battle against Indian occupation forces. The fighters 
infiltrated Indian-controlled Kashmir and attacked symbols of Indian 
rule, including army posts and police stations. In response the Indian 
army established border posts along the Line of Control to combat the 
attacks. Because of the high altitude of these posts — from about 12,000 
to more than 15,000 feet (4,000-5,200 m) — troops were withdrawn 
during the winter. 

In April 1999, before Indian troops returned to their high-altitude 
garrisons, Kashmiri guerrillas captured posts along mountain ridges 
near the Indian-occupied towns of Kargil and Drass. From their posi- 
tions the guerrillas launched artillery fire on National Highway 1, 
which runs north from Kashmir's capital, Srinagar. Pakistan denied 
any knowledge of or support for the guerrilla action. But India claimed 
identification taken from slain guerrillas revealed they were members of 
Pakistan's Northern Light Infantry, a paramilitary force under Pakistan's 
control. Beginning in May Indian forces counterattacked in what was 
to become the first land war in history between two declared nuclear 
powers. Two of its aircraft strayed into Pakistani territory, one of which 
was shot down. The potential for a nuclear confrontation caused 
worldwide concern. As the fighting continued from May into July, and 
the Pakistani forces were slowly pushed back, U.S. president Clinton 
helped persuade Pakistan to use its influence with the guerrillas to stop 
fighting. Bowing to international pressure, Sharif withdrew all Pakistani 
troops from Indian-held territory to the Line of Control. The guerrillas 
left the captured territory by August 1999. The withdrawal of Pakistani 
forces further increased Sharif's unpopularity at home. 
==The Coup against Sharif==
The object of increasingly unflattering media coverage, Nawaz Sharif 
attempted to intimidate the press. In May 1999 Nawaz Sharif's secret 
police invaded the home of a leading journalist and critic of the regime, 
Najam Sethi, and assaulted and kidnapped him. An international protest 
forced Sharif to release the journalist. Signs of public disenchantment 
with the entire political process grew. In the four national elections held 
from 1988 to 1997, voter turnout had dropped progressively, from 43 
percent in 1988 to 35 percent by 1997. 

The military remained the one state institution Nawaz Sharif had 
not brought under his control. Karamat's departure in late 1998 had 
provoked great resentment in the military, placing Nawaz Sharif in a 
vulnerable position. As mass opposition rallies were staged against his 
government, Sharif, worried about the potential for a coup, planned 
to replace Musharraf, a veteran of both the 1965 and 1971 wars with 
India, with a more compliant official. On October 12, 1999, General 
Musharraf was on a commercial flight to Karachi, returning from a 
visit to Colombo, Sri Lanka, one of 198 passengers. According to a 
police report filed by a colonel in the army, Nawaz Sharif ordered the 
Civil Aviation Authority to deny the flight permission to land any- 
where in Pakistan. This became known as the "Plane Conspiracy" 
case. Simultaneously, Nawaz Sharif announced he was appointing the 
director of the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence service, as the military's new 
chief of staff. The military refused to recognize the appointment and 
took over Karachi airport, allowing Musharraf's flight to land with only 
minutes of fuel left onboard. Once on the ground, General Musharraf 
ordered the military to take control of the government, claiming the 
turmoil and uncertainty gripping the nation necessitated the action. 
Musharraf proclaimed himself the chief executive of Pakistan. The 
Thirteenth Amendment had proven insufficient to protect democracy, 
however flawed the democratic system may have been. Although 
Musharraf did not declare martial law, as had been done in previous 
military takeovers, Pakistan was once more under military rule.