Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0274/02743.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 28KB | 433 lines

$Unique_ID{COW02743}
$Pretitle{248}
$Title{Pakistan
Chapter 4A.   Government and Politics}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Lawrence Ziring}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{zia
pakistan
military
political
general
junta
khan
army
officers
government}
$Date{1983}
$Log{Steel Engraving*0274301.scf
Table B.*0274301.tab
}
Country:     Pakistan
Book:        Pakistan, A Country Study
Author:      Lawrence Ziring
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1983

Chapter 4A.   Government and Politics

[See Steel Engraving: From a steel engraving of 1860s of Grand Durbar at
Cawnpore in 1859; Lord Canning, first viceroy of India, shown granting a medal
to one of Queen Victoria's subjects.]

     Nationbuilding remains a tedious process in Pakistan. Experiments with a
variety of political systems have failed to produce national integration,
and disparate nationalities have yet to learn the rudiments of living
together. The lesson of Bangladesh-formerly East Pakistan or East Wing-was
lost even before it could be registered among the governors and people.
Centrifugal forces were long at work in West Pakistan, predating the loss
of the country's eastern wing, and those forces were not tamed by the
dismemberment. To the contrary, they were aroused to greater intensity by the
successful secession. Moreover, the nation's political leaders exacerbated
the situation. Despite calls for unity and national sacrifice, they
practiced self-interest and hence undermined their capacity to lead a
divided people.

     When General Mohammad Zia ul Haq and his colleagues deposed the
civilian government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in July 1977, Zia announced his
determination to reverse the course of Pakistani politics. Martial law
had been imposed before. Political parties had been banned, the legislatures
closed, and constitutions abrogated. Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan
had offered the nation "Basic Democracy," and General Agha Mohammad Yahya
Khan had promised to return to parliamentary processes. Neither succeeded in
realizing his stated objectives. The nation proceeded from crisis to crisis
until civil war engulfed the country in 1971 and nullified the reform
programs. Zia was determined to take a different course.

     Although Zia did not cancel the 1973 Constitution, his declarations
and edicts-particularly the Provisional Constitutional Order of March 4,
1981-emphasized its subordination to martial law and hence its de facto
suspension. Zia also publicized his intention to give the nation still
another constitution when the basic structure of his new political system
was firmly in place. Zia spoke for the military junta that he led but
to which he was also indebted. Together the generals pressed the policy
that Pakistan's survival, as well as its progress, was dependent on the
construction of an Islamic state. Declaring themselves to be true to the
teachings of the Prophet Muhammad and Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the country's
founding father, the generals insisted that only by following the tenets
of their Islamic faith and by incorporating those tenets in their national
life could the country be preserved; only by adhering to the guidelines
established by Jinnah and interpreted by the generals could the country
realize its true purpose.

     Zia's views, and it can be assumed those of his brother officers, were
contained in a speech delivered in December 1982 celebrating the birth
anniversary of the Prophet. Zia used the occasion to call on the people
of Pakistan to shape their lives in accordance with the teachings of the
Quran and Sunna and to propagate the faith and performance of their
spiritual leader. Attending the ceremony were the key ministers and advisers
of the government as well as the leaders of the religious community. Their
joint appearance suggested the compatibility of temporal and spiritual power
and provided a special air of urgency to the address. It also was meant
to confer legitimacy on the military rulers. President Zia declared that
nothing less than a jihad could promote Islamic values. His government, he
argued, sought the guidance of the Quran and Sunna in creating the
Nizam-i-Mustafa (Rule of the Prophet) in Pakistan, and toward this goal he
sought to enlist the expertise and wisdom of the theologians and spiritual
divines. Zia noted that his government had adopted a number of Islamic laws
but that Islamization involved more than legal pronouncements. The country's
moral fiber had to be strengthened to ensure the genuineness of the Islamic
state.

     According to Zia, the building of Pakistan's Islamic state must be a
"brick-by-brick" exercise, painstaking and deliberate in order to ensure its
proper and lasting construction. The president noted the emphasis given to
Zakat (alms) and Ushr (the tax on agriculture), which were aimed at providing
the state with the resources needed to assist the less fortunate members of
society. He also cited the government's intention to impose the Islamic rule
of qisas (the right of preemption) and diyat (the laws of evidence in Islam),
to establish Qazi courts (headed by religious judges), and to introduce the
Islamic judicial system, as well as the eventual elimination of interest
in commercial and financial undertakings. Zia's statements and actions
pointed to the necessity of substituting Islamic bodies and practices for
those secular institutions and activities long in place in the country. The
reforms were not only concerned with reducing alien influence; they seemed
aimed also at neutralizing, and in time liquidating, the sophisticated,
cosmopolitan elite that had dominated the Pakistan scene from the state's
inception.

     Zia, however, avoided characterizing his Islamization program as an
attempt to destroy real or potential rivals. Rather, the president spoke
of decay in the Muslim world permitting foreign powers to divide and weaken
the Islamic polity. Pakistan's purpose, explained Zia, was no different from
that publicized by other Muslim states. Muslims had drifted from the source
of their faith, had lost their way in a myriad of practices imposed on them
by outsiders, and as a consequence had suffered humiliation, defeat, and
division. Pakistan, he opined, would set an example for the entire Islamic
world; piety, selflessness, high ethical conduct, and community endeavor
would inspire a new sense of unity at home that would spread to other
Muslim countries. The strength of Pakistan's Muslim convictions would not go
unnoticed, and the Muslim world was destined to regain the respect and
stature that it once enjoyed. Zia's program for Islamic reform, therefore,
went well beyond the confines of the Pakistan nation and could be considered
a counterpoint to the claims and aspirations of Iran's Ayatollah Ruholla
Khomeini. For the time being, however, Zia made it clear that his concern was
limited to Pakistan, where national survival had become the pressing
imperative.

Political Stability

     Pakistan's military junta seized power in a bloodless coup in July 1977,
and although it announced an early return to civilian government, the generals
have not found it advantageous to pursue such a course. Arguing that the
political parties lack national appeal or discipline and convinced that the
politicians are incapable of leading a divided nation, the military
establishment in late 1983 retained its monopoly of power and judged itself
the only guarantee against anarchy and chaos. No mention was made of the fact
that the nation had suffered dismemberment during another sequence of military
rule. No thought was given to the possibility that the present military
government could repeat the experience. The junta appeared convinced that the
tragedy of Bangladesh was not caused by the military's ineptitude but rather
by General Yahya Khan's persistence in working with the existing political
parties and their ambitious leaders (see Yahya Khan and Bangladesh, ch. 1).

     Junta spokesmen suggested that in 1970 and 1971 the armed forces were
duped b