Fall of Pakistan Governments _ A Socio-Historical Analysis

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Fall of Pakistan Governments – Social-Historical

Analysis

Pakistan has witnessed a long chain of political instability- and also change of government either

through coups ot street fighting. The trend started right after murder of Liaquat Ali Khan, the then

Prime Minister. That was a sign of things to come. There have so far been four major political

movements in Pakistan that led to overthrowing a sitting government. Three of these movements were

against military rule and one targeted an elected civilian setup. Though three of the movements (two

against military rule and one against a civilian government) were actually successful in initiating a

sequence of events that bought the government down, the eventual successes of these movements were

soon soiled by the consequential emergence of greater social and political crisis compared to the ones

that the movements had pointed their demonstrations against.

The four movements include the 1968-69 uprising against Filed Martial Ayub Khan’s military-backed

regime; the 1977 movement of opposition parties against the civilian government of Zulfikar Ali

Bhutto; the 1983 movement led by the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD) against the

military dictatorship of General Ziaul Haq; and the 2007 protest movement led by radical lawyers and

aided by opposition parties against the pro-military set-up of General Parvez Musharraf.

The movements against Ayub, Musharraf and Bhutto were successful in gradually ousting these men.

But each one of these successes were soon followed by certain weighty events that were largely

triggered by the immediate consequences of the movements i.e. weakening of the economy, political

bedlam, and the withering of the social contract between the state and society that encouraged

indiscipline and confusion within state institutions and in society in general.

Ayub’s regime fell in 1969. Though his fall was followed by Pakistan’s first ever general election based

on adult franchise (in 1970), in 1971 Pakistan lost a civil war in its Eastern wing (East Pakistan) and

then a war against India whose forces aided the separation of East Pakistan from its Western wing.

The weakening of Bhutto’s regime due to intense protests against it in 1977 was almost immediately

followed by a reactionary military coup that lasted for eleven years. The dictatorship’s legacy today is

widely considered to be one of the most damaging to the country’s social and political fabric.

The movement against Musharraf forced him to hold an election in 2008 that allowed the return of the

country’s two main parties (Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and the PPP); and the same year he was

forced by the newly elected government and parliament to resign as head of state and Army chief.

However, his exit further intensified episodes of anarchic terrorism by religious extremists and

militants who had first emerged during his regime. Thousands of civilians, politicians, soldiers and

policemen were killed in the militant violence and bombings that erupted during the regimes that

followed his ouster.

Of course, the movements that ousted Ayub, Bhutto and Musharraf can’t be entirely blamed for such

devastating quandaries because the roots of the ultimate damage that followed their ouster also lie in

the shortcomings of their respective governments. But it is also true that the economic, political and

social consequences triggered by the movements did intensify the magnitude of the rot that had been

brewing within the country’s state and society before the movements began.

1. Good bye Ayub

Many people who as young men and women took part in the widespread protest movement against the

military rule of Ayub Khan in the late 1960s suggest that Ayub relinquished power after he was told

what some of the protesters had started to call him. In 1968 at the height of the movement against him,

young protesters in Karachi and Lahore began describing him as a dog. This was a time when

politicians and rulers in Pakistan hardly ever used any derogatory language against their opponents, so

Ayub was shocked when he heard that some of his children (the term he used to describe his subjects),

had decided to call him a dog.

Ayub had come to power in 1958 on the back of a popular military coup (Pakistan’s first), and had

enjoyed a significant run of admiration from a majority of Pakistanis in the first four years of his

dictatorship.

Vowing to make Pakistan a powerful and influential military-industrial state, Ayub encouraged and

facilitated an unprecedented growth in the process of industrialisation in the country. He also initiated

the introduction of technical innovations in agriculture and brought Pakistan closer to the United States,

thus benefitting from the military and financial aid that came with the enhanced relationship.

By 1961 the Ayub regime had largely restored the country’s economy that had begun to weaken from

the mid-1950s onwards, mainly due to the political chaos that prevailed in the country, as various

factions of Pakistan’s first ruling party, the Muslim League, indulged in constant infighting and

intrigues, and were unable to address the growing disenchantment and cynicism exhibited towards

politicians by those who were kept out from the political process dominated by the country’s political-

bureaucratic elite.

Ayub was at the height of his power and popularity when he decided to lift Martial Law in 1962 and

restore at least a semblance of political activity by the parties that had been banned in 1958. He became

President and handpicked an assembly through a complex electoral system called ‘Basic Democracies’.

After discarding the 1956 Constitution, his assembly passed a brand new Constitution that enshrined

Ayub’s idea of Jinnah’s Pakistan. The idea revolved around the construction of a strong military-

industrial state, propped up by state-backed capitalism, free enterprise, agricultural reforms and a

progressive interpretation of Islam that was compatible with science, technology and modernity.

Ayub detested politicians, from both the left as well as the right sides of the conventional ideological

divide. His regime came down hard on left-wing parties and then went on to ban certain fundamentalist

parties such as the Jamat-i-Islami (JI) (though the ban was overturned by the courts).

The leftists accused him of encouraging capitalist cronyism, the exploitation of the workers, and the

suppression of the rights and ethnic-nationalism of of the Bengalis (in East Pakistan), Sindhis, the

Baloch and the Pakhtun, and of dislodging the Urdu-speakers (the Mohajirs) from important state and

government institutions that they had helped build after Pakistan’s creation in 1947.

The religious right denounced him of being overtly secular. Ayub easily glided through the many

periodical protests that took place against him after 1962 and then won a second term as President in a

controversial Presidential race in 1965.

Buoyed by his victory and his firm status as a benevolent dictator, Ayub then made an uncharacteristic

mistake , advised by the hawks in his cabinet (led by his young Foreign Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto),

to crown his economic and political achievements with a military triumph against India. India had

suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Chinese army in 1962 and Bhutto and his supporters in

the cabinet were convinced that the Pakistan army would be able to crush the weakened Indian armed

forces.

Though the Pakistani armed forces made rapid gains in the initial period of the 1965 Pakistan-India

War, the conflict soon turned against Pakistan and the control of Lahore virtually passed to India. Ayub

settled for a ceasefire, sending Bhutto into a rage. Ayub eased out Bhutto from the government but the

damage was done. The war had drained the country’s resources and the economy began its detrimental

slide.

Ayub’s opponents accused him of coping out and of losing the war on the negotiation table. Bhutto

went on to form his radical left-liberal party, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), and along with the

already established left-wing groups, such as the National Awami Party (NAP) and the National

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Fall of Pakistan Governments - Social-Historical Analysis Pakistan has witnessed a long chain of political instability- and also change of government either through coups ot street fighting. The trend started right after murder of Liaquat Ali Khan, the then Prime Minister. That was a sign of things to come. There have so far been four major political movements in Pakistan that led to overthrowing a sitting government. Three of these movements were against military rule and one targeted an elected civilian setup. Though three of the movements (two against military rule and one against a civilian government) were actually successful in initiating a sequence of events that bought the government down, the eventual successes of these movements were soon soiled by the consequential emergence of greater social and political crisis compared to the ones that the movements had pointed their demonstrations against. The four movements include the 1968-69 uprising against Filed Martial Ayub Khan's military-backed regime; the 1977 movement of opposition parties against the civilian government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto; the 1983 movement led by the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD) against the military dictatorship of General Ziaul Haq; and the 2007 protest movement led by radical lawyers and aided by opposition parties against the pro-military set-up of General Parvez Musharraf. The movements against Ayub, Musharraf and Bhutto were successful in gradually ousting these men. But ...
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