PAKISTAN

PAKISTAN Pakistan came into existence as a homeland for Muslims on 14 August 1947, carved out of Muslim majority regions of British India. Partition accompanied the British grant of independence and the transfer of power to leaders of the Indian and Pakistani national movements, respectively. Approximately 14 million people moved from both sides of the border, Muslims to Pakistan, and Hindus and Sikhs to India, in an exchange that left at least a half million people dead in communal violence.

Pakistan owes its existence above all to the leadership and vision of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, who headed the Pakistan national movement and was known to his followers as Quaid-i-Azam (Great Leader). As Pakistan's first head of state, he inherited a county beset with problems of identity and limited resources. Jinnah's death, only thirteen months after independence, followed by the assassination of his successor Liaquat Ali Khan three years later, left the country without clear direction on unresolved constitutional issues, including the balance of state and religion.

Pakistan is bounded on the west by Iran, to the north by Afghanistan, to the northeast by China, to the east and southeast by India, and to the south by the Arabian Sea. It has an area (excluding the Pakistani-held part of Jammu and Kashmir) of 307,374 square miles (796,095 sq. km). Pakistan's population in 2003 was nearly 150 million, and its growth rate was officially estimated at 2.5 percent per annum.

The country is comprised of four provinces, each with a distinctive language: Punjab, the most populated and agriculturally rich; Sind, which has important tracts of irrigated farmland but also large barren areas, and which contains several major urban centers, led by Karachi, the country's largest city and original capital; Balochistan, primarily desert and sparsely populated by Balochi tribes; and the North-West Frontier province (NWFP), which has large mountainous areas, is mainly Pashto speaking, and shares several Pashtun tribes with eastern Afghanistan. A Pashtun-inhabited Federally Administered Tribal Area, which hugs the border with Afghanistan, is outside any province and is vested with considerable political autonomy. Islamabad, the country's capital since 1960, is located in a designated federal area in northern Punjab.

Until 1971 Pakistan had an East and West Wing, separated by about 1,000 miles (1,609 km) of Indian territory. Dominance of the political system by West Pakistani elites resulted in economic exploitation and disparities favoring West over East, generating Bengali resentment and separatism. Bengalis, the country's ethnic majority, believed they were intentionally underrepresented in the government and the military. In a civil war that succeeded with Indian military intervention, the East Wing broke away to form Bangladesh.

Muslims constitute 97 percent of Pakistan's population, mostly divided between Sunnis, who make up 77 percent of Muslims, and nearly 20 percent who are Shi?a. Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians comprise the remaining 3 percent. The country's principal ethno-linguistic groups are Punjabis, Sindis, Pathans (or Pashtuns), Baluchis, and a significant, largely urban population of Muhajirs, Urdu-speaking refugees (who migrated to Pakistan from India following independence) and their descendants. Pakistan's official language is Urdu, but the dominant spoken language is Punjabi, the first language of 65 percent of the population, followed by Sindi (11 percent), Pashto (8 percent), and Urdu (9 percent). English is widely used in educational institutions, business circles, and in the government.

The task of national integration has been made difficult by deep fault lines that have formed over the contending aspirations and grievances of the country's provincially concentrated ethno-linguistic groups, the vesting of political power, and the appropriate role of Islam in public life. Social class disparities, economic instability and deprivation, and tribal and linguistic populations that overlap with India and Afghanistan have aggravated these differences. Divisions among Pakistanis have occasioned bitter ideological debates and have subjected the country to periodic political instability. Serious implications exist, moreover, for Pakistan's economic development and foreign policies.

There is contention among and within Pakistan's provinces, and between provinces and the federal government, over how the resources of the state should be equitably allocated. Most resentment today is directed against the politically ascendant Punjab. The NWFP, Sind, and Baluchistan all have had nationalist movements seeking greater political autonomy and larger representation in the country's civil bureaucracy, military, and key sectors of the economy. Sindis accuse Punjab of an unfair distribution of Indus River waters through major canal and dam diversions. Muhajirs concentrated in Karachi bitterly object to their lack of political influence in Sind province and complain about a system of federally legislated quotas for government jobs and college entrance. Rural Sindis, along with Pathans who have settled in the province's major cities, are discontented with past Muhajir and new Punjabi domination of commercial and industrial activities in Karachi and other urban centers.

An insurrection in Baluchistan against the federal government was put down militarily under the government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the 1970s, but grievances continue to simmer. Pashtun nationalism in the NWFP has been periodically at odds with the central government on foreign policy issues, and with the province's religious parties over the implementation of Islamic social and economic principles.

Pakistan has also been unable to settle on the kind of political system that promotes effective governance, needed social and economic development, and national identity to counter regional and ethnic diversity. It remains uncertain whether the country requires a more authoritarian, centralized state, primarily run by the military and bureaucracy, or is better served by greater federalism and democratic institutions. Nor has Pakistan been able to resolve whether it should be simply a homeland for the subcontinent's Muslims or instead seek to realize the ideals of an Islamic state, with laws and practices that adhere to strict Islamic precepts.

At the time of independence, Pakistan was an agrarian society with very little industrial capacity. A small number of powerful landowners with large land holdings dominated the country politically and economically. Much of the country continues to have a land tenure system that is feudal, in which tenant farmers cultivate land owned by usually absentee landlords. Agriculture remains the nation's major source of income, employing almost half of the country's population, and accounting for roughly 25 percent of its gross national product. Wheat, cotton, rice, barley, sugarcane, maize, and fodder are the main crops.

The industrial sector has played an increasingly critical role in the country's economic development. Pakistan now has in place a broad industrial base, producing a wide range of consumer and industrial products in such key industries as textiles, construction materials, sugar, food processing, paper products, and rubber. However, the industrial sector, which employs over 20 percent of the formal workforce, has failed to create jobs for an increasingly younger population. Neither has it succeeded in training and retaining a highly educated workforce. Importantly, political instability, corruption, and the threat of conflict with India have affected Pakistan's ability to attract domestic and foreign investment.

While domestic economic growth rates have averaged about 5 percent, economic disparities have increased, in both rural and urban areas. The poorest 20 percent of the people, or those with the lowest income, have a share of 6.2 percent of the income of the nation, while the richest 20 percent have an estimated 50 percent share. There is only a minimal safety net for the poor. The proportion of Pakistanis living below the poverty line is estimated to have risen in recent years, from about 26 percent in 1990–1991, to nearly 40 percent in 2003. In a global measure of health, education, and income, Pakistan's human development has been slipping year after year; by 2003 it stood behind that of many African countries. The country's literacy rate is only 36 percent.

Pakistan's leaders have relied heavily on foreign aid, remittances from workers in the oil-producing states, and international credit. Over the years, the United States has been the major provider of bilateral aid and was particularly generous during the 1980s, when Pakistan was a frontline state against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. U.S. economic and military aid was cut off in 1990, the year following the Soviet withdrawal, with Washington's decision to no longer ignore Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. Economic and military support for Pakistan was resumed in 2002, as Pakistan won U.S. favor for its willingness to cooperate in the "war on terrorism," specifically U.S. operations in Afghanistan. The country has also been able to reattract greatly increased financial assistance from the international creditor community. However, despite rescheduling and some debt write-offs, Pakistan remains burdened in servicing its heavy external debt.

Pakistan confronted numerous social, political, and security problems as a consequence of the Afghan war to oust the Soviets and their Communist allies, and the subsequent civil strife in Afghanistan during the 1990s. Hosting millions of Afghan refugees and giving sanctuary to fighters turned urban areas in Pakistan into thriving markets for small arms and illicit drugs. The growth of Islamic religious schools through the 1980s and 1990s spawned volunteers for the conflicts in Afghanistan and Kashmir and also contributed to making the country's interethnic and sectarian politics more violent and intolerant.

Pakistanis have lived under military rule for more than half their history. The failure of Pakistan's elected politicians to provide stable, honest, and effective government has repeatedly been used to justify the military's intervention to remove civilian leadership. Differences among political figures over regional and ethnic distribution of power delayed approval of a constitution until 1956. By October 1958 the army had suspended a collapsing parliamentary system. A year later, army chief General Mohammad Ayub Khan assumed full control of the military government. He introduced an indirect election system known as "Basic Democracies" that also provided the framework for local government and development. In 1962 a new constitution created a strong presidency, to which Ayub was elected in 1965. Ayub aligned Pakistan with the United States in military and economic agreements, and also reached out to China. Ayub was weakened politically, however, by Pakistan's failure to make gains against India in the 1965 war over Kashmir. Popular dissatisfaction with corruption and inflation, together with Ayub's ill health, led to his removal in 1969 by General Yahya Khan.

Following the disastrous war with India that resulted in the loss of the East Wing in December 1971, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto assumed the presidency. Bhutto's populist Pakistan People's Party had run strongest in the West Wing in Pakistan's 1970 election, the first under universal suffrage. With the passage of a new constitution in 1973, Bhutto assumed the office of prime minister. He proceeded to forge closer relations with the Arab and nonaligned world than had his predecessors, and he undertook a controversial program of nationalization. Popular agitation in the wake of a discredited national election in March 1977 led General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq to depose Bhutto in July and, two years later, to have him executed.

General Zia's rule was defined most by his cooperation with the United States in supporting the insurgency against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, which began in December 1979. He is also remembered for fostering the Islamization of Pakistan's politics. In 1985 he ended his martial law regime, allowing for the election of a nonparty government, over which he nevertheless remained in command as president. Zia was killed in a still mysterious explosion of his plane in September 1988, ushering in the restoration that November of democratic government with the election of Benazir Bhutto, daughter of the executed leader, as prime minister.

Over the course of the next eleven years, Bhutto's People's Party and the Muslim League headed by Nawaz Sharif, both essentially secular parties, alternated in power. During this time, no elected government completed its term of office. On three separate occasions, the prime ministers—Bhutto in 1990 and 1996, and Sharif in 1993—were dismissed on the grounds of corruption and incompetence by the country's presidents, acting on behalf of the military. In a direct civilian-military clash, General Pervez Musharraf ousted Nawaz Sharif in an October 1999 coup. Musharraf assumed the office of chief executive and then president. Civilian government was ostensibly restored with the election of a National Assembly in October 2002. But whether formally in charge or not, the military has remained the final arbiter of Pakistan's politics.

Internal disorder and continuing concerns for Pakistan's security have helped to institutionalize the military's pivotal political role and assure its popular esteem. The large, highly professional standing army makes strong claims on the national budget and is heavily invested in key industries through wealthy and privileged foundations. An amply rewarded officer corps ensures internal cohesion and loyalty. For both foreign ventures and domestic security, the military employs a pervasive and powerful intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence Division.

Pakistan's dispute with India over Kashmir remains a national obsession and largely shapes its defense policies and domestic priorities. Successive Pakistani governments have sought, both through diplomacy and assistance to militants, to undo the 1947 accession of the most prized half of the once princely state of Jammu and Kashmir to India. India has accused Pakistan of fostering infiltration and terrorism, while Pakistan has justified its resistance by citing the human and political rights violations suffered by the Indian state's Muslim majority. At a conventional military disadvantage, Pakistan considers nuclear weapons its most effective deterrent against a large-scale Indian attack. Concerns about nuclear proliferation from Pakistan and over the possible escalation of a conflict with India to a nuclear confrontation have heightened international attention to the region.

Marvin G. Weinbaum

See alsoAfghanistan ; Jinnah, Mohammad Ali ; Kashmir ; Pakistan and India

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Blood, Peter R., ed. Pakistan: A Country Study. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1994. A valuable reference guide.

Jalal, Aysha. The State of Martial Rule. Lahore: Vanguard, 1991. A deeply analytic, perceptive study of military rule.

Jones, Owen Bennett. Pakistan: Eye of the Storm. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002. A highly readable, broad examination of events, institutions, and personalities.

Kux, Dennis. The United States and Pakistan, 1947–2000. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2001. The definitive study of U.S.–Pakistan relations.

Stephens, Ian. Pakistan. New York: Fredrick A. Praeger, 1967. One of the best descriptions available of Pakistan's first two political decades.

Wirsing, Robert G. India, Pakistan, and the Kashmir Dispute. Kolkata: Rupa, 1995. An objective, informative examination of the unresolved dispute.

Wolpert, Stanley. Jinnah of Pakistan. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. An insightful, comprehensive study of Pakistan's founding father.

Ziring, Lawrence. Pakistan: At the Crosscurrent of History. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2003. An excellent survey of Pakistan's troubled history from a veteran observer of Pakistani politics.