5

ZIA AND THE QUEST FOR PAKISTAN’S STABILITY

Zia-ul-Haq’s rule (1977-88) strengthened presidential authority and the army’s entrenched
political and economic role. It also bequeathed the doleful legacies of the ‘Kalashnikov
Culture”, the linkage between the military and Islamic extremists and increased sectarianism.
Many of the mosque schools which mushroomed in this era were highly sectarian in outlook
as well as committed to a trans-national jihadist outlook. Successive post-Zia governments
have been unable to rein in the radical madaris and their militants.

Less remarked upon, but equally portentous for Pakistan’s future stability, was the
continued underfunding of the social welfare, despite a period of remittance and investment-
fuelled growth. Pakistan still outperformed India at this time in terms of economic growth
(with growth rates of over 6 per cent in the Zia era) and per capita income. But its uneven
development and lack of human capital investment meant that it was more poorly equipped
than India to take advantage of the rapidly approaching late-twentieth-century spread of
globalization. The neglect of human development was accompanied by a further weakening
of such important state institutions as the civil service, the universities, and the courts. Zia’s
rule also coincide with an onslaught on civil society and an attempt to write Jinnah’s pluralist
vision of Pakistan out of the history books.

This doleful inheritance has been so profound that writers have been tempted to blame
all Pakistan’s ills on Zia’s rule.