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ADELPHI
 VA t WZ. , h 3 *2U-
ADELPHI PAPER 246

Mahnaz Ispahani is Director of Research at the National Demo¬

cratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) in Washington,
DC. This Paper was researched and written while she was a
Research Associate with the IISS (based in Washington, DC). Dr
Ispahani is the author of Roads and Rivals: The Politics of Access
in the Borderlands of Asia, published by Cornell University
Press/I.B. Tauris and Co. London in 1989.
The author would like to thank Robert S. Litwak, Shuja Nawaz
and Leonard S. Spector for their comments. She is also grateful
to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, where,
as a Fellow, she was able to complete the manuscript. This
research was funded by the MacArthur Foundation.
The views expressed in this Paper are the author’s own and
should not be taken to represent the views of the Institute, its
members, or of NDI.

First published Winter 1989/90 by Brassey’s for

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Contents

Introduction 3

I. Domestic disorder 7

II. Regional politics 30

III. Pakistan’s global strategies 54

Conclusion 64

Notes 70
Pakistan: Dimensions of
Insecurity
INTRODUCTION
1988 was a watershed year in the history of Pakistan. Its security
environment underwent sudden, dramatic changes, as Soviet troops
began to leave Afghanistan, a new detente between the super-powers
began to take shape and a civilian regime replaced the military. As a
result the Afghans, including Soviet-armed President Najibullah and
the rival foreign-armed Mujaheddin commanders based in Afghanis¬
tan, Pakistan and Iran were all left to fight among themselves - a
development which did little to reduce the pressures on Pakistan’s
decision-makers. Improvements in US-Soviet and Sino-Soviet
relations meant that Pakistan’s traditional strategy of manoeuvring
among antagonistic great powers was becoming less manageable while
its security environment remained laden with risks. Inside Pakistan,
the long tenure of General Zia ul-Haq’s military regime came to an
unexpected end on 17 August, when Zia, his leading associates (includ¬
ing Lieutenant-General Akhtar Abdur Rahman, Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee) and US Ambassador to Pakistan
Arnold L. Raphel, died in an airplane crash near the city of
Bahawalpur in eastern Pakistan. In a notably calm succession, super¬
vised by the new army leadership, the civilian regime of Benazir
Bhutto and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) replaced Zia’s regime.
These transformations, however historic, have not led to radical
changes in Pakistan’s policies. Old domestic political dilemmas and
regional security concerns, along with the sturdy constraints posed by
entrenched political elites, have ensured many continuities in policy.
The purpose of this Paper is to show how old interests have coalesced
with new dilemmas. Will the scars that remain from Pakistan’s prob¬
lems of the 1980s be healed or aggravated in the 1990s? Will the
transfer of power from soldiers to civilians significantly alter
Pakistan’s domestic economic and political priorities, and the direc¬
tion of its foreign policies?
Pakistan is a telling example of the enormous pressures that weak,
post-colonial states can survive. Even if its present predicament is
assessed only in the context of its own bloody history, the prospects for
national calm are not encouraging. Pakistan’s politics have been punc¬
tuated by failures to establish a modus vivendi among its ethnically
varied citizens and among its elites. It has experienced virtually all
varieties of internal conflict: tribal insurgencies, ethnic and sectarian
struggles, civil war, secession, border conflicts, irredentism and con-

3
ventional war. Today, the ethnic and regional rivalries which split
Pakistan in 1971, and which flared up in Baluchistan in the mid-
1970s, have emerged once more in the embittered province of Sind,
endangering the Bhutto regime and further weakening the state. Pakis¬
tan has yet to exorcise the demon of national fragmentation.
Can civilian regimes succeed in fostering a domestic consensus
where army regimes have failed? The domination of soldiers over the
state’s governing institutions and the parallel weakness of the civilian
political elite have largely shaped the fabric of Pakistan’s domestic life
and the nature of its security policies. Zia’s era was informed by a new
domestic activism on the part of the military. As his tenure made obvi¬
ous, the generals have developed sophisticated ideas not only about
the requirements for Pakistan’s territorial defence but also about the
nature and direction of the social, political and economic change
appropriate for the country.
Pakistan’s few civilian rulers have always been vulnerable to the
army’s decision to usurp political power in the name of restoring pol¬
itical stability. Peaceful transfers of power have been uncommon,
and constitutional warnings against coup-makers have been ignored.
Pakistan’s electoral history is not a happy one. The 1970 vote led to
the secession of East Pakistan the following year. The 1977 vote culmi¬
nated in the overthrow of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1971 -7). The tradition
of competitive democratic politics has yet to take root and Pakistan’s
civilian rulers have conformed to two general patterns: authoritarian
rulers, or quarrelling coalitions and fragmented parties. Since the elder
Bhutto wielded extensive personal power he was able to place his
stamp on all dimensions of state policy. Other civilian leaders have
been unable to effect policy because of ill-managed conflicts between
competing political parties. All civilian politicians have quarrelled
unrestrainedly among themselves, sometimes creating the impression
that they would prefer to keep not soldiers but other civilians out of
power. The advent of a new civilian regime in 1988 raised again the
issue of whether traditional political models or a new, more successful
form of civilian democracy will prevail in Pakistan.
The 1988 elections also raised hopes that the army might return per¬
manently to the barracks. Still, the public’s perception of the army as
the final arbiter of politics, and its fear of yet another army inter¬
vention endures. The victory of democracy is neither easy nor inevi¬
table in Pakistan. If civilian politics collapses once more into faction¬
alism and violence the prospects for a return to army rule will be
greatly increased. What must civilian politicians do to distance the
army from the political arena?
The role of Islam in Pakistan’s public life has become increasingly
central to its politics, a fact which no regime can ignore. The current
debates about Islamization stem from contradictions which existed
prior to Independence, when a powerful Muslim freedom movement
was led to victory by secular lawyers trained in, and admiring of, West-

4
ern liberal and democratic traditions. Recently, as revolutionary and
militant Islamic groups have swept across the Muslim world, religious
groups inside Pakistan have gained courage, links between domestic
and foreign Islamicists have increased, and arguments for an Islamic
state have sharpened.
Pakistan’s Muslim identity has provided it with the flexibility to
operate in areas beyond the subcontinent. The elder Bhutto viewed
Pakistan’s Islamic ideology as more pertinent to the pursuit of foreign-
policy goals than to the domestic consensus. He embarked on an
ambitious effort to cultivate economic, political and military links
with Iran and the radical Arab states, and nurtured an astute interde¬
pendence with the rich Muslim oil-producing states. Zia, however,
deployed Islam as a socio-economic and political vehicle to integrate
the nation-state and to legitimize the regime. Today, political argu¬
ments must increasingly be framed within an Islamic context. Will
Benazir Bhutto’s civilian regime be able to withstand the pressures to
emphasize Islam as the source of laws and policy? In a time of global
Islamic consciousness and after a decade of Islamization, can any
Pakistani regime separate religion from the state?
Pakistan’s external policies depend not only on religious affinities,
but, importantly, on political-geographical factors. Pakistan’s location,
at the hinge of South, Central and West Asia, gives rise both to its exter¬
nal vulnerabilities as well as to its assets. Pakistan’s leaders perceive it
as a small state virtually surrounded by powerful, and in recent years,
turbulent neighbours: by the two great land powers, China and the
USSR, and by India, Iran and Afghanistan. To compensate for the
insecurity born of conventional military inferiority in South Asia, suc¬
cessive Pakistani regimes have attempted to turn geographic position
into external political, economic and military support. Pakistan’s
location has made it strategically valuable to all the powers who have
interests in the acquisition or denial of access to the lands south of the
Himalaya, the Karakoram, and the Hindu Kush mountains, and to the
waters of the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf. Despite its myriad
domestic weaknesses, Pakistan has successfully enticed the interest of
these powers, especially of the US and China.
While Pakistan has carefully controlled its South Asian frontier, its
Central and West Asian frontiers have been open to large movements
of peoples. The Afghan exodus into Pakistan, of over 3 million refu¬
gees, is only one example. Yet despite its West and Central Asian
affiliations, geography and history conspire to make India and South
Asia Pakistan’s principal and permanent frames of reference. From
the capital, Islamabad, India dominates the horizon. The confessional
Muslim basis of Pakistan’s birth, and the communal nature of its par¬
tition from India in 1947, have defined India as Pakistan’s premier
enemy, and dictated its military expenditures and deployments. Indo-
Pakistani relations have been characterized by distrust, discord and
war. Pakistan’s elite, especially the soldiers, see Pakistan as standing

5
alone in its effort to resist India’s regional dominance of South Asia.
India has been seen as a bullying neighbour which, because of its inter¬
vention in the affairs of Sikkim, Bhutan, Nepal, the Maldives, Sri
Lanka and Bangladesh, has turned South Asia into an insecure region.
Today, new and dangerous types of competition, particularly the pro¬
liferation of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile technologies, have
been superimposed upon traditional strategic tensions. Can a demo¬
cratic civilian regime expand the possibilities for Indo-Pakistani rec¬
onciliation which were limited under Zia?
Pakistan’s security concerns exemplify those of small states, whose
domestic economic inadequacies and political demands generate
external dependence, and whose geographical frontiers remain porous
to the movements of men and material - to refugees, foreign armies,
mercenary forces and to migrant labour. Pakistan’s leaders have also
traditionally linked the attainment of security and development goals
to outside sources of finance and arms. Given the continued
unpredictability of their regional environment, and the uncertainties
of future great-power relations, will Pakistan’s regime use tried and
tested strategies to maintain domestic and regional security in the
1990s, or will it adopt new courses?
This Paper addresses the prospects for successful democratization
in Pakistan; examines the country’s domestic instability and foreign
vulnerabilities - and how one complicates the other; and determines
the extent to which its leaders are likely to transcend Pakistan’s dom¬
estic weaknesses and formulate successful strategies for managing
their complex and changing security environment.

6
I. DOMESTIC DISORDER
It is a historical truism that since 1945 states, even weak states, have
rarely collapsed. Yet in 1971 Pakistan was sundered. Since that trauma,
its very existence has been considered by many Pakistanis and external
observers to be under threat from both domestic and foreign sources. A
collapse of the state is unlikely, but it cannot be denied that today Pakis¬
tan is being dangerously weakened by internal schisms.
Since Independence, Pakistani politics has consisted chiefly of battles
to achieve a stable national identity. These battles are fought out in a
society whose political culture is riddled with ambiguities: where the
practitioners of traditional feudal and clan politics and the representa¬
tives of modern political ideologies are often one and the same; where
soldiers assert an ‘unwilling’ primacy over politicians; where political
parties function without programmes or ideology; where ethnic parties,
religious politicians and secular nationalists all put forward competing
claims to political allegiance. The principal antagonists in the search for
power in Pakistan today are the army, the PPP and the IJI (Islami
Jamhoori Ittehad) and the President, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, successors to
the political philosophies represented by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Zia
ul-Haq. Their endeavours are endangered by the strengthened forces of
corruption, guns and drugs.
Pakistani politics are fractured by uncertainties about the future of
democracy, civil-military and centre-province relations and by the
unruly competition between political elites. Ethnic conflicts, disputes
about the appropriate relationship between religion and the state, the
spread of corruption, drugs and guns, and the paucity of domestic econ¬
omic resources, all hinder Pakistan’s socio-economic development
and its prospects for peace.

Elections, civilian regimes and domestic stability

The elections of 1988, and the subsequent constitutional transfer of
power, set important historical precedents for the future of Pakistan’s
politics. In 1988 a moribund judiciary, robbed repeatedly of its inde¬
pendence, impressively revived itself and issued a series of rulings
which facilitated a return to party-based elections. Guided by these
judicial verdicts, and overseen by the military, free and fair elections
were held on 16 November - the first elections in 18 years to lead to a
secure political transition. On 2 December 1988, when Benazir Bhutto,
leader of the PPP, was invited to form a government, the transfer of
power was effected peacefully and in accordance with the Constitution.
It is the first time a woman has been elected to lead a Muslim nation and
this, too, in an era when Islamicists are gaining strength across the
Muslim world.
Until the elections of 1988, party-based elections had a dismal his¬
tory: the 1970 elections, held under the auspices of an army regime,
culminated in the disintegration of Pakistan. The elections of 1977,

7
held under a civilian administration, led to a dispute over its results, to
urban disturbances, the paralysis of the regime in power, and finally to
an army coup. There have been no accepted rules of succession: in its
43-year history no Pakistani ruler has left office willingly.
The 1988 elections may be seen as a contest between the myths and
the memories of Zia ul-Haq and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. The former was
represented by a hastily-convened alliance of disparate parties - the IJI
- led by Nawaz Sharif, Chief Minister of the Punjab, the latter by
Bhutto’s PPP. Both Zia and the elder Bhutto were social and political
activists who represented, in character and in deed, rival elements of
Pakistan’s political culture. While Bhutto sought change which was
secular and (originally) socialist, Zia wished to set society on a conserva¬
tive social and political course.
Both men have left their mark. Bhutto was simultaneously haughty
and feudal, charismatic and populist. Western-educated, he preached a
dogma of egalitarianism. His principal legacies were the creation of pol¬
itical consciousness among the Pakistani masses, a democratic consti¬
tution, and a bitterly divided public. Bhutto nationalized industry and
paid lip service to Islam (Islamic socialism was a goal of his party),
applauded democracy and curbed the press and labour. He banished his
opponents and in the end he alienated the middle classes, the bureauc¬
racy, the army and the mullahs.
These became Zia’s bastions of support. The General was a middle-
class soldier-reformer. He abhorred politicians even as he himself
became a master politician. He paid lip service to democracy while he
ruled as an autocrat and pursued strict Islamization. He privatized the
economy and tried to turn social conduct into public conduct. His prin¬
cipal legacies were state-imposed Islamization, ethnic turmoil in Sind,
large infusions of foreign aid, and, like Bhutto’s, a divided public - this
time along different lines.
The Bhutto and Zia eras shattered the post-1971 notions that with the
severance of its eastern wing Pakistan would embark on a more coherent
national destiny and reduce the burden of violence in its political life;
that civilian rule could prevent the future involvement of the army in
politics; that Islamic politics could remain largely symbolic and that Pak¬
istan would finally attend to its economic and social infrastructure.
In 1988, after more than a decade of Zia’s military rule, ordinary
Pakistanis voted in free elections. Public expectations of this resurrec¬
tion of civilian, democratic politics immediately rose, as political and
social liberalization seemed possible. Political prisoners were freed and
press censorship was lifted; student and trade unions were restored.
After a decade of virtual stasis, Pakistan’s domestic polity seemed
poised for great changes. Yet, the old elite and the old disputes about
national identity remain, limiting the effectiveness of reforms under¬
taken by any civilian regime.
Benazir Bhutto came to power in a time of extreme international and
regional political volatility and domestic political polarization. By

8
1988, after years of good harvests, and large infusions of American
economic and military aid, as well as high remittances from migrant
workers in the Middle East, Pakistan’s economy remained structurally
weak and highly dependent on external aid. Its society suffered from
ethnic fratricide, and from the debris - guns and narcotics - of the war
in Afghanistan. The Bhutto regime faced a faltering economy and a
state deeply marked by the social, political and economic
encroachments of the military. Bhutto herself encountered a unique
challenge - her right, as a woman, to govern a Muslim state.
The 1988 elections produced a weak regime governing a divided pub¬
lic in the face of a powerful opposition. Although the PPP won a plu¬
rality of seats in the National Assembly as well as representation in all
four of Pakistan’s provinces, supporting its claim to be Pakistan’s only
national party, it did not win a clear national parliamentary majority,
nor a national mandate. It won only 38% of the vote, and fared even
more poorly in the provincial elections. While the PPP faced strong
opposition in Baluchistan and the North West Frontier Province
(NWFP), the IJI effectively controlled Pakistan’s heartland: Punjab. In
the National Assembly, and especially in the Senate, whose conserva¬
tive members were elected during Zia’s rule, Bhutto encountered
powerful political resistance.
Any civilian regime must either conquer, co-operate or negotiate with
soldiers, bureaucrats and opposition politicians in order to generate
effective domestic policies. To achieve economic reform, it must also
gamer international financial support. Although Bhutto’s democratic
regime has successfully attracted foreign funds for development, it has
been far less effective in fostering domestic economic, political and
social change.
In Pakistani politics, even a regime change as radical as that from Zia
to Bhutto does not necessarily signify radical shifts in domestic or
foreign policy. Despite the obvious personal and political differences
between Zia and Benazir Bhutto, the transition of power was note¬
worthy for its continuities. While civil liberties were expanded,
significant concessions had to be made to the traditional wielders of
power in Pakistan: the army, the bureaucracy and the rural elite. To
gain the premiership, Bhutto had to make commitments of policy conti¬
nuity to the generals. The tension between the policies of compromise
accepted by the civilian regime and its own divergent political goals in
matters ranging from Islamization to the Afghan War, has resulted
inevitably in stasis in policy-making. The stalemate which has charac¬
terized Pakistani politics under Bhutto is the predictable product of a
weak regime having to do battle with powerful opponents. In its first
year in government the PPP made little progress in any of its professed
goals: fostering socio-economic growth; forging national unity; and cre¬
ating a society where the rule of law is paramount. Instead, amid fre¬
quent charges of corruption and incompetence, Bhutto s tenure in
power was marked by the absence of parliamentary consensus, a failure

9
to implement major national policy initiatives, and an exacerbation of
the dilemmas about provincial autonomy, and ethnic and religious
conflicts.
The strategies Benazir Bhutto adopts towards the army and the civ¬
ilian opposition will affect her regime’s ability to survive, and its
potential to reshape the domestic order and reformulate regional policy.
Until November 1989, when the PPP regime was faced with a motion of
no-confidence in the National Assembly, its efforts focused on regime
consolidation, party patronage, confrontational politics and consti¬
tutional revision. If it is to distinguish itself from a tradition of auth¬
oritarian, fractious or ineffective civilian rule, however, the new
regime will have to alter its political course, and patiently pursue
innovative - if risk-laden - economic and social policy initiatives.

CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS
The rise, and the endurance, of the soldier in the civil sphere has been
the salient feature of Pakistani politics. Between 1947 and 1990, except
for about 17 years of turbulent civilian rule, Pakistan’s politics have
been dominated by the 480,000 strong army. Persistent praetorianism
has left its mark: the imbalance of power between civilians and the army
has resulted in the uncomfortable acknowledgement by all civilian
regimes that their political actions risk army displeasure and coups.
Today, all civilian regimes are de facto power-sharing regimes, depen¬
dent on the co-operation of soldiers and bureaucrats.
Traditionally, Pakistan’s national political dilemma has been that
while the soldiers view the decay of democratic institutions and civil
administration as the reason that they are forced to enter civil politics
and impose martial law, the civilian politicians insist that it is the
army’s repeated interventions which result in the disability of demo¬
cratic institutions and processes.1 While both statements contain
truth, taken together this truth amounts to a vicious cycle of history. In
1990 it remained uncertain whether Pakistan’s civilian and military
politicians would find their way out of this conundrum.
All army regimes have sought legitimacy through ‘civilianization’ but
none have found success. Field Marshal Mohammed Ayub Khan devised
a scheme for limited political participation called ‘Basic Democracies’
and established his own party, while General Yahya Khan held free and
fair elections, whose results, however, were not upheld.
Zia believed firmly in the ineptitude of civilian politicians and the
right of the army to rule. During his long tenure of eleven and a half
years he retained both the posts of President and Chief of Army Staff
(COAS), personifying the unification of the army and the state. Under
him the army determined the direction and pace of political, social and
economic change. By 1983, however, Zia felt the need to enhance his
legitimacy by sharing power with a civilian leadership. He began to
orchestrate a transition to a form of controlled democracy. He installed
himself in the Presidency which was duly strengthened through a consti-

10
tutional amendment (the Eighth), held no-party elections (boycotted by
the civilian opposition alliance, the eleven-party Movement for the Res¬
toration of Democracy, which included the PPP), and appointed a
Sindhi Prime Minister, Mohammed Khan Junejo. (In the 1988 elec¬
tions, Junejo failed even to win his own seat.) Zia’s National Assembly
was required to pass an amendment prohibiting any future attempt to
find the army culpable for its actions during the 1980s.
This experiment in a formal civil-military ruling arrangement also
failed. In May 1988, when Prime Minister Junejo challenged Zia’s auth¬
ority on foreign policy and the army’s prerogatives Zia dismissed him,
dissolved the Assembly, set up a caretaker cabinet and once again prom¬
ised elections. His sudden death made his future intentions moot.
The death of Zia and his leading generals was a turning point in the
institutional history of the army; it lost its leaders, but was also relieved of
the burden of those who had directed martial law in the 1980s. The new
army leadership now had the chance to move gracefully out of the public
arena and into the political shadows. In October 1988, General Aslam
Beg, the new Chief of Army Staff (COAS) made the historic decision to
allow the restoration of democracy. He ordered and supervised elections
and permitted the transfer of power to a civilian regime.
The elections of 1988 did not signify a conclusive return to civilian
control. It was by the generals’ decision that the return to civilian rule
came about, and it is by their own choice that the soldiers remain
overtly outside civil affairs. Benazir Bhutto inherited not only the broad
legacy of army rule but also the specific constitutional and religious
bequests of General Zia. In 1990 four centres of power existed in Pakis¬
tan: the PPP regime; the army; the President, Ghulam Ishaq Khan,
and the civilian opposition. Both Benazir Bhutto and General Beg
found themselves in unfamiliar situations. Bhutto had to act as a
national leader rather than as an opposition politician while Beg (and
his corps commanders) had to behave as political subordinates. The
successes of civilian politicians, especially in their relationship with the
army will be central to the prospects for democracy in Pakistan.
The army, and the President, who inherited Zia’s substantial consti¬
tutional powers, have restricted Bhutto’s exercise of authority. When
she took her oath of office under the 1985 Constitution, Bhutto
technically accepted a power-sharing arrangement and the constraints
imposed by Zia’s legal dispensations, but she quickly found them unac¬
ceptable and spent much of her first year in office trying to remove the
legacy of the generals.
Bhutto’s most public contest was with President Ghulam Ishaq Khan,
a veteran civil servant who commands the sympathy of the bureauc¬
racy, the army and the civilian opposition. The principal quarrel
between Bhutto and the President has emerged from the Eighth Amend¬
ment of Zia’s 1985 Constitution which transfers substantial executive
authority from the Prime Minister to the President. (Zulfikar Ali
Bhutto’s 1973 Constitution, on the other hand, had invested principal

11
authority in the Prime Minister, with the Presidency being virtually a
ceremonial office.) To repeal the Eighth Amendment Bhutto requires a
two-thirds majority in both houses of Parliament, which she cannot
attain as long as the Senate remains overwhelmingly opposed to her
policies and she herself is losing support in the National Assembly.
In 1989 Bhutto and the President quarrelled about the appointment
and retirement of military officers and judges. She asserted her right to
retire senior military officers by ending the tenure of Admiral Iftikhar
Ahmed Sirohey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee. The
President insisted, however, that under the 1985 Constitution, it was
he, and not the Prime Minister who has the ‘discretionary’ powers to
determine the status of officers such as Sirohey (whom he had
appointed). Disputes between the Prime Minister and the President
have also affected foreign relations. At the very moment that Bhutto
was discussing the normalization of relations with India, for example,
Ghulam Ishaq Khan accused India of desiring ‘hegemony’ in South
Asia. The no-confidence motion pressed against her regime in Novem¬
ber 1989 forced Bhutto to recognize the PPP’s own weaknesses and the
strengths of the power-sharing arrangement, to end her quarrel with the
President and to initiate new efforts to gain his support.
The army holds veto power in politics today. At each step it can
decide whether to allow democratic politics to proceed. Thus far, the
new COAS, General Aslam Beg has exercised his powers judiciously.
Bhutto could not have assumed the Prime Ministership without his
assent. She also had to accept an army-sanctioned bureaucrat as Presi¬
dent and a retired general and former luminary of Zia’s regime,
Sahibzada Yaqub Khan, as Foreign Minister. The army’s influence in
areas of its cardinal concern, such as Afghanistan, nuclear weapons,
relations with the US, Islamization, and importantly, defence expendi¬
tures, circumscribe Bhutto’s own policy goals.
Since assuming power Bhutto has developed a two-track strategy to
contend with the military’s power, involving efforts to expand the ambit
of her authority while satisfying the soldiers’ concerns. She has kept the
Defence portfolio and, in May 1989, in a much noted act, she trans¬
ferred General Hameed Gul, a foremost supporter of Zia’s domestic
and Afghan policies from his post as Director-General of the powerful
Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI). Accusing it of ‘playing a
leading role in the formation’ of the IJI opposition alliance, Bhutto
relieved the ISI (which, like Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s Federal Security Force
(FSF) ensured domestic political control) of its internal surveillance
functions.2 The success of this measure is as yet uncertain.
Because of the inescapable reality of the army’s political power, dur¬
ing 1989-90, Bhutto managed her relationship with the generals better
than with her civilian opposition. Encroachments on military power
were compensated by numerous efforts to placate the soldiers. Under
Bhutto, defence expenditure is high and not debated in the Assembly. A
single figure is quoted: in the 1989-90 budget, it was listed as Rs. 51.77

12
bn, or 36.9% of current expenditures. The sum apparently excludes
numerous costs, including those of the Coast Guard, Rangers, Frontier
Constabulary, outlays to be financed from the arms purchase credits
extended under the US $4.02 bn aid package, debt-servicing for military
purchases, pensions of personnel, and strategic border roads in NWFP
and Baluchistan.3 In a period of strict financial constraints and in spite
of the PPP s commitment to higher spending on socio-economic wel¬
fare, Bhutto has not only protected the military’s share of the budget
but defended it, arguing that reducing military expenditures would
endanger Pakistan’s security. She also successfully supported the
Army’s agenda for defence procurements by acquiring 60 additional
F-16 aircraft from the US at a cost of $1.4 bn.
The delicate nature of power relations between civilians and soldiers
is evident in the way civilian regimes rarely hold the army accountable
for its political actions. They have been careful to separate the army’s
rank and file from the policies of its leaders. Benazir Bhutto has dis¬
tinguished Zia's alleged calumnies from the integrity of the army, and
instead of criticizing the soldiers for their role in maintaining martial
law, she commended them for overseeing a peaceful transfer of power
and awarded them the Medal of Democracy. She emphasizes the
respect of Pakistanis for the army and avers that it is the threatening
nature of Pakistan’s security environment which dictates the size and
importance of the institution.
Nevertheless, Bhutto’s present regime is not likely to be able to assert
enduring civilian political supremacy. She faces unique disadvantages
in her efforts to manage civil-military relations. Historically, the gen¬
erals have been uncomfortable with the PPP’s brand of mass politics;
and it was under military auspices, although that of an old leadership,
that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged. Today, too, Benazir Bhutto has a
weaker civilian mandate and - because of Zia’s strengthening of the
army’s political power - a more influential army than did her father.
The elder Bhutto tried to neutralize the army as a political instrument
by taking extraordinary measures, which included reworking the civil-
military decision-making structure, firing senior generals, raising pay,
abolishing the rank of Commander in Chief, and creating a para¬
military force - the FSF - at a time when the army had been humili¬
ated by Indian forces in Bangladesh and lost 90,000 prisoners of war to
India. Yet the soldiers proved resilient: less than six years later the army
under Zia ul-Haq (a reputedly apolitical, junior officer whom Bhutto
had raised to CO AS for possessing precisely those characteristics)
toppled Bhutto.
Thus far the army has been supportive of democratization. General
Beg has stated repeatedly his commitment to democratic processes and
counselled patience with the vagaries of civilian rule, even during the
nervous days of the no-confidence motion. Despite rumours of coup
attempts and Beg’s own admission that unspecified forces have press¬
ured the soldiers to intervene, the COAS insists that the army fully

13
supports the democratic system and believes in its viability; is not com¬
mitted to any group or party; will limit its duties to maintaining dom¬
estic law and order and safeguarding Pakistan’s frontiers; and will not
intervene in politics.4 He has re-emphasized the professionalism of the
army, criticized - in a move unusual for a serving officer - the army’s
military performance in 1965 and 1971, and launched Zarb-e-Momin
(Impact of the Believer), the largest war exercises ever held. The army
has also begun an unusual programme to familiarize the media with
military programmes.
Beg’s pro-democracy position differs markedly from that of Zia.
Nevertheless, the frequency with which he must make such prot¬
estations is troubling. Political perceptions are what matter, and
Pakistanis continue to look to the COAS as the final political arbiter.
Given the historical record, they have little confidence in the ability of
civilian leaders to solve national problems, avoid confrontational poli¬
tics and prevent the army from re-entering civilian politics.
Moreover, the generals say that civilians, by failing to attend to their
own disputes and by using an impatient army as a political arbiter of
last resort, have encouraged its presence in politics. The Pakistan Army
does not have a history of long stretches of tolerance for such civilian
dissension. In summer 1977, for example, one of the chief aims of the
urban protest movement against the elder Bhutto was to destroy ‘the
legitimacy of the regime in the eyes of the military’, that is to invite
army interference.5 In 1989-90, too, during the no-confidence motion,
the army’s presence was required by civilians to ensure a peaceful vote.
Politicians found it politically useful to convey the impression that they
had the support of soldiers, and although Bhutto’s regime was trying to
expand the provincial police force in Sind, it was becoming increasingly
dependent on the army to stem the violence in the province.
Thus, while the political conditions in Pakistan have changed dra¬
matically since the death of Zia, the structural problems of the army’s
political power persists. The Pakistan Army is a relatively monolithic
institution which tends to follow its COAS. As different as the attitudes
of Zia and Beg towards democracy have been, a third COAS could well
lead the army along his chosen and different path. While General Beg is
COAS, Pakistan’s politicians have time to test their political acumen.
Yet, given the trials of civilian politics, the prospects for continued
democratization and military non-intervention still depend far too
much upon the character and judgement of the individual COAS. The
notion of an apolitical Chief of Army Staff has become fanciful. Even
though some soldiers may see extended governance as a blight on mili¬
tary professionalism and reform, the Pakistan Army has always been
available to - in its terms - ‘clean up the mess’ of civil politics.
Today, the army as an institution has become highly sensitive to its
environment. Its members have developed lucrative and entangling
involvements with civil, political, economic and social institutions. Pol¬
itical power has ensured economic well-being. Soldiers have access to

14
better pensions, scholarships and medical facilities than civil servants.
Generous grants of irrigated land and of valuable urban real estate have
been made to them, especially by Zia’s regime. Zia reserved about 10%
of the highest civil service positions for serving and retired officers, gave
them special import facilities, chairmanships of the largest public-sector
corporations, and choice diplomatic posts. Between 1979 and 1986 the
army s own organization for the welfare of retired servicemen’s famil¬
ies, the Fauji Foundation, recorded a four-fold increase in assets and a
seven-fold increase in profits. The National Logistics Cell, the military
transport group which carried weapons and aid to the Afghans from
Karachi, has become Pakistan’s largest haulage concern.6
Civilian political supremacy cannot be guaranteed in Pakistan. If the
Bhutto regime and its opponents, like all previous civilian exercises in
democratic politics, bring about their own ruin through factionalism and
violence, there will always be soldiers waiting in the wings. If the current
experiment in civilian rule fails, then those voices inside Pakistan which
argue for a formal institutionalization of a civil-military power-sharing
arrangement, or even for army intervention may grow louder.

PARTY POLITICS
In 1990 two truths about Pakistani politics appear paramount: the army
is a principal political power in Pakistan; and the Bhutto regime has
failed to distinguish itself from an undistinguished tradition of civilian
rule. Since 1947, Pakistan’s civilians have been unable to forge a modus
vivendi among themselves and therefore to resist army encroachments.
An important reason for this is that political parties, from the earliest
version of the Muslim League to the present-day IJI, have been mostly
frail coalitions of divergent interests built around a leadership which
has been either too weak and fragmented (as in the Muslim League) or
too powerful and personalized (as in the PPP). Essentially patrimonial
systems, these parties have lacked both organization and
institutionalization.7 Apart from the PPP, few parties have had either
substantial national or grass-roots support. Fewer still have had strong
or democratic party organizations.
Pakistan’s politics rarely rises into the realm of ideology. Its rural elite
(landlords and tribal chiefs) has always provided the membership cru¬
cial to major political parties (the PPP’s Sindhi representatives are
almost all members of this elite). More and more, political life is popu¬
lated by exclusivist ethnic, provincial, religious and sectarian parties.
The Shias and the Muhajirs (immigrants from India) have their own
parties, with the latter, the Muhajir Qaumi Movement (MQM) com¬
manding 14 seats in the National Assembly. Founded in 1986, the
MQM, a party led by educated young men from the urban lower middle
class, is the most important new political group to have emerged in Pak¬
istan. Baluchistan and the North West Frontier Province are led by
essentially provincial parties, and in 1989, an anti-PPP coalition incor¬
porating radically hostile interests emerged.

15
 In the 1980s the PPP moved from being a debilitated, socialist-
oriented party on the fringes of an army-controlled political stage
(1977—84) to a stronger, more centrist party in a mixed civil-military
environment (1985-8). Adapting to local and international circum¬
stances, it diluted its positions and its platforms of the sharp, contro¬
versial rhetoric about ‘Bhuttoism’, nationalization, and anti-
Americanism. During the 1988 elections the PPP, chameleon-like,
transformed itself (as it had during the 1977 elections) into a party of
old stalwarts, young radicals, feudals and power-brokers. Benazir
Bhutto had unique charismatic appeal, but the PPP and IJI platforms
hardly differed. Both opposed nationalization, supported a continu¬
ation of Zia’s policies on Afghanistan, a strong defence, and good
relations with the US.
The PPP-IJI dispute deteriorated after the 1988 elections when the
PPP took federal power and the IJI took a majority of the seats in the
Punjab Assembly. This quarrel between political parties quickly
became a dispute between centre and province. Punjab is rich, populous
and home to much of the army, among whom the IJI leaders count
many sympathizers. In Punjab, the IJI government has developed a
reputation for efficiency and has challenged the Bhutto regime’s powers,
suggesting separate television, water and power authorities for the prov¬
ince and asserting its prerogative to determine the status of federal
employees. The IJI (and the Baluchistan provincial government) dis¬
pute the centre’s control of the People’s Works Programme which
seeks to provide basic services for the poor, accusing the PPP of favour¬
itism and corruption. In 1989, a provincial bank, the Bank of Punjab,
was inaugurated, thus further symbolizing the search for autonomy.
Even during Pakistan’s democratic intervals, the political party in
Islamabad has tried to centralize power and failed to negotiate comfort¬
ably with the parties in the provinces. In the 1970s, the elder Bhutto
could not abide the presence of elected opposition governments in
Baluchistan and the NWFP. He dissolved, even banned them. Benazir
Bhutto’s regime has mounted its own challenges to the opposition in
Punjab, including an attempt to oust Nawaz Sharif, and in Baluchistan
(where the Chief Minister, Nawab Akbar Bugti challenged Bhutto’s
authority to collect the revenues from the province’s natural gas
reserves). In the NWFP and Sind (the only province where the PPP won
an outright majority), Bhutto has experienced the revolt of coalition
partners. During 1989 all her opponents, including those in Punjab,
argued for greater provincial autonomy and complained that she arbi¬
trarily placed non-elected advisors in many key positions.
On 2 November 1989, the IJI joined with other parties to form the
Combined Opposition Party (COP), an ideologically incoherent group
whose only source of unity is its members’ opposition to Bhutto. The
COP incorporates both the conservative IJI, part of the left-wing
Awami National Party (ANP) which has its base in the NWFP, and the
MQM which, disgruntled with the PPP in Sind, had signed a secret

16
accord with the IJI in September 1989, effectively rendering nugatory
the Karachi Declaration. Two of the IJI’s constituents, the Pakistan
Muslim League and the fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami, are also at
odds. At the instigation of an ex-PPP Sindhi leader, Ghulam Mustapha
Jatoi (a landowner and aspiring Prime Minister who failed to win his
own seat in the 1988 elections), the COP tabled a motion of
no-confidence against the PPP regime in the National Assembly.
Although the motion failed to pass by 12 votes, it marked a notable
decline in the PPP’s parliamentary support. Unsavoury charges of cor¬
ruption and the widespread intimidation and bribery of MPs by both
sides (which took the form of cash payments, jobs and land grants),
marked this early exercise in democratic politics.
Bhutto was left further weakened and vulnerable to renewed oppo¬
sition efforts to unseat her regime. If the no-confidence motion spurs
changes in the PPP’s strategy of political negotiations with its civilian
opponents, it may yet serve to improve the prospects for regime stab¬
ility and democratization. Still, the COP’s determination to unseat
Bhutto could make such policies of reconciliation impossible.
Pakistan’s political history suggests the PPP-COP conflict could even
be contested in the streets. Mass urban protests have been a common
vehicle of regime change. They dislodged the already weakened Ayub
Khan in 1968, and in 1977 they felled Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Today
Benazir Bhutto’s opposition includes the Jamaat-e-Islami, past masters
of organized urban agitation.
Since there exist important political differences between the parties
which comprise the COP and as its leadership is hydra-headed (including
Junejo, Jatoi and Nawaz Sharif), a transfer of power from a PPP to an
IJI-dominated civilian regime, however peaceful, may lead to the forma¬
tion of yet another unstable, faction-ridden regime facing a strong oppo¬
sition led by Bhutto. Such an IJI-led coalition regime is unlikely to sur¬
vive longer, or to establish a better record of achievement than Bhutto’s
regime, especially in the critical area of the resolution of ethnic conflict.
1988 brought a uniquely hopeful moment for a pluralist Pakistani
civilian order. The generals were co-operative and important foreign
allies were supportive. Yet in Pakistan there is no inevitability to the
survival of democracy. Until such time as the procedures of democracy
become entrenched and unremarkable, each regime and each oppo¬
sition must prove itself anew.
In an era of global political liberalization, the record of the first year
of democratization in Pakistan is an instructive lesson in the tenuous
nature of civilian rule. Bhutto and her opponents have had no tradition
of constructive democratic politics upon which to build, and they cer¬
tainly have not fostered a climate for such politics. While, in theory,
the Punjab-centre rift might promote democratic checks and balances
in a polity with a predilection for autocrats, in practice it has resulted in
confrontational party politics, and deadlock in administrative appoint¬
ments and in political and economic programmes. In the past, the

17
army has always been able to bank upon such intra-civilian dissension
to open the way to power.
At this early stage in the process of democratization civilians must
demonstrate to the soldiers that they can govern Pakistan. It is their pol¬
itical abilities more than any Constitution which can provide an effec¬
tive bar to armed intervention. If Bhutto were able to contend as well
with her civilian opponents as she has with the soldiers, the prospects
for her regime would be greatly improved. Perhaps the most valuable
political legacy of any civilian leadership, including Bhutto’s, would be
the demonstration that intra-civilian negotiations aimed at national
reconciliation and effective policy-making are possible, and that intra¬
civilian conflicts can be resolved within constitutional bounds.
The hope for Pakistani democracy lies in the efforts of civilian poli¬
ticians to negotiate with each other on the basis of national rather than
wholly party, provincial, ethnic, feudal, religious, or self interest. This
can only be the just due of Pakistan’s people who, after more than a dec¬
ade of military rule, disproved Zia’s view that democracy was not right
for Pakistan, and voted eagerly and peacefully in the 1988 elections.

Islam in politics
While intra-civilian discord and ethnic conflicts are dangerous sources
of division in Pakistan, Islam has been the favoured yet flawed tool of
national integration. The banner of Islam has been raised both to
weaken and to strengthen regimes. If Benazir Bhutto’s civilian regime
chooses to limit the Islamization of laws, it will risk a dangerous con¬
frontation with its opponents.
In Pakistan, the historical understanding of relations between Islamic
authority, the state and popular religion differs from that in Iran, Egypt
or Saudi Arabia. Islam in Pakistan has not been institutionalized as a
revolutionary state doctrine (as in Iran) or as the basis for a revolution¬
ary political movement (as in Egypt). Islamization in Pakistan has
been fundamentalist and legalistic, imposed by the state rather than
proposed by a political movement. Further, Pakistan’s diverse Muslim
practices and traditions militate against a unified, orthodox Sunni
Islamization. Islam is not monolithic in Pakistan, for there is a substan¬
tial Shia minority estimated at between 15% and 20% of the popu¬
lation. Pakistan’s Islamic ideology has also increased its role as
middleman in the disputatious affairs of the Muslim world, while its
Muslim sectarian composition has linked domestic politics to regional
rifts such as those between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
During the 1980s, Islamic politics were unique in their domination of
Pakistan’s public life. Although the secession of the Bengalis should
have discredited the notion that a formal Islamic identity alone could
successfully hold Pakistan’s different ethno-linguistic groups together,
Zia’s tenure saw an emphatic use of Islam to ensure legitimacy for the
military regime and unity for the nation-state. The Zia era also saw the

18
first major effort to tie Islamic slogans to socio-economic and political
change.
From the beginning of Pakistan’s history the idea and the manage¬
ment of the state have contradicted each other. The religious symbols
of the independence movement and the secular nationalist ideology of
its elite conflicted. Pakistan was founded by Western-educated lawyers
who believed in a parliamentary democracy for the Indian Muslim
nation. The public movement they led, however, was based on a
Muslim identity, on a Muslim nationalism, and on Muslim slogans.
Ever since, Pakistan’s theologians and scholars have disputed the form
an Islamic state should take.8
From 1947 onwards, successive regimes promoted Islamic symbols
and acts as the ideology of Pakistan, and as the source of national inte¬
gration. Yet their efforts were restricted to professions of fidelity to
Islamic principles. There was no attendant effort to realize the compli¬
cated notion of an Islamic state, or even to promote Islamic socio¬
economic reform. Prior to Zia, in fact, both army and civilian regimes
had sought to replace religious injunctions with a more modem social
code. The Muslim Family Laws Ordinance which, among other things,
restricted polygamy, was passed by Field Marshal Ayub Khan in 1961,
and the elder Bhutto’s 1973 Constitution declared that there should be
no public discrimination on the basis of sex alone.
These changes did not occur unopposed. During the conflict between
regime and opposition in the late 1970s, both sides used Islam against
each other. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto prohibited alcohol and gambling,
declared the Ahmedis (a nineteenth-century movement which many
Muslim theologians consider heretical) to be non-Muslims, and made
Friday the weekly holiday, while the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA)
campaigned on the theme of creating an Islamic society based on the
Nizam-e-Mustafa (Order of the Prophet Muhammad).
Zia was a dramatic innovator, directing his generals, who began their
careers as the guardians of the physical boundaries of the state, to assert
their right to become guardians of its legal and political boundaries. Zia
attempted to establish a political order ‘suited to the genius’ of Islam just
as, before him, in the 1960s, Ayub Khan had argued for a system of con¬
trolled democracy which ‘suited the genius’ of the Pakistani people. Zia
proposed an Islamic state in which sovereignty rested not with the legis¬
lature but with God, and with the priestly interpreters of his divine will.
An ‘Islamic democracy’, economy (incorporating interest-free bank¬
ing and the collection of zakat and ushr - Islamic poor and agricultural
taxes), judiciary (incorporating a Federal Shariah Court and lower Qazi
Courts), penal code (punishments for crimes ranging from theft to rape
and adultery), and laws of evidence were all promoted in efforts to
Islamicize the society. Zia frequently expressed the view that political
parties were un-Islamic and thus unfit to govern. In 1984, he held an
unprecedented referendum in which a vote for Islamization was also to
be a vote for him to continue in power for five more years.

19
 Zia’s Islamization, however, furthered neither national integration
nor national identity. Ethnic wars erupted in Sind, while electoral sup¬
port for religious parties further declined. (Their modest electoral sup¬
port, however, has always belied their political influence.) Islamization
worsened sectarian rifts. Zia’s attempts to impose a Sunni interpret¬
ation of Shariah (Islamic law) in Pakistan alienated the Shia com¬
munity. Although sporadic Shia-Sunni clashes are endemic in the
subcontinent, it took Zia’s laws and the Iranian Revolution next door to
turn Pakistani Shias into a politically organized force. In 1983, Zia’s
imposition of compulsory zakat collection - unacceptable to Shias -
resulted in demonstrations and riots in Karachi as well as in Punjab and
Baluchistan. Zia was forced to absolve Shias of responsibility for zakat
payments to the state.9
Islamization also fuelled extremist Sunni attacks on Shias. Some
Sunni ulema demanded that Pakistan be declared a ‘Sunni state’ which
would restrict the public performance of Shia religious rituals.10 Finally,
in 1987 Shias transformed their existing religious organization into a
political party: the Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Fiqh Jafaria (TNFJ). It opposes a
uniform Shariah code, demands to be consulted on the formulation of
Islamic laws, and supports the implementation of Koranic and Shariah
injunctions for each sect according to its own interpretation.
Tensions between the Shia and Sunni communities were exacerbated
by these developments. In the late summer of 1988, a leading Shia,
Allama Arif Hussain al-Hussaini was assassinated in Peshawar. The
Shias responded by crying ‘Blood for Blood!’, and accused Zia of com¬
plicity in the crime. This led to suspicion of the possible role of Shia
militants in Zia’s death. Shia-Sunni violence also merged with the
rivalries of the Afghan War. Fighting among Shia and Sunni Pakhtun
tribes of the mountainous Kurram Agency (where the existing sectarian
balance between Shias and Sunnis was upset by an influx, since 1979, of
about 400,000 Afghan Sunnis) resulted in the razing of villages and hun¬
dreds of deaths in 1987.
Today Islam in Pakistan is a powerful instrument and an inflamma¬
tory issue, the focus of ritual political battles. Islamization is the politi¬
cal platform of the IJI, and its leaders speak routinely of establishing
an Islamic welfare social order in the Punjab. The Jamaat-e-Islami, a
leading IJI member, has long been the most important Islamic activist
movement in Pakistan. Founded in 1941, the Jamaat is an orthodox,
fundamentalist, cell party with a tight organizational structure. Its few
thousand members and narrow base of electoral support do not
adequately convey its political influence. Although initially opposed to
the creation of Pakistan, Jamaat leaders have since agitated for an
Islamic state.
In 1953 the Jamaat played an important part in the anti-Ahmedi dis¬
turbances which led ultimately to Pakistan’s first martial law, as well as
in the 1977 ‘Islamic’ upheaval against the elder Bhutto which led to
Zia’s coup. In the early years of Zia’s regime the Jamaat was

20
co-operative, only to return quickly to the opposition where it engaged
in a battle of Islamic one-upmanship with the regime. The Jamaat is not
averse to making politically expedient alliances: in 1989 it joined the
secular MQM (whose ethnic leadership captured the Jamaat’s urban
Sindhi strongholds in 1988) and the left-wing ANP to form the com¬
bined opposition against Bhutto.
The Jamaat-e-Islami is a potential conduit for regional Islamic forces.
It has cultivated close political ties to the Afghan Mujaheddin, provid¬
ing them with humanitarian aid and political counsel. Its armed cadre
are widely said to train with the Afghans in the refugee camps. The
Jamaat has been especially zealous in its loyalty to Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar, the leader of the extreme fundamentalist group Hezb-i-
Islami. It rejected the Geneva Accords and views the Soviet Union as
the dominant threat to Pakistan. The party has enduring ideological
(and reportedly, financial) links to Wahhabi Saudi Arabia.
The Jamaat is implacably opposed to the presence of a woman and a
Bhutto as the Prime Minister of Pakistan. Along with the traditional
religious leaders, the Pirs, other ulema and IJI members, the Jamaat has
decreed that Islam denies a woman the legitimacy to govern a Muslim
nation. Although it did remarkably poorly in the elections, losing
Karachi to the young MQM activists, the Jamaat still fields a heavily
armed student wing on university campuses, remains influential among
the IJI leadership, and specializes in the politics of street agitation. The
first major protest aimed at the Bhutto government - ostensibly over the
novel The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie - was organized by
Jamaat and other IJI leaders. In its self-appointed role as the watchdog
of Islamization, the Jamaat remains a dangerous force inhibiting any
regime and especially one led by Benazir Bhutto, from any attempts in
the direction of Muslim moderation.
Bhutto is a Muslim modernist. The Pakistanis who elected her did not
vote for the IJI’s platform of Islamization, and Bhutto’s victory was a
consequential and unprecedented event, a powerful symbol of egali¬
tarianism in a Muslim society. Yet, like her father, who capitulated to
the Islamizers when his rule was threatened, Benazir Bhutto has also
compromised. Although she stands for the legal and socio-economic
rights of women and minorities, Bhutto’s lack of a parliamentary
majority and the support of her conservative opponents for Islamization,
have led her to function in an Islamic mould and avoid controversial
actions. President Ghulam Ishaq Khan, with whom Bhutto shares power,
pressed for Islamization in his address to the joint session of Parliament
on 2 December 1989. He complained that ‘no noteworthy progress’ had
yet been achieved in this sphere, the Shariah (Islamic Law) Bill had not
yet been approved, and insufficient attention had been paid to the 51
reports submitted by the Islamic Ideology Council.11
Bhutto has not encouraged the union of religion and politics, but she
has also not abolished the punitive Islamic personal laws injurious to
women. The PPP has lifted only the ban on women in sports. The con-

21
troversial Hadood Ordinances and the special Shariah committee set
up to devise an Islamic system of laws for Pakistan are still intact.
Women’s groups fear that the 1961 Family Laws Ordinance which pro¬
vided limited gains for women will be rescinded as un-Islamic. Also,
Bhutto has not remedied the discrimination against the Ahmedis which
her father, and then Zia, ensured. Her insecurity of tenure has meant
that, thus far, Zia’s policies of Islamization remain uncontested.

Ethnic conflicts
The ethnic conflicts raging in Pakistan today should banish the idea that
Islam can restore order to an ethnically torn society. Ethno-nationalism
remains a formidable danger to Pakistani security: politicized ethnic
consciousness may be found today among Muhajirs, Sindhis, Pakhtuns,
Baluch, Saraikis, even Punjabis. It reinforces other conflicts between
parties and provinces and is exacerbated by other problems: refugees,
rural poverty, guns and drugs.
The imbalance between the power, the population (Punjabis make up
60% of Pakistan’s total population) and the economic potential of the
Punjab, on the one hand, and those of the smaller provinces, on the
other, has made ethnic politics and regionalism unavoidable issues. The
secession of the Bengalis in 1971 did not resolve the state’s ethnic prob¬
lems, and the lessons of Bangladesh’s creation have not been learned.
After 1971 many Pakistanis believed that they would see a reduction in
ethnic violence and an increase in national identification; but ethnic
movements developed in Baluchistan and Sind. First Bengalis, then
Baluch, Sindhis and Muhajirs have risen in complaint against mistreat¬
ment or neglect by the federal government, or inadequate access to
political power and to economic and cultural resources. Adding to
Pakistan’s problems is a new and aggressive sense of reverse discrimi¬
nation and chauvinism that is growing in Punjab.
Pakistan’s multi-ethnicity is hardly unique. Yet its leaders have failed
markedly to inculcate a collective identity in its disparate peoples. Once
the monolithic venture for Muslim statehood had achieved its goal with
Independence in 1947, ethnic disputes and competition bred calls for
autonomy, insurgency, war and secession. In Pakistan, ethnicity has
become an overt and brutal language of public discourse. The centraliz¬
ation policies of regimes, the perceived persistence of political, econ¬
omic, social and cultural disparities, and the influences and intrusions
of powers beyond Pakistan's borders - all have radicalized ethnic senti¬
ment. Such sentiments rarely vanish; they have simmered in Pakistan,
making ethno-nationalism its most intractable domestic dilemma.
All regimes, civilian or military, have had to contend with ethnic
movements, to confront the agitation of a particular ethnic group and
province. Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan faced the rebellious politics of
Bengalis, Bhutto forcibly put down Baluch tribesmen, and Zia sent out
the army to suppress rural Sind. Army regimes have generally treated
ethnic disturbances as short-term issues of law and order, to be met by a

22
suitable deployment of force. Further, army rule, which urges centraliz¬
ation, has never had a salutary impact on Pakistan’s ethnic cohesion.
By its composition, recruitment and actions, it corrodes a fragile ethnic
consensus. The fact that the army is 60% Punjabi, and that there are few
Sindhis or Baluch to be found, especially in its officer corps, leads to the
charge by the smaller provinces that army rule translates into domi¬
nation by the Punjab. (In September 1989 Bhutto called upon Sindhis
to join the army which she said had previously denied opportunities ‘to
a particular section of the people’.)12
Civilian regimes, by contrast, have recognized ethnic conflicts as
rooted in economic and political problems, and yet they too have
depended upon the army to counter insurgency or enforce peace. Today
the principal ethnic threat to the state and to the regime lies in Sind,
where Benazir Bhutto, a Sindhi herself as were her father and
Mohammed Khan Junejo, has inherited a volatile political
disequilibrium between Sindhis and Muhajirs and other migrants
(Pakhtuns, Punjabis, Baluch and Afghans). Sind’s peasants are among
the most burdened, and its land tenure system is one of the most inequi¬
table in the world. The claims of Sindhis are common to many ethnic
minorities: they have long been discriminated against in terms of gov¬
ernment jobs, education and resources. They do not control their own
water supply. Their province has been flooded with too many immi¬
grants from India, Punjab, NWFP and Baluchistan. Ethnic Sindhis
now comprise less than half of the population in their own province
(and only about 5% of Karachi’s population).13 Too much of their land
has been taken by non-ethnic Sindhis. The Muhajirs, they complain,
dominate the major cities of Karachi and Hyderabad.
Sindhi frustrations have fuelled radical Sindhi nationalist parties
which are anti-Muhajir and anti-Punjab. During the 1980s, numerous
small, parochial, regional and ethnic-based parties and groups flourished.
(These include Jiye Sind led by veteran politician G.M. Syed, and an
umbrella organization, the Sind National Alliance). Along with their
armed student affiliates these parties promote platforms ranging from a
looser constitutional restructuring of centre-province relations, to auton¬
omy, confederation and outright secession. In the 1988 elections, how¬
ever, the people in rural Sind voted for the national policies of the PPP
over the provincial politics of Sindhi nationalistic parties, and rejected all
IJI candidates (including Sindhis such as Junejo, Ghulam Mustapha
Jatoi and the Pir of Pagaro). Urban Sind, especially Urdu speakers in
Hyderabad and Karachi, voted for the MQM.
The MQM stands opposed to indigenous Sindhi movements and, on
occasion, to other ethnic groups in Sind (especially the Pakhtuns). Once
prominent in government, MQM supporters have come to feel
excluded from government jobs and educational opportunities. This
situation developed as the indigenous, mainly Punjabi elite asserted
itself in national affairs, and as ethnic distinctions and affiliations
became increasingly politicized. The more extreme amongst the MQM

23
have asserted claims to being a ‘fifth nationality’ in Pakistan. Violence
between Sindhi nationalists (who speak Sindhi and claim to be ‘sons of
the soil’), Pakhtuns (who have an important stake in the vital transport
industry) and Muhajirs has pervaded Sind’s political organizations, uni¬
versity campuses and streets.
Sind’s ethnic strife has been exacerbated by the proliferation of
weapons resulting from the Afghan War. The rural areas and the main
provincial highways have been besieged by dacoits (bandits) armed with
Kalashnikovs and rocket-launchers. Young militants carry sophisticated
weaponry, and there has been a heavy concentration of soldiers and
para-military forces. In 1983 alone, the army killed nearly 400 people
during anti-government protests. By the late 1980s Karachi, Pakistan’s
largest urban-industrial centre, had become the scene of extraordinary
civil violence. With a rapidly rising population (between 8-10 million,
nearly a third of whom live in squatter settlements), inadequate urban
infrastructure, municipal services and resources, and ethnic
polarization, Karachi is being transformed into an impoverished and
anarchic battle zone.
Despite Bhutto’s insistence that all Sind’s problems have resulted
from Zia’s autocratic policies, by late 1989 it was clear that the return to
democratic politics had not resolved the province’s crises. Although
they were abandoned by voters for the PPP in 1988, support for radical
Sindhi parties revived when their leaders successfully attacked the
PPP’s efforts to negotiate with the MQM in 1989 and reconcile Sindhi
and non-Sindhi claims. The PPP’s dilemma is that while it must work
for rural Sind (which speaks through powerful leaders in the PPP hier¬
archy) it must also act as a national party, trapping it between the
MQM and Sindhi extremists.
Sind’s future depends largely upon the decision of the regime to make
the resolution of ethnic conflict its foremost priority, and upon the
ability of both the PPP and the MQM to share power in Sind, reining in
their extreme factions. In 1989 the two parties entered an inevitably
unstable yet crucial alliance. A PPP-MQM accord, known as the
Karachi Declaration, was signed, outlining the PPP’s rights and
responsibilities towards the Muhajirs in return for the MQM’s political
co-operation. Among the issues addressed were the eradication of law¬
lessness and the confiscation of illegal arms, the control of migrants
from Pakistan’s other provinces, repatriation of Afghan refugees,
repatriation of‘Pakistanis living abroad’, i.e. Biharis, increased spend¬
ing on education, new criteria for university admissions, police
recruitment and employment, and the release of political prisoners.
Disappointed by the PPP’s failure to adhere to the accord, the MQM
deserted Bhutto on 18 September 1989 and made a secret agreement
with the IJI by whom it had been wooed periodically. (The collapse of
the Karachi Declaration gave the PPP some respite from its Sindhi
extremist critics.) A small ethnic party with a narrow constituency, the
MQM has become an important actor in national politics: in partner-

24
ship with the IJI it supported the motion of no-confidence against
Bhutto in the National Assembly.
Many complex issues divide the Sindhi-supported PPP and the
Muhajir party. A central MQM demand is for the repatriation to Sind of
an estimated 250,000 Urdu-speaking Biharis, (or ‘stranded Pakistanis’)
from 66 refugee camps in Bangladesh where they have lived in wretched
conditions since 1971. In a time of high Sindhi unemployment and of
growing fears about being overwhelmed by non-Sindhis, the Bihari
issue has incited Sindhi protests.
Sindhis and Muhajirs, the PPP and the MQM, must survive in Sind if
they are to survive at all. The MQM’s accord with the IJI was
strategically unwise, creating greater Sindhi resentment and, except on
paper (where the IJI agreed to prompt repatriation of the Biharis) show¬
ing little likelihood of forwarding Muhajir interests in Sind. So long as
the MQM promotes a militant and exclusivist agenda it will not con¬
tribute to a resolution of ethnic conflict. Neither the PPP nor the
MQM has been able to stem the tide of ethnic fratricide. Since October
1986, nearly 1,000 people have been killed in Sind while in 1989 alone
over a hundred people died, hundreds more were injured, kidnapped or
robbed, and non-Sindhis began to migrate from the interior of Sind.
Bhutto’s majority in Sind was an important element in the army’s
decision to give her a chance to govern, and if left untended, Sind can
ruin the credibility of her regime, reduce Pakistan’s industrial capacity
(in 1989-90 the growth rate of national industrial production fell from
10.55% to 1%), and endanger its unity. As the provincial violence shows
no signs of abating, Bhutto’s regime must place greater emphasis upon
the maintenance of order. Without an adequate police force (Karachi
has an ill-equipped police force of 10,000), her regime has been forced
to rely on curfews and frequent requests for the army’s ‘aid to the civil
power’. At the end of 1989 army troops patrolled Sind’s major cities,
including Hyderabad and Karachi.
For now Pakistan’s generals insist that Sind’s problems are political
and are best addressed by an elected government using political
means.14 Still, the army has always viewed ethnic and provincial strife
as posing a danger to national unity. Repeated civilian invitations to
restore order are seen as a sign that the regime cannot resolve the crisis
through political means. The army also views the lack of full control
over domestic peacekeeping operations as a threat to its institutional
reputation. In the past, such aid to the civil power duties have led to the
soldiers’ decision to ensure state security by recapturing political power.
Pakistan’s ethnic discord has invited trans-border interventions.
Each rift has provoked external interference, which, in turn, has aided
either the cause of the ethnic groups or of the regime. In 1971 Indian
military intervention ensured the success of Bengali secessionists. Argu¬
ing that fleeing Bengali refugees were having a deleterious impact on
its own delicate ethnic balance, India intervened in support of the
Bengali insurgents. The 1973 Baluch insurgency induced the active pol-

25
itical and military involvement of the Shah of Iran on behalf of Zulhkar
Ali Bhutto’s regime. The Shah, too, feared the cross-border influences of
an uprising in Pakistan upon his own restive Baluch population. Since
the mid-1970s, Baluch insurgents have been provided with a safe haven
in Afghanistan. If a future Afghan regime in Kabul is friendly to Pakis¬
tan, however, the secure status of these Baluch exiles could change.
Traditional Afghan support for Pakhtun and Baluch nationalists
became a factor in Pakistan’s regional security policies during the
1980s. It influenced Zia’s efforts to establish a pro-Pakistani regime in
post-Soviet Afghanistan. The attempt, since 1947, to create
‘Pakhtunistan’ - a state which in its varying descriptions would contain
all of the NWFP and large parts of Baluchistan - has been a brainchild
of successive irredentist Afghan regimes in the north. They have denied
the validity of the 1,200-mile Durand Line boundary (which was
devised by the British and agreed to by the Afghans in 1893) and pro¬
moted their claim diplomatically and militarily. Inside the NWFP
there is also a long tradition of regional autonomy movements. Yet
since Pakistan’s Pakhtuns have been relatively prosperous, have pro¬
vided recruits for the army, and since 1980 have housed millions of
their Afghan brethren, ‘pro-Pakhtunistan’ groups have increasingly
received short shrift.

Drugs, guns and crime

External factors, specifically the conflict in Afghanistan, have reverber¬
ated inside Pakistan, exacerbating its indigenous social problems. The
spread of narcotics and of weapons intended for the war in Afghanistan
has inflamed existing ethnic tensions and significantly raised the level of
casualties in Sind as well as corruption nationwide. The population of
addicts has grown as has the ‘black’ economy.
Narcotics are the new national plague. The revolution in Iran closed
the old traffic routes to the West, and the war in Afghanistan led many
Afghan poppy growers not only to shift production of poppy and heroin
across the border into Pakistan’s hospitable tribal lands (especially the
Khyber Agency where heroin laboratories flourish), but also to use Pakis¬
tan as the main transshipment point for heroin travelling westwards.
(About sixty percent of US and European heroin arrives from Pakistan.)
Prior to 1980 Pakistan had no reported heroin addicts; in 1983 there
were 30,000, and in late 1989 there were between 800,000 and one mil¬
lion heroin addicts. Today, every sixth young man in Karachi is
reportedly a drug user. High levels of opium production continue in
Afghanistan and Pakistan. Between 1985 and 1988 Afghan opium pro¬
duction rose from 400-500 metric tons to 700-800 metric tons. Afghan¬
istan also produced 200-400 metric tons of hashish. Pakistan's opium
production rose from 40-70 metric tons in 1985 to 205 metric tons in
1988. It also produced 200 metric tons of hashish. In 1989 Afghanistan
was the world’s second largest opium producer (after Burma).15

26
 Under US pressure, Zia instituted a few poppy eradication
measures such as aerial spraying, but even so during his tenure, the
drug trade expanded. While Benazir Bhutto has announced an official
war on drugs, including the establishment (with US support) of an elite
anti-narcotics unit, reorganization of the Pakistan Narcotics Control
Board, increased eradication efforts, investigation of drug traders and
extradition of a few major drug traffickers from Pakistan to the US, a
substantial and enduring reduction of the drug trade is unlikely in the
near future. (Opium production inside Pakistan is expected to ‘decline
sharply’ in 1989, but the lower figures are due primarily to poor
weather conditions which have reduced the acreage of poppy
cultivated.)
Given high Western demand, the enormous profitability for local
producers (estimated, in 1989, at between $4 bn and $7 bn yearly), and
their connections within the Pakistani elite, the efforts to eliminate the
narcotics trade are unlikely to be quickly successful. Heroin labora¬
tories continue to flourish along the Afghan border. Violent confron¬
tations often erupt between opium farmers and the government’s
poppy eradication forces. Some Afghan Mujaheddin commanders are
reported to be principal drug exporters. Future predictions are
gloomy, and there is growing concern in the US and elsewhere in the
international community that the return of the Afghan refugees will
serve only to raise opium production above current levels. Experts
suggest that if the Afghan War ends and Afghan refugees return home,
poppy, quick-yielding and lucrative, is likely to be the first crop they
plant. If, on the other hand, the conflict persists and international
sources of arms aid diminish, rival Mujaheddin commanders could
carve up and develop opium fiefdoms to subsidize their fighting
habits. The US has stated that aid to a future Mujaheddin regime in
Afghanistan will be conditional on its efforts to reduce the cultivation
of poppy and drug trafficking.16
Domestic violence in Pakistan has been fired indirectly by
Pakistan’s role as a base of operations and as a weapons conduit for the
Afghan Mujaheddin. Along with the arms sent into Pakistan through
pro-Kabul Pakhtun tribesmen by the Afghan regime, an estimated
40% of the weapons destined for the war effort via the CIA’s arms
pipeline (operated inside Pakistan by the ISI) have ‘leaked into Pakis¬
tan. Pakistani army officers and Mujaheddin have been reported to
sell weapons on the open market in Pakistan, while some Afghans have
traded their weapons to raise funds for the transport of medical and
food supplies into Afghanistan. In consequence, all varieties of viol¬
ence have proliferated: petty crime, urban street killings, rural ban¬
ditry, tribal, sectarian and ethnic feuds. Drug traffickers, right-wing
Islamicists, frontier warlords and rural bandits have all gained access
to sophisticated arms ranging from Kalashnikovs to rocket-launchers
and anti-tank missiles. Lawlessness, while prevalent in the frontier ter¬
ritories, is worst today in Sind.

27
Economic weaknesses
The scale of financial corruption exacerbates Pakistan’s economic
shortcomings, which enforce its dependence on external sources of
funds, and endangers efforts at democratization. There are few
reliable estimates of the extent of corruption. Even the soldiers are
said to participate in this insidious aspect of Pakistan’s national life,
which reportedly includes drug peddling, gun running and irregular
housing and land sales. Bureaucratic corruption alone has been esti¬
mated to amount to about $1 bn a year (Rs. 20 bn). In 1987 the
National Taxation Reform Commission estimated that black money
(unaccounted for tax purposes) was $9 bn (about Rs. 180 bn at 1989
rates), that corruption absorbed $2.4 bn in development funds, and
that public sector employees were implicated in $3.5 bn of black
money. Another $ 1.2 bn (about Rs 24 bn) worth of smuggled goods are
thought to enter Pakistan each year. Economists at the UN estimate
that unaccounted monies could comprise up to 50% of GNP.17
Although it has risen to reach near-middle-income country status
(i.e. with an average per capita income of nearly $400 per annum),
Pakistan has serious weaknesses in its social and economic infrastruc¬
ture which few regimes have sought to redress: for example, the child
mortality rate is 170 deaths per thousand, 80% of rural households do
not have clean drinking water and the increasingly youthful popu¬
lation grows at an annual rate of 3.1%. While defence and civil
administration expenditures consume more than half the annual
budget, the last six Five Year Plans have allocated 1.66% to education.
Where the lot of men is hard, the lot is women is harder: in some dis¬
tricts women’s literacy is less than 2% and their welfare and pro¬
ductivity is among the lowest in the world.18
With a savings rate of less than five percent - low even by South
Asian standards - Pakistan cannot obtain the minimum investment
rate required to sustain its growth or to repay its debts. The tax base is
limited, inflation is officially estimated at 12%, remittances from
migrant workers are falling, and the 1988 foreign debt was $16.4 bn.
All Pakistani regimes have judged the political costs of genuine land
reforms and agricultural taxes to be prohibitive (the elder Bhutto suc¬
ceeded on paper only). Despite its political manifesto the new PPP
regime, which includes numerous landowners, is unlikely to transform
the agricultural sector into a source of social equity or tax revenue.
Bhutto’s professed commitment to a re-ordering of spending priorities
in favour of economic and social welfare is limited by her policy of
retaining the support of rural landowners, as well as by large defence
expenditure (which she cannot question) and debt repayments.
Political dissent is less intense when harvests are good and the econ¬
omy is resilient. Zia’s years were financially lucrative and
agriculturally sound ones for Pakistan. Yet its once-thriving economy
- a 6% GNP growth rate, and infusions of billions of dollars from the
US and from migrants to the Middle East - declined near the end of

28
his period in office. Current economic weaknesses have made the
acquisition of foreign funds and private investment a central consider¬
ation of foreign policy. While Zia used a regional crisis in Afghanis¬
tan to increase national solvency, Bhutto has used the advent of
democracy as an instrument of foreign economic policy. She has
argued insistently in international fora about the importance of global
financial support for fledgling democracies. Japan, Europe and the US
have all been generous, speedily providing Bhutto with the
concessional funds so important for her political survival. Together
they pledged $3.1 bn in aid to Pakistan for 1990. Aware of the poten¬
tial for popular protest against the new regime, even the IMF tem¬
pered the harsh restrictions attached to its three-year, nearly $l-bn
line of credit to Pakistan. Without this aid, Bhutto’s regime could have
faced an economic crisis with damaging political ramifications.
Wherever Pakistan’s traditional power-brokers have lost some
ground, they have only done so to an inexperienced political elite
which, in order to stay in power, has readily accommodated their
interests and compromised its own ambitions for social and economic
welfare; or to a new, corrupt and corrupting economic elite; or to
dangerously exclusivist ethnic and religious parties. Today, the success
of civilian regimes depends on: one province, the Punjab; one crisis,
ethnic warfare in Sind; one issue, Islam; one unfulfilled expectation,
economic security; one institution, the army; and one critical political
inadequacy, the inability of civilians to negotiate power among them¬
selves. In 1990 Pakistan’s old elite and older concerns continue in
place, not yet outwitted by a regime trapped by its own political weak¬
nesses and lack of policy initiatives, by the uncertain balance of pol¬
itical power between itself and soldiers, bureaucrats and political
opponents. These domestic uncertainties have increased Pakistan’s
vulnerability to outside intervention, generated the dependence of
regimes on external forces, and influenced the state’s foreign policies.

29
II. REGIONAL POLITICS
Pakistan’s efforts to define its identity are amply discernible in its
regional policies. With a location which permits it not only a South
Asian identity, but also Central and West Asian identities, Pakistan
has described itself differently in different eras. Still, from the realm of
culture to the realm of security, its foremost concerns are to be found
in South Asia, a fact immediately evident in the nature of its boundary
relations with India, which differ markedly from its associations with
other states. Whereas its Central and West Asian borders have been
porous over the past two decades, Pakistan has followed virtually a
‘closed border’ policy in the subcontinent. Indo-Pakistani relations
have been antagonistic and distrustful, and political and economic
intercourse between the neighbours has been restricted. Military
engagements have been a prominent mode of encounter. Similarly,
while Pakistan’s relations with Central and West Asia have centred on
trans-state flows, and been subject to rapid and continuous change
beyond state control, Indo-Pakistani relations have been primarily
state-to-state and there have been strong domestic political constraints
on changes in policy, and few active transport, economic or cultural
links. Where trans-state contacts exist, in fact, as in Punjab and
Kashmir, they are a source of threat and anxiety.
Indo-Pakistani relations have been essentially static, predictable
and least subject to sudden or radical change. Domestic politics and
Pakistan’s changing international circumstances have determined the
regional policies of regimes - especially those led by civilians. Despite
Benazir Bhutto’s interest in reducing political tensions, under this
PPP regime Indo-Pakistani relations are unlikely to witness speedy,
revolutionary change.

South Asia
Partition’s legacy has been a uniquely bitter brand of inter-state poli¬
tics. Since 1947, Pakistan and India have been unable to agree on the
terms of amicable co-existence. India is the dominant factor in
Pakistan’s foreign policy and intrudes into its domestic politics. His¬
torically, Pakistanis, especially the soldiers, have been sceptical
about India’s acceptance of a Muslim nation with independent
interests and have resented India’s political bullying, economic threats
and armed intervention in the affairs of all its South Asian neighbours.
Pakistan’s minimal strategic depth and the easterly location of its
industries, population centres, and lines of communication make
India the preponderant military danger. Pakistan has responded to
this threat by emphasizing conventional defence modernization and a
nuclear weapons’ research programme. It has sought a role for itself in
theatres outside the subcontinent as well as in a series of international,
Islamic and regional organizations, such as the Organization of the
Islamic Conference (OIC) and the South Asian Association for

30
Regional Cooperation (SAARC). The need to augment its strength
through extra-regional affiliations has also made the search for allies
and arms, and the dispersal of migrants and mercenaries beyond
South Asia, key foreign and security policy pursuits for Pakistan.
Subcontinental peace accords - made at Tashkent in 1966 and at
Simla in 1972 - have been reached only in the aftermath of the Indo-
Pakistani wars of 1965 and 1971. An enduring amity never devel¬
oped, however, and neither side made serious efforts to maintain
regional order. In the past two decades, the acquisition of arms from
abroad has been a continuing source of friction, and conventional con¬
flict, nuclear competition and interference in one another’s domestic
disputes have all marked Indo-Pakistani relations, balanced only by
genuine, if stilted, efforts at regional co-operation through SAARC.

ARMS PURCHASES AND INDO-PAKISTANI RELATIONS

Indo-Pakistani rivalry has independent historical and geographical
roots and is not the consequence of relations with external powers.
However, as India views Pakistan’s military links with external powers
as a disruption of its ‘natural’ dominion in the subcontinent,
Pakistan’s military ties to the US and the PRC have resulted in
heightened Indo-Pakistani tensions. Despite its own extensive mili¬
tary and treaty ties with external powers, India insists upon
‘bilateralism’ in regional disputes and the severance of links between
the smaller regional states and external powers. It insists upon a Pakis¬
tan without external supports. The depth of India’s distaste for
Pakistan’s alliances and arms purchases was evident in the 1980s,
when it saw the Soviet presence in Afghanistan as less of a threat to
regional security than the US-Pakistan arms relationship which devel¬
oped following the invasion.
The USSR supplies India with about 70% of its arms imports.
According to the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
(ACDA), Soviet arms sent to India between 1983 and 1987 had a
cumulative value in current dollars of $7.6 bn, while the total value of
US arms supplies to Pakistan over the same period was $1.3 bn.1
Recent Soviet transfers to India have included the MiG-29 and the
lease of nuclear-powered submarines. Both Pakistan and India also
buy arms from France, the UK and the FRG, among others, while
India also buys from Poland and Czechoslovakia and Pakistan buys
from China.
Pakistan argues that it is Indo-Soviet co-operation which fuels
subcontinental rivalry. In reality, each state has profited militarily and
economically over the years from the other’s alliances, as US, Chinese
and Soviet competition became entangled in the regional quarrel. The
price of such great-power involvement and thus of weapons imports,
however, has been regional dissension. Pakistani regimes have seen it
as their sovereign choice to purchase arms abroad, but because India
objects, such purchases are incompatible with relaxed regional

31
relations. India saw the large US arms transfers to Pakistan which
began in the early 1980s as provocative, destabilizing and escalatory,
and lobbied especially hard against advanced US arms such as F-16
aircraft and Airborne Warning and Control Systems (AWACS). It
accused Pakistan of wrecking bilateral relations by its cultivation of an
extra-regional alliance.
During the 1987 AWACS debate in the US, Pakistan argued for
these aircraft rather than an alternative, lower-cost ground-based
radar system (to deal with repeated Afghan air violations of its
borderlands), but India insisted that the AWACS were not ‘one eyed’:
they were an unwelcome, destabilizing and escalatory system, able to
look deep into Indian territory. (While the USSR was in Afghanistan
Pakistan had its best opportunity to acquire the airborne systems.
Many factors, including US uncertainty about Pakistan’s nuclear
activities, made the sale infeasible. Today, the transfer of AWACS to
Pakistan is unlikely.)
Successive Pakistani regimes have asserted that they must continue
to arm owing to the country’s clear conventional military vulnerability
to India, and the latter’s military expansion programmes. They point to
India’s purchase of aircraft carriers and aircraft such as MiG-29, Har¬
rier, Jaguar and Mirage 2000, possession of one of the most sophisti¬
cated air-defence systems in Asia, and (in the face of negligible threats
from the sea) rapidly increasing maritime power projection capabilities.
India’s combat capabilities in the air, at sea and on land, qualitative
and quantitative, overwhelm those of Pakistan, whose indigenous arms
production and export capacities are also outstripped. At present, over
80% of Pakistan’s defence needs are procured abroad, and, although
there is a domestic ballistic missile programme, production still focuses
on small arms. However, Pakistan is modernizing the Chinese-made
T-59 tank and plans to build the FT-5 and the Karakoram 8 trainer
aircraft.2 Meanwhile, Indian domestic production includes small arms
and ammunition, mortars, the Arjun battle tank, combat aircraft, heli¬
copters, small warships, radar and electronic equipment, arms for
export (increasingly being used to offset production costs) and a space
programme (costing $200 m a year) which incorporates the testing of
rockets, satellites and launch vehicles.
The US commitment to ridding Afghanistan of Soviet forces gave
the Pakistan Army the opportunity to modernize its antiquated and
mainly obsolescent hardware (much of it of Korean War vintage)
through the acquisition of technologically sophisticated American
weapons systems which would compensate for its quantitative inferi¬
ority vis-a-vis India and increase the costs to India of prosecuting a
war against Pakistan.
In Pakistan, the agenda for such defence procurements is not set by
civilian regimes, especially weak ones; it is the army’s evaluations of
threat and response that remain the driving force behind military
acquisitions. As long as India continues its ambitious military pro-

32
grammes, civilian regimes are unlikely to be able to restrain Pakistan’s
quest for advanced arms. In 1989, Benazir Bhutto requested 60
additional American F-16. President Bush agreed to supply the air¬
craft, and even those Congressional leaders who had been critical of
earlier weapons sales to Pakistan chose not to block the sale.

CONVENTIONAL CONFLICTS
Since the war of 1971 in which it suffered a terrible defeat by India,
Pakistan’s politicians and soldiers have avoided a full-scale military
confrontation with India. Despite frequent high levels of political ten¬
sion, fuelled by their acquisition of conventional arms and nuclear
technology, both states have shown military restraint. For Pakistan,
such avoidance of conflict became a strategic necessity while Soviet
soldiers were in Afghanistan.
Local confrontations, however, continue. Tensions were high along
the Indo-Pakistan border in 1987, and a mini-war persists along the
Siachen Glacier in Kashmir. Given the instability of the
subcontinental rivalry such minor quarrels always carry the risk of
larger military conflicts. The conventional crisis of 1987, for example,
in which India and Pakistan massed over 300,000 troops on their bor¬
ders, revealed both the fragility of the Indo-Pakistani military
relationship. The confrontation on the Siachen Glacier also demon¬
strates the lengths to which both countries will go to defend their per¬
ceived sovereign interest.
In the winter of 1986-7, Operation Brass Tacks, India’s complex,
military exercises involving about a third of its army, which took place
without prior notification close to its western borders, unnerved Pakis¬
tan. Pakistan responded by among other things, keeping its forces at
forward positions after the completion of its own manoeuvres. Border
tensions peaked in early 1987. Indian and Pakistani leaders, however,
demonstrated their improved ability to manage such crises. Frequent
negotiations between officials prevented a full-scale war. Existing ‘hot
lines’ were used, and bilateral agreement led to speedy troop with¬
drawals. Zia successfully exploited a mutual affinity for sport in Febru¬
ary 1987 by flying to India on a ‘peace through cricket’ mission.
Pakistan’s proposals for broad CBM, for prior and proper notification
of military exercises and the provision of observers from each side dur¬
ing war games, however, failed to win Indian support. It is notable that
only a strong military autocrat like Zia could make such a controversial
peace so quickly. A civilian regime, such as Benazir Bhutto’s, might
have had to pay a high domestic political price for such a gesture.
The dangerous uncertainties surrounding Operation Brass Tacks
were not lost on the Pakistan Army. In December 1989, when it held
Pakistan’s largest ever war exercises, Zarb-e-Momin (Impact of the
Believer), involving over 200,000 men, the army publicized the
manoeuvres in advance, informed its Indian counterparts, invited
foreign observers (including the Indian military attache in Islamabad),

33
and chose an area of action about 200-250 kilometres away from the
Indo-Pakistan border.3

The Siachen Fracas

Since April 1984, Pakistan and India have also engaged troops around
the remote, Siachen Glacier in the Karakoram borderlands. This mini¬
war (the world’s highest) was sparked by a boundary quarrel. Both
states claim the Glacier to be on their side of the Line of Actual Control
in Kashmir, a line which, from map co-ordinate NJ9842 to the glaciers,
has remained undemarcated. The rivalry, confined initially to issuing
competing permits for mountaineering expeditions, turned quickly into
armed clashes as Pakistan and India each deployed several thousand
troops. India launched the first assault, Operation Meghdoot, and took
nearly 2,590 square km of territory claimed by Pakistan. The fighting,
along with icy weather, frostbite and avalanches, has claimed a few hun¬
dred lives, and been costly in terms of money and materiel. The harsh
terrain, the high altitude and the vagaries of climate account for eight
out of ten casualties. These factors, rather than Indo-Pakistani nego¬
tiations, have restricted the scope of the conflict. The only perceptible
benefits of the war have been new roads and the increased ability of both
armies to fight in high altitudes.4
This military fracas has been difficult for any regime to resolve,
since Siachen’s status is linked to the sensitive controversy over
Kashmir, which itself has already been the object of two major Indo-
Pakistani conflicts. The Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, cur¬
rently in the grip of rising, anti-Indian, Muslim agitation, promises to
become a thorny issue in Indo-Pakistani relations once more. Talks on
Siachen, held since 1986, have not brought about a cease-fire. Even
though India and Pakistan began to pursue the ‘normalization’ of
relations after Bhutto’s electoral victory in 1988, the two states failed
to agree on an end to the war. When the June 1989 negotiations
resulted in an agreement to work towards a comprehensive settlement
based on the redeployment of forces, it was quickly drowned in ambi¬
guity and misunderstanding. Although talks continue, Benazir
Bhutto, wary of opposition accusations of ‘losing’ Siachen (she once
accused Zia of doing precisely that), has visited the troops there and
reaffirmed Pakistan’s commitment to holding its ground in the
Karakoram mountains.

INDO-PAKISTANI NUCLEAR COMPETITION

Indo-Pakistani competition is escalating into the nuclear sphere and
threatens to broaden the geographical dimensions of the regional con¬
flict. Their budding nuclear rivalry, already of concern to old nuclear
powers as well as to neighbouring states who have no nuclear capa¬
bility, could even invite the direct military involvement of extra-
regional states. (There has been speculation, for example, that Israel

34
thrice proposed to India a joint strike against Pakistani nuclear
facilities.5)
Losses in conventional war - India’s defeat by the PRC in 1962 and
Pakistan’s division and defeat by India in 1971 - convinced the lead¬
ing subcontinental states to take the nuclear route. Although both
states declare their peaceful nuclear intent, neither Pakistan nor India
has signed the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Both have
nuclear power plants, or enrichment or reprocessing facilities which
are not under international safeguards. India detonated a nuclear
device in 1974, possesses unsafeguarded plutonium, and, according to
recent American reports, there is an ‘indication’ of its interest in build¬
ing thermonuclear devices.6
Despite Pakistan’s insistent denials, Western experts concur that it
has enriched uranium to weapons grade since 1985-6. According to
Western reports, it has also tested the ‘triggering package’ of a nuclear
device. In the shadow of Indian warnings that it might have to recon¬
sider its own nuclear options, Pakistan has reportedly sought out,
often clandestinely and illegally, in Europe and the US, material and
know-how for its nuclear facilities. India and Pakistan are accumulat¬
ing uncontrolled material suitable for the manufacture of nuclear
weapons. In a 1988 report it was estimated that Pakistan may have
sufficient enriched uranium to make one or two nuclear weapons per
year, while India’s capabilities are known to be considerably greater.7
In theory at least, both possess delivery vehicles: Pakistan has F-16 air¬
craft and has tested short-range ballistic missiles (Hatf I and II), while
India has a large airforce, and in March 1988 tested a short-range bal¬
listic missile, the Prithvi. In May 1989 it also tested the Agni as a
space-launch vehicle with a 2,000-pound payload capacity. Although
there are no immediate deployment plans, the Agni is slated to form
the basis for India’s long-range ballistic missile programme. The
Prithvi was tested again in September 1989 and the Indian Army has
placed an order for the system.8
Mutual suspicion originating from Partition in 1947 and exacer¬
bated by the current cold peace between the states make it unlikely
that domestic consensus will be reached in either state on nuclear
peace. Nuclear weapons research is inspired by (and itself spurs) tra¬
ditional sources of insecurity. Uncertainty about one another’s
intent, progress and goals in such research only heightens other
regional insecurities, while allegations about cross-border intervention
in ethnic wars, for example, can create an atmosphere unsuited to sen¬
sitive nuclear talks. Rajiv Gandhi refused to consider many of Zia’s
offers to negotiate a regional nuclear peace or even his 1987 proposal
of a limited, nuclear test ban agreement because he suspected Zia’s
hand in Punjab’s Sikh terror. After his election as Prime Minister of
India, in November 1989, V.P. Singh indicated a desire to improve
relations with all India’s neighbours. The weakness of his own position
and continued Indian accusations regarding Pakistan’s involvement

35
in Punjab and Kashmir, however, suggest that the opening of any
detailed discussions with Pakistan focusing on nuclear matters will be
extremely difficult.
Disputes over the geographical scope of the nuclear-relevant region
have also frustrated attempts to limit nuclear progress. In a reversal of
roles, Pakistan, despite its links to Central and West Asia, has pro¬
posed ‘regional solutions’ (i.e. a South Asian nuclear free zone), while
India, which always insists upon bilateral and inter-regional solutions
to South Asian problems (and is sharply critical of Pakistan for its ties
to extra-regional powers) has advocated both a broader definition of
the region (to include all or part of the PRC, such as Tibet) as well as
regional nuclear accords which are linked to international arms-
control agreements.
Both military and civilian regimes in Pakistan have attempted
regional solutions. Zia ul-Haq’s proposals included the renunciation
by Pakistan and India of the manufacture and use of nuclear weapons;
mutual inspection; placement of nuclear facilities under full IAEA
(International Atomic Energy Agency) safeguards; simultaneous
signing of the NPT; and establishment of a South Asian nuclear
weapons-free-zone. India always demurred. Benazir Bhutto’s regime
stood by Zia’s regional emphases, reiterating that Pakistan, rather
than desiring a bomb, seeks instead to promote a regional approach to
non-proliferation. The only nuclear CBM agreed to, as of late 1989, is
the December 1985 verbal accord between Zia and Gandhi not to
attack one another’s nuclear facilities. Shortly after Bhutto came to
power this agreement was put into writing.

The domestic politics of nuclear weapons policy

Nuclear research programmes and the possible acquisition of nuclear
weapons are widely associated in the region with sovereignty, national
pride and national security. Yet, there is little debate about the effects
of nuclear war on South Asia. In Pakistan there is devout and public
support - among important segments of the political elite, the oppo¬
sition, the press, the defence establishment and the people - for the
attainment of a nuclear stance which could serve as a political
‘equalizer’ in South Asian affairs. Attacks on Pakistan’s nuclear pro¬
gramme are even viewed by some conservative politicians as an
American-Jewish-Hindu conspiracy against Islam.
The determination of Pakistani supporters of the nuclear pro¬
gramme to continue research stems from their political view that
only Pakistan’s ability to build such a deterrent can neutralize India’s
broad regional dominance, and their calculation that the acquisition
of a nuclear weapons capability can deter India’s conventional mili¬
tary threat by raising the costs of conflict to unacceptably high levels.
The historical record of Pakistan’s alliances with the US and the
PRC, where neither power has shown a willingness to become
embroiled militarily in Indo-Pakistani conventional wars, also

36
confirms the belief of the pro-nuclear constituency that no state will
safeguard Pakistan’s security in a confrontation with India. Pro¬
ponents in Pakistan hold that nuclear weapons provide the ultimate
guarantee of regional security. The gestures of peace in Asia, too,
especially between the PRC and India, make Pakistan feel increasingly
insecure. If realized, Sino-Indian accords could chip away at
Pakistan’s regional margin of manoeuvre. Envisioning all this, the pro-
nuclear lobby in Pakistan is unlikely to show great willingness to
abandon the nuclear option.
Civilian and military regimes have adopted broadly similar pos¬
itions on the nuclear issue. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto is recognized as the
creative force behind the nuclear weapons research programme in the
1970s, while Zia developed the essential infrastructure for a nuclear
weapons option in the 1980s. Benazir Bhutto, like her predecessor, has
said that Pakistan, while it has the know-how, does not intend to
manufacture nuclear weapons.9 She will not, however, consider the
unilateral renunciation of the nuclear option. The existence of a
nuclear weapons programme can be an asset for any regime, a readily
manipulate prestige symbol which is capable of unifying disparate
constituencies and bolstering public support. A Pakistani regime
which publicly and wholly abandons a nuclear posture (which is inten¬
tionally ambiguous) could face domestic charges of abandoning the
national interest. Thus, internal pressures can serve to sustain nuclear
competition. The likely political manipulation of the Indian threat by
proponents of nuclear weapons works against any Pakistani regime’s
ability to enforce unilateral nuclear curbs.
However strongly it might oppose proliferation, a weak civilian
regime, such as Bhutto’s, which must struggle to control sensitive mili¬
tary policies and daily prove its concern for national security, will
always be vulnerable to an alliance of soldiers and civilians who
oppose the slowing of Pakistan’s nuclear efforts. In April 1989, for
example, PPP officials had to deny forcefully opposition charges that
the regime had succumbed to US and Indian pressures to shut down
the Kahuta nuclear centrifuge enrichment facility. Such charges are
frequently made.10 Rumours about India’s plans to attack Kahuta
spread in 1983-4 and again in 1989. Only a regime with strong civil-
military support, substantial control over the research programme, or
important inducements to offer proponents of a weapons programme
(such as US F-16 aircraft), can make realistic decisions about restrain¬
ing nuclear progress. (It is still unclear how much Bhutto knows
about and how much she controls the nuclear programme.) Pakistan’s
nuclear strategists may decide, too, that by maintaining a posture ot
ambiguity - without moving to an overt, visible weapons production
capability - they can still achieve their goals of political and military
deterrence in the region. Reports in 1989 suggested that while Pakis¬
tan continued to try to buy weapons components abroad and to
enrich uranium over the 5% of U-235 necessary for a peaceful pro-

37
 gramme, it may be making certain unspecified changes in its enrich¬
ment practices."
The nuclear issue presents a difficult policy dilemma for regimes
dependent upon external support. The clash between domestic ‘nuclear
nationalism’ and the US aversion to nuclear weapons proliferation has
meant that the Bhutto regime has struggled simultaneously to satisfy the
different demands of its vital domestic constituencies - the source of
political power - and of its foreign constituencies - the source of essen¬
tial economic and conventional military aid. Foreign supporters
demand evidence that it is not Pakistan’s intent to continue its weapons
acquisition process, while domestic supporters often make the opposite
demand. Therefore, ambiguity has been the preferred declaratory pol¬
icy. Publicly, while Bhutto has made statements similar to Zia’s, she
has also alluded to the US ability to verify discreetly the status of
Pakistan’s nuclear programme.

MUTUAL INTERFERENCE IN DOMESTIC AFFAIRS

Because the 1947 Partition resulted from a fundamental dispute over
the role of secularism and religion in the foundation of national ident¬
ity, and was attended by communal massacres (estimates as high as
one million dead) and an exodus (in which eight million Muslims left
India for Pakistan and six million Sikhs and Hindus left Pakistan for
India) India and Pakistan have been especially sensitive to cross-
border interference in one another’s domestic disputes.12 Yet their
mutual vulnerability to ethnic, sectarian and religious conflicts, and to
the dangerous links between domestic schisms and external security,
has not tempered the predilection of either state for involvement in
the domestic affairs of the other. The permeability of borders is no less
troubling than the placement of borders. Since 1947, Pakistan and
India have both faced a series of violent domestic rifts and each has
alleged involvement by the other in these national ruptures.
India’s destruction of Pakistan in its eastern wing in 1971 was fol¬
lowed m the 1980s by accusations concerning Pakistan’s involve¬
ment in two of India’s own most precarious regions, Punjab and
Kashmir. India’s Punjab crisis was a prime catalyst in worsening Indo-
Pakistam relations in the 1980s. Its difficulties in Kashmir could
jeopardize the regional relationship in the 1990s.
Gandhi accused Zia of actively supporting about 2,000 hard-
c°re Sikh terrorists fighting for Khalistan, an independent homeland,
n May 1988 Indian sources asserted that Sikh extremists visited Pak¬
istan frequently, armed intrusions occurred across the border, Pakis¬
tan housed training camps for Sikh terrorists, modern weaponrv
flowed across the border (including US-supplied arms meant for the
Afghan Mujaheddin, AK-47 Kalashnikovs, RPG-7 anti-tank rockets
and rocket launchers), and that Pakistani intelligence agencies had
been assisting the terrorists since 1985.12 Pakistan responded that it
was not government policy to aid the Sikhs, but that it was difficult to

38
prevent the smuggling of narcotics, gold and Kalashnikovs across the
border. This response was not accepted. Talks in 1987 and 1988 on
smuggling, illegal crossings, the arms and drug trades, joint patrols and
the exchange of communications about the Punjab border, came to
nought. Zia’s call for a joint renunciation of support for secessionist
movements was ignored, and India refused Pakistani offers to send
observers to alleged Sikh training camps, arguing that such camps were
easily shifted.
In its turn, Zia’s regime accused India of instigating dissidence in
Sind by, among other things, housing 37 training camps for separatists
in neighbouring Rajasthan and supporting opposition groups.14 Since
the disturbances in Sind in 1983, Pakistani leaders have alluded to
Indian interference there, suggesting that it is a product of efforts to
distract attention from the Punjab. Indian force movements along the
Siachen Glacier in 1984 were also seen in Pakistan as a reflection of
Mrs Gandhi’s efforts to externalize her internal problems in an elec¬
tion year and to divert attention from the violence in Punjab.
In the 1980s, Indo-Pakistani regional competition even contributed
to Pakistan’s minor involvement in the Sinhalese-Tamil ethnic con¬
flict in Sri Lanka. While India supported the Tamil guerrillas, Pakis¬
tan gave diplomatic and limited military support to Junius
Jayawardene’s regime: government troops are said to have received
Pakistani training.

REGIONAL CO-OPERATION
One area of regional co-operation saw progress under Zia: in the 1980s
SAARC was conceived. Pakistan’s participation in SAARC demon¬
strated its formal reintegration into the South Asian security system,
from which it had been virtually absent since 1971. SAARC has
evolved into a useful instrument - ancillary, if not pivotal - for the
pursuit of Pakistan’s political and diplomatic interests. The regional
grouping supplements Pakistan’s limited bilateral dealings with South
Asia’s smaller states. Efforts at social, economic and political
co-operation reached formal fruition on 8 December 1985, when the
first SAARC summit was convened at Dhaka. India, Pakistan,
Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Maldives approved the
SAARC Charter. Mutual suspicions, such as Pakistan’s early concern
that SAARC would become yet another forum for Indian dominance,
slowed SAARC’s formation.
India’s insistence that bilateral issues be placed beyond SAARC’s
purview contributed to its greatest inadequacy as an effective regional
organization. Since pressing issues such as the economic dispute
between India and land-locked Nepal in 1989 (Nepal accused India of
imposing an ‘economic blockade’), the ethnic crisis and the presence
of Indian troops in Sri Lanka, and regional water disputes between
India and its neighbours are all considered ‘bilateral by India, they are
all excluded from SAARC’s agenda. Pakistan and other, smaller,

39
 SAARC members have already tried and failed to include discussions
of such economic, ethnic and military security disputes and CBM in
SAARC fora.15 Still, regional political tensions do penetrate SAARC.
In 1989 Sri Lanka insisted that the withdrawal of Indian troops from
Sri Lanka be completed before a SAARC summit could be held in
Colombo. Indo-Pakistani competition has also created organizational
disputes: for example, India insisted and Pakistan refused to admit
Soviet-occupied Afghanistan into the regional grouping.
Political mistrust and differing economic capacities have retarded
regional economic co-operation. Although successive Pakistani
regimes remain wary of removing the trade barriers which protect
their smaller market and fragile industrialization, in late 1989,
Pakistan’s leaders were taking small steps towards economic normaliz¬
ation: for example, the Bhutto regime increased the number of items
importable from India. Such trepidation over economic, environmen¬
tal, political and military issues between India and the smaller states,
makes it unlikely that SAARC will evolve into a genuine regional
security organization, or even into an official forum for the resolution
of disputes.
Nevertheless, SAARC has begun to play a profitable role in this
insecure region. It has served as an umbrella organization whose meet¬
ings permit bilateral communication among the region’s leaders
without the pressures of official talks. In Dhaka, in December 1985
Rajiv Gandhi and Zia agreed verbally not to attack each other’s
nuclear facilities. At the 1986 summit in Bangalore, convened at a
time of high Indo-Pakistani military tensions, there were informal
talks between Gandhi and Pakistani Prime Minister Mohammed
Khan Junejo. The Bhutto regime, too, has profited by this new politi¬
cal arena. In Islamabad in January 1989, Benazir Bhutto took the
opportunity of the SAARC summit to hold a series of important bilat¬
eral meetings with Gandhi.

CIVILIAN REGIMES AND INDO-PAKISTANI RELATIONS

The policies of India’s regimes, and their preferences regarding the
nature of Pakistan’s regimes affects the tenor of inter-state relations
The policy towards Pakistan of the new Janata Dal regime, led by V.P.
Singh, which defeated Gandhi’s Congress Party in the elections of
November 1989, its domestic policies towards Indian Muslims, and
its ability to control the violence in Kashmir and Punjab will be
important factors in future Indo-Pakistan relations. Traditionally,
India has been least ready to negotiate when Pakistan is ruled by a
military regime, emphasizes its Islamic identity, and expands its link¬
ages with powers external to the region or hostile to India. Zia
ul-Haq s status as head of state and army, his domestic policy of
Islamization and his military links to the US, made Gandhi more
reluctant to co-operate on issues of mutual concern. India has been
more solicitous of secular democratic regimes: Rajiv Gandhi’s July

40
1989 visit to Islamabad marked the first such official visit in nearly
three decades.
Benazir Bhutto’s advent to power in 1988 helped to ameliorate the
subcontinent’s charged political atmosphere. Soon after her election,
she agreed with India that the 1972 Simla Accord, which declares that
disputes be resolved bilaterally and peacefully, and not Zia’s ‘no-war’
proposals, should form the basis for inter-state relations. Important
Indo-Pakistani talks have been occurring with greater frequency and
regularity than in decades past.
Bhutto has said that her regime will not support Sikh terrorists nor
interfere in India’s growing troubles in Kashmir. Besides the nuclear
non-attack accord and the Punjab border agreements, Bhutto has
raised the issue of arms reductions and promoted agreements on the
liberalization of travel, trade, cultural exchange, information transfers
and drug trafficking, as well as on expanded daily rail traffic, avoid¬
ance of double taxation, border security and smuggling. The
implementation of such accords could provide the calmer atmosphere
needed in which to tackle more difficult Indo-Pakistani disputes:
Siachen, Kashmir and the nuclear arms race.
Still, Bhutto has been quickly cautioned against hasty gestures of
friendship by the realities of the power-sharing arrangement and by
domestic politics. While Prime Minister Bhutto has made gestures of
peace. President Ghulam Ishaq Khan has accused India of desiring
‘hegemony’ over South Asia. Not only the long record of mutual Indo-
Pakistani distrust but Bhutto’s limited mandate and the strengths of
her opponents curtail her ability to achieve a quick or comprehensive
regional peace. India is the ready demon for Pakistan’s public, and the
latter’s opposition parties skilfully use the fear of India as a tool of
anti-regime politics. Policies perceived as accommodating India may
be read as signs of the weakness of a regime and may provide occasions
to destabilize it.16
The PPP regime cannot afford to be seen as ‘soft’ on India. Although
Bhutto initially preached a post-partition, ‘new-generation’ era of bet¬
ter Indo-Pakistani relations and established a personal rapport with
Gandhi, she quickly had to reconsider the domestic political costs of
her regional policies. The killing of Muslims in Assam, Rajasthan and
Uttar Pradesh in 1989 resulted in a strong condemnation from
Bhutto’s Foreign Office (which led in turn to a harsh Indian response
accusing Pakistan of interfering in its domestic affairs). Bhutto also
reassured the public that the Kashmir dispute in particular remained
alive, insisting that it was not covered by the bilateral Simla Accord
and may thus be taken to the UN or other international fora.
The wounding and dangerous subcontinental dispute over Kashmir
has provoked an inauspicious beginning to the new decade. The quick¬
ening pace of conflict in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir in
1989 and 1990 does not augur well for Indo-Pakistani reconciliation.
Kashmiri Muslim separatists who demand either independence or

41
unification with Pakistan (Pakistan has consistently advocated a refer¬
endum which would allow Kashmiris the right to determine their pol¬
itical status) have grown stronger, and by January 1990 Indian troops
were patrolling Srinagar and other Kashmiri cities. While Bhutto’s
emissaries have sought to reassure the new Indian government of
Pakistan’s desire to improve bilateral relations and of its non¬
involvement in Kashmir, the Indian Prime Minister, V.P. Singh, has
criticized Pakistan’s role in Kashmir. Accusations by Indian officials
that Pakistan continues to support Muslim extremists in Kashmir as
well as Sikh terrorists in Punjab with training, funds and weapons, has
led to a notable reversal in diplomatic relations. A quick resolution to
the Kashmir dispute looks unlikely.

Central Asia
AFGHANISTAN’S ROLE IN INDO-PAKISTANI RELATIONS
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 became
Pakistan’s foremost regional security concern of the 1980s, affecting
its domestic, regional and global policies. The Afghan War under¬
scored Pakistan’s geopolitical attachment to events in Central Asia
and became the main focus of its defence policies. It also became a
major source of inter-state contention in South Asia.
Pakistan spent the 1980s enduring the brunt of the war, opposing
Soviet intervention, supporting the Afghan Mujaheddin and cultivat¬
ing close economic and military ties with the US. When Soviet troops
left Afghanistan in February 1989, Pakistan’s new civilian regime was
pursuing a two-track political and military solution to the conflict with
the regime in Kabul. In these difficult days India refrained from con¬
demning the Soviet presence, but attacked the US-Pakistani arms
relationship, tried to carve a role for itself in the Afghan negotiations,
and welcomed Najibullah to Delhi in 1987 and 1988.
Although the Soviet troop withdrawals reduced the pitch of antag¬
onism in South Asia, disagreements about the composition and role
of a future Afghan regime still irritate Indo-Pakistani relations. From
Pakistan’s perspective India’s steady support for Najibullah (which
India terms humanitarian) and its opposition to a Mujaheddin-bsLsed
regime in Kabul preclude its ability to play a constructive role in
Afghan negotiations.
The Soviet invasion modified Pakistan’s military and diplomatic
strategies in South Asia. Prior to the outbreak of the war and despite
years of minor skirmishes, defence planners in Quetta and Peshawar
had focused their fears on the eastern front. The Afghan frontier had
given little cause for serious military alarm. The presence of Soviet
troops in Afghanistan, however, forced Pakistan to contend with
insecurity on both Indian and Afghan fronts. Forces had to be
restructured and tactical calculations reshaped to contend with the
danger of Pakistan’s worst-case strategic scenario: a war on both its
eastern and western fronts. The risks posed by such a possibility in the

42
1980s meant that peace with India — however cold — was a military
necessity. Thus Zia muted his anti-Indian posture with proposals for
peace pacts and nuclear restraint. The departure of Soviet troops, and
any improvement in the Afghan situation allows the Pakistan Army to
revive its former, eastward, orientation.17

The Afghan War as a domestic problem for Pakistan

The political, military and commercial currents of Pakistan and
Afghanistan have long mingled across the mountain corridors in
north-western Pakistan and across the Hindu Kush. The Durand Line,
whose validity has been contested by all Afghan regimes, has never
succeeded as a cultural, territorial and political boundary between the
two states. Following the historical pattern, the modern Afghan con¬
flict overflowed into Pakistan. The Soviet departure was only one
precondition for peace in Afghanistan and did not suffice to disen¬
tangle Pakistan from Afghanistan’s tribal warfare.
Although fears of a Soviet military invasion southwards proved
unrealized, the Soviet presence in Afghanistan did lead to an influx of
peoples, weapons and narcotics into Pakistan from Afghanistan and
from distant allies. Millions of Afghan refugees and Mujaheddin
(mainly Pakhtuns, like the Pakistani tribesmen to their south) flooded
across the frontier seeking safe haven and a base of operations. The
US, too, re-entered South Asia in a strength not witnessed before.
Arms and humanitarian assistance for the Afghans, and economic and
military aid for the Pakistanis came to, and through, Pakistan from
American, Arab, Chinese and other sources.
The Soviet departure from Afghanistan in February 1989 caused
Pakistan to re-evaluate its security considerations. Although the bur¬
den of one super-power’s presence and proximity was lifted, Pakistan
had to adapt to internecine tribal and political strife among members
of the Peshawar-based Mujaheddin Afghan Interim Government
(AIG), the Iranian and the Afghanistan-based Mujaheddin. The war
continues and the refugees, so great a burden on Pakistan, have not
left. The scars of the Afghan conflict on Pakistan, especially the illegal
traffic in arms and drugs, will take years to heal.
While the benefits of the Afghan War for Pakistan came mainly from
external sources, its highest costs (although unevenly distributed
among provinces and institutions) have been internal. General Zia’s
policies of resisting the Soviet occupation, promoting the Afghan
cause in international fora, and providing shelter to the refugees and
Mujaheddin, brought international recognition and aid for Pakistan,
ensured US support for his regime, and enhanced his image as a peace¬
maker, as a bulwark against Communism, and as a protector of
Islamic peoples in the Muslim world and in the West. The war, how¬
ever, also highlighted Pakistan’s vulnerability to foreign influences.
As it had vitally influenced Pakistan’s early economic and social his¬
tory, the movement of peoples, of Central Asian refugees (and

43
 migrants to West Asia), emerged once again as an important factor in
the late 1970s.18 The trans-state forces which entered Pakistan spurred
domestic instability and made the quick and voluntary repatriation of
Afghan refugees a foremost foreign policy goal. After 1979 Pakistan
became host to the world’s largest refugee population. The refugees
were initially welcomed because Pakistanis had ethnic, kinship and
family ties to them and supported the jihad. Local resentment against
the Afghans rose, however, as their numbers swelled and the duration
of their stay grew longer and more uncertain. Regardless of their true
culpability, the Afghan.refugees came to be viewed by many Pakistanis
as responsible for rising levels of violence and death as well as a host of
social, economic, political and environmental ills.
The trickle of political refugees which had begun in 1973 turned into
a flood in winter 1979. Since then, each month, between 20,000 and
90,000 refugees entered Pakistan. By 1989 there were an estimated 3.4
m registered and 300-400,000 unregistered, refugees (who receive no
international assistance). Nearly 2.2 m Afghans live in 250 refugee vil¬
lages in the NWFP, Baluchistan houses about 835,400, Punjab about
180,500, and Sind some 20,000. The cities of Quetta and Peshawar are
now one-quarter Afghan, more than two-thirds of whom are women
and children. Unlike other host states, Pakistan did not confine the
refugees to camps. Instead, they have been able to move freely
throughout the country.19
The immediate economic benefits from the refugee presence, such
as valuable foreign exchange and the longer-term benefits, such as the
expansion of hospitals, roads and other infrastructure, have been bal¬
anced by the negative consequences of their continuing stay. While a
10,000-strong bureaucracy has developed to contend with Afghan wel¬
fare, it has cost nearly $ 1 m per day to keep the refugees (the US and
Pakistan are the largest contributors). (In 1987, Pakistan alone spent
$ 174 m on refugee relief).20 The Afghans’ wood-consumption tradition
and their three million animals have caused severe ecological damage,
including widespread deforestation (especially in the Hazara and
Malakand areas) and the destruction of pasture lands. While many
positive relationships do exist between Afghans and Pakistanis,
especially around Peshawar and Kohat, the refugees are also resented
for their access to foreign and local aid, as well as to scarce jobs and
investments in the important national transport industry.
By acquiring false Pakistani domicile papers affluent Afghans have
purchased property and small businesses, raising local prices and
rents. In the NWFP conflicts have arisen between refugees and locals
over grazing grounds and water, and over rights of passage. The
province’s roads, schools and hospitals are filled with Afghans. Since
the war began, the 600,000 population of Peshawar increased to 1.2
million as the Afghans came in from outlying camps. Some refugees
have become involved in Pakistan’s domestic politics. Extreme
fundamentalists, like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar of the Hezb-i-Islami,

44
developed close links with the armed, right-wing, religious party, the
Jamaat-e-Islami. Other political parties saw the Afghans, some of
whom placed themselves on Pakistan’s electoral rolls, as a ‘vote bank’
for the Jamaat. During the 1988 elections Bhutto’s PPP charged that
the refugees, with fake Pakistani identity cards, would be deployed to
vote against the party. At election time, the Afghans were forbidden to
leave their refugee villages and barred from entering Pakistani towns
and cities.21
Through its spin-offs - drugs and guns - the Afghan War has per¬
meated Pakistan’s social and political fabric. Sometimes Afghan refu¬
gees have been involved in or blamed for, the ethnic conflicts and drug
trade which plague Karachi.22 Terrorist attacks and cross-border Soviet
and Afghan aerial raids have taken their toll. Bombings and sabotage,
undertaken by local tribesmen and infiltrators from the Afghan Secret
Service (KHAD), have increasingly dominated urban life, especially in
the NWFP. By 1987, the bombings had spread from Peshawar and
Quetta to Rawalpindi, Lahore and Karachi. By August 1988 there had
been 891 ground violations and 2,379 air violations of Pakistani terri¬
tory in which 762 people were killed and 1,273 injured. In 1987 alone,
377 people were killed and 631 injured, and by August 1988, 1,456 acts
of sabotage in Pakistan’s cities had resulted in 810 dead and 2,940
wounded. In April 1988, several hundred Pakistanis died when the
Ojhri army depot near Islamabad, which stored arms and ammunition
for the Afghans, exploded. A similar explosion in Chitral in November
1989 led to more than 40 deaths.23 The deaths of Pakistanis have given
rise to anti-refugee sentiment, to riots and protests demanding that the
Afghans be confined to their camps or sent home.
Pakistan will remain hostage to the Afghan War until the refugees
move northwards and they are not likely to return to Afghanistan
before peace is restored, nor are Mujaheddin leaders likely to encour¬
age their departure while Kabul remains controlled by Najibullah.
Despite the departure of Soviet troops, some cities still lie under siege
and more Afghans are entering Pakistan: in 1989 over 70,000 refugees
crossed the border.
Short of conducting a forced and violent repatriation, Pakistan’s
means of sending the Afghans home are limited by factors beyond its
control. The refugees must themselves determine when there exists
sufficient ‘physical security’ for their return: millions of mines litter
Afghanistan, (there are few good maps to guide those who would
defuse them), and the irrigation and agricultural infrastructure has
been largely destroyed. The earliest to return are expected to be the
unregistered refugees who receive no international assistance. Regard¬
less of the outcome of the war, it is estimated that about 10-15% of all
the refugees will stay on in Pakistan. Until a political settlement is
finally reached in Afghanistan, Pakistan will be increasingly concerned
about the growing financial and social burden of the refugees on Pakis-

45
tan and the prospects of a loss of interest in Pakistan by foreign
donors.

Pakistan’s Afghan policies

Zia’s goals in Afghanistan were to expel the Soviet troops by raising
the cost of their presence and to install an Islamic, pro-Pakistani
regime in Kabul. He actively supported the Mujaheddin party, Hezb-i-
Islami, led by the charismatic and reputedly militarily efficient
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Zia also skilfully manipulated US concerns
about the USSR to support his own Afghan favourites. Through his
intercession, Hekmatyar, received the bulk of foreign-supplied
weaponry. For Zia, the Geneva Accords of 14 April 1988, apart from
providing a legal umbrella for the planned Soviet withdrawal (which,
he believed, would have occurred with or without an agreement),
achieved little of substance. An interim Mujaheddin government was
not agreed upon for Kabul; the civil war continued; the Accords’ other
promises of non-intervention and non-interference were not kept; and
the Afghan refugees stayed in Pakistan.
Benazir Bhutto was wary of the Mujaheddin, especially of
Hekmatyar, while in opposition, and critical of the impact of the refu¬
gees on Pakistan. PPP supporters opposed Pakistan’s role as a
weapons’ conduit from the US to the Mujaheddin. Yet the dramatic
change of regime from Zia to Bhutto resulted in few dramatic changes
in Afghan policy, largely because the army - in particular the Inter-
Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) - as well as the US see Afghan
policy as of central concern to them. Bhutto promised ‘continuity’ of
policy and ruled out direct talks with Najibullah. She lent full support
to the Mujaheddin and deferred consideration of a role for the former
ruler of Afghanistan, King Zahir Shah, in Afghan negotiations. At the
same time Bhutto made standard official promises to uphold the
Geneva Accords, supported continued military manoeuvres and left
unhindered Pakistan’s role as a weapons’ conduit. She also supported
the idea of political talks with ‘good Muslims’ in Afghanistan, follow¬
ing any collapse of the Najibullah regime. These notable continuities
mirrored the division of power in Pakistan’s political arrangements,
between the President and the Chief of Army Staff, and Bhutto herself.
Bhutto’s regime has tried to alter subtly Pakistan’s Afghan policy -
with limited success. She has been aided by increasing signs of political
dissension and military incompetence among the Mujaheddin, and by
the resilience of Najibullah’s Kabul regime. Bhutto has stressed the
importance of a political settlement and tried to alter Pakistan’s poli¬
cies towards the Mujaheddin parties: Zia’s death caused the Hezb-i-
Islami to lose its chief patron, and Bhutto has been inclined to reduce
Hekmatyar’s favoured treatment.24 She has often stated that while the
Mujaheddin have Pakistan’s full support, her regime will not support
one group of Mujaheddin over others, nor should it determine which

46
group will rule Kabul. Still, Hekmatyar’s party retains arms, money
and influence inside Afghanistan and Pakistan.
An important indicator of civilian attempts to wrest control of
Afghan policy from soldiers with close links to Zia, followed the
Mujaheddin military setbacks in the siege of Jalalabad in 1989. Bhutto
reassigned Lieutenant-General Hameed Gul, an ardent proponent of a
military solution to the Afghan crisis, from his post as head of the ISI
(replacing him with a retired officer, General Shamsur Rahman
Kallu). An increasingly PPP-defined Afghan policy would mark the
growing independence and strength of this civilian regime. For now,
however, Bhutto must moderate the inclination for a political settle¬
ment and manoeuvre within carefully defined domestic and foreign
political boundaries.
The management of the Afghan crisis by any Pakistani civilian
regime is constrained not only by domestic forces, but also by the
decisions of external forces such as the Mujaheddin themselves, the
US, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Although it is pivotally located, Pakistan is
only one of several actors insistent on influencing the outcome of the
war. The major Mujaheddin groups based in Peshawar, for example,
will not talk with King Zahir Shah. In 1990, too, the Bhutto regime was
still working with a US administration which was undecided about its
Afghan policy, as well as the quarrelling Mujaheddin to find a proper
balance between military offensives and political negotiations.
When the Soviet forces left Afghanistan, the principal interests of
the US, Pakistan and the Peshawar-based Mujaheddin began inevi¬
tably to diverge. Continued Soviet arms supplies to the PDPA regime
(including Scud missiles, tanks and armoured vehicles), and Soviet
political support for Najibullah are sustaining US military and politi¬
cal interest in the conflict. Without the presence of Soviet troops in
Afghanistan, however, the three partners are likely to be increasingly
at odds with each other over such issues as the participation of Zahir
Shah in a transitional or new Kabul regime, the agreement of both the
US and the USSR on ‘negative symmetry’ (i.e. stopping arms supplies
to their respective allies), the role of the Iran-based Mujaheddin and of
the United Nations, and, of course, the role of Najibullah in a future
Afghan regime. Rival Afghan Mujaheddin factions have quickly fallen
into a routine of internecine bloodletting; Pakistan is finding itself
more and more isolated in the region, as Iran and the PRC both move
to improve their relationships with Moscow. Iran, for example, has
sought to indicate its support for an Afghan settlement which would
minimize US influence by proposing a regional conference on Afghan¬
istan which would exclude the US, India and Saudi Arabia.

West Asia
When Pakistan lost its eastern wing in 1971, the elder Bhutto began to
focus Pakistan’s external policies more towards West Asia. Less than a
decade later the Afghan War provided Pakistan with an issue on which

47
it could be at the centre of its attempted leadership of the West Asian
Muslim world. Zia successfully used Pakistan’s Muslim origins and its
patient support of the Afghan jihad to pursue a regional strategy of
strengthening Pakistan in South Asia through expanded ties to West
Asia and new commitments to the Gulf region. Although Pakistan’s
foreign policy has long had an Islamic component, it was not until the
mid-1970s that Muslim affinities were promoted successfully under
the elder Bhutto. Under Zia, however, Pakistan’s political, economic
and military ties to the conservative, modernizing Arab states of the
Gulf flourished. It seconded soldiers, exported millions of migrant
workers, took in millions of dollars in remittances and earnings, and
cultivated a reputation as the most militarily-sophisticated state in the
Muslim world.
Since 1979, the Islamic world has seen the emergence of dangerous
antagonisms. The break between traditional rivals: Ayatollah
Khomeini’s revolutionary Shia Iran and the Sunni conservatives of
the Arab Gulf states led by Saudi Arabia, was reflected in, and was a
source of tension for Pakistan. With hostile neighbours on its eastern
and north-western fronts, and with a large Shia minority at home, Pak¬
istan has been careful to keep friendly diplomatic and trade relations
with Iran as well as its Arab ties. In a region riven by war, between Iran
and Iraq, and by broader Iranian-Arab disputes, Pakistan has skilfully
managed to retain its links to the Arab states, to Iran, as well as to the
US, Iran’s ‘Great Satan’. Pakistan’s willingness to act as an interlocu¬
tor (most recently in autumn 1989) between Iran, Syria and the West
in negotiations on hostage issues is illustrative of its predilection for
middle-man politics.

ECONOMIC AND SECURITY LINKS TO THE ARAB WORLD

The outward flow of migrants and seconded forces, and the conse¬
quential inward flow of remittances and other benefits have domi¬
nated Pakistan’s relations with West Asia since the mid-1970s. The
1973 oil price rise transformed the Middle Eastern members of OPEC
into wealthy states and spurred plans for rapid modernization. This
Arab development programme created a high demand for Pakistan’s
surplus resource of cheap human labour and led to a massive emi¬
gration (eventually reaching two to three million) of Pakistanis (man¬
ual, semi-skilled and professional workers) to the Gulf states. The
Arab states raised oil prices, demanded labour and gave economic aid.
By 1979 there were one million Pakistanis in the Gulf. The resulting
foreign exchange remittances helped to relieve Pakistan of the near-
quadrupling of its oil products import bill,25 and its economic secur¬
ity became linked to the scale of Arab development.
As early as 1980-81, remittances of $2 bn (up from $339 m in
1975-6 and from $34 m in 1972-3) made up nearly 80% of Pakistan’s
merchandise export earnings and reduced the current account deficit
by more than half. Between 1972 and 1985 remittances from the

48
Middle East grew at an annual rate of 45%, with workers in Saudi
Arabia, Oman, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates accounting for
over 90% of the remittances from the region. These financial infusions
from migrants (83% of whom are manual workers) significantly raised
the earnings of low-income, migrant families in the NWFP and
Punjab.26 In the 1980s remittances from migrant workers formed the
principal contribution to Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves.
The Pakistani economy remains sensitive to changing economic
conditions in West Asia. By the mid-1980s, stagnating oil prices,
competition from other labour-exporting developing countries, a
general slowdown in Arab development, and the changing structure
of specific programmes had reduced Pakistani migration and remit¬
tances. According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO),
the Gulf states have decreased all migrants’ wages by up to 20% and
about 700,000 workers have left. The ILO estimates that the number
of Pakistani migrants will have fallen by nearly 300,000 between
1985 and 1990 and that they will be earning 25% less in real terms. A
net annual return migration of about 50,000 per year is expected,
with official remittances falling from $2 bn to about $1.3 bn. By June
1987, about 100,000 Pakistani workers had returned, and by 1986-7,
domestic unemployment levels had risen to 5.6% (from 3.9% in
1982-3).27 Returning migrants are not being replaced in the same
numbers, while new migrants tend to be educated skilled pro¬
fessionals, who are paid more but remit less than unskilled
labourers.
In 1989, however, Shahid Javed Burki, the economist, took issue
with the ILO’s predictions, calling them overly pessimistic (in part
because their calculations of remittances were based only on formal
channels of resource transfer). He argued instead that the pool of
migrants and the amount of remittances was likely to stabilize at levels
higher than those posited by the ILO. Burki also suggested that
Pakistani fears about the impact of the migrants’ return were ‘exagger¬
ated’, stating that if Pakistan’s most productive resource is trained
human labour, then it should be exported and the valuable foreign
exchange remittances used to meet the domestic gap between savings
and resources, and investment requirements.28
While such disputes about the precise levels of decline in migration
and remittances continue, there is broader agreement about the fact
that unless Pakistan’s leaders plan to channel and utilize more
effectively remittances, which have thus far been largely frittered away
on current consumption, luxury goods and unproductive investments
the return of migrants could require Pakistan, with its growing unem¬
ployment, to make major, uncharted, social, economic and political
adjustments. Aware both of Pakistan’s high dependence on foreign
remittances and the potential adverse consequences of the migrants
return, Bhutto’s regime has continued the policy of exporting surplus
labour. In March 1989, it announced that 50,000 unemployed workers

49
 would be sent to Libya. Pakistan is also banking on the post-war con¬
struction boom in Iran and Iraq to absorb its workers.
Not only the development, but also the security requirements, of the
Arab Gulf states have tied Pakistan’s military and civilian regimes to
West Asia. Beginning in the late 1960s, and increasingly under Zulfikar
Ali Bhutto, Pakistan supplied its military expertise to Syria, Libya,
Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Gulf states. With a clear
preference for ties to the conservative Arab states, Zia expanded these
military links, focusing on Saudi Arabia and on ties with the Gulf
Co-operation Council. Gulf air forces have Pakistani aircrews, the
Saudi and Kuwaiti navies are manned partly by Pakistani sailors, and
the military academies are staffed by Pakistani instructors. Pakistan
army training institutions receive cadets from the Gulf states. As a
result of these various military ties, Pakistani forces have gained experi¬
ence, and earned hard currency and political clout.
Mutual Saudi and Pakistani needs (the former’s desire for enhanced
regime and ruler security and the latter’s interest in financially capitaliz¬
ing on its political and military links with West Asia) resulted in the
largest transfer abroad ever of Pakistani military personnel. Following
the seizure of the Grand Mosque by a Wahhabi fanatic group in Novem¬
ber 1979, the Saudis requested, and received, Pakistani soldiers. These
were Muslim professionals, separated from the locals by nationality and
language. Two divisions of Pakistani soldiers saw service in Saudi
Arabia, in return for which Pakistan requested Saudi funds for its own
defence purchases, such as combat and early-warning aircraft.

PAKISTAN AND IRANIAN-ARAB TENSIONS

Whereas Zia’s Sunni state-sponsored Islamization, his support of the
Peshawar-based fundamentalist Mujaheddin, and his close association
with the US complemented his pro-Saudi posture, all three policies
complicated relations with revolutionary Shia Iran. Yet geographical
realities ordained that officially Zia pursue good relations with
Ayatollah Khomeini. This uncomfortable brotherhood survived the
vagaries of Pakistan’s Arab and American links as well as the
Ayatollah’s sectarian zeal. Pakistan has been careful not to be overly
hospitable to Iranian exiles, who are thought to number more than
22,000 and include Bahais, Christians and draft dodgers. Sporadic
violence between pro-and anti-Khomeini forces in Karachi and
Quetta led Pakistan to forbid anti-Iranian activities on its soil, and to
threaten the deportation of illegal Iranian immigrants.29 Under the
auspices of the OIC, Pakistan took a leading, if fruitless, role in trying
to end the Iran-Iraq War and although it was officially neutral in the
war, Zia hesitated to dispute Iran’s positions, criticized US reflagging
efforts in the Gulf, and was silent when Iran attacked Gulf tanker
traffic. Domestic considerations reinforced these Pakistani policies.
Not only the nationalistic, but also the Shia Islamic impact of the
Iranian Revolution was quickly felt in Pakistan and the omnipresent

50
possibility of sectarian strife limited Zia’s pro-Arab expressions during
the war.
Since both Saudis and Iranians aim to spread their influence across
the Islamic world, their rivalry is mirrored in Pakistan. Groups associ¬
ated with them, including competing tribes, political and religious
parties, and Mujaheddin parties, battle one another and pressure the
Pakistani government. Iranian Revolutionary Guards and orthodox
Saudi preachers have found their way into Pakistan, while an esti¬
mated 1,000 Saudi Wahhabi fanatics have even volunteered to fight
in the Afghan War.
Pakistan has been unable to stay entirely aloof from all Iranian-
Arab tensions and has felt the pressure to reduce overt military ties
with Saudi Arabia. The possibility that Pakistani troops with a Shia
component could have been drawn into the Iran-Iraq War, and the
1987 Mecca incident (in which Iranian pilgrims and Saudi troops
clashed, leaving at least 400 dead) led to the return of 10,000 Pakistani
soldiers from Saudi Arabia. Despite Zia’s particular affinity for Saudi
Arabia, a joint decision was announced in December 1987 to repatri¬
ate the majority of Pakistan’s troops, including an elite tank brigade.
Reportedly, in the aftermath of the troop withdrawal, Saudi Arabia cut
aid to Pakistan. This curtailment of its largest deployment of forces
outside the country cost Pakistan its financial agreement with Saudi
Arabia which reportedly was worth $300 m annually between 1983
and 1987.
This vital West Asian link, however, has not been completely severed.
Saudi Arabia remains a powerful and necessary patron, continuing to
show an interest in Pakistan’s defence capabilities. Benazir Bhutto felt
it essential to make her first post-election foreign visit to Mecca, despite
the fact that Saudi Arabia was hardly a leading supporter of her advent
to power. So long as US-Pakistan ties remain strong, too, it is unlikely
that her regime will revert to the earlier policies of her father, which
focused upon the Arab radicals, Libya and Syria.

A NEW REGIONAL CO-OPERATION FOR DEVELOPMENT?

Bhutto may, however, support concrete improvements in Pakistan’s
relations with Iran. Following Zia’s death there was a limited shift in
policy, away from the Arab world and towards Pakistan’s oldest
regional partners, Iran and Turkey. The end of the Iran-Iraq War, the
return of Pakistani troops from Saudi Arabia, the premiership of
Benazir Bhutto, and the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in June 1989
facilitated increased economic and military co-operation between Iran
and Pakistan. Pakistani and Iranian defence bureaucrats began to pay
frequent, publicized visits to one another and agreed to co-operate in
the areas of military training and defence production. The recognition
of geopolitical realities predominated over differences in the domestic
nature of the two regimes. Thus far, Iran has not criticized Bhutto’s
right to rule, while Pakistan has shown a reciprocal sensitivity to Iran’s

51
 positions. When passions ran high in early 1989 over The Satanic
Verses by Salman Rushdie, Bhutto would not comment on Khomeini’s
imposition of a death sentence on the British writer and said only that
Iran was a neighbour with which Pakistan wished to have good
relations, and that there was a large Shia minority in Pakistan. In the
domestic context she did, however, blame the fundamentalists for stir¬
ring up the controversy.30
Both military and civilian leaders are also sympathetic to the idea of
reinvigorating Pakistan’s relationships with both Iran and Turkey,
within a non-Arab regional grouping. The inclusion of Afghanistan in
such a group has also been mentioned.31 (In 1964, Iran, Pakistan and
Turkey formed the now-moribund Regional Cooperation for Develop¬
ment group.) Many leading Pakistanis advocate the diversification of
arms purchases, the development of a credible indigenous defence
capability as well as defence co-operation with neighbouring Muslim
states so that Pakistan may decrease its reliance on Western arms sup¬
pliers. Pakistan’s leadership recognizes Turkey as a modernizing
West Asian Muslim state, a neighbour of Iran, as well as a NATO ally
of the US. It is a friend with whom economic, and especially defence
co-operation can profitably be increased. Turkey’s Aerospace Indus¬
tries’ F-16 production plant, for example, could fulfil a specific
Pakistani defence need.
In 1989, Iran and Pakistan agreed to expand their trade, which
stood at a low $400 m. More importantly, high-level Iranian military
officials have visited Pakistan to discuss joint efforts at weapons
manufacture, Pakistan’s training of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, and
the transfer of Pakistani military technicians. Iran has also suggested
an ‘Islamic defence line’ in the region. Pakistan’s close ties to the US,
however, and Iran’s position on the Afghan crisis, which in 1989 grew
closer to that of the USSR (recommending a dialogue with the
Najibullah regime), remain potential obstacles to improved Iranian-
Pakistani relations.
Pakistan’s pivotal location has entailed geopolitical risks and required
its leaders to demonstrate political flexibility in regional affairs. Indo-
Pakistani relations in particular will remain least susceptible to revol¬
utionary change however much Benazir Bhutto and V.P. Singh might
personally wish to alter traditional enmity. Indeed, the growing violence
in Kashmir threatens to jeopardize the limited improvements in the
bilateral relationship which occurred during 1989-90.
Pakistan’s leaders have used an active foreign policy to supply their
domestic needs. Their diplomacy towards West Asia has been man¬
aged astutely; they have used the export of surplus civilian and
trained military labour as an effective, if short-term strategy to redress
internal resource constraints. They have also adroitly capitalized on
US concerns in Afghanistan and elicited substantial American and
military aid. Pakistan cannot hope, however, to escape permanently
its internal weaknesses through such external remedies alone.

52
 The refugee situation in Pakistan presented a great challenge for
both state and society in the 1980s. In the 1990s the consequences of
the Afghan migration into Pakistan - intensified drug and weapons
trade, friction between Afghans and local Pakistanis and financial bur¬
dens - will continue to be of central concern to Pakistan’s leadership.
Absorbing all the Afghan migrants will not be a realistic policy option,
despite the role migrants have played throughout Pakistan’s history.
Thus, the return of the Afghans must be a principal goal of Pakistan’s
regional strategy in the decade ahead.

53
 III. PAKISTAN’S GLOBAL STRATEGIES
Pakistan’s global strategies have derived from the constraints of its
regional position, the imperatives of domestic need, and from a third
reality, the availability of great-power partners. Largely dependent on
the financial and military support of great powers and international aid
organizations, Pakistan’s global policies have vacillated between close
engagement with a great power and a loosely defined multilateralism.
Over the past two decades, Pakistan has negotiated informal alliances
with the US and the PRC in order to achieve its own foreign and mili¬
tary policy objectives. In the 1980s these objectives have included sup¬
port against India and for the Mujaheddin in the Afghan conflict, pur¬
suit of a nuclear weapons research programme, and defence and
economic modernization. In the shadow of the Afghan War, Pakistan
parlayed its geopolitics into its best bargaining asset, successfully
eliciting aid to meet the ceaseless demands of modernization. It has pre¬
sented itself as a state critical to the realization of great-power interests
in South and Central Asia and as a useful military, political and econ¬
omic interlocutor among West Asia’s Muslim states.
Like all developing states, however, Pakistan is hardly the sole, or
even the main, arbiter of its international relations. Super-power con¬
flicts advance the limited margin of manoeuvre for weak states; and
super-power accords diminish their ability to maximize foreign and
security policy goals. If it endures, the global detente fostered by
Mikhail Gorbachev could transform Pakistan’s external environment.
Improved relations between the USSR and China and between the
USSR and the US could reduce Pakistan’s political leverage with its
great-power partners. If Pakistan grows less able to rely on its alliances
with the US and China, it may be encouraged to negotiate with the
USSR or to cast its lot within a more multilateral framework, expanding
its involvement with Muslim states (through the OIC and bilaterally),
the Commonwealth, the UN and the Non-Aligned Movement.
Improved US-Soviet relations have not as yet ended the
super-powers’ regional competition in Central and West Asia. Ameri¬
can and Soviet interests still diverge in Afghanistan and, importantly,
in Iran. In June 1989, Iran agreed to political, economic and military
co-operation with the Soviet Union; in Afghanistan, in late 1989 the
USSR continued to arm and to aid the Najibullah regime. Pakistan’s
regime can still rely on American interests - albeit reduced - in the
region, but it must mobilize other national assets with which to but¬
tress these geopolitical claims to foreign aid.
If the Central Asian conflict declines in importance, and if
Pakistan’s regimes continue to view sustaining a US interest as the key
to its security (as Bhutto’s regime has thus far done), attention will
have to be refocused on Pakistan’s West Asian connections to Iran, the
Gulf states, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Already these ties have given

54
rise to Pakistan’s increased involvement with the US Central
Command.
The foreign-policy dilemma of Pakistan’s regimes has always been
to find ways to synchronize their enduring regional security concerns
with the global dynamics of super-power relations. Pakistan’s inter¬
national alignments have evolved largely out of its perceived regional
weaknesses. All regimes have viewed these ties as providing one cen¬
tral benefit: to bolster Pakistan’s strength in South Asia. Thus,
Pakistan’s pivotal external policy choice, the decision to resist Indian
dominance, has influenced its choice of great-power partners, arms
suppliers and donors of economic aid.
Since the mid-1960s, China has been Pakistan’s most compatible
ally, because despite its technological and economic handicaps, it is
India’s powerful and feuding neighbour. The US has been seen in dif¬
ferent ways: as a geographically remote power with shifting global
interests, a bountiful but unreliable partner, whose outstretched hand,
however, has rarely been shunned. The special military and financial
benefits from a US alliance for the Indo-Pakistani balance have rarely
been lost on Pakistan’s leaders.

REGIMES AND GREAT-POWER ALLIES

Since Pakistan’s international policies have been driven by predict¬
able domestic needs and regional security requirements, changes in
the political identity of regimes have rarely provoked sudden shifts in
foreign policy. Pakistan’s global policies have been evolutionary,
vacillating between a singular attachment to a great power and a more
multilateral, non-aligned posture. Proponents of the first have been
Ayub Khan, Zia, and Benazir Bhutto. The elder Bhutto was the sole -
and not wholly voluntary - advocate of advancing Pakistani national
interests through the diversification of external ties.
Ayub Khan’s early foreign policy was one-dimensional: Pakistan
was the most ‘allied of allies’ of the US, a military partner locked in the
embraces of the anti-Soviet pacts. Later in his tenure he did shift Pak¬
istan towards a more balanced relationship with all three great
powers: the US, the USSR and China. After 1971, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
cultivated relations with the PRC, which became Pakistan’s principal
arms supplier. After the ignominious loss of Bangladesh, Bhutto also
emphasized a more varied, multilateral diplomacy which focused on
Pakistan’s ties to a newly-rich West Asia and to the Muslim world. He
took Pakistan out of moribund anti-Soviet pacts (Pakistan left SEATO
in 1972) as well as out of the Commonwealth shortly after the UK
allowed Bangladesh to be recognized as a sovereign state.
Despite the dramatic political differences between the elder Bhutto
and himself, Zia continued the PPP’s foreign policies. He retained the
essential tie to the PRC, consolidated Bhutto’s Islamic foreign policy,
and took Pakistan out of CENTO and into the Non-Aligned Move¬
ment. Still, when the opportunity presented itself, in the shape of a

55
Soviet threat to the region, Pakistan’s power politics became one-
directional once more. Zia used Pakistan’s willingness to act as a
‘conduit’ for military and economic aid to the Afghan Mujaheddin to
develop a complex military and economic relationship with the US.
Having rejected President Carter’s initial offer of $400 m, Zia eventu¬
ally settled for a six-year, $3.2 bn economic and military aid contract.
Pakistan became the third largest recipient of US aid after Egypt and
Israel. In 1987, the six-year contract was renewed for $4.02 bn. As Zia
reckoned, this US-Pakistani relationship best satisfied Pakistan’s
external security and domestic economic requirements. For all the
General’s multilateral rhetoric, Pakistan became the most ‘aligned’ of
states once more.

THE UNITED STATES

For all her early anti-American rhetoric, Benazir Bhutto, too, has
depended on US support. The Bhutto regime, perhaps even more than
its predecessor, has looked to the US for its security of tenure. Happily
for Pakistan, the change in the nature of the regime coincided with an
extraordinary era of international political liberalization. Differing
from Zia, Bhutto has supplemented the emphasis on the common geo¬
political interests of the US and Pakistan with a special stress on the
new democratic nature of Pakistan’s polity, and on the theme of a
union between two democracies.
Like Zia, Bhutto has made US-Pakistani relations the cornerstone
of her foreign policy. The persisting demands of military moderniz¬
ation, ethnic peace, and development press strongly on her weak civ¬
ilian government. Its coffers are empty and its promises of economic
welfare must be faced. US support has been deemed necessary to help
bear the burdens of the continuing Afghan conflict, to demonstrate
Bhutto’s strength to her civilian opposition, and to assuage the
regime s anxieties about the political intentions of the army. American
interest and aid have been seen as important in deterring soldiers con¬
templating a coup against the PPP regime and in ensuring the army’s
co-operation in the process of democratization.
Yet, historically, the importance of the domestic political identity of
Pakistan’s leaders to the great powers has been conditioned by the
latter’s broader security concerns. The PRC has worked as comfort¬
ably with Pakistan’s generals as it has with its civilian leaders, while
an American commitment to Pakistan has been predicated not on the
nature of Pakistan’s regimes, but rather on the state’s usefulness to
broader US interests. While Soviet troops were in Afghanistan in the
1980s, the US supported Zia’s Islamizing military regime; in the 1970s
it rebuffed the popularly-elected Zulfikar Ali Bhutto when it lost
patience with his perceived passion for nuclear weapons. In the
absence of a major strategic interest in Pakistan today, however, the
US concern for democracy has gained ground: if soldiers attempt to

56
oust Benazir Bhutto’s regime they could risk a cut-off of US military
supplies and spare parts.
Without the presence of a perceived Soviet threat to Central and
West Asia the US would have forged none of its associations with Pak¬
istan. Although Pakistan has had little direct truck with the Soviet
Union, the presence of Soviet forces in the region has given Pakistan’s
location global political meaning. The recurring American interest in
Pakistan, in the early Cold War years and again during the 1980s, has
derived from US assessments of Soviet regional intentions, actions
and influence, all of which were seen as pernicious. Pakistan has sup¬
ported the American goal of containing Soviet expansion and its ter¬
ritory has served the US as a point of access, a strategic base, a front¬
line or a ‘conduit’ state for the transfer of arms (as to the Afghans in
the 1980s), or in pursuit of a diplomatic initiative, as in the opening to
the PRC in 1971. In 1954, Pakistan joined SEATO and in 1955, the
Baghdad Pact (which later became CENTO). The US and Pakistan
signed two early bilateral security agreements, in 1954 and 1959, and
another in 1981.1
Rarely, however, have the US and Pakistan acted on similar
regional threat perceptions. The 1980s will be recorded as a decade
unique in US-Pakistan relations: there is a direct coincidence of stra¬
tegic interests brought about by the Soviet involvement in a Central
Asian crisis. Pakistan’s principal concern with India has rarely jibed
with US global concerns. US-Pakistan bilateral relations have
reinforced Pakistan’s non-South Asian identities, while conflicts in
South Asia have culminated in reduced US-Pakistani ties. When the
Sino-Indian War broke out in 1962, for example, the US supplied mili¬
tary and economic aid to India much to Pakistan’s chagrin. The Indo-
Pakistani War of 1965 was also followed by the imposition of a US
arms embargo which hurt Pakistan more than it did India.
US-Pakistani relations have been paradoxical. While they have
been the most extensive and influential of any of Pakistan’s alliances,
they have also been the most unreliable and mutable, the most depen¬
dent upon the tenor of US-Soviet relations. Thus, the US has also
been the most controversial of Pakistan’s partners. During Pakistan’s
most fragile years, 1971 and 1977, US support ebbed. The current
US-Soviet intent to improve bilateral relations can come at the
expense of the security interests of Pakistani regimes. A recent
example was provided by the negotiating process which led up to the
Geneva Accords of 1988, in which the US, in the interest of achieving
agreement with the Soviet Union on a withdrawal of its troops trom
Afghanistan, sacrificed the Pakistani regime’s desire that prior agree¬
ment be reached on the formation of an interim government for
Afghanistan. In turn, the Soviet military withdrawal has meant that
US and Pakistani national priorities, in Afghanistan and beyond, have
begun to diverge. The original US goal in Afghanistan - the with-

57
 drawal of Soviet troops - has been largely attained; Pakistan’s overrid¬
ing goal - the return of the Afghan refugees - has not.
Benazir Bhutto, like Zia before her, made US-Pakistani relations
the cornerstone of her foreign policy. The demands of military mod¬
ernization, ethnic peace and economic progress press strongly on her
weak civilian government. Its coffers are empty and its promises of
economic welfare must be faced. US support remains necessary to help
bear the burdens of the continuing Afghan conflict, to help assuage the
regime’s anxieties about the army’s political intentions and the
opposition’s strengths. Bhutto may hope that demonstrations of US
backing for the new regime will dissuade soldiers contemplating its
overthrow and ensure their co-operation in the process of
democratization. Certainly, any overt shift in US support away from
the Bhutto regime could radicalize the PPP leadership into reverting
to its pre-election positions, and alter the domestic balance of power
between regime, opposition and army.
Pakistani-US relations are furthered by the fact that at all times
Benazir Bhutto must placate an intrusive army. Continuing military
ties with the US provides an area of co-operative endeavour between
civilians and the army. Military modernization, through advanced US
weapons systems, also demonstrates the regime’s resolve to ensure
that Pakistan’s defence needs continue to be accorded priority. While
Benazir Bhutto’s dramatic emphases on democratic ties and a
multifaceted relationship with the US may differ from Zia’s plain
references to geopolitical realities, they do not conceal any substantive
changes in the military, political and economic content of
US-Pakistani relations.
The elder Bhutto’s multilateralism was enforced in part by his
decision to take the nuclear route, not the American route. Prospects
for genuine Pakistani multilateralism in the future will depend, among
other things, on three US-related factors: whether the civilian regime
pursues the nuclear weapons option; whether the US redefines its con¬
flict with the Soviet Union in the region, and whether a link with the
US might entail, at some point, too high a domestic political cost (i.e.
anti-Americanism). While the ebb and flow of anti-American senti¬
ments among Pakistan’s politically-aware population depends in part
on the level of US involvement in the region, the domestic political
importance of such sentiments can no longer be disregarded by civ¬
ilian elites. (Her opponents accuse Bhutto of being too reliant on US
support and too sure that her international image will secure her dom¬
estic political future.)
Pakistan’s ties to the US have generally brought higher rates of econ¬
omic and military return than those with China, but they have also
involved risks and uncertainty. Pakistan’s nuclear programme has
long threatened US-Pakistani relations. For Benazir Bhutto’s regime,
securing continued US support may require her at least to show her
control over and even delay, progress in the nuclear programme. How

58
much she must do depends on the determination of the US Congress
to accord primacy to its anti-proliferation stipulations. In September
1977, the US cut all new development aid and project assistance to
Pakistan, suspecting its nuclear intentions. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
accused President Carter of trying to destabilize his regime because it
wanted a nuclear reprocessing plant. In October 1978, after France
stopped performing under its nuclear power contract with Pakistan,
US aid was restored. On learning that Pakistan was acquiring uranium
enrichment technology, in April 1978, however, the US again cut off
non-food economic and military aid, including a military training
programme.
Zia, however, was shielded from American non-proliferation stat¬
utes during the 1980s by US geopolitical interests in Afghanistan.
The most important statute affecting Pakistan is the 1976 Symington
Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act, which bars aid to states
which deliver to or acquire from other states unsafeguarded nuclear
enrichment materials, equipment or technology. During the Afghan
War, Congress twice suspended the Symington Amendment to permit
continued aid, but in 1985 it conditioned further assistance on a presi¬
dential certification that Pakistan does not ‘possess’ a nuclear explos¬
ive device. In 1987 Pakistan was also deemed to be in violation of the
1985 Solarz Amendment, which requires a cut-off of US aid to states
pursuing the clandestine export from the US of nuclear weapons-
related material, equipment or technology. But the President waived
sanctions on the grounds of national security.2
Benazir Bhutto has had to confront the nuclear dilemma anew. Her
repeated assurance that Pakistan will not jeopardize relations with the
US by making a nuclear device will ring hollow if she cannot demon¬
strate the power, the knowledge and the constituency to keep that
promise. Events of 1989, however, suggest a reprieve for US-Pakistan
relations. Despite the difficulties expected in President Bush’s
certification of Pakistan’s continuing non-nuclear weapons status, and
the testimony of the Director of the CIA in May 1989 that Pakistan
‘was engaged in developing a nuclear capability’, the US government
certified in October 1989 for another year that Pakistan did not ‘pos¬
sess’ a nuclear weapon.3 The 1990 aid request for Pakistan - $380 m
in economic aid and $240 m in military aid - was thereby permitted to
proceed. Earlier in the year, too, both Bhutto and General Aslam Beg
visited Washington, and Pakistan received a promise of 60 American
F-16 aircraft. Have the US and Pakistan reached a mutually accept¬
able agreement? According to a leading American analyst, Bhutto
may have been able to convince Pakistani supporters of the nuclear
programme to slow down some aspects of Pakistan’s nuclear efforts
such as the enrichment process in exchange for sophisticated US con¬
ventional weaponry.4 Thus far, the appeal of Bhutto’s nascent
democracy has helped to balance Congressional concerns about
Pakistan’s nuclear programme, and the US Administration has been

59
 inclined to permit a civilian regime more time in which to assert its
control over the course of nuclear weapons research. All this, however,
could quickly change in light of further evidence of progress in
Pakistan’s nuclear weapons research.
In this time ot peacemaking among the great powers and the end of
the Soviet military adventure in Afghanistan, the strategic decision
any Pakistani regimemust make is whether to slow down the nuclear
programme slightly and continue to receive substantial US economic
and conventional military aid, or to strike out independently and
develop an overt nuclear stance.

THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

As the decade of the 1990s opens the US is Pakistan’s preferred, but
not its only, great-power partner. Since the Sino-Indian War of 1962 -
the critical event in determining the future strategic orientation of
South Asia s states - Pakistan’s proximate, least controversial and
most reliable political and military partner has been the PRC. Not
only have the two states traditionally agreed on the nature of the Sov¬
iet threat, but, vitally for Pakistan, they have agreed that India, which
shares a long mountain border with the PRC, is the main source of
danger in South Asia. These common threat perceptions have forged a
long-standing and broad policy consensus inside Pakistan in support
of close co-operation with the PRC’s Communist regimes. Sino-
Pakistani friendship was first manifested in 1963, when the two states
signed a Karakoram border treaty which reapportioned lands also
claimed by India. In 1978, the massive Karakoram Highway was
jointly built through previously uncharted and impenetrable terrain,
linking the PRC’s Xinjiang Province with Pakistan’s Northern Areas!
thus consolidating the geopolitical links between the allies.
Given China s geopolitical importance to Pakistan, it is increased
Sino-Indian co-operation which would most threaten Pakistan’s secur¬
ity in South Asia, more so than any other change in the present world
order, including US-Soviet or Sino-Soviet detente. A Sino-Indian rec¬
onciliation, settling border disputes in the Aksai Chin (through which
runs a solitary strategic Chinese road) and in the north-eastern
borderlands of the subcontinent would strengthen India’s hand in sen¬
sitive areas such as Kashmir, and give rise to new strategic quan¬
daries in the Northern Areas.
In the context of Pakistan’s needs, the PRC is neither a technologi¬
cal nor a financial match for the US. Yet Pakistan’s ties to the PRC
are prized, not only because of its geopolitical relevance to Pakistani
security, but also because the Chinese have been consistent and pre¬
dictable allies. Since 1963, India has had to consider the potential for
Sino-Pakistani military collaboration around Kashmir in its strategic
calculations. While Pakistan has never succeeded in gaining a US com¬
mitment to aid Pakistan were it endangered by India, the PRC did
provide diplomatic and political support for Pakistan during both the

60
1965 and 1971 conflicts with India. Although it has stopped short of
direct armed intervention, the PRC has on occasion, as in 1965 when
it warned India to stop fighting, hinted at military action. The signing
of the Indo-Soviet treaty of amity in 1971, however, reinforced
China’s reluctance to enter militarily into an Indo-Pakistani conflict.
After the US arms embargo in 1965, the PRC became Pakistan’s main
arms supplier. By 1982, the PRC had provided Pakistan with about 75%
of its tanks and about 65% of its aircraft. The flow of advanced American
weapons systems into Pakistan’s inventory during the 1980s continued to
be supplemented by Chinese arms. The PRC has also partnered Pakistan
in an area of expanding importance: the development of indigenous
defence industries. It has given Pakistan technical advice and monetary
assistance for domestic defence production projects, including a heavy
foundry, mechanical complex and equipment overhaul factory at Taxila,
the Pakistan Ordnance Factories at Wah, and the Kamra Aeronautical
Complex. Together the two states are manufacturing the Karakoram 8
trainer aircraft. The PRC also sponsors mineral development projects in
the NWFP and Baluchistan.5
According to US and UK reports, the PRC has collaborated in the
design of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and in the production of key
nuclear materials. It has also, ‘apparently’, co-operated in the develop¬
ment of the Hatf I and II tactical missiles. In November 1989, too,
officials from the two states reportedly met to finalize the transfer of Chi¬
nese long-range Silkworm-type missiles to Pakistan. The PRC also sup¬
ported Pakistan’s positions on the Afghan War and supplied weapons to
the Afghan Mujaheddin through Pakistan. In November 1989, China
agreed to provide Pakistan with a 300-megawatt capacity nuclear power
plant. Chinese officials have described the military relationship with Pak¬
istan as ‘one of the closest’ the PRC has with any state.6
Like its friendship with the US, Pakistan’s ties to the PRC are
viewed unfavourably in India, and thus do not contribute to the relax¬
ation of Indo-Pakistani tensions. There are, however, few domestic
costs for Pakistan in the relationship. The importance of the associ¬
ation with China became obvious in the wake of the anti-democracy
crackdown in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in June 1989. Benazir
Bhutto, herself the young leader of a new democracy, would not criti¬
cize the Chinese regime; Pakistani officials suggested that the
troubles were an internal Chinese matter, and in November 1989,
Bhutto welcomed the Chinese Premier, Li Peng, to Pakistan. The
maintenance of the Sino-Pakistani alliance is a constant, long-term
goal of Pakistan’s great-power politics.

THE SOVIET UNION

Pakistan’s traditional foreign-policy predicaments and opportunities
are, in a profound sense, very much a consequence of the Soviet
Union’s dual role as super-power and regional power. Diplomatic
relations between Pakistan and the Soviet Union were slow to

61
 develop: they exchanged ambassadors only in 1950, three years after
Pakistan’s independence. The two countries have disagreed on most
things: all Pakistan’s external alliances, such as its involvement in the
US-instigated anti-Soviet pacts, as well as on the Soviet Union’s
choice of regional partners, such as India to which the USSR has made
a long-term, military, economic and political commitment. This long¬
standing antipathy has been broken only by the briefest periods of
goodwill, such as at Tashkent in 1966, when the USSR hosted the
peace settlement to an Indo-Pakistani war. The antipathy peaked in
1979 when Soviet troops entered Afghanistan. By this act, which led to
the most prolonged and intense Soviet-Pakistani confrontation, the
USSR implicated Pakistan in a super-power conflict.
Disappointments with their distant American ally, however, have
led some Pakistanis to argue that their state cannot afford entirely to
alienate its neighbouring super-power. Successive regimes have tried
to follow a correct, if careful, policy towards the Soviet Union; both
Bhuttos went to Moscow, and sporadic talks on improved trade, and
technological, economic and scientific ties, have been held. Barring a
single military transaction in the mid-1960s, however, Soviet-
Pakistani intercourse has been tailored to the public economic sector.
The largest Soviet aid project is a functioning integrated iron and steel
mill near Karachi with an initial capacity of 1.1 m tons, which the
USSR agreed to build in 1971.
Competing domestic and regional factors simultaneously facilitate
and constrain improvements in Soviet-Pakistani relations. Some
Pakistanis argue that they cannot afford to be hostile towards the USSR
in a region where all their neighbours and friends have begun to do busi¬
ness with Moscow. Gorbachev’s offers of military reductions in
Mongolia and economic assistance towards the PRC, as well as Iran,
have been well received. India is a Soviet friend. Even Gulf Arab states
such as Kuwait, are holding tentative economic discussions with Mos¬
cow. If the US commitment to Pakistan recedes, for reasons either of
geopolitics or of non-proliferation, Pakistan will be isolated. Its leaders
may judge such isolation to be unaffordable, and become further disin¬
clined to hold an antagonistic position towards the Soviet Union.
Since the Geneva Accords in 1988 and the Soviet troop withdrawals
from Afghanistan in early 1989, there have been hopeful diplomatic
statements from both states about the prospects for improved
relations, and talks proceed on a political settlement on Afghanistan.
In November 1989 Bhutto announced that the USSR had agreed to
provide $100 m to expand the Pakistan steel mills. However, serious
obstacles remain. While a civilian regime could adopt a more flexible
stance towards the Soviet Union, the anti-Sovietism of the Pakistan
Army militates against any quick or substantive expansion of ties. The
army has a historical and strategic antipathy to the USSR, and a
special distaste for Indo-Soviet military co-operation. Further, while
the two states still arm opposing factions in the civil war in Afghanis-

62
tan, there can be no genuine improvements in Soviet-Pakistani
relations. The USSR continues to arm (at the rate of an estimated
$200-300 m-worth of shipments per month) and to advise
Najibullah’s PDPA regime, while Pakistan continues to serve as both
base and conduit for Mujaheddin political and military operations and
weaponry. The future tenor of Soviet-Pakistani relations, then, is
highly dependent upon the nature and the outcome of an Afghan
settlement.
Soviet-Pakistani relations may also become increasingly linked to
the behaviour of the Soviet Union’s 40 m ethnically-diverse Muslims.
Given Pakistan’s Islamic identity, any surge of militant, nationalist,
anti-Soviet activity in the Central Asian Republics - to which the
USSR responds forcefully - could create tensions between Pakistan
and the USSR.
Pakistan’s global strategies have been influenced primarily by its
particular regional vulnerabilities, and its leaders have successfully
manipulated regional crises, anti-Soviet concerns and limited geopol¬
itical assets in order to acquire lucrative economic and military aid
from their great-power allies: the US and China. Rapid changes in the
international environment, including great-power rapprochements,
instability in the Soviet Union, and significantly raised demands for
financial assistance in Eastern Europe, however, could adversely affect
Pakistan’s present global strategies. Given their past record of astute
and active small-power diplomacy Pakistan’s leaders are likely to rec¬
ognize the need to respond to their evolving international predica¬
ment by tailoring new regional and multilateral policies.

63
CONCLUSION
Pakistan defies easy classification. Geographically attached to South,
West and Central Asia, it is a weak state with some of the character¬
istics of a middle military power, a poor country with many of the
features of a middle-income economy. It is a nation born out of an
extraordinary mass political movement which has been ruled fre¬
quently by a military elite averse to politics, a conservative Muslim
society which, in 1988, elected a woman to be Prime Minister. The
principal domestic and external threats to its security, however, are
clear and constant. Pakistan has successfully employed its limited
assets, such as location, military talent, cheap, skilled labour, Islamic,
and recently, democratic identity, to cultivate rewarding ties with
external powers. Thus far, ties to states in West Asia, to the PRC and
to the US, have been exploited to fulfil Pakistan’s requirements for
domestic development and regional security. Yet, this strategy of
external reliance can entail high risks. It heightens Pakistan’s vulner¬
ability to changes beyond its borders, and draws attention to the
importance of balancing the strengths derived abroad with the devel¬
opment of enduring political, economic and social strengths at home.
Over the past 20 years Pakistan has become increasingly susceptible
to the volatile interaction of domestic, trans-state and external move¬
ments. The influx of peoples, goods, money and arms has brought
new problems of security as well as new benefits. The sheltering of
refugees and foreign armies, the introduction and spread of foreign
arms, and the expanded power of arms dealers and narcotics traders,
have considerably worsened Pakistan’s domestic situation, diminish¬
ing the political control exercised by its regimes. Meanwhile, the
receipt of remittances from migrant workers abroad and of foreign
economic and military aid have bolstered Pakistan’s economy and
increased the flexibility of its regimes. Pakistan’s leaders have had to
demonstrate diplomatic and managerial skill to take full advantage of
such flows. Zia, for example, exploited the common threat perceptions
of the US and Pakistan during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
He elicited economic aid for Pakistan and for the Afghan refugees. He
also convinced the US to modernize his army, thereby enhancing its
regional capabilities, and to avoid penalizing Pakistan while it pur¬
sued nuclear weapons research. Benazir Bhutto, in turn, has smartly
manipulated the drama of Pakistani democracy to raise Pakistan’s
international profile and to encourage the generosity of donors such as
Japan - an increasingly important economic ally - and the US. Both
leaders have shown how small states in an uncertain environment can
use the coincidence of interests with stronger powers to serve purely
national goals. Neither leader, however, has been able to address suc¬
cessfully Pakistan’s domestic weaknesses.
Despite the variety of external intrusions it is the political character
of the Pakistani state and its socio-economic arrangements which, in

64
the end, harbour the seeds of its advancement or its decay. The lack of
even a minimal domestic political consensus and the consequent
weakness of civilian regimes has made it more difficult for them to
implement policies which address Pakistan’s structural economic, pol¬
itical and social dilemmas, or to manage securely their external
environment. Basic economic weaknesses, the neglect of social wel¬
fare, the inadequacy of indigenous arms production capabilities, and
ethnic conflicts left unaddressed because of their high political costs,
have generated high dependence on external sources. For example,
PPP leaders, once champions of socialism, quickly promised their
foreign donors the implementation of economic liberalization policies
in order to acquire essential aid. Still, while Pakistan’s main industrial
city, Karachi, remains paralysed by ethnic violence, the PPP cannot
provide the stable environment required to reinvigorate domestic
industries or encourage foreign enterprises. In the military sphere, the
Pakistan Army’s plans for continuing defence modernization, and for
a high state of military preparedness against India - without a strong
domestic base of weapons production - have turned Pakistan into a
state dependent on the secure and subsidized supply of foreign arms.
In the short-term, changes in regime, civilian or military, should
result in limited or gradual changes in Pakistan’s foreign-policy orien¬
tation. Few Pakistani regimes have initiated radical breaks with past
policies; all have tried to find a route between bilateral great-power
alliances and a broader multilateralism. Army regimes have preferred
an alliance with the US but when this has not been possible or
sufficient they have, like civilian regimes, sought to establish ties with
other states, always including the PRC and Muslim states (Saudi
Arabia), and with multilateral fora such as the OIC and the Non-
Aligned Movement. Today, too, Benazir Bhutto has brought Pakis¬
tan back into the Commonwealth, which should provide it with yet
another forum for dialogue with Western states other than the US,
with developing states, and perhaps even with India.
The tenor of Indo-Pakistani relations, and the evolution of the
Afghan conflict, will largely define the parameters of Pakistan’s inter¬
national relations in the early 1990s. Pakistan’s South Asian security
concerns will continue to affect its policies of linkage with extra-
regional powers.
When relations with India are at their worst, Pakistani regimes see a
greater need for allies. Increased subcontinental goodwill would likely
contribute to a more secure multilateralism in Pakistan’s foreign poli¬
cies. Traditionally such goodwill has stood a better chance under civ¬
ilian regimes. Benazir Bhutto’s commitment to South Asian rec¬
onciliation has been evident. She has succeeded in signing useful
agreements with India, continues to negotiate at high levels with the
new Indian government led by V.P. Singh (with whom she is reported
to have co-operated during a recent political kidnapping in Kashmir)

65
 and the broader relationship has improved substantially since Zia’s
era.
Nevertheless, valuable incremental improvements and not revol¬
utionary change are the most that should be expected in Indo-
Pakistani relations. Unless Bhutto’s regime garners greater domestic
power it will be unable substantially to change the direction of the
regional relationship. Her need to calculate constantly the domestic
political costs of regional accords has diminished the value of her good
intentions, and there is strong resistance to her policies of
rapprochement from the President, the opposition and the army.
Finally, both India’s new leadership and that of Pakistan will have to
strive to avoid the potential dangers in the escalating, separatist viol¬
ence in Kashmir.
Another regime change in Pakistan is unlikely to bode well for Indo-
Pakistani reconciliation. Given the alarming calls from some of
Bhutto’s opponents for the expansion of Pakistan’s nuclear pro¬
gramme, and their anti-Indian invective, it is clear that a non-PPP,
civilian regime, or a new military regime, will be less interested in poli¬
cies devoted to the normalization of Indo-Pakistani relations.
Until Pakistan’s political elite can desist from using the fear of India
as a tool in their bitter feuds, any regime’s efforts to devise a long-term
strategy of normalization with India will be jeopardized. As Zia dem¬
onstrated during his ‘peace through cricket’ mission, only a
strongman can make a speedy peace with India without fear of its
domestic political consequences.
For ten years, the Afghan War has been the fundamental issue in
Pakistan’s domestic polity as well as in its relations with the super¬
powers. Zia chose the dangerous but rewarding policy of confronting
the Soviet Union armed with a US ally. He was able to win US econ¬
omic aid and weaponry for Pakistan as well as for the Afghan refugees
and Mujaheddin. Yet, Pakistan’s most pressing goal, the return of the
Afghan refugees, has not yet been achieved. Future strategies to
resolve the conflict (by supporting, in conjunction with the US,
renewed efforts at military victory and a pro-Mujaheddin peace settle¬
ment, or working within the framework of the UN to achieve a broad-
based government in Kabul, to mention only two possibilities) will
depend as much on the role of the US and the Mujaheddin based in
Pakistan, Iran and inside Afghanistan as on the composition of the
Pakistani regime. Factions within the IJI leadership are committed to
particular Mujaheddin groups (the Jamaat-e-Islami is partial to the
Hezb-i-Islami), while a new army leadership may be less inclined than
Zia to involve itself so deeply in Afghan affairs. The Afghan War is not
over for Pakistan.
Detente between the super-powers, and a decline in their Central
Asian dispute, could encourage Pakistan to reorient its foreign policies
and to supplement its international relations with expanded bilateral
ties to other regional and Muslim states. Zia’s special partner was

66
Saudi Arabia. The new civilian regime is poised to consolidate ties
with Turkey and Iran. Any successor regime, civilian or military, is
likely to follow suit. Recognition of the adverse consequences which
could result if it chose to increase the pace of progress in nuclear
weapons research (such as a cut-off of US aid and the radical alien¬
ation of India) could provide Pakistan with an impetus to expand its
ties to the Muslim world and other developing states.
Super-power peace in tandem with the global spread of new technol¬
ogies has raised the prospects for expanded indigenous defence pro¬
duction and co-operation between smaller states. The production
and transfer of ballistic missiles, the sale of chemical weapons, arms
exports, defence co-operation and co-production arrangements
between developing states are all part of the strategies of developing
states for decreasing their dependence on major powers. When vertical
relationships are viewed as unreliable, horizontal contacts increase.
However, US-Soviet competition in West and Central Asia is not
quite a thing of the past. The USSR has not yet played out its hand in
Afghanistan; its military ties to India are secure; and it has even signed
an important accord with Iran. For economically and technologically
dependent states like Pakistan, too, policies of indigenous arms pro¬
duction and diversification, while they may be developed as medium-
term strategies, cannot yet compensate for the advantages of a great-
power alliance. Until it can provide itself with economic security and
meet its defence needs through domestic production or regional
co-operation, and unless its leaders deem a nuclear umbrella to be a
sufficient guarantee of security, Pakistan will likely continue its search
for allies who can meet its multifarious political, economic and mili¬
tary requirements.
While foreign allies and arms may assist in maintaining Pakistan’s
regional power, however, they do not address its fundamental dom¬
estic problems. The dangers from beyond Pakistan’s borders are less
troubling than the dangers from within. Without a solution to its dom¬
estic wars of political identity, Pakistan guarantees itself a frag¬
mented existence. Ethnic and provincial conflicts remain the most
durable and the gravest threat, not only to the capacity of a Pakistani
regime, but to the resilience of the Pakistani state. The failure to
resolve the troubles in Sind will mark the failure not only of the
regime, but of an experiment in civilian governance. So far, civilian
regimes have fared no better than military regimes in coping with
Pakistan’s propensity for internal fragmentation.
Confronting ethnic crises, therefore, must be the foremost political
priority of any regime. Benazir Bhutto’s regime has yet to find success
in Sind, either through political negotiations or through an unwanted
yet increasing reliance on military power. When ethnic conflicts
worsen, regimes generally call in the army; armies, as they become
involved in the reduction of civil violence without commensurate pol¬
itical authority often find their institutional credibility threatened;

67
 and when army commanders decide that elected civilians cannot cope
with threats to national unity, they may be tempted, regardless of
history’s lessons, to re-enter the political arena. Their return may sup¬
press briefly Pakistan’s ethnic disputes, but - as the lessons of
Bangladesh should have made clear - it certainly will not resolve them.
Pakistan stands at a critical juncture in its political evolution. It
must choose between democratic politics and army rule, between secu¬
lar politics and an Islamic state. The pattern of power in Pakistan
thus far has been authbritarian. There is only a scant national history
of respect for law and constitutional processes. The faith of many who
believed in the relevance of democracy for Pakistan was shaken by
what they saw as its distortion by the elder Bhutto. Moreover, in the
past decade the state has cultivated Islamization. Zia’s ideological leg¬
acy was the assertion that Islam was antithetical to democracy. He
challenged the applicability of democracy and political parties to Pak¬
istan by placing them in opposition to Islam.
The other strain of Pakistani political culture, represented by
Benazir Bhutto s political manifesto, consists of support for pluralist
and democratic principles. It has received short shrift. Today Pakistan
may have its last chance for Muslim moderation, at remaining a
society of diverse Islamic practices embodied in a state that is not
bound by laws which discriminate against women and minority sects
and religions. Islam has been applied repeatedly as a cure for
Pakistan s crises of national unity, and it has failed repeatedly. If it is
used once again, religion may not merely fail, it could exacerbate
Pakistan’s ethnic and sectarian schisms. Nevertheless, Pakistan’s
Muslim identity continues to serve the state well in its external
relations and even encourages its role as intermediary in the frayed
dialogue between Muslim and Western states.
Pakistan s future remains bedevilled by domestic insecurities. Any
Pakistani regime, civilian or military, will have to contend with
numerous, daunting political, economic and social crises. Yet, the pre¬
sent PPP government has special, intrinsic weaknesses. Owing to the
compromised nature of its inception and its restricted electoral man¬
date, Bhutto’s regime has been weak, commanding few spheres of
domestic policy and sharing many. Although she compromises know-
ingly> Bhutto shares power with soldiers, bureaucrats and,
increasingly, with her civilian opponents. Further, while the PPP
remains a national party, and Bhutto a leader who advocates laudable
domestic and regional goals, her regime has been directionless and
unable to reorder domestic priorities towards social and economic
welfare. Whether or not Bhutto is leader enough to use this precious
opportunity to civilianize Pakistan’s political processes, rather than
tntter d away in civilian infighting (amidst charges of corruption and
inefficiency against her advisors) is still uncertain. If, in response to
her political weakness, Bhutto should reorganize her regime to incor¬
porate some of her opponents - who include many more feudal

68
elements than the PPP itself - she will reduce simultaneously the
potential for domestic political discord as well as for innovative
change in domestic or regional policies.
Currently, remarkably high levels of rhetoric and political invective
rather than policy-making occupy Pakistan’s political elite. Without the
benefit of established mechanisms, institutions and processes of politi¬
cal negotiation and dialogue among civilians and between civilians
and soldiers, this young democracy is at risk. At worst, if intra-civilian
political conflict results in strife in the streets, or in an incapacitated
regime, it could provide a restless army with an excuse for intervention.
The fears of overthrow to which Bhutto is prone have led her to cul¬
tivate US support as a special warning to potential coup-makers (a
strategy used without success by Corazon Aquino in the Philippines).
Bhutto relies on the fact that the military may be deterred from staging
a coup by the threat of a cut-off of US weaponry, spare parts and aid.
Given the recurring bouts of anti-Americanism which afflict Pakistan,
however, the regime’s strategy of close association with the US may
not succeed in saving it. Ultimately, foreign friends cannot protect any
Pakistani regime from its own domestic weaknesses.
Today Pakistan’s polity is marked by corruption, inefficiency and
paralysis. The political intentions of its military, which retains veto
power in the civil sphere, remain uncertain. Any hope for a stable and
productive Pakistani democracy rests on critical changes occurring in
the political attitudes of both soldiers and civilians. The army as an
institution, and not merely its current Chief of Staff (who has been
very supportive of the return to democracy), must be encouraged to
return to professionalism, and to permit parliamentary manoeuvres,
the political failures of civilians, and even regime change, without
intervention. Civilian oversight of military matters must be increased.
To promote this process, civilian leaders, for their part, must acquire a
sense of confidence in their ability to govern, and must negotiate with
each other on the basis of national rather than party, provincial or eth¬
nic interests. Only if such changes are effected can Pakistan’s people,
who have endured many years of military rule, look forward to the
prospect of the stable and productive democracy they deserve.

69
 Notes
Chapter I
1 As a retired Pakistani general, Amir
Abdullah Niazi, told Herald (Karachi),
July 1989, p 78: ‘The army never takes
over unless it is invited or unless
conditions that necessitate its
intervention are created.’
2 Bhutto quoted in Washington Post, 22
May 1989, p. A-13.
3 Shahid Kardar ‘Defence Outlay and
Budget Papers’, Dawn (Karachi), 19 July
1989, p. 7.
4 For General Beg’s statements on the
army’s attitudes towards democracy see
the reports in Foreign Broadcast
Information Service (Near East and
South Asia) (hereafter FBIS (NESA), 11
August 1989, p. 56; 14 September 1989,
pp. 52-3; 28 September 1989, p. 53; 31
October 1989, p. 67; 17 November
1989, pp. 40-41.
5 Maleeha Lodhi, ‘Pakistan People’s
Party and Pakistani Democracy’,
Journal of South Asian and Middle
Eastern Studies, 6 (Spring 1983), p. 29.
6 Economist, 3 September 1988, p. 31.
7 See argument in Lodhi, (op. cit. in note
5).
8 For a unique compilation of
disagreements among Pakistan’s ulema
on the nature of an Islamic state see
Report of the Court of Inquiry constituted
under Punjab Act II of 1954 to enquire
into the Punjab Disturbances of 1953,
(Lahore: Superintendent, Government
Printing, Punjab, 1954).
9 Zakat is one of the five pillars of
Islam, in effect a tax on a Muslim’s
possessions which can be paid to the
poor as alms, to travellers, or to the
state. Ushr, or tenth, is the tax on the
produce of land. Shias do not recognize
the right of temporal rulers to collect
zakat. Instead, they pay it to their
mujtahide (religious leaders capable of
exercising independent judgement in
jurisprudence), who are responsible for
its distribution. Their control over such
religious funds allows Shia mujtahids a
greater freedom from state authority
than that available to Sunni ulema. For
discussions of Shia-Sunni differences on
matters of religion and politics see
Moojan Momen, An Introduction to Shia
70
Islam (New Haven CT: Yale University
Press, 1985).
10 Mumtaz Ahmed, ‘Pakistan’, in
Shireen T. Hunter (ed.), The Politics of
Islamic Revivalism: Diversity and Unity
(Bloomington IN: Indiana University
Press, 1988), p. 237.
11 Islamabad Domestic Service,
reprinted in FBIS (NESA) 5 December
1989, p. 66.
12 Muslim, 22 September 1989, pp. 1,6,
reprinted in FBIS (NESA), 27 October
1989, pp. 63-4.
13 Karachi’s population is about 54%
muhajir, 13% Punjabi speakers, 11%
Sindhi or Baluch; 11% Gujurati speakers
(mainly merchant communities), and
10% Pathan.
14 Excellent reporting on Sind’s
problems may be found in the
Karachi-based magazine, Herald.
General Aslam Beg has frequently stated
these views. See, for example, Muslim,
16 May 1989, p. 4, reprinted in FBIS
(NESA), 2 June 1989, p. 68. See also,
FBIS (NESA), 14 September 1989, p. 53.
15 US Department of State, Bureau of
International Narcotics Matters,
International Narcotics Control Strategy
Report, Executive Summary, March
1989, pp. 15-16, and Mid-Year Update,
August 1989, p. 61, and United States
Drug Enforcement Agency and Pakistan
Narcotics Control Board figures cited in
Herald, December 1989. For tribal and
Mujaheddin involvement in drug trade
see also ‘The cultivation of poppy
cannot be stopped in the tribal areas’
interview with Malik Nadir Khan
Zakakhel, Herald, December 1989, p
127.
16 For poppy cultivation estimates see
Mid-Year Update, ibid, p. 65; for
estimate of drug profitability see Far
Eastern Economic Review (hereafter
FEER), 10 August 1989, p. 25. Expert
assessments of future Afghan poppy
production levels derive from discussion
with Pakistani journalist covering
Afghanistan and Herald, December
1989, p. 74. For US narcotics policy in
Afghanistan see Mid-Year Update, ibid,
p. 61. Naseem Akhundzada, an Afghan
commander associated with Mohammed
Nabi Mohammadi, the AIG’s Defence
Minister, is reportedly known as the
'King of Heroin.’ See Washington Post,
29 August 1989, p. A-15.
17 Clarence Maloney, ‘Pakistan: Social
Basis of the Economy’, Universities
Field Staff International (UFSI) Reports,
Asia Series, 8 (Indianapolis IN: UFSI,
1987) pp. 2-3. Strong charges of
corruption have been levelled against
members of the PPP regime. See, for
example, Ahmed Rashid, 'Bhutto’s
Feeble Grip on Power’, Independent
(London), 14 November 1989.
18 For the low socio-economic status of
Pakistan’s women, see World Bank,
Women in Pakistan: An Economic and
Social Strategy (Washington DC: World
Bank, 1989). ’
Chapter II
1 US Arms Control and Disarmament
Agency, World Military Expenditures
and Arms Transfers 1988 ACDA
Publication 131 (Washington, DC:
USGPO, June 1989), p. 114.
2 See Mushahid Hussain, Frontier Post
(Peshawar), 4 March 1989, pp. 4-5, and
Hussain, India Today, 15 March 1989,
p. 71.
3 FEER, 26 October 1989, p. 25; and
Frontier Post, 15 September 1989, p. 6.
4 Edward W Desmond 'War at the Top
of the World’, Time, 31 July 1989, pp.
26-9; and Mahnaz Z. Ispahani, Roads
and Rivals: The Political Uses of Access
in the Borderlands of Asia (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1989), pp.
209-10.
5 See Shyam Bhatia, Nuclear Rivals in
the Middle East (London: Routledge,
1988) .
6 New York Times (hereafter NYT), 19
May 1989, p. A-7.
7 For Indian warnings, see the statement
of Indian Defence Minister, K.C. Pant
to the Lok Sabha, Reuters, 27 April
1987; Gandhi’s address to Indian
military officers reported in Times of
India, 29 October 1986, reprinted in
‘Indian Press, Selected Reports and
Articles’, Embassy of India (Washington,
DC); and Report of Carnegie Task Force
on Non-Proliferation And South Asian
Security, Nuclear Weapons and South
Asian Security (Washington, DC:
Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, 1988), pp. 71-2. For reports of
Pakistan’s 'triggering package’ see Bob
Woodward, ‘Pakistan Reported Near
Atom Arms Production’, Washington
Post, 4 November 1986, and John Scali,
‘Good Morning America’, American
Broadcasting Company, 11 July 1985, as
cited in Report of Carnegie Task Force,
Nuclear Weapons (ibid.) p. 21. For
estimates of Pakistani and Indian
nuclear weapons production and
delivery capabilities, ibid., pp. 9-19.
8 Richard Weintraub, ‘India Tests
Mid-range Agni missile’, Washington
Post, 23 May 1989, p. A-l. Also on
Prithvi test, interview with Leonard S.
Spector, 22 January 1990, Washington,
DC.
9 See Zia’s interview with Time, 30
March 1987 (p. 42) in which he said
that ‘Pakistan has the capability of
building the bomb’. ‘Once you have
acquired the technology, which Pakistan
has, you can do whatever you like. . .
You can use it for peaceful purposes
only. You can also utilize it for military
purposes. . . We have never said we are
incapable of doing this. We have said we
have neither the intention nor the
desire’. In a similar vein Benazir Bhutto
said in 1989: ‘We do not have a nuclear
bomb; that is, one that is constructed,
assembled, ready to be used, and
positioned on the table. . . . What we
have is a peaceful program which would
enable us to acquire the know-how. We
have acquired the know-how which can
never be obliterated or removed by a
decision. . . We will not wilfully make
the decision to manufacture or assemble
the atomic bomb’. FBIS (NESA), 20
July 1989, pp. 26-7. Also see Muslim
(Islamabad), 4 October 1989, p. 4.
10 See, for example, FBIS (NESA), 18
April 1989, p. 59.
11 See NYT, 11 June 1989, p. A-5.
12 For statistics see Shahid Javed Burki,
'What Migration to the Middle East
May Mean for Pakistan’, Journal of
South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
3 (Spring 1980), p. 48.
13 See Telegraph (India), 17 May 1988;
and Economist, 1 May 1988, p. 27.
Unpublished Indian government report
on Pakistan’s involvement in the
Punjab.
14 In 1987, when a bomb blast killed 74
and injured 250 persons in Karachi,
71
3 U *3 U X 3
Prime Minister Junejo insinuated Indian
involvement: he asked reporters ‘Why
do you talk of Afghanistan alone? Why
ignore India?’ See FEER, 12 March
1987, p. 36.
15 At the inaugural session of the 1986
Bangalore Summit Pakistan’s Prime
Minister Junejo suggested that SAARC
members should devise a convention ‘to
make it obligatory for the members to
inform each other of significant troop
movements, define the numbers that
would be considered significant and also
to allow each other’s observers to watch
all major military exercises’. FEER, 27
November 1986, p. 30.
16 Ayub Khan’s participation at the
1966 Tashkent peace talks which
followed the Indo-Pakistani war
contributed to his collapse. It was cast as
‘capitulation’ by his opponents and gave
the elder Bhutto, then in opposition,
grist for his political mill. Bhutto
himself could sign the Simla Accord
with India only at a unique historical
moment - after Pakistan’s citizens and
soldiers had experienced the damaging
consequences of the Bengali secession.
17 As a Lieutenant-General in late 1986,
Aslam Beg reportedly argued that the
Afghanistan situation should be defused
rather than fuelled so that Pakistan
might better protect its eastern front.
See Mary Anne Weaver, ‘Letter from
Pakistan’, New Yorker, 14 November
1988, p. 103.
18 Between 1947 and 1948 one out of
every four persons in Pakistan was a
refugee from India. See, for example,
Burki (op. cit. in note 12), p. 47. Burki’s
works establish the important thesis that
migrations have played a central role in
the history of Pakistan.
19 See US Committee for Refugees,
World Refugee Survey: 1988 in Review,
(Washington, DC: USGPO, 1988) pp.
79-80; and Subcommittee on
Immigration and Refugee Affairs,
Committee on the Judiciary, US Senate,
Staff Report, ‘Afghanistan: Peace and
Repatriation’, 14 May 1988, p. 19. (For
figures on the Afghan exodus between
1978 and 1988, see p. 21.)
20 Herald, May 1989, p. 20; and
Subcommittee on Immigration and
Refugee Affairs, ibid., pp. 23, 30.
21 See, for example, Pervaiz Iqbal
72
Cheema, ‘Impact of the Afghan War on
Pakistan’, Pakistan Horizon, January
1988, esp. pp. 29, 34; and World
Refugee Survey (op. cit. in note 19), p. 80.
22 Over 200 died in fighting between
Muhajirs, Pakistani Pakhtuns, and
Afghan refugees in Karachi in December
1986. The fighting began in Sohrab
Goth, a heroin marketing area. Due to
such incidents, Afghan refugees have
had to be moved out of Karachi. See
Chapter II for the impact of guns and
drugs on Pakistan.
23 Statistics provided by the Embassy of
the Islamic Republic of Pakistan,
Washington, DC. For explosions at
munitions depots see FBIS (NESA) 16
November 1989, p. 54.
24 For Benazir Bhutto’s views on the
possible dangers to her person posed by
the Afghan Mujaheddin while she was an
opposition leader, see her
autobiography, Daughter of Destiny
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989)
pp. 332-3, 389. Although Hekmatyar
has denied the charges, Hezb-i-Islami
members are widely thought to have
ambushed and killed 30 fighters of the
Jamaat-e-lslami in northern Afghanistan
on 9 July 1989. An Asia Watch report
‘Human Rights Abuses by Elements of
the Afghan Resistance’, 3 November
1989, further suggests that many
politically-motivated threats,
kidnappings and killings of Afghan aid
workers and intellectuals are attributable
(although not solely) to Hekmatyar’s
group.
25 See Shahid Javed Burki ‘International
Migration: The Emergence of a New
Dynamic’, Pakistan and Gulf Economist,
27 March 1982. Burki argues that
increases in the price of oil not only hurt
oil-importing developing countries like
Pakistan but also provided them with
new economic opportunities.
26 Isabelle Tsakok, ‘The Export of
Manpower from Pakistan to the Middle
East, 1975-1985’, World Development,
40 (1982), p. 319, and Abdul Hafeez
Shaikh and Shahid N. Zahid, ‘Analysis
of Remittances to Pakistan: 1972-85’,
(Karachi: unpublished paper), pp.
17-18. The official remittance figure is
estimated to be only half the real figure
because it does not take into account the
informal and non-bank - ‘black’ -
mechanisms for foreign exchange
transfer. See also Economist, 10
September 1988, p. 21. Although data is
lacking about the impact of remittances
upon the consumption, investment and
savings habits of migrant families, see
Tsakok, ibid. p. 320; Shaikh and Zahid,
ibid, and, Burki (op. cit. in note 12), pp.
56-66.
27 Economist, 10 September 1988, p. 21;
Inquiry, November 1987, p. 31; and.
Dawn, 6 March 1989, p. 7.
28 Shahid Javed Burki interviewed by
author in Washington DC, 1989.
29 US Committee for Refugees (op. cit.
in note 19), p. 80.
30 See Benazir Bhutto’s interview with
the Indian Express, in FBIS (NESA), 31
March 1989, p. 55.
29 See Bhutto’s interview with Al Ra’y,
in FBIS (NESA), 20 July 1989, p. 26;
and Ghulam Sarwar Cheema, Pakistani
Minister of State for Defence
interviewed by Turkish TV and
newspapers, FBIS (NESA), 5 May 1989,
p. 53, and 12 May 1989, p. 25.
Chapter III
1 Pakistan, and not the US, has
interpreted their early agreements to
mean that the US would come to
Pakistan’s aid in the event of a conflict
with India.
2 See Richard P. Cronin, Congressional
Research Service Issue Brief: ‘Pakistan’s
Nuclear Program: US Foreign Policy
Considerations’, Washington, DC, 29
June 1989.
3 In early 1989 German officials
revealed that Pakistan had acquired a
plant for purifying tritium, while in the
US, officials were unenthusiastic about
making the required certification that
Pakistan did not possess nuclear
weapons. See Washington Post, 28
January 1989, p. A-l, and NYT, 29
January 1989, p. 13.
4 Interview with Leonard S. Spector,
Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, Washington, DC, 13 November
1989.
5 IISS, The Military Balance 1981-82
(London: IISS, 1981); and Latif Ahmed
Sherwani, ‘Review of Sino-Pakistani
Relations, 1981-85’, Pakistan Horizon,
39 (first quarter 1986), p. 99.
6 See ‘India Tests Mid-Range Agni
Missile’, Washington Post, 23 May 1989,
p. A-l. There is a broad consensus in the
Washington policy community that in
1983 there was Chinese assistance to
Pakistan in the bomb design phase. Also
see Leslie H. Gelb, ‘Pakistan Links Peril
US-China Nuclear Pact’, NYT, 22 June
1984, p. 1, and ‘Peking said to Balk at
Nuclear Pledges’, NYT, 23 June 1984, p.
3; and FEER, 12 December 1985, p. 25.
For China’s agreement on the nuclear
power plant, see BBC, Summary of
World Broadcasts (FE) 18 November
1989.
73
 ADELPHI PAPERS
The following is a selection of those available. They are distributed by Brassey's and
may be ordered at a current price of £6.25 ($US 9.25) from: Brassey’s (UK), Headington
Hill Hall, Oxford, 0X3 OBW.
(Residents of North America): Brassey’s (US), Front & Brown Streets, Riverside, NJ
08075 USA.

200 The Prospects and Implications of Non-nuclear Means for Strategic Conflict
Carl H. Builder. Summer 1985
201 French Military Policy and African Security John Chipman. Summer 1985
202 Sino-Soviet Relations after Mao Gerald Segal. Autumn 1985
203 Soviet Policy Towards West Germany Roland Smith. Winter 1985
204 Spain: Domestic Politics and Security Policy Gregory F. Treverton. Spring 1986
205-7 Power and Policy: Doctrine, the Alliance and Arms Control: Parts l-lll
Papers from the IISS 27th Annual Conference. Spring 1986
208 The Two Koreas: Catalyst for Conflict in East Asia? Peter Polomka. Summer 1986
209 South Africa and its Neighbours: the Dynamics of Regional Conflict
Robert S. Jaster. Summer 1986
210 Deterrence, War-fighting and Soviet Military Doctrine
John Van Oudenaren. Summer 1986
211 NATO’s Out-of-Area Problem Marc Bentinck. Autumn 1986
212 The Japan-US Alliance: A Japanese Perspective Atsushi Tokinoya. Autumn 1986
213 Strategic Stability between the Super-powers Paul Stockton. Winter 1986
214 Canadian Security and Defence: the Legacy and the Challenges R.B. Byers.
Winter 1986
215 Deterrence, Technology and Strategic Arms Control William Bajusz. Winter 1986/7
216-8 East Asia, the West and International Security: Prospects for Peace: Parts l-lll
Papers from the IISS 28th Annual Conference. Spring 1987
219 The Iran-lraq War: The Political Implications Ralph King. Spring 1987
220 The Iran-lraq War: A Military Analysis Efraim Karsh. Spring 1987
221 Directed-Energy Weapons and Strategic Defence: a Primer
Dietrich Schroeer. Summer 1987
222 Shadow or Substance? Perceptions and Symbolism in Nuclear Force Planning
Philip A. G. Sabin. Summer 1987
223 The Future of the ABM Treaty William J. Durch. Summer 1987
224 Strategic Defence in the Nuclear Age Lawrence Freedman. Autumn 1987
225 Strategic Defences in NATO Strategy Richard I. Brody. Autumn 1987
226 Land-attack Cruise Missiles Rose E. Gottemoeller. Winter 1987/8
227 Southern Africa in Soviet Foreign Policy Kurt M. Campbell. Winter 1987/8
228 Politics and Protectionism in the Pacific Bernard K. Gordon. Spring 1988
229-31 Prospects for Security in the Mediterranean: Parts l-lll
Papers from the IISS 29th Annual Conference. Spring 1988
232 The Sino-Vietnamese Relationship and the Soviet Union
Charles McGregor. Autumn 1988
233 NATO Strategy and Ballistic Missile Defence Ivo H. Daalder. Winter 1988
234 The Problem of Cyprus Robert McDonald. Winter 1988/9
235-7 The Changing Strategic Landscape: Parts l-lll
Papers from the IISS 30th Annual Conference. Spring 1989
238 The Impact of Strategic Defences on European-American Relations in the 1990s
Stuart Croft. Spring 1989
239 Challenges of Conventional Arms Control Klaus Wittmann. Summer 1989
240 The GDR in East-West Relations Hans-Joachim Spanger. Summer 1989
241 Strategic Stability in the Arctic George Lindsey. Summer 1989
242 Mexico: Converging Challenges Lt Col. Michael J. Dziedzic. Autumn 1989
243 Lebanon: Dimensions of Conflict Flussein Sirriyeh. Autumn 1989
244 Prospects for West European Security Co-operation Ian Gambles. Autumn 1989
245 Verification in Conventional Arms Control Volker Kunzendorff. Winter 1989
 DATE DUE
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JM 1 41395
FFB 2 2 199h
FE B 2 01995

ArK 3 G 1996

0 7 2003