Conflict history: Pakistan

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Head of State: President Asif Ali Zardari, February 2008-

Pakistan gained independence upon the partition of British India 1947, leading to massive refugee flows and hundreds of thousands dead in communal Muslim-Hindu violence. Since then, India and Pakistan have fought three full-scale wars, in 1948, 1965 and 1971, the latter leading to the secession of East Pakistan and creation of Bangladesh.

Since 1958 the army has played a major role Pakistani politics, including four military regimes that ruled for a total of 31 years, frequently allying with religious rightwing groups to offset opposition from the moderate mainstream political parties. Pakistan’s democratic interlude under Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's premiership following the first-ever general elections in 1970 ended with General Zia-ul Haq’s coup in 1977. Bhutto was executed in April 1979 after a murder conviction in a sham trial; his daughter, Benazir, eventually assumed the leadership of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). Zia’s military regime was characterised by state-driven Islamisation, including reforms to the legal and education systems; support to rightwing religious parties and their madrasas; and creation and patronage of Islamist extremist groups for the U.S.-supported anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan.

After Zia’s death in a plane explosion in 1988, power was handed back to civilians, but with the military continuing to dominate key policy areas, including use of militant Islamist groups for jihad in India-administered Kashmir and in support of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The democratic interlude of the 1990s was also marked by political infighting between the PPP and Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N), poor governance, and repeated indirect military interventions, which included the dismissal of three elected governments, with neither party allowed to complete a full term of office. The Sharif government’s peace initiative with India, starting in February 1999, were derailed by Army Chief General Pervez Musharraf incursion into Kargil in May 1999. The democratic transition ended with Musharraf’s military coup in October 1999.

The Musharraf government joined the U.S.-led “war on terror” following the 11 September 2001 attacks, ostensibly reversing its support to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. While promoting his image abroad as a secular reformer, Musharraf supported religious rightwing parties at home to offset his popular moderate political opposition; backtracked on commitments to crack down on jihadi groups and reform the madrasa sector; and enacted far-reaching political and constitutional reforms that centralized power with the army and its civilian proxies.

After a rigged election in October 2002, a six-party alliance of rightwing religious parties, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) formed a majority government in the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP), and a coalition government with the Musharraf-backed Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-i-Azam) (PML-Q) in Balochistan. The military’s inept counter-insurgency operations, followed by peace deals with tribal militants, in the South and North Waziristan Agencies of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), and more recently in NWFP’s Malakand division, which includes Swat region, expanded the space of religious extremists while continuing violent conflict. In the process, FATA became a safe haven for al-Qaeda, Afghan Taliban and Pakistani Taliban groups.

Musharraf was re-elected president on 6 October 2007, but anticipating a Supreme Court challenge to his dual role as army chief and head of state, imposed virtual martial law on 3 November 2007, deposing more than 50 superior court judges, and detaining thousands of prominent lawyers, journalists and political leaders, including Benazir Bhutto. Under mounting domestic and international pressure, Musharraf resigned as army chief on 28 November, while retaining the presidency, and promised elections in January 2009. While the Constitution was restored on 16 December, Musharraf refused to reinstate the judges.

On 27 December Bhutto was assassinated at a campaign rally in Rawalpindi. Mass demonstrations followed in which some 50 people were killed, as many saw Musharraf and his government as directly or indirectly complicit in her death. Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, became the new party leader. With elections finally held on 18 February 2008, the PPP, PML-N and the Awami National Party routed the military-backed PML-Q and MMA. The PPP’s Yousaf Raza Gilani was sworn in as the new prime minister on 17 March 2008, heading a PPP-PML-N coalition government.

After the coalition threatened to initiate impeachment proceedings, Musharraf announced his resignation of the presidency on 18 August and was soon succeeded by Zardari. On 25 August the ruling coalition collapsed after disagreement over the reinstatement of the sacked judges, leaving the PPP-led coalition with a fragile parliamentary majority. On 16 March 2009, after mass PML-N-led demonstrations, Prime Minister Gilani announced that his government would restore all the deposed judges, averting a political crisis and paving the way for renewed cooperation between the two major parties to carry through on election pledges to reverse Musharraf’s constitutional and political reforms, and institute sustainable democratic governance.

updated April 2009

For further information see Crisis Group reports and briefings on Pakistan. The CrisisWatch database provides a report on monthly conflict developments for Pakistan since September 2003.