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HISTORY

Pakistan's long history dates back to the ancient Indus civilization preserved at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro (ending c.1500 ©) and was subsequently influenced by Indic cultures while part of the Magadha (beginning c.542 ©), Maurya (c.321Ð236 ©), Kushan (¥ c.78Ð176), and Gupta (¥ 320Ðc.535) empires. Islam was introduced into Sindh in the 8th century and gained wider acceptance after Mahmud of Ghazni initiated 700 years of Turko-Afghan rule in the 11th century. The Mogul dynasty assumed control in the 16th century. British influence grew after the 1750s, direct British rule being imposed in 1858 (see India, history of).

The idea of partitioning British India into separate Hindu and Muslim areas originated in the 1930s and became the goal of the Muslim League under the leadership of Muhammad Ali Jinnah in the 1940s. Independence was achieved on Aug. 14, 1947, and Pakistan assumed sovereignty over two separate regionsÑEast Bengal (later East Pakistan) and West PakistanÑlocated on either side of the South Asian subcontinent. The separation from Hindu-dominated areas granted to India was accompanied by widespread Hindu-Muslim rioting, the transfer of about 8 million Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan (especially from the Punjab) to India, and the forced relocation of about 6 million Muslims from India to Pakistan. War erupted with India over control of Muslim-dominated Jammu and Kashmir and ended in 1949 with a cease-fire line recognizing Pakistan control of about 40% of the disputed state (see India-Pakistan Wars).

Internal differences between East and West PakistanÑunited by little other than religionÑfrustrated efforts to create a single, central government and delayed adoption of the first constitution until 1956. During these trying years the military, strengthened by U.S. aid after 1953, grew increasingly politicized and on Oct. 7, 1958, seized control of the government. The 1956 constitution was abrogated, and martial law imposed, with Gen. (later Field Marshal) Muhammad Ayub Khan as chief martial-law administrator. In 1962 he proclaimed a new constitution and became president. Discontent and rioting, especially in the eastern wing, forced Ayub Khan to resign in March 1969. Gen. Muhammad Yahya Khan assumed control, and martial law was temporarily reimposed.

Political activity was allowed to resume in 1970. National Assembly elections gave an overall majority to East Pakistan's Awami League, led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, which pledged to seek greater autonomy for East Pakistan; a majority in less populous West Pakistan was won by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's Pakistan People's party (PPP; see Bhutto, family). Yahya Khan twice postponed convening the new assembly; then, in March 1971, the election results were disregarded, the Awami League outlawed, and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman arrested. East Pakistan then declared its independence as the People's Republic of Bangladesh, and civil war ensued. The army moved in to end the civil war but was defeated after India intervened.

Civilian rule was restored in West Pakistan (now Pakistan) with Bhutto as president. A third constitution was adopted in 1973, under which he became prime minister of the demoralized nation. Bhutto was reelected in 1977, but, following political turmoil and charges of election fraud, the army again seized control of the government. Gen. Zia ul-Haq became chief martial-law administrator and in 1978 assumed the presidency. Bhutto was arrested and later hanged. Zia, who twice postponed elections, embarked on a program of Islamization approved in a probably fraudulent referendum in December 1984, a vote that he took as approval for his continuation in office for five years. After legislative elections in 1985, a civilian prime minister was appointed. Martial law was ended on Dec. 30, 1985.

Zia, who had dismissed the government in May 1988, was killed in a mysterious plane crash on August 17. In November elections the PPP, led by Bhutto's daughter Benazir, won a plurality of seats. She was appointed prime minister on December 1 by President Ghulam Ishaq Khan, Zia's successor. On Aug. 6, 1990, Ishaq Khan dismissed Bhutto and dissolved the legislature. An army-backed conservative party headed by Nawaz Sharif decisively won new elections in October. The president dismissed Sharif in April 1993, but the dismissal was overturned by the supreme court. The power struggle between Ishaq Khan and Sharif paralyzed the government, and both men resigned on July 18. After new elections in which neither Bhutto's nor Sharif's party won a majority, Bhutto returned as prime minister on Oct. 19, 1993, as head of a coalition government. Bhutto's candidate for the presidency, Farooq Leghari, was elected in November. Political and sectarian conflict continued, and a feud between the prime minister and her mother and brother (the latter killed in 1996 in a shootout with police) threatened to split the PPP. Leghari dismissed Bhutto on Nov. 5, 1996. In January, Leghari and the cabinet of interim caretaker prime minister Malik Meraj Khalid approved granting the armed forces a formal advisory role in the government. Following new elections on Feb. 3, 1997, which the PPP lost by a wide margin, Sharif again became prime minister. Despite mounting violence by Muslim militants, extremist Islamic parties won only two seats in the legislature in the 1997 elections.

In April 1997 the legislature repealed the section of the constitution permitting the president to dismiss the elected government. Authority to appoint the heads of all branches of the armed forces was transferred from the president to the prime minister. Later that year, as Pakistan and India celebrated the 50th anniversary of their independence, the two nations moved to improve their long-troubled relationship, although Pakistan continued to refuse to bow to U.S. pressures to eliminate or freeze its covert nuclear weapons program unless India took similar measures. On Dec. 2, 1997, after Sharif had suspended the chief justice (who had brought corruption charges against the prime minister and sought to restore the president's power to dismiss the government), Leghari resigned as president rather than appoint a replacement. In January 1998 the legislature selected former judge Rafiq Tarar to replace Leghari as president. Relations with India worsened in 1998. In May of that year, after the government of new Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee conducted five underground nuclear tests and openly declared itself a nuclear state, Pakistan conducted its own nuclear tests. The tests, condemned by the international community, raised tensions in the area to new heights.

In August of that year one of the suspects in the terrorist bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania was captured in Pakistan and sent to the United States for trial. Later that month, under pressure from religious-based parties following a U.S. retaliatory strike at training camps in neighboring Afghanistan, Sharif announced plans to introduce an Islamic system of justice in Pakistan. The lower house of the legislature passed a constitutional amendment declaring Islamic law the supreme law of the nation by a huge margin in October 1998 in a climate of mounting sectarian and political violence and economic decline. The application of Islamic law to legal and state as well as family and religious matters, which is also done only in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Afghanistan, was fiercely opposed by Pakistan's religious minorities and by opposition parties. Amid fears that this would lead to discrimination against non-Muslims and charges that it undermined the country's fundamental constitutional structure, the Senate blocked the move. Nevertheless, Sharia was imposed as the supreme law by local authorities in two regions of the North-West Frontier province in January 1999. Earlier that month, as political violence continued, radical Arabs increasingly used Pakistan as a base for terrorist activities, and the government cracked down on numerous armed religious and ethnic groups, Sharif had narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. His government's establishment of special

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