Pakistan Military History

Topic Name: History of Military Coup in Pakistan

INTRODUCTION

The military is both an institution of the state and a powerful interest group. Pakistan is a point of turbulent civil-military relations. In the 68 years since Pakistan became an independent state, the military has overthrown democratic governments three times.

On each occasion, the act was motivated by violation of law of the institutional interests of the military, and supported by sections of the elites, whose interests had also been compromised.

Military dictatorships in Pakistan have been selfish motives and have set policies that heavily favoured elite groups such as the bureaucracy, Islamic clerics and rural landlords, at the expense of the tax payer money. The major political

As the refugee problem ballooned out of proportion, India declared war on Pakistan. Indian forces captured 93,000 Pakistani troops in Dhaka (the capital of East Pakistan), and assisted the East in attaining the status of an independent nation state, Bangladesh. This political and military disaster spelled the end of the Yahya regime.

In December 1971, the general was forced out of force under intense public pressure (Talbot, 1998, p. 202-13), and he handed over the Presidency of Pakistan to Bhutto. Pakistan 's second foray into democracy lasted from 1971-77.

Initially, Bhutto adopted a populist, socialist stance that embraced the urban intelligentsia (Jalal, 1995, p. 82; Stern, 2001, p.137-8). He took decisive steps towards containing the power of the military; the Commander-in- Chief position was abolished and the tenure of service of senior officers was limited.

Meanwhile, he adopted a strong anti-India stance, and resolved to develop nuclear weapons after India 's first nuclear test in 1974. This decision angered his patrons in Washington, who cut back on military support to Pakistan. Consequently, the military strongly opposed the nuclear program (Jalal, 1995, p. 77-82), but Bhutto

On this occasion, he succeeded in repealing the Eighth Amendment. Sharif rapidly moved to crush any possible opposition to his rule, including that of dissidents within his party and excluded the army from the political decision making process. Sharif 's deteriorating relationship with General Musharraf, the army chief, eached the lowest ebb in the wake of the Kargil misadventure" of 1999 (a military conflict with India in the Kargil region of Kashmir), which ended in an “unconditional [Pakistani] withdrawal" (p. 256-7). In October 1999, Sharif attempted to sack Musharraf by blaming him for the incident, only for the latter to oust Sharif