Dictators should never be forgotten. They may be removed by people power. They may flee their countries when things get beyond control for them. They may spend years in prison once better, decent men replace them. They may die in bed, without any punishment having been meted out to them. But history and people in their countries and around the world must never forget them.
General Ziaul Haq died in a mysterious air crash in Pakistan’s Bahawalpur in August 1988. All these years after his passing, he is as good as forgotten in his country. Hardly anyone speaks of him, unless it is with reference to some questionable measure he caused to be brought about in his years in power. His grave, containing fragments of him -- he and his co-passengers were blown to bits in that plane crash -- is in Islamabad. No one remembers him on his death anniversary. Revulsion is how he is recalled, if at all, in Pakistan and beyond Pakistan.
47 years ago, on July 5, 1977, Ziaul Haq, then serving as chief of Pakistan’s army staff, removed the civilian government of embattled Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in a coup d’etat that was a clear violation of the constitution. The coup came at a time when the government and the opposition Pakistan National Alliance had concluded a deal on fresh elections to be organised after the rigged vote that had taken place in March of the year. Had those elections taken place and had Zia resisted the temptation of launching a coup, democracy may well have gained a foothold in Pakistan.
General Zia knew full well that the political deal between the Bhutto government and the PNA had been reached, that conditions now promised to return to normalcy. But ambitious as he and his fellow generals were -- few Pakistani generals have ever demonstrated any fealty to democratic principles -- the military could not wait to take over. Following the fiasco of the army’s gigantic defeat in the Bangladesh war in 1971, the soldiers waited for an opportunity to strike out on a new mission of seizing power. The opposition agitation gave Zia and his friends that opportunity.
The coup was not only a removal of the Bhutto government but an assault on Pakistan’s constitution. It was a document that had been adopted by the national assembly in 1973 after long and careful study by the ruling Pakistan People’s Party and the opposition. Given the disturbing earlier history of constitution-making in the country, in 1956 and 1962, the 1973 constitution was certainly a credible document upon which democratic politics would be conducted in Pakistan. The Zia coup put paid to that possibility.
Pakistan’s coup makers have all made immense contributions to the slow decline of the state. Field Marshal Ayub Khan presided over a decade-long period of disparity governing relations between East and West Pakistan; General Yahya Khan repudiated the results of the 1970 elections and had the army go on a genocidal rampage in a soon-to-be Bangladesh. After Zia, General Pervez Musharraf felt no qualms in turfing out the elected government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in 1999. The consequence of all these coups is today evident in Pakistan, with the military arrogating to itself the right to form and dismiss governments in the country.
It is the deep state or the establishment, as the army’s dominance has come to be known, that is the political reality in Pakistan today. The process was certainly not inaugurated by Zia, but he amplified the role of the army through his authoritarian rule. And it began with ensuring that Bhutto, the very man who had him supersede six other generals in order to take over as army chief of staff from General Tikka Khan, was put to death in what would come to be known as a judicial murder. The appeals to Zia from global leaders for clemency for Bhutto went unheeded. The general had already made it known that the deposed prime minister had no chance of survival. ‘I shall hang the bastard’, is what he stated publicly. Bhutto was marched to the gallows on 4 April 1979.
It was not just hypocrisy which underpinned the Zia character. His was a personality built on lies, cunning and subterfuge. On seizing power, he promised new elections within ninety days. The ninety days stretched to eleven years. In all that time, Zia vigorously did all he could to push Pakistan into a state of religious bigotry. He attempted to impose Sharia-based rule on the country, calling it Nizam-e-Mustafa. He was unable to spell out the details of his plan. At one point, he organised a set of curious non-party elections he thought was what Pakistanis needed. He appointed Mohammad Khan Junejo, whose political experience had been limited to being a provincial minister in Ayub-era Pakistan, as prime minister. When Junejo began flexing his muscles, Zia dismissed him.
Pakistan under Ziaul Haq was a state systematically pushed into medievalism. Restrictions on movies and music were asphyxiating. Expecting loyalty, as all dictators do, from an entire nation for every silly thing they do, Zia was shocked that journalists like Salamat Ali and poets like Ibrahim Jalees were not willing to put up with his nonsense. He ordered Ali be humiliated in public with lashes administered by the regime. And these lashes became a hideous spectacle in the years he kept Pakistan in his murderous grip. And Habib Jalib, whose penchant for rebellion against dictatorship went back to the Ayub and Yahya days, would not let Zia off the hook. The sarcasm in his poetry infuriated Zia, whose response was to keep the poet in prison lock-up.
The Ziaul Haq era was noted for its misogyny. The Hudood Ordinances were a patent humiliation of women, seeing that they were based on such egregious ideas as the rape of a woman needing to be verified by four witnesses. That was absurdity at its extreme, for no rapist or raped woman ever could conceive of a situation where such a crime could be committed in the physical presence of witnesses. Zia’s rule meant women newscasters pulling the scarf over their heads on television. It meant obscene restrictions on theatre and cinema, to a point where creativity became a casualty of dictatorial fiat.
The coup d’etat of July 5, 1977 pushed Pakistan into wrong-headed foreign policy. Having been ostracised by the Carter administration over his human rights record, Zia quickly bounced back into American affections once the Soviet Union sent its soldiers into Afghanistan in late 1979. In the Reagan years, Zia and his American allies cheerfully pumped arms and money to the Mujahideen in its armed struggle against Soviet occupation. It was a time when Afghan refugees, in droves, made their way to Pakistan. The refugee problem persists, more than three decades after Zia perished in the C-130 crash in Bahawalpur.
Islamization and deepening militarization under Ziaul Haq were to cast dark shadows over Pakistan. The people of Pakistan, as also their political classes, have not quite been able to break free of Zia’s dark legacy. No one might recall Zia or pay tribute to his memory, but the ramifications of the grave damage he did to Pakistan are yet being felt.
The July 5, 1977 coup in Pakistan is a reminder for people in fledgling or weak democracies of how men of the Ziaul Haq mould remain busy in thoughts of undermining people’s democratic aspirations. The sinister tales of dictatorship must not be forgotten.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is Consultant Editor, Dhaka Tribune.