Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak

Pakistan’s Unholy Alliance
system, overseen by the generals. By creating a counterbalance in the
form of the IDA, the generals constrained the new government of a
political party that had led the resistance against military hegemony
for ten years. 24
The military-sponsored alliance comprised a mix of traditional
power brokers, religious parties and politicians who had emerged on
the scene during the 1980s under military patronage. General Zia’s
regime, needing a measure of legitimacy and a social base of support,
had co-opted segments of Punjab’s dominant socio-economic strata:
influential landlords, industrialists and emerging commercial groups.
The new leadership of the Pakistan Muslim League thus largely
consisted of politicians who owed their political rise to the military’s
backing. The other important components of the alliance were the
right-wing Islamic groups, including the Jamaat-i-Islami, which had
been involved in the Afghan jihad against the Soviet forces and the
separatist war in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
While the IDA, which carried General Zia’s legacy, could not achieve
any significant electoral gains in the 1988 elections in the three smaller
provinces, it did relatively well in Punjab and prevented the PPP from
winning an absolute majority in the National Assembly. The military
reluctantly handed over power to Benazir at the centre, but prevented
her party from forming the government in Punjab, the biggest and
most important of Pakistan’s four provinces, which was being ruled
by Nawaz Sharif. Political manipulation by the ISI helped Sharif retain
power in the province with the support of independent members.
Benazir Bhutto’s assumption of power, touted at the time as the
dawn of a new democratic era, was in fact a transition from direct to
indirect military rule. The formal restoration of civilian rule in 1988 did
not reduce the ISI’s clout. A return to the barracks did not mean that the
military’s structure of control and manipulation had been dismantled.
The ISI still kept a close watch on civilian rulers. The strains in civil
and military relationships remained the biggest obstacle to democracy
taking root in Pakistan. The Chief of Army Staff remained the power
behind the scenes in alliance with the new President, Ghulam Ishaq
Khan, who held sweeping powers under the Eighth Amendment in
the constitution introduced by General Zia.
For the army, the new political situation offered power without
responsibility. The military continued to oversee Pakistan’s policies
on Afghanistan and India, managing relations with the USA and
controlling the country’s nuclear weapons programme. The army high