After being threatened with seven years in prison under Pakistan's Official Secrets Act, early 2003, Dr. Chaudry Abdul Majid, PAEC's chief engineer, admitted that he met with bin Laden and other al-Qaida officials on a regular basis to provide technical assistance for the construction and care of its nuclear weapons. The plan called for the detonation of seven tactical nuclear devices in seven US cities at the same time, details Paul Williams, in “Al Qaeda Connection: International Terrorism, Organized Crime, And the Coming Apocalypse.” Williams comments about Pakistan following the latest media attention to Islamism in Pakistan.

Pakistan's Islamists made a strong showing during parliamentary polls held in October 2002, when they secured 11.1 percent of the popular vote and 20 percent of the seats in the lower house of Parliament. Since then, they have pressed for Taliban-style Islamization in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) bordering Afghanistan, where they control the provincial administration. Pakistan's military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, has made repeated pronouncements to reassure the world of his intention to radically alter Pakistan's policy direction away from its recent Islamist and jihadi past. In a major policy speech on January 12, 2002, Musharraf announced measures to limit the influence of Islamic militants at home, including those previously described by him as "Kashmiri freedom fighters." "No organizations will be able to carry out terrorism on the pretext of Kashmir," he declared. "Whoever is involved with such acts in the future will be dealt with strongly whether they come from inside or outside the country." (See January 12, 2002: www.pak.gov.pk/President_ Addresses/ presidential addresses index.htm.)

Musharraf's supporters described his speech as revolutionary and his address caused a rally on the Pakistani stock market. ("Pakistani Stocks Rise 2.4% on Musharraf's Speech," Agence France-Presse, January 14, 2002.) Pakistanis tired of years of religious and sectarian violence agreed with Musharraf's statement that "Violence and terrorism have been going on for years and we are weary and sick of this Kalashnikov culture ... The day of reckoning has come." However the Musharraf government remained tolerant of Afghanistan's Taliban regime, hoping to use them in resuscitating Takistan's influence in Afghanistan in case the U.S.-installed regime of President Hamid Karzai falters.

This duality in Pakistani policy is a structural problem, and Islamist groups have been sponsored and supported by the state machinery at different times to influence domestic politics and support the military's political dominance. In the South Asian region, the Islamists have been allies in the Pakistan military's efforts to seek strategic depth in Afghanistan and to put pressure on India for negotiations over the future of Kashmir. Relations between ideologically motivated clients and their state patrons are not always smooth, which partly explains the inability of Pakistan's generals to completely control the Islamists in the post-9/11 phase.

This political commitment to an ideological state gradually evolved especially during and after the Bangladesh war of 1971, when the Pakistani military used Islamist idiom and the help of Islamist groups to keep secular leaders who were supported by and elected by the majority Bengali-speaking population out of power.

Initially Muslims called for full participation in the Indian nationalist movement led by the Indian National Congress of Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, but soon felt that Muslims had a spatial identity that would be erased over time by ethnic and territorial' nationalism centered primarily on the Hindu majority in India.

Coalescing in the All-India Muslim League and led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Muslim nationalists asserted that India's Muslims constituted a nation separate from non-Muslim Indians and subsequently demanded a separate homeland in areas with a Muslim majority. British India's Muslim-majority provinces lay in its northwest and northeast, leading to Pakistan comprising two wings separated by India until the eastern wing became the new state of Bangladesh in December 1971. Pakistan's creation represented the acceptance of the two-nation theory, which had been periodically articulated long before the formal demand for recognition of a Muslim nation in 1940 but had never been fully explained in terms of how it would be bag pied.

Although Pakistan was intended to save South Asia's Muslims from being a permanent minority, it never became the homeland of all South Asia's Muslims. One-third of the Indian subcontinent's Muslims remained behind as a minority in Hindu-dominated India even after partition in 1947. The other two-thirds now lives in two separate countries, Pakistan and Bangladesh, confirming the doubts expressed before independence about the practicality of the two-nation theory. Although the Muslim League claimed to speak for the majority of Indian Muslims, its strongest support and most of its national leadership came from regions where Muslims were in a minority. (Ian Talbot, Pakistan: A Modern History, 1998, pp. 66-94.)

Especially leaders of the Muslim League had given little thought to, how to run a new country. One possible explanation for this lack is that the demand for Pakistan was devised for bargaining purposes to gain political leverage for Muslims. (Dennis Kux, The United States and Pakistan, 1947-2000 Disenchanted Allies, 2001, p. 7)

Several Muslim leaders, proposed schemes for power sharing between the religious majority and minorities in independent India. They claimed that India's Muslims constituted a separate nation by virtue of their unique history and cultural differences with the Hindu majority. This claim to nationhood, however, was not necessarily a claim to separate statehood. A separate Muslim nation could have remained part of a federal or confederal India under special power sharing arrangements and that may have been the original intention of the Muslim League leadership.

According to this argument, the refusal of the Indian National Congress to contemplate such power-sharing and to accept the notion of a multination state led inadvertently to partition and the creation of a sovereign Pakistan.While seeking recognition of a separate Muslim nation, Pakistan’s first President Jinnah, had managed to pull together various elements of Muslim leadership in India, creating communal unity through ambiguity about the final goal. He was "using the demand for Pakistan to negotiate a new constitutional arrangement in which Muslims would have an equal share of power" once the British left the subcontinent. (Ayesha Jalal, The State of Martial Rule, Cambridge University Press, 1990, p. 16.)

Once the principle of Muslim provinces being grouped to form a separate state was conceded, Jinnah was prepared to negotiate whether that state would seek a confederation with the non-Muslim provinces, namely Hindustan, on the basis of equalit . at the all-India level, or whether, as a sovereign state, it would make treaty arrangements with the rest of India. If they were to play their role in the making of India's constitutional future, Jinnah and the Muslim League had to prove their support in the Muslim-majority provinces. Such support could not have been won by too precise a political programme since the interests of Muslims in one part of India did not suit Muslims in others ... Jinnah could not afford to wreck the existing structure of Muslim politics, especially since he had nothing plbysible to replace it with. This is where religion came to the rescue .Yet Jinnah's resort to religion was not an ideology to which he was ever committed or even a device to use against rival communities; it was simply a way of giving a semblance of unity and solidity to his divided Muslim constituents. Jinnah needed a demand that was specifically ambiguous and imprecise to command general support, something specifically Muslim though unspecific in every other respect. The intentionally obscure cry for a "Pakistan" was contrived to meet this requirement. Jinnah could not afford to state precisely what the demand for "Pakistan" was intended to accomplish. If the demand was to enjoy support from Muslims in the minority provinces it had to be couched in uncompromisingly communal terms. But the communal slant to the demand cut against the grain of politics in the Muslim provinces, particularly the Punjab and Bengal, where Muslim domination over undivided territories depended upon keeping fences mended with members of other communities. The Muslim League had not contemplated a Pakistan that did not include all of Punjab and Bengal.

Thus one result of Jinnah's elaborate strategy was that India's Muslims demanded Pakistan without really knowing the results of that demand. Once Jinnah's demand for recognition of Muslim nationhood had been characterized as a demand for India's division, Jinnah's critics pointed out that any division of India along communal lines would inevitably have to include a division of the two major provinces, Punjab and Bengal, along similar lines. (Jalal, The State of Martial Rule, 1990, p. 18.)

A few months before independence, Khwaja Nazimuddin, who later became Pakistan's second governor general as well as its second prime minister, candidly told a British governor that he did not know "what Pakistan means and that nobody in the Muslim League knew." (British India Library, "Fortnightly Report to the Viceroy by Sir Evan Jenkins,Governor of Punjab, February 1947," Records of the Political and Secret Department: LIP & 1/5/250, p. 379.)

What may have been an effort to seek recognition for Muslims as a nation in minority moved millions of Indian Muslims into expecting a separate country, the running of which Muslim leaders had made no preparations for. By May 1947, Jinnah was telling a foreign visitor that "even if 'driven into the Sind desert,' he would insist on a sovereign state." (Kux, United States and Pakistan, 1947-2000, p. 13.)

The British agreement to concede the demand for Pakistan was based partly on the outcome of the 1945-1946 elections for a Constituent Assembly and various provincial assemblies. The elections were organized on the basis of limited franchise and separate electorates for various religious communities, a practice in vogue in India since 1909. The Muslim League won 75 percent of the Muslim vote and all the Muslim seats in the constituent assembly. Only 15 percent of the population had the right to vote on the basis of literacy, property, income, and combatant status. (Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Elections in Pakistan: A Brief History; www.hrcpelectoralwatch.org/his_persp.cfm.)

To shore up Muslim support, the Muslim League appealed to religious and communal sentiment. Although Jinnah-by then known as Quaid-i-Azam and most of his principal deputies in the campaign for Pakistan were secular individuals, the Muslim League's 1945-1946 election campaign was based almost entirely on Islamic rhetoric. The Muslim League responded by rolling out its own theologians. The result was the almost total identification of Pakistan with Islam in the course of the campaign. The rural Muslim masses were encouraged to develop "a vague feeling that they would all become better Muslims once a Muslim state was established." (Khalid bin Sayeed, Pakistan,'The Formative Phase, Oxford University Press, 1968, p. 198.)

Having decided to end colonial rule over India, the British conceded the demand for Pakistan by agreeing to divide India as well as the provinces of Punjab and Bengal. The Pakistan that was created was communally more homogenous but economically and administratively a backwater. Communal riots involving Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs resulted in massive migrations from Pakistan to India and vice versa, although no such shifts of population had b en envisaged by Pakistan's founders.

The communal basis of partition, coupled with the religious frenzy generated by it, made religion more central to the new state of Pakistan than Jinnah may have originally envisaged. The circumstances of the Muslim League's apparent success in the 1946 elections foreshadowed the difficulties confronting Pakistan's leaders once the new country was created. The campaign for Pakistan had, in its final stages, become a religious movement even though its leaders initiated it as a formula for resolving post-independence constitutional problems. This created confusion about Pakistan's raison d'être, which Pakistan's leadership has attempted to resolve through a state ideology.

The partition plan of 3 June 1947 gave only seventy-two days for transition to independence. Within this brief period, three provinces had to be divided, referendums organized, civil and armed services bifurcated, and assets apportioned. The telescoped timetable created seemingly impossible problems for Pakistan, which, unlike India, inherited neither a capital nor government nor the financial resources to establish and equip the administrative, economic and military institutions of the new state. Even more daunting problems arose in the wake of the partition. Communal rioting led to the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. A tidal wave of millions of refugees entered Pakistan, confronting the new state with an awesome burden of rehabilitation. (Abdus Sâttar, "Fifty Years of the Kashmir Dispute: The Diplomatic Aspect," in Suroosh Irfani, ed., Fifty Years of the Kashmir Dispute, University of Azad Jammu and Kashmir,1997, pp. 11-12.)

Getting the new state on its feet economically presented one of the major challenges. Pakistan had virtually no industry, and the major markets for its agricultural products were in India. Even the monetary assets of the Pakistan government were held by the Reserve Bank of India and, given the atmosphere of hostility between partisans of the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League, the division and transfer of assets was by no means a smooth process. Pakistan's earliest government officials feared the "economic strangulation" of their new country and saw a Hindu design to force Pakistan to its knees. (Jalal, State of Martial Rule, p. 36, Rupees is abbreviated Rs.)

In fact the greatest support for Pakistan had come from Muslims living in regions that did not become part of the new state especially in India. Now that it was a these became obstacles and Pakistan's first constitution was not promulgated until 1956, and within two years it was abrogated through a military coup d'état.

Jinnah's successors chose to patch over domestic differences in the independent country the same way that Muslim unity had been forged during the pre-independence phase. They defined Pakistani national identity through religious symbolism and carried forward the hostilities between the Indian National Congress and the All-India Muslim League by building India-Pakistan rivalry. This meant that protecting Pakistan's nationhood by military means took priority, conferring a special status upon the national security apparatus. Demanding ethnic rights or provincial autonomy, seeking friendly ties with India, and advocating a secular constitution fell under that category of subversion. Ayesha Jalal points out:

If defense against India provided added impetus for the consolidation of state authority in Pakistan, paradoxically enough, it also served to distort the balance of relations between the newly formed center and the provinces. Nothing stood in the way of the reincorporation of the Pakistan areas into the Indian union except the notion of a central government whose structures of authority lacked both muscle and the necessary bottom. So in Pakistan's case defense against India was in part a defense against internal threats to central authority. This is why a preoccupation with affording the defense establishment-not unusual for a newly created state assumed obsessive dimensions in the first few years of Pakistan's existence. An insecure central leadership of a state carved out of a continuing sovereign entity found it convenient to perceive all internal political opposition as a threat to the security of the state. In the process the very important distinction between internal and external security threats was all but blurred. (Jalal, State of Martial Rule, p. 49.)

Hostility to India, and the Urdu language were identified as the cornerstones of this new national ideology.

The belief that India represented an existential threat to Pakistan, led to maintaining a large military, which in turn helped the military assert its dominance in the life of the country. The United States on the other hand had to be persuaded of the value of Pakistan's strategic location and its anticommunist credentials to be able to secure weapons, which were needed to confront the Indians. During its history, the greatest threats to Pakistan's central authority came from groups seeking regional autonomy, ethnic rights, or political inclusion; however, suee4ssive Pakistani governments linked these threats to either an Indian-inspired plan to weaken Pakistan or "communists," even though communist influence in Pakistan was minuscule.

Although Muslim governments were initially unsympathetic to Pakistan's pan-Islamic aspirations, soon controversial figures such as the pro-Nazi former grand mufti of Palestine, Al-Haj Amin al-Husseini, and leaders of Islamist political movements like the Arab Muslim Brotherhood became frequent visitors to the country.

During Pakistan's formative years, however, pan-Islamism was more important for Pakistan's efforts to consolidate its national identity than as the mainstay of its foreign policy. The strongest objections to the Islamic ideological paradigm being imposed on the new state came from Pakistan's eastern wing. Bengali-speaking Muslims from what is now Bangladesh, hoping their more numerous population would guarantee them at least an equal say in running a new country's affairs, had supported the idea of Pakistan, but West Pakistani soldiers, politicians, and civil servants dominated Pakistan's government. Within a year of independence, Bengalis in East Pakistan were rioting in the streets, demanding recognition of their language, Bengali, as a national language. Soon thereafter, in the western wing of the country, ethnic Sindhis, Pashtuns (also known as Pathans), and Balochis also complained about the domination of the civil services and the military's officer corps by ethnic Punjabis and Urdu-speaking migrants from northern India.

The experience of language riots by Bengalis in East Pakistan had pointed out the difficulty of subsuming ethnic identities into a new Pakistani identity. Making being Pakistani synonymous with being a good Muslim thus was considered the more attainable goal. Given the reality that Islam meant different things to different people, however, institutions of state had to control the process of building the new nation.

The Pakistani government also took advantage of religious groups, as was the case during the anti-Ahmadi riots in Lahore in 1953. The Ahmadis (also known as Qadianis or Ahmadiyyas) assert that they are Muslims, follow the teachings of a nineteenth century messiah, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (whom they consider a prophet), and do not recognize the obligation of jihad. Orthodox Muslims had always considered Ahmadis a non-Islamic cult because of their refusal to acknowledge that Muhammad was the final prophet of God. After the 1951 Punjab elections, Punjab's chief minister, a member of the Muslim League, used the links his provincial secret service had with Islamist groups to foment popular agitation calling for legislation that would declare the Ahmadis non-Muslims for legal purposes.

The anti-Ahmadi riots brought into the limelight Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi and his Jamaat-e-Islami (Islamic Society or Islamic Party). Founded in 1941, the Jamaat-e-Islami was different from other religious groups. It was neither sectarian nor an association of theologians of a particular Islamic school. The Jamaat-e-Islami was an Islamist party similar to the Arab Muslim Brotherhood. (See: modernistreligions.html)

Maulana Maududi, its founder, aimed his calls for Islamic revival at middle-class professionals and state employees rather than traditional mullahs. (See Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, Mawdudi and the Making of Islamic Revivalism, Oxford University Press, 1996.)

Muslim League leaders saw Maulana Maududi as a rival claimant for popular support. However the Jamaat-e-Islami benefited from close ties with Muslim League leaders, such as Punjab chief minister Nawab Iftikhar Mamdot, who were eager to enlist the support of Islamic groups such as the Jamaat.

In December 1947, a group of students inspired by Maulana Maududi's writings formed the Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba (Islamic Students Society, also known as Jamaat or by its initials, IJT). Although essentially the student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami, the IJT was greatly influenced by the methods of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which were more radical than the constitutional gradualism advocated by Jamaat-e-Islami. (Musa Khan Jalalzai, Sectarian and Religio-Political Terrorism in Pakistan, Lahore, 1993, pp. 255-56.)

The IJT became involved in student politics, which enabled it to act as a big tent for center-right students opposed to Marxist student groups on Pakistan's college campuses. IJT members clashed violently with rival, mostly leftwing, student groups and engaged in agitation on issues affecting students. In addition to providing a large cadre for recruitment for the Jamaat-e-Islami, the IJT also created a wide circle of "fellow travelers" in Pakistan's educational system, civil services, and the military's officer corps. As IJT members graduated to membership in the parent organization, Jamaat-e-Islami became more overtly political; it no longer stuck to a single modus operandi and was now willing to explore all possible avenues toward expanding its influence and ideology.

Maulana Maududi outlined a nine-point agenda for Islamic revival. Some of the points, such as the need to "break the power of un-Islam and enable Islam to take hold of life as a whole" were not particularly appealing to the ruling elite. Others points, such as his ideas for intellectual revolution and defense of Islam, could be useful in building an Islamic national identity for Pakistan. Maulana Maududi defined intellectual revolution as an effort to "shape the ideas, beliefs and moral viewpoints of the people into the Islamic mould, reform the system of education and revive the Islamic sciences and attitudes in general." (S. Abul Ala Maududi, A Short History of the Revivalist Movement in Islam, Lahore, 1963 p. 26.)

Maulana Maududi was initially also critical of Pakistan's alliance with the United States, but he gradually tempered his criticism and focused more on combating communism.

On the other hand the dominant Indian narrative of independence demonized Jinnah and spoke of Pakistan's creation as a tragedy. Indian intellectuals and officials routinely predicted that India and Pakistan would become one nation again. For example the sister of India's Prime Minister Nehru , Vijay Lakshmi Pandit ,who served as Indian ambassador to the United States told an American newspaper in 1951, "We agreed to partition because failure to do so would have perpetuated foreign rule." (Khan, United Nations and Kashmir, p. 62.)

Pakistanis were concerned about the prospect of India "undoing" the partition and the attitude of India's post-independence elite, which continued to speak in terms of the inevitability of "reunification," did not help in allaying Pakistani fears. Among the contentious issues born out of the partition was that of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. During the Raj, 562 princely states had retained varying degrees of administrative independence through treaties with Britain concluded during the process of colonial penetration.  

At the time of partition, the British asked the rulers of these states to choose between India and Pakistan, taking into consideration geographical contiguity and the wishes of their subjects.

Kashmir's contiguity with Pakistan and its Muslim majority created the expectation of its inclusion in the new Muslim country. The state's ruler at the time of partition, Maharajah Hari Singh, sought to retain independence even though a segment of his Muslim subjects wanted Kashmir to become part of Pakistan .57 It has been argued that Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had thought through a grand strategy for the princely states, including a design to ensure the inclusion of Jammu and Kashmir in the independent Indian state. All Pakistani authors on the subject emphasize the existence of support for the All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference led by Yusuf Shah and Ghulam Abbas. Sumit Ganguly, in Conflict Unending: India-Pakistan Tensions since 1947 (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2001), also refers to Kashmiri leader Shaikh Abdullah while recognizing his limited support in some areas. As earlier mentioned, Stanley Wolpert in “Shameful Flight” implicates the last British viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, and members of his staff.

Under the partition plan, the province of Punjab was to be divided between India and Pakistan on grounds of contiguity and majority of religious affiliation. Two Muslim-majority s (subdivisions) in Gurdaspur district were awarded to India by the Boundary Commission led by British judge Sir Cyril Radcliffe. This provided overland access to Kashmir from India. Had the map of the Punjab been drawn differently, Kashmir could have ended up with road access only to Pakistan and a natural mountainous frontier with India. This would have precluded any effective Indian claim on the princely state. Pakistan's first move in Kashmir was an unconventional war, begun with the assumption that the Kashmiri people would support the invading (unstructured) army, and that the maharajah's forces would be easily subdued. Little, if any, thought had been given to the prospect of failure or to what might happen if the Indian army got involved in forestalling a Pakistani fait accompli against the Kashmiri maharajah.

In fact Maharajah Hari Singh sought Indian military help and signed the instrument of accession with India to secure military assistance. Pakistan on the other hand continues to dispute Hari Singh's accession, arguing that it was not the result of a voluntary decision and that he was not competent to accede to India because he had signed a standstill agreement with Pakistan earlier. (See Prem Shanker Jha, Kashmir, 1947: Rival Versions of History, New York, 1996)

The Indian army secured the capital, Srinagar, and established control over the Kashmir valley and most parts of Jammu and Ladakh before a cease-fire was declared and United Nations (UN) peacekeeping troops arrived. The critical consequence of the 1947-1948 war and the subsequent cease-fire was that it conferred upon India the position of a status quo power, holding most of the population and significant territory of Jammu and Kashmir, including its capital, Srinagar.

Liaquat Ali Khan, Jinnah's anointed successor and Pakistan's first prime minister, next explained the three fundamental interests that would define Pakistan's external relations: "integrity of Pakistan, Islamic culture and the need for economic development." Maintaining Pakistan's integrity was a euphemism for ensuring adequate defense and militariremained Pakistan's main military concern, the first Pakistani prime minister went along with the theme of fighting the communist menace. He supported U.S. actions in Korea, which he described as being aimed at "saving Asia from the dangers of world communism." (Liaquat Ali Khan, Pakistan, the Heart of Asia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950), p. 28.)

In 1951, General Ayub Khan became the first Pakistani commander in chief of Pakistan's army, marking the indigenization of the military and ending the transition role of British officers. In the same year, Liaquat Ali Khan was assassinated.

The U.S. administration, led by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, sought to reduce U.S. involvement in military operations of the type undertaken in Korea by building the military capability of frontline states such as Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, and Iraq. This plan of building a northern tier of defense against Soviet expansion required Pakistan's participation.

In May 1950, Liaquat Ali Khan visited Washington at the invitation of President Harry Truman and was warmly received. During the visit he declared Pakistan's alignment with the United States." Although India remained Pakistan's main military concern, the first Pakistani prime minister went along with the theme of fighting the communist menace. He supported U.S. actions in Korea, which he described as being aimed at "saving Asia from the dangers of world communism. " U.S. economic aid started flowing to Pakistan soon after Liaquat's trip to Washington. Liaquat balanced his generally pro-West policy with a refusal to align Pakistan completely with the United States "unless Washington guaranteed Pakistan's security against India." (Denis Kux, United States and Pakistan, 1947-2000, p. 38.)

Pakistan concluded a joint defense treaty with the United States in 1954 and became part of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). From Pakistan's point of view, the relationship was one of quid pro quo. Pakistan would get U.S. arms as well as substantial aid to cover the costs of economic development. The United States would secure Pakistan's membership in alliances it considered necessary. Pakistan subsequently also became part of the Baghdad Pact and the Central Treaty Organization (CENTQ). The deal ensured the resources needed to protect the integrity of Pakistan and the need for economic development-two of the three fundamental national interests identified by Liaquat Ali Khan.

The third element-Islamic ideology-remained in the picture, but its priority was lowered for the moment. Appeals to Islamic sentiment against godless communism fit in well with Pakistan's alliance with the United States; however, as Liaquat had himself realized, while dealing with Americans it was not expedient to go beyond mild references to Islamic culture and the importance of religious roots. The United States, in a policy statement, had made it clear that "[a]part from Communism, the other main threat to American interests in Pakistan was from 'reactionary groups of landholders and uneducated religious leaders' who were opposed to the 'present Western-minded government' and 'favor[ed] a return to primitive Islamic principles." (U.S. Department of State policy statement on Pakistan, July 1, 1951, cited in Jalal, State of Martial Rule, p. 127.)

On the other hand, it had to contend with opposition from more eager Islamists, who saw a close relationship with the United States as impeding Pakistan's ideological growth. At home, Pakistan's leaders dealt with the problem partly by portraying the alliance with the United States in terms of ensuring Pakistani security vis-à-vis India and acquiring Kashmir although, in fact, Washington had given no clear guarantee about Kashmir. In their eagerness to seek alliance with the United States, Pakistani officials had exaggerated their commitment to fighting communism and had even pledged that U.S. military aid would not be used against India. (Kux, United States and Pakistan, 1947-2000, p. 55.)

The United States, after getting Pakistan's participation in SEATO and CENTO, fulfilled Pakistan's demand for military equipment and economic aid. In the quest for U.S. support, Ayub Khan had gone so far as telling a U.S. official, "Our army can be your army if you want, requesting a maximum price " (Tahir-Kheli, United States and Pakistan, p. 4.)

Because a full agreement on this could not be made the United States sought as part of the strategy for the containment of communism, it permitted U-2 reconnaissance flights and listening posts that were aimed at the Soviet Union. The United States had to be content with looking upon its investment in Pakistan as one that would bear fruit only over time' Ayub Khan's bargaining for greater military and economic assistance became the norm for his successors. General Zia ul-Haq drove a similarly hard bargain when the United States sought to expand an anticommunist insurgency in Afghanistan after the 1979 Soviet invasion of that country. General Musharraf, too, followed Ayub Khan in' seeking the right price for cooperation in the war against terrorism after September 11, 2001. While the Pakistanis bargained well for military and economic assistance, the United States has generally had to be modest in its ambitions about what it could hope to achieve. Pakistan's real or projected limitations and compulsions have repeatedly been cited during the execution stage of-deals based on a quid pro quo, limiting the fulfillment of U.S. expectations.

The bureaucrats, backed by the military, now attempted to reduce the domestic role of religion by ignoring, for example, calls for Sharia rule. -But religious sentiment continued to be exploited in responding to what came to be described as the Indian threat. The civil-military complex adapted the ideology of Pakistan to mean demonization of India's Brahmin Hinduism and a zealous hostility toward India. Domestic political groups demanding provincial autonomy or ethnic rights were invariably accused of advancing an Indian agenda to dismember or weaken Pakistan.

Among Ayub Khan's reforms were the consolidation of state control over education and the media. At this time, the study of Islam or "Islamiyat" began receiving considerable emphasis. (A. H. Nayyar and Ahmad Salim, The Subtle Subz ersion: The State of Curricula and Textbooks in Pakistan (Islamabad: Sustainable Development Policy Institute, 2003, p. 3.)

The study of history, geography, and civics at primary and secondary school levels was collapsed into a single subject called social studies. Curricula and textbooks were standardized, presenting a version of history that linked Pakistan's emergence to Islam's arrival in the subcontinent iuAead of it being the outcome of a dispute over the constitution of postcolonial India. The history of Islam was pre¬sented, not as the history of a religion or a civilization, but as a prelude to Pakistan's creation. Muslim conquerors were glorified, Hindu-Muslim relations were painted as intrinsically hostile, and the ability of Pakistanis to manage democratic rule was questioned. Ayub Khan's revolution was characterized as an important step toward the consolidation of Pakistan. The field marshal's successors required the study of the same themes at undergraduate level as Pakistan studies and diluted the exaggerated praise of Ayub Khan, but they retained the contrived historical narrative and expanded the emphasis on Islam. The Ministry of Information and the Bureau of National Reconstruction ensured that a message similar to that taught in schools was available to adults through radio, television, films, magazines, books, and newspapers.

Contrary to widespread perception, Ayub Khan was not a secularist; neither was he averse to the notion of Pakistan having a state ideology. Being a straightforward soldier, he did not have time for an elaborate theory of the Islamic state such as the one proposed by Maududi. He simply wanted to do what he perceived was good for the state and declare it as Islamic.

Ayub Khan did not think highly of the ulema and spoke of their conflict with "the educated classes." He also did not like the complicated and mutually contradictory versions of religion offered by theologians and clearly opposed their role in governance. Ayub Khan wanted the state to exercise the function of religious interpretation and wanted an Islamic ideology that would help him in the "defense and security and development" and the "welding" of Pakistan's different races into a unified whole. Thus Islam became a nation-building tool; See Bringing Back the Local Past: Who Made Pakistan? P.1, and P.2.

His distance from the ulema, and his careful choice of words abroad helped create his image as a latter day Atatürk or a Muslim de Gaulle; however, Ayub Khan moved Pakistan further along the road of a state-sponsored ideology. The military leadership, assuming that the military would remain in control, saw no threat to the state from the Islamists.

At one point, Ayub Khan banned the Jamaat-e-Islami under a law regulating political parties, but the Supreme Court forced him to withdraw the ban. The Jamaat and some officials in Ayub Khan's regime cooperated with each other, however, so that the Jamaat would use its Islamist contacts in Arab countries over the Kashmir issue.

When Ayub Khan held the first indirect presidential election under this constitution in January 1965, the opposition parties nominated Fatima Jinnah, the sister of Pakistan's founder, as their joint candidate. Among the various political strategies used by Ayub Khan's Interior Ministry (which controlled the domestic intelligence service) in that campaign was a fatwa declaring that Islam did not allow a woman to be head of state. Maududi, committed to Fatima Jinnah's candidacy, said a woman could be head of an Islamic state but it was not desirable. (See Husain Haqqani, Pakistan Between Mosque and Military, 2005.)

In the ensuing controversy, the government persuaded pr bribed many clerics. One pro-Ayub holy man, Pir Sahib Dewal Sharif, claimed that in the course of meditation, the Almighty had favored him with a communication which indicated divine displeasure with the Combined Opposition Parties. The episode undermined Ayub Khan's original plan of keeping clerics at a distance. (Herbert Feldman, From Crisis to Crisis: Pakistan 1962-1969, Oxford University Press, 1972, p. 66.)

Next Ayub Khan started warming up to China just as the Kennedy-Johnson administration sought to build closer ties with India. In a Foreign Affairs piece, "Pakistan-American Alliance-Stresses and Strains," published in January 1964, the Pakistani leader explained that the priority for Pakistan was to ensure its security against India, and he voiced the Pakistani grievance that the United States was not helping on that front. (Herbert Feldman, From Crisis to Crisis, p. 123.)

The problem of Pakistanis and Americans having different priorities in their alliance came to a head at the time of the Sino-Indian border war of 1962. During that war, the United States provided military assistance to India. Pakistan's view was that supply of U.S. arms to India should be linked to a Kashmir settlement; otherwise India would use U.S. weapons against Pakistan, a U.S. ally. Pakistan also turned down U.S. suggetions that Pakistan mend fences with India and back away from an entente with the People's Republic of China. Pakistan reached an agreement on demarcating its border with the Chinese, including territory that was formally part of the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir. It also became the first noncommunist country to begin commercial flights to the People's Republic.
Pakistan's leaders had been clear from the beginning that they were allying with the United States only to offset the disadvantages in resources Pakistan had inherited at the time of partition and that they not completely share the U.S. worldview.

Following the 1964 death of India's long-serving prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, at a time of Muslim unrest in the Indian-controlled parts of Kashmir, infiltrators were sent into Kashmir in August 1965. On September 6, India retaliated by widening the war along Pakistan's international border. The United States suspended supplies of arms to both India and Pakistan, causing disappointment in Pakistan because of the country's greater dependence on U.S. weapons, and the war ended in a stalemate. The 1965 war with India had several consequences, each important for Pakistan's future. First, it bred anti-Americanism among Pakistanis on the basis of the notion that the United States had not come to Pakistan's aid despite being its ally. Second, it linked the Pakistani military closer to an Islamist ideology. Religious symbolism and calls to jihad were used to build the morale of soldiers and the people. Third, it widened the gulf between East and West Pakistan as Bengalis felt that the military strategy of Ayub Khan had left them completely unprotected. Fourth, it weakened Ayub Khan, who lost the confidence of the United States by going to war with India and of his own people by his being unable to score a definitive victory against India.

The Pakistani people were told by the state that they had been victims of aggression and that the aggression had been repelled With the help of God. The propagation of this view needed the help of religious leaders and groups. The traditional ulema and Islamists used the environment of jihad to advance their own agenda, and one agenda item was that they should be accepted as custodians of Pakistan's ideology and identity.

The war ended within seventeen days with a UN-sponsored ceasefire, but was far from decisive. Official propaganda convinced the people of Pakistan that their military had won the war. Pakistan had occupied 1,600 square miles of Indian territory, 1,300 of it in the desert, while India secured 350 square miles of Pakistani real estate. The Pakistani land occupied by the Indians was of greater strategic value, as it was located near the West Pakistani capital, Lahore, and the industrial city of Sialkot as well as in Kashmir. Moreover, although Pakistan had held its own against a larger army, it came out of the war a weakened nation. The U.S.-Pakistan relationship had lost its initial strength, Kashmir was still unsettled, and inattention from the central government was upsetting the Bengalis in East Pakistan more than ever. Domestic factors were also causing unrest in Sindh and Balochistan.

Neither Ayub Khan nor his deputies realized that it was time to move away from the ideological tripod. The belief persisted that Pakistan's success depended on an Islamic nationalism, confrontation with India, and external alliances to help the country acquire weapons and pay for development. Evidence to the contrary was either brushed aside or hidden from the Pakistani people.

Ayub Khan resigned as president in March 1969 after several months of violent demonstrations against his government. Instead of transferring power to the speaker of the National Assembly, a Bengali, as required by his own constitution of 1962, Ayub Khan however returned the country to martial law. The army chief, General Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan, became Pakistan's president and chief martial law administrator and ruled by decree, without a constitution.

Today although it may be difficult for U.S. and Pakistani policy makers to force an end to Pakistan's status as an Islamic ideological state, changes in the nature of the Pakistani state can gradually wean the country from Islamic extremism. Musharraf cannot. For many years military rule has fomented religious militancy in Pakistan. Under military leadership, Pakistan has defined its national objective as wresting Kashmir from India and, in recent years, establishing a client regime in Afghanistan. Unless Islamabad's objectives are redefined to focus on economic prosperity and popular participation in governance-which the military as an institution remains reluctant to do-the state will continue to turn to Islam as a national unifier.

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