Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq (12 August 1924 – 17 August 1988) was a Pakistani general who ruled Pakistan from his coup in 1977 until his death in an airplane crash in 1988. He served as the chief martial law administrator from 1977 to 1985, and as the president of Pakistan from 1978 until his death. Zia was also the chief of the army staff of the Pakistan Army from 1976. He remains Pakistan's longest-serving de-facto ruler to date, and his political ideology is known as Ziaism.
Educated at Delhi University, Zia saw action in World War II as a British Indian Army officer in Burma and Malaya, before opting for Pakistan in 1947 and fighting as a tank commander in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965. In 1970, he led a military training mission to Jordan, proving instrumental to defeating the Black September insurgency against King Hussein. Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto appointed Zia Chief of Army Staff in 1976. Following civil disorder after the controversial 1977 general election, Zia deposed Bhutto in a military coup and declared martial law on 5 July 1977. Bhutto was controversially tried by the Supreme Court and executed less than two years later, for authorising the murder of a political opponent.
Assuming the presidency in 1978, Zia played a major role in the Soviet-Afghan War. Backed by the United States and Saudi Arabia, Zia coordinated the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviet occupation throughout the 1980s. This culminated in the Soviet Union's withdrawal in 1989, but also led to the proliferation of millions of refugees, with heroin and weaponry into Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province. Zia also bolstered ties with China and the United States, and emphasised Pakistan's role in the Islamic world, while relations with India worsened amid the Siachen conflict and accusations that Pakistan was aiding the Khalistan movement. Domestically, Zia passed broad-ranging legislation as part of Pakistan's Islamization, curbed civil liberties, and heightened press censorship. He also escalated Pakistan's atomic bomb project, and instituted industrialisation and deregulation, helping Pakistan's economy become the fastest-growing in South Asia. Averaged over Zia's rule, GDP growth was the highest in the country's history.
After lifting martial law and holding non-partisan elections in 1985, Zia appointed Muhammad Khan Junejo Prime Minister but accumulated more presidential powers via the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution. After Junejo signed the Geneva Accords in 1988 against Zia's wishes, and called for an inquiry into the Ojhri Camp disaster, Zia dismissed Junejo's government and announced fresh elections in November 1988. He was killed along with several of his top military officials and two American diplomats in a mysterious plane crash near Bahawalpur on 17 August 1988.
Zia remains a polarising figure in Pakistan's history, credited for preventing wider Soviet incursions into the region and introducing an era of economic prosperity, but decried for weakening democratic institutions and passing laws encouraging religious intolerance. He is also cited for promoting the early political career of Nawaz Sharif, who would be elected Prime Minister three times.
Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq was born on 12 August 1924 in Jullundur, Punjab into a family belonging to the Arain tribe of Punjabis. His father, Muhammad Akbar Ali, worked in the Army General Headquarters in Delhi. Ali was noted for his religiousness which earned him the Muslim clerical title of maulvi. At an early age, Zia and his six siblings were taught the Qur'an.
After completing his initial education in Shimla, Zia attended Delhi's prestigious St. Stephen's College, an Anglican missionary school, for his bachelor's degree in history, from which he graduated with distinction in 1943. He was admitted to the Indian Military Academy at Dehradun, graduating in May 1945 among the last group of officers to be commissioned before the independence of India.
Zia was commissioned into the British Indian Army on 12 May 1943 after graduating from the Mhow Officer Training School. He was posted to the 13th Lancers, a cavalry unit equipped with tanks. During the Second World War, Zia participated in the Burma campaign of the Pacific War against the Imperial Japanese Army. Zia also participated in Indonesian National Revolution and the Battle of Surabaya.
Following the Partition of India in 1947, Zia was the escort officer for the last train of refugees to leave Babina, an armoured corps training centre in Uttar Pradesh, a difficult journey that took seven days, during which the passengers were under constant fire due to communal violence which broke out in the aftermath of the Partition.
After the partition, Zia joined the Pakistan Army, In September 1950, he joined the Guides Cavalry. He was trained in the United States from 1962–1964 at the United States Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. After that, he returned to take over as Directing Staff at Command and Staff College, Quetta. During the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, Zia is said to have been the Assistant Quartermaster of the 101st Infantry Brigade.. In 1969 he raised the 9th Armoured Brigade in Kharian as the first Brigade Commander of the unit; the brigade is currently stationed in Gujranwala under the 6th Armoured Division.
As a young soldier, Zia preferred prayers when "drinking, gambling, dancing and music were the way officers spent their free time."
Zia was stationed in Jordan from 1967 to 1970 as the head of a Pakistani training mission to Jordan. He later became involved as an advisor for the Jordanians during the Black September against the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Zia had been stationed in Amman for three years prior to Black September. During the events, according to CIA official Jack O'Connell, Zia was dispatched by Hussein north to assess Syria's military capabilities. The Pakistani commander reported back to Hussein, recommending the deployment of a Royal Jordanian Air Force squadron to the region. According to Pakistani journalist Raja Anwar, the mission may have been a violation of Zia's original assignment in Jordan by the Pakistani military, even though it helped Jordan repel the Syrian offensive. Hussein came to view Zia favourably, and later convinced Pakistani president Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to appoint him as Chief of Army Staff. O'Connell also said that Zia personally led Jordanian troops during the battles.
He was then promoted as lieutenant general and was appointed commander of the II Corps at Multan in 1975. On 1 March 1976, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto approved then-three star rank general Lieutenant General Zia to Chief of Army Staff and to be elevated to four-star rank.
At the time of his nomination as the successor to the outgoing chief of army staff, General Tikka Khan, the lieutenant generals in order of seniority were: Muhammad Shariff, Akbar Khan, Aftab Ahmed, Azmat Baksh Awan, Ibrahim Akram, Abdul Majeed Malik, Ghulam Jilani Khan, and Zia himself. Bhutto chose the most junior, superseding seven more senior lieutenant-generals. However, the senior most at that time, Lieutenant General Mohammad Shariff, though promoted to General, was made the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee.
Pakistani academic Husain Haqqani argues that Bhutto chose Zia ahead of many senior officers for ethnic and caste reasons, thinking that an Arain would not make an alliance with the predominantly Pashtun and Rajput military officers in order to overthrow him, and this is also the reason why he let Zia push for more Islam in the armed forces. Thus, Bhutto let him change the army's motto to Iman, Taqwa, Jihad fi sabilillah and let him offer books of Abul A'la Maududi, an Islamic scholar and critic of Bhutto, to his officers as prizes during various competitions, despite the strong ideological antagonism between Bhutto and Zia.
Bhutto began facing considerable criticism and increasing unpopularity as his term progressed; the alliance of socialists in Pakistan who had previously allied with Bhutto began to diminish as time progressed. Bhutto also targeted opposition leader Abdul Wali Khan and his party the National Awami Party (NAP). Despite the socialistic ideological similarity of the two parties, the clash of egos between the two men became increasingly fierce, starting with the Bhutto government's decision to oust the NAP provincial government in Balochistan for alleged secessionist activities and subsequent banning of the NAP with the arrest of much of its leadership after the death of a close lieutenant of Bhutto's, Hayat Sherpao, in a bomb blast in the frontier town of Peshawar.