Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq
Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq ruled Pakistan from July 1977, when as army chief he overthrew the Bhutto who had promoted him over six seniors, to August 1988, when his aircraft fell out of the sky near Bahawalpur with the American ambassador aboard. In eleven years he hanged Bhutto in April 1979 after a murder trial the world called judicial. He postponed the elections he had promised in ninety days for eight years and made himself president in 1978. He Islamised the state. There were the Hudood ordinances of 1979 that made adultery and fornication crimes punishable by stoning and put the burden of proof of rape on the woman, the blasphemy laws, the zakat tax deducted from bank accounts, which drove the Shia into the streets. There were the federal shariat court, the interest-free banking, the prayer breaks in offices, and the ten-thousand madrasas funded with Saudi money, and the army's motto changed to faith, piety and holy war. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 turned him from a pariah into Washington's front-line ally. There were three billion dollars of aid, the F-16s, the CIA's money and weapons for the mujahideen passing through his intelligence service, which chose the Islamists among them. There were three million Afghan refugees, the heroin and the Kalashnikov that came with them, and the nuclear programme that the Americans agreed not to see. He was born in Jalandhar in the Punjab in 1924, the son of a clerk in the army's headquarters, was commissioned in 1945, fought in Burma, and moved to Pakistan at partition. He commanded the armoured division, and in 1970 he was on secondment to Jordan, where he led Jordanian troops against the Palestinians in Black September. The referendum of December 1984, which asked whether the voters wanted Islamisation and counted a yes as a five-year presidential term, and the partyless election of 1985 gave him a civilian prime minister, Junejo, whom he dismissed in May 1988 for signing the Geneva accords on Afghanistan without him. The eighth amendment of 1985 gave the president the power to dismiss governments, which his successors used four times. The crash of the C-130 on 17 August 1988, minutes after take-off from a tank demonstration, killed him, the American ambassador Raphel, the chairman of the joint chiefs and twenty-eight others. It was never explained. Benazir Bhutto was elected prime minister three months later, and the laws he made are still on the books.
- Lived: 1924 CE – 1988 CE
- Nationality: Pakistani
- Roles: president, general, dictator
