7. Military in Politics and Civil-Military Relations

Why This Topic Matters

Four of Pakistan’s rulers between 1958 and 2008 came to power through direct military takeover, and the military’s influence on politics, security policy and even the economy extends well beyond these four episodes of formal martial law. This topic asks a genuinely structural question — why has the military repeatedly become the decisive political actor, and what has each period of military rule changed institutionally — rather than simply asking for four separate biographies. Treating it as four biographies, without a comparative and structural argument connecting them, is the single most common way candidates lose marks on this topic.

Why Military Intervention Became Possible: Structural Explanations

Before studying the four individual rulers, it is worth establishing the structural conditions that made repeated intervention possible, since no single ruler’s personal ambition is a sufficient explanation on its own:

• Institutional imbalance inherited from 1947. As established in Topic 6, Pakistan inherited a comparatively small and inexperienced political-party apparatus alongside a well-organised, professionally trained civil bureaucracy and military, both carrying over strong institutional traditions from the colonial period. This imbalance meant that, from the very beginning, the state’s most organisationally capable institutions were not the elected ones.
• Weak party institutionalisation. Pakistani political parties in the 1950s were frequently built around individual personalities and shifting factional alliances rather than durable organisational structures or mass membership bases, making elected governments comparatively fragile and prone to defection-driven collapse.
• Constitutional delay and instability, discussed in Topic 6, meant that Pakistan spent its first decade without a working, tested constitutional framework — a vacuum military and bureaucratic actors were well positioned to fill.
• External security pressure and alliance patronage. Pakistan’s Cold War-era alliances (SEATO, the Baghdad Pact/CENTO, and close bilateral defence cooperation with the United States, examined fully in Topic 10) channelled substantial military assistance and training directly to the armed forces, strengthening the military’s organisational capacity and international standing relative to civilian institutions.
• A self-reinforcing pattern. Each period of military rule, once established, further weakened civilian institutions (by co-opting, marginalising or outlasting political parties), making it harder for the next elected government to build durable institutional strength before the next crisis — a dynamic some analysts describe as a “hybrid” or path-dependent civil-military equilibrium rather than a series of unconnected, one-off coups.

No single factor above is sufficient by itself; a strong answer explains the interaction among institutional imbalance, weak parties, constitutional instability, and external patronage, rather than picking one as “the” cause.

Ayub Khan (1958–1969)

General Ayub Khan’s takeover in October 1958, formally initiated by President Iskander Mirza’s declaration of martial law (Mirza was himself removed by Ayub within weeks, illustrating how quickly the military became the dominant actor once martial law was declared), ended the 1956 constitutional order and Pakistan’s first parliamentary experiment. Ayub subsequently introduced the 1962 Constitution (Topic 6), establishing a presidential system legitimated through the indirect Basic Democracies electoral structure. His government pursued an ambitious economic development strategy — often summarised as the “Decade of Development” — emphasising industrialisation, the Green Revolution in agriculture, and close alignment with the United States and Western development assistance (Topic 10). Politically, Ayub’s rule combined administrative centralisation with growing regional and political opposition, particularly in East Pakistan (where Basic Democracies and centralised economic planning were widely perceived as favouring West Pakistan) and among urban political and student movements protesting limited political participation and rising inequality. Mass protests in 1968–1969 forced Ayub’s resignation in March 1969, and he handed power not to a civilian successor but to the army commander, General Yahya Khan — itself a telling indication of how thoroughly the military, rather than any civilian institution, had become the de facto final arbiter of political transition.

Yahya Khan (1969–1971)

General Yahya Khan’s brief period in power is dominated by two connected developments, both discussed at length elsewhere in this subject. He abolished the One Unit scheme (restoring West Pakistan’s separate provinces) and issued the Legal Framework Order of 1970, providing rules for Pakistan’s first general election held on the basis of direct adult franchise (Topic 6 and Topic 9 both refer back to this election as a genuine milestone in Pakistan’s electoral history). That December 1970 election produced a decisive Awami League majority based overwhelmingly on East Pakistani votes — and Yahya’s government’s failure to convene the National Assembly and transfer power to the resulting majority became the immediate political trigger for the crisis analysed in full in Topic 8, culminating in military action, civil war, and the loss of East Pakistan in December 1971. Yahya’s period in power should therefore be read less as a self-contained episode of military rule and more as the hinge connecting the parity-based constitutional structure of Topic 6 to the breakup analysed in Topic 8.

Zia-ul-Haq (1977–1988)

General Zia-ul-Haq’s coup in July 1977 removed the elected government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (Topic 9), following months of opposition protest over allegations of electoral rigging in the March 1977 election. Zia’s eleven-year rule is distinguished from the other three military periods by several specific features:

• Islamization measures, including changes to criminal law (the Hudood Ordinances of 1979), the introduction of Zakat and Ushr collection systems, and broader efforts to align legal and educational institutions more closely with Zia’s interpretation of Islamic principles — measures with substantial and long-debated social and legal consequences that outlasted his own rule.
• Non-party political arrangements, including a non-party basis for the 1985 general election, intended to weaken established political parties (particularly the Pakistan People’s Party) while still providing some appearance of electoral legitimacy.
• Deep involvement in the Afghan war. Following the Soviet Union’s 1979 military intervention in Afghanistan, Pakistan under Zia became the principal frontline state channelling substantial American and Saudi-financed support to Afghan resistance fighters (the mujahideen) — a role examined fully in Topic 10 for its foreign-policy dimension, but relevant here for its profound domestic consequences: an influx of weapons, a large refugee population, and the growth of a militant and sectarian infrastructure whose long-term security effects have persisted for decades after Zia’s own rule ended.
• Zia governed under martial law for several years before restoring a nominally civilian constitutional framework via the Eighth Amendment (Topic 6), which he used to retain substantial presidential authority even after the formal end of martial law. He died in a plane crash in August 1988, shortly before a scheduled general election.

Pervez Musharraf (1999–2008)

General Pervez Musharraf’s takeover in October 1999 removed the elected government of Nawaz Sharif, following a period of acute tension between Sharif’s government and the military leadership over the conduct of the 1999 Kargil conflict with India (Topic 10) and Sharif’s attempt to remove Musharraf as army chief. Musharraf initially governed as Chief Executive before later combining the presidency with continued leadership of the army, a dual role he retained for several years despite its constitutional and political controversy. His government introduced local-government reforms (a devolution plan intended to strengthen elected local bodies, though its long-term institutional legacy remains debated) and pursued a broadly market-oriented economic policy. Following the 11 September 2001 attacks in the United States, Musharraf’s government became a major partner in the American-led “War on Terror” (Topic 10), reversing Pakistan’s earlier direct support for the Afghan Taliban regime and receiving substantial renewed American aid and diplomatic support in return. Musharraf’s later years in power were marked by escalating conflict with the judiciary (particularly his 2007 suspension and later dismissal of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, which provoked a sustained and ultimately successful lawyers’ movement demanding judicial independence) and with political parties, culminating in his resignation in August 2008 under the threat of impeachment by a newly elected civilian parliament.

Civil-Military Relations Beyond Formal Coups

Restricting this topic to the four periods of formal martial law significantly understates its true scope. Civil-military relations in Pakistan also encompass:

• Defence and national-security decision-making, where the military’s institutional expertise, information advantages, and direct control of the country’s nuclear weapons programme (Topic 10) have given it substantial influence over policy even during periods of civilian government.
• Intelligence institutions, particularly the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI), whose role in domestic politics as well as external security and intelligence operations has been the subject of extensive analysis and controversy, including during periods of civilian rule.
• The military’s economic footprint. The scholar Ayesha Siddiqa’s influential study Military Inc. (2007) documented the scale of the Pakistani military’s involvement in commercial enterprises — a phenomenon she terms “Milbus” (military business), covering welfare foundations, real estate, and a range of commercial ventures operated by or for the benefit of military personnel and institutions — arguing that this economic footprint gives the military an institutional stake in political influence that extends well beyond formal governmental power. This remains a debated and actively researched area of Pakistan’s political economy.
• Civilian institutional capacity itself, which theorists of civil-military relations (drawing on the broader comparative political science of scholars such as Samuel Huntington, who distinguished “objective” civilian control — a professionalised military that stays out of politics as a matter of institutional norm — from “subjective” civilian control achieved through political co-optation of the military) generally treat as the other half of the explanation: civil-military imbalance results from weakness on the civilian side as much as strength or ambition on the military side, and studying only the military’s actions while treating civilian institutions as a passive, unchanging backdrop produces an incomplete analysis.

Key Terms and Concepts

• Legal Framework Order (1970): Yahya Khan’s framework governing Pakistan’s first direct-franchise general election.
• Hudood Ordinances (1979): Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamization-era criminal law reforms, among the most consequential and most debated legal changes of the military-rule period.
• Milbus: Ayesha Siddiqa’s term for the Pakistani military’s commercial and economic enterprises, extending its institutional interests beyond formal governmental power.
• Objective vs. subjective civilian control: Samuel Huntington’s distinction between professionalised military non-interference as an institutional norm, versus civilian control achieved through political co-optation of the military.

Comparing the Four Periods of Military Rule

Preparation Toolkit

Preparation Checklist

• Use the four-column comparison above as your core revision structure: takeover and justification; institutional changes; major policies and outcomes; exit and legacy.
• Prepare the structural explanations (weak parties, bureaucratic-military inheritance, constitutional instability, external patronage) as a separate, freestanding argument you can deploy in any “why has the military intervened repeatedly” question, independent of any single ruler’s biography.
• Connect Yahya Khan’s period explicitly to Topic 8 (the 1971 crisis) and Zia’s and Musharraf’s periods explicitly to Topic 10 (the Afghan war and the War on Terror respectively) — this topic is deliberately woven into the rest of the subject, not self-contained.
• Keep an evidence bank: 1958 and 1977 and 1999 coups, the 1962 Constitution, the 1970 election under the Legal Framework Order, the Hudood Ordinances (1979), Musharraf’s dual office and the 2007 judicial crisis.
• Practice one analytical outline answering: “Compare the causes and long-term consequences of any two military takeovers in Pakistan’s history.”

Common Confusions to Avoid

• Do not write four separate biographies and call it civil-military analysis; compare the causes, mechanisms and institutional effects of each period against each other, and against the structural explanations set out at the start of this topic.
• Do not assume all four military governments pursued an identical constitutional or political strategy; each developed distinct legal and institutional arrangements (compare the 1962 Constitution with Zia’s Eighth Amendment and Musharraf’s combined presidency-and-army-command arrangement, for instance).
• Do not treat civilian institutions as a passive, unchanging backdrop; their organisational strength, legitimacy and internal cohesion varied significantly across different periods and are themselves part of the explanation for military intervention.
• Do not confine civil-military relations to the four periods of formal martial law; defence policy, intelligence institutions, and the military’s economic role remain relevant during civilian rule as well.

Easy Revision Points

• Ayub Khan emerged as the dominant ruler after the 1958 martial-law takeover and later introduced the 1962 Constitution and the Basic Democracies system.
• Yahya Khan took power in 1969, held Pakistan’s first nationwide general election on direct adult franchise in 1970, and presided over the crisis that led to the 1971 breakup of Pakistan.
• Zia-ul-Haq seized power in 1977; his rule was shaped by Islamization policies (including the 1979 Hudood Ordinances) and by Pakistan’s frontline role in the Soviet-Afghan war after 1979.
• Pervez Musharraf took power in 1999 after a crisis with the elected government over Kargil and the army-chief dismissal attempt; his government later became a central partner in the post-9/11 “War on Terror.”
• Civil-military relations cannot be explained by personalities alone; institutional strength, security environment, and political competition are equally important, and the military’s economic and intelligence-related influence extends beyond formal periods of martial law.

Key Takeaways

• Military intervention in Pakistan is best explained structurally — through institutional imbalance inherited from 1947, weak party institutionalisation, constitutional instability, and external alliance patronage — rather than as four unrelated instances of individual ambition.
• Each period of military rule produced distinct institutional changes (the 1962 Constitution, the Eighth Amendment, Musharraf’s dual office) that should be compared directly rather than treated as interchangeable.
• Yahya Khan’s period connects directly to Topic 8, and Zia’s and Musharraf’s periods connect directly to Topic 10; this topic cannot be fully understood in isolation from the rest of the subject.
• Civil-military relations extend well beyond formal martial law into defence policy, intelligence institutions, and the military’s documented economic interests (Ayesha Siddiqa’s concept of “Milbus”), and a complete answer addresses this wider scope.
• Civilian institutional weakness is as much a part of the explanation for repeated military intervention as any strength or ambition on the military’s part — a balanced analytical framework, not a one-sided one, is what distinguishes a strong answer.