The deep, festering wounds inflicted by two assassinations – first of Liaquat Ali Khan and then, 56 years later, of Benazir Bhutto – have pushed Pakistan to the edge of uncertainty. Coupled with the 1979 “judicial murder” of then Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the forced elimination of Liaquat and Benazir has made Pakistan unstable.
The death of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah in September
1948 had already dealt a heavy blow to the newly-formed nation. The assassination of Pakistan’s first Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan on October 16, 1951, at a public meeting at Municipal Park, (now Liaquat Bagh), Rawalpindi, plunged the country into a serious constitutional, political and identity crisis. “After Jinnah, Khan was the only leader with nationwide standing. His murder shifted leadership to regional satraps. These leaders had their support base in one province or another. This leadership found it difficult to create consensus on constitution-making cutting across boundaries. Pakistani politics got fragmented as a result,” Dr Hasan Askari-Rizvi, Pakistan’s top defence analyst and a distinguished scholar told TSI. The uncertainty and chaos that engulfed Pakistan after Liaquat’s assassination under mysterious circumstances could be gauged from the fact that between 1947 and 1958, Pakistan had as many as seven prime ministers from different political parties and groups. Palace intrigues became the order of the day.
The security forces shot dead Said Akbar, the assassin of Khan, on the spot, thereby erasing any clue as to who masterminded the brutal murder. “The assassination was important in the sense that after Jinnah, Liaquat was the only leader of any substance. His death created a big vacuum that was, it seems, the objective of the assassin. The bureaucracy took complete control of state power and thereafter the army ruled the country for decades,” says Dr Syed Jaffar Ahmed, chairman, Pakistan Study Centre, Karachi University.
“Major changes in the government followed Liaquat’s murder. Khawaja Nazimuddin was moved from the position of governor general to that of prime minister. Malik Ghulam Mohammad, the then finance minister, became governor general. Chaudhri Muhammad Ali, another top bureaucrat of the colonial era, took over as finance minister. Nawab Mushtaq Ahmed Gurmani, a senior bureaucrat too, became the interior minister. These three constituted a troika, which held real power after Liaquat’s death. All the three were from Punjab. That was the beginning of the rise of the Punjabi civil bureaucracy,” noted Baloch leader Mir Ghaus Baksh Bizenjo in his autobiography published posthumously recently.
However, seeds of transforming Pakistan into a client state were already sown during Khan's era. He ignored the invitation of the former Soviet Union to visit that country and instead rushed to the US and declared that he had come there so that America may “discover” Pakistan. In subsequent years, the policy of subservience was consolidated. Pakistan joined notorious security pacts such as Seato and Cento and allowed the US to set up a base near Peshawar.
The death of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah in September
1948 had already dealt a heavy blow to the newly-formed nation. The assassination of Pakistan’s first Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan on October 16, 1951, at a public meeting at Municipal Park, (now Liaquat Bagh), Rawalpindi, plunged the country into a serious constitutional, political and identity crisis. “After Jinnah, Khan was the only leader with nationwide standing. His murder shifted leadership to regional satraps. These leaders had their support base in one province or another. This leadership found it difficult to create consensus on constitution-making cutting across boundaries. Pakistani politics got fragmented as a result,” Dr Hasan Askari-Rizvi, Pakistan’s top defence analyst and a distinguished scholar told TSI. The uncertainty and chaos that engulfed Pakistan after Liaquat’s assassination under mysterious circumstances could be gauged from the fact that between 1947 and 1958, Pakistan had as many as seven prime ministers from different political parties and groups. Palace intrigues became the order of the day.The security forces shot dead Said Akbar, the assassin of Khan, on the spot, thereby erasing any clue as to who masterminded the brutal murder. “The assassination was important in the sense that after Jinnah, Liaquat was the only leader of any substance. His death created a big vacuum that was, it seems, the objective of the assassin. The bureaucracy took complete control of state power and thereafter the army ruled the country for decades,” says Dr Syed Jaffar Ahmed, chairman, Pakistan Study Centre, Karachi University.
“Major changes in the government followed Liaquat’s murder. Khawaja Nazimuddin was moved from the position of governor general to that of prime minister. Malik Ghulam Mohammad, the then finance minister, became governor general. Chaudhri Muhammad Ali, another top bureaucrat of the colonial era, took over as finance minister. Nawab Mushtaq Ahmed Gurmani, a senior bureaucrat too, became the interior minister. These three constituted a troika, which held real power after Liaquat’s death. All the three were from Punjab. That was the beginning of the rise of the Punjabi civil bureaucracy,” noted Baloch leader Mir Ghaus Baksh Bizenjo in his autobiography published posthumously recently.
However, seeds of transforming Pakistan into a client state were already sown during Khan's era. He ignored the invitation of the former Soviet Union to visit that country and instead rushed to the US and declared that he had come there so that America may “discover” Pakistan. In subsequent years, the policy of subservience was consolidated. Pakistan joined notorious security pacts such as Seato and Cento and allowed the US to set up a base near Peshawar.
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