Después del Evento

On 12th October 1999, General Pervaiz Musharraf seized power and overthrew a democratically elected government. A junior officer who was handpicked by Nawaz Sharif to be the next Chief of Army Staff had systematically dragged Pakistan into a conflict in Kargil to dent Nawaz Sharif’s authority and upon being fired from his job, he instigated a coup with the help of the bureaucratic/autocratic establishment. Lacking any governance experience, the first 2 years of Musharraf rule were dogged by international condemnation and severe economic hardship for Pakistan. Throughout this process, Musharraf relied on establishment bureaucrats and technocrats to help him rule but with heavy international sanctions as a result of the coup.

Things changed dramatically within 24 hours in 2001. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacked in the US, Pakistan found itself in a critical geopolitical location. US, desperate to exact any revenge for the September 11 attacks, brushed aside the sanctions and differences it had with the Musharraf regime. Moreover, the US signed an agreement for Pakistan to be used as a staging base and logistical route for the Afghan War. With US changing its tone on Pakistan, General Musharraf was longer viewed as a pariah globally. With money rolling in for the war effort in Afghanistan, Pakistan was back to the good old dictatorship days of the 80s. With status quo coming a full circle and establishment reclaiming their sweeping powers from back in 1980s,

15 _{The details of the coup are well documented. This story from the day of the coup details most}

of the details as they happened https://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/17/world/countdown-to- pakistan-s-coup-a-duel-of-nerves-in-the-air.html the rest of the details i.e. role of the Civil Aviation Authority and other civilian institutions are documents in Pervaiz Musharraf’s memoir,

Pakistan had a stable government and saw rapid economic growth that averaged between 6 to 7% per annum between 2002 and 2007.

Unlike the democratic period from 1988 to 1999, the dictatorship of General Musharraf survived because of external support that came through for the Afghan War. And with political turmoil of the 1990s behind them, people supported the notion of a stable government. In 2002, General Musharraf ordered general elections after getting himself voted as President of Pakistan in a national referendum. General Musharraf learned from General Zia’s mistake and before announcing elections, he put together his political party that would eventually reelect him as President via a parliamentary vote.

Given that status quo players were still in position of power since the 1980s, Musharraf carved out a new party from the PML – N and labelled it Pakistan Muslim League – Quaid (PML – Q). PML – Q was made up of politicians who had gotten their start under the last dictator and had since then aligned with Nawaz Sharif during the 1990s. Seeing a return to the dictatorship era, these politicians came back to power through PML – Q. The result was a competitive authoritarian regime that ruled Pakistan till 2008.

However, like every dictator, General Musharraf did make a mistake. While he kept most of the establishment on board with his policies, he attempted a power grab against the Supreme Court and that backfired when the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Iftikhar Choudhary refused to resign in General Musharraf’s office. He was promptly suspended from his post pending inquiry but instead of staying shut, he fought back and launched the ‘lawyer’s movement’ in 2007 that eventually saw the fall of Musharraf regime and a return to the democracy for Pakistan in 2008.

With elections announced for 2008, General Musharraf, under pressure from the lawyer’s movement and the US, was all set to strike a deal with Benazir Bhutto and her People’s Party to

form a government that would keep Musharraf on as a President after he formally retired from the military. Unfortunately, before the elections were to be held, Benazir was assassinated by Al Qaeda terrorists in a gun and bomb attack on 27th December16, just two weeks before the January 2008 election date. Her assassination led to elections being moved to February 18th and her party, led by her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, forming the government.

Throughout this period of dictatorship, the establishment underwent a renaissance. Musharraf promised civil service reforms that ended up merely being a name change of the District Management Group to Pakistan Administrative Services. Apart from that the role of civil servants in policy making, especially at the federal level, was expanded given that the country was being run by a technocrat Prime Minister, Shaukat Aziz. And while politicians were ‘elected’ to parliament, most of the policy making, economic revamping and planning was being conducted via technocrats like Dr. Ishrat Hussein, Dr. Ashfaq Hasan Khan, Dr. Hafeez Pasha, Dr. Salman Shah, Dr. Hafeez Sheikh and Shaukat Tareen17_{. Similar to the Zia government in the 1980s, these}

technocrats never worked with politicians but in fact directly with the establishment to design and implement policy agendas. For all effective purposes then, Pakistan’s economy has mostly been designed and planned by the bureaucratic elites who retire and become technocrat advisers to the government.

16 _{Multiple detailed accounts of Benazir’s assassination have been compiled. All of them agree}

that Al Qaeda terrorists working with Pakistani Taliban factions were responsible for her assassination. https://www.aljazeera.com/blogs/asia/2017/12/day-benazir-bhutto-killed- 171227060649509.html

17 _{Information gathered via interviews held in Pakistan. Specifically, interviews with current and}

former Secretaries of Planning Commission of Pakistan elucidated on the scale of influence these technocrats, most of them now former senior bureaucrats, had during the Musharraf era. At least six interviewees, including former Minister of Planning and Development, names the persons mentioned here.