OPINION
The military's position has also been strengthened because South Asia's regional security environment has not improved with the end of the Cold War. Pakistan's security predicament persists because of civil war in Afghanistan, and because Pakistan and India are engaged in an undeclared nuclear-weapons and missile race. Such regional insecurity increases the military's relevance to decision-making.

All these factors make it easy for the military to maintain its central role in the political process. The military's profile depends on the civilian government's performance - how it maintains economic and political stability and civic peace and order, and how it deals with the military's professional and corporate interests. The military's options increase if the government's political and economic performance falters, if it faces a crisis of legitimacy aggravated by popular unrest in the major urban centres, or if political competition turns nasty. The military retains the capability to veto Pakistan's transition to democracy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hasan-Askari Rizvi is Quaid-i-Azam professor at the southern Asian Institute, school of international and public affairs, Columbia University, New York, and professor of political science, Punjab university, Lahore.

NOTES
1. Daily Jang (Lahore), 19 March 1986.
2. See Omar Noman, Pakistan: Political and Economic History Since 1947 (London: Kegan Paul, 1990), p.118.
3. For an analysis of the military commanders' decision not to assume power, see Hasan-Askari Rizvi, 'The Legacy of Military Rule in Pakistan'. Survival, vol. 31, no. 3, May-June 1989, pp. 255-68.
4. The Army Chiefs in question were Mirza Aslam Beg (1988-91), Asif Nawaz Janjua (1991-93), Abdul Waheed Kaker (1993-96) and Jehangir Karamat (1996 to present).
5. The military has four foundations which own industrial enterprises and engage in business and commercial activities. Their profits are used for the welfare of former service personnel and their families. They include the Fauji Foundation and the Army Welfare Trust (Army), the Shaheen Foundation (Air Force) and the Bahria Foundation (Navy).
6. Iftikhar H. Malik, State and Civil Society in Pakistan (New York: St Martin's Press, 1997), pp. 100-101. See also The Independent, 6 November 1996; and Daily Jang, 5 November 1996.
7. For the ISI's connections with the CIA, see Lawrence Lifschultz, 'Dangerous Liaison: The CIA-ISI connection', Newsline (Karachi), September 1989, pp. 49-54.
8. Army Chief General Aslam Beg admitted in a May 1995 interview that the Army did not trust the PPP in 1988. As the PPP was expected to win the elections, the Army decided to balance the situation by creating the IJI. See The Nation (Lahore), 9 May 1995
9. Speaking to the press after being removed from service, one of the officers involved in Operation Midnight Jackals said, 'toppling the Benazir government was not my own mission but I was assigned this task'. See The News (Lahore), 9 July 1994. For details of the operation, see ibid., 5 and 6 August 1994; 'The Anatomy of Operation Midnight Jackals', The Nation, 25 September 1992.
10. The then ISI Chief gave a list of people who received funds during the 1990 general elections to the National Assembly in June 1996. It included several prominent political leaders, among them Nawaz Sharif; Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, caretaker Prime Minister at the time; and Mohammad Khan Junejo, a former Prime Minister. See Herald (Karachi), July 1996, p. 15. In February 1997, General Beg maintained that it was ISI practice to support certain candidates under the President's directions and that, in 1990, the ISI made funds available to the IJI. See The Muslim (Islamabad), 25 February 1997. Beg also maintained that the ISI distributed Rs 60m ($2.76m) to the political parties while Rs 80m ($3.69m) were used as a special fund. See Pakistan Times (Lahore), 17 June 1997; and Altaf Gauhar, 'The Mysteries of Secret Service Funds', The Nation, 6 May 1994.
11. The 1985 Pressler Amendment to the US Foreign Assistance Act made it obligatory for the US President to issue annual certification that Pakistan did not possess a 'nuclear explosive device' as a pre-condition for the release of economic assistance and military sales to Pakistan. In 1990, President George Bush refused to issue such a certification, thereby stalling new economic assistance and military sales to Pakistan from 1 October. This embargo also applied to weapons, military equipment and F-16 aircraft Pakistan had ordered and paid for before the above date. Under the 1995 Brown Amendment, the US administration released weapons and military equipment withheld since October 1990, but no new military sales were permitted. For 28 F-16 aircraft, the US was to refund Pakistan's money by selling these to some third country. As the US could not find a buyer, the F-16 issue is still pending; Pakistan is pressing for the refund of its money.
12. To the annoyance of the Army and the intelligence establishment, Bhutto appointed a committee headed by a former Air Force Chief, Air Chief Marshal Zulfikar Ali Khan, to review the working of the ISI and other intelligence agencies and to recommend measures to improve their performance. The report was not made public and there is no evidence to suggest that the government implemented any of its recommendations.
13. General Beg claimed in April 1995 that he controlled the urge to assert his authority as Army Chief three times: immediately after Zia's death in 1988; on the appointment of a retired officer as ISI chief; and when Bhutto sought reprieve for the dismissed Army officers. See Daily Pakistan (Lahore), 27 April 1995.
14. See Saeed Shafqat, Civil-Military Relation in Pakistan (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), pp. 228-29; and Samina Ahmad, 'The Military and Ethnic Politics', in Charles H. Kennedy and Rasul B. Rais (eds), Pakistan 1995 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995), pp. 103-31.
15. These freedoms included releasing a large number of prisoners sentenced by the military courts and partial relaxation of controls on electronic media.
16. Army Chief Beg said in a July 1990 statement that if the Army was given the necessary legal authority, it would restore 'absolute peace and harmony' in Sindh 'in the shortest possible time'. See 'Army in Aid of the Civil Power', Defence Journal (Karachi), vol. 16, nos. 7-8, July-August 1990, pp. 37-49, 57-58.
17. In dismissing the Bhutto government, President Ishaq Khan cited several grounds, including corruption and nepotism; wilfully undermining and violating Constitutional arrangements; usurping the provinces' authority; failing to maintain law and order in Sindh; and the National Assembly's inability to discharge 'substantive legislative functions' because of internal discord, dissension, corrupt practices and buying political loyalties by offering material inducements.
18. In May 1992, when Nawaz Sharif was Prime Minister, the Army resumed a security operation in Sindh under Article 147 of the Constitution which Bhutto inherited when she assumed power. The Army brought down the level of violence, but it could not fully control the situation. On 30 November 1994, the Army decided to end its operation and handed back responsibility to the police and the paramilitary rangers, although the civilian government wanted the Army operation to continue.
19. The Pakistan press covered the killings and other incidents of violence during 1995-96 in detail. The Herald and Newsline published several investigative reports on ethnic and religious violence in 1996.
20. In August 1994, the government appointed 20 new judges to the Punjab High Court. Thirteen of them were PPP activists; three were known for their political links with PML-Junejo (a coalition partner). Some of them had nominal, if any, High Court-level experience. See the report in The Friday Times, 11-17 August 1994.
21. The President gave nine major grounds for dismissing Bhutto's second government: widespread killings of innocent people, especially those in police custody; 'malicious' propaganda against the presidency and the armed forces with reference to Murtaza Bhutto's murder; delay in implementing the Supreme Court judgement on appointing judges; attempts to destroy the judiciary's independence; failure to separate the judiciary and the executive; bugging the telephones of judges, senior civilian and military officials; corruption, nepotism and breaking rules and administrative procedures; transferring civil servants on political considerations and inducting a cabinet minister who faced legal proceedings; and failing to reconsider oil and gas disinvestment deals sent back to the cabinet by the President.
22. Nawaz Sharif was appointed to the Punjab provincial cabinet during martial law. In 1985, he was appointed Chief Minister of the province and remained so after the IJI won provincial elections in the Punjab in 1988. In the early 1980s, the martial-law government returned his family's industrial concern Ittefaq Industries, which had been nationalised by the elder Bhutto government in 1972.
23. See Ahmed Rashid, 'Death of a Pragmatist', The Herald, January 1993, pp. 55-56a. One widely circulated story was that, as strains surfaced in civil-military relations, Sharif offered an expensive car to the Army Chief, which he refused to accept.
24. The President also referred to the charge levelled by General Janjua's widow that her husband was poisoned, alleging that the pro-government elements could be involved because Janjua had developed differences with the Sharif government. Subsequent medical investigations showed that the general had died of a heart attack. For the text of the dismissal order, see The Nation, 19 April 1993. See also Najam Sehti, '101 Days that Shock Pakistan', The Friday Times, 22-28 April 1993, p. 3; and Samina Yasmeen, 'Democracy in Pakistan: The Third Dismissal', Asian Survey, vol. 34, no. 6, June 1994, pp. 572-88.
25. For an informed discussion of the political developments during May-July 1993, especially the Army's role, see Zafar Abbas, 'Enter the Army', The Herald, July 1993, pp. 19-24a; Zahid Hussain, 'Day of the General ', Newsline, July 1993, pp. 24-30a; and Hasan-Askari Rizvi, 'The Year of Dramatic Changes', The Nation, 31 December 1993.
26. The 'Accountability Bureau' in the Prime Minister's secretariat was headed by Saifur Rehman, a Nawaz loyalist and business friend who was also a Senator on the ruling PML-N ticket.
27. See Dawn, 3 and 20 May 1997; and the Muslim, 1 July 1997.
28. While commenting on the suspension of the 14th amendment, Sharif said that the Chief Justice's action was 'illegal and unconstitutional' and that it would revive 'horse trading' in the parliament. He also maintained that the Chief Justice had created a situation that, was both 'unfortunate' and 'undemocratic'. See ibid., 30 October 1997.
29. For the government's efforts to split the Supreme Court, see Zafar Abbas, 'How the Judiciary was Won', The Herald, December 1997, pp. 33-35. For the government's involvement in the mob attack on the Supreme Court, see Idrees Bakhtiar, 'The End of Civility', pp. 42a; Zahid Hussain, 'Winner Takes All', Newsline, December 1997, pp. 22-27; and the Muslim, 29 and 30 November 1997
30. For details about the last stage of the confrontation, see New York Times, 2 and 3 December 1997; and Dawn, 3 December 1997.

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