* The author is a barrister and entrepreneur. Pakistani history and politics hold great interest for him. He can be contacted at: [email protected]
It is a cold winter morning in the dying days of 1975 and the scene is the GHQ in Rawalpindi. General Tikka Khan, two months away from retirement after a four-year tenure as Chief of Army Staff (COAS), has received bewildering news from his civilian overlord, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Tikka’s successor as army chief has been selected by the prime minister, but the old warrior is stunned to discover that the baton is to be handed to the junior-most of eight lieutenant generals in the run, namely Lt General Zia-ul-Haq, the Corps Commander, Multan.
Tikka had, in writing, recommended the third-most senior contender, Lt General Akbar Khan, as his replacement, while his second choice had been the senior-most officer in the run, Lt General Mohammed Shariff1. Having been the prime minister’s trusted and compliant army chief over the preceding four years, Tikka had never doubted that his advice on the matter would be accepted, even though the prime minister had, inexplicably, neither discussed the recommendations with Tikka nor had he otherwise sought his counsel on selecting the new army chief.
The simple truth is that none of the several people Bhutto consulted had recommended that Zia be appointed the army chief – at least no one has ever publicly acknowledged having backed Zia’s selection.2 On the contrary, the historical record shows that the bulk of the advice received by Bhutto was to the effect that Zia should not be made the COAS. However, all of this counsel fell on deaf ears because Bhutto was determined to appoint Zia.
The question then arises: why on earth did Bhutto take the unbelievable decision of handing over command of the Pakistan Army to Zia-ul-Haq? While a copious amount has been written on the events leading up to the imposition of martial law and on Zia’s eleven year rule over Pakistan, comparatively far less has been penned about Zia’s origins and family background or about his career prior to his appointment as COAS. This article attempts to fill the gap by discussing the life and times of Zia, primarily by focusing on certain key milestones of his career before becoming the army chief: first, his stint in Jordan; second, the circumstances of his promotion as major general; third, his chairmanship of the military tribunal to try the accused in the Attock Conspiracy Case; and, last but not least, his appointment as Corps Commander Multan. The article closes by evaluating Zia’s character and personality and linking that assessment with Bhutto’s decision to make Zia the army chief over the heads of seven generals, which in effect amounted to signing his own death warrant.
Who was Zia?
On 12 August 1924, the man destined to become the longest-serving ruler of Pakistan was born in Jullundhur in the house of Akbar Ali, commonly known by the prefix of Maulvi on account of his pronounced religious bent of mind. Akbar Ali, of Arain stock, was a man of modest means who served as a minor government functionary (in the clerical cadre) of the British Indian Army. The family divided time between Delhi and Simla, the winter and summer headquarters of the army.
Akbar Ali instilled in his seven children a rigid adherence to Islamic tenets, including the strict observance of the five daily prayers in a congregational setting and the regular recitation of the Quran. Such was his unflinching commitment to ensuring that his progeny perform the prayers without fail, particularly the Fajr prayer, that he once reportedly slapped Zia-ul-Haq at the age of eighteen when the latter, on a rare occasion, failed to offer the morning prayer on time. To his credit on the count of filial obedience, Zia received the chastisement silently with his head bowed in shame at the infraction he had committed.
It was in such an austere and religiously-oriented setting that Zia’s personality was moulded, and it explains a lot about his avowed life- long commitment to Islamic rituals and forms.
Having passed out from the Government Boys Senior Secondary School in Lalpani, Simla in 1940 with a first grade, Zia enrolled in Delhi’s famed St Stephens College, a constituent college of Delhi University and one of the most prestigious institutions of higher learning in India. Over the years, famous Indian alumni of the college have included former president Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, former ministers, Kunwar Natwar Singh, Mani Shankar Aiyar, Shashi Tharoor and Salman Khurshid, famous journalist and author Khushwant Singh and, last but not least, Rahul Gandhi.
Not much is known about Zia’s stay in the college, apart from the fact that he lost no opportunity to exhort fellow Muslim students to offer their daily prayers and to dedicate themselves to the cause of Islam – an early sign of things to come when he became the ruler of Pakistan. His parlous financial situation was such that he had to survive on a meagre 30 rupee monthly allowance from his father, of which 18 rupees were spent on his tuition fee and the remaining amount just about covered the cost of his food and lodging.
While the future president struggled to make ends meet, quite a few of his fellow students came from prosperous and prominent families with secure financial backgrounds. Therefore, it would not be far- fetched to conclude that the pressure of his own financial insecurity, in contrast to the comfortable existence of many of his peers, would have significantly preyed on Zia’s mind. The weight of deprivation can often ignite a ruthless streak in a person to succeed in life, irrespective of the price, and without much care for observing moral niceties or a code of honour. The course and trajectory of Zia’s career shows that he may well have fitted into this mould.
Having graduated from St Stephen’s with a specialization in history, Zia decided to join the army and for this purpose he enrolled at the Officers Training School at Mhow. In 1945, Zia was commissioned as an Emergency Commissioned Officer in the 13th Lancers, an elite armoured corps regiment of the Indian Army. He accompanied his unit to Indonesia in the dying stages of the Second World War and was attached to a Tank Delivery Unit. Zia nearly drowned at the time of his unit’s amphibious landings at an island, but a VCO miraculously saved his life3 – destiny had clearly marked him for higher things.
Returning to India, Zia was soon transferred out from his unit on the basis of an adverse report and he ended up in another regiment of the armoured corps, the 6th Lancers; but it was not long before he was again put on a review in this unit. The likely reason for these setbacks was not on account of a lack of competence but due to the fact that Zia, with his distinct religious and conservative proclivities, could not gell into these heavily Anglicised regiments. Partition brought him a welcome reprieve, and on his migration to Pakistan he was transferred to the Guides Cavalry, a more broad-based and less Western-oriented regiment, which remained his unit to his dying day.
The course of Zia’s early career was an ordinary one. Although he was described by different people as hard-working and meticulous and with an eye for detail, no one considered him a man of any marked professional competence or distinct intellectual ability. On the contrary, when Zia attended a staff course in 1953 his assignment answers were so confusing that an exasperated instructor, Brigadier Nicholson, had to say to him that “I have not been able to understand your arguments, I don’t think you will ever make a staff officer”4.
While he had the standard combination of staff and command appointments in his unit, he also served as an instructor in the Command and Staff College, Quetta – he was there around the time of the 1965 Pakistan-India War but was then assigned on war duty as the Assistant Quartermaster of the 101st Infantry Brigade, seeing action on the Kashmir front. Zia also undertook two courses in the USA, at Fort Knox and at Fort Leavenworth, and upon promotion as brigadier in late 1968 he was given command of the 2nd Independent Armoured Brigade. This command lasted less than a year, since Zia was soon bound for the Middle East, and therein hangs a tale.
(1) Jordan
In 1969, Zia had been nominated for the important War Course at the Command and Staff College; however, for reasons best known to him, he ran from pillar to post to secure the scotching of his nomination for the course5. Neither for the first, and certainly not for the last time, fate intervened in Zia’s favour and he was able to avoid the War Course by being posted to Jordan as the Deputy Head of the Pakistan Military Advisory Team.
The team, which had been deputed to help rebuild and train the Jordanian armed forces after their defeat by the Israelis in the Arab- Israeli War of 1967, was then headed by Major General Syed Nawazish Ali. When the Jordanian Civil War, also known as “Black September”, reached a tipping point in September 1970, General Nawazish was away from Jordan on leave and in his absence Brigadier Zia-ul-Haq was the acting leader of the team. At the height of the crisis, news emerged that the Jordanian Armoured Division had lost its nerve and was in retreat in the face of the advancing Syrian troops who were intervening in the conflict in favour of the Palestinians and against the Jordanian monarchy. It was at this time that the Jordanian authorities desperately appealed to the Pakistan Army team for help.
Previously, Brigadier Zia-ul-Haq had taken pains to develop warm personal ties with senior officers of the Jordanian Army, including relatives of King Hussein. In addition, Zia had also forged a close relationship with the military attache of the US Embassy in Amman6. Bearing in mind these linkages Zia had built with important power- brokers in Jordan, it is not surprising that Zia rallied to the cause of the Jordanian monarchy and assumed command of the Jordanian Armoured Division. The details of his contribution are sketchy but there is little doubt that at the very least he led the effort to provide a backbone to the retreating Jordanian troops and he actively counselled them on how to tackle the advancing Syrian troops. Other reports suggest that he actually led combat operations which resulted in the massacre of thousands of Palestinian guerrillas.
Irrespective of the scale of Zia-ul-Haq’s intervention, it clearly amounted to a violation of the mandate of the Pakistan Army contingent in Jordan, which was restricted solely to training and rebuilding the Jordanian Army. Therefore, when General Nawazish returned from leave and discovered the details of the role played by Zia-ul-Haq, he had no doubt in concluding that the latter had exceeded the limits of his authority and that this act merited a court martial. Nawazish recommended the same to GHQ in Rawalpindi, and it is said that President Yahya Khan was enraged at the news of Zia’s actions and was determined that he be punished7. However, Yahya did not realise the power of Zia’s lucky star, which was truly in the ascendant.
Zia flew to Pindi to try and get off the hook through the intercession of his powerful former boss, Lt General Gul Hasan, the then Chief of General Staff. Gul obliged and and prevailed upon the president to spare Zia. The potency of Zia’s lucky star was such that not only did he escape any punitive action for his conduct in Jordan, but his commanding officer, Major General Nawazish, died shortly afterwards of a heart attack. Had Nawazish lived on and given Zia a further adverse rating in his annual confidential report (ACR), it is quite likely that Zia would have gone no further in the army and would have retired as a brigadier. But fate had something else in store for Zia and for Pakistan.
(2) Promotion as Major General
Having escaped any liability in the Jordan matter, Zia returned to Pakistan in 1971, and his patron, Gul Hasan, engineered a parking slot for him as 2nd-in-command of the elite Armoured Division in Multan. With quite a few officers of major-general rank having been taken POW in East Pakistan, and several others having been retired by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto after he became president in December 1971, multiple vacancies of major-general rank needed to be filled. These circumstances already favoured Brigadier Zia-ul-Haq’s prospects for promotion, but the clinching argument became the appointment of his benefactor, Gul Hasan, as Commander-in-Chief of the Army. This fortuitous turn of events paved the way for Zia’s promotion as major general, upon which he was given command of the elite Armoured Division in Multan.
It is strongly rumoured that Jordan’s King Hussein, who was indebted to Zia for his role in the Black September crisis, put in a word with Bhutto to boost Zia’s promotion prospects. This was the first time that Zia’s name would probably have come to the attention of Bhutto, and no doubt he would have been suitably impressed at the extent of Zia’s ability to deliver results for a foreign monarch, even if it meant going outside the book and risking his own career in the process.
It would not be out of place here to highlight a few particularly peculiar aspects of Zia’s promotion to two-star rank. First, this was probably the first, and perhaps the only, case of its kind when a foreign head of state put in a word for the promotion of a Pakistani army officer to the rank of a major-general; second, if King Hussein took the trouble of intervening with Bhutto on behalf of Zia to secure the latter’s promotion, it definitely lends credence to the fact that Zia must have rendered yeoman service to the monarch at the time of the Black September crisis; and, third, it underlined the fact that destiny had earmarked Zia for higher things – after all, only someone with a very charmed life could narrowly avoid being court-martialed in one year and be promoted to the next rank in the succeeding year, and that too on the back of a recommendation of a foreign king.
(3) Attock Conspiracy Case
With Zia having come on his radar via the intervention of the Hashemite monarch of Jordan, it was perhaps but natural that Bhutto decided to further test Zia’s quantum of loyalty quotient. The perfect opportunity arose when the Attock Conspiracy reared its head. The case pertained to a conspiracy by several serving, and a few retired officers of the army (and a handful of air force officers) to overthrow the government on account of their frustration that General Yahya Khan and members of his coterie had not been taken to task for their role in the separation of East Pakistan. The key officers in the plot included retired Brigadier F.B Ali, Lt Colonel Aleem Afridi, Major Farook Adam Khan and Major Saeed Akhtar Malik, the last two being the sons of retired Generals Adam Khan and Akhtar Ali Malik. One of the prospective conspirators, Lt Colonel Tariq Rafi, tipped off the army authorities about the plot, which led to the conspiracy being nipped in the bud.
Zia conducted the trial in a fair and even-handed manner and he gave the accused ample opportunity to defend themselves, but the result of the trial was a foregone conclusion, since the charge of conspiracy to overthrow the government was substantiated by considerable evidence. However, Zia could not hand down the death penalty to any of the accused, as had been desired by Bhutto particularly in the case of Brigadier F.B Ali, primarily because the junior members of the tribunal, which included future lieutenant generals Jahandad Khan and Muzaffar Hussain Usmani, were opposed to this course of action. Still, he awarded the maximum possible sentences to the accused officers, including lengthy custodial sentences and cancellation of pensions. When asked to explain the harshness of the sentences he is reported to have said to the prime minister in a gushing show of fealty: “Sir, you may have a soft corner for these men, but I must give the maximum punishment to those who were conspiring against my Prime Minister8.”
From Zia’s perspective, the court martial proceedings were of crucial importance to the future course of his career since they provided him with a golden opportunity to establish a direct line to the prime minister. Bhutto was keenly interested in getting a daily update on the case proceedings, and Zia diligently performed this task, often bypassing his boss, General Tikka Khan, by directly briefing the prime minister on the subject. This rapport that Zia formed with Bhutto was of a deep nature which even no three-star, leave alone a two-star, officer of the army could ever have dreamed of forging with the prime minister. It seemed the stars were yet again aligning in a remarkable way to pave the path for Zia’s ascension to COAS.
(4) The Multan Years
Until January 1975, Major General Zia-ul-Haq served as the GOC of the 1st Armoured Division, under Lt General Mohammed Shariff, Corps Commander, Multan. Shariff, a graduate of Lawrence College, Ghoragali and the Royal Indian Military Academy, Dehradun, was the quintessential soldier, with an impressive and unblemished military career that included both staff and command appointments at the highest level. A no-nonsense man of few words, he had an imposing physical presence and was considered quite apolitical. In other words, Shariff and Zia were like chalk and cheese.
Zia being Zia, he soon got on the wrong side of Shariff when he displayed a tendency to bypass his superior officer in certain professional matters. An incensed Shariff made an adverse remark on this count in Zia’s ACR, and GHQ sided with the Corps Commander on the matter, directing Zia to observe the requirements of the chain of command. Suffice it to say that there was little love lost between the two men.
However, just as the Jordan incident had been like water off a duck’s back, the disapprobation of Lt General Shariff did nothing to hamper Zia’s career prospects. On the contrary, not only was Zia-ul- Haq promoted as lieutenant general in January 1975, but he was also appointed to replace Shariff as the commander of the Multan Corps, one of the key formations of the Pakistan Army. It was in this role that Zia was able to set the seal on his selection as the future chief of the Army by extinguishing any remaining doubts in Bhutto’s mind on the issue.
Both as GOC of the First Armoured Division and later as the Corps Commander Multan, Zia set new standards of sycophancy. A few examples reveal the extent to which Zia was willing to go to curry Bhutto’s approbation.
On one occasion, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto had reached Multan Circuit House after a gruelling day of political activities. Hoping to be on his own and to attend to file-work, the prime minister was not amused to learn that Zia was at the rest house and craved an audience. A few moments later, Major General Zia-ul-Haq, then still a divisional commander, was ushered into the prime minister’s presence. After saluting the premier, Zia apologized for having disturbed him and revealed the sole purpose of his visit: it was simply intended to personally assure the esteemed visitor that he had himself checked the security arrangements of his temporary abode and that everything was in order. His task complete, Zia saluted Bhutto and took his leave. However, this calculated show of extreme diligence and concern for the prime minister’s safety had the effect of impressing Bhutto in a significant way. After Zia left, Bhutto turned to his wife and reportedly remarked, “I have found the next COAS!9”
Another instance which gave Zia the chance to assure the prime minister of his fealty was in relation to Bhutto’s installation as the Honorary Colonel of the Armoured Corps. To make the event a truly memorable one, Zia contrived to get Bhutto’s personal tailor in Karachi to stitch a special blue patrol uniform for the prime minister; to make the matter even more special, Bhutto was given the pleasant surprise of finding the uniform packed in a suitcase which had been left for him to discover on his bed in the Kharian guest house.10 Although Bhutto demurred at donning the uniform, it quite possibly moved him in no small measure to realise the extreme length to which Zia had gone to make the ceremony unforgettable for the guest of honour.
The trump card that Zia used to fully win over the prime minister’s mind was when he once appeared at the White House, the Multan residence of senior PPP leader, Nawab Sadiq Hussain Qureshi, and swore undying fealty to the prime minister with a Quran in his hand11.
It is remarkable that Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who boasted of being the most intelligent politician in Pakistan, was taken in lock, stock and barrel by such transparent and obvious displays of sycophancy and flattery. But every mortal has his/her Achilles heel, and it is obvious that susceptibility to adulation was Bhutto’s deadly flaw; and sadly he paid for it with his life.
Bhutto’s concept of the ideal COAS and how Zia fitted the bill
Apart from making a small reference in “If I Am Assassinated” to the appointment as COAS of Zia-ul-Haq, Bhutto never provided any insight into why he selected Zia to replace General Tikka Khan. But based on review of a myriad of sources, a fairly clear picture emerges in this regard.
There is little doubt that Bhutto sought to appoint an army chief who would have no qualms about letting the prime minister interfere in key military matters, particularly promotions, transfers and appointments12. In addition, Bhutto also required that his future army chief should give him total loyalty and unwavering support, and that he should never be in a position to assert himself against the prime minister and/or to question any of his actions. This criteria had been faithfully fulfilled by Tikka Khan13, and the precedent was one that Bhutto obviously wanted to continue for the future. With this yardstick in mind, Bhutto evaluated the eight lieutenant generals in the run. Clearly, to Bhutto’s mind the most obvious candidate who ticked all the boxes was Zia-ul-Haq.
First, Zia appeared an attractive choice because he belonged to a refugee family from East Punjab and he was an Arain. To Bhutto these two points seemed ideal, since this meant that Zia neither belonged to the traditional Punjabi belt comprising of Jhelum, Chakwal, Pindi, Attock and Mianwali districts, which provided the bulk of the army’s manpower, nor did he belong to either the Rajput, Jat or Awan Punjabi tribes which were well-represented in the army and had been considered “martial races” by the British. Therefore, Bhutto concluded that Zia did not have a natural constituency in the Army and he would not be able to become a powerful army chief or to challenge civilian supremacy. Events were soon to prove that this was a disastrous error of judgement by Bhutto and a gross failure by him to understand the military psyche – according to which the orders of the army chief are followed to the hilt, irrespective of his ethnic, tribal or linguistic background.
Second, Bhutto formed the view, albeit a gravely erroneous one, that Zia’s shows of extreme humility, meekness and servility were reflective of a persona that would be totally subordinate to the wishes of the prime minister. The fact that Zia outwardly lacked an impressive military bearing and the manner and style in which he wore his uniform was, more often than not, the antithesis of traditional military smartness14, further reinforced Bhutto’s view that the General would not display any assertiveness or ambition. In actual fact, Bhutto failed to fathom that Zia’s unbelievable displays of subservience, and non-martial look, actually masked a cold and unbridled ambition.
Third, the known religious proclivities of Zia suggested to Bhutto that the former would not be in the secular and liberal mould of Ayub Khan or Yahya Khan, the two previous Commanders-in-Chief who had been interested in power games and had had a thirst for political power; instead Bhutto probably felt that Zia could be another Musa Khan – conservative and religious-minded without being fanatical, utterly loyal to his master and with no political ambitions. The fact that Musa was from a minority group, the Shia Hazaras, without a power-base in the Army, and Zia was an Arain refugee from East Punjab, and similarly he did not belong to a distinct military lobby, leave alone a powerful one, would surely have further appealed to Bhutto in making his selection of the new COAS.
Fourth, Bhutto extracted a flawed moral from the Jordan incident. To him, Zia’s involvement in the Black September imbroglio was convincing proof of his ability to be loyal to the hilt to the ruler of the day. In actual fact, Zia’s involvement in the incident was simply a glaring proof of his ability to do whatever it took to climb the greasy pole. But Bhutto hopelessly missed the wood for the trees and he mistook Zia’s ruthless display of ambition for furthering his own career as simply a show of unquestioning faithfulness and extraordinary obedience to the civilian authority, in this case King Hussein.
For the above reasons, Bhutto concluded that Zia was the best man for the job. But there was one other reason why Bhutto chose Zia, and that was his overweening faith in his own stature, greatness and judgment, which blinded him to the dictates of reason and made him fall prey to unvarnished toadyism. According to Rafi Raza, a member of Bhutto’s cabinet and one of his closest aides, he had a conversation with Bhutto a few months before the selection of Tikka Khan’s replacement as army chief and he counselled him to be careful in his choice. In return, Bhutto stated that he would make the choice carefully and that “if a Bavarian could master the Prussian Army what could prevent him from doing the same with the Punjabi Army!15” This was a classic example of Bhutto’s fatal hubris and flawed judgement, since there was no parallel between himself and Hitler or between the German Army of the 1930s and the Pakistan Army of the 1970s; the rest, as they say, is history.
References
- Betrayals of Another Kind by Lt General Faiz Ali Chishti (PCL Publishing House) at page 25
- In “If I am Assassinated”, the book based on Bhutto’s appeal to the Supreme Court, at page 79 Bhutto claimed that the then DG ISI, Lieutenant General Ghulam Jillani Khan, had recommended that Zia be made the However, till his dying day, Jillani never publicly admitted that he had supported Zia’s appointment as COAS and there is no independent corroboration of Bhutto’s claim.
- Memories of a Soldier, 1947, Before During After by Major General Syed Wajahat Hussain at page 163
- “Asli Zia-ul-Haq” by Rafiq Dogar (Deed-Shaneed Publications) at page 174
- Memoirs of Lt General Gul Hasan Khan (OUP) at page 403
- Ibid 4 at page 201-202
- Unlikely Beginnings, A Soldier’s Life by Major General O.Mitha (OUP) page 321
- Z.A.Bhutto by Khalid Hasan at Qissa Khwani Archives (qissa-khwani.blogspot. com)
- Ibid 1 at page 28
- Ibid 3 at pages 188-189
- Ibid 4 at page 188
- Pakistan Leadership Challenges by Lt General Jahandad Khan (OUP) at pages 149-150
- During the Tikka years as COAS, Bhutto was intimately involved in officers’ promotions to two and three star rank, even to the extent of meeting and interviewing some officers before they were promoted. This intrusion into the Army’s jealously-guarded home turf is a feat that no prime minister before or after Bhutto has achieved. Imran Khan attempted to do so, albeit in a ham- handed manner, in relation to the matter of the DG ISI’s appointment in October 2021, but in the end he had to eat humble pie and he could not achieve the result that he desired.
- As COAS, General Zia was always photographed in uniform wearing a loose- fitting tunic or a safari shirt, with a general’s regalia. While this exuded a relaxed, casual and easy-going approach, it was quite unlike the traditional bearing of a Pakistani Army chief, who would normally wear the standard military shirt, smartly tucked into the trousers. Whereas there are numerous photos showing Zia’s predecessors wearing such a form of uniform, i.e. a shirt tucked into the trouser, none of Zia’s publicly available photos show him in the same vein.
- Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Pakistan, 1967-1977 by Rafi Raza (OUP), page 119.
