Career Soldier Zia Became One of Asia’s Canniest Political Leaders

When Gen. Zia ul-Haq led a military coup d’etat to seize control of Pakistan in 1977, he humbly promised to return Pakistan to civilian rule in 90 days.

Modest, dedicated soldiers like himself, he said, “must stay above politics and let the political problems be solved by political and constitutional means.”

Eleven years later, Zia, 64, who in 1978 titled himself president of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, had still not relinquished power to the men he called professional politicians. Instead, the mustachioed career military officer had weathered dozens of challenges to his rule to emerge as one of the canniest, if sometimes harsh, political leaders in Asia.

A Paternalistic Image

During the same period he changed physically from a British-trained, ramrod-straight, military man in full uniform to a graying, grandfatherly and somewhat stooped figure in knee-length, Muslim-style sleeveless coats. He carefully cultivated the paternalistic image, and there were times, particularly when he spoke of his love for his family and his physically handicapped daughter, Zain, when it almost fit.

But for millions of Pakistanis he remained, until his death Wednesday in an airplane explosion over the Pakistan Punjab, “Zia the Dog,” the man who had overthrown the populist government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Bhutto was executed under Zia’s rule in 1979. But Bhutto’s daughter, Benazir, emerged as Zia’s most threatening opponent, and the general jailed her several times, along with hundreds of other opposition leaders, during his 11 years in power. Benazir Bhutto haunted Zia, always drawing the huge and enthusiastic crowds that Zia coveted but never got.

Restrained Reaction

Contacted at her Karachi home Wednesday, Bhutto, who had learned not to underestimate Zia as a political opponent, was restrained in her reaction to his death.

“Life and death are in the hands of God,” she said. “We will not say anything.”

Zia was never widely beloved in Pakistan, but he slowly became respected, if only for his ability to stay in power in a country with a volatile, 40-year political history that included two previous military governments.

He developed a mischievous wit that he sometimes used to twit less-experienced leaders such as India’s Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, 44, whom Zia liked to call a “nice young man.”

Jokes About Background

In a recent interview with a French magazine, Zia was even able to joke about his own political background. Under his rule, Pakistan had undergone a constant parade of promised elections, canceled elections, staged elections and, most recently this May, the spectacle of Zia dismissing the elected civilian government of Mohammed Khan Junejo, whom he had hand-picked for the job.

Zia was asked by the French reporter if he planned to hold new elections soon to replace the Junejo government. “Yes,” he replied with a smile, “but my record is not very good on that.”

Before his death Wednesday in the military aircraft explosion that also killed U.S. Ambassador Arnold L. Raphel and the chairman of the Pakistani joint chiefs of staff, Gen. Akhtar Abdul Rahman, Zia had established Pakistan as one of Washington’s staunchest allies in the Third World and won the admiration of the Reagan Administration despite constant tension between the two countries over Pakistan’s program to develop nuclear weapons.

Much of the respect for Zia in Western countries came from his uncompromising eight-year opposition to the Soviet Union’s military intervention in neighboring Afghanistan. During the conflict, Zia welcomed more than 3 million Afghan refugees, the largest refugee population in the world, into Pakistani territory. Most of the refugees lived in U.N.-supported camps near the Afghan border, but thousands of them moved south into the already swollen cities, where they competed openly with Pakistanis for jobs and food.

‘Muslim Brothers’

To Zia, the Afghan refugees were “Muslim brothers” who were welcome to stay in Pakistan until the Red Army left Afghanistan and it was safe to return.

Zia was a devoutly religious Sunni Muslim whom even his bitterest enemies described as a gracious host. “I went to see him full of venom and hate,” said one opposition leader. “Although I still opposed him just as strongly when I came out, I could not help thinking, ‘What a nice chap.’ ”

As part of his commitment to the moujahedeen, the Afghan rebels fighting Soviet troops and the Soviet-backed Afghan forces, Zia allowed the CIA to use his country as the base for its largest intelligence operation since the Vietnam War.

Arms for Afghans

More than $1 billion in American-supplied weapons, ranging from Chinese-made assault rifles to U.S.-made Stinger missiles, were distributed to Afghan rebels based in Pakistan, and Zia’s military officers assisted in the distribution.

Pakistan’s steadfast support for the rebels was considered one of the major factors behind the Soviet Union’s decision this spring to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan--the first military defeat for the Red Army since World War II.

Zia, said Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, “was very important to the whole geopolitical, strategic constellation of the region, very important to the freedom fighters of Afghanistan.”

His death, Kirkpatrick said Wednesday, “raises the question of whether Pakistan can continue to as strongly support the moujahedeen and whether Pakistan can resist the extremes of Islamic fundamentalism.”

Politically Inconspicuous

As late as 1976, Zia was politically inconspicuous, one of several competent yet undistinguished senior army officers.

But in a country whose brief, turbulent history had been scarred by military coups, then-Prime Minister Bhutto is said to have felt that Zia’s apparent lack of political ambition made him an attractive choice to head the army. He was selected for the job over several more senior generals.

But by July, 1977, with rising civil unrest and Bhutto gradually losing his grip on the country, Zia telephoned Bhutto to inform him that the army, in a bloodless move, had once again seized power.

According to authoritative accounts of the coup, Zia acted only after of a group of junior officers convinced him that Bhutto’s continued use of the military to quell street riots threatened the unity of both the army and the nation.

In the days after the coup, he reportedly continued to address Bhutto as “sir.”

Promised Civilian Rule

Zia promised a quick return to civilian rule and seemed so far out of his political depth that he was widely regarded as a puppet in the hands of more politically ambitious generals.

His initial actions were tentative and frequently contradictory. Sophisticated Pakistanis in Karachi and other major cities dismissed him as “the drum major” and found him difficult to take seriously.

But the laughter quickly subsided.

Expressing disillusionment at the extent of Bhutto’s corruption, the general ordered the deposed prime minister to stand trial on charges of conspiring to murder a political opponent. On a cool April morning in 1979, a stunned nation learned that Zia had rebuffed pleas for leniency and that Bhutto had been hanged.

Although politically inexperienced, Zia gradually emerged as an exceptionally canny student of human nature with an unwavering purpose: to build a strong Pakistan with a sense of its own Islamic identity.

Polite and Patient

In person he was invariably polite and patient. His sincerity frequently disarmed the most cynical observers.

“It is hard not to believe what he is saying at the time he says it,” summed up a veteran newsman who had interviewed Zia more than once.

Those who knew both Zia and India’s then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi liked to joke that Zia was a dictator with a democrat’s manner, while Gandhi was a democrat with a dictator’s style.

A deeply religious Muslim, Zia presided over radical changes in the country’s political system, implementing Islamic laws and Koranic punishments, including public floggings. However, his pledge to install a rigid, harsh form of Islamic law in his country was never truly fulfilled. While some criminals were flogged, there is no record of amputations or stonings that are also prescribed Islamic penalties.

To Placate Fundamentalists

Some of his religious pronouncements were probably posturing, in order to placate the religious fundamentalists among his people, particularly after Iran’s clergy-led revolution. In part, Zia’s reforms were also seen as a way to reinforce his country’s fuzzy identity. But they also reflected his belief that a decadence fueled by Western values was at the root of the country’s endemic political corruption.

He successfully resisted Western pressures to give up Pakistan’s quest for nuclear weapons. This stance, together with his repeated refusal to hold elections, had by late 1979 left him virtually isolated from the West and increasingly unpopular at home.

But the Soviet invasion of neighboring Afghanistan transformed Pakistan almost overnight into a crucially important nation in the fight against Soviet expansionism.

Despite his longevity in office, Zia consistently maintained that military rule was bad for the country.

“It is not up to the military to take over administrative control of a country, I’m against that,” he insisted. “But what has happened in Pakistan, unfortunately, is that our country was on the brink of a civil war.”

‘Light of God’

Zia, whose surname mean “light of God” in the Urdu language, was born in 1924 in Jullunder, a city that is now in the Indian half of Punjab. His father was a clerk with the British government.

The young Zia had a liberal arts education at the prestigious St. Stephen’s College of Delhi University, where he made many friends in both the Hindu and Muslim communities.

He attended the Royal Indian Military Academy in Dehra Dun, where he was an accomplished cricket player. Commissioned in 1945, he served with British forces in Burma, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Zia and his wife, Shafiz, had two sons and three daughters. At the time of independence in 1947, he and his family joined the new Muslim state of Pakistan following the partition of the former British colony into Muslim and Hindu nations.

Zia fought in both of Pakistan’s major conflicts with India, in 1965 and 1971, and rose steadily, if not spectacularly, through the ranks. Along the way, he attended several military staff colleges in the United States, which helped build his affection for Americans.