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70 years since failed Rawalpindi Conspiracy — Pakistan’s history dotted with successful coups

Military coups have been common in Pakistan. ThePrint looks at the first coup attempt — which took place in 1951 — and the more successful ones that followed.

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New Delhi: February marks 70 years since the first ever coup was attempted in Pakistan — popularly known as the Rawalpindi Conspiracy. The military was aided in the attempted coup by the political far-Left but the efforts proved significantly unsuccessful.

Military coups have been common in Pakistan and the first such effort was made as early as 1951, just four years after the country was formed. The country has since spent several decades under military rule.

ThePrint tells you more about the Rawalpindi Conspiracy and the other more successful coup attempts.

Rawalpindi Conspiracy 

Brainchild of Major General Mohammad Akbar Khan, Chief of the General Staff of the Pakistani army who was honoured the Distinguished Service Order by the British, the Rawalpindi Conspiracy was borne out of his dissatisfaction “with the moral and material support that the then prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan’s government had provided to the Pakistani fighters” when violence had broken out in Kashmir after Independence, according to co-conspirator Zafar Ullah Poshni in his book, ‘Prison Interlude: The Last Eyewitness Account of the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case’.

A ceasefire was agreed upon between India and Pakistan in 1949 after an armed conflict over Jammu & Kashmir in 1947-1948, but Maj. Gen. Khan believed this to be a mistake and that “the battle against the Indian Army should have continued”.

Poshni said the plan was hatched in Maj. Gen. Khan’s house on 23 February 1951. The Major General found solidarity in the senior-most air force officer, Mohammad Janjua, Maj. Gen. Khan’s former commander Nazir Ahmedh, and his former lieutenant, Mohammad Abdul-Latif, among others. Khan had help from 11 officers of the armed forces and four civilians, including legendary poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, and his own wife, Nasim Shahnawaz.

Pakistan’s political leadership at the time was “highly antagonistic towards persons propagating the cause of communism”. Three of the four civilians that were privy to Maj. Gen. Khan’s plans were staunch communists.

In his book, Poshi noted that the plans fell apart after a confidant of Khan tipped off the prime minister, who announced the foiling of the coup on 9 March 1951.

Faiz Ahmed Faiz — then the editor in chief of the newspaper Pakistan Times and an author, communist, teacher and former army officer — was picked up on 9 March 1951 and tried on charges of treason and conspiracy against the Government of Pakistan, the punishment for which was the death penalty.

A special tribunal was constituted by the government, and the trial began on 15 June 1951. The defendants were represented by leading advocates of the time, including Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy and Zahirul Hasan Lari. In the judgment pronounced on 5 January 1953, Maj. Gen. Khan was sentenced to 12 years of rigorous prison, Maj. Gen. Nazir Ahmed was sentenced “till the rising of the court”, while all civilians and junior officers involved were sentenced to four years. However, all detainees were released by 1955 “on account of an amnesty granted by the new Constituent Assembly”.


Also read: Battered economy, brewing uprising in Pakistan means India can’t rule out adventurism in 2021


Successful coups

After Maj. Gen. Khan’s attempt was thwarted, General Ayub Khan, commander-in-chief of the Pakistan Army, went on to establish the country’s first military dictatorship on 7 October 1958.

“That date marked the time when the country took a sharp tilt towards military adventurism and history witnessed the military involvement in state affairs well before democracy had taken hold,” Muhammad Daim Fazil, a lecturer of International Relations at University of Gujrat, Sialkot Campus, wrote in The Diplomat in 2016.

Ayub Khan ruled for a decade but was made to resign in 1969 owing to a rise in protests and a growing independence movement in what is today Bangladesh. Khan then directed his protege and commander-in-chief of the army, Yahya Khan, to take over for a few months to “preserve the integrity of Pakistan”. He was forced to hand over power to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of the Pakistan Peoples Party, who then led a civilian government.

In 1977, General Muhamed Zia-ul-Haq, Chief of Army Staff, ousted prime minister Bhutto — who was sentenced to death in 1979 — and “promoted Islamisation, turned against Muslim minorities such as the Ahmadis or the Shias, and supported the Mujaheddin who were fighting Soviet troops in Afghanistan”.

Zia died in a plane crash in 1988, marking an end to a period many see as Pakistan’s most vicious encounter with military rule. However, stability didn’t last long as four elected governments failed to complete a constitutional term and the next coup took place in 1999, when the then Nawaz Sharif government was toppled by his top army officer, Pervez Musharraf. Military rule persisted under him till 2008; Musharraf resigned on 18 August 2008 to avoid an impeachment and went into a self-imposed exile.

Although civilian rule returned to Pakistan and elections have been held, which saw Nawaz Sharif return to office and more recently Imran Khan get elected as PM, the military continues to play a dominant role in Pakistan’s politics.

“The ever-present sense of a possible coup in Pakistan is not only because the coup-makers are ever ready, but even more because the politicians themselves provided room for military adventurism,” Fazil wrote in The Diplomat.


Also read: Why Twitter is upset over Allama Iqbal’s Lahore statue & Arabic now must in Islamabad schools


 

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