Pakistan

PAKISTAN

Pakistan (pop.250 million) is the fifth most populous nation in the world, after India, China, USA and Indonesia. It is a Muslim nation and a nuclear-armed power with a fairly diversified economy whose largest trading partner is the US.

Pakistan recently had a hotly contested election in which an imprisoned former prime minister, Imran Khan, ousted by Parliament in 2022 under military pressure, appears to have won. The other main candidate, Nawaz Sharif, was himself ousted by the military in 2017, but now is favored by the military.

How did the military get so much political and economic power in Pakistan? The roots of this situation lie in the period of British rule. Britain depended heavily on troops from what is now Pakistan to guard British India’s northwest frontier and regarded Muslims as one of the “martial races” (along with Sikhs, Gurkhas from Nepal and a few other groups). After independence there were wars with majority-Hindu India which gave prestige to the military and the military came to regard itself as the arbiter of politics in Pakistan. The result has been that no prime minister has ever completed his/her term in Pakistan’s entire 76-year history, due to military intervention. 

Sources: The New York Times, 2/9 and 11/2024 also Wikipedia.