India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan: Main political figures of the last 50 Years

Indira Gandhi (1917-1984)

-Daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister

-Leader of the Indian National Congress and Prime Minister of India (from 1966-1977 and from 1980-1984)

-Favored economic development (esp. in agriculture)

-Received military aid from the U.S.S.R.

-Pursued the development of a nuclear weapon for India

-Gunned down by 2 of her Sikh bodyguards several months after she had ordered a military assault on the Golden Temple in Amritsar (where Sikh extremists, favoring a separate state, had been holding out)

Rajiv Gandhi (1944-1991) • In 1984, he took over as prime minister

after his mother’s assassination

• At age 40, he was India’s youngest prime minister

• Originally he was not interested in pursuing a career in politics (he had gone to Cambridge and become a pilot for the national airline company)

• While in office (1984-1989), he focused on modernizing India’s economy; he also helped India’s middle class develop

• While campaigning for office again in 1991, he was killed by a female suicide bomber who favored Tamil separatists in Sri Lanka

Attack in Mumbai (November 2008)

-Sometimes referred to as 26/11

-In this three-day attack in Mumbai, India’s largest city, 164 people were killed and over 300 were wounded

-Islamic extremists from Lashkar-i-Taibi were involved in this attack

-India has accused Pakistan’s military intelligence agency, or ISI, of having helped with the attack

Other attacks were apparently planned by the Lashkar-i-Taibi

-David Headley, e.g., a Pakistani American from Chicago, is suspected of having done advance work for a (thwarted) attack on a Danish cartoonist’s newspaper’s office in Copenhagen, Denmark

Manmohan Singh (1932-)

-India’s 13th and current prime minister (since 2004)

-A Sikh, he is India’s first non-Hindu prime minister

-Previously he served as minister of finance

-Born in the Punjab, he lived as a child in Amritsar

-An economist, he studied at the universities of Cambridge and Oxford

The 1971 Civil War in Pakistan-This war pitted West Pakistan against East Pakistan

-People in East Pakistan felt that they were discriminated against ethnically and linguistically; they also believed that West Pakistan neglected them economically.

-Eventually, with Indian help, East Pakistan broke free and declared its independence as the new nation of Bangladesh

-Today it is the 8th biggest country in the world. It is also one of the most impoverished.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1928-1979)

-Founder of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP)

-Educated at the Univ of California-Berkeley and Oxford University (England), Bhutto sought to westernize his country

– He was prime minister of Pakistan from 1973 to 1977

-He was deposed in a coup d’etat led by General Zia-ul-Haq

-Later, in 1979, he was arrested and hanged to death on General Zia’s orders for allegedly having ordered the assassination of the father of a political opponent

General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq (1924-1988)

-Seized power in a coup d’etat in 1977

-Ruled Pakistan as a dictator from 1977 to 1988

-Changed his country’s laws so as to make them conform to shar’ia

-Worked with the U.S. to help Afghan mujahideen fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan; the Pakistani military intelligence agency, the ISI, played a key role in funneling U.S. money and weapons (including Stinger missiles) to the Afghan rebels

-Died, along with several of his generals and the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, in a mysterious air crash in 1988

Benazir Bhutto (1953-2007)-Daughter of former Pakistani prime minister Ali Bhutto-Had degrees from Harvard and Oxford (she did so well at Oxford, in fact, that in 1976 she was elected president of the Oxford Union) -A secularist, she became prime minister of Pakistan in 1988-Removed from power by the military in 1990, she was reelected prime minister in 1993-In 1996, President Farooq Leghari removed her from office; her administration was accused of corruption -In 1998 she went into exile abroad (to Dubai)-Later, in 2007, she returned to Pakistan to campaign once more for office but was killed by an assassin

Asif Ali Zardari (1955-)-Married to Benazir Bhutto from 1987 to 2007-Leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) after his wife’s death, he was elected president of Pakistan in 2008 (he replaced General PervezMusharraf as the country’s leader)-He is worked with the U.S. to combat Islamic extremists in Pakistan and Afghanistan but his government has been accused of not doing enough to root out terrorist cells and support networks; a major source of irritation have been Islamic groups hiding out in the Tribal Frontier near Afghanistan-Osama Bin Laden’s stay in Pakistan so close to Islamabad has also caused controversy

Osama Bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad

Hamid Karzai (1957-)-A Pashtun, he has been president of Afghanistan since 2004

-In general, he has worked with the U.S. to combat the Taliban, Islamic fundamentalists who controlled Afghanistan in the 1990s (and who gave sanctuary to Osama bin Laden and Al-Queda prior to 9/11)

-There have been some disagreements with the U.S., however, esp. regarding bombing of villages in which some civilians have been killed by mistake