Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq

The general Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq (August 12th 1924 - August 17th 1988), soldier, politician Pakistan board, president of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan of the September 16th 1978 until its death in 1988 in an air crash. He had been general-in-chief of the Pakistani army two years before being the author of the coup d'etat which led it to the capacity.

As of his come to power in 1977, the Zia-ul-Haq general makes condemn to dead by hanging the former Prime Minister Zulfikar Alî Bhutto, for a vague history of murder (Zulfikar Alî Bhutto is the father of Benazir Bhutto, elected Prime Minister of Pakistan in 1988).

The Zia general played a big role in the conflict soviético-Afghan, while bringing a military aid and financial with the Afghans, helps who was heavily supported by the United States which had promised in Zia territories in the North-West to compensate for the loss of the Bengladesh.

It continued the Pakistani nuclear program in the years 1970, program which leads in 1998 to a successful nuclear test, starting again the conflict with India by the way inter alia Cachemire.

Contrary to Zulfikar Bhutto, attracted by secularity, the Zia general had the will to found an Islam of the integrist type while being pressed on mollahs: he prohibits banking interest rates, founded obligatory alms, the public punishments, obliged the women to veil himself on television… Modern Pakistan regressed. The Zia general wanted to even be further trying to re-establish the Califat (common authority Moslem) which had been abolished on March 3rd, 1924 by the Turkish president Mustapha Kemal.

In 1988, whereas it was accompanied by American diplomats, the plane of the Zia general is crushed in Pakistan in mysterious circumstances. No proof to date could be brought to accredit the thesis of an assassination financed or not by a foreign force.

The democracy was restored shortly after its death with the election of Madam Benazir Bhutto.

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