AMERICANS celebrate the Fourth of July because on that day 229 years ago the 13 British colonies in America issued their “Declaration of Independence.” Many Pakistanis have reason to mourn the following day, the Fifth of July, because on that day 28 years ago Pakistan’s fragile democracy once again fell prey to the ambition and whim of a grasping army general. I shall address myself to the second of these events today and leave the American Declaration for next Sunday.

The coup did not result only from Mr Bhutto’s doings and Ziaul Haq’s treachery. The shortsightedness and vengefulness of certain prominent opposition politicians had a substantial role in bringing it about. The more noteworthy of the proceedings that culminated in Mr Bhutto’s ouster may be recalled here.

The PPP was declared to have won 155 of the 192 general seats in the National Assembly, including 108 of the 116 seats in Punjab in the election held on March 7, 1977. The size of this victory startled even Mr Bhutto, and it incensed a great many people in the country. It was generally understood that the election had been rigged on a very large scale. The Pakistan National Alliance (PNA), an electoral coalition of nine opposition parties, saw in this public reaction an opportunity for launching an effective mass movement to get the election annulled, and such a movement it launched, beginning March 12. The government arrested the top PNA leaders on March 25, and many of the second-ranking leaders later, leaving the movement to be guided by the khatibs and imams in mosques, who added “Nizam-i-Mustafa” to the PNA’s charter of demands.

Two months later, Mr Bhutto decided to negotiate matters with the PNA. Negotiations began on June 3 and went through 13 rounds. A little before midnight on July 3 the two sides reached an agreement, leaving a few minor points for Mr Bhutto to consider and accept. During the day on July 4 he decided to accept all of the PNA’s demands, and late in the evening of the same day he conveyed his decision to his cabinet, General Ziaul Haq, and a few journalists. The general, unwilling to let the agreement take effect, struck shortly after midnight.

The PNA’s decision-making body, a council consisting of two representatives from each of the nine-member parties, appointed Maulana Mufti Mahmood, Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan, and Professor Ghafoor Ahmad as its negotiators, while Abdul Hafeez Pirzada and Maulana Kausar Niazi assisted Mr Bhutto. Any understanding that the PNA negotiators might reach with Mr Bhutto had to have the Council’s unanimous approval to go forward.

The PNA representatives were conciliatory and so was Mr Bhutto. Each time they came for a meeting, Mr Bhutto greeted them outside the front door of the prime minister’s secretariat. On a few occasions he entertained them to dinner and, knowing that Mufti Mahmood had a “sweet tooth,” he ordered special desserts for him.

Mr Bhutto accepted the PNA’s demand for holding new elections fairly early in the negotiations, and the PNA withdrew its earlier demand for his resignation. The talks then focused on the ways and means of ensuring that the next elections would be free and fair. It was agreed that an “Implementation Council,” consisting of an equal number of government and PNA nominees, presided over by Mr Bhutto and, in his absence, by Mufti Mahmood, would have wide-ranging governmental powers to oversee arrangements connected with the conduct of elections, including authority over the appointment and transfer of governors, higher ranking civil servants and police officers.

On three occasions the two teams came close to a satisfactory agreement, and then something happened to thwart it. At their ninth meeting on June 15 they reached agreement on all basic issues: new elections and the dates on which these would be held, a new election commission with enhanced authority, release of political prisoners, and the establishment of the Implementation Council referred to above.

Mr Bhutto then went abroad for a week, leaving it to Pirzada and Professor Ghafoor to fill in the details. This they did not do because they could not work together. The PNA Council confronted Mr Bhutto (on his return from abroad) with a new draft, containing provisions regarding the legal status and modus operandi of the proposed Implementation Council.

At their meeting on June 25 Mr Bhutto accepted most of the PNA’s new demands, suggested a few minor changes, and asked that the Implementation Council limit itself to matters relevant to the conduct of new elections. Instead of picking up the thread where it had been left at this meeting, the PNA prepared still another, and this time the “final”, draft.

At their twelfth meeting which began at 8 pm on July 1 and ended at 6:30 the following morning, the parties once again reached agreement. Both made concessions and, as a result, the PNA’s final draft got changed a bit. The PNA negotiators believed that the changes they had accepted were indeed minor, and that their Council would not hesitate to approve them. It met in the evening of July 2 and some of its members denounced the negotiators for having entertained Bhutto’s proposed changes. The Council then came up with nine additional demands and instructed Mufti Mahmood to sign the agreement if the prime minister accepted them without further ado.

The PNA negotiators presented these new demands to Mr Bhutto at 10 pm on July 3. After consulting Pirzada and Kausar Niazi, he asked for time to consider the new situation. As mentioned above, the following day (July 4), he decided to accept all of PNA’s demands and so informed his cabinet, General Ziaul Haq, and some journalists later that evening. But then during the night between July 4 and 5 the general intervened.

It is now time to ask who in the PNA Council had the main role in frustrating their own negotiators’ efforts to reach an accord with the prime minister. It appears that four of its members did not really want an accord to be reached, and they preferred military intervention in the expectation that the generals would hold fair elections shortly after seizing power. They were Asghar Khan (Tehrik-i-Istaqlal), Begum Nasim Wali Khan and Sher Baz Mazari (National Democratic Party), and Shah Ahmad Noorani (JUP).

Asghar Khan regarded Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as personifying unmitigated evil and despised him. At a press conference in Lahore in April 1973, he described him as “foolish, mentally sick, insane, a fascist, and, above all, a goonda” (gangster). In the summer of 1977,seeing that the prime minister had got himself into trouble, he determined to do all he could to stop him from remaining in power. Even before the negotiations began, he had urged the generals to mutiny, and to refrain from killing their own people to support Bhutto’s illegal regime. He wrote: “As men of honour it is for you to do your duty and the call of duty in these trying circumstances is not blind obedience to unlawful commands. There comes a time in the lives of nations when each man has to ask himself whether he is doing the right thing. For you that time has come. Answer this call honestly and save Pakistan.” (Full text of Asghar Khan’s message is included as an appendix in Professor Ghafoor Ahmad’s book, Phir Marshal La Aa Gia, 1988.)

Begum Nasim Wali Khan had reasons of her own to detest Bhutto. He had unjustly dismissed her party’s government in Balochistan in March 1973 and put its leaders in jail. In 1975 his government arrested her husband, Abdul Wali Khan, on a charge of treason and sent him to Hyderabad jail to be tried, along with the other ANP leaders already there, by a special tribunal authorized to set aside the ordinary due process of law and rules of evidence. Sher Baz Mazari also had a good reason to hate Bhutto: he had been arrested and detained on a probably bogus charge of gunrunning in 1972. I am not aware of any violence that may have been done to Shah Ahmad Noorani, but he would appear to have let himself be persuaded that Bhutto must be made to go.

I wonder if there were occasions during the long and terrible decade of Ziaul Haq’s tyranny in Pakistan when Asghar Khan, Begum Nasim Wali Khan and Sher Baz Mazari regretted the disruptive role they had played during the PNA’s negotiations with Prime Minister Bhutto. Surely, there was abundant reason for them to regret it.

Mr Bhutto himself may unwittingly have contributed to the army’s disposition to intervene. He kept Ziaul Haq and some other generals informed of the progress of his negotiations with the PNA, invited them to the cabinet meeting where these matters were discussed, invited their participation and their reactions. They took a strong position in opposition to the PNA’s demand for the withdrawal of armed forces from Balochistan and disbandment of the special tribunal trying the NAP leaders in Hyderabad, knowing full well that this was a matter of vital concern to some of its Council members.

On three occasions Kausar Niazi and other members of the cabinet referred to the danger of a military coup. Each time Ziaul Haq and his colleagues in attendance stood up to repudiate this suggestion and pledge unfailing support to Mr Bhutto and his government. But it appears that at the same time they were getting ready, and making all necessary arrangements, for their intervention.

A military coup cannot be executed at a moment’s notice. General Ziaul Haq learned of Mr Bhutto’s decision to accept the PNA’s demands at the cabinet meeting on the evening of July 4. He struck within a few hours of this meeting. It is clear that his officers and their men had been standing by, waiting for his signal to move out and seize the government, a signal that he gave on his return from the prime minister’s house to the GHQ.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA. E-mail: anwarsyed@cox.net