Pakistan's decades-long, on-again, off-again relationship with democracy has been marred by both internal and external factors. Over the past three decades, Pakistan has held six general and a similar number of local body elections. It is difficult to complain about the number of elections, though the duration between these polls has varied widely. Whenever the people of Pakistan have been allowed to exercise their franchise, the levels of participation in the political process, even at the village level, have been fairly good. In the last three decades, while people have voted for their representatives and governments, they just have not been given a chance to vote out their representatives and governments. Either the military has stepped in or presidents have dissolved assemblies owing to disagreements with prime ministers.
Civilian presidents dissolved assemblies and dismissed the governments of Benazir Bhutto twice and of Nawaz Sharif once. But while these prime ministers were not allowed to complete their terms, presidential action did not disrupt the democratic process, as new assemblies were constituted throughout the 1988-1999 period through elections. However, the dismissal of the governments of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (5 July 1977) and Nawaz Sharif (12 October 1999) came at the hands of generals who introduced their own visions of civil-military democracy. If General Zia-ul Haq brought in a conservative agenda, General Pervez Musharraf took over with a comparatively liberal one. But both introduced democracies of their choice and defined governance on their own terms. And both fabricated would-be ruling parties overnight to advance their respective agendas.
During his 11-year rule, Zia literally tried to change the basic democratic fabric of Pakistani society through so-called Islamisation, which US policymakers condoned and sanctioned so that they could leverage religious sentiment against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. This is the era that brought to Pakistan the culture of the Taliban, Kalashnikovs, drugs and other extremist trends linked to the US-Osama bin Laden jihad against Soviet troops. The Zia era successfully fragmented Pakistani society along ethnic, caste, creed and religious lines, and witnessed the creation of a separate electorate system to justify the general's grip on power through elected local bodies. Then came the highly controversial Hudood laws, which, in the name of Islamisation, undermined the position of women and contributed to the marginalisation of minority communities and citizens in general, making them more vulnerable to social and state violence while concomitantly depriving them of their fundamental rights and democratic traditions.
The military dictatorship of General Zia is solely responsible for Pakistan's spiralling crises, which combined have blocked progress towards democracy and stymied the pursuit of tolerance, peace, social justice, economic growth and institution building. Moreover, it was Zia's rule that created militant jihadis, the so-called warrior element, among the otherwise peaceful and democracy-loving people of Pakistan.