It is axiomatic locally that, while most countries have an army, in Pakistan the army has a country. Since it secured independence from British rule following the Partition of India in 1947, Pakistan has effectively been in the grip of martial law, sometimes formally so and sometimes not – and it has been ruled directly by the army for almost half its life, with military coups in 1958, 1969, 1977 and 1999. In the most recent of these, General Pervez Musharraf dissolved the elected government of Nawaz Sharif and ruled until 2008 when he was overthrown following massive protests and thereafter embraced a comfortable exile in Dubai.
However, to say that democracy has held sway in Pakistan since 2008 would be extremely misleading. Government continues subject to the blessing of the generals, and the country’s main political parties seem to have accepted the reality that it is next to impossible to come to elected power without the backing of the armed forces.
