*Pakistan has demanded that the United States steeply reduce the number of Central Intelligence Agency operatives and Special Operations forces working in Pakistan, and that it put on hold C.I.A. drone strikes aimed at militants in northwest Pakistan, a sign of the near collapse of cooperation between the two testy allies.
*Shahbaz Bhatti, the only Christian minister in the government, was shot dead, an attack strikingly similar to the killing two months before of another senior politician holding liberal views. Mr. Bhatti, like Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab who was gunned down Jan. 4, had campaigned for the reform of Pakistan’s blasphemy law. The law, introduced in the 1970s, calls for the death penalty for those accused of speaking against the Prophet Muhammad.
*Pakistan’s chief spy agency demanded an accounting by the Central Intelligence Agency of all its contractors working in Pakistan, a fallout from the arrest last month of an American involved in surveillance of militant groups. The American, Raymond A. Davis, worked as a contractor in Pakistan on covert C.I.A. operations without the knowledge of the Pakistanis.
*In January 2011, the government of Asif Ali Zardari faced a political crisis after defections of two of the allied parties that gave it control of Parliament. Mr. Zardari's party eventually patched its coalition government back together, barely holding onto power, but at a price that officials in Washington had feared: the collapse of reforms critical to stabilizing the nation’s economy.
*New American intelligence assessments concluded that Pakistan has steadily expanded its nuclear arsenal since President Obama came to office, and that it is building the capability to surge ahead in the production of nuclear-weapons material, putting it on a path to overtake Britain as the world’s fifth largest nuclear weapons power.
OVERVIEW
Pakistan was born as an explicitly Muslim state, and the wrestling between its secular and Islamic natures has never been so pronounced as in recent years. Its other sources of unrest, including the military's role as the arbiter of power — there have been four coups in its 60 years of independence — its rampant corruption and political instability, have been joined by the rise of Islamic militant groups that control of parts of the country's western half and have launched attacks in the heart of its largest cities.
After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Pakistan entered into an alliance with the United States that it later claimed was the result of coercion. In 2002, it came to the brink of war with India after Islamic members of a Pakistani militant group attacked India's Parliament.
The following years were tumultuous even by Pakistan's standards, as its military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, was forced from office and a combination of the Taliban and home-grown Islamic militants spread their control from country's mountainous western border ever further toward the capital.
General Musharraf's successor was Asif Ali Zardari, who inherited control of the Pakistan Peoples Party from his wife, Benazir Bhutto, after she was gunned down at a political rally in 2008. But Mr. Zardari has proved to be a weak and unpopular president, whose main achievement seems to be juggling members of the Supreme Court to keep old corruption charges against him at bay.
Instead, power has continued to be exercised largely by the military -- if more discreetly -- and its leader, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kaylani, is widely regarded as the country's most powerful figure. And while General Kaylani has pursued a more aggressive approach toward battling the militants, launching offensives to reclaim control of the western provinces, American officials remain convinced that portions of the military are still supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The summer of 2010 produced Pakistan's worst flooding in 80 years (more on Pakistan's 2010 floods here). The government’s poor performance in the aftermath of the floods, which left 20 million people homeless and the nation dependent on handouts from skeptical foreign donors, laid bare the deep underlying tensions between military and civilian leaders as the military pushed for a shake-up of elected officials in response to popular anger.
MUSHARRAF'S ERA ENDS
In 2007, Pakistan's military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, was forced from power. He was replaced by neither of his longtime rivals, Nawaz Sharif or Benazir Bhutto, who was killed by a bomb at a campaign rally. A tide of strong emotion swept Bhutto's party into power in parliamentary elections in 2008, and her widower, Asif Ali Zardari, became president.
General Musharraf's tenure was dominated by the aftermath of the Sept. 11th attacks, by political instability and the rise of Islamic extremist groups.
After 9/11, the United States demanded that Pakistan turn against the Taliban and al Qaeda. Mr. Musharraf agreed but then walked a tightrope between satisfying the Bush administration without inflaming Islamic groups that strongly support al Qaeda. The mountains of western Pakistan became a haven for Al Qaeda and the Taliban and a launching pad for increasing numbers of extremist attacks in Afghanistan and within Pakistan.
Mr. Musharraf's downfall began with his attempt to force out the chief justice of Pakistan's Supreme Court, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, in the spring of 2007, which was widely protested. Mr. Musharraf was forced to backtrack. Under pressure from the Bush administration, he began negotiations with Ms. Bhutto, a former prime minister then in exile, about a power sharing agreement.
No agreement was reached, and Mr. Musharraf declared a state of emergency. Hundreds of political opponents were arrested and a majority of the Supreme Court was forced to resign. On Nov. 28, 2007, Mr. Musharraf gave up his military rank, and two weeks later ended emergency rule. By that time, Ms. Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister Mr. Musharraf had deposed, were vigorously campaigning against Mr. Musharraf.
THE ZARDARI PRESIDENCY
On Dec. 27, 2007, Benazir Bhutto was killed by a bomb detonated as she left a large rally, throwing the country into deep mourning. A parliamentary election was postponed until February 2008, when Mr. Musharraf's party was routed as Mr. Zardari took charge of her political apparatus. Mr. Zardari and Mr. Sharif formed a governing coalition, which declared that it would seek the impeachment of Mr. Musharraf, who soon after announced his resignation.
In September 2008, Mr. Zardari was elected president, completing a remarkable swing from prisoner to exile to marginal political player to the country's central figure.
In November 2008, tensions with India returned to the forefront after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, which were quickly linked to a Pakistani militant group, Lakshar e-Taiba. The country soon faced a financial crisis as well, as the global financial crisis cut Pakistan off from credit it desperately needed. The government reached agreement with the International Monetary Fund for a $7 billion loan.
In February 2009, Mr. Zardari tried to force Mr. Sharif out of office, but relented in the face of huge protests and Mr. Sharif emerged as the most popular politician in the country. Mr. Zardari has seen his popularity ratings plummet, largely because of concerns about Pakistan's faltering economy and a general sense that the country is headed in the wrong direction.
In January 2011 his government survived another crisis only by promising to resume fuel subsidies and put off efforts to expand tax collection, two steps that the United States and international lenders considered crucial to maintaining the country's solvency.
For the time being, Pakistan may remain dependent on international assistance, including billions of dollars in military and civilian aid from the United States, even as fewer than 2 percent of Pakistanis pay income tax, with many wealthy members of government among those who pay nothing. The country’s tax revenues will remain among the lowest in the world.
THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE TALIBAN
Pakistanis long supported the Taliban and other militant groups as allies to exert influence in neighboring Afghanistan and as a hedge against India. Unlike Afghans, they never lived under Taliban rule, and were slow to absorb its dangers.
Through 2008 and early 2009 the influence of the Taliban spread from the remote mountains along the Afghanistan border. The region of Swat, formerly a lure for tourists not far from the capital, became the scene of infiltration, intimidation and constant fighting, and in early 2009 the government reached a truce agreement with militants there. Mr. Zardari signed a measure that would impose Islamic law in the valley.
Soon afterward the Taliban took over Buner, an adjoining district only 60 miles from Islamabad. The conquest shook the central government, as well as the middle and upper classes across the country. It also caused American officials to apply enormous pressure on Pakistan to act.
The ensuing military campaign, begun in May 2009, seemed to be prosecuted with a new resolve, in what appeared to be a change of heart in the Pakistani Army, which had supported the militants for many years. Unaccustomed to urban guerrilla warfare, the military first concentrated on fighting in the rural and mountainous areas of Swat. The ensuing exodus of 1.3 million refugees was the largest mass migration of Pakistanis since the country was partitioned from India more than 60 years ago.
As the battle in Swat died down, the army's mission turned to the rugged Taliban stronghold of South Waziristan, home to Baitullah Mehsud, Pakistan's enemy No. 1. Mr. Mehsud was killed in August 2009 in a United States drone strike, but thousands of fighters remained entrenched in mountain terrain that is nearly impossible for conventional armies to navigate.
Many of the Pakistani Taliban fighters organize and rest in North Waziristan under the protection of Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Afghan Taliban leader who runs a network of several thousand fighters of his own. Allied with the Taliban and backed by Al Qaeda, the Haqqani group makes up a significant part of the insurgency in Afghanistan, too, and American officials have pressed the Pakistani Army for an offensive against them. But the brunt of the effort against Al Qaeda and the Haqqani fighters is borne by American drone strikes launched with Pakistan's acquiescence.
Suspicions about the role of the Pakistani military in the rise of the Taliban were underscored by the release in July 2010 of a trove of thousands of classified American military documents. The documents, made available by an organization called WikiLeaks, suggest that Pakistan, an ostensible ally of the United States, allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders — charges Pakistan vehemently denied.
2010: FLOODING DEVASTATES THE NATION
The summer of 2010 produced Pakistan's worst flooding in 80 years (more on Pakistan's 2010 floods here). In a televised address on Aug. 14, Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said 20 million people, about one-ninth of the population, had been displaced by the disaster. Millions were without food, shelter and clean water.
Flooding began on July 22 in the province of Baluchistan, and the swollen waterways poured across the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province in the northwest before flowing south into Punjab and Sindh. Even as Pakistani and international relief officials scrambled to save people and property, they despaired that the nation’s worst natural calamity had ruined just about every physical strand that knit this country together — roads, bridges, schools, health clinics, electricity and communications.
The devastation raised fears of further instability. Hard-line Islamic groups stepped in to provide aid where the government failed to reach; the United States also sent aid with an eye to improving its reputation among ordinary Pakistanis.
The Pakistani military, angered by the inept handling of the floods and alarmed by a collapse of the economy, pushed for a shake-up of the elected government, and in the longer term, even the removal of President Zardari and his top lieutenants. However, the military’s preoccupation with its war against militants and reluctance to assume responsibility for the economy directly led it to emphasize it is not eager to take over the government.
STEPPING UP DRONE WARFARE
The escalation of attacks announced by the Obama administration in late 2010 largely involved increased drone strikes. The move reflected mounting frustration both in Afghanistan and the United States that Pakistan has not been aggressive enough in dislodging militants in the mountains.
The military has embedded small numbers of Special Operations troops with Pakistani military units carrying out operations in the tribal areas. The Pentagon has rarely blessed cross- border raids from Afghanistan, fearing a sharp backlash for American troops if villagers were killed on Pakistani soil.
The last time the United States tried a cross-border operation -- in September 2010 -- a furious Pakistani government responded by shutting down a critical supply route into Afghanistan, leaving the road open, literally, for insurgents to blow up dozens of trucks, lined up like sitting ducks, which were meant to provide supplies to American and NATO troops in Afghanistan. The United States apologized for the helicopter strike that killed three Pakistani border soldiers and ignited the episode, and eventually Pakistan reopened the border crossing.
Drone strikes in Pakistan rose significantly in 2010. The Central Intelligence Agency carried out roughly 53 Predator attacks in 2009, which was more than President George W. Bush authorized during his entire presidency. The figure more than doubled in 2010, though presidential aides would not publicly discuss the program because it is technically secret.
Less U.S. Presence
Pakistan demanded in April 2011 that the United States scale back its number of C.I.A. operatives and Special Operations forces working in the country, and suspend drone strikes on militants in northwest Pakistan.
In all, about 335 American personnel — C.I.A. officers and contractors and Special Operations forces — were being asked to leave the country, said a Pakistani official closely involved in the decision. The cuts threatened to badly hamper American efforts — either through drone strikes or Pakistani military training — to combat militants who use Pakistan as a base to fight American forces in Afghanistan and plot terrorist attacks abroad.
The reductions were personally demanded by the chief of the Pakistan army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, said Pakistani and American officials, who requested anonymity while discussing the sensitive issue.
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