Thirty years after the founding of the PTI, the murder of Murtaza Bhutto, the Taliban’s capture of Kabul and Benazir Bhutto’s dismissal, Pakistan is still living with the choices made in that extraordinary year. I remember 1996 as one of those years when events seemed to be moving faster than our ability to understand their consequences.
Pakistanis had already become accustomed to political instability. Governments came and went; allegations of corruption were routine; Karachi was violent; Afghanistan appeared permanently at war. Few of us could have imagined that four events occurring within little more than six months would continue to shape Pakistan three decades later. On April 25, Imran Khan founded the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf. On September 20, Mir Murtaza Bhutto was killed by police near his home in Karachi. A week later, on September 27, the Taliban captured Kabul. Then, on November 5, then-president Farooq Leghari dismissed Benazir Bhutto’s second government.
Thirty years later, these are not merely anniversaries. They form a single cautionary tale about politicians, the establishment and Pakistan’s persistent preference for managing politics rather than allowing political institutions to mature. The PTI began as an insurgency against the political establishment of its day. Pakistan in 1996 was essentially divided between the PPP and PML-N. Imran Khan offered something apparently different: accountability, justice, an assault on corruption and liberation from what he portrayed as a corrupt two-party order. Initially hardly anyone in the political class took him seriously. The PTI won no National Assembly seat in 1997, and in 2002 Imran himself was its solitary successful National Assembly candidate.
Yet by 2011 the crowds had arrived; by 2013, the PTI was a major national party; and in 2018 it formed the federal government. Here lies the first irony of 1996. The PTI promised to dismantle the old system but eventually became entangled in precisely the civil-military arrangements it had once claimed it would transcend. The 2018 election took place amid widespread allegations that sections of the establishment favoured the PTI and constrained its principal opponents. This was denied, and election-day observers did not conclude that any institution had taken over the polling process.
But the European Union observation mission recorded that the election occurred against a background of allegations about interference by institutions acting politically. One need not believe every allegation to recognise the larger pattern. Pakistan’s powerful circles have repeatedly tried to decide which civilian politicians are acceptable, which are dangerous and which can be temporarily useful. And such arrangements rarely last. The lesson is uncomfortable: a political force cultivated, accommodated or tolerated today may become tomorrow’s most determined challenger.
September 1996 brought an even darker reminder of what happens when politics and coercive state power become entangled. Murtaza Bhutto was not an uncomplicated democratic hero. His political past, his years abroad and his alleged militant associations remained controversial. He had created his own PPP faction. But whatever one’s judgment of his politics, what happened on September 20 was extraordinary: the prime minister’s brother was killed in a police firing outside his own residence. Questions about the police operation, the extraordinary volume of fire and the delay in taking the wounded for treatment deepened suspicions.
I still remember the atmosphere surrounding Murtaza’s killing: the disbelief, speculation and immediate sense that the public might never be told the whole story. That feeling is perhaps more important than any single conspiracy theory. Pakistan had created a system in which citizens had learnt to distrust official explanations whenever political power and coercive institutions intersected. Thirty years later that mistrust has not disappeared. The deeper problem was the political culture produced by decades of state dominance: powerful forces, politicised policing, opaque chains of command, weak civilian oversight and the assumption that certain affairs of state were best kept beyond public scrutiny. Murtaza’s death helped destroy what remained of Benazir’s authority. Yet only seven days later another event occurred whose consequences would be infinitely larger.
The Taliban captured Kabul on September 27, 1996. To important sections of Pakistan’s establishment, this seemed a strategic triumph. Pakistan had spent years seeking influence in Afghanistan. After other favoured Afghan factions failed to produce a friendly and stable order, Islamabad shifted increasingly towards the Taliban. Human Rights Watch subsequently documented extensive Pakistani political, logistical and military assistance and concluded that Pakistani support was crucial to Taliban offensives, including the 1996 seizure of Kabul. The logic was called, explicitly or implicitly, strategic depth: Pakistan needed a friendly western neighbour, reduced Indian influence in Kabul and access towards Central Asia.
Few policies better demonstrate the dangers of clever strategy divorced from long-term consequences. The Taliban’s Afghanistan became home to Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. September 11 brought America into Afghanistan in 2001. Pakistan became Washington’s indispensable ally while simultaneously maintaining relationships with elements of the Afghan Taliban. Militancy seeped back across the frontier. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan emerged and Pakistan paid an appalling price in civilians, soldiers, policemen, schools, markets and mosques. Then came the apparent vindication. The Taliban returned to Kabul in August 2021. Again, some celebrated. Again, reality proved less accommodating.
By 2026, Pakistan and Taliban-ruled Afghanistan had moved into their gravest confrontation in decades, with Pakistan accusing Kabul of sheltering TTP militants and conducting strikes inside Afghanistan. Pakistan had moved from sponsor to enemy of the movement whose establishment it had once considered an instrument of strategic advantage. There is a lesson here which should have been obvious long ago. Afghans – even friendly Afghans – have their own nationalism, interests and ambitions. A proxy eventually acquires interests different from those of its patron. Then came November.
Benazir Bhutto’s second government was unquestionably in trouble. The economy was deteriorating. Corruption allegations had multiplied. Relations with the judiciary were poisonous. Law and order remained problematic. Murtaza’s death had devastated the government’s moral standing. No serious assessment of 1996 should romanticise that government. But its failures should not obscure what followed. President Farooq Leghari dismissed Benazir on November 5 using Article 58(2)(b). Formally, it was a constitutional act by an elected president. In practice, it belonged to a broader political system in which presidents, judges, generals and intelligence institutions could determine whether elected governments should survive.
It would be simplistic to claim that one institution alone scripted Benazir’s downfall. Farooq Leghari had his own conflict with her. The judiciary had its grievances. The opposition was mobilising. The government had made serious mistakes. But treating November 5 as ordinary parliamentary accountability would be equally misleading. Pakistan had constructed an unelected veto over elected politics. The consequences were disastrous. Nawaz Sharif won overwhelmingly in February 1997 and parliament abolished Article 58(2)(b). But removing one constitutional weapon did not remove the underlying habit of guardianship. In 1999, General Pervez Musharraf simply removed Nawaz Sharif altogether.
And this brings me to what I find most disturbing when looking back from 2026: we appear to have learnt remarkably little from the failures of 1996. Methods have changed. The preferred instruments are often subtler: pressure, political engineering, selective accountability, influence over information, shifting alliances with politicians and reliance upon other unelected institutions. The players rotate. Yesterday’s favourite becomes today’s threat; yesterday’s villain becomes tomorrow’s acceptable interlocutor. Benazir learnt this. Nawaz Sharif learnt it. Imran Khan learnt it. But what about the institutions?
Pakistan’s civilians deserve their share of criticism. Political parties remain excessively personalised. Parliament is weaker than it should be. Dynasties dominate. Politicians themselves have repeatedly welcomed intervention when directed against their opponents. Benazir and Nawaz spent much of the 1990s undermining each other instead of defending democratic rules. The PTI later committed some of the same errors. That is precisely why the lesson of 1996 must apply to everyone.
The writer is dean of the faculty of liberal arts at a private university in Karachi. He tweets/posts @NaazirMahmood and can be reached at: [email protected]
