Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq

Zia saw combat in Burma and Malaya as a British Indian officer in World War II, chose Pakistan at partition, and fought as a tank commander in the 1965 war with India. In 1970 he led a training mission to Jordan that helped crush the Black September uprising; grateful, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto made him Chief of Army Staff in 1976. A year later, after disputed elections sparked unrest, Zia staged a coup and imposed martial law. Bhutto was tried and hanged in 1979 for ordering a political murder. As president from 1978, Zia funneled American and Saudi support to Afghan fighters against the Soviet occupation, a campaign that ended in Soviet withdrawal but flooded Pakistan's northwest with refugees, heroin, and weapons. He pushed broad Islamization laws, tightened press censorship, advanced the atomic bomb program, and presided over the fastest economic growth in Pakistan's history. In 1988, after his prime minister signed peace accords Zia opposed and sought an inquiry into an arms depot explosion, Zia dissolved the government and called new elections. He died with senior officers and two American diplomats when his plane went down near Bahawalpur on 17 A