Why Nawaz Sharif Matters:
Nawaz Sharif was twice prime minister of Pakistan (1990-1993 and 1997-1999) and remains one of the leading figures in Pakistani politics. He leads the Pakistan Muslim League, or PML, a generally right-wing, pro-business, anti-American Islamic Pakistani party erratically linked to Pakistan's military and clerical establishment.
Sharif is instinctively, pragmatically imperious, ruling by paradox to keep opponents off balance. He led a courageous peace initiative with India in 1999 but also set off Pakistan’s first nuclear bombs in a series of tests in 1998. He attempted to establish Islamic law in Pakistan.
Nawaz Sharif’s Early Life and Family:
Nawaz Sharif was born on Dec. 25, 1949 in Lahore, Pakistan’s second city and the capital of Punjab, the most economically and culturally vibrant of Pakistan’s four provinces. Sharif, a practicing Muslim, is the son of industrial magnate Muhammad Sharif, originally from Kashmir, whose Ittefaq Industries dominate Pakistan’s steel, textile and sugar markets and have profited immensely from the family’s close ties with government. Sharif, a graduate of Saint Anthony’s High School and Government College in Lahore, holds a law degree from Punjab University. There is no record of Sharif having married or having children.
Rising Through Provincial Politics:
Sharif was a director of the Ittefaq Group in 1981 when then-military dictator Zia ul Haq appointed him finance minister of Punjab. Sharif used his business interests to promote a pro-development agenda and steer federal money Punjab's way. Bringing home more bacon than his predecessor won him the Punjab chief minister’s job in the 1985 election. That was also the year of Zia ul Haq’s death in a plane crash—and the rise of Benazir Bhutto, whose coalition government pre-empted a move by Sharif to fill the power vacuum left by Zia. It was the beginning of a long and bitter enmity between Sharif and the Bhutto clan.
Rising Through National Politics: First Stint as Prime Minister, 1990-93:
Bhutto diverted Punjab Province’s federal appropriations gravy train, angering Sharif but also setting the stage for his public denouncements of Bhutto—and propelling his popularity to national prominence at a time when Bhutto was squandering her popularity through mis-rule, nepotism and cascading charges of corruption. In November 1990, with Bhutto weakened and abandoned by the military and business communities, Sharif became prime minister, promising economic reform, clean government and a more consciously Islamic state. For the first time, a politician outside of Pakistan’s landed aristocracy was elected.
Economically, Sharif was astute. He privatized inefficient industries, opened the stock market to foreign investment and loosened foreign exchange restrictions, earning plaudits from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. But his style alienated entrenched political interests. And politically, Sharif was less astute. He alienated Pakistan’s secular establishment by trying (and failing) to impose a form of Islamic law. When he sought to abrogate the president’s power, the president dismissed him, though on unproven corruption charges that Sharif used his position to enrich Ittifaq Industries.
Second Stint as Prime Minister, 1997-99:
Sharif regained the prime ministership in a landslide victory over Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party, winning an improbable 90% of the vote. With that mandate, Sharif moved successfully to amend the constitution, removing the president’s power to dismiss the prime minister or the national assembly—but also enabling party leaders to dismiss assembly members at will, thus ensuring minimal dissent. Sharif’s initiative was characteristically imperious, curtailing what checks and balances on the prime minister’s office.
Sharif’s second administration also featured four major developments:
- In May 1998, Sharif approved the detonation of several nuclear devices in a test, signaling to India and the world that Pakistan was the Islamic world’s first nuclear power.
- Following Bhutto’s lead, Sharif financed and armed the Taliban in Afghanistan, recognizing the extremist regime as Afghanistan’s legitimate government.
- In February 1999, Sharif met with Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vijpayee in Lahore in an attempt to normalize relations with India and ease hair-trigger relations over Kashmir. The move angered Pakistan’s military.
Ouster:
Sharif appointed Pervez Musharraf army chief in 1998, a decision he’d soon regret. Jealous of Musharraf’s growing power within the military, Sharif fired him in October 1999, while Musharraf was on a commercial jet, flying to Karachi. Sharif initially ordered the jet diverted. Musharraf orchestrated a bloodless coup from the plane and later arrested Sharif, charging him with hijacking, conspiracy to murder and treason. The Supreme Court upheld the hijacking charge. Musharraf eventually pardoned Sharif but also booted him out of the country. Sharif took up exile in Saudi Arabia.
Return to Pakistan, and Maybe Power:
Sharif flew back to Pakistan on Sept. 10, 2007. Musharraf immediately ordered him out of the country again. Sharif returned on Nov. 25, 2007, this time for good, as Musharraf’s rule was slowly, irrevocably disintegrating in the face of popular outrage. For a time Sharif and Benazir Bhutto campaigned together until Bhutto’s assassination. After the 2008 parliamentary elections, Sharif’s PML and Bhutto’s PPP briefly ruled as a coalition. That arrangement collapsed in August 2008.
In the Sept. 6, 2008 parliamentary vote that was to decide Pakistan's next president, Sharif nominated former chief justice Saeed-uz-Zaman Siddiqui to face Asif Ali Zardari and a Pervez Musharraf loyalist, Mushahid Hussain.
