India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan: Main political figures of the last 50 Years

Transcription

1 India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan: Main political figures of the last 50 Years

2 Indira Gandhi ( ) -Daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, India s first prime minister -Leader of the Indian National Congress and Prime Minister of India (from and from ) -Favored economic development (esp. in agriculture) -Received military aid from the U.S.S.R. -Pursued the development of a nuclear weapon for India -Gunned down by 2 of her Sikh bodyguards several months after she had ordered a military assault on the Golden Temple in Amritsar (where Sikh extremists, favoring a separate state, had been holding out)

3 Rajiv Gandhi ( ) In 1984, he took over as prime minister after his mother s assassination At age 40, he was India s youngest prime minister Originally he was not interested in pursuing a career in politics (he had gone to Cambridge and become a pilot for the national airline company) While in office ( ), he focused on modernizing India s economy; he also helped India s middle class develop While campaigning for office again in 1991, he was killed by a female suicide bomber who favored Tamil separatists in Sri Lanka

4 Attack in Mumbai (November 2008) -Sometimes referred to as 26/11 -In this three-day attack in Mumbai, India s largest city, 164 people were killed and over 300 were wounded -Islamic extremists from Lashkar-i-Taibi were involved in this attack -India has accused Pakistan s military intelligence agency, or ISI, of having helped with the attack

5 Other attacks were apparently planned by the Lashkar-i-Taibi -David Headley, e.g., a Pakistani American from Chicago, is suspected of having done advance work for a (thwarted) attack on a Danish cartoonist s newspaper s office in Copenhagen, Denmark

6 Manmohan Singh (1932-) -India s 13 th prime minister (from ) -A Sikh, he was India s first non- Hindu prime minister -Previously he served as minister of finance -Born in the Punjab, he lived as a child in Amritsar -An economist, he studied at the universities of Cambridge and Oxford

7 Narendra Modi (1950- ) India s Current Prime Minister Member of the BJP (a Hindu Nationalist party) from Gujarat Humble origins (his father sold tea at a railroad station)

8 The 1971 Civil War in Pakistan -This war pitted West Pakistan against East Pakistan -People in East Pakistan felt that they were discriminated against ethnically and linguistically; they also believed that West Pakistan neglected them economically. -Eventually, with Indian help, East Pakistan broke free and declared its independence as the new nation of Bangladesh -Today it is the 8 th biggest country in the world. It is also one of the most impoverished.

9 Zulfikar Ali Bhutto ( ) -Founder of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) -Educated at the Univ of California- Berkeley and Oxford University (England), Bhutto sought to westernize his country He was prime minister of Pakistan from 1973 to He was deposed in a coup d etat led by General Zia-ul-Haq -Later, in 1979, he was arrested and hanged to death on General Zia s orders for allegedly having ordered the assassination of the father of a political opponent

10 General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq ( ) -Seized power in a coup d etat in Ruled Pakistan as a dictator from 1977 to Changed his country s laws so as to make them conform to shar ia -Worked with the U.S. to help Afghan mujahideen fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan; the Pakistani military intelligence agency, the ISI, played a key role in funneling U.S. money and weapons (including Stinger missiles) to the Afghan rebels -Died, along with several of his generals and the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, in a mysterious air crash in 1988

11 Benazir Bhutto ( ) -Daughter of former Pakistani prime minister Ali Bhutto -Had degrees from Harvard and Oxford (she did so well at Oxford, in fact, that in 1976 she was elected president of the Oxford Union) -A secularist, she became prime minister of Pakistan in Removed from power by the military in 1990, she was reelected prime minister in In 1996, President Farooq Leghari removed her from office; her administration was accused of corruption -In 1998 she went into exile abroad (to Dubai) -Later, in 2007, she returned to Pakistan to campaign once more for office but was killed by an assassin

12 Asif Ali Zardari (1955-) -Married to Benazir Bhutto from 1987 to Leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) after his wife s death, he was elected president of Pakistan in 2008 (he replaced General Pervez Musharraf as the country s leader) -He worked with the U.S. to combat Islamic extremists in Pakistan and Afghanistan but his government was accused of not doing enough to root out terrorist cells and support networks; a major source of irritation have been Islamic groups hiding out in the Tribal Frontier near Afghanistan -Osama Bin Laden s stay in Pakistan so close to Islamabad also caused controversy

13 Osama Bin Laden s hideout in Abbottabad

14 Nawaz Sharif, head of the Pakistan Muslim League-N Party and Pakistan s leader since 2013

15 Hamid Karzai (1957-) -A Pashtun, he was president of Afghanistan from In general, he worked with the U.S. to combat the Taliban, Islamic fundamentalists who controlled Afghanistan in the 1990s (and who gave sanctuary to Osama bin Laden and Al- Queda prior to 9/11) -There have been some disagreements with the U.S., however, esp. regarding bombing of villages in which some civilians have been killed by mistake -In late 2014, Karzai stepped down and Ashraf Ghani took over as president.

16 Ashraf Ghani (1949-) President of Afghanistan since 2014 A Pashtun, he used to work for the World Bank He also served as Afghanistan s finance minister from His wife Rula Saade is Lebanese

17 The Taliban