Timeline:
Pakistan's troubled political history
Here is a look back at Pakistan’s troubled political history:
December 1971 – Full-scale war breaks out between India and Pakistan over East Pakistan. It ends with surrender of 90,000 Pakistani troops and leads to creation of Bangladesh.
July 1977 – Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto is deposed in a military coup and imprisoned; army chief General Mohammad Ziaul Haq takes power, imposes martial law and promises elections.
April 1979 – Zulfikar is hanged on a disputed conviction for conspiring to commit political murder. In October, Zia postpones elections indefinitely, and bans political parties.
February 1985 – Elections held. Zia sworn in as president for five-year term in March.
August 1988 – Zia dies in plane crash in Pakistan.
November 1988 – Benazir Bhutto, daughter of Zulfikar, wins elections.
August 1990 – President Ghulam Ishaq Khan sacks Benazir and cabinet for corruption and abuse of power. State of emergency declared. In November, Nawaz Sharif is elected prime minister.
1993 – Ishaq Khan dismisses Sharif’s government, accusing it of corruption. Benazir becomes prime minister again.
November 1996 – President Farooq Leghari sacks Benazir and calls elections, which Sharif wins.
October 1999 – Army chief Pervez Musharraf seizes power in bloodless coup. Sworn in as president in June 2001, he wins controversial referendum extending his rule for five more years in April 2002.
March 9, 2007 – Musharraf suspends Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry on charges of misconduct, setting off protests by lawyers and opposition politicians.
July – Musharraf orders troops to storm the Red Mosque in Islamabad. About 105 people are killed. A wave of militant attacks and bombings follow.
July 20 – Supreme Court reinstates Chief Justice Chaudhry, dealing a blow to Musharraf’s authority.
October 19 – At least 139 people killed in suicide bomb attack on Benazir’s motorcade as the former prime minister is driven through Karachi after arriving from eight years of exile.
December 27 – Benazir is killed in a gun and bomb attack after a rally in Rawalpindi. At least 16 others are killed.
August 18, 2008 – President Musharraf resigns after the ruling coalition agrees to launch impeachment proceedings against him.
September – Parliament elects Pakistan People’s Party’s (PPP) Asif Ali Zardari, widower of Benazir, as president.
November 26-29 – An attack on Mumbai in November kills 166 people and targets foreigners as well as Indians. The Lashkar-e-Taiba, a militant group, is blamed.
July 17, 2009 – Pakistan’s Supreme Court quashes a nine-year-old hijacking conviction against former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, clearing at least one hurdle to him seeking power.
August 2010 – The worst floods in Pakistan kill more than 1,750 people, affect more than 18 million and inflict nearly $43 billion worth of damage to infrastructure and agriculture.
March 30, 2011 – India’s and Pakistan’s prime ministers meet during a World Cup cricket match in a symbolic gesture aimed at rebuilding ties shattered by the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
May 2 – A unilateral raid by US special forces kills al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad.
November 26 – US-Pakistan relations plunge into crisis when Nato helicopters and fighter jets kill 24 Pakistani troops in attacks on two military border outposts in northwest Pakistan.
January 15, 2012 – Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani rejects a demand by the country’s powerful army chief that he clarify or retract his criticism of the army and spy agency, raising tension further.
Gilani criticises Army Chief General Ashfaq Kayani and the director general of the ISI, Lieutenant-General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, for filing court papers in a case involving a mysterious memo that has pitted the military against the civilian government.
January 25 – Gilani reverses his earlier criticism that the country’s military had acted unconstitutionally in calling for an investigation of the controversial memo.
February 13 – Gilani pleads not guilty as the Supreme Court charges him with contempt of court for his refusal to re-open old corruption cases against President Zardari. If convicted, Gilani could be forced to step down and faces up to six months in jail.
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