He initially ruled as Chief Martial Law Administrator, but later installed himself as the President of Pakistan in September 1978. He was the sixth President of Pakistan from July 1977 to his death in August 1988.
Zia was born in Jalandhar, British India, in 1924 as the second child of , Muhammad Akbar, who worked as a senior clerk in the Army GHQ in Delhi and Simla pre-partition.
After graduation from St Stephen's College in Delhi, Zia joined the British Indian Army in 1943. He married Shafiq Jahan in 1951. One of his sons went into politics (Muhammad Ijaz-ul-Haq) becoming a cabinet minister in the government of Nawaz Sharif. He completed his initial education in Simla and then attended St. Stephen's College, Delhi for his graduate degree.
He was commissioned in the British Indian Army in a cavalry regiment on 12 May 1943 and served against Nazi Germany and its allies in World War II. After Pakistan gained its independence, Zia joined the newly formed Pakistan Army as a major. His regiment was now the Guides Cavalry Frontier Force Regiment.
He trained in the United States in 1962–1964 at the US Army Command and General Staff College Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. After that, he returned to take over as Directing Staff (DS) at Command and Staff College, Quetta. During the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, Zia was a tank commander.
Zia was stationed in Jordan from 1967 to 1970 as a Brigadier, helping in the training of Jordanian soldiers, as well as leading the training mission into battle during the Black September operations as commander of Jordanian 2nd Division, a strategy that proved crucial to King Hussein's remaining in power. By 1973, then Maj Gen Zia was commanding the 1st Armoured Division at Multan.
He was then promoted as Lt Gen and was appointed commander of the II Strike Corps at Multan in 1975. It was during this time when General Zia invited Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as the Colonel-in-Chief of the Armoured Corps at Multan, using his tailor to stitch the Blue Patrols of his size. The next day, Bhutto was requested to climb a tank and engage a target, where the target was quite obviously hit. After the function, General Zia met Bhutto, placed his hand on the Quran and said, "You are the saviour of Pakistan and we owe it to you to be totally loyal to you."
On 1 March 1976, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto approved Zia-ul-Haq as Chief of Army, ahead of a number of more senior officers. At the time of his nominating the successor to the outgoing chief General Tikka Khan, the Lieutenant Generals in order of seniority were, Muhammad Shariff, Muhammad Akbar Khan, Aftab Ahmed Khan, Azmat Baksh Awan, Agha Ibrahim Akram, Abdul Majeed Malik, Ghulam Jilani Khan, and Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq.
Bhutto chose the most junior, superseding seven more senior generals. However, the senior most at that time, Lt Gen Mohammad Shariff, though promoted to General, was made the Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, a constitutional post akin to President Fazal Ilahi Chaudhry.
After start of a combined movement of opposition by the title of pakistan national Alliance (PNA), from January 1977, the Political and civil disorder of country intensified, which led to more unrest. Nevertheless, a compromise agreement between Bhutto and opposition was ultimately reported. Yet on 5 July 1977, Bhutto and members of his cabinet were arrested by troops and Zia took over as Chief Martial Law Administrator of Pakistan.
After assuming power as Chief Martial Law Administrator, General Zia promised to hold National and Provincial Assembly elections in the next 90 daysand to hand over power to the representatives of the nation. He also stated that the Constitution of Pakistan had not been abrogated whatsoever, but had been temporarily suspended.
However, in October 1977, he announced the postponement of the electoral plan and decided to start an accountability process for the politicians. Zia said that he changed his decision due to the strong public demand for the scrutiny of political leaders.
On 4 April 1979, the former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged, after the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence as passed by the Lahore High Court. The Supreme Court ruled four to three in favour of execution.
The High Court had given him the death sentence on charges of the murder of the father of Ahmed Raza Kasuri, a dissident PPP politician. Despite many clemency appeals from foreign leaders requesting Zia to commute Bhutto's death sentence, Zia dismissed the appeals as "trade union activity" and upheld the death sentence.
The hanging of an elected prime minister by a military man was condemned by the international community and by lawyers and jurists across Pakistan.Today it is widely accepted as a politically motivated judicial murder.
Despite the case whereby Bhutto was held behind the murder of Ahmed Raza Kasuri, the trial is considered to have been biased against Bhutto who it is generally believed to have been framed in the case.
In the absence of a parliament, General Zia decided to set up an alternative system, Majlis-e-Shoora, in 1980. Most of the members of the Shoora were intellectuals, scholars, ulema, journalists, economists, and professionals belonging to different fields of life. The Shoora was to act as a board of advisors to the President. All 284 members of the Shoora were to be nominated by the President, also known as a technocracy or government of technocrats.
General Zia eventually decided to hold elections in the country. But before handing over the power to the public representatives, he decided to secure his position as the head of state. A referendum was held on 1 December 1984, and the option was to elect or reject the General as the future President. Despite pressure from the government to vote, only 10% of those eligible to vote did so. Zia had the overwhelming majority of the votes cast, but in reality the referendum was an embarrassing failure.
Zia's international standing greatly rose after his declaration to fight the Soviet invaders, as he went from being portrayed as just another military dictator to a champion of the free world by the Western media. Pakistan–United States relations took a much more positive turn. The United States, faced with a rival superpower looking as if it were to create another Communist bloc, now engaged Zia to fight a US-aided war by proxy in Afghanistan against the Soviets.
On 2 December 1978, on the occasion of the first day of the Hijra to enforce the Islamic system in Pakistan in a nationwide address, Zia accused politicians of exploiting the name of Islam: "Many a ruler did what they pleased in the name of Islam."
As time passed, the legislature wanted to have more freedom and power and by the beginning of 1988, rumors about the differences between Prime Minister Muhammad Khan Junejo and Zia were rife.
On 29 May 1988, General Zia dissolved the Senate and the National Assembly and removed the Prime Minister under article 58(2)b of the amended Constitution. Apart from many other reasons, Prime Minister Junejo's decision to sign the Geneva Accord against the wishes of General Zia.
General Zia-ul-Haq promised to hold elections in 1988 after the dismissal of Junejo government. He said that he would hold elections within the next 90 days. The late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's daughter Benazir Bhutto had returned from exile earlier in 1986, and had announced that she would be contesting the elections.
With Bhutto's popularity somewhat growing, and a decrease in international aid following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, Zia was in a repetitively difficult political situation.
Zia's major domestic initiatives included the consolidation of the fledgling nuclear program, which was initiated by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. He is most remembered for his foreign policy; the subsidizing of the Mujahideen movement during the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan which led to the Soviet Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan. He was described by some as a "fundamentalist Sunni dictator"
Zia died along with several of his top generals and then-United States Ambassador to Pakistan Arnold Lewis Raphel in a suspicious aircraft crash near Bahawalpur (Punjab) on 17 August 1988.
His funeral was held on 19 August 1988 in Islamabad. Also in attendance was his successor President Ghulam Ishaq Khan, who had earlier officially announced Zia's death in a nationwide address. Zia's body was buried in a small tomb outside the Faisal Mosque.
