Why blame Zia alone?

Salman Zafar has a newspaper blog article that points out that the rot in Pakistan long precedes General Zia-ul-Haq, whom it is fashionable nowadays, to blame for Pakistan's ills.

These include the Objectives Resolution, 1949, which bound state and religion together; the Doctrine of Necessity, 1954, that enabled constitutional processes to be broken at will; the One Unit program, 1954, that made West Pakistan into one province to try to match East Pakistan; the Constitution of 1956, that made Pakistan into an Islamic Republic, and gave the President the right to declare emergency; the first coup of 1958; the Constitution of 1962 that set up the Council of Islamic Ideology; the unequal treatment of East Pakistan that created massive unrest 1965-1970; the denial of the right of the East Pakistan based Awami League to form the government after it won the elections; the genocide during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971; the second amendment to the Constitution of 1973 that declared Ahmadis as non-Muslims.

The Delusions of a Pakistani Marxist

Lal Khan, editor of the Asian Marxist Review and so on, in the Daily Times, on Bangladesh:
(emphasis added)

Revolutionary upheaval on a class basis had erupted in both East and West Pakistan in 1968. The state was hanging in midair as a revolutionary wave swept across the country. Power was there to be seized. Lack of a revolutionary leadership prepared and determined to carry out a socialist revolution, necessary for a victorious class struggle, led to the derailing of the movement onto nationalist lines. Even then, as military aggression was being defeated, in liberated areas, people’s soviets, with JSD, communists and left nationalists in the leadership, were taking control. A new order was coming into being that threatened the whole system. Fear of the revolution spreading to West Bengal and beyond persuaded the Indian army to enter East Bengal. The defeated Pakistani army was salvaged for another occasion by its supposed foe and transported to prisons in India to subsequently return home. The Indian and Pakistan elites were and are terrified of a revolutionary transformation. War was waged to divert it. The US seventh fleet anchored with marines on board in the Bay of Bengal to intervene in case the Indian army failed to crush the burgeoning revolt. The bourgeois nationalist government based in Calcutta was installed under Indian patronage. Capitalism was saved. People continued to suffer its exploitation and repression.

The cost of losing East Pakistan

Regarding Gilgit-Baltistan [GB], Nazir Naji writes:

What did we lose after losing East Pakistan? Those who are pushing this country deep into a quagmire in the name of Islam still have no idea about how grave that loss was. The leadership of East Pakistan would never have let Pakistan be embroiled in the Afghan war. The Kashmir problem would possibly have been solved. Just like India, Pakistan would be on the road to rapid development. We would be standing with dignity in the comity of nations. Our society would have been free from the scourge of violence. No OBL would have been ensconced safely in our quarters and no Hafiz Saeed would have had the gall to support foreign terrorists. We have seen all this because we let East Pakistan go. And what is happening in GB now, if I allude even perfunctorily to it, it would scare the daylights out of most.