The bureaucratic and military leaders ruled the country for over 25 years and equally disappointed the nation. The sick Ghulam Muhammad dissolved the Constituent Assembly and the government of Prime Minister Khwaja Nazimudding. Iskander Mirza managed to rise from Defence Secretary to the powerful Presidency through palace intrigues. General Ayub Khan, though Commander-in-Chief, was appointed as the Defence Minister. In the short years from the dismissal of Khwaja Nazimudding to the imposition of Martial Law by General Ayub Khan in October 1958, five Prime Ministers were in and out of power in quick succession. The political conditions in the provinces were more chaotic than in the center. General Ayub Khan’s regime is credited with political stability, economic development and successful foreign policy. Without going into details, it is sufficient to say General Ayub Khan meticulously planned his rise to the apogee of political power in connivance with President Iskander Mirza finally upsetting the applecart and ousting his benefactor. He abrogated the parliamentary Constitution of 1956 passed by the Constituent Assembly substituting it with his own adopted in a referendum with a Presidential form of governance. He ruled the country with absolute power with the help of a technocrat cabinet, a disciplined and powerful bureaucracy and 80,000 pliable basic democrats who also formed the electoral college for the election of the president. He brought in the ‘Parity System’ between the two wings for distribution of political and administrative positions and divisible economic and financial resources sowing the seed of Bengali nationalism that ultimately culminated in the secession of the eastern wing. His regime’s economic growth averaged between 6-7% mainly because of the generous foreign economic and military aid from the USA-led Western world for our participation in the anti-communist alliances. His economic policies, steered by Harvard trained economists, resulted in the concentration of the national wealth into 22 industrialists with no expected ‘trickle down’ leaving the masses as poor and powerless as ever. The mass agitation against the growing economic marginalization of the people began rocking his boat from 1967 and forced him to abdicate power in March 1969. General Ayub Khan’s regime is credited with political stability, economic development and successful foreign policy His anti-communist alliances fell apart after the 1965 war with India when the US clamped arms embargo on both the countries. The Western world refused to mediate between Pakistan and India leaving the field open for the Soviet leaders who coerced him to accept the Tashkent Treaty which had no reference to the Kashmir dispute. Though our bilateral relations with the US had all diplomatic trappings, we failed to have the backing of the American leadership for any breakthrough in the Kashmir dispute. General Yahya Khan conceded to the main demands of the opposition alliance which included the dissolution of the One-Unit; the adoption of the parliamentary form of government; the holding of elections on the adult franchise basis and the recognition of Balochistan as a province. He failed to handle the post- election situation adroitly in the 1971and lost the bigger wing of the country. General Zia ul Haq pounced on the apple pie in July 1977 when the politicians were squabbling. He promised to hold elections within 90 days and go back to soldiering but ruled the country with an iron fist for 11 years until his death in August 1988. He arrested Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, tried him on trumped-up murder charges and executed him antagonizing Sindhis. He arrested political activists and confined them to dreary dungeons; plunged the country into the Afghanistan war accepting Islamists from all over the Muslim world to train them in the use of modern arms and launch them into the Afghanistan war; countenanced drug production and smuggling of lethal arms into the country. What he left behind were millions of drug addicts, trained militants, Kalashnikov culture, a weaponized society, religious bigotry and sectarian polarization, a corrupt and de-politicized social milieu. He was sustained in power so long by Western and Arab political and economic support. The billions of dollars received in economic aid, however, did not trickled down to ameliorate the lot of the masses. General Pervaiz Musharraf was forced to intervene as a result of the shenanigans of Mian Nawaz Sharif who had developed a delusional sense of invincibility after having outdone President Farooq Leghari, Chief Justice Late Sajjad Ali Shah and General Jehangir Karamat. He stumbled while trying to outmaneuver his new Army Chief, General Musharraf. The General created euphoria by his seven-point agenda in his first address to the nation. He became the hero of the Western world overnight in the wake of the US decision to attack Kabul seeking revenge for the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York, acceding to all the US demands in October 2001. The ungovernability of Pakistan combined with the bad advice of his Western friends to give a civilian façade to his military regime, General Musharraf was compelled to fall back on the putrefied politicians adopting a King’s party. He got himself elected as President through a referendum. After holding general elections, he managed to coerce sufficient numbers to have his protégé Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali elected as the Prime Minister. He was replaced by Chaudhry Shujat Hussain for an interim 45 days to pave the way for another protégé, Shaukat Aziz to become the Prime Minister. The rest is history. He is now remembered for his quarrel with the judiciary, the dubious NRO and his exit from power. All the bureaucratic and military rulers left the country economically battered, politically chaotic and socially fragmented. However, they have been successfully outpaced by the new and existing lot of the political leaders in disappointing this poor nation that continues to look hopelessly for a Mahathir Muhammad or Kemal Ataturk. The author was a member of the Foreign Service of Pakistan and he has authored two books