Mir Balakh Sher Mazari

The chief (tumandar) and the paramount sardar of the Mazari tribe, Mir Balakh Sher Mazari was born on 8 July 1928 in Kot Karam Khan to the 21st Sardar and the sixth Mir of the Mazari tribe, Murad Buksh Khan Mazari. He was elevated to become the Mazari chief in 1933 after the death of his father who had only ruled as chief for 9 months.

Murad Buksh Mazari had earlier succeeded his elder brother Mir Dost Muhammad Khan Mazari as the tribe chief and their father Mir Sher Muhammad Khan Mazari who was the 19th Sardar and fourth Mir of the Mazaris. Mazari tribe is situated on the tristate area between Balochistan, Sindh and Punjab provinces of Pakistan.

After the completion of his education from Aitchison College in 1945, Balakh Sher Mazari went on to live in Rojhan-Mazari, from where he joined active politics in 1951 and was elected Member of the National Assembly and Member of the Provincial Assembly on many occasions.

As the chief of his tribe, Balakh Sher Mazari holds the title of ‘Mir’ but also goes by the styles of ‘Tumandar’ or Sardar. Mazari is 22nd Sardar and the seventh Mir of the Mazaris. Alongside Balakh Sher Mazari, his brother Sherbaz Khan Mazari has also played a prominent role in the politics of Pakistan. Even his grandson Mir Dost Mohammad Mazari is a Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP) parliamentarian from Rajanpur who served as the parliamentary secretary for the Ministry of Water and Power.

On 19 April 1993, president Ghulam Ishaq Khan exercised his extra-constitutional presidential powers, instituted to him through the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan, to resolve the power struggle in Pakistan and dismissed the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on the charges of corruption and economic mismanagement. After dissolving both, the national and the provincial assemblies, Ghulam Ishaq Khan appointed Mir Balakh Sher Mazari as the caretaker prime minister.

In his short lived career as the caretaker Prime Minister, Mazari’s foreign policy remained his strong suit. One significant act on his part was to attend the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit as Pakistan's representative head. At the summit, he called upon the OIC to adopt resolute steps to condemn Indian atrocities and violations of human rights in Jammu and Kashmir. Concerned with the struggle of the Kashmiri people, he said that they had been denied their right to self-determination and condemned India's continued occupation of the Kashmiri territory. He pointed out that the unending repression had failed to break the will of the Kashmiri people to liberate from India's illegal occupation.

On the question of Palestine, Prime Minister Balakh Sher Mazari stated that Israel must fully implement resolutions 242 and 338 of the U.N. Security Council and that all the Palestinian people be allowed to return to their homeland. On the genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina, he stated that Pakistan had sponsored a Security Council resolution imposing additional sanctions on Serbia. He sincerely hoped that the Conference would respond generously to Bosnia-Herzegovina's needs.

Prime Minister Mazari also called on the OIC to condemn strongly Armenia's attack on Azerbaijan and called for the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Azerbaijan and the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. On the issue of Cyprus, the Prime Minister stated that Pakistan supported a bi-zonal and bi-communal federal structure based on the equality of the Turkish and Greek communities. He also called on the Islamic world to support the people of Afghanistan in this period of political transition.

On the issue of terrorism, he stated that Pakistan is committed to combating international terrorism, and called on the OIC to condemn strongly all forms of terrorism. The Prime Minister of Pakistan also called on the OIC to protect the rights and welfare of Muslim minorities. Prime Minister Mazari also stated that many OIC states have a stake in combatting racism and xenophobia in Europe that is affecting Muslims living there.

On 26 May 1993, the Supreme Court voted that Ishaq Khan's dissolution of the National Assembly and his dismissal of the prime minister were unconstitutional. The Supreme Court's action was a sharp rebuke of Ishaq Khan's heavy-handed exercise of presidential powers and was widely hailed as a victory for the advocates of democratisation. Yet, although the Supreme Court was able to reinstate the Nawaz Sharif government, the status quo ante was not restored, and the struggle between the president and the prime minister continued unabated, making the pursuit of regular government workings impossible.