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Strategic location made Pakistan a valuable ally of the United States (US) in the Cold War and again in the war on terror. Tensions in the alliance grew out of conditions in Pakistan that have hindered its political and economic development.

Summary: When General Pervez Musharraf seized power in a bloodless military coup in 1999, some members of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), or PML(N), broke away to form a new group, the Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-e-Azam), or the PML(Q). The party came in first in the parliamentary election of 2002. In February 2008, however, the PML (Q), supporting Musharraf and his policies against a coalition of the Pakistan's People's Party (PPP) and the PML(N), came in third, winning just 54 seats (out of 292 contested seats). A centrist-conservative group, the PML(Q) favors government based on the principles of Islam. In its manifesto, it emphasizes national unity, political reform, and social issues such as health care, education and employment. In October 2010 Musharraf announced he was forming a new party, the All-Pakistan Muslim League, in advance of returning from exile in London before the next national elections, scheduled for 2013.Musharraf would ultimately be disqualified from participating in these elections and would later be sentenced to death for treason. Musharraf fled to Dubai where he died in 2023. In the 2020s, the PML(Q) has retained a handful of members in the Pakistan parliament. Nonetheless, it has largely been politically irrelevant.

AKA: Anjuman Sipah-e-Sahaba; Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP); Millat-e-Islamia Party (MIP); Jamaat Ahle Sunnat.

Summary: The Awami National Party (ANP), despite its middle name, is primarily a party representing ethnic Pashtuns - the same ethnic group from northern Pakistan that comprises the Pakistan Taliban. It is the heir of a succession of groups dating from the early twentieth-century movement for independence from Britain. The ANP's leaders traditionally opposed organizing a separate state from British India based on religion. During the 1950s, some members of the banned Pakistan Communist Party joined ANP's predecessor, the National Awami Party, which was viewed as a front for communists and opposed to Pakistan's long-time Cold War alliance with the United States. ANP was formally organized in 1986 as an alliance of several smaller left-wing parties. In 2009, ANP scored its best showing in parliamentary elections, sending thirteen members to the Parliament in Islamabad and joining the ruling national coalition. The party also took the lead in the provincial government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (before 2010, North-West Frontier Province). ANP remained a dominant political party until 2013 when they lost their majority to Pakistan Tehreek-e-Isaf. Attempts to reassert their power where thwarted during the 2018 elections when ANP’s Assembly candidate was killed by a suicide bombing at a political rally.

Summary: The Muttahida Majlis-el-Amal (MMA) is a shifting alliance of four or five fundamentalist Islamist parties formed to oppose Pakistan's participation in the U.S.-led war on terrorism. The alliance is viewed as sympathetic to the Taliban, both in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. The MMA alliance was created shortly after former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf joined the war on terrorism in the wake of the bombings of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001. MMA, whose constituent parties had not been a major political force, won the third-largest bloc of seats in the National Assembly in parliamentary elections in October 2002. One of its leaders was briefly considered a candidate to become prime minister in the negotiations for parliamentary alliances to form a majority. MMA was strongest in the provinces of Northwest Frontier and Balochistan, where it formed provincial governments. In elections held in February 2008, several constituent parties refused to participate, with the result that MMA lost 49 seats in the National Assembly and emerged with only 10. In addition, it lost power in both provinces. This marked a turn away from sympathy for the Taliban in its northern strongholds in the midst of spreading warfare into those two provinces.

Summary:Pakistan’s Frontier Corps is a non-sectarian, paramilitary organization dating from colonial days to guard the border of Pakistan. The Frontier Corps, comprising separately administered units in the Northwest Frontier Province and Balochistan, in 2008 became the focus of American efforts to induce Pakistani resistance to the Taliban and its ally Al Qaeda in the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) and in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). The Frontier Corps (FC) traces its origins to the first decade of the twentieth century when it was organized by Pakistan's (then British India) viceroy to protect the border and extend authority into remote areas. In 2008 the FC, mostly comprising ethnic Pashtuns in the NWFP and FATA, began receiving training by the U.S. military which provided equipment and transportation to combat the Taliban. The FC has about 80,000 members who have long provided a combination of domestic police enforcement and border patrols.

Summary: After alternating terms in power with the Pakistani People's Party (PPP) during the 1990s, the Pakistani Muslim League-Nawaz (PML(N)) was ousted from government in a military coup led by General Pervez Musharraf in 1999. Then-premier and PLM(N) leader Nawaz Sharif, accused of corruption, was sent into exile. In autumn 2007 Sharif returned from exile--initially for just a few hours before being deported, and later permanently--at the insistence of Saudi Arabia. In February 2008 the PML(N) came in second behind the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) in parliamentary elections and formed an alliance with the PPP that threatened the position of Musharraf. Nawaz was barred from running for office himself, but took a prominent role in his party during parliamentary elections first scheduled for January 2008 and postponed a month by the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. The PML(N) is one of two similar Muslim parties; the other is the Pakistan Muslim League- Quaid-e-Azam (PML[Q)]), the main source of support for President Musharraf. The PML(N) is generally regarded as the less secular of the two, although its policies are not as strictly Islamist as some smaller groups active in Pakistan.

The media in Pakistan have faced overt and covert censorship from the government and pressure groups. As an Islamic nation, with a 97 percent Muslim population, religious public opinion has been a powerful source of censorship. Having been a British colony, Pakistan shared a common censorship legacy with India until 1947, when the two countries became independent. After the birth of Pakistan, censorship continued for the media, literature, fine arts, and films.