FOR some strange reason Pakistanis don't like history. They don't write it; they don't read it; and they don't learn lessons from it.

If they did, they would have allowed their leaders to make fewer mistakes; they themselves would have been more alert whenever the country was sent in the wrong direction by those holding the reins of power. For this reason alone it may be a good idea to reflect a little on the number of regime changes the country has seen in the last 50 years, from 1958 to 2008.

There were changes even before 1958 when prime ministers came and went. After 1958 when the military intervened for the first time, each change brought about a structural transformation. Economists tell us that institutions don't develop when societies are in a state of flux. Pakistan has been in such a state for its entire life as a nation state. It is not surprising that it has failed to create institutions without which the country cannot be governed for long in a steady way.

The latest change occurred on Aug 18, four days after the country celebrated its 61st birthday. There were a number of differences between this kink in our history compared to the previous discontinuities. This time a military leader was forced to leave office by an organised civilian movement. The process that brought about the change was semi-constitutional in that the leaders of the two parties who saw Pervez Musharraf out of the presidency used the power they had acquired in the provincial and national assemblies following the elections of Feb 18.

It was not fully constitutional since neither of the two men who devised the process to move Musharraf out of the presidency was an elected representative of the people. Before I speculate on what may lie in the future, let me go back to the country's history of regime change.

It is perhaps a coincidence that major political periods in Pakistan have lasted 11 years. The country gained independence in 1947 but the chaotic rule of democracy ended with the military coup in 1958, 11 years later. Gen (later Field Marshal) Muhammad Ayub Khan governed for 11 years until he was forced out of office by Gen Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan in 1969. Ayub Khan both built and de

stroyed. He built a strong economy but weakened the political system by throwing out a constitution that gave the country a parliamentary system of government.

Yahya lasted for less than three years during which he saw the Pakistani state split in two with the emergence of the country's eastern wing as Bangladesh. The military does not appreciate its leaders who surrender in the battlefield; Yahya Khan fell to the wrath of senior and junior military officers who shouted him down in an army auditorium where he had gone to explain the defeat of the forces he commanded at the hands of the Indians.

Yahya thought that his explanation before a highly agitated audience would help him keep his job. He did not survive and the reins of power were placed by the army in the hands of a civilian, the mercurial Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

There was to be no peace under Bhutto. He opened many fronts while he governed. While he gave the country a constitution in 1973 — it was very similar in structure to the one that had been promulgated in 1956 only to be abrogated by Ayub Khan in 1958 — he did not always govern by it.

The 1973 Constitution promised much but delivered little. It promised provincial autonomy but Bhutto created a highly centralised system of governance. Islamabad sucked in power from the provincial governments to strengthen the central administration. If the provincial governments were in the hands of the opposition they were dismissed and replaced by semi-authoritarian governors who ruled on the basis of directions received from the prime minister and his powerful secretariat.

Bhutto did not understand economics and tended to apply simple solutions to complex problems. One of these was to expand the size of the government and the economic reach of the state in order to deliver more to the less advantaged segments of the population. He didn't understand that the state can't efficiently manage economic assets — that only leads to waste and corruption. That is precisely what happened.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was made to surrender his job — and later his life — to the head of the military, and one whom he had appointed. Looking deep into the eyes of General Ziaul Haq, Bhutto did not think he read any political ambition.

He turned out to be terribly wrong. The new military leader also governed for 11 years, from 1977 to 1988. He may have lasted longer had he not been killed in an air crash. Zia's 11 years saw a major structural change not in the country's economy, nor in its political system. The change happened in the way the people looked at themselves and their country.

Pakistanis became more conservative and more religious while Zia governed. This made it possible for religious groups and organisations to throw deep roots into Pakistani soil. Before Zia, Pakistan was a tolerant society which allowed without fear or contempt expression of different points of view. Under Zia conformity became a requirement for advancing in society. The government brought in a new form of Islam — Wahabism, that was foreign to the lands of which Pakistan was a part.

Zia's death in Aug 1988 ushered in another political period that also lasted for 11 years. While the military watched the political stage from the wings, two political parties locked themselves in a deadly embrace. Regimes changed four times and four elections were held and two individuals twice became prime minister but not with very happy results.

If the Pakistani people distributed sweets in the streets to celebrate Musharraf's departure, sweets were also distributed in 1990 and 1996 when Benazir Bhutto was dismissed and in 1993 and 1999 when Nawaz Sharif was forced out of office. Pakistanis, it would appear, are always ready to celebrate regime change.

Pervez Musharraf broke the 11-year rule of Pakistani history. I once mentioned that to him to his great amusement. That was in March 2006 when I went to discuss with him the book I was writing on his period in office. “By your rule I should be in office until 2010,” he said. “That will be okay with me.”