ABSTRACT
The new Director General of ISI (DGISI), Mohamed Riaz Khan, had a reputation for being religiously inclined, and this made him a logical choice to serve as Zia's intelligence chief. The 1977 coup triggered a shift in ISI's domestic missions. Now Zia's enemies became ISI priorities, and these included Sindhi separatists, Shi'a militants stirred up after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), and the Bhutto family. Pakistan's poverty, lack of development, corrupt bureaucracy, illiteracy and lopsided military budgets were another formidable impediment to Zia's goals. Zia's foreign policy was substantially different from that of his predecessor. He was not a jet-set diplomat, although he did emphasize Islam as a foreign policy element, especially when it came to Afghanistan. Islamabad stepped up radio broadcasts in Dari and Pashto, the two dominant languages of Afghanistan, and much of the program content was focused on Islamic themes.
