Who is Nawaz Sharif?
The politician has come a long way since his controversial start as a firebrand protégé of Islamist general and former Pakistani President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq. Like most ambitious politicians, he developed strong ties with the Pakistani military and intelligence officers and gave full support to the Afghan jihad against the Soviets in the 1980s. Since then, Nawaz has reinvented himself as a constitutional liberal, an audacious if not entirely persuasive feat of political shrewdness. His two stints as prime minister in the early and late 1990s were marked by weak economic growth, widespread corruption, and ineffective governance. Still, he is remembered less for his failures than for authorizing the 1998 nuclear tests that made Pakistan the first, and so far only, Muslim country with a nuclear bomb. More recently, Sharif owes his popularity to savvy moves such as his unbridled support for Pakistan’s recently reinstated chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who was twice removed unc
