Alliance With Pakistan Peoples Party
Since its inception, the Awami National Party has been an important ally of democratic socialist party, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and liberal secular MQM, despite political differences and clash of ideologies. The party formed a coalition government with the PPP in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province and MQM in Sindh Province and Islamabad for central government after the Pakistani parliamentary elections in 1988. This alliance, however, collapsed in April 1989 after differences cropped up between the two parties, after Prime minister Benazir Bhutto ordered a military action that brutally failed. The Awami National Party later formed an alliance with the conservative Pakistan Muslim League in early June 1989 which led to a formal split in the party with many activists allying with the PPP.
After the election of Nawaz Sharif to power after the 1990 elections the ANP again formed a coalition with former rivals Pakistan Muslim League. This alliance proved longer lasting, surviving till 1998 when it collapsed over differences over Kalabagh Dam and renaming the province Pakhtunkhwa. The party then joined the Grand Democratic Alliance, campaigning against Nawaz Sharif government's policies. After Nawaz Sharif's overthrow by Pervez Musharraf, the party stayed an active member of the Alliance for Restoration of Democracy, until the September 11 attacks in the United States in 2001, when it left the alliance over supporting the US ouster of the Taliban. The party's reputation was damaged in this period following the arrest of former Federal Minister and senior party leader Azam Khan Hoti.
In the 2002 elections the party struck up an alliance with the People's party however both parties were electorally routed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa by the religion-political alliance Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) riding on a wave of anti-American sentiment in Pakistan.
In the 2008 elections the party contested on its own and won a plurality of votes in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as well as winning seats in Balochistan for the first time in 15 years and in Karachi for the first time. It subsequently formed a government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and is supporting the PPP government in the centre and Sindh and Balochistan.
The strongholds of the ANP are in the Pashtun areas of Pakistan, except in Punjab, particularly in the Peshawar valley of the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, while Karachi hosts one of the largest Pashtun populations in the world with 7 million Pashtuns living in Karachi . In the election of 2008, the ANP won two Sindh assembly seats in Karachi.
Read more about this topic: Awami National Party, Formation and History
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