Begum Zia was born in 1931 in Kampala, Uganda, to a family of Punjabi descent; she moved to Pakistan after the partition of India, and married General Zia-ul-Haq on 10 August 1950 in Lahore.[1][2] Shafiq was eight years younger than her husband and related to him on her maternal side. Her father, a medical doctor who lived and worked in Kampala, had taken leave at the time and was in Pakistan so that he could arrange the marriages of both his daughters.[1]
After the 1977 coup and her husband's assumption of the presidency in 1978, Zia became first lady. Over the next decade, she accompanied her husband on several overseas trips, including a state visit to the United States in 1982.[3]
As First Lady
Upon assuming the presidency in 1978, the Zia family continued residing at the Army House in Rawalpindi, but hosted official functions and state dinners at the newly-completed Aiwan-i-Sadr. Begum Zia's work as First Lady of Pakistan focused on domestic initiatives pertaining to the welfare of disabled persons and the problems of drug addiction and abuse among young people. In 1981, the Zia government passed the Disabled Persons' (Employment and Rehabilitation) Ordinance, which created national and provincial councils to formulate policy for the employment and welfare of those with disabilities, established training centres, set employment quotas and called for the creation of a federal fund for the disbursement of stipends and scholarships for disabled persons.[4] Begum and President Zia's own child, youngest daughter Zain, was born with speech and hearing disabilities.[5]
Following Zia-ul-Haq's death in 1988, Begum Zia founded the Zia-ul-Haq Foundation. In 1989, her pension and privileges as the wife of a former president were revoked by the Benazir Bhutto government.[15] She died on 5 January 1996 at the Cromwell Hospital in London and is survived by three daughters, Rubina, Quratulain, and Zain, and two sons, Ijaz and Anwar.[16]
^ abParveen Shaukat Ali (1997). Politics of conviction: the life and times of Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. The London Centre for Pakistan Studies. p. 9. ISBN978-1-901899-03-0. Zia-ul-Haq became engaged to his cousin (the daughter of his mother's sister), who was eight years younger than he was. Begum Shafiq Zia-ul-Haq was born in 1932 in Uganda, where her father lived. According to the traditional religious custom, it was an arranged marriage and was solemnized on August 10, 1950, in Model Town, Lahore. Shafiq's father had been staying there on a leave of absence from his job in Uganda, so that he could marry his two daughters in his own country.
