 Zia-ul-Haq forged a strong alliance between the military and Deobandi institutions.Possible motivations for the Islamization programme included Zia's personal piety (most accounts agree that he came from a religious family), his desire to gain political allies, to "fulfill Pakistan's "raison d'être"" as a Muslim state, or the political need to legitimise what was seen by some Pakistanis as his "repressive, un-representative martial law regime".President Zia's long eleven-year rule featured the country's first successful technocracy.