Ayub Khan:

– Family law ordinance
– Started population control
– The Indus water treaty. We under-estimate this but it has really helped Pakistan over the last 4-5 decades.
– Economy (yes there were flaws in the distribution too but he did move the economy forward)
– The green revolution
– Infrastructure development
– The steel mill. Most people associate it with ZAB but it was conceived in Ayub’s period (see the wikipedia article for more on this)
– The basic democracies. Yes, using this system as an electoral college was wrong, but still establishing such a system of elected local bodies was a good step as it allowed participation of people at the grass-roots. This probably also somewhat ironically contributed to the politicization of the people which eventually led to the anti-Ayub movement.
– a reasonably decent foreign policy, especially opening up relations with China while maintaining ties with the US.

Now of course Ayub brought the military into politics and his rule laid the foundation for the separation of East Pakistan, so against the above list, there are some major negative points as well, but I’m just trying to stick to the topic here.

ZAB:

The following can be cited

– We can probably give him credit for continuing with the steel mills.
– The nuclear program
– foreign policy
– The 1973 constitution.
– Restoring national self-esteem after 1971
– Giving voice to the under-privillaged.

The problem we run into here is that objectively speaking, almost all these points have to be accompanied with some serious reservations. Credit for the steel mill and nuclear program has to be shared with others (PSM with Ayub and Yahya, and the nuclear program was also moved forward by Zia in a big way and continued by later govts). Giving ZAB credit for the restoration of national self-esteem after the separation of East Pakistan seems like a joke after his own role in 1971. Giving voice to the poor is undermined by the fact that ZAB used it for creating his own personality cult instead of giving the people a genuine say in the power structure through proper mechanisms such as elected local govts or intra-party democracy.

ZAB did reach out to other parties while developing the 1973 constitution, and for that he deserves some credit. But in its substance, was the 1973 constitution very different from 1956 or say the one we were about to have in 1954? We often overlook the fact that he was in some sense building upon some of the things that had been worked out earlier, but he had the extra advantage of not having to perform the tough balancing act between East and West Pakistan that made constitution making very challenging in the 1950s.

Musharraf:

– Elected local govts
– Higher education.
– Women rights related. Provided an environment where issues like honour killings could be debated openly for the first time. Special seats for women in the assemblies, and especially local councils were a huge step forward. And of course, the women protection bill, which removed the probblematic parts of the hudood laws (after this amendment a rape victim did not have to produce 4 whitnesses). Some of this was however undermined by his disgusting statement about rape victims to Washington post.
– Nadra. We under-estimate this but computerizing the national data base was pretty important.
– Opening up the media. Here we should however recognize that Mush did not invent media freedom and it is something that would probably have happened eventually on its own too, but he does deserve some credit for expediting it. Of course his crackdown on the media during the lawyers’ movement does take some of the gloss off it.

The economy was badly mismanaged though, so deserves a mention in the list of failures rather than accomplishments. Likewise for the struggle against extremism (especially the criminal manner in which the Taliban gradually took over Swat during his rule).