Pervez Musharraf was known to be one of Pakistan’s better dictators A projected protagonist in the war on terror, the former general Pakistan army commander in chief and president of Pakistan died in Dubai on February 5th 2023. When Parvez Musharraf was selected as military commander in chief he was considered a surprising choice. A hot-headed former artilleryman, with a reputation for bravery under Indian fire and occasional indiscipline, he was number three on a list of generals that Nawaz Sharif, then prime minister, had been given to pick from. He was also an outlier in a top brass dominated by ethnic Punjabis and Pushtuns.
Mr Musharraf hailed from the southern Pakistani city of Karachi; his Urdu-speaking family had migrated there in 1947 from Delhi, where he was born. Muslim families from Indian origin have faced lot of discrimination and challenges in punjabi dominated political elites culture. Mr Sharif, it was clear, envisaged Mr Musharraf as a weak army chief whom he could control. Former Pakistan prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had applied the same logic when appointing Muhammad Zia ul-Haq army chief in 1976. But Zia promptly removed Bhutto in a coup, hanged him, and ruled Pakistan until he was killed in a mysterious plane crash in 1988 Mr Sharif, too had similarly underestimated Mr Musharraf. The general Musharraf toppled Mr Sharif in a coup in 1999, had him sentenced to life in prison and ruled Pakistan, first as “chief executive” and then as president, until his resignation in 2008.
President Musharraf’s decade in power also followed a similar pattern to General Zia’s rule. Following a period of civilian misrule, Mr Musharraf stabilised the economy, passed liberal reforms, raised the growth rate and became a people’s general. like Zia, Mr Musharraf’s rule coincided with a momentous event in next-door Afghanistan that would present a huge test of his leadership and transform Pakistan’s place in the world. During President Musharraf’s, initial years in power al-Qaeda a Muslim fundamentalist organisation emerged. This Afghanistan-based organisation had in its ranks veterans of the anti-Soviet liberation struggle that General Zia had organised on America’s behalf. Mr Musharraf’s decision to co-operate with America in the war on terror that followed made him one of its most important allies. America—which had cut off aid to Pakistan in the 1990s—authorised $18bn in military and non-military support for the country between 2002 and 2011. President Parvez Musharraf was hailed by than American President George W. Bush as a “strong defender of freedom”. “In the Line of Fire”, a vainglorious autobiography the general published in 2006, surged on to the New York Times bestseller list.
President Musharraf’s alliance with America against jihadism, in Afghanistan and beyond, went against Pakistani opinion, including within the army, Mr Musharraf’s defiance against jihadist Al-Qaeda was his matter of personal conviction. Unlike the pious Islamist President Zia, Musharraf was a whisky-drinking moderate with an eye for the ladies. Having spent much of his childhood in Turkey, where his father was stationed as a diplomat, Mr Musharraf was a lifelong fan of Kemal Ataturk, reformist ruler of Turkey, Musharraf during his army career his love of Pakistani rock music and Western fashions earned him the nickname “Cowboy”. As Pakistan’s ruler, he claimed to be pushing a programme of “enlightened moderation”. Musharraf liberalised Pakistan’s media, encouraged pop culture and passed measures to protect women from the chauvinist Islamist legal regime that President Zia had built. In tandem with two Indian prime ministers, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and then Dr Manmohan Singh, he launched a bold and imaginative peace process that would come unprecedentedly close to settling the South Asian rivals’ differences.
Mr Musharraf was publicly reviled as an American puppet and the target of multiple assassination plots. At the same time the contradictions in his position, as an enlightened dictator and a moderate leader of an Islamicised army, made him at best a qualified reformer and unreliable American ally. After leaving office Mr Musharraf came close to admitting what had long been heavily suspected—that, while fighting militants at home, Pakistan’s generals had continued to offer tacit support to the Afghan Taliban even as they were killing American and allied troops. By 2007 the contradictions in Mr Musharraf’s relatively enlightened dictatorship had become unsustainable. Pakistan was being ravaged by terrorism. The limited democracy he had allowed had led to mass protests against his rule. His foremost democratic opponents, Mr Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, were back on the campaign trail. Calling himself “indispensable”, Mr Musharraf briefly declared a state of emergency and suspended the constitution. Musharraf’s army comrades, and the Americans, were growing tired of the disorder, especially after Ms Bhutto was assassinated shortly afterwards. When Mr Musharraf’s opponents won an election in 2008 he resigned the presidency and fled to London rather than face impeachment proceedings. The new government promptly overturned many of his legal and constitutional changes.
Mr Musharraf remained a player in Pakistan’s political drama. After coming back to Pakistan he started plotting a route back to power. He returned to Pakistan in 2013, but met with little popular support and a barrage of lawsuits. He was disqualified from running for election and held under house arrest on multiple charges, including complicity in Ms Bhutto’s killing. Despite turmoil and failure to chart a political comeback in 2016, the army arranged for him to leave for medical attention in Dubai. He was convicted of treason and sentenced to death in absentia, a verdict that was later overturned. Increasingly beset by ill health, he never returned to Pakistan. Mr Musharraf during his tenure as President did try to turn Pakistan’s strategic geopolitical relevance to his country’s advantage. But his reactionary opponents, military and civilian, sponsors of militancy and disorder, squandered the chance. And it may never come again. Whatever the merits of Pakistan’s next military dictator, he is unlikely to be feted in Washington, dc, as Mr Musharraf often was in his life span even after his Presidency. Musharraf’s Presidency and dictatorship is remembered fondly by many Pakistanis today. No successor has come close to repeating the seriousness of his peacemaking with India. He also left some positive marks on Pakistan. His liberalisation of its media is an enduring success. Perhaps most of all, Mr Musharraf was synonymous with a time when Pakistan was enormously important geopolitically, something that few Pakistanis appreciated until the opportunity that this presented had passed.
