End of the line - Review of Pervez Musharraf’s autobiography
He was really a fascist — using the most progressive rhetoric to promote regressive ends, the first of which was to stay in power forever. It was a tragedy, because a man of his undoubted capability could have done a lot of good for his country”
- Pervez Musharraf on Bhutto
At the time of purchasing the book, I noted three odd things about it. First, the picture that I was accustomed to seeing on the promotional cover jacket online, in which Musharraf is shown saluting someone, had been replaced with his another photo in a rather meditative mood. The second thing that I noticed was the absence of footnotes. Since we were anticipating his version on uncountable contentious issues, I was at least expecting his book to carry some verifiable references to other works or documents. The third is the issue of the publishing rights of the book, which are reserved in his name. I believe that at least his staff officer Brigadier Afzal Bajwa should have been given some reward for having painstakingly transcribing this magnus opus.
The book has three dimensions: personal, political and personal-political. While his personal life has been really very interesting, some episodes are narrated rather crudely. As for his views on politics before his rise to the power echelons are concerned, I daresay they are mostly politically incorrect. And the third portion that discusses his personal involvement in the contentious political issues, both in the military and the civilian domains, offers challenging reading owing to lack of contextual relevance. It is in this section that you realise that statements even in the same chapters do not match, which essentially implies that they were neither jotted down in long regular sessions nor edited any differently. Perhaps, Musharraf was really in terrible haste to get it published.
Now, it is really difficult for one to carry out a point by point analysis of his book, as one would have actually desired. So many facts have been crammed into mere 335 pages. Perhaps, the sanest idea would be to pluck out some important issues and discuss them. The rest can be left for later discussions. But before I proceed any further, let me qualify a point I made in my last column. In my piece titled ‘A frisson of terror’ dated September 24, I had written: “And frankly, it seems a bit odd to find a sitting general- president writing a book on sensitive matters when even his recently retired colleagues cannot express themselves before the media owing to the Official Secrets Act.” Unfortunately, some of our friends have tried to imply that since all of the facts reproduced in the book were already being speculated widely, they did not constitute an offence. Alas, the matter is not that simple. There is huge a difference between someone’s speculations or obtaining information through anonymous sources and a sitting army chief and self-styled president dishing out indictments in his official memoirs.
The General has made no bones about the fact that he never had respect or tolerance for authority, a psychological reason for that could be that abbreviation of his name PM gave him political ambitions from the very start as that is often used as the shorthand for the prime minister — the most powerful constitutional post of the country, hence we could not expect him to be too subtle. But to jeopardise the country’s security and interests just to earn a few quick bucks is really saddening. Now anyone can use his words for the official version and hence use them to implicate Pakistan in considerably damaging situations. Perhaps, a few points would be enough to elucidate my position.
At this moment, I am welling with troubling thoughts and at a loss where to begin. Should I begin from page 59 where while discussing the purported A and B areas, the General slips in his distorted facts regarding his disagreements with the Baloch sardars or his attempts at calling Bhutto a hypocrite for banning booze when he himself conveniently forgets to mention in his book his own predilection for spirits. His suspicions regarding Zia’s assassination, which he could not muster up courage to reveal, or his sheer bravado in recollecting even the minute details of what I am obliged to call his 1999 counter-conspiracy (if his was a counter-coup against Nawaz’s coup, and if the premier’s was a conspiracy, his was indeed a counter-conspiracy).
There is one sad point in his book that highlights a character flaw. He rarely admires anyone who does not serve his interest. May it be Ali Kuli Khan, Kakar, Ziauddin, Nawaz Sharif or his DGMO when he was the deputy director. But to be fair with those whom he has appreciated, like the officers who helped him takeover or the beleaguered former premier Jamali, he has tried to present them too as his personal pets. (Chapter 14)
But before anything else can be discussed, I should highlight two impressions that I had while reading the book. First, while his account of the ground operation on the night of his takeover might be true, the claim that he was not expecting it at all makes no sense. A person as politically ambitious as Musharraf could have never left without making the necessary contingency plans. We can say this because he firmly believes in transforming challenges into opportunities. Remember that the 65 war saved him when he was to be court-martialled?
Now the area which I am about to step into is really sad but extremely relevant. There is no doubt that in 1998, he became the army chief by staging a coup against his army chief and senior colleagues because as he makes abundantly clear in the case of Lieutenant General (retired) Tariq Pervez, a corps commander’s meeting with the premier is tantamount to undermining the military discipline. He was fully aware of the fact how much friction could it cause between the military and the political set-up. He still did not relent in accepting the post. And yet within no time we witnessed the Kargil misadventure, which clearly destabilised the civilian political set-up and left behind, despite his repeated emphasis otherwise, only remorse. Could it be that even Kargil was a premeditated move to pave the way for his rise to power?
If such an assessment is really taken into cognisance, the same chain of logic can have more far reaching consequences. Yet, without further guessing, we should note with great regret that in his long reconstruction of the takeover events, he has consciously or unconsciously exposed the supposed political fault-lines in the army that make it much more prone to exploitation. Before this book, we did not know that had the Quetta corps been mobilised that fateful night, the nation could face a civil war.
In these eight years he has short-changed many of his mentors and supporters. His mushy book indeed deserves full justice and hence we continue the last week’s review of this heaven-sent opportunity.
Much has been said by the media managers of Musharraf on this rather dangerous experiment, being his attempt at Pakistan’s image building abroad.
Let me quote here from the last chapter called Reflections, in which he keeps changing many hats from Stephen Covey’s to Max Webber’s, just to show how our president presents us: “Democracy in illiterate, feudal, tribal, and parochial societies (my emphasis) has a downside. People are not elected on pure merit.” Again he makes no bones about the fact that Pakistan has been a nuclear proliferator in the past. My readers who have watched the North Korean nuclear tests will surely now understand my concern regarding the president’s indictments. Now tell me where does our collective image stand in the Western world after reading this book?
Another question is regarding our General’s ambition. He tries to project himself as a content man who had nothing to do with politics until destiny was thrust upon him. Yet on page 152, not only does he reproduce a quote from Abraham Lincoln’s letter in which he had referred to the Constitution as a limb which could be amputated to save the rest of the body or life. “In fact, I found this passage so inspirational and so beautifully worded that I have kept it in my briefcase ever since I first read it in 1990,” he writes. Wait, wait, General sahib, you were only a brigadier in 1990, why did you bother to carry an irrelevant comment on the Constitution for nearly 19 years, prior to your rise to power? Brigadiers, even though under oath to protect the Constitution, hardly have anything to do with abrogating it.
Now see the developments before and during the Kargil Operation in the light of this ambition. Thus far we have studied Kargil in military and diplomatic terms. Let us try digging out some political traces from its rubble. Karamat in Musharraf’s own words had chosen Ali Kuli as his successor. Yet he had to pay the price for talking loudly on the state of the nation’s economy. In the Corps Commanders meetings, Musharraf till then was Nawaz’s man through and through. Nawaz showed Karamat the door and brought Musharraf in. I still remember the overall downbeat morale of the forces. Interestingly enough, Musharraf was known among some of his uniformed colleagues as Nawaz’s robot. He had to do something to remove this stigma. Since now he had become the army chief, Nawaz was expendable. Hence, we witnessed the Kargil episode.
While we will deal with the operational dynamics of the Kargil episode some other time, I have two major issues with it. First, if I recollect it correctly, the purpose of the operation was to deny India an access route to Siachen, yet the operation failed to take over the Kargil-Dras Road, the main artery, sealing the fate of the operation since its very inception. Second, even though I have not read Anthony Zinni’s biography, yet from the published excerpts from his book, I gather that the General was unhappy with Nawaz as early as April 1999. Now that is a terrible indictment on his ambitions.
Let us proceed to the issue of proliferation now. What AQ Khan has done is now no secret and we cannot deny that. But there is one lingering concern. It is astonishing that the US and Musharraf both started finding some rudimentary information on AQ Khan’s activities at the same time. We have had the capacity for considerable time by then but no substantial information was carried in the international newspapers till then. It is beyond my comprehension why the reports on proliferation started surfacing in the foreign journals with devilish speed after the establishment of the National Command Authority when the proliferation had already been nipped? It somehow seems that someone from our side was feeding the information to all for some personal gains.
No, no, do not talk about the CIA. It was handing Iran the clean chit before an Iranian opposition group gave it a presentation with the proof. It could not spot the activity going on in Pokhran before the Indian nuclear tests. It has now been surprised by the North Korean detonations. Unfortunately, Musharraf, like AQ Khan, was now the only person who could provide anyone with any information. Could it be that the General wanted more clout in his own constituency and hence wanted to keep it under pressure? He has penned this book too after all. Now let us take the issue of the war on terror in which we have proven ourselves holier than the Pope. Musharraf shows great sympathy for Daniel Pearl on humanitarian grounds. But have you noted how his assassin was apprehended? “By tracing the e-mails sent by Omar Sheikh’s accomplices to the media, the police had been able to capture some of his key accomplices and relatives, and his own family as well, including his eighteen-month old son.” When the President of Pakistan announces this so proudly, I am sure his 18-month-old son must be a key accomplice.
And guess what? It keeps getting better and better. On cracking a terror network in Punjab with a tip-off from Ahmed Ghailani, he writes: “This network was finished off when, acting on information from him, we arrested fifteen more people comprising al Qaeda operatives and their families (including a newborn baby).” I am sure you must have reached the conclusion by now that this newborn was the plotter of some heinous terror plan. Goodbye, good old human rights, do not dare to return.
To cut the long story short, I am still confused where to place this book in my library. Whether in the collection of my favourite contemporary novels or in the rack dedicated to the information of strange things in the world? Can you help me out?
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