Beyond the news: Pervez Musharraf, a dictator with democratic pretence
He was Pakistan’s most charismatic dictator who for long held the West in thrall with his panache for drama and democratic pretence.
Its history riddled with long spells of army rule, Pakistan will perhaps not miss General Pervez Musharraf much. But on many yardsticks he was that country’s most charismatic dictator who for long held the West in thrall with his panache for drama and democratic pretence.
At one time, such was his image makeover that propositions of Musharraf being a “benign” dictator flustered no end the country’s civilian leadership at the receiving end of his shenanigans. In April 2005, when his slain wife Benazir Bhutto was alive, the Pakistan Peoples Party’s Asif Ali Zardari spoke to this writer about their protestations in the wilderness unlike in the past when leaders of democratic parties had a ready global audience against dictators: “Imagine our plight! A man who’s no different from other military rulers is so easily beguiling the world by showing himself as a family man, getting photographed in the international media with his family and pet dogs.”
Washington’s Project Democracy was on the backburner then as Musharraf played doubles with the United States in Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 twin-tower attack. So heady was that first flush of the powwow that his new-found international allies forgot that just two years earlier, in 1999, he staged a coup against an elected prime minister, Nawaz Sharif. The team-up had a disastrous consequence in the global fight against terrorism. But that’s how surrogates and hatchet-holders are drafted in big power games.
On assuming control after ousting Sharif -- behind whose back he planned and executed the Kargil incursions that caused a military conflict with India -- Musharraf could manoeuvre his way to sign the 2003 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with AB Vajpayee which saw Islamabad accept for the first time that its territory was a staging-ground for terror against India. The abandonment of the proxy war the document promised (but failed to fulfil) transformed the dictator’s image as a man of peace but not the frayed India-Pakistan relations.
The back channel dialogue initiated during Musharraf’s tenure with India under Vajpayee’s successor, Manmohan Singh, for an “out-of-the-box” solution to the vexed Kashmir question came a cropper when in 2007 he recklessly cracked down on the judiciary. That triggered protracted mass protests which led to his downfall in 2008. The streets had turned restive after Benazir’s December 2007 assassination in the middle of the poll campaign. The elections that followed in February next year threw up the unlikely coalition of the PPP and Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (N) that managed to see the dictator’s back.
A trained commando that he was, Musharraf forever remained one in his dealings with India. In spite of his proclivity for easy solutions to complex questions, he was at sea when faced with unforeseen questions or situations. In a particularly icy period in Indo-Pak ties after the failed Agra Summit, I asked why he could not just pick up the phone to talk to Vajpayee. The query was met with a mumble: “I can, but what if he does not take my call.” That their chemistry changed in later years was evident from the call he made to the BJP leader after his 2004 defeat. “How could that happen,” he asked. Vajpayee’s reply to that was a lesson for all dictators: “Such things happen in democracies.” This account of the conversation is based on the former prime minister’s own narration to this writer after he received the call in the middle of a tea party.
The opportunity to ask Musharraf searching question came during an all-party Indian delegation’s August, 2003 visit to Pakistan that captured popular imagination with saturation coverage in that country’s print and electronic media. It was at a meeting with the visiting leaders, including BJP MPs and others such as Lalu Prasad, that the general famously talked about ceasefire at the “blow of a whistle” on the LoC and the international borders. The promise fructified three months later, preparing ground for the January 2004 MoU.
In his interaction with the Indian MPs, Musharraf was at his charming best, seeing an opening there for the moribund bilateral engagement. Taken in the most by Lalu Prasad’s celebration by the local media, he jocularly asked the RJD leader: “Hope you’re not planning to contest elections and make a political career here.” The banter apart, the commando was left red-faced and speechless when a senior Indian journalist, on being introduced to him, said the tricolour angvastram looked good on his military regalia. As his birthday fell a day earlier, the stole was placed on his shoulder by the Congress’s Margaret Alva as a belated greeting.
On a visit to India to participate in the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit, the leader of Pakistan’s Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) Altaf Hussain, who drew support from among families divided by the Partition, found virtue in Musharraf’s dictatorship. He backed the general because he was a Muhajir (with roots in Delhi) whose peace efforts with India were in the interest of the community. Keeping broadly his counsel, Musharraf responded with a faint smile when confronted with Hussain’s observations, in a 2004 question on the occasion of Indian journalists’ visit to PoK (Pakistan occupied Kashmir). In a later telephonic conversation, the MQM leader’s reading of Musharraf’s demeanour was perceptive: “There must have been some Punjabi general overhearing the conversation on the table.”
As a Muhajir who rose to helm Pakistan’s military establishment, Musharraf nursed his share of diffidence. The reception for journalists headed for PoK was hosted at the official residence of the Punjab governor who happened to be a retired general. Amid strains of Bollywood music, an inquisitive scribe probed: Do you like Indian music? The reply: “Yes, I like pre-Partition Bollywood songs.”
The commando who wore bravado on his sleeve was cognisant obviously of his vulnerabilities in a system dominated by Punjabis and Pathans. While in office and out of it, there were bids on his life by Islamists of varied hue.
