According to the Pakistan Minister of State for Law, Afzal Sindhu, the Pakistan Government will soon prosecute former military ruler Pervez Musharraf and his collaborators for ‘high treason’, for violating the Constitution by imposing Emergency in 2007. Many even in Pakistan believe he deserves to be prosecuted and punished in good measure.
This is a book which details what Musharraf did when he came illegally into power. It is authored by a Pakistani scholar, Murtaza Razvi, who works with the Dawn Media Group and can be trusted to write with first hand experience. Razvi is fair to Musharraf. He says that nobody can accuse Musharraf of any financial wrong-doing and that “all his actions, right or wrong, were undertaken in good faith and in the cause of Pakistan”. Obviously as Musharraf conceived the cause. Was the Kargil misadventure in the “cause of Pakistan”? Razvi quotes a friend of Musharraf as saying that “not even a stupid man would go to Kargil and try to defeat India there”. Was it wise for Musharraf to take on India?
Razvi again quotes another of the President’s friends as sayings: Confronting India doesn’t mean going out and wrestling with them. Their (India’s) Generals look like clerks and ours like champions but whenever we go to fight them, we lose! Apparently when Musharraf took over power in October 1999 he was considered “the man of the hour” and Pakistan “would not have been the same without him”. But when his reign was over many thought that Musharraf lost “yet another opportunity to rise from the depths of political, social and cultural obscurantism”. It is a pity. Musharraf chose to be a poodle to the US and the West. Razvi says that Pakistan was placed “at the mercy of the US and military action initiated against its own took precedence over the country’s own good”. Was it wise? Says Razvi, sadly: “It was the Americans who finally wanted Musharraf out and got their way. He tried to lift Pakistan out of its quagmire but was failed by the powers that be”. Poor Musharraf!
Even his other friend, China, could not do anything for him when the Americans wanted him to be kicked out. India had refused to engage Pakistan in any formal talks or dialogue since the disintegration of the Lahore Declaration (February 1999). Musharraf’s Kargil misadventure had wholly destroyed for months any trust that might have existed between Delhi and Islamabad, but it is interesting to learn from Razvi that during a period of heightened tension between India and Pakistan, Clinton received a phone call from Musharraf asking for help in restarting discussions with Vajpayee. Clinton is supposed to have said that he would not be a party to any approach unless he was certain that Musharraf recognised that a demand for India to give up Kashmir could not be part of the deal. Musharraf apparently said he would be back in touch.
Clinton heard nothing more from Musharraf, When the matter came up when Clinton met Vajpayee, the latter is reported to have told the US President that he could get back to Musharraf and convey a simple message: that India was determined if possible to remove once and for all the burden that the Indo-Pak dispute had imposed on both countries. But apparently the hard core elements in the Pak Army were against any dialogue with India. They had the last word. Musharraf was the ultimate dictator who had little respect for law and even less for law givers. The legal crisis began on March 9, 2007 when Musharraf summoned the Chief Justice to his camp office at Army House in Rawalpindi and in the presence of his Military Intelligence Chiefs asked the former to resign, allegedly intimidating and threatening the Chief Justice with sever consequences. It was the worst thing that could have been done. For all his claims to liberalism and respect for womanhood his response to Pakistan women leaders was one of near-contempt. His approach to Balochistan was no better. He insisted in setting up a cantonment in what was purely a tribal area, forcing a tribal leader to openly call for independence from Pakistan rule. Musharraf’s reply was more suppression. Razvi says that ‘Balochistan never fully recovered from the fissures caused by military action”.
Baloch national leaders went underground and stayed there till the rest of Musharraf’s tenure in office. On August 15, three days before Musharraf resigned, a newly-elected Balochistan Assembly unanimously passed a resolution urging the Federal Government to initiate impeachment proceedings against Musharraf for killing hundreds of Baloch, Pashtuns and others. There was also a demand that the General be “arrested and brought to Balochistan for an open trial”. Musharraf is obviously one of the most hated men in Pakistan today. Razvi reminds us that by July 2008 the coalition government came under immense pressure to impeach Musharraf and all four provincial legislatures passed resolutions urging the Central Government to do the same. In the end Musharraf was allowed to bow out. His “double-face” writes Razvi, was apparent even to the western powers.
According to Razvi it was under Musharraf that the Taliban were allowed to spread their wings into the Frontier’s settled districts like Charsadda, a smaller twin city of Peshawar. In both semi-autonomous tribal and settled districts of the Frontier Province, local Taliban became a force to reckon with, so long as Musharraf remained in office. They went round unchecked, shutting down music and video shops, threatening barvers with closure of their business, if they did not stop offering un-Islamic services of trimming or shaving men’s beards and threatening women teachers and girls, asking them to stop attending schools and colleges. Musharraf drew little distinction between Taliban of Pakistani and Afghan origins as both would supposedly serve the army’s purpose well in Afghanistan soon to be abandoned by the Americans. And that summed up Musharraf’s alleged social liberalism.
Razvi says that by 2007, eight years after he took office, the people had had enough of him. He was in one friend’s opinion “brash”, full of “fiery rhetoric” and once told the media that he wanted ” to confront India on its home-ground”. “Unbridled power” writes Razvi, “took the reins of his life”. He had enemies in many places. One intellectual called him a dictator who “did not contribute directly to the chaos at the global level but by becoming a part of the system he played a role which aggravated the situation”. There are others even more critical. Razvi in his own summing up charges Musharraf for contributing “significantly” to many of Pakistan’s ills, and for pushing the country back “in terms of political sustainability and economic stability”. He is merely being kind, but the people obviously know better.
(HarperCollins Publishers India, A-53, Sector-57, Noida-201 201 (UP))
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