Hamid Mir
September 28, 2006
Four years ago, General Pervez Musharraf was the first head of State to announce the death of Osama bin Laden.
In an interview to CNN on January 18, 2002, he said bin Laden had died because of his kidney disease. It was General Musharraf again who told CNN on March 18, 2004 that Pakistani forces have surrounded a high value target in south Wazirastan.
The whole American media was jubilant about that claim and speculated that this target was none other than top Al Qaeda leader Dr Ayman al-Zawahri. Once again Musharraf was proved wrong. There was no high value target in south Wazirastan.
Who was pushing Musharraf into an embarrassing position again and again by feeding him wrong information? There is no answer to this important question in the book, In the Line of Fire, written by General Musharraf.
There are lots of other questions that have not been answered in the book. He claims, 'the fact that so many Saudis are in the Konar (Afghanistan) area perhaps suggests that this is where Osama bin Laden has his hideout, but we cannot be sure.'
If he had some idea about Osama's hideout then why did he alert the most wanted man by mentioning Konar in his book? Maybe he is just taunting Afghan President Hamid Karzai that bin Laden is actually hiding in his eastern province.
The author has tried to answer one important question on why he changed his policy towards the Taliban after 9/11, but former US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage rejected his claims. On page 201 of his book, Musharraf says, 'our director general of the ISI, who happened to be in Washington, told me on the phone about his meeting with US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage. In what has to be the most undiplomatic statement ever made, Armitage said that not only we had to decide whether we were with America or with the terrorists, but that if we chose the terrorists, then we should be prepared to be bombed back to the stone age."
President Bush expressed ignorance on that alleged threat and Armitage accused the then director general of ISI of misreporting his meeting to Musharraf. He never used threatening language with the ISI chief. His denial generated a big controversy in Pakistan.
General Musharraf is still not able to prove whether he is right and Armitage is wrong. The former director general of ISI, Lieutenant General Mahmood Ahmad (retd) is not ready to say anything in support of his former boss.
It is also not mentioned why Mahmood was sent home within few weeks of his coming from Washington. General Musharraf must realise that his book has created many questions about his post 9/11 decisions and also about the ISI's credibility.
It is also notable that Musharraf, who is still in uniform, has not used the word 'General' before his name on the cover of his book. Maybe he is aware that a serving General cannot write a book on national and international politics; it is merely a violation of service rules.
He can say that the book is written by 'President' Musharraf and not 'General' Musharraf, so that no other general dare write a book on politics.
It is not the first time that a sitting army chief in Pakistan has violated service rules by writing a book without taking permission from the cabinet division. The first one to do the same was General Ayub Khan who wrote Friends not Masters with the help of bureaucrat, Altaf Gauhar.
And now General Pervez Musharraf has written In the Line of Fire with the help of Humayun Gauhar, the son of the late Altaf Gauhar. The book is being talked about from the east to west and its impact is spreading like real fire. This fire will burn many hearts not only in Pakistan but also in Afghanistan, Iran and in the Arab world where the masses are not ready to hear anything good about the only Jewish state in the world.
This fire may also burn the peace process between India and Pakistan.
The president of Pakistan has doubted the Indian prime minister's sincerity in pursuing the peace process between the two neighbours. He also describes the Kargil operation as a military success and admits for the first time that Pakistani troops were involved but maintained that they did not cross the Line of Control. He writes that Kargil forced India to start talks on Kashmir.
Many Pakistanis are asking some simple questions. If Kargil was a military success then why did Musharraf not inform his nation about this great success in the last seven years? Why did he always claim that freedom fighters were involved in the Kargil operation? How can Pakistanis and Indians now trust Musharraf after his 'changed opinions' in the book?
Despite all these valid questions, I personally believe that Musharraf is right at least on one account. That then prime minister Nawaz Sharif was on board with him in the Kargil operation.
Nawaz Sharif was briefed not once but thrice about the Kargil operation and one can see the three pictures in Musharraf's book where the prime minister can be seen getting briefed by the army high command.
Sharif was happy that soon he would become the hero of Kashmir, but when he sensed that the Kargil operation was going to fail, he immediately distanced himself from Musharraf on this issue.
Pakistan needs democracy, not a military president
Hamid Mir
Many Pakistanis believe the Kargil operation was a disaster for the 'Kashmir movement' because India was provided an opportunity to say that there were no freedom fighters in Kashmir, they were terrorists.
After 9/11, Musharraf himself declared them terrorists but now, once again, he calls them 'freedom fighters' (in his book]. Why?
It is clear his book is actually meant for the 2007 election. This is his new election agenda. It is not possible for him to take a popular anti-American line like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.
There is only one option for Musharraf and that is to attack India for getting votes in the next election. Somebody around him is still advising him that playing the anti- India sentiment will stabilise his position in domestic politics.
He criticises the late Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in the book but is also trying to play the India card, again like Bhutto did. He does not mention the sad episode in the life of his father Syed Musharrafudin that was brought about by Bhutto in the 1970s.
Bhutto fired his father from the Pakistan embassy in Jakarta for misappropriation charges. His father was at the end of his diplomatic career but Bhutto disgraced the diplomat by sending him straight home.
After many decades Pervez Musharraf took revenge by declaring Bhutto an autocrat. A president in uniform not only criticises the first elected prime minister of Pakistan who commenced his country's nuclear programme but also ruthlessly attacks the father of Pakistan's nuclear programme Dr A Q Khan.
Musharraf accuses Dr Khan, who is suffering from cancer, for supplying nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya. On page 291, Musharraf says: 'Our investigations revealed that A Q Khan had started his activities as far as 1987, primarily with Iran.'
On page 294, he claims: 'Dr A Q Khan transferred nearly two dozen P-1 and P-11 centrifuges to North Korea.' Now the question is how one man could supply nuclear secrets and centrifuges from Iran to North Korea without the knowledge of the military establishment in Pakistan?
How can a single man transport two-dozen centrifuges weighing more than 24 tons to North Korea single handedly? These questions are enough to create doubts about Pakistan's nuclear programme.
Musharraf claimed that Dr Khan wrote a letter to his daughter in London to reveal nuclear secrets to the British media. This is difficult to believe. There is no benefit in exposing nuclear secrets for the national hero of Pakistan. Why would he like to become a zero from being a hero? If this was true, why haven't the British authorities not taken any action against Dr Khan's daughter who is still living in London?
Musharraf also endorses the American chargesheet against Iran and North Korea. His book is readymade evidence against these two countries. Bush can now spread his fire to Iran and North Korea on the basis of evidence produced by Musharraf.
He has also praised Israel's former prime minister Ariel Sharon for his efforts to resolve the Palestinian dispute. Musharraf never mentions his telephonic conversations with Sharon before he fell ill but on page 305, he says: 'Pakistan now accepts Israel as a Jewish state and a de facto reality.'
These words are explosive in Pakistan because this country has no diplomatic relations with Israel. These words can also create bad feelings in the Arab masses that have not yet forgotten Israeli atrocities against Lebanese civilians in the recent Middle East crisis.
Musharraf does not write how he became army chief in 1998. It was not as simple as Nawaz Sharif choosing him just by chance. Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, the brother of the then Pakistan defence secretary Iftikhar Ali Khan, has a different story.
He claims that Musharraf used to visit his Rawalpindi home secretly late at night to meet the defence secretary who played an active role in his appointment as the new army chief.
Nawaz Sharif overlooked two generals who were senior to Musharraf. Both of them resigned after they were superseded. Two close aides of Nawaz Sharif, Hameed Asgher Kadwai and Khiam Qaisar, also lobbied for Musharraf. One was the ambassador to Kenya and the other was the ambassador to the UAE.
The army removed Nawaz Sharif from power on October 12, 1999 but Kidwai and Qaisar were not touched though they were not career diplomats but political appointees.
It is not difficult to understand why both of them were not touched by Musharraf? Today Musharraf has not used the title 'General' in his book. Maybe he is planning to relinquish his uniform next year due to some constitutional obligations. He cannot run for offices of president and army chief jointly after November 2007 due to the 17th Amendment which was incorporated in the constitution of Pakistan with the help of the religious parties.
Musharraf got a reprieve about his uniform through that amendment till 2007. He never disclosed his secret meetings with Qazi Hussain Ahmad and Maulana Fazalur Rehman, the leaders of the religious parties' alliance, which took place before his deal with them.
His book is quiet on how he won the support of the maulanas on the uniform issue, on the assurance he announced on television that he would quit donning his uniform by December 31, 2004 and on why he changed his mind and never fulfilled his promise to the nation?
Anyhow, the most positive message emerging from his book is the absence of the word 'General' from the title of In the Line of Fire. One can hope Musharraf will put away his uniform next year. By doing so, he will show respect towards the feelings of a big majority in Pakistan.
Yes, he conquered Washington this time by writing against Iran, North Korea and Dr A Q Khan but he has not conquered the hearts and minds of his own people. He can only conquer his own people by providing them a true democracy, a democracy without a military president.
Hamid Mir is the executive editor, northern region for Geo TV in Pakistan. He can be reached at hamid.mir@geo.tv
http://www.rediff.com/news/2006/sep/28hamid1.htm