Pervez Musharraf’s Children

Soon after toppling the second Nawaz Sharif government in October 1999 in a military coup, General Parvez Musharraf posed for cameras at his house. He made sure to bring along two of his pet dogs, conscious of the presence of a large number of Western photographers and reporters gathered there.

This was a signal from him to the US and European governments: He wasn’t a ‘fundo’; and that Pakistan’s newly-built nuclear devises were in safe hands and in no danger of falling in the palms of groups of officers within the military who had become radicalised, first during the General Zia-ul-Haq dictatorship (1977-88) and then during the tumultuous ‘decade of democracy’ that followed Zia’s demise in 1988.

At the time of Musharraf’s coup, Pakistan was facing stringent economic sanctions imposed by the US and various European countries. The sanctions were largely slapped in 1998 when PM Nawaz Sharif decided to conduct nuclear tests after India had done the same. The US had offered billions of dollars to Pakistan to not react in this manner to India’s nuclear showmanship. But Nawaz went ahead with the tests. He knew that if he did not, he would be vehemently castigated by the populist Urdu press and Islamist forces, as well as by the military establishment.

Musharraf immediately presented himself as someone who would eradicate the ‘unprecedented corruption’ witnessed during the ten years of ‘democracy’ that followed Zia’s demise, and reset the country’s politics and society by mitigating the influence of political Islam and sectarianism that had seeped into the body politic.

He proudly aired his admiration for the founder of the modern Turkish Republic and of Turkish secularism, Kamal Ataturk. He also exhibited similar admiration for former Pakistani military strongman and ‘modernist’ Ayub Khan (1958-69). There wasn’t any immediate reaction to this from a polity exhausted by economic sanctions and the constant three-way political conflict between Sharif’s PML-N, Benazir Bhutto’s PPP and the military establishment.

Cases of vicious sectarian and ethnic violence too had increased across the 1990s, even though their roots firmly lay in the policies of the Zia dictatorship. Musharraf’s coup was celebrated by most people, as reports of smiling men and women distributing sweetmeat began to come in.

Anti-Nawaz politicians weren’t too disturbed by the coup as well. To them, Nawaz had become incredibly arrogant, dictatorial and even delusional after his party had won a two-thirds majority in the 1997 election. Musharraf found himself in a rather comfortable spot, even though US and European governments decided to adopt a more cautious approach. The sanctions stayed.

The Supreme Court allowed Musharraf to rule for up to three years as ‘Chief Executive,’ and military chief. Despite the fact that he did not face any serious opposition from the major political parties who had become exhausted due to the hectic nature of the politics of survivalism that they had to play in the 1990s, Musharraf struggled to revive the economy and the trust of the country’s Western donors and trading partners.

Musharraf promised to ‘bring back’ an era during which – apparently – Pakistan was a modern, prosperous and liberal country. By this, Musharraf meant Ayub Khan’s Pakistan. But for this, he needed a functioning economy and trusting friends in the West. The opportunity to gain these presented itself in the most dramatic manner. 9/11 happened. Renegade Arab jihadists were involved, funded by the one of the most wanted Islamist terrorists, Osama bin Laden.

Osama and his men were operating from Afghanistan which, at the time, was being ruled by the first Taliban regime. That government had been installed by the Pakistani intelligence agencies in 1996. Only three countries were willing to recognise the reactionary Taliban regime: Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Pakistan.

The US government was livid at Osama’s audacity to attack US citizens inside the US. Hundreds perished during the 9/11 attacks. US President George W. Bush gave the green signal to American armed forces to invade Afghanistan, dislodge the Taliban, capture Osama, and install a government of anti-Taliban factions that controlled just ten percent of Afghan territory.

The involvement of Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies was vital to the plan. Not only did Pakistan share a long border with Afghanistan, but it was heavily involved in Afghan politics after the departure of Soviet troops from Kabul in the late 1980s.

Friday Times