November 8, 2007
Pakistan leader's back is to the wall
By TAREK FATAH
The Toronto SUN
http://www.torontosun.com/Comment/2007/11/08/4639856-sun.html
General Pervez Musharraf has his back to the wall and it seems he is fighting for his very life. He came as a refugee child with parents who fled to Pakistan from India in 1947 during an orgy of bloodletting. As he faces his imminent fall, it is worth studying how he came to realize his fantasy of ruling a Muslim country as some sort of a benevolent Moghul Emperor.
Mush, as he likes to be known among his buddies or Busharraf as the man on the street calls him, got his break in 1998 when then Pakistani prime minister, Nawaz Shariff, looking for an obedient and subservient officer, appointed Musharraf as the country's army chief of staff. But the two men saw his role in vastly different ways. Shariff rightfully expected Musharraf to be subservient to the country's civilian government and report to the prime minister.
Musharraf, on the other hand, had dreams of being one of those medieval conquering invaders of India who would take back Kashmir from the Hindus. So while Shariff and Indian leaders were engaged in peace talks and seeking rapprochement, Musharraf was secretly planning the invasion of India from the northern mountains of Himalayas. Like his predecessors, General Musharraf had no strategic war goals; just tactical plans for a set battle which he delusionally believed would liberate Kashmir from India's occupation.
In May 1999, without the knowledge of Pakistan's prime minister or cabinet, Musharraf launched an incursion deep inside Indian-held Kashmir in the northern Kargil sector. Stung by complete surprise, on the one hand the Indians ceded territory and on the other a shocked Nawaz Shariff was left with no choice but to back his rogue commander-in-chief. Shariff joined Musharraf in lying to the media that Pakistan had not invaded, but that the fighting was by Kashmiri "freedom-fighters." Suffice to say, not even the Pakistani public bought this propaganda. They had seen this once before in 1965.
By July, the Pakistani troops were dying in the hundreds, many left with no supplies or ammunition, starving to death of being cut down by advancing Indian Gurkhas. Shariff was summoned to Washington by then president Bill Clinton, where he was given a dressing down and asked to end hostilities. Shariff had to take the blame while Musharraf tightened his control over the army and its $20-billion military-industrial complex. Humiliated, Shariff bided for time and on Oct. 12 1999, when Musharraf was in Sri Lanka, he fired his chief of army staff and replaced him with Lt.-Gen. Khwaja Ziauddin.
When Mush heard the news of his dismissal, he took a commercial flight back from Colombo and used the aircraft's communication system to rally his generals, urging them to stage a coup. However, there was a problem. To stage a coup, the Musharaf loyalist officers first had to deal with the new Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen Ziauddin. To disobey his commands was a violation of the Army Act, which would be considered treasonable and could lead to a court martial and potential death by a firing squad. Musharraf and his gang did not let these fine points get in the way. They imprisoned the new army chief of staff, staged the coup and exiled the deposed prime minster.
Today, that act of treason -- overthrowing the country's Army chief of staff, and not the PM, is haunting Musharraf. Will he face a court martial when deposed?
The opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto, had provided him with an escape clause, but a paranoid and suspicious Musharraf reneged on the deal and imposed a second martial law. Now as the country erupts into open rebellion, Musharraf has a choice: Go out with guns blazing like Ceausescu, or walk away into the sunset like Gorbachev.
