ISLAMABAD, 24 June — The world first became aware of a Pakistani general called Musharraf three summers ago. As India fought to repel a huge intrusion of enemy forces into its territory at Kargil, high in the Himalayas of Kashmir, the man who had conceived and directed this, the first major Indo-Pakistan conflict for 28 years, came into focus: a leathery, hard-bitten commando in fatigues and a beret, caught on film obtained by the BBC loading and firing a pistol somewhere near the front line, a cigarette drooping from his lips.
India had found a new Pakistani hate figure; the world, or that small portion of it that cared about an obscure scrimmage going on above the clouds in India, a new focus for its nuclear fears. Pakistan had dared to launch this brazen attack across Kashmir’s Line of Control (LoC) because the nuclear weapons it had tested one year earlier gave it a new sense of immunity from Indian counterattack. The man who personified this swaggering, nuclear-armed rashness was Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff — the man with his finger on his country’s nuclear button. According to the recent account of an aide to then-President Clinton, Pakistan’s nuclear missiles were deployed in forward positions during the Kargil crisis. The elected prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, knew nothing about it.
The crisis ended when Clinton, at India’s behest, bullied Sharif into ordering Pakistan’s forces back from the LoC. But it was a grave national humiliation, from which Sharif’s esteem did not recover. Four months later, claiming that Sharif had tried to kill him, Pakistan’s top general elbowed the prime minister aside and seized power.
But for the people of Pakistsan, “Chief Executive” Musharraf (as he styled himself at the beginning) was a revelation. Addressing the nation in army uniform, looking hunted and aggrieved, he roundly condemned Sharif, echoing the sentiments of many. But he also showed a lesser-known side to his character. “Islam teaches tolerance, not hatred,” he insisted, “universal brotherhood and not enmity, peace and not violence, progress and not bigotry.” He sought to assure Pakistan’s minorities that “they enjoy full rights and protection as equal citizens in the letter and spirit of true Islam.” He promised economic revival, an end to corruption, an eventual return to democracy, a free press. Pakistan’s liberals discovered behind the uniform and the military scowl a secular hero. Improbable though it seemed, Gen. Pervez Musharraf offered Pakistan new hope and a new beginning.
Today Musharraf still rules his country. Democracy, of a sort, is on the way back, with elections promised for October. Musharraf, who in that first address told the nation, “My tax returns and assets (are) open for public scrutiny” remains untainted by scandal. His secular convictions are beyond doubt. Yet Pakistan is once again gazing into the abyss. In October 1999, Musharraf said, “My dear countrymen...we have hit rock bottom.” Now Pakistan has hit rock bottom again.
At Army House in Rawalpindi, the old British stucco bungalow that is his official residence, I congratulated him on the first anniversary of his presidency (he elevated himself to the top job on June 20, 2001), but pointed out, “You’ve got a lot of problems — problems to the right, problems to the left, problems in the middle.” He laughed shortly. “You’ve put it correctly,” he replied.
It was reported, I went on, that because of threats to his life he now rarely leaves the capital region, and moves around with hundreds of guards.
The president bridled. “That’s absolutely untrue,” he said, “ I can leave anywhere, I’ve gone abroad, I’ve gone to Lahore, Karachi, I move in accordance with my plan of movement, in accordance with what I want to do. This is absolutely ridiculous — why should I not move? I don’t get scared like that — no problem, I go anywhere, any time...The people around me may not be very happy about it .”
But was it not fair to say that, with three quarters of a million Indian troops on the border, with Al-Qaeda and American special forces in combustible combination to the west, and terror attacks killing foreigners in Karachi and Islamabad, Pakistan was in grave crisis?
“Pakistan is facing difficult days, yes...Rarely has Pakistan faced such a difficult situation. But I am very confident that our security is not threatened at all. We are very secure and there is no problem so far as our stability and sovereignty is concerned.”
For the outside world, there are two Musharrafs. There is the liberal, secular reformer, inspired by Ataturk (his childhood was spent in Turkey, where his father was a diplomat), struggling to purge Pakistan of Islamism.
But there is also the author of Kargil, the friend of the Taleban, the military dictator so tainted by terrorism that Clinton, on the briefest of visits, refused to be photographed shaking his hand.
Post Sept. 11, Musharraf dropped the Taleban like a hot potato. In the past month, under intense pressure from Britain and the United States, he appears to have done the same to Kashmir’s militants. But how far can the world trust a man who takes such steps only under duress?
Today, Musharraf justifies Pakistan’s former cosiness with the Taleban as unavoidable. “Ninety percent of Afghistan was in Taleban hands,” he reasoned, “and they happened to be Pushtuns. Now Pushtuns have a very close affinity with Pakistan, so I think there was no other option for Pakistan to follow other than recognizing Taleban and trying to be with them. We couldn’t have left the Taleban and gone on the side of the Northern Alliance. All that I did was to bring normalcy. I tried to moderate the views of the Taleban...That however never meant that we were in sort of love with the Taleban — certainly we didn’t want that kind of Islam in Pakistan. Nor did it mean that we were very much impressed by what they were doing in their country.”
Pakistan gave up the Taleban, he explains, because “Policies are made in accordance with environments. The environment changed, our policy changed. National interest is permanent... National interest can never be given up. Our national interest is with Afghanistan, not with Taleban. We would like to have peace in Afghanistan, we would like to have stability and unity of Afghanistan, that is our national interest.”
And what about Kashmir? The threat of war between India and Pakistan has receded because Musharraf has ordered a halt to infiltration of militants across the LoC. So has he not now sold out the Kashmiris for the same reason of national interest?
Absolutely not, he said. “Our national interest is that the cause of Kashmir must be resolved...Kashmir is a festering wound, it is going on since Partition, there is a United Nations Security Council resolution on Kashmir and we are demanding its implementation. We must resolve the Kashmir dispute, this is our stand even now.”
So if the Kashmir problem has not been resolved, what has induced India to pull back its warships and send its front-line troops on leave? Normally so fluent, the president becomes strangely tongue-tied answering this question. There is only one thing he is willing to say about what he has done to appease India, and he says it over and over again.
“There is nothing happening across the Line of Control,” he says. “I know that the world is concerned about the war clouds, and they were all concerned about cross-border terrorism. Now I did tell them that we need to address this Kashmir dispute once for all, and this is the assurance I’ve got, that we need to address the Kashmir dispute and move forward on it. So all I’ve done is that there is nothing happening across the Line of Control, and move forward toward its resolution.”
Intelligence leaks in recent weeks claim that Musharraf was only induced to smother the Kashmiri jihad when Richard Armitage, America’s musclebound deputy secretary of state, made frank threats. Not at all, said Musharraf.
“We had a very very congenial and very good interaction where he understood exactly our point of view... No, there has been no threat whatsoever, there was no question of a threat.”
Bitter mockery entered his voice when he spoke of the conciliatory steps taken by India. “Cosmetic,” he snorted, “cosmetic. They are easing their own problems.” And all his hopes are now pinned on world pressure forcing India to come to the negotiating table over Kashmir.
But as anyone who knows India will tell you, it’s a long shot: The chronic enmity between India and Pakistan derives from the stubborn inflexibility of both countries regarding the strategic Himalayan state. There has never been any give on either side. That remains the situation today. Musharraf sacrificed the Taleban on the altar of “national interest”. But if he risked similar ruthlessness over Kashmir, the stability of his regime, not to mention his own life, would be in great peril. So the withdrawal, like the pullback from Kargil three years ago, has been strictly tactical. India, he says, must negotiate. And if they don’t? “Kashmir needs to be resolved,” he repeated. “Okay, I also say it needs to be resolved in a peaceful manner. But if at all the other side does not want to resolve it, then we are stuck again. Then what happens?
“Therefore I keep telling the United States and everyone, we must understand the dangers of this region. These dangers can only be averted if we resolve the Kashmir dispute. We must do that. Otherwise there is another Palestine here in the making.” The threat is clear enough. (The Independent)