If it were only about promoting his book the annual pilgrimage of Gen Pervez Musharraf to the US (followed by the mandatory stop in the UK) would have served him and his country well. Unfortunately for him by the time his long foreign sojourn ended both he and his country had come to be seen in more unfavourable light than he could have expected in his wildest dreams.
Unlike some of their political leaders, western analysts and commentators did not mince words in alleging that Musharraf was an unreliable ally in the so-called war on terror. A report by an unnamed British defence analyst, written for the British ministry of defence, denounced Pakistan’s continued support to terrorists and questioned the wisdom of backing Musharraf. The report, too hot for the British government to claim as an official document, went on to say that ‘Pakistan exists on the edge of chaos.’ It said that Musharraf did not stand for stability and the year 2007 was going to be a ‘crunch year’ for Pakistan in which international pressure for a move to civil rule will collide with the Pakistani military’s attempts to retain control of the country through the Inter-Services Intelligence and the political proxies.
Perhaps Musharraf himself had made an inauspicious start by disclosing in his book—and his sales promotion rounds--that the US had paid huge bounties to Pakistan government for capturing wanted Al Qaeda terrorists. His subsequent backtracking on this revelation, while making one of the innumerable appearances on American TV channels, may have carried conviction only to his cronies in the military-mullah alliance back home, not the mainstream opposition. Then matters reached a head when it was quickly followed by the damning ‘unofficial’ British report about Pakistan and its ISI. The author toured Pakistan in June this year with a British Defence Academy team. He found the ISI to be so disastrous for the cause of the ‘war on terror’ that he suggested that the outfit be dismantled.
The British report claimed that the US has been paying Musharraf $70-80 million a month for ensuring his support to the so-called war on terror. Some might argue that the money went to the coffers of the government of Pakistan and hence there was nothing wrong. Looked differently, the ‘disclosure’ makes very clear that allurement of monetary rewards was a key factor that prompted policy U-turn after 9/11 by Pak President. So much so, the so called Armitage (the then US assistant secretary of state, Richard Armitage) threat of US bombing Pakistan to ‘stone age’ if it did not join this ‘war’ is a piece of fiction concocted for effect either by Musharraf himself or his ISI chief of the time who had received that dire threat first hand from Armitage.
US media and the people don’t appear to go by President Bush line on Gen Musharraf. He is fast emerging as their favourite whipping boy as they find him to be a slippery and duplicitous character who does not want to wind up his terror machine. The more they see of him on TV and hear him in person, the more they find him to be a bit too cheeky and discourteous. He often uses a language that they would expect from an inveterate US hater though the Musharraf barbs are aimed at his critics in the West, Afghanistan, and, above all, India.
The language that Musharraf has used to run down the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, bore the stamp of a lingo appropriate to his own military barracks. It was foul and inelegant. Karzai could have got much worse had Musharraf been speaking in his native tongue, Urdu heavily influenced by barrack room Punjabi. His command over the English language is not only ‘lisping’ but also questionable. He probably tries to make up for this deficiency by donning smart suits! Sample this line from an interview he gave to the BBC: ‘Youngsters who are 25,30 years old and who happen to come to Pakistan for a month or two and you put the entire blame on these two months of visit and don’t talk about the 27 years or whatever they are suffering in your country.’
Musharraf’s ‘motor mouth’, on view in his almost daily media appearances in the US, must have contributed greatly to winning him more enemies than he would care to count in Canada. Apropos of NATO’s operation in Afghanistan, he told Canadians in a TV interview: ‘We have suffered 500 casualties, Canadian have suffered four or five…. You suffer two dead, and there is a cry and shout all around the base that there are coffins. Well, we’ve had 500 coffins.’
While Musharraf deliberately underplayed the Canadian casualties (37) it is doubtful if any audience anywhere had heard such crude words from the head of a state about their dead soldiers. These Canadians had laid down their lives fighting terrorists that enjoy support of many in the Pakistani establishment, not to mention the stellar role of Musharraf’s secret service, the ISI, in raising Taliban.
Musharraf must have left many speechless when hurt by the criticism of ISI by the unnamed British defence analyst he boasted that ‘the ISI won the cold war for the world.’ Fifty years of Herculean US efforts trashed by their ‘frontline’ ally!
His description of the ISI being a ‘disciplined force’ is odd when he himself has often hinted that there are ‘rogue’ elements within the Pakistan forces. Oh, but he also said that the ISI always did ‘what the government has been telling them.’ One of the things that the ISI is told is to recruit, train and help in all possible manner terrorists operating in India. Musharraf has a ready but tired explanation for this too: he calls terrorists who cross over to India as ‘freelances’ who join the ‘freedom fighters’ to wage a clandestine war against India, financed and managed by ISI and its creations.
Courtesy : Syndicate Features
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