First Draft of a Manifesto

Pervez Musharraf tries to tell the world that Pakistan is in such bad shape that it is crucial that he be around a while longer

This book is very readable and highly persuasive. It is mainly intended for an American audience. This has been translated into Urdu and released in Pakistan where it will serve as an election manifesto of General Musharraf in next year’s presidential election. In this book, he portrays himself as a Muslim of enlightened moderation, committed to fighting terrorism and extremism, a ruler who wants to restore democracy to his country, which he believes has been denied democracy since Ayub Khan’s military takeover in 1958, who wants to empower women and focus on education for the masses, on higher education and health services, and who aims to incorporate Pakistan as a valuable and respected member of the international community.

He comes through as a modest man. He makes no claims to intellectual brilliance. He confesses to a record of indiscipline in the junior and middle ranks of the army. He admits that his elevation to the post of chief of army staff was because Nawaz Sharif concentrated the power of appointment of the chief in his hands (it was with the president earlier). He did not plan the coup which put him in power. That was done by the senior army establishment when he was still flying from Colombo to Karachi.

He takes pains to project himself as an independent Pakistani patriot solely committed to securing Pakistan’s interests and security. Though he refers to the US ultimatum following the 9/11 attack, he asserts that his decision was based solely on calculations of Pakistani national interest. In his view, believe it or not, it provided an opportunity to fight terrorism and extremism which he admits could not have been done on Pakistan’s own resources. He concedes the majority of his countrymen are anti-American and his decision was not popular but that it was in the best interests of Pakistan. He is highly critical of American policy on the Israel-Palestine issue, on Iraq and on imposition of democratisation on Islamic nations. He highlights Pakistani achievements in capturing and neutralising Al-Qaeda elements on Pakistani soil and downplays the US role in that field. He is highly critical of American delays in providing sophisticated equipment such as helicopters, unarmed aerial vehicles and night vision devices which could have made anti-Al-Qaeda operations more effective. His accounts on fighting terrorism are so detailed that one wonders whether those chapters were not contributed by his staff. He rebuts criticism from the US media and think-tanks that Pakistani cooperation in fighting terrorism is not adequate.

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In spite of all attempts to project himself as a man of candour, the General economises on the truth on very crucial issues. His version of Kargil war will not be bought either in India or Pakistan. While he gives the number of Indian casualties and says that it was much higher, he does not choose to disclose Pakistani casualties even seven years after the event.

Kargil is not the only war where he tries to depict defeat as victory. Musharraf was an artillery officer in the elite Pakistan armoured division equipped with US Patton tanks which thrust into Khem Karan in 1965. The whole world knows that the armoured division was totally annihilated. But Musharraf maintains that after three days the division was ordered to Lahore sector and talks of wandering on the empty streets of Khem Karan. He talks of the 2002 Indian Army deployment on the Pakistan border but fails to mention the attack on the Indian Parliament. Musharraf’s account of Kargil has been widely challenged not only in India, but also in Pakistan.

Musharraf tries to heap all the blame for Pakistani nuclear proliferation to Iran, North Korea and Libya on A.Q. Khan. He admits that it went back to 1987 and he attributes the proliferation to Khan’s greed. He mentions 210 centrifuge tubes being manufactured and shipped to Iran from Khan Laboratories without being challenged. One wonders, even if Khan had complete freedom to bring European blackmarket and smuggled equipment and materials into Pakistan, would he have been allowed to send things out of his laboratory on such a large scale without the knowledge of the army or intelligence?

As a Pakistani observer put it, Musharraf comes out of the book in shining colours while he has damned Pakistani polity, civil society and clergy. He is highly critical of the evolution of Pakistani politics since Ayub’s takeover. Even while agreeing with Pakistan’s decision to align with the US in the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, he raises the pertinent question whether the CIA and the ISI thought about the consequences of assembling a vast Mujahideen force, arming them, training them, indoctrinating them and then abandoning them when the war was won. But he does not address the question whether his own strategy of differentiating between the violence of “freedom fighters” in Kashmir, which he justifies, and their terrorism elsewhere in India, which he denounces, would not lead to similar consequences for himself and Pakistan. The terrorist groups that targeted him operate in Kashmir as well as the rest of India. There is hardly any discussion of the various terrorist organisations operating in Pakistan.

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The book is not likely to have much credibility in India and Pakistan. But it is mainly intended for the rest of the world to tell them that Pakistan is in such bad shape that it requires his leadership for another five years and they should not be too critical if he gets himself elected once again by making various tactical adjustments and through some innovative electoral procedures. That will all be for the good of Pakistan and international peace and security.

—K. Subrahmanyam was chairman of the Kargil Review Committee