You have to give General Pervez Muaharraf his due. When he is truthful, he is revelatory. But when he is fibbing, he is transparent in his self-righteousness. He is also wont to be delusional. Indeed, his recently launched memoir “In the Line of Fire” is threaded with destiny and fate (“which have smiled upon me”). He clearly doesn’t suffer from a surfeit of modesty.
The general believes he was a “born leader” and fate intervened at critical moments to spare him for the sake of Pakistan. He admits to more than the proverbial nine lives. He was about four years old when Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah died in 1948 and recalls that day vividly, “crying along with everyone else”. Unbelievably, a “metamorphosis took place in me in the fist months and years after Partition. An uprooted little boy found earth that was natural to him. He took root in it forever. I would protect the earth with my life.”
He was also a born strategic thinker apparently: when he was playing, “even at that age I was very good at making strategies and planning tactics to ambush and trap other gangs”. About his street fighting days in Nazimabad Karachi, “needless to say, I was one of the tough guys … who became known as a dada geer – a tough guy you don’t mess with”. He was a bodybuilder, an athlete, a gymnast, and winning a place at the military academy at Kakul “was a cinch for an athletic, intelligent boy”.
Much later in life, Pervez Musharraf was “surprised and disappointed” when the then COAS General Jehangir Karamat selected General Ali Kuli Khan, “a mediocre officer”, as his Chief of General Staff because “most army officers felt that I would and should get the job.” He says Karamat’s predecessor General Abdul Waheed Kakar “manipulated” the seniority list to “promote” Ali Kuli Khan. But General Musharraf’s obsession for serving the country remained with him in the form of a prayer since his days as a corps commander at Mangla: “O Allah! The only thing I can promise the Army and my Nation is sincerity, honesty, integrity and unflinching loyalty, You give me the vision to see and perceive the truth from the false, the wisdom …, the courage… the clarity, the chance to serve the Nation”. That said, poor Ali Kuli Khan Khattak gets it in the neck more than anyone else in the book.
General Musharraf says that on October 7th 1998 at around 7.30 pm, then PM Nawaz Sharif’s military secretary rang him and asked him to drive down immediately from Mangla to the PM’s house without explaining anything. He “sensed something abnormal afoot”. Mr Sharif told him, he says, “One of the reasons I have selected you (as COAS) is that you are the only Lt Gen who never approached me, directly or indirectly, for this job.” Was he indeed clueless about what destiny had in store for him? Had he given up on his prayer to Allah to give him a chance to serve the nation? When Ali Kuli Khan resigned after being bypassed, General Musharraf silently advised him to remember that “Man proposes and God disposes”. Of course, it is another matter of fact that several members of Nawaz Sharif’s inner circle, including General (retd) Iftikhar Ali Khan and General (retd) Moinuddin Haider, had “proposed” General Musharraf to Nawaz Sharif instead of General Ali Kuli Khan for many months and their protégé was aware of their efforts. General Iftikhar was defense secretary at the time and is treated sympathetically in the book – he didn’t sign the notification sacking General Musharraf as army chief – while General Haider was rewarded after the coup (he served as interior minister and then governor of Sindh).
The last chapter of the book is titled “Reflections”. “God has always been kind to me”, says General Musharraf, protecting him from certain death time and again, helping him move up the army ladder in preference to “officers born with a silver spoon in their mouth”. “I wonder why”, he asks innocently, while “reinforcing his belief in his destiny” and his sense of “honesty, truthfulness, contentment and humility” (“being humble in greatness raises one’s stature”). A splendid lecture on leadership follows. It is all about character, decisiveness, boldness and cool temperament. Loyalty, honesty and uprightness are essential prerequisites in colleagues. A leader must never suffer paralysis through analysis. He must have the will to change public opinion in the true national interest. General Musharraf is all of these and more because he is used to putting in 15 hours of work a day even though he doesn’t believe in micromanagement.
The most revealing aspect of the book, and one which his idle detractors will find most depressing, is the list of things-to-do on his 7-point agenda for the next decade ahead. “We have to consolidate our democracy and ensure the supremacy of the constitution” is way down the line at number 6 in terms of priority. “But Pakistan has a long way to go”, says the author.
General Musharraf has promised to shed his uniform by the end of his first official term as president next year. But since he expects to be in the driving seat on the nation’s long journey to rediscovery and rebirth, we shouldn’t hold our breath.