son must be a key accomplice.

And guess what? It keeps getting better and better. On cracking a terror network in Punjab with a tip-off from Ahmed Ghailani, he writes: “This network was finished off when, acting on information from him, we arrested fifteen more people comprising al Qaeda operatives and their families (including a newborn baby).” I am sure you must have reached the conclusion by now that this newborn was the plotter of some heinous terror plan. Goodbye, good old human rights, do not dare to return.

To cut the long story short, I am still confused where to place this book in my library. Whether in the collection of my favourite contemporary novels or in the rack dedicated to the information of strange things in the world? Can you help me out?


The writer is an independent columnist and media consultant

Comments 0n In the line of fire by Pervez Musharraf

End of the line – final cut

12/10/2006

Farrukh Khan Pitafi

 

Today marks the seventh anniversary of General Musharraf in power. In these seven years he has short-changed many of his mentors and supporters. His mushy book indeed deserves full justice and hence we continue the last week's review of this heaven-sent opportunity.

Much has been said by the media managers of Musharraf on this rather dangerous experiment, being his attempt at Pakistan's image building abroad.

Let me quote here from the last chapter called Reflections, in which he keeps changing many hats from Stephen Covey's to Max Webber's, just to show how our president presents us: “Democracy in illiterate, feudal, tribal, and parochial societies (my emphasis) has a downside. People are not elected on pure merit.” Again he makes no bones about the fact that Pakistan has been a nuclear proliferator in the past. My readers who have watched the North Korean nuclear tests will surely now understand my concern regarding the president's indictments. Now tell me where does our collective image stand in the Western world after reading this book?

Another question is regarding our General's ambition. He tries to project himself as a content man who had nothing to do with politics until destiny was thrust upon him. Yet on page 152, not only does he reproduce a quote from Abraham Lincoln's letter in which he had referred to the Constitution as a limb which could be amputated to save the rest of the body or life. “In fact, I found this passage so inspirational and so beautifully worded that I have kept it in my briefcase ever since I first read it in 1990,” he writes. Wait, wait, General sahib, you were only a brigadier in 1990, why did you bother to carry an irrelevant comment on the Constitution for nearly 19 years, prior to your rise to power? Brigadiers, even though under oath to protect the Constitution, hardly have anything to do with abrogating it.

Now see the developments before and during the Kargil Operation in the light of this ambition. Thus far we have studied Kargil in military and diplomatic terms. Let us try digging out some political traces from its rubble. Karamat in Musharraf's own words had chosen Ali Kuli as his successor. Yet he had to pay the price for talking loudly on the state of the nation's economy. In the Corps Commanders meetings, Musharraf till then was Nawaz's man through and through. Nawaz showed Karamat the door and brought Musharraf in. I still remember the overall downbeat morale of the forces. Interestingly enough, Musharraf was known among some of his uniformed colleagues as Nawaz's robot. He had to do something to remove this stigma. Since now he had become the army chief, Nawaz was expendable. Hence, we witnessed the Kargil episode.

While we will deal with the operational dynamics of the Kargil episode some other time, I have two major issues with it. First, if I recollect it correctly, the purpose of the operation was to deny India an access route to Siachen, yet the operation failed to take over the Kargil-Dras Road, the main artery, sealing the fate of the operation since its very inception. Second, even though I have not read Anthony Zinni's biography, yet from the published excerpts from his book, I gather that the General was unhappy with Nawaz as early as April 1999. Now that is a terrible indictment on his ambitions.

Let us proceed to the issue of proliferation now. What AQ Khan has done is now no secret and we cannot deny that. But there is one lingering concern. It is astonishing that the US and Musharraf both started finding some rudimentary information on AQ Khan's activities at the same time. We have had the capacity for considerable time by then but no substantial information was carried in the international newspapers till then. It is beyond my comprehension why the reports on proliferation started surfacing in the foreign journals with devilish speed after the establishment of the National Command Authority when the proliferation had already been nipped? It somehow seems that someone from our side was feeding the information to all for some personal gains.

No, no, do not talk about the CIA. It was handing Iran the clean chit before an Iranian opposition group gave it a presentation with the proof. It could not spot the activity going on in Pokhran before the Indian nuclear tests. It has now been surprised by the North Korean detonations. Unfortunately, Musharraf, like AQ Khan, was now the only person who could provide anyone with any information. Could it be that the General wanted more clout in his own constituency and hence wanted to keep it under pressure? He has penned this book too after all. Now let us take the issue of the war on terror in which we have proven ourselves holier than the Pope. Musharraf shows great sympathy for Daniel Pearl on humanitarian grounds. But have you noted how his assassin was apprehended? “By tracing the e-mails sent by Omar Sheikh's accomplices to the media, the police had been able to capture some of his key accomplices and relatives, and his own family as well, including his eighteen-month old son.” When the President of Pakistan announces this so proudly, I am sure his 18-month-old son must be a key accomplice.

And guess what? It keeps getting better and better. On cracking a terror network in Punjab with a tip-off from Ahmed Ghailani, he writes: “This network was finished off when, acting on information from him, we arrested fifteen more people comprising al Qaeda operatives and their families (including a newborn baby).” I am sure you must have reached the conclusion by now that this newborn was the plotter of some heinous terror plan. Goodbye, good old human rights, do not dare to return.

To cut the long story short, I am still confused where to place this book in my library. Whether in the collection of my favourite contemporary novels or in the rack dedicated to the information of strange things in the world? Can you help me out?


The writer is an independent columnist and media consultant