With his death after a long illness, Pakistan’s former president Pervez Musharraf leaves in his wake a two-faced legacy in relations with India that saw him preside over some horrendous acts of terrorism but later, under pressure from United States allegedly threatening to bomb Stone Age Pakistan after 9/11, demanding peace.
While he will still be best remembered here for his 1999 Kargil adventurism, a chastened Musharraf got the two sides to a ceasefire agreement in 2003, facilitating then Prime Minister AB Vajpayee’s visit to Pakistan for the Saarc summit next year.
Musharraf’s efforts to seek international legitimacy also saw a reduction in violence during that period and, in 2006, his 4-point peace formula for Kashmir which he arrived at with Vajpayee’s successor Manmohan Singh, bringing the India and Pakistan very close to a “non-territorial solution.
Musharraf effectively dominated Pakistan for 10 long years, from when he was appointed army chief by then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in 1998 until his resignation as president in 2008.
While Sharif had made him army chief, Musharraf wasted no time in undermining the Prime Minister’s authority by ordering the Kargil infiltration just 3 months after India and Pakistan signed the Lahore Declaration during Vajpayee’s visit to Pakistan in 1999.
The Declaration, together with the Simla Agreement, continues to provide the basis for the 2 countries to resolve all issues bilaterally. The same year Sharif was overthrown in a military coup by Musharraf.
As former Indian ambassador to Pakistan Sharat Sabharwal says, Musharraf leaves behind a mixed legacy.
“It can be divided into 2 phases. The first, after he took over as Army Chief of Staff, was marked by extreme adventurism. Major acts of terrorism such as the hijacking of IC 814 and the attack on Parliament are under his watch. Later, due to 9/11 and pressure from the West, he adopted a more reasonable position. That was when the violence subsided and there were secret talks,” says Sabharwal.
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Pervez Musharraf: From Military Ruler to Forgotten Man in Pakistani Politics
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Former army chief and Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf passed away on Sunday after a long battle with a rare health condition called amyloidosis
Musharraf, who served as army chief for nearly nine years (1999-2008), became Pakistan’s tenth president in 2001 and held the position until early 2008.
He was born in pre-partition Delhi on 11 August 1943. After partition, his family settled in Karachi where he attended Saint Patrick’s School. Later, he joined the Kakul Pakistan Military Academy and graduated from the institute in 1964.
For his early battlefield experience, he served in the elite Special Services Group (SSG) from 1966 to 1972. During the 1971 war with India, Musharraf was a company commander of an SSG commando battalion.
In October 1998, he was appointed Army Chief of Staff by then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
On October 12, 1999, his troops seized control of the Prime Minister’s House after Sharif prevented Musharraf from landing at Karachi airport on his return journey from Sri Lanka. Musharraf reacted by declaring a state of emergency, suspending the constitution and assuming the role of chief executive.
In June 2001, Musharraf became president of Pakistan.
The 9/11 attacks occurred just months after Musharraf became president. He later entered Pakistan into an alliance with the United States in the latter’s “war on terror”.
Musharraf held a general election in October 2002 during which he allied himself with the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q), the Muttahida Qaumi movement and a six-party religious alliance called the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal.
With this election, Musharraf was able to muster the two-thirds majority required to pass the 17th amendment that helped legitimize the 1999 coup and many other measures he enacted.
In January 2004, Musharraf won a vote of confidence from both houses of parliament and the four provincial assemblies with a 56% majority and was declared elected.
In March 2007, Musharraf suspended then Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry after the latter refused to resign over alleged abuse of his post. The incident sparked violent protests from lawyers and civil society activists.
On 20 June 2007, the Supreme Court reinstated the chief justice and declared Musharraf’s suspension of the former null and void. However, the chief justice was deposed again when Musharraf imposed a state of emergency in the country on November 3, 2007.
During this period, Musharraf stepped down from his position as army chief, with General Ashfaq Pervaiz Kayani taking over.
The PPP-led coalition government at the core has launched parliamentary proceedings to impeach him. Musharraf initially refused to step down before voluntarily leaving office.
Musharraf has also been named in cases relating to the murder of Benazir Bhutto, the killing of Nawab Akbar Bugti and the “unlawful imprisonment” of 62 judges after the November 2007 emergency.
Although he received bail for all three cases, Musharraf was barred from traveling abroad after his name was placed on the Exit Control List (ECL) on April 5, 2013.
The former president’s name was however cleared by the ECL and he flew to Dubai on 17 March 2016 to “seek medical treatment” and never returned.
In September 2018, it was revealed that he was “weakening rapidly” from an unspecified illness. A month later, it was revealed that she suffered from amyloidosis, which had impaired her mobility.
Musharraf’s hubris has also been seen as one of the reasons for the debacle of the Agra summit in 2001, shortly before which he officially nominated himself president. The Vajpayee government’s very invitation to Musharraf for the summit – just 18 months after the IC814 hijacking – offers a stark contrast to how the NDA government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has chosen to deal with Pakistan with his “terror and talks”. t-go together policy.
Shortly before the summit, Musharraf even met with Hurriyat leaders at the Pakistan High Commission and promised them moral and political support. Years later, in 2014, the Modi government effectively drew a red line for any bilateral engagement by canceling the then foreign minister’s visit to Islamabad because the Pakistani high commissioner here had held a meeting with separatists shortly before the visit.
This was also the reason why the Indian government insisted on calling the 10-point dialogue process launched in 2015 a “bilateral” global dialogue and not just, as Pakistan initially wanted, a global dialogue.
Despite his peace initiatives, Musharraf in the fullness of time will be remembered more for dragging India into the Kargil war than for his 4-point Kashmir formula. As Sabharwal says, the formula was a major initiative and there was interest on both sides to move forward.
It was perhaps the first time that the 2 countries had nearly reached an agreement for a non-territorial settlement to the Kashmir issue. Musharraf resigned in 2008 after his clash with the judiciary and the peace formula is now only the subject of academic discussion.
