The demise of the Pakistani military dictator Pervez Musharraf invited a flurry of respectful and nostalgic obituaries from Indian journalists calling him a โbraveโ and โno-nonsenseโ man. Congress leader Shashi Tharoor called him a โreal force of peaceโ. When BJP protested, he retaliated by saying โI was raised in an India where you are expected to speak kindly of people when they die.โ
Obituaries are not meant to paint individuals as saints but to recall and assess the legacy they left behind. So, the very idea that one must not be โspoken ill ofโ in death is antithetical to the act of writing an obituary.
Musharrafโs life was full of massive corruption scandals, links to political assassinations, and aiding and abetting terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda and Bin Laden. In 2019, a special court found Musharraf guilty of high treason under Article 6 of Pakistanโs constitution โ for suspending the constitution when he imposed a state of emergency in November 2007 โ and sentenced him to death.
Musharraf was accused of being responsible for assassinating Pakistanโs former Prime Minster, Benazir Bhutto, and was called a โmurdererโ and a โcowardโ by Bhuttoโs children. During his tenure as Pakistanโs dictator, Musharraf was accused of
amassing huge wealth and depositing billions of rupees in overseas banks. His name figured in the Panama Papers leak scandal and there were allegations that he had sent billions of rupees outside the country through offshore accounts.
Pakistanโs support for notorious terrorist groups is very well known across the world, and General Musharraf was no stranger to this. Immediately after 9/11, Musharrafโs ISI chief, Mahmud Ahmed traveled to Afghanistan to talk to Taliban leader Mullah Omar. Mahmud Ahmed told Omar not to hand over Bin Laden to the Americans. Under American pressure, Mushrraf had to sack Ahmed. After 9/11 Musharraf was ready to cut off support for the Taliban but was not ready to dismantle the homegrown terrorists (Lashkar, Jaish) who were used as proxies in Kashmir.
Taliban was quietly allowed to regenerate in Pakistan, and it happened right under Mushraffโs watch. In 2014, British journalist and author, Carlotta Gall, wrote in her book, The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan (2001-2014), โโMusharrafโs double-dealing may have gone as far as helping Al-Qaedaโs top leaders escape capture. In 2005, a senior Pashtun tribal leader told Afghan officials that al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawhiri was staying as a guest at the house of a senior Pakistani government official in Kohat. The official was none other than the governor of the NWFP, a retired general, and a Musharraf appointeeโโ.
Under Musharraf and his ISI chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Osama Bin Laden lived and moved around Pakistan (Swat valley, Abbottabad, Haripur), the Taliban received consistent protection and support from Pakistan and came to threaten the entire US-led mission in Afghanistan. Musharrafโs misadventure in Kargil derailed the peace process started by the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee with his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif at the Lahore Summit in 1999.
During the Kargil war, Pakistan kept insisting to the entire world that the hundreds of invaders who had dug into mountaintop positions just inside Indian-controlled Kashmir were Mujahideen, Muslim holy warriors. Musharraf and his men couldnโt hide the truth for long. He refused to even recognize and claim his own countrymenโs fallen soldiers when it turned out that the so-called holy warriors are in reality, Pakistani army men.
Pakistani generals have a history of being engaged in exporting terrorism through its proxies and India has suffered the most from Rawalpindiโs evil designs for more than three decades now. Musharraf and other such generals deserve no respectful obituary from Indians.
