It seems almost quaint to recall that, not so long ago, the relations of India and Pakistan with the United States were almost exactly the reverse of what they are now. Pakistan, the Muslim state created in 1947 in the wake of Indian independence, leaned toward the West and was friendly to Cold War Washington. “Non-aligned” India, led by the British-educated socialist Jawaharlal Nehru and the other grandees of his clan, kept Washington at arm’s length and was helpful to the Soviet Union.
Yet for Pakistan, at least, one figure personified the gradual, awkward transition, which he sought to prevent during his nine tumultuous years as president: Gen. Pervez Musharraf. The onetime army commando seized power in a bloodless 1999 coup, chose America’s side against Islamist terror after the 9/11 attacks, and sought unsuccessfully to balance a reformist agenda against the rise of radical Islam in his homeland.
Increasingly authoritarian, he was forced from office in 2008, convicted of treason, and eventually sentenced to death (although he was later exonerated). Musharraf died in exile last week after a long illness in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. He was 79.
Musharraf was an Urdu-speaking muhajir, an emigrant Muslim from Delhi whose family fled westward to the newly created Pakistan when British India split in two. His father, a civil servant under British rule, became a Pakistani diplomat and was posted in Turkey for several years, where his young son grew to admire that country’s spirit of militant secularism.
Educated at Pakistan’s military academy and the Royal College of Defence Studies in London, Musharraf became an artillery officer and served as a much-admired commando in Pakistan’s wars with India in 1965 and 1971. As a muhajir, he was always perceived as an outsider of sorts, but he also successfully straddled Pakistan’s ethnic divides and tribal enmities and rose to become army chief of staff in the late 1990s.
He also developed a gathering disdain for Pakistan’s corrupt ruling class, and in 1999, then-President Nawaz Sharif sought to dismiss him while Musharraf was visiting Sri Lanka. Flying home to Karachi, Pakistan, to confront Sharif, Musharraf learned that the president had ordered his pilot not to land the aircraft. By that time, however, rebellious officers had seized the president’s residence and Pakistan’s state-owned television station. When he finally landed at Karachi’s airport, the 56-year-old career soldier found himself Sharif’s successor.
He was confronted, at once, with the two principal challenges that would complicate his leadership and push him gradually in autocratic directions: widespread corruption in public life and the growth and deepening influence of radical Islam.
His governing programs were swift and comprehensive. He reduced Pakistan’s burdensome debt and promoted free-market reforms, leading to dramatic economic growth and progress. He shook up the bureaucracy, dismissed entrenched officials, and in the words of the New York Times: “Changes were immediately palpable. Crime dropped sharply. Police officers stopped pulling cars over to demand bribes. Even airport taxi lines became orderly.” Musharraf sought to reduce historic tensions with India, negotiating with its then-Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to seek a peaceful resolution to their chronic dispute over the status of Kashmir.
Fundamentalist Islam, however, proved his undoing. Pakistan had initially supported the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan, angering the Clinton administration. But after 9/11, Musharraf switched sides and, in exchange for American aid and assistance, joined forces with the George W. Bush administration in its war on terror, which, while burnishing Pakistan’s credentials in the West, undermined Musharraf’s standing at home. He banned Islamist groups and captured prominent al Qaeda suspects. But his efforts to reduce the influence of radical clerics in civic life were thwarted by religious and bureaucratic resistance. And his efforts to criminalize “honor” killings, modernize seminaries, and strike down laws that punished rape victims failed.
“I never did anything for myself,” he later recalled. “It was all for Pakistan.” Which might well be true. But while history may ultimately vindicate Musharraf, he remains, for now, a transitional figure whose political skills did not quite match his patriotism.
Philip Terzian is a contributing writer to the Washington Examiner magazine.
