I’m no doctor, but I think Mushrraf has multiple personality disorder the way he switches between Gen. Mushrraf & “President” Mushrraf. Read this with light humor… 
Both President and General Musharraf must go
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Nafisa Shah
Throughout the years I served as nazim in a district in Pakistan, I would curiously watch General Musharraf switch to President Musharraf with theatrical ease. When he would be roaring at the Balochi insurgents challenging him from the foothills of Suleiman ranges, he would dress as a commando in combat uniform, but when he would head a corps commanders’ meeting in the Rawalpindi Army House he would be in his khakis. When he would receive American diplomats, he would be at his charming best – in well-cut western suits. When he would come to address rallies he would wear the gear of a political leader, the shalwar kameez and sometimes a turban to go with it. His shirwani representing him as the constitutional head would be donned when he addressed the nation on the television.
His dress switching, I observed, was a form of a political message. It showed that his power was complex and multifaceted, combining the military command with the executive and titular power, and was all-encompassing. It is this complex and multifaceted power which has challenged and stretched all understandings and interpretations of law that I consider has brought us to the present state. Throughout this time too, I heard lawyers, politicians and thinkers asking him to take his uniform off. I can now see why.
On November 3, President Musharraf declared emergency as General Musharraf while wearing his shirwani but signing the note as chief of army staff. “Now therefore, I, General Pervez Musharraf, chief of army staff, hereby declare emergency”, he wrote in his declaration. In doing so, he conquered the people of Pakistan for the second time. His main weapon was the law that he broke. He said he did it because extremists had increased their attacks and the judiciary was helping letting them loose.
The general suspended the constitution, put curbs on the press and imprisoned judges and lawyers in large numbers. His next targets were human rights activists, liberal academics and students and then political activists – all those who one would consider his natural allies on his war against extremist forces. While the police was filling truckloads of activists and lawyers in their vans, there was an exchange of prisoners where extremist militants were released in lieu of soldiers in the militancy-filled north.
Most people say the imposition of emergency law was an action against his own rule – in other words a coup against himself. But that was to be expected. When one man embodies two constitutional positions – the head of state and the head of the army – it in itself allows him to take action against himself.
The action of suspending the constitution was done in his capacity as the head of the army. The question we need to ask him is, what did he do to President Musharraf? I don’t agree that General Musharraf toppled President Musharraf. It seems that General Musharraf came to the rescue of President Musharraf, whom he feared might have been constitutionally put to a sudden death by the judges of the Supreme Court. The president stands restored in a commando action by General Musharraf.
This is further substantiated when the emergency imposed by Musharraf as chief of army staff now hands power to end the emergency to the Musharraf as president. The notification about the amendment to the PCO reads: “The president may revoke the proclamation of emergency of the 3rd day of November, 2007, on such day as he may deem fit”. By striking at the law, the general has rescued the president. Legal observers say the general would like to transform into the president and say goodbye to the chief of army staff. I don’t see how the president rescued by the general would survive.
There are two wars that President-General Musharraf is presently fighting. One is definitely the international concerns about the war on terror for which he receives $11 million a week from Washington. The other is war on Pakistan’s constitution and those who protect it. Both wars must be perpetual and ongoing if the general and the president are to live in one man as parallel and interchangeable power forms. For the general to survive in the president, the war on terror must be sustained, for which, ironically, militancy itself has to be able to live or be allowed to live in the ominous frontiers of this country.
There must be something of that when media in America echoed that General Musharraf allowed the Taliban to regroup in the north western frontiers. Recently also, you may have noted how a part of the beautiful Swat valley was suddenly taken by militants from God knows where. But, in contrast, for the president to survive in the general, the legal system must be throttled and emergency laws renewed, as law gives him no space to live as two in one. It was therefore inevitable for him to declare war on the country’s legal fraternity that was set to eliminate the president from the general.
Eventually the Freudian split personality of President-General Musharraf, which has been allowed to operate for so long, wreck both our chances of waging a successful war on terror and bringing constitutional rule to this country. It is to our luck that our judges and the legal fraternity have bravely exposed the anomalous and highly dangerous nature of power that two-faced Musharraf has come to represent.
Both General Musharraf and President Musharraf pose external and internal security threats to the people of Pakistan and for the global security, respectively. The Pakistani people know this well and since long. It is time his allies, and I hope I can call them former allies, in the west realised that both General Musharraf and President Musharraf must go.
The writer is a former journalist and ex-nazim of Khairpur. She is currently studying at Oxford University for her doctorate.