I think this guy is delusional. I hate to break it to you, Mushy, but no one needs you. And, if I was you, I’d stay away from Pakistan just to stay alive.
(Oct. 19) – Slamming the current leaders of his country, former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf today declared it vital that he return home to rejoin politics if Pakistan is to be saved from terrorism and economic collapse.
“None of them [politicians] are capable of delivering Pakistan from the darkness that it faces today,” the former military dictator said in a speech at the Asia Society in Houston.
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Ben Stansall, AFP / Getty Images
Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf salutes the audience at a rally in Birmingham, England, on Oct. 2, following the announcement of his return to politics with the launch of his political party, the All Pakistan Muslim League.
“I thought there is an issue greater than self and that is the nation itself,” he told the audience, recalling that when he took charge Pakistan was on the verge of becoming a “failed state.”
The then army chief of staff came to power in a bloodless coup in 1999 and later became a key ally of the U.S. in the “war against terror.” But in 2008, he went into self-imposed exile in London under the threat of impeachment amid nationwide protests against his rule.
This month, Musharraf, 67, announced his plans to return to politics by fighting elections in 2013, launching a new party called All Pakistan Muslim League in London. The former leader vowed to wage “jihad against poverty, hunger, illiteracy and backwardness”](http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/front-page/musharraf-apologises-for-mistakes,-launches-party-200%20) and asserted that the military must do more to save the country.
Though the country remains desperately poor, there was an uptick in prosperity during the Musharraf years that could translate into some political support. “Regardless of the way he got there, the years he was in power were the best Pakistan had since the 1960s,” said Kashif Rauf, a banker in Karachi.
But most experts agree that Musharraf’s return to power is highly unlikely, and his new enthusiasm has raised eyebrows.
“The puzzle is why he is campaigning in the U.K. and America … strange location for a Pakistani politician,” said Stephen Cohen, a Pakistan expert at the Brookings Institution, a think tank based in Washington, D.C.
“I think his political career is over. Pakistan has enough problems as it is without former dictators complicating the process,” Cohen continued.
Musharraf, however, contends that the current leaders are the problem, especially the man he overthrew in 1999: then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who he described as once again “vying to become prime minister.”
“He wants us to take us again down the drain. … Any patriotic Pakistani, I feel, must not allow that,” the former army chief said.
Pakistan expert Bruce Riedel, also from Brookings, pointed out that Pakistan’s main parties opposed Musharraf and that the army is now controlled by Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, not considered a Musharraf ally.
Riedel noted, however, that while Musharraf’s returning to power was a “long shot,” nothing can be ruled out entirely: “Pakistani politics are dynamic and fluid so comebacks are always possible.”
Indeed, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who had returned from exile under a cloud of corruption charges, appeared to be making a successful comeback when she was killed in December 2007 by a suicide bomber during a campaign stop in Rawalpindi.
Her Pakistan Peoples Party went onto win the most parliamentary seats in the 2008 elections, and her widower, Asif Ali Zardari, became president of the country.
Many of Bhutto’s supporters thought that Musharraf’s supporters were behind the assassination. A subsequent United Nations investigation blamed the Musharraf government for failing to protect Bhutto, and said that Pakistan’s intelligence agency, ISI, deliberately prevented a proper investigation into her death.
Allegations have proliferated in recent years that elements of the ISI are backing the Taliban in their fight against NATO forces in Afghanistan, even as it accommodates U.S. attempts to stymie militants in Pakistan. Analysts have suggested that Pakistan might play a double game because it needs to establish a working alliance with the militants once the Americans leave Afghanistan, especially with an eye to limit India’s influence there.
That record does not endear Musharraf with the current administration. “For the Obama team,” Riedel said, “he is the man who deceived Bush on the ISI’s terror connections.”
There are also deep suspicions that ISI was behind the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, carried out by terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, that killed more than 160 people. And last month, Musharraf said that the Pakistan military had trained militants to act in Indian-controlled Kashmir; he has since backtracked.
In Houston today he described the separatist elements in Kashmir as “independent mujahedeen groups” that “erupted in Pakistan.”
Pushpesh Pant, an international relations expert at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, said that changes in leadership made little difference in Pakistan, which he said is basically controlled by the army.
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Responding to whether New Delhi would rather deal with a Musharraf-led government than a Zardari-led government, Pant suggested that the distinction was cosmetic. “India has to deal with a serving general who pulls the strings of elected puppets,” he said. “Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and [his daughter] Benazir paid the price with their lives [for] suffering from the illusion that civilians matter.”
Zardari, haunted by old corruption charges, remains deeply unpopular at home for kowtowing to the Americans and more recently for being away in Europe while the country was dealing with floods that impacted 20 million people.
But Zardari’s unpopularity doesn’t translate into people wanting Musharraf back, according to observers.
“His presence will be dangerous for Pakistan and public will not allow him,” said Syed Adil Gilani, head of Pakistan’s Transparency International, who described Musharraf as “corrupt” and “responsible for current terrorism and economic deterioration.”
But Musharraf, who could risk his life by going back, hardly appears bogged down by the prevailing skepticism.
“Pakistan and our region is the happening place in the world,” he said today. “As far as I am concerned there has never been a dull moment in life.”