Re: My official stance on Musharraf
If you go that way back, then may as well throw in Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who was clearly not a mohajir. Liaqat Ali Khan, while being known as Qaid-e-Millat and all that good stuff, was never credited with brilliant leadership. Infact, he was unable to tackle many of the severe problems Pakistan was facing with, and resultantly got himself assassinated leaving Pakistan under the clutches of greedy politicians and bureacrats.
First two were fairly non-controversial, primarily because they didn’t do pretty much anything… GM was a cunning bureacrat. I don’t recall him doing anything great for Pakistan.
Having a war should not be the sole yardstick, ofcourse. Ayub’s general leadership is praised, as well as very high industrial development that took place during his rule. Bhutto invokes fairly strong emotions on both sides, but generally is deemed a very intelligent person, and depending on your view point, you can call him either an “evil genius” or a “poor man’s crusader”. Our economy almost completely tanked during the 70’s, primarily because of socialist policies.
Personally, I don’t think the place of birth of a person defines his/her leadership skills. These are dis-connected matrices, and leadership result card is dependent on the personality of the person, willingness to do good and opportunity to achieve the goals, more than the name of the village where one is born.