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Musharraf: The Years in Power GENERAL Pervez Musharaff’s eight-year rule over Pakistan kept both the international community and India on tenterhooks. However, among the intellectuals of his own country, it was the story of a despotic army General whom absolute power had corrupted absolutely.
Razvi deserves praise for bringing to light what Musharaff never accepted before the international community—whether it was his open support to the Taliban whom he allowed to operate from his soil against the Kabul regime or his planned attack on the former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto or still worse his inability to check zealots from letting loose lawlessness in the Swat Valley. He has exposed the former General’s weakness, his failure to deliver despite tall promises of assisting the US in hunting down terrorists. The book also makes no bones about his machinations in Kargil and how the democratically elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was diplomatically isolated and forced to seek asylum. It is the story of an authoritarian General who ruled when economic crisis was at its worst in Pakistan. Even its being a nuclear power did not give it much internationally standing because of political instability haunting it all through. The book begins with a terse account of the sequence of events which led to the infamous coup when he had overthrown Nawaz Sharif in October 1999. The turning point in his eight-year unbridled tenure came in March 2007 when he illegally suspended the Chief Justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, who refused to succumb to his dictates. However, nationwide protests led to the CJs subsequent reinstatement in July and this was viewed as the first challenge to the General’s dictatorial authority which set the tone for his several other unilateral decisions being stiffly opposed. The writer, who has seen political developments from close quarters, narrates with much alacrity how the General tried to exploit each situation and entered into a tacit understanding with Benazir Bhutto to seek her support. But having failed to tame her fully, there were plots of deliberate security lapses on her cavalcade after she arrived home from years of self-exile, leading to her death in a suicide bomb attack. He, however, faced a piquant situation after 9/11 when the US forced Pakistan to assist in hunting down Osama bin Laden and pin down al-Qaeda operatives. This infuriated the extremists and the rule of law became a casualty in the terrorist-hit Swat and Balochistan. While all his actions were focused on allowing him to cling to power without doffing his uniform, he ensured no one challenged his actions. Extreme decisions like imposition of Emergency fearing an adverse judgment on his reelection for a second term in November 2007 and ending Emergency after getting his actions indemnified by judges were indeed the last nails in his coffin, which indeed led to his downfall. Razvi deserves full credit for aptly describing Musharraf who had not only isolated himself in his last days of his tenure solely in pursuit of power, but also turned a back towards any attempts to even remotely challenge his dictatorial rule from even his long-held companions. Using various reports of US emissaries, even General’s own accounts in his books, the writer has presented an unbiased account of this "accidental dictator", as he was called in Pakistan.
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Written by Murtaza Razvi,
a Pakistani journalist, working with the Dawn Media Group, the book
has perhaps for the first time brought out a candid and unbiased
account of how the General rose to power by a military coup and his
subsequent rise and fall from grace.