He had seized power on 12 October 1999, just a few months after his special military operation in the spring of 1999 against Indian forces in Kargil, Kashmir went awry. The operation was condemned worldwide. It failed to garner support even from China, Pakistan’s all-weather friend. The general’s image tanked even further after the coup.
Ironically, it improved dramatically after he decided to join the US War on Terror led by President George W Bush, which was launched in Afghanistan in October 2001, just a few weeks after the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
When the general, who had since promoted himself to general arrived in the US in June 2003, at the invitation of President Bush, he must have felt like a knight riding on a white horse.
It was a case of history repeating itself. In 1977, General Zia had overthrown ZA Bhutto’s government after both had attended the reception at the American Embassy to celebrate America's independence on the 4th of July. The coup was condemned worldwide. In April 1979, Bhutto was hanged on Zia’s watch, and some say on his behest. Zia’s image was in tatters. Then, in December 1979, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, the US reached out to Zia for help and he complied. From that point on, he became America’s favourite general and key strategist in the war against the Soviet Union.
At a high-profile gathering on the Avenue of the Stars, tough questions about Kashmir were silenced while the general painted a rosy economic picture
The primary objective of Musharaff’s visit in 2003 was to improve Pakistan's image with investors and the Pakistani American community, and to discuss US-Pakistan relations and cooperation in the War on Terror with President Bush.
On 26 June, he gave a dinner talk at the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles. On the following day he spoke to a group of American investors over breakfast, gave a talk at the RAND Corporation over lunch, had tea with Pacific Council on International Policy and gave a speech after dinner to several hundred Pakistanis.
I was invited to attend the breakfast and dinner meetings on 27 June. I am not sure why I was invited. Perhaps it had something to do with my attendance at two conferences that were held at Stanford University in 2002 and 2003. They were held after an attack on the Indian parliament in New Delhi in December 2001. India had blamed Pakistan for sponsoring the attacks and begun to mount hundreds of thousands of troops on the border with Pakistan. Sure enough, Pakistan responded by moving several army divisions on its border with India. At one point, a million soldiers were gathered on both sides of the international border.
The Stanford conferences were designed to find a way to prevent war between the South Asian rivals. While I was not a speaker, during the question-and-answer session that followed a panel discussion, I did put some tough questions to a professor of Indian origin who was putting the entire blame on Pakistan. Pakistan’s Consul General, who was in the conference room, probably put my name on the invitation list for the breakfast meeting.
The breakfast meeting was held in a fancy hotel on the Avenue of the Stars in Los Angeles. It was my first in-person exposure to the general. He sat on the dais, with the Pakistani ambassador to the US seated next to him. Shaukat Aziz was also nearby.
The general posted a rosy picture about Pakistan’s economic prospects and said it had improved dramatically since he came to power. He was speaking spontaneously. He did not mention Kashmir once. A man in shalwar kameez stood up and asked him why he was not even discussing the crisis in Kashmir and what he intended to do to resolve it.
Musharraf ignored him. The university chancellor who was moderating the meeting asked the man to please wait for the question-and-answer session and to wait to ask his question when he was called. People with a question were asked to raise their hands and would be able to do so when the moderator gave them his permission. “Home run pitches” were delivered to the general and he “hit the ball out of the park.” But the man who had raised the difficult issue about Kashmir never got a chance to put forward his question.
While this was happening, I saw a man get up and walk toward the dais to hand the general a book. However, he was halted by a security guard, who took the book from him. Then, in front of our eyes, he threw the book into a large bin, which resembled a garbage can. Musharraf pretended to look the other away. The man returned to his table, disappointed.
Afterwards, I chatted with a couple of professors from Stanford who had organised the conferences mentioned earlier and asked them for their impressions. They said the general was more impressive than they had expected him to be. However, no one in the room stood up and said they would invest millions in the country, which was the sole purpose of the speech.
The dinner meeting was held at the swank Beverly Hotel. The ballroom where the general would speak was packed. But there was no sign of the general. As it was getting late, several people got up and offered the Maghrib prayers in the adjacent hallway. Then they returned to the dinner tables.
Still there was no sign of the general. An announcement was made that he was delayed due to a series of TV interviews. Appetisers were served to calm the audience. Still there was no sign of Musharraf. The audience was getting hungry and restless, when suddenly one by one, four members of the US armed forces marched in, carrying the respective flags of their branch of service. Behind them was General Musharraf. This was as much pomp and circumstance as one can expect to witness in a hotel.
Dinner was served. The general along with the guests began to consume it. There were at least 50 tables in the room and 10 people were seated on each table. They were all Pakistani-Americans who had come from far and wide.
At our table, a woman got up to say hello to the general, saying she was his neighbour in Islamabad a while back. I said politely to her that security won’t let you approach him. That did not halt her progression towards the dais. Sure enough, the security folks stopped her. She was sent back and I asked her what happened. She said the guard told her that the general would come to each table afterwards and talk with the guests.
Musharraf had momentarily glanced at her as she approached the dais, probably recognised her, but then looked the other way.
Then he got up to speak. He spoke without a script in English to an entirely Pakistani audience, which surprised me. In his talk, he came across as a vainglorious, self-centred man who just loved talking up his accomplishments, both real and imagined.
He said people keep asking me why he took the $1 billion in aid from the US. It was a trivial amount. Switching to colloquial Urdu, he said “They are giving it to me for free. Why would I not take it?” Then he went back to speaking in English.
After speaking uninterrupted for an hour, he said “I have run past my allotted time. The hotel wants us to empty the conference room.” And then he left abruptly. No questions were taken from the audience. Nor did he swing by any table to chat with his guests, which the woman from my table had been promised. He just disappeared in the darkness of the night.
The statement that the hotel wanted us to empty the grand ballroom carried no credibility. He was a head of state visiting the US at the invitation of the US President. He had entered the room with an honour guard. Why would the normal hours of the ballroom apply to a VIP of his standing?
I felt that the meeting was a public relations disaster. I wondered if he was so arrogant in the US, then how arrogant was he in Pakistan where he reigned supreme.
In the years that followed, it became clear that he was all about projecting his image, just as the three prior dictators had been. And he owed his continued tenure to the US.
Courtesy of President Bush, Pakistan got $13 billion of aid from the US. The growth rate rose in the two years that followed 2003, but then it began an inexorable fall, which presaged the end of his rule. By 2008, fatigue had set in. He had overstayed his welcome, even in the eyes of the US.
The general’s fatal error was declaring a state of national emergency and suspending the constitution. In other words, he had put himself above the law. Soon afterwards, he was forced to resign and spent much of his time abroad, giving speeches in the US and the UK at large and small universities. In return, he earned lucrative fees.
In December 2019, a special court convicted him of treason for suspending the constitution and issued a death sentence. The decision was later annulled by the Lahore High Court, but the stigma was not erased.
From 2016 onwards the fourth dictator of Pakistan chose to live in exile, mostly in Dubai, and that’s where he died in ignominy in 2023.