(COMMANDO) pervaiz musharaf strikes back!

[ice_man]

Do you really, think they will, send musharaf!
His hands tied behind, his back & in the wooden box?
Still, mr ASLAM BAIG is here, what kind of punishment , he got till, now!
Check our history, they are angels, & no one to, judge them in pakistan!
Come out of your, jamhori dreamsn my, friend,

Make up your mind my friend. one minute ago you were saying HERO COMMANDO musharraf & now you are saying bad things about army?

 

[batmannow]

Make up your mind my friend. one minute ago you were saying HERO COMMANDO musharraf & now you are saying bad things about army?

dear, mate!
guss, what , i was in army!
i had served, in pak-army, its still in my blood, i also been a part of a war!
the, post you have, posted before, it gives imperesion , that ! pakistani govt is sending , its SWAT teams, to capture commando!
with some, foolish article on a newspaper, cant become reality, my dear?
commando, had done wonders, for the progress of pakistan, look at the situation , in pakistan kaos, is the law of the land?
with, my words, that they(army-chiefs) in pakistan, are angels, its 1000%, true, because i belive, no army chief of pakistan, acted alone, on any issue, just try to learn more about the, chain of command, hope you, will understand , something!
i have, provided you, the example of ,THE CHIEF SHAHIB(mr, aslam baig), his case is in court, i guss he, did best , what ever was , in the best national, intersts of pakistan!
just, tell mr,(ANDHA QANOON) to decide, anything against, even chief shahib, & you will, see him vanishing , IN THE AIR, like he was, never there!
well, i think commando, is preparing his parashute, & packing his gear, to jump in pakistan, soon.
thanks for the reply!

 

[BATMAN]

Well he can not do worse then the present incumbent I would say

No one can match his performance even in single sector of state.

 

[Luftwaffe]

commando? runaway man, ditched his own country leaving behind solders to fight...simply Epic!

My friend batman you are a good poster what happened to you.

Had he not fiddled with constitution, had he not fiddled with CJ even if CJ was wrong he was going to retire in couple of years but Nay musharraf was excited, had he demanded more from US for getting into WOT, Had he thrown out chaudhary brothers; he would have survived, see a duffer he came out to be that is why is staying in london asylum seeker, let him rot there he has no future in Pakistan, Yes even if he is back let him be powerless president of Pakistan just symbolic one, don't just give credit to musharraf many of the economic plans were advised and inputs were from the civilians of pml-q musharraf was not a one man running all and every department. Lastly why call him commando even the most hatred leader fo the country sometimes give away good statement occasionally although rare. Thankyou ice_man i don't have to add more what someone does wrong they have to face it as well, under any circumstances fiddling with constitution and firing CJ are completely illegal,one has to face Cases, musharraf is no special entity, tell him to come back face the cases and give his interviews in Pakistan, he is now one of those arm chair drawing room general

 

[BATMAN]

I have my observation and you have yours.

I don't want to debate on same baseless rhetoric over and again.

 

[batmannow]

Pervez Musharaf: Truth about Lal Masjid. - YouTube

Girls of the Red Mosque - Pakistan - YouTube

Pervez Musharaf: Truth about Lal Masjid. - YouTube

commando? runaway man, ditched his own country leaving behind solders to fight...simply Epic!

My friend batman you are a good poster what happened to you.

Had he not fiddled with constitution, had he not fiddled with CJ even if CJ was wrong he was going to retire in couple of years but Nay musharraf was excited, had he demanded more from US for getting into WOT, Had he thrown out chaudhary brothers; he would have survived, see a duffer he came out to be that is why is staying in london asylum seeker, let him rot there he has no future in Pakistan, Yes even if he is back let him be powerless president of Pakistan just symbolic one, don't just give credit to musharraf many of the economic plans were advised and inputs were from the civilians of pml-q musharraf was not a one man running all and every department. Lastly why call him commando even the most hatred leader fo the country sometimes give away good statement occasionally although rare. Thankyou ice_man i don't have to add more what someone does wrong they have to face it as well, under any circumstances fiddling with constitution and firing CJ are completely illegal,one has to face Cases, musharraf is no special entity, tell him to come back face the cases and give his interviews in Pakistan, he is now one of those arm chair drawing room general

what, constitution? mate!
the same, which gives a funny, sentence to gilani?
which he still deny?
& which can gives freedom, nawaz sharif & shabaz sharif, in hijacking case?
& lawyers like chowdry aitizaz , power to defend the looted , wealth of pakistan?
which gives power to criminals?
its a , forged useless, document, used by our crupt politicians!

 

[Luftwaffe]

what, constitution? mate!
the same, which gives a funny, sentence?
which he still, denies?
which gives power to criminals?

Opps you did it again! POWER TO CRIMINALS = musharraf, exactly you agree to my point musharraf being criminal. how can he even deny by keeping uniform as well as calling himself president and then rigging and shedding his uniform to become a full time president. How can he deny by declaring unwanted emergency, how can he deny he suspended constitution as soon as he came to power. And for your information he in one of his interviews said he was wrong about CJ and if he ever comes to Pakistan he will meet CJ and ask for a sorry. Sir, please don't be blind follower, sense should prevail that man has done enough blunders which even if he wants to cannot deny.

Is not dictatorship unconstitutional, or is it legal, is it please answer carefully. And you should not say what constitution if musharraf did not follow it atleast you being Pakistan should follow it, constitution of Pakistan is not the culprit it is the men in power who never follows it.

You may check my posts in National Politics Section, I have finger point at every politician that belongs to thug Political Parties.

 

[BATMAN]

Iftikhar ch. is even more corrupt than combined Gilani & Zardari.

He has been involved in petty crimes like reimbursing fake petrol invoices and reversing the judgments.

There was no reason to free the Mullah Ghazi and TTP operatives, who were convicted for murder attempts on Musharraf and security agencies.

 

[batmannow]

Iftikhar ch. is even more corrupt than combined Gilani & Zardari.

He has been involved in petty crimes like reimbursing fake petrol invoices and reversing the judgments.

There was no reason to free the Mullah Ghazi and TTP operatives, who were convicted for murder attempts on Musharraf and security agencies.

Lal Masjid Truth - YouTube!

 

[batmannow]

Abducted Col. Imam Sultan Tarar (R) appealed the government after kidnap (July 2010) - YouTube
Exclusive ; Taliban Leader Hakeemullah Mehsood On Screen Again , ISI Officer Col Imam Killed - YouTube

& it kept going on & on?
& our peoples keep, talikng constitution!

 

[batmannow]

Pervez Musharraf: We fight for Pakistan - YouTube

 

[Edevelop]

Is Musharraf seriously called a 'commando'?
ROFL didn't he refuse to fight the 65 war initially and went hiding somewhere in Karachi ?

 

[batmannow]

Is Musharraf seriously called a 'commando'?
ROFL didn't he refuse to fight the 65 war initially and went hiding somewhere in Karachi ?

Who told you that!
Dangerous Ground
By ANTHONY SPAETH ISLAMABAD Monday, July 22, 2002
The 1964 edition of rising crescent, the yearbook of the Pakistan Military Academy, is filled with nicknames, in-jokes and adolescent digs. Graduating cadet Pervez Musharraf, 20, is teased for his hearty appetite and a preference for a center hair part. ("Has the habit of splitting hairs.") But this slim volume is more than a collection of collegiate memories; it's also a testimonial to the camaraderie whipped up during two arduous years of grunt training in the foothills of the Himalayas. Musharraf's classmates concluded his entry: "Quite a guy to be with, especially when in a fix."

Which was a valuable kind of classmate to have: within months of graduation, the newly minted officers saw action in Pakistan's 1965 war against India over Kashmir, and Musharraf won a medal for gallantry. When war with India came again in 1971, he led a squadron of commandos from the Special Service Group (ssg), Pakistan's equivalent of the Green Berets. "I was always a risk taker," the 58-year-old Musharraf recalls, and he trained his men not to flinch at danger. Seated in the parlor of his army residence in Rawalpindi, surrounded by 18th century muskets and gilded sabers, Pakistan's President described for Time a favorite training exercise. He would order a soldier to lie as close to a set of railroad tracks as possible, facing an oncoming train. "The train will definitely not touch you," he would tell the soldier. "But you have to keep your head up and eyes open."

It's lucky for Musharraf that he has had ample experience of dealing with danger. No leader in Asia, perhaps in the world, has survived the number and magnitude of political crises that he has endured in recent months. After Sept. 11, Washington embraced Pakistan as its closest ally in the war against the Taliban?a group cultivated by the Pakistani government. Musharraf acceded, forcing the country into a gigantic policy U-turn. In December, India moved 500,000 troops to its border with Pakistan and demanded that Musharraf stop the infiltration of militants into Kashmir?many of them covertly trained and armed by Pakistan's army. After six months of tension?with the hourly threat of nuclear war?Musharraf backed down, cutting off the flow of insurgents. He's also cracking a whip on the country's madrasahs, religious schools that often preach sectarian violence and hatred of the West.

All of this has come at a perilous price. By going moderate, Musharraf has alienated many of his supporters and fomented a bitter sense that he is merely America's lackey. Some extremist groups, possibly linked to al-Qaeda, want Musharraf's whole Yankee-loving crowd eliminated, and they have brought terror to the commercial capital of Karachi, setting off bombs to kill foreigners and murdering American journalist Daniel Pearl. Musharraf "has crossed all limits," declares an active member of Jaish-e-Muhammad, an extremist group implicated in numerous attacks in Indian-controlled Kashmir. "There will be a backlash. There will be more suicide attacks. We are ready to sacrifice our lives." The biggest score for such extremists would be Musharraf, whose security is extra tight. (Last week the government announced it had foiled an April assassination plot against the President by extremists who had the help of a traitor from Musharraf's paramilitary police force.) The general, who has been known to carry a gun, shrugs off the danger. Says wife Sehba: "I do the major worrying." But a friend of Musharraf's confides, "He should be scared?he is scared."

The world is counting on Musharraf to help steer South and Central Asia from local chaos to regional security, from the brink of Armageddon to Pax Pakistana, and from fundamentalist fervor to secular moderation. Nisar Sarwar, a retired army colonel who was at the military academy with Musharraf, notes, "The ssg motto is 'Who Dares, Wins.' And he dares to win."

But the question today is whether he has dared too much. Musharraf now faces the gravest challenge of his life, having to hold firm in the face of a maelstrom of conflicting forces: pressure from the U.S., Indian saber rattling that could lead to war, seething fundamentalists and extremists scattered throughout his own land?and now the demands and intrigue of Pakistani politics, an arena Musharraf openly despises. Musharraf himself is under no illusions about the enormity of the task before him. Asked if his is the world's toughest job, he replies with quiet bluntness: "I think at the moment, yes."

Under U.S. pressure, Musharraf has kept to his promise to end one-man rule through national elections this October. He's already appointed himself President, but he'll share power with an elected National Assembly, a Senate and four provincial legislatures?all packed with wheeler-dealers who harbor competing agendas. According to Pakistan's constitution, the President must give up control of the military, which would mean ceding the army's might?and his power base?to another general. Musharraf has given no indication that he is willing to do so. And he is currently rewriting the constitution to counter this threat to his power and ensure that he does not become a lone figure without regiments or a political party behind him.



?
The key to understanding how Musharraf will navigate this minefield is his background as a military man. Pakistani soldiers learn all about the art of survival, and Musharraf remains a soldier to his core. Indeed, he still bids farewell to civilians and even foreign journalists with a crisp salute. The trouble is, politics?both local and international?requires a different set of skills: the art of compromise, the popular touch, Machiavellian guile, a rare gift for persuasion. Those are skills they don't teach at the military academy.

musharraf is a natural charmer: hospitable and humorous, eager to share delicate samosas and cloying sweets from the kitchen of Army House, prepared to venture anywhere in a conversation?and compulsively eager to convince you that he means what he says. A lot of his public support since October 1999 has been based on that palpable sincerity. A Musharraf speech on television?the most memorable came last January when he explained why he had to crack down on Islamic fundamentalism?is an emotional appeal to the people, a for-Allah's-sake-understand-me entreaty. A good proportion of the populace responded to the aura of a military man who seemed neither haughty nor deceitful.

He was never the brightest boy, even in his own family. His mother, Zohra, predicted grand futures for bookworm older brother Javed, a Rhodes scholar who now works at the Food and Agricultural Organization in Rome, and younger sibling Naved, who practices anesthesiology in Chicago. Hearty Pervez, she decreed, should be a soldier. "For all of us," Musharraf says today, "she selected the right profession." Zohra lives with Musharraf in Army House, breakfasts with him most days, reading headlines aloud and checking if her son looks overly stressed. Says Musharraf: "She sees me off in the morning."

The partition of India in 1947 forced Musharraf, then age 3, from the bustling, cosmopolitan center of New Delhi to a refugee ghetto in Karachi. A seven-year posting in Turkey secured his father's future in the foreign service and the family's rung in the middle class. For the short, pudgy Musharraf, who was nicknamed "Gola" (which means ball), finding his own avenue for achievement would prove more challenging. But at Forman Christian College, a Presbyterian boarding school in Lahore, he discovered competitive athletics. Nasrullah Khan, a schoolmate who now heads the botany department, remembers Musharraf entering a bodybuilding competition in freshman year in which students struck poses before a panel of teachers in the gymnasium. Gola's baby fat had melted away: he took third place.

The brawn-over-brains pattern continued through his career. At the military academy, someone else won Best in Class, but Musharraf carried the flag at graduation, an honor awarded to the cadet who best combined academics with physical training and drilling. In the early '90s when he was anointed a three-star general and head of the Mangla army base, located at the most sensitive stretch of the Line of Control dividing Kashmir, he was famous for speeding through work by 2 p.m. so he could spend the rest of the day canoeing or playing Ping-Pong, tennis or squash with the men. "There wasn't a game he couldn't learn," says Major General Rashid Qureshi, who served with Musharraf at Mangla and is now his official spokesman. "We found him everywhere the troops were. He was able to inspire them."

It's a refrain you hear often in military circles: Musharraf was excellent with "the men." Kind, fair, engaged, disciplined. Of course, the men were trained exactly as Musharraf was: to look up to their officers, admire them, and obey.

As military dictators go, Musharraf is exactly the type for these liberal times. To begin with, he took power reluctantly. In 1999, he was on the outs with Prime Minister Mian Mohammed Nawaz Sharif?the kind of conflict that always spells danger in Pakistan. Earlier that year, Musharraf as Army Chief of Staff had engineered the Kargil campaign, the capturing of a few mountain peaks on the other side of the Line of Control, which was essentially a mini invasion of India. Bill Clinton forced Nawaz Sharif to pull Pakistani troops out, infuriating the military. On Oct. 12, following an army visit to Sri Lanka, Musharraf boarded a commercial flight to Karachi with his wife by his side. Nawaz Sharif waited for the general's plane to take off, then signed his dismissal papers. He ordered the flight diverted to a smaller airport, where police were waiting to arrest Musharraf, and later to India, where Musharraf would have been delivered to his country's enemies, who hated him for his role in Kargil. Sensing something amiss, Musharraf strode into the cockpit and ordered the pilot to stay on course to Karachi. His loyalists on the ground rapidly engineered a coup. Musharraf later claimed that Nawaz Sharif could have killed him, along with 198 fellow passengers on the plane. The message: he was the victim of political shenanigans, and that's why the coup happened.

Musharraf suspended the constitution and had the Prime Minister arrested. But that was about as tough as he got. The print media were allowed almost complete freedom, and Musharraf vowed to hold elections within a few years. Unlike Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the last politician to be ousted in a coup, Nawaz Sharif escaped execution and was sent into comfortable exile in Saudi Arabia. He wasn't missed: Pakistanis were sick of civilian governments that had done little for the country for the previous 11 years. They were willing to give Musharraf some time to clean things up. The general has since lived up to his reputation as an honest man who would never steal from the till. Since taking power, he hasn't awarded fat government contracts to relatives, and the only salary he takes is the army chief pay he earned before the coup. He still uses commercial flights rather than commandeering aircraft for foreign trips.

Musharraf, who tends to rely on the advice of a small circle of army commanders, bureaucrats and provincial governors, remains ill at ease in the political realm he now occupies. The people he appears to trust least are other politicians. They play by different rules, gaining power through the popular vote?not by taking orders from superiors, patiently climbing the ranks or winning medals. "He can't understand democracy," says a longtime friend. "In the army, you live in your own world."





?
It's acid test day at the pakistan Military Academy, an event dreaded by every student. For nearly two years, the cadets have learned to run a six-minute mile, perform endless rounds of push-ups, climb into a boxing ring to beat up their buddies. The Acid Test is the most grueling exercise of all. The academy is in the Himalayan foothills north of Islamabad, but the weather is still brutal: 35C by midday. First, the cadets have to traverse a mountain carrying logs on their shoulders. Then they run 14.5 kilometers wearing full gear to an obstacle course that forces them to swing over ditches, haul themselves over walls and slosh through an artificial swamp fed by a guy hosing water from a truck. Some recruits complete the course in two-and-a-half hours. Others collapse along the way. Those who reach the finish are allowed five rounds to hit a target at 22 meters beneath an inscription that reads, "Verily the power lies in firepower."

A soldier's attitude toward politics springs from his training days at the academy. All cadets receive lectures on governance. Arts majors take a political science course studying constitutions of six nations and the political theories of Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Indian strategist Chanakya, Arab historian Ibn Khaldun and Pakistani poet Muhammad Iqbal. But the average soldier learns more in the mess hall and the boxing ring than from this tutoring in political theory. "Phfft," sniffs Major General Hamid Rab Nawaz, the academy's commandant. "I never studied political science myself."

This is the environment that molded Pakistan's political leader?and that's cause for concern. The Pakistani military considers itself the country's only functioning institution. What it steadfastly fails to admit is that military rule for 28 of the country's 55 years of existence kept the other democratic institutions, such as a parliament and a judiciary, from maturing. Musharraf shares this mind-set, displaying a self-serving indifference to democratic niceties, while also portraying himself grandiosely as the shepherd of "real democracy." In a speech to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., last February, he boasted, "I am more democratic than any government [that] ever existed in Pakistan."

Musharraf bases this claim on the fact that he is allowing elections, ceding power, and personally overhauling the constitution to reduce the clout of untrustworthy politicians. He sees nothing wrong with one man's rewriting the rules of the democratic game and appropriating a prerogative that formerly belonged to a two-thirds majority of an elected National Assembly. "Thank God it has been allowed," he tells TIME. Anyway, he adds, the people gave him a "massive mandate" in a referendum he held on his rule in April. He ignores the criticism that this referendum was merely a democratic charade marred by voting irregularities.

The referendum made Musharraf look insincere and manipulative?much like the military leaders who preceded him. His planned changes to the constitution have deepened that sense of betrayal and have whittled away support among the educated middle class. And there's already a strong whiff of a fix for the Oct. 10 parliamentary elections. A new rule dictates that parties must have unique names, a possible killer blow to Nawaz Sharif, whose Pakistan Muslim League split into two wings with near-identical names. Another regulation says no one can be Prime Minister three times?both Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto have served twice.

No matter who is elected to the National Assembly, they'll find that Musharraf has devised a whole new ball game. He plans to give himself the power to dissolve the assembly or fire the Prime Minister and Cabinet. He'll shorten parliamentarians' terms from five years to four, but not his own. (That way he'll be in power to pull strings between parliaments.) He wants a new constitutional center of power, a National Security Council, which will give all three armed service chiefs a role in government. Musharraf insists his altered constitution will check the abuse of power?by civilian politicians. "How were they governing in these 11 years?" he asks, referring to Bhutto's and Nawaz Sharif's governments. "They were looting and plundering and misgoverning." Responds Ejaz Shafi, a former Pakistan Muslim League solon: "He is no different from any other dictator."

Musharraf hasn't yet made the one constitutional change he'll need if he's to survive under the new system. At the moment, the constitution says he can't hold the army chief's job along with the presidency?but he is widely expected to reverse that restriction. It would be an understandable act of self-preservation, because his power derives not from civilian politics but from the military, and any general who could fill the seat might later be tempted to betray him. After all, even with the backing of his new constitutional powers, Musharraf knows that no individual is a match for an army that can take over a government in half an hour, or for political parties that can bring millions to the streets?a power retained by both Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. Musharraf has described his constitutional fiddlings as Reform Package No. 1?leading many to believe a second round will be announced at the last minute to allow him to maintain both political and military supremacy. One telling sign: his wife, Sehba, says she isn't planning to pack?she intends to continue living in Army House, the residence of the military's top dog.

But as one-man rule slides to an end, the chorus of Musharraf critics is getting louder. His newfound moderation over Kashmir has particularly enraged hard-liners. "He abandoned Afghanistan, claiming it was necessary to save other Pakistani interests, including Kashmir," rails Farhan Bokhari, a member of the radical Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir. "Now he's abandoning Kashmir, presenting it as yet another necessary loss." As for India, its leaders distrust Musharraf utterly and its battalions remain poised on the border, waiting for an excuse, such as a terrorist attack on Indian soil, to punish Pakistan militarily.

In Pakistan, Musharraf's alliance with Washington has earned him the sneering nickname of "Busharraf." Yet Washington seems eager to distance itself somewhat from the tarnished general, figuring that if he falls off the high wire, a suitable successor will emerge from the military. "There are other people who have high skills and political savvy," says a State Department official, who compares Pakistan to Egypt after Anwar Sadat was assassinated?and replaced by Hosni Mubarak, who has since held power for 21 years. "It doesn't all rest on this one individual."

The old soldier is beginning to show the strain. Musharraf still exercises every evening, briskly striding around the tightly guarded Army House compound. But he's suffering from a bum shoulder. He can't lift his arm?"See?" he says, failing to raise it fully above his head. "That's as far as it goes!" His daily tennis game, played with security guards, stopped a few months ago.

In Army House, Musharraf has hung a plaque with advice to get him through these tough times, an excerpt from the 2,500-year-old Taoist classic Dao De Jing by Chinese sage Laozi:

When the Master governs, the people are hardly aware that he exists.
Next best is a leader who is loved. Next, one who is feared.
The worst is one who is despised.
Asked what kind of leader he is, Musharraf answers instantly, "Loved. A leader is no leader if he is not loved." He continues, "They must follow you because they love you, because they think that you are the greatest. That is what a real test of leadership is." That's how it was when Pervez Musharraf brought his men into action in the past. But in his current battles, Musharraf is going in alone.
Dangerous Ground - TIME

 

[batmannow]

A President under pressure

m.guardian.co.uk

Some see him as a reformer and the West's ally, but others believe he's a dictator who secretly supports the Taliban. With the recent violence in Pakistan and elections on the way, the general finds himself under siege
Jason Burke
The Observer, Sun 29 Jul 2007 00.12 BST
A few days after taking power in October 1999, General Pervez Musharraf called his first press conference in the garden of Army House, the colonial-era mini-mansion which is the residence of the commander of the world's second largest Muslim state's land-based armed forces. The general walked out of his home in his army khaki, campaign medals, paratrooper's wings and commando flashes proudly on display, and advanced across the perfect lawns towards the media. Suddenly, he was intercepted by his media officer. A swift exchange, the general returned indoors and five minutes later, now clad in light brown slacks and a striped shirt, he gave his first interviews.
The question over which habit best suits Musharraf has been posed many times throughout his eight-year rule. Is he a ruthless military dictator desperately clinging to power? Is he a successful general seeking the stability that will allow his troubled country to make a successful transition to true democracy? Indeed, should he instead, as his fiercest detractors in the US and in India claim, be wearing the black turban of the Taliban?
The question is now more pertinent than ever. Last week's visit of Foreign Secretary David Miliband to Pakistan attests to Musharraf's status as a key global player. After bloody violence at a mosque in the centre of Islamabad, riots in Karachi, a slap administered by Pakistan's courts after a clumsy bid to get rid of the nation's top judge, approaching elections and a string of failed assassination attempts, the 63-year-old career soldier and President is looking more fragile than for a long time.
Not that he would admit it. 'The President does not do "fragile",' one official who worked closely with Musharraf says. 'He was a commando after all. He's all about keeping the momentum, keeping his enemies on their toes. He's in perpetual motion. Frankly, it's exhausting.'
Musharraf was born in Delhi, four years before the bloody partition of 1947 that saw the former British imperial south-Asian possessions split into India and Pakistan. His family, lower middle-class, educated, comfortable but not rich, were among those who, passing the corpses along the train tracks and roads, were sufficiently fearful of their future in a majority Hindu state to move to the new Islamic Republic of Pakistan. He was thus a 'mohajir', not a native of Pakistan, and so something of an outsider in his new homeland.
Musharraf's first interviews that afternoon in 1999 in the grounds of Army House were to the BBC and to Turkish television - in fluent Turkish. Musharraf spent much of his childhood in Ankara, where his bureaucrat father was posted, and learned both the language and a profound admiration for Mustafa Kemal Ataturk who, through persuasion, wily politics internally and externally, physical force and sheer strength of character, created the modern, secular state of Turkey.
Returning to Karachi at 13, Musharraf, something of a tearaway with a taste for firecrackers, was enrolled at a Catholic missionary school where, according to the autobiography In the Line of Fire published last year, he learnt to fight: 'I became known as a tough guy whom you don't mess with.'
Unsurprisingly, his memoir recounts that the future President excelled at sports and, though his academic record was not perfect, 'winning a spot [at Pakistan's military academy] was a cinch'.
In 1965 he saw action in a war against India and was again in combat six years later against the same enemy. His acknowledged bravery did much to off-set problems with discipline and he rose steadily through the ranks to take command of an infantry division in 1991, becoming one of the few senior officers from Pakistan's mohajir minority in an army dominated by those with roots in the eastern Punjab province. He was made Chief of the Army Staff in 1998. Though a purely military post, in a country ruled by the army for more than half its short history, no general is apolitical.
Musharraf came to international attention in 1999 when India and Pakistan fought a short, bloody war in the Himalayas above a scruffy Kashmiri town called Kargil. The exact role the general played in the deployment of Pakistani paramilitaries across the frontier into India and in the fighting that followed is unclear but many say the venture was his idea. Whoever lay behind it, the two nuclear-capable nations came close to all-out war and it ended with a fairly ignominious withdrawal of Pakistani troops under massive international pressure.
But the conflict was just the prelude. Just months after its end, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, corrupt and incompetent, made an ill-judged bid to fire Musharraf while he was out of the country and prompted a coup - bloodless and largely welcomed in Pakistan.
Musharraf was flying back to Pakistan in a civilian plane which Sharif tried to divert to India. The general ordered the pilot to continue. Finally the plane landed and, in the small hours of the morning, TV screens across Pakistan flickered back into life after a blackout and the nation saw its new leader, in combat fatigues, explaining, as all military coup leaders do, that the army had taken control for the good of the nation and for a temporary period. The men in khaki were back in power.
But what sort of a man was the new boss? Confident, affable, often charming, with a fondness for dogs and a taste for whisky and the occasional cigarette, hardly puritanical. Journalists turning up at Army House would find the President-General's wife sitting on the sofa eating pizza and watching films. Polite too, sometimes icily but always with the touch of courtesy learned from parents who invited their son's important visitors to drop by for tea at their humbler home. In short, from the Sandhurst wing of the Pakistani army, not the jihadi wing. 'A nationalist, a patriot, a soldier, but not an Islamist,' says one senior Pakistani ex-officer.
A speech made months after taking power outlined his vision of a 'moderate Islam' that denounced extremism, welcomed the rights of women (one of his earliest acts was to enforce a minimum quota of female MPs) and pledged economic progress and peaceful relations with the West. A self-admitted 'economic half-literate', the technocrats around the President have pressed through a programme of liberal reforms that have pushed growth rates to 10 per cent - though little of that has trickled down to the 50 per cent of Pakistanis who do not even have safe drinking water. Under his rule, the number of television channels has exploded and the press has remained relatively free - though it has come under pressure recently.
Yet there is another side to Musharraf. Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, he was telephoned by Richard Armitage, then US deputy secretary of state, and told, according to the latter, that he was 'with us or against us'. Musharraf says Armitage told him that the US would 'bomb Pakistan into the Stone Age' if they made the wrong choice. This annoyed Musharraf and he admits that he made his decision (to help the US) on the basis of Pakistan's best interests, not on the basis of who was globally right or wrong. There are persistent claims that Musharraf has milked Pakistan's position as a supporter of the 'war on terror' to obtain massive aid from the US while simultaneously supporting the Taliban.
Actually, the situation is more complicated. There are powerful elements within Pakistan who do support the Taliban on whom, because of a lack of domestic political legitimacy, the President, hated by many jihadis, has been forced to go easy. Equally, there are elements that escape the President's control and a variety of complex and shifting agendas - even within the country's sprawling security establishment. No army or government has ever established control of the tribal zones where the Taliban have their bases and al-Qaeda are meant to be hiding, and hundreds of soldiers have died in recent years trying to do so. But equally there is no doubt that few Pakistani military strategists want to see the emergence of a strong, stable and independent Afghanistan with diplomatic and commercial links to regional rivals.
And though he has calmed relations with India since the two countries' nuclear stand-off over Kashmir, he pardoned Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, the 'father of Pakistan's bomb' who gave nuclear weapons technology to rogue states, including Iran and Libya. Equally, though hundreds of militants have been handed over to the Americans, promises to clean up the madrassas where poor Pakistanis receive often hard-line religious education, are unfulfilled. And finally, Musharraf appears far from willing to relinquish his position just yet. With the 10-year anniversary of the coup not too distant, his initial pledge of a 'temporary interruption of democracy' appears somewhat less than convincing.
The Observer asked Musharraf on that afternoon in the garden of Army House eight years ago if it was good to be in control. The general thought for a second and then smiled. 'Yes,' he answered. Some things have remained unchanged.
August 11 1943 in Mohallah Kacha Saad Ullah, Old Delhi. Married to Sebha, with two children, Ayla and Bilal, four grandchildren.
In 2004, a global poll by a respected American think-tank found Musharraf to be the most popular leader in the world with 86 per cent rating him favourably, and 60 per cent viewing him very favourably.
Musharraf has said he 'literally wept' when he heard the 'disgusting' news of the surrender of Pakistani troops during the Bangladesh war with India in 1971.
'What we [Muslims] need is introspection. Who are we, what do we as Muslims stand for, where are we going, where should we be headed and how can we reach it? The answers to these questions are ... Enlightened Moderation.'
'Unfortunately the regime was unable to deliver on its promise of building a true democracy and instead it exploited the international community's concern about terrorism ... [militants] have thrived under the dictatorship of General Musharraf.'

 

[Respect4Respect01]

tell mushi uncle to sdfu now and enjoy his life in uk, he is the reason behind all this mess in Pakistan.