Former Pakistani President Musharraf, Who Helped US Wage War In Afghanistan, Dies : NPR

FILE – Pervez Musharraf addresses the United Nations General Assembly November 10, 2001, at the United Nations headquarters in New York. An official said Sunday, February 5, 2023 that General Pervez Musharraf, a Pakistani military leader who supported the US war in Afghanistan after 9/11, has died.

Beth Keiser/AP

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FILE – Pervez Musharraf addresses the United Nations General Assembly November 10, 2001, at the United Nations headquarters in New York. An official said Sunday, February 5, 2023 that General Pervez Musharraf, a Pakistani military leader who supported the US war in Afghanistan after 9/11, has died.

Beth Keiser/AP

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pervez Musharraf, who was Pakistan’s military ruler for nearly a decade, has died in Dubai after a long illness. The 79-year-old four-star general was a key ally in the US-led war on terror and a controversial figure at home.

The Pakistani military immediately issued a statement of condolences, as did many politicians, who remained loyal to Musharraf despite his rise to power in a military coup in October 1999, when he overthrew a prime minister. elected, Nawaz Sharif.

Musharraf’s time in power was shaped by the September 11 attacks and their aftermath. The attacks were orchestrated by al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, whom the Taliban harbored in Afghanistan, a country that shares a long border with Pakistan.

“America was sure to react violently, like a wounded bear,” he wrote in his autobiography. “If the aggressor turned out to be al-Qaeda, this wounded bear would rush right at us.”

The following day, then-US Secretary of State Colin Powell told Musharraf that Pakistan would either be “with us or against us”, while Musharraf alleged that another US official, whom he did not did not name, had threatened to bomb Pakistan “back into stone”. Age” if he chose the latter, according to The Associated Press.

Musharraf joined the US War on Terror that was launched after 9/11.

For a brief period, America and Pakistan became very closely aligned, says Omar Waraich, who covered the last years of Musharraf’s rule for Time Magazine. At the time, “there was a very good relationship that worked very well between the two intelligence agencies. They picked up many, many al-Qaeda leaders and they picked up a lot of other people who ended up at Guantanamo Bay.”

FILE – U.S. President Bush, right, shakes hands with Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf during a news conference at the Waldorf – Astoria hotel in New York, November 10, 2001.

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FILE – U.S. President Bush, right, shakes hands with Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf during a news conference at the Waldorf – Astoria hotel in New York, November 10, 2001.

ED BAILEY/AP

Pakistan has been used as a transit for NATO and United States forces in Afghanistan. And Musharraf has tolerated attacks by US forces on suspected militants in Pakistan’s rugged border areas.

That hasn’t stopped him from playing what some in Washington have called a double game, says Madiha Afzal, foreign policy officer at the Brookings Institution in Washington, “cooperating with the United States on counterterrorism, while by allowing the Taliban to have refuge in Pakistan”. .”

She says Pakistan led by Musharraf has essentially hedged its bets – envisioning a future where the United States leaves the region. Pakistan also hoped that friendly relations with the Taliban would provide it with a buffer against its neighbor and rival, India. Even so, Musharraf also tried to make peace with India, almost reaching an agreement over the disputed territory of Kashmir, the AP reported.

In a 2015 interview with NPR, Musharraf attempted to explain Pakistan’s thinking on the Taliban: that he wanted to counter India’s influence in Afghanistan. “Obviously Pakistan is starting to look for elements that would support Pakistan, that would play our game.”

The Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021, and Afzal says that was partly the result of Musharraf’s policies. “The fact that the Taliban have taken refuge in Pakistan… Musharraf is the one who started this policy.”

This left another legacy: the deep mistrust that exists until today between Washington and Islamabad because of this so-called “double game”.

Musharraf also faced another scandal under his rule, when it was revealed that a famous Pakistani nuclear scientist, AQ Khan, was selling centrifuge designs and other secrets to countries like Iran, Libya and North Korea. These designs helped Pyongyang arm itself with a nuclear weapon, while the centrifuges of Khan’s designs are still spinning in Iran.

Musharraf has also become a controversial figure at home. Its troubles came to a head in 2007. Pakistan was grappling with growing extremism, including a local offshoot of the Taliban taking power in the scenic Swat Valley, about a six-hour drive from the capital, Islamabad. The militants then took over a radical mosque in the heart of the capital – a short distance from Pakistan’s notoriously powerful military intelligence wing, known as ISI.

He was accused of complicity in the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. And the trigger for his downfall was when he sacked the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan. This eventually fermented a movement for the restoration of democracy.

Amid nationwide protests, Musharraf “doubled down,” Waraich recalled. “He imposed an emergency. And he banned journalists. He arrested opposition politicians.”

Eventually, in 2008, Musharraf resigned. He was later charged with treason for imposing a state of emergency and fled Pakistan in 2016, spending his final years in exile. He attempted a comeback in 2012, which failed. While in exile, his former political party announced that he had been diagnosed with a rare disease, amyloidosis.

Pervez Musharraf was born in New Delhi, India in 1943, the son of a diplomat. He fled with other Muslims to the new state of Pakistan after partition in 1947. He joined the army at 18 and served there during Pakistan’s three wars with India. Just before taking office in 1999, Musharraf tried to take over part of the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.

Despite the upheavals surrounding Musharraf’s years in power, he has his defenders. The economy grew under his leadership, while the country was considered strategically important. Musharraf, a former special forces commando, was the last military dictator to rule Pakistan.

But the military remains Pakatan’s most powerful institution, and critics say its generals still wield enormous influence over civilian governments – though now thinly veiled.