General Unhappiness

According to reliable sources in the Pakistani military, there are signs ofembarrassment and unhappiness in sections of Pakistan's armed forces over theway he conducted himself in public and TV interviews during his recent visit tothe US and the UK. These are not confined to only retired officers. For thefirst time, even serving officers have been expressing their disapproval of theway Musharraf has been conducting himself.

In the past, skepticism over Musharraf's policies and conduct was largelyconfined to serving officers of the Air Force and, to a smaller extent, theNavy. Senior serving officers of the rank of Major-General and above in theArmy, who largely owed their rise to him, refrained from any criticism. It is nolonger so after his performance in the US, which many regard as undignified of ahead of state.

Questions are being raised about the propriety of his misusing an officialvisit at government expense for the private promotion of his book. It has beenalleged that many of those connected with the publication of his book such asthe ghost-writers, his local agents in Pakistan, translators etc travelled bythe President's Air Force plane at the state's expense.

Lt.Gen.(retd) Mahmood Ahmed, who was the Director-General of theInter-Services Intelligence (ISI) at the time of the 9/11 terrorist strikes andwho was present in the US on an official visit on the day of the strike, hasreportedly been telling his friends and colleagues that Musharraf's statementthat Mr Richard Armitage, the then US Deputy Secretary of State, had threatenedto bomb Pakistan back to the stone age was not quite correct though he (MrArmitage) did use strong language. Lt.Gen.Ahmed, who now actively works for theTablighi Jamaat, has been avoiding the media since Musharraf made hiscontroversial statement in a TV interview in the US.

Musharraf's disclosure in his book about the payments made by the US' CentralIntelligence Agency (CIA) to the government of Pakistan for every terroristsuspect caught and handed over to the US agencies has also come in for strongcriticism. It is learnt that Lt.Gen. Ashfaq Ahmed Kiyani, the present DG of theISI, has told his colleagues that he was not aware that Musharraf has disclosedthis in his book. According to him, Musharraf never got the manuscript of hisbook cleared by the ISI and the GHQ before giving it to his publishers.

It is also being alleged that the Foreign Office was not kept in the pictureby Musharraf regarding his various engagements and interviews in the USconnected with the release of the book. These were handled directly by hisagents in collaboration with the publishers.

Musharraf's remarks about the Taliban and Dr AQ Khan, the nuclear scientist,have also not gone down well with his colleagues in the army and scientists inthe nuclear establishment. His projection of AQ Khan as a greedy, money-mindedindividual has shocked many in Pakistan. It is being pointed out that theTaliban was steadfast in its loyalty to Pakistan and that AQ Khan was the onlygenuine hero produced by Pakistan since it became independent in 1947. ThatMusharraf has let them down under duress from the US has shocked many.

Sections of the Urdu language press of Pakistan have described Musharraf as ahabitual "U-turn maker", who keeps making U-turns depending on thecircumstances. According to one of them, while he tried to project himself as astatesman par excellence, he has come out as a hypocrite par excellence.

Commenting on a speech made by him at Brussels on his way to Havanadescribing the Taliban as more dangerous than Al Qaeda, the Jasarat wroteon September 14, 2006:

"Musharraf said that we are not the makers of the Taliban, but he forgot that the entire world is aware of the reality. Gen (retd) Naseerullah Babar (Mrs.Benazir Bhutto's Interior Minister in 1993-96) has been propagating throughout that it is wrong to consider the Taliban as a group of Afghans. They are our children, but under pressure Musharraf conveniently handed them over to the US."

The paper asked whether Musharraf would similarly betray Dr AQ Khan as aforeigner from Holland, who was invited to work in Pakistan and who let downPakistan. It further asked Musharraf whether he would tell the US under pressurethat Pakistan did not ask AQ Khan to produce the atomic bomb and that heproduced it on his own without the knowledge of the Pakistani military.

B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India,New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai.