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Within the 9 years that he led Pakistan, Gen. Pervez Musharraf generally known as himself a “tightrope walker” — somebody who might steadiness opposing forces, or straddle Pakistan’s dizzying political and ideological divides.
Contradictions abounded. Mr. Musharraf was the darling of the West who performed footsie with the Taliban; he was the whiskey-swilling liberal who made concessions to extremists; or the swaggering military commando who tried to make peace with India.
However the tragedy for Mr. Musharraf, who died in Dubai on Sunday on the age of 79, is that he’s now largely seen because the chief who couldn’t hold his footing and finally fell off the tightrope: the final army common who overtly held energy in Pakistan.
As plans had been being made on Monday to fly Mr. Musharraf’s stays residence from exile — a journey he couldn’t make in life — historians and others in Pakistan started to grapple along with his conflicted legacy as a central determine within the post-Sept. 11 world who finally misplaced his grasp on any Pakistani constituency.
“At this time’s Pakistan is the product of Musharraf,” stated Adil Najam, a professor of worldwide affairs at Boston College. “The forces that form the nation right this moment had been unleashed throughout his time in energy. However I don’t suppose he supposed it that approach.”
It’s been over 4 a long time since Pakistanis mourned a pacesetter who died in mattress. The final two funerals had been for former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in 2007; and the army dictator Gen. Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, who died in a mysterious airplane crash in 1988 — each unforgettable emblems of the nation’s perilous politics.
Even so, there was little hesitation to go judgment on Mr. Musharraf in current days. Some squarely blame him for the precarious state of the nation — a nuclear-armed nation of 220 million with tottering establishments, fractious politics, a crumbling economic system and empowered non secular extremism. “A lot of the ills of right this moment could be traced again to the Musharraf period,” Cyril Almeida, a political commentator, wrote on Twitter.
His legacy is most uncomfortable for the army he as soon as led.
Since his ouster in 2008, the military had sought to protect Mr. Musharraf from the total wrath of Pakistan’s justice system. As indignant Pakistanis pursued him by means of the courts with accusations of abuses throughout his time in energy, together with homicide and treason, he by no means spent an evening in jail. That was largely as a result of the army made positive he was allowed to slide into exile a number of occasions, most lately in 2016.
But the military has additionally appeared completely happy have Mr. Musharraf fade into obscurity in Dubai. Many inside the nation’s safety sector blame him for troubles that battered the military’s fame and, finally, triggered the army management to seriously change the way in which they exert energy in Pakistan.
Some level to his alliance with the USA and President George W. Bush after the Al Qaeda terrorist assaults of 2001 that introduced in billions of {dollars} in army assist, but additionally triggered a militant rebellion inside Pakistan that led to vicious combating, suicide bombings and tens of 1000’s of deaths.
Others had been resentful of the cooperation that Mr. Musharraf gave the People, permitting the C.I.A. to arrange a secret drone base for a number of years — solely to be humiliated, in 2011, when a Navy SEAL workforce swooped right into a home in Abbottabad and killed the founding father of Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, barely a number of hundred yards from a serious Pakistani army base.
Nonetheless others have condemned what they see as Musharraf’s “double recreation” — along with his intelligence providers searching some militants to earn American favor and cash, whereas they quietly coddled others who had been deemed to serve Pakistan’s strategic pursuits in Afghanistan or Kashmir.
Harsh public criticism of the army grew to become louder and extra frequent, altering a relationship with a Pakistani public that had beforehand been characterised by deference — or at the very least silence.
“The army in Pakistan has gone by means of a serious change up to now 20 years,” Mr. Najam stated. “It has gone from being an establishment that most individuals revered, or stored quiet about, to 1 that’s now very publicly underneath assault — and that shift began with Pervez Musharraf.”
That period modified the calculus of energy for the Pakistani army, which has dominated the nation a technique or one other because the nation’s independence in 1947. Not bent on seizing energy immediately after Musharraf’s tenure, it permits civilians to be elected in democratic polls, whereas retaining a maintain on the levers that depend: management of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons; steering the nation’s coverage towards Afghanistan and India; and directing the connection with America and, more and more, China.
It isn’t, most likely, the nation that Mr. Musharraf hoped to forge after he seized energy in a cold coup in 1999. He portrayed himself as a swashbuckling modernizer who was decided to steer Pakistan away from the dour Islamism of its earlier army ruler, Normal Zia.
He sat within the entrance row at style reveals, let or not it’s identified that he loved a glass of whiskey, and was photographed clutching his two Pekingese poodles, which infuriated conservatives who contemplate canines to be soiled.
He printed a memoir whereas nonetheless in workplace during which he in contrast himself to Napoleon and boasted about his muscle mass and the variety of occasions he had cheated dying. He appeared on the Jon Stewart’s “The Every day Present,” the place he ate Twinkies, made jokes about Mr. bin Laden and known as himself a “tightrope walker.”
For a time, the West lapped it up. The USA lavished billions in assist on Pakistan. In return, Mr. Musharraf handed over for detention on the People’ Guantánamo Bay a whole bunch of suspected Qaeda members — a few of whom turned out to be harmless.
However it quickly grew to become clear that Mr. Musharraf couldn’t hold his guarantees, and frustrations started to construct. Schisms emerged inside his personal army about methods to counter Islamist extremism. There have been disagreements about methods to struggle the Pakistani Taliban, or whether or not to chop military assist to militant teams like Lashkar-e-Taiba, which in 2008 carried out terrorist assaults in Mumbai that killed 175 folks.
Huge avenue protests rose towards Mr. Musharraf, and he was pressured to resign in 2008.
The consequences of that period proceed to reverberate.
The insurgency in Baluchistan that ignited underneath Mr. Musharraf rumbles on. The nation’s safety institution seemingly stays ambivalent about methods to take care of jihadist teams. The legacy of empowered Islamic extremists continues to be inflicting chaos on Pakistan’s streets, whether or not within the type of big protests or lynch mobs that kill accused blasphemers with impunity. Simply final weekend, the Pakistani authorities banned the web site Wikipedia, claiming it contained blasphemous materials.
The dysfunctional relationship between civilian and army leaders has taken a brand new twist. Imran Khan, the cricket legend turned politician, got here to energy in 2018 with the flippantly disguised assist of the army, which noticed him as a biddable ally.
However after Mr. Khan was ousted in a no-confidence vote final yr, he directed his supporters’ anger towards foes contained in the army whom he blamed for his downfall. Since then, he has devoted his energies to a public excoriation of senior army figures that will have as soon as been unthinkable.
“Imran Khan got here to energy touting that he was on the identical web page because the army,” stated Madiha Afzal, a Pakistan skilled on the Brookings Establishment. “And he has ended on a surprising anti-establishment be aware in a approach that no Pakistani politician has finished earlier than.”
Nonetheless, she added, it could be unfair responsible Mr. Musharraf for all of Pakistan’s issues, and even for the army’s continued maintain on energy. These, she stated, are rooted in pathologies that return to the nation’s cut up with India in 1947.
“It traces again to 2 pillars — reliance on Islam and opposition to India — that the entire nation’s leaders have tried to comply with,” she stated. “Musharraf wasn’t liable for that — he was a product of it.”
Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan.
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