Perfidious Musharraf and his Recent TV Interview - Part I

A few days back, Mr. Arnab Goswami of the Times Now TV channel conducted an interview with Gen. (r) Musharraf. He asked him a set of fifteen questions to which Gen. Musharraf, the once proud member of the SSG (Special Services Group) of the Pakistani Army (a position that he seems to value more than all the other illustrious positions that he held in the Pakistani Army) gave replies in his usual I-am-always-right-and-blunt demeanour.

Any lay audience would have easily found out the perfidy he paraded and the evasiveness he displayed. Mr. Arnab Goswami, in my opinion, had done his home work. He led Gen. (r) Musharraf step-by-step like a lamb being led to the slaughterhouse and Mr. Musharraf fell for it. Of course, as they say, once you lie you have to lie a thousand times more to cover up that original lie. Having built-up his recent career, at least from the time of his coup in circa 1999, entirely on lies and duplicity, Gen (r) Musharraf has but no option other than to keep lying even as the façade gets blown off rather quickly. I felt therefore that Mr. Goswami stopped short of embarrassing Gen (r) Musharraf completely though he could have done so easily. However, the interview left no one in doubt about the the liar that Gen (r) Musharraf is.

I thought therefore that I would dwell on some aspects of the interview that caught Gen (r) Musharraf like an emperor with no clothes.

The interview started off with the denial of visa recently by the Government of India (GoI) to Gen (r) Musharraf. On this trip, he wanted to visit several Indian cities and address meetings, like he has been doing recently in the US. The GoI was quite correctly wary of such a proposal coming from a General who as the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) of the Pakistani Army (PA) refused to show the simple courtesy of saluting the Indian Prime Minister Mr. Vajpayee when he visited that country, who plotted secretively the Kargil war even as the Indian Prime Minister was engaged in ground-breaking peace dialogue, who thundered in Muzzafarabad after usurping power from Mr. Nawaz Sharif that jihad had shifted decisively to Kashmir from Afghanistan, who on his very first Indian visit berated India in an editors’ meeting in New Delhi just before the Agra talks etc. etc.

In the aftermath of visa denial, Gen (r) Musharraf who felt slighted, had vowed never to visit India thereafter. When queried on this visa denial issue, a chastened (that was how I felt since he spoke in a conciliatory tone) Gen (r) Musharraf claimed that he had visited India thrice and he could not therefore understand what the fuss was all about. While it is true that he visited India thrice after his Kargil misadventure and the subsequent assumption of power in the coup, two of them were undertaken in his official capacity as the President of Pakistan (Indo-Pak Summit in July 2001 and April 2005) and the third was a private visit for attending a specific international conference organized by India Today. His current visit was meant to bolster his image back in Pakistan since he is now head of a political party, All Pakistan Muslim League (APML), a proposition GoI would not like. Let us remember that it was India’s invitation to the then CEO of Pakistan, Gen. Musharraf, that legitimized him among the world community. He hurriedly relieved the then President Rafique Ahmed Tarar and assumed Presidency so that he could fly into India as the President of Pakistan. India did not want to allow its soil to be used for his rehabilitation once again. No amount of doing seminar circuits in the US would bring him the kind of publicity among the Pakistani masses that a single meeting in India can do

A digression at this point. President Tarar’s easing out from the Presidency itself was a hilarious drama. As soon as India foolishly called for the Agra Peace Summit, CEO Gen. Musharraf appointed himself as President through an Amendment to the Provisional Constitution Order (PCO), called "President's Succession Order, 2001". It reads, inter alia: "Upon the office of the President becoming vacant for any reason whatsoever, the Chief Executive of Islamic Republic of Pakistan shall be the President... and shall perform all functions assigned to the President... The Chief Executive shall hold office as President until his successor enters upon his office." It was later clarified that the Presidential Office will be held by Gen. Musharraf for a period of 5 years. But, Gen. Musharraf had to find a reason for throwing out the Nawaz Sharif nominee Justice Rafique Ahmed Tarar and here is where the Pakistani ingenuity came out in flying colours. A strange reason was adduced to the "easing out" of Pres. Tarar namely that since the National Assembly and Provincial Assemblies had been dissolved, the President elected by such bodies ceased to exist !! Thus Gen. Musharraf who called himself a ‘reluctant coup leader’ began to assume all powers, President, CEO and COAS, all rolled into one. Later he even justified this ‘multiple hats’ as ‘unity of command’, another innovative phrase just like ‘enlightened moderation’. So, how did he justify this ‘unity of command’ ? When urgent repairs had to be done in the Tarbela dam, he asked the Pakistani Army engineers to carry them out and boasted that he could take such a decision because of ‘unity of command’ !

So, it becomes quite clear that it is generally difficult to engage with Gen (r) Musharraf, as it is with most Pakistanis for that matter, in a meaningful dialogue or a debate because he is far too righteous to be questioned by ordinary mortals, especially a kaffir. He will easily make a fool of the other party by himself talking foolishly. So, when Gen (r) Musharraf wondered why India should be harking back on events that happened more than ten years back, one cannot make him understand why. Anyway, he agreed that he was hasty in declaring his intentions of never visiting India because he was emotional at that point. One can understand that because he has never been denied a visa before. Is this probably a harbinger of things to come for Gen (r) Musharraf who has much to answer not only to the citizens of his own country but also several other countries ?

Anyway, the interview then moved on to more substantive issues from the minor visa issue. But, the visa issue set the stage for the next few questions because Mr. Goswami had suggested that it was perhaps because of his ‘misrepresentation of facts regarding Kargil’ that the GoI probably denied him a visa, an accusation that made Gen (r) Musharraf bristle. He emphatically denied that the PA was at all involved in the Kargil misadventure. He said that the Kargil operation was carried out by ‘the mujahideen and second-line forces’. Though this was interesting, he was not more closely questioned on this either because Mr. Goswami overlooked this formulation of Gen (r) Musharraf or he had to complete his prepared set of questions within the allotted time. Had he been questioned as to how thousands of these mujahideen and second-line forces came to posses heavy weapons that normally only the Armies of a nation could and how they could have reached those commanding heights without the PA ever knowing about them since the preparations must have gone on a large scale and for months together, or why the PA did not apprehend these 'mujahideen and second-line forces' upon their retreat after the pasting they received from the Indian Army, his standard reply would have been that the borders were porous and not every inch could be guarded which was why even the Indian Army with its 700,000 soldiers could not stop the infiltrators. What about the conversation between COAS Gen. Musharraf and Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Mohammed Aziz that was taped by India's Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) that revealed the Kargil intrusion as entirely planned by the PA ? Oh, that would be dismissed as concocted, as such things can be easily done. See, it is difficult to argue with him reasonably.

But, Gen (r) Musharraf was squarely and truly cornered when Mr. Goswami quoted from Musharraf’s own book, ‘In the Line of Fire’ wherein he had stated that Kargil was indeed a turning point in PA’s history. Of course, the PA itself has recently released the list of PA officers and soldiers killed (453 in all) in the Kargil operation in the ‘Shuhada Corner’ (Martyr’s Corner) of their website along with such information as their rank, location, how they were killed etc. Why, the PA’s Shuhada Corner even glorified a Pakistan Army suicide attacker, a certain Naik (Corporal) Zulfiqar Ahmed, who died in a New Delhi hospital due to severe ‘nephrotic syndrome’ and when this was picked up in India, the PA website was taken down hurriedly, poor Zulfiqar’s name was quietly removed and a weak explanation offered of it being a data entry error in the first place. It puzzles one, then, as to why his operation was classified as ‘Suicide Attack’. Similarly, when cornered by a quote from his own book, Gen (r) Musharraf gave a completely elliptical and asinine answer when he said whatever he had to say at that time he had said and they were realities in which he believed !!

Anyhow, the reference to the ‘second-line forces’ was interesting and confirmed what everybody knew for a very long time. In circa 1971, Pakistan used Al-Shams and Al-Badr to massacre the East Pakistanis, especially the Hindus there. Let us understand what these outfits are and why they worked in close alliance with the PA.

These second-line forces are whom Pakistan euphemistically refers nowadays as ‘good Taliban’ because they identify themselves completely with the PA and by extension 'Nazriya-e-Pakistan' which has two basic principles. The first is to implement Nizam-e-Mustafa (Order of the Prophet or Government according to Shariah) and the second is to destroy India. Nowadays, there is a third addition as well which is to establish the new Grand Caliphate in Pakistan. Among the second-line forces that are helping PA enforce this 'Nazriya-e-Pakistan' are the Lashkar-e-Tayba (LeT) followed by Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM). We have discussed these outfits in other places. However, the Islamist political party founded by Maulana Abu ala al Mawdudi spawned two terrorist organizations Al-Shams and Al-Badr. Now, Al-Badr is named after the historic Battle of Badr (near Mecca) fought and won by Prophet Mohammed. Immediately after the 9/11 incidents, India shared with the US the locations of 120 terror training camps along with video footage in many instances. Many of those camps seemed to be run by Al Badr based on the insignias, slogans etc seen there. Now, Al Badr was the creation of ISI and very close to it too. The Al Badr cadres along with the PA took part in the genocide in the then East Pakistan. Al-Shams was the comrade-in-arms in that massacre. They were disbanded after that but Al-Badr was resurrected in 1979 and fought in Afghanistan under Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hizb-e-Islami, another notorious ISI protegé. Later, they were let loose on India in J&K.

Since the PA has confirmed its involvement in Kargil and since we have no reason to disbelieve Gen (r) Musharraf either, who as the COAS was the chief architect of Kargil, we can easily come to conclusions. It was therefore awesome to hear the former President of Pakistan casually accept that these terrorist outfits are indeed part of the PA and make a passing reference as though such behaviour is totally acceptable.

Such are the vicissitudes of life and Pakistan.

(To be continued. . . )