General retired Pervez Musharraf has chosen the wrong route to greatness. I don’t know whether his ambition is about achieving real greatness or simply to become influential enough as to become famous in the world. In the former case there is no shortcut. One has really to possess the grit required for achieving greatness. In the later case intrinsic greatness of personality is perhaps not required. In this case the element of chance has the pivotal role.

Pervez Musharraf has gone wrong at a tangent. He thought he belonged to the former group whereas he belongs to the second group, as a text book case. He is one of those actors of human drama who was exclusively catapulted to prominence by a sheer chance and a favorable circumstance. Had the then prime minister of Pakistan, Mr Nawaz Sharif, not been so naïve to deny landing to the aircraft of country’s army chief in Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf would have been basking in the sun like any other retired four star general of the Pakistan army.

It is only a person with genuine potential of greatness who is capable of maintaining a critical eye on the obtaining conditions and circumstances around and taking decisions accordingly. In the case of actors of incidental prominence, the individual takes things for granted and takes decisions based on whims, trial and error.

There is no hard or fast rule about classifications of above two types. Even an ordinary man obtaining prominence by chance can be the performer of many good deeds. In fact when a person reaches the pedestal of some authority, his potential of good as well as bad deeds gets stimulated.

Pervez Musharraf had been in the driving seat of our federation for over 8 years. Before passing any verdict, we have to analyze his rule. First, we take his good deeds.

For the first time in history he gave a genuine local government system to the country. He was right in calling it a prerequisite for democracy at grass root level. Our pseudonym politicians belonging to the conservative right, when returned to power after Pervez Musharraf’s exit from the country, did not have a second thought in rejecting that system in their sphere of authority.

As he was not financially corrupt personally, the vultures around him were inhibited to indulge in financial corruption as a matter of rule. As such the country did enjoy a respite from plunder, experienced during the so called decade of democracy, preceding his arrival.

The greatest achievement of General Pervez Musharraf, benefiting the posterity in achieving democratic values, is complete freedom granted to media. During his rule he liberalized licenses for television and radio channels. He also ensured facilitation of granting uninhibited declarations for newspapers and magazines.(Carl Marx has said somewhere that the capitalist, by granting labor reforms, weaves a web around his own neck that would ultimately strangulate him. In the case of Pervez Musharraf it is media reform that ultimately caused his downfall.)

The above pluses of Pervez Musharraf, though are no mean achievements and particularly the later item will be remembered for long and will be praised in history. But unfortunately, he also has a long list of negatives against his name.

The most damaging negative of his doing has been his promotion of religious (fanatic) parties. Like all his predecessors he also thought that he could fool the people in the name of religion. As a consequence the elements of secular polity and enlightenment suffered a serious blow. In the same context he ignored proliferation of religious seminaries (madrassas) in the country that provided impetus to sectarian divide as well as general terrorism by Tehrik Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Al Qaida. Lal Masjad episode was a corollary of the same. In word, he advocated enlightened moderation but in deed he promoted religious extremism. To keep Saudi junta in good humor, he kept his eyes closed to the money being pumped in to Pakistan, through semi literate mullahs for the establishment of religious seminaries and airing sectarian hatred.

The other bad thing done by him was staging the disastrous drama of Kargil that derailed the meaningful negotiations with India. In the same context of rapprochement with India he had also misbehaved during Indian Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpai’s bus diplomacy visit to Pakistan, by declining to be with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif during reception of Indian premier at Wagha.

He caused a great damage to the cause of Baluchistan. Instead of bringing them in the national fold, he alienated the Baloch nationalist leaders through arm twisting and other authoritarian ways. General Zia ul Haq groomed the specter of Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) to strength and Perved Musharraf extensively used this monster to his personal advantage and to the detriment of national interest.

Future historian will expose the devastating damage done by the institution of ISI to the state and the people of Pakistan. Pervez Musharraf will be graded right in line with General Zia.

The nexus of ISI and Lashkar E Tayeba (LT) and other jehadi outfits is responsible for Indo - Pak tensions. General Pervez Musharraf continued the policy of promoting the jehadi organizations which resulted in the shape of Indian parliament and Mumbai terrorist attacks, most probably by LT, thus thwarting the Indo - Pak rapprochement.

He also maintained the illusory concept of good and bad Taliban. He treated the TTP as the enemy and the Haqqani group and Mullah Umer of Quetta Shura as the good Taliban.
One wonders how a Taliban outfit that is almost inhuman in Pakistan will become a benign friend while in Afghanistan. Actually there is nothing to wonder about. If a person can mount an obviously doomed expedition like Kargil and still claim it to be a great feat of strategy, any senseless action can be expected of him.

He then enters in to an understanding with Peoples Party, through his American patrons to bring about an engineered democracy in Pakistan. Even that was going all right till a stalemate occurred with chief justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhary. Then he behaved like a bull in china shop and committed successive unconstitutional and senseless acts like proclamation of emergency and detention of judges of higher judiciary that brought his back against a wall. He was bailed out of this dirty situation by the army and he proceeded on self imposed exile.

He should have thanked his stars and should have called it a day for politics as he was living comfortably in London and Dubai and making millions of dollars by lecturing around the world. But that was not to be. After four years of exile he started getting hallucinations via the face book and twitter that the nation was beckoning him to come and assume the charge. Against all advice, including that of the Pakistan army leadership and his friends and family, he took the plunge and has landed himself in a deep muck. Ultimately what will happen to him is any one’s guess but one fact is so obvious that no good can happen to him.

Carl Marx says, “Men make their history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” Evolution is bound to take its toll.

http://www.thefrontierpost.com/category/40/