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Friday, March 29, 2024

‘Butcher of Kargil’ Musharraf dies in exile

Former Pakistani dictator Gen. Pervez Musharraf died today following a prolonged illness at a hospital in Dubai, UAE after years in exile due to treason charges in his home country.

The former Pakistan Army Chief, 79, snatched power from Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif in 1999 through a military coup, before himself being pushed out of power in 2008.

Born in Delhi in 1943, Musharraf moved to Karachi, Pakistan in 1947 after partition. He joined the army in 1961 and was selected as army chief on 6 October 1998 by PM Nawaz Sharif. Almost immediately, Musharraf started planning for Kargil infiltration in which Pak Army soldiers disguised as mujahideen started crossing the LoC in spring of 1999 to occupy strategic positions on the Bharatiya side in the Kargil-Drass sector.

Many analysts believe Musharraf kept Sharif in the dark about this plan or gave him limited information.

Pakistani perfidy can be gauged by the fact that in February 1999, Bharat’s PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee, visited Pakistan as part of the much touted ‘bus diplomacy’, on the invitation of his counterpart, Nawaz Sharif. Vajpayee was greeted with great pomp and show, unaware that Kargil had been (or was being) occupied.

In May, Bharat found out about the incursion after a patrol team led by Captain Saurabh and including 5 other soldiers – Sepoys Arjun Ram, Bhanwar Lal Bagaria, Bhika Ram, Moola Ram and Naresh Singh – were captured alive on 15 May, 1999 by Pakistani troops. They were kept in captivity where they were tortured and their bodies mutilated.

Their bodies were handed over to Bharat after 15 days. The country was shocked when it heard about the barbarity of the Pakistan army led by Musharaff – Capt. Kalia’s ear drums were punctured with hot rods, his eyes were punctured and his limbs and genitals had been cut off. Most of his teeth and bones had also been broken.

This heralded the start of the Kargil war which ended on July 26, 1999 after the Pakistani Army intruders were completely evicted from Bharatiya territory. 527 Bharatiya soldiers made the supreme sacrifice, while thousands of Pakistani soldiers were also killed (Pak Army officially admitted to 453 deaths, but refused to accept some bodies).

After the war ended in a defeat for Pakistan, tensions arose between the Pak Army and govt. with Musharraf deposing and arresting Sharif in a coup on October 12, 1999.

Musharraf is widely regarded as a ‘moderate’ Muslim, with a penchant for cigars and imported whisky, and someone who allied with the West after 9/11 – although the US government’s threats to ‘bomb Pakistan back to the stone age’ may have had something to do with that decision.

Yet, Musharraf’s inner Hindu-hate and fanaticism was borne out by what happened on 27 February 2000. On this day, Pakistani HuJI jihadis, led by Maulana Ilyas Kashmiri and supported by Pakistani Army regulars, ambushed an Indian Army post in Rajouri district of J&K. Sepoy Bhausaheb Maruti Talekar and 7 other soldiers were killed in cold blood, and the jihadis beheaded hutatma Talekar and carried his head back to Pakistan as a trophy. They played football with the head, then presented it to Musharaff who rewarded Kashmiri for his ‘bravery’.

After 9/11, Musharraf was left with little choice but to aid the US ‘war on terror’ in Afghanistan against the Al Qaeda and Taliban. But the double-dealing nature of Pakistan manifested itself here too.

In his autobiography, Line of Fire, Musharraf admitted arresting suspected al-Qaeda members and handing them over to the US, some of whom ended up in the US-run prison in Guantanamo, Cuba, while earning “bounty payments totalling millions of dollars”. Enforced disappearances of government critics became the norm during Musharraf’s rule, although he is also credited for opening up Pakistan’s media landscape.

In a 2017 interview given from Dubai, Musharraf justified assassination of government critics living abroad calling it ‘pro-active diplomacy’.

Despite his back-stabbing act of executing the Kargil incursion just when PM Vajpayee was visiting Pakistan, Bharat invited Musharraf to Agra for talks on 14 July 2001 with much fanfare. Note – this was before 9/11, so it can’t be said that US forced us to negotiate with Pakistan. Musharraf was also allowed to meet Kashmiri separatists in New Delhi!

But it was in Agra where Musharraf showed his true colors. He addressed what was touted as an ‘off camera’ breakfast meeting of senior Indian and foreign editors on the morning of Monday, July 16. But the discussions were be filmed by a Pakistan TV crew, and Musharraf’s gave a highly aggressive performance repeating the usual Pakistani rhetoric on Kashmir and even justifying the Kargil incursion. This recording was then slipped to an Indian news channel (who else but NDTV!), which duly broadcasted the same, much to Bharat’s embarassment.

Predictably, the talks failed.

Pakistani state-sponsored terror really took under Musharraf in a big way: hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight 814 by 5 Pakistani Harkat-ul-Mujahideen terrorists on 24 Dec 1999; attack on Red Fort by LeT on 22 December 2000; Kaluchak massacre in family quarters of Indian Army by LeT jihadis on 14 May 2002; and of course, the Parliament attack on 13 December 2001 by Pakistani terror groups LeT and JeM…these are just a sample of the blood-thirsty carnage unleashed by Musharraf’s jihadis.

This tweet encapsulates very well how Musharraf and his spin masters adroitly co-opted sections of deracinated Indian elite to fool the Bharatiya masses

In a 2015 interview, Musharraf admitted to Pakistan’s state policy of terror.

“Kashmiris who came to Pakistan received a hero’s reception here. We used to train them …considered them as Mujahideens who will fight with the Indian Army. Then, various organisations like Lashkar-e-Taiba rose in this period. They were our heroes….We brought Mujahideens from all over the world, we trained them and supplied weapons to them. We trained the Taliban, sent them in. They were our heroes. Haqqani was our hero. Osama bin Laden was our hero. Ayman al-Zawahiri was our hero. Then the global environment changed,” Musharraf said.

Tried for treason

Musharraf was tried in Pakistan for high treason stemming from his actions on 3 November 2007 when he subverted and suspended the Constitution of Pakistan, sacking dozens of Supreme Court and provincial High Court judges, and putting the then Chief Justice of Pakistan under house arrest.

Many believe Musharraf and the Pakistan Army-ISI also had a hand in former PM Benazir Bhutto’s assassination on 27 December 2007.

Following a massive public backlash, deteriorating security conditions due to rise of TTP (an extremist Deobandi group loyal to the Afghan Taliban, which considered Musharraf an American ‘lapdog’), and poor performance of his party in polls, Musharraf was forced to resign as president on August 18, 2008 and fled the country, going into exile in London and Dubai.

He returned to Pakistan on March 24, 2013, but was barred from contesting polls and from leaving the country. Soon after, then PM Nawaz Sharif ordered a probe into the high-treason case against Musharraf. An enquiry found him solely responsible for suspending the Constitution, but he pleaded not guilty to the charges.

However, when the travel ban was lifted, he quietly slipped away from Pakistan on March 18, 2016 to seek medical treatment in Dubai. After the PTI government under Imran Khan was sworn in, a Special Court sentenced Musharraf to death on December 17, 2019 for abrogating Constitution under Article 6. But in another twist, on 13 January 2020, the Lahore High Court annulled the death sentence. This verdict was also challenged, and the matter was pending in the Pakistan Supreme Court.

It was the first time in Pakistan’s history that a former military dictator, and that country has seen more than a few, faced a trial for treason.

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