This week, in a verdict that was described as historic by opposition politicians, a special court in Pakistan sentenced the former military dictator Gen. Pervez Musharraf to death for high treason.
The Pakistan Army responded with a statement that also was historic: It said that its rank and file felt “pain and anguish” over the decision. The military leadership didn’t talk about the national interest or regional security as it usually does, but instead used the poetic language of a long-suffering lover. How could you do this to one of us? it asked, in essence. A man who “has served the country for 40 years, fought wars for the defense of the country can surely never be a traitor,” its statement read — and with that single sentence, the army dismissed the country’s courts and Constitution.
The army’s hurt this week reminds me of the anguish that Musharraf expressed when he was at the peak of his power in 2007. (Back in 1999, when he was army chief, he had overthrown the elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif after Sharif tried to fire him.) Musharraf liked the good life — cigars, cultural events, fashion shows. He displayed a special fondness for Ghazal singing in Urdu and could sometimes be seen crooning along with famous singers at private concerts.
It was said that he had a particular liking for the leftist revolutionary anthem “Hum Dekhenge,” “We Shall Witness.” The song was written by the left-wing poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz in 1979 — after another military dictator had another elected prime minister hanged — and has long been popular with socialists asking for livable wages, feminists protesting honor killings and even Islamists demanding Shariah
I was quite puzzled when I heard that Musharraf was also fond of the song. “We too shall bear witness/To the promised day etched on all eternity,” the lyrics go, and later, “When crowns would be tossed around/When thrones would be demolished.” Here was a military dictator, America’s go-to man in the war on terrorism — a man who facilitated the invasion of Afghanistan by providing the United States Army access to Pakistan’s military bases — playing at being a basement Che Guevara. Here was our king in uniform wanting to toss his own crown.
Odd, I thought — then again maybe this was the power of popular culture, and some songs can transcend the differences between oppressor and oppressed. But it seems our commando president meant business.
On Nov. 3, 2007, he launched what was essentially a coup against his own government and declared a state of emergency. He ordered senior judges detained and television channels off the air, and, addressing the nation in a whiny voice, said, “extremists have gone very extreme,” and things like, “nobody listens to us generals anymore.” Here was the most powerful man in the country lamenting that he didn’t have enough power.
Even after a broad-based political movement forced him to hold elections, he dreamed of staying on as president. But threatened with impeachment, he resigned in August 2008. After nursing his humiliation for a while, he decided — from self-imposed exile — to start a political party and is said to have lobbied his old friends in America asking for their support “not overtly but in a covert manner.”
In early 2013, he returned to Pakistan expecting a rousing welcome — and I heard him at the airport asking, forlorn: “Where are the people?” He ran in the general elections in March and didn’t win.
Yet many people in Pakistan today say that Musharraf’s tenure was a period of relative prosperity for the urban middle classes. Apparently, it brought more washing machines, cars, music concerts, fashion shows, satellite TV channels than ever before. But there was also torture, and hundreds of political activists or alleged militants were disappeared into military-run dungeons.
In one video interview, Musharraf can be seen claiming that he doesn’t care if his people use drills or whatever to extract information from suspects. He once threatened a veteran Baloch nationalist politician by saying, “you won’t even know what hit you.” The man was hit, and killed, by a missile in 2006.
Although Musharraf claimed to be a champion of women’s rights, he was reported to have told The Washington Post that women get themselves raped in order to obtain visas to Canada. (He denied doing so, but then the newspaper released the audio files.) While in office, he wrote a book proudly claiming to have handed over Pakistani prisoners to the United States in exchange for cash. He got the book endorsed by President George W. Bush during one of his many state visits to Washington.
Musharraf could do all of this with impunity because he felt certain that he would never be brought to justice. The Constitution, he once famously said, was a piece of paper to be thrown into a dustbin. He actually believed that whatever he decided was the law; not only could he decide what was the national interest, he was the national interest. And the army agreed.
The treason case against Musharraf started in 2013, and on Jan. 2, 2014, while he was supposedly on his way to court, the Pakistan Army, in what looked like a commando operation, whisked him off to a military hospital. Later, he was allowed to leave the country for medical treatment. But he continued to appear on the media and the lecture circuit. In the six years that his trial has spanned, Musharraf made only two appearances and refused an offer to record a statement by video.
Now that a judgment has been issued, the Pakistan Army has claimed, in its we-reject-this-verdict statement, that Musharraf was not given the chance to defend himself. After the military’s passionate plea against the decision — as well as strident criticism from the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan — chances are that Musharraf’s death sentence will never be carried out. The Pakistan Army demands and gets more love from its people than most other professional armies.
Still, with this court decision, it will have to not only learn to live with its pain and anguish, but also work hard to reclaim the impunity it has always taken for granted.
Mohammed Hanif is the author of the novels A Case of Exploding Mangoes, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti and Red Birds. He is a contributing opinion writer.