In the Line of Fire — Pervez Musharraf
Narcissism and self-centered is what the book portrays throughout the narrative. Pervez Musharraf boasts about himself so much in the book that at times I felt, how someone can be that perfect. He starts the book with two suicide bombing attempts on him, which he survived luckily. He took over the country in a military coup but defines it as a counter-coup because as per him the precedents and present government at that point in time were already running the country as coups and not democracy because the leaders were autocrats and not democratic.
He also categorized Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as a chief martial law administer during his tenure. On the contrary, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was the most famous leader of his time, who was loved, cherished and looked upon by the people of Pakistan. Pakistan has a history of prolonged military coups but whatever democracy came was being run by Nawaz Sharif or Benazir Bhutto (10 years consecutive either of the two held offices). When Nawaz took over government for the second time, he created dissension in the army by sacking the then COAS and replaced him with Pervez Musharraf. Despite that Musharraf has demoralized Nawaz’s government on many occasions and called it corrupt, indecisive and incompetent.
Nawaz seeing that Musharraf was going against the rift after Kargil debacle decided to sack him. However the army this time couldn’t take it and decided to take over the government. It wasn’t a coup by Musharraf (as it was not that bad when he was made the COAS, as Nawaz previously sacked the then COAS, but he couldn’t do the same with him) rather by the army itself as per the narrative in this book. He was the COAS and also the Chief of Joint Staffs (an additional position given to him by Nawaz) and yet he takes no responsibility for the coup.
After taking over the government, through Legal Framework Order popularly known as 17th Amendment he legalized his coup and held two positions that is COAS and President of Pakistan till 2007.
The attack on twin towers on 9/11 shook the world, Musharraf decided to be an ally on ‘War on Terror’ for America. Hence the culture of suicide bombs came into being, which till date have killed thousands of Pakistanis. Although in Musharraf’s reign Pakistan saw a lot of economic development but that was only possible due to the billions of dollars aid Pakistan was receiving being an ally.
In this book, he takes all the credit for everything good that happened and denounced against bad (not even acknowledges it). He doesn’t talk about Akbar Bugti’s mysterious death in 2006, the siege of Lal Masjid, sacking of Chief Justice of Pakistan Chaudhary Iftikhar, disclosure of Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan’s labs or the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Though the book was published in 2006 but most of these incidents happened before the publication and yet there is no mention of any of them. Musharraf was a man of self-brag, his coup brought in some positives but the negatives cannot be compensated with them as Pakistan is still in a state of war against the Talibans, which were nurtured to fight Al Qeada in Afghanistan.
