Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf is In the Line of Fire

President Bush holds a joint press conference with Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Friday, Sept. 22, 2006. (Gerald Herbert/Associated Press)

His just released autobiography — a rare event for a sitting ruler — is a runaway bestseller on the Indian subcontinent, where it appears to have angered friend and foe alike.

It should also do well in the U.S., especially after its author, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, reveals that one of Washington's top diplomats threatened to bomb Pakistan "back to the Stone Age" in 2001 if it didn't help with the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

Such kiss-and-tell revelations are not the usual fare for an international statesman, and a dictator at that, with his finger on the nuclear launch codes. (Pakistan's opposition parties want him prosecuted for what they see as revealing state secrets.) But Musharraf has never been one to fit easily into a stereotype.

Indeed, his new memoirs, In the Line of Fire, are an aptly titled description of someone who has survived at least four assassination attempts at home and is routinely mistrusted in the West, and India, for where his loyalties really lie.

Born in 1943 to an Urdu-speaking Muslim family in Delhi, India, the Musharrafs moved to Karachi, Pakistan, a few years later following partition between the two now nuclear-tipped rivals.

Musharraf joined the Pakistan army as a young man of 21 and steadily made his way up the ranks, which was considered unusual at the time for someone who was not of the predominantly Punjabi officer class.

By all accounts, he had a distinguished military career. He was an artillery platoon and commando leader during Pakistan's two wars with India in 1965 and 1971.

The face of war

He rose to become the army's chief of staff in 1999 right at the start of the next big conflict over disputed Kashmir, a controversial adventure (retold through Musharraf's eyes in his memoirs) that led to the demise of the civilian government of Nawaz Sharif. Musharraf, in fact, was the public face of that conflict as, fluent in English (he had taken some of his military training in the U.K.), he briefed the Pakistani press as well as the international media on an almost daily basis.

When he became chief of staff, the speculation was that he was chosen because he was something of an outsider, and therefore would not have the widespread backing within the military to challenge Pakistan's fledgling democracy. But this proved not to be the case, and Musharraf came to power in October 1999 in a bloodless coup with spectacular overtones.

Sharif tried to dismiss Musharraf while the leader was out of the country and refused to allow his plane to land at Karachi as he tried to return. Senior generals, however, wouldn't accept the dismissal and, the story goes, the Musharraf plane touched down with only a few minutes of fuel left in its tank.

His first few years in power were characterized by political battles at home that may have shaped his image abroad as a dictatorial strongman: He fought with and eventually dismissed Supreme Court justices who had attempted to put limits on his rule; and he was forced to make political peace with some of the more conservative land-holding elements in the Pakistan legislature, as well as some of the more radical groups with links to al-Qaeda to get bills passed and legitimize his presidency.

Then, following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S., his presidency changed and Musharraf performed what has been described as a political U-turn towards the West.

A pro-West reformer?

As Musharraf describes that period in In the Line of Fire, he was pressured by both then U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell as well as Powell's deputy Richard Armitage, who told Musharref: "Be prepared to be bombed" if you don't agree to help in the fight against bin Laden.

Armitage has since denied using those precise words, and Musharraf said he briefly "war-gamed" going to war with the U.S. in his mind, but quickly decided that was a losing proposition and so signed on to the so-called war on terror.

This was a dicey proposition in staunchly Islamic Pakistan where bin Laden is something of a folk hero to many. But Musharraf lent the U.S. three of his air bases from which to wage the bombing campaign against the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan, and the moment became a turning point in Pakistan's foreign relations.

There are still ongoing complaints today from the West, newly democratized Afghanistan and India about whether Pakistan is doing enough to rein in its militant jihadists and the radical madrasses or seminary schools that many see as a spawning ground.

But the fact is, Musharraf's alliance with Washington, uneasy as it proved to be, represented an important opening to the West.

In 2002, Musharraf delivered a much-noted speech denouncing Islamic extremism and acts of terrorism, including those aimed at delivering Kashmir's Muslim from Indian rule. And in 2004, he launched an important peace initiative with India that is still unfolding.

In between, he survived two of the four known assassination attempts against him by fundamentalists. And along the way, he shut down renegade nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, the so-called father of the Pakistan bomb, and delivered several high-ranking al-Qaeda operatives over to the CIA.

Still, there are many who question what his allegiances truly are. Though he has been feted by official Washington for much of this week, Musharraf, the erstwhile ally, was notably snubbed by U.S. President George W. Bush during a high-profile visit to India earlier this year.

Meanwhile, in Pakistan, he is viewed as a westernized Muslim, who enjoys whisky and whose wife does not wear a hijab in public, and whose previous words of praise for the Taliban are now treated with suspicion.

His term of office is supposed to end in October 2007, but who knows whether that will really happen. Musharraf is a survivor who, whether under fire or not, seems to know how to walk a fine line.