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Strategies & Market Trends : India Coffee House -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JPR who wrote (8313)	10/13/1999 9:52:00 AM
From: JPR	Respond to of 12475

Gen. Musharraf - man of the hour By BARBARA CROSSETTE Bolded words are mine Pervaiz Musharraf, the Pakistani general who ousted the civilian government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, was an unlikely coup-maker because he appeared to be an apolitical officer who took over the army at a time when military coups seemed to be a thing of the past. He replaced a man who had political ideas and who was pushed aside largely because he did. Musharraf, 58, on the other hand, had been a military officer for 35 years, and he had spent his career as a field officer -- a soldier's soldier -- rather than in the centers of political power. An artillery officer with commando experience, Musharraf, with his scholar's rimless glasses, took over as Pakistan's chief of army staff only a year ago, after the resignation of a predecessor who had suggested resurrecting a broader role for the military in national policy-making. Sharif had succeeded in curtailing military impunity through a change in the constitution. Two weeks ago, after fending off rumors that a military coup might be imminent, Musharraf won a two-year extension of his appointment. He also won a pledge of support from Sharif. No reason was given publicly for the dismissal of Musharraf on Tuesday. Stephen Cohen, an expert on the Indian and Pakistani military at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said that Musharraf seemed an unlikely "political" general in the mold of other Pakistani officers who have seized power in the past. More of a Mushhead than a strategic thinker "I suspect he is going to want to get out of power as quickly as he can," Cohen said in an interview. "This is not his kind of thing. He's regarded as a good professional soldier by his colleagues. He is not regarded as a great strategic thinker like most special forces people. He has a narrow focus on things." General was decorated for losing war with India Musharraf, who was decorated for service in the 1965 war with India, is a graduate of the Pakistani Command and Staff College at Quetta and also studied at military institutions in Britain. He has commanded an infantry brigade and artillery regiments as well as serving in various commando battalions. Delhiwallah He was born in New Delhi, India, in August 1943, then migrated to Pakistan with his family and lived as a child in the port city of Karachi. He joined Pakistan's army in 1964 and served in an artillery regiment after training in the well-known military academy of Kakul in North West Frontier Province. In 1965, he fought Indian troops in the Khem Karan sector in Punjab province during the 16-day war with India, taking part in intense battles for which he received a medal for gallantry. In 1971, when Pakistan again went to war with India, Musharraf was a member of the elite military Special Services Group of commandos. He has also commanded an infantry division and a strike corps and has received a number of military decorations. He has been on the faculty of the Command and Staff College in Quetta and of the war wing of the National Defense College. As a lieutenant general, his last key posting came in 1995 when he became a commander in Mangla in Punjab, an important military area close to the border with India. He was appointed army chief in October 1998 after the resignation of former military chief general Jehangir Karamat, who stepped down after making remarks seen critical of Sharif. Little is known about his personal life. He is known to have a son and daughter, both of whom are married. Experts say that Musharraf may have seized the moment of his dismissal to respond as much to civilian frustration with an ineffective government as to festering army resentment at Sharif's withdrawal in July of support for a Himalayan border war with India. With an economy in shambles and continuing violence among ethnic minorities and Shia and Sunni Muslims, the military under Musharraf decided this spring to support militants who had crossed into India, only to have army support abruptly withdrawn by Sharif under pressure from Washington in July, said Sumit Ganguly, a visiting fellow specializing in South Asia at the center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. The battle for the mountain region called Kargil was a popular campaign in Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto, who was twice dismissed as prime minister for corruption and misuse of power, has been actively campaigning against Sharif in the West, where she lives in exile to avoid an arrest warrant in Pakistan. On Tuesday, in an interview on CNN International, Ms. Bhutto was very complimentary toward Musharraf and said that she was eager to return to Pakistan and take part in another election. Commando Gen.Mushhead: Shoot first, (think &) ask questions later "Musharraf was my director general of military operations," she said. "He wasn't a cleric. He was a professional soldier and I thought that he was very courageous and brave. He'd been a commando, and a person who is a commando can take tremendous risks and think afterward." Experts said Tuesday that they were uncertain where the fault lines lay in the Pakistani military after the army takeover. Clearly Musharraf had considerable support if soldiers loyal to him were able to reject Sharif's order of dismissal and move into positions around important government installations in Islamabad before the general had returned to the country from a visit to Sri Lanka. In his television address early Wednesday in Pakistan, Musharraf accused Sharif of trying to create dissension within the army for political reasons. And, speaking in English, he made this pledge: "Your armed forces have never and shall never let you down."