Our Meeting with General Musharraf

Since putting up my picture with General Musharraf last Friday a number of you have been asking about what was discussed and how was the overall mood of the meeting. So here I am finally putting aside my habitual lethargy and procrastination to write few lines on the experience.

Meeting Setup:

Like many good things in my life this meeting came through my radio contacts. One of my very regular listeners, Colonel Fazal Abbas sb offered me the opportunity to set an appointment with General Musharraf during an informal lunch I was having with him in mid June. My response was an immediate yes. I was asked to wait and wait I did. Within ten days I received a call confirming the time of the meeting and day. I was asked to be present outside the colony where General sb is residing at Zamzama Karachi. Hearing this, my wife insisted to be a part of the meeting. I knew she has a soft corner for General sb in her heart but I saw a dedicated fan in her that evening. Like every good husband I couldn’t say no to her and eventually managed to take her along albeit her security clearance came less than an hour before the meeting. Luckily she was there on time.

Note: Pls don’t ask me to setup the meeting with General sb…I am in no way in any position to set those up J

It wasn’t a one on one meeting. There were 5 individuals other than me and Tasmia. One of them was the President of a local Bank

First Impression of the house:

 General sb is currently living in the a nice spacious house within the General’s Society at Zamzama. The society had its own security while there were few Rangers personnel giving duty outside his house. We were greeted warmly by the staff at the main gate. We did pass through the security gate and were asked to hand over our cell phones (politely). I was allowed to carry my camera inside though.

The house  building itself though not very big was pretty well organized and decorated. The first things you would note were the pictures hanging on the wall of the living room with notable leaders of the world.

We were asked to sit in the drawing room and were served with some refreshments. We had to wait for a few minutes before we heard the familiar voice coming from the background. Tasmia looked at me and smiled suggesting “we have heard this voice before haven’t we?”.

So finally General entered drawing room and first thing which was visible was his grown waistline. Surely he wasn’t working out as much I read he is used to. He welcomed each one individually. This was supposed to be a very informal meeting and the good thing was that there were no ground rules set. General sb appeared in good spirit and fresh. Not a typical 70+ year old man we know in our society.

Discussions:

Bulk of the opening minutes were taken by the President of that banking introducing himself and how he was distantly related to him through many distant contacts. The intro was so long that I knew my number would never come and I had to get General talk about the current state of affairs in Pakistan. Which is why we were there after all. Getting an opportunity I broke the news to General sb about Sri Lanka taking away on-arrival visa facility from Pakistanis. He was shocked to hear that and said

“ab ye time aa gaya hai kay Sri Lanka hamaray saath ye kar raha hai”

Sri Lanka naturally holds great importance in General sb’s life and he believes he is still widely respected there. He narrated an incident during their civil war when their soldiers were trapped somewhere near the Jaffna peninsula and were under attack from LTTE. Then President Chandrika Kumaratunga called General Musharraf for help and Pakistan was prompt to send as much help as possible in the form of arms, ammunition and technical expertise to help the Sri Lankan brothers.

Iftikhar Chaudhary:

Any meeting with General Musharraf could never be complete without the mentioning of Iftikhar Chaudhary. He joked about the appointment of Arsalan Iftikhar at the Vice Chairman of Baluchistan BOI and how a national treasure like Reqo Diq would be under him now for exploitation.

“ye dekho chor ko chowkidaari pe laga diya”

He highlighted how Chaudhary sabotaged the whole reqo diq deal GOP signed with a consortium of the Canadian and Chilean company for the mining of copper and goal reserves. His regret was overwhelming when he estimated how many millions of dollars worth of exports were to come in 2012 if Tythian Gold and Antofagasta were allowed to carry out their job. He said that he met the president of Tythian Gold in London after the annulment of the deal by Chaudhary and how much disappointed he was on what was going on in Pakistan.

General sb did shed some light on the Pakistan Steel deal and shared the plan of what Al Tawarqi (the winning party) was supposed to do with Pak Steel in terms of further investment and exports. I asked General sb if there was any discussion between the then Judiciary and himself before the announcement of the decision. General sb smiled and me and said that now I have asked him he would share the details. The details (which I will not share here) were shocking on ground of how much aligned General sb, Iftikhar Chaudhary and the Attorney General were on the pro-privatization judgement which was supposed to come.  However the ultimate judgement was totally the opposite. General sb hinted the reason why this would have happened and he would share this in the sequel of his book “In the Line of Fire”.

The Book Sequel:

The sequel of his book is very much on the cards in fact if appeared that most of the book has already been written. He smiled and said the text would be completed once the judgement of the ongoing trails especially the article 6 case is out.              

During the meeting we didn’t specifically talk about the on going cases perhaps due to the shortage of time.

His Political Future:

I asked General sb on where he sees himself in the politics now considering how he has been singled out by the biased judiciary in his previous political endeavour. His response was not very specific. He did mention that the current political system isn’t helping the country out. People have tried and tested PPP which failed to deliver and now PMLN isn’t faring any better. As expected he didn’t have much hope from Imran Khan either. He said that no matter how many elections you have in Pakistan we will eventually end up having the same people getting elected. He believed that country desperately need some form of an interim setup for an extended period of time with a solid backing of the military. Does General sb see tacit role for himself in any such setup…I would say yes. At least his body language suggests so. He clearly said that the days of military coup in Pakistan are now over. He nodded his approval on the Tahir Ul Qadri’s movement.

Religious Extremism:

General sb dedicated a lot of time in explaining how extremism can be combated. In a typical Musharraf like style of giving solution, he divided the war against extremism in various stages with actions like Zarb e Azab as the first one. He believed that till the time the madrassas have been incorporated in the modern schooling system we cant win the war. He proudly mentioned about some of the strict steps he took against madrassa by amending their curriculum and making them more mainstream. Alas most of this has been reversed and madrassas have growth has been unabated since he left.

I think the meeting was supposed to last for an hour but it continued for an hour and a half before him chief of staff requested us to finish the discussion. There of course were many questions unanswered but I did ask General sb if he is in touch with Shaukat Aziz and Altaf bhai. About Shaukat Aziz he said he they talked often when he was in London and Dubai but haven’t talked since he is in Pakistan. About Altaf Bhai he said “oh yes I am”. J

General sb came to his door to see us all off. He encouraged my wife to start working rather than staying at home!

And there it was…that’s the longest I have written in a while. One question that I really forgot asking General sb was “Which team is he supporting in the FIFA world cup?” J