Pakistani military leader and president (1999 ), born in New Delhi, NC India. He emigrated with his family to Karachi, Pakistan in 1947, when Pakistan was separated from India. On leaving college in Lahore he joined the army and was a career soldier for 35 years. He fought in the 1965 and 1971 wars against India and was awarded a medal for bravery in 1965. After graduating from the Army Command and Staff College, Quetta and the Royal College of Defence Studies, Britain, he rose through the ranks after holding posts in the infantry, artillery, and commando units. In 1998 he was appointed chief of the army by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharrif and supported the Pakistani invasion of the Indian-held territory of JammuKashmir (1999). Angered by the decision to withdraw from the territory, he seized power after learning that he had been sacked as army chief. He became head of the military government, suspended the constitution, dissolved parliament, and established a National Security Council. In 2001, he played a major role in relation to the international movement against terrorism, focused on adjoining Afghanistan. In 2002 he received overwhelming support in a controversial nationwide referendum to extend his term of office for another five years. In May 2002 he was again at the centre of international attention, during the confrontation between Pakistan and India over JammuKashmir. He survived an assassination attempt by Islamic extremists in 2002 and again in December 2003.
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General Pervez Musharraf پرويز مشرف |
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| 12th President of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan | |
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| Incumbent | |
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In office since October 12, 1999 |
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| Preceded by | Muhammad Rafiq Tarar |
| Succeeded by | Incumbent |
| Born |
August 11, 1943 Delhi, India |
| Political party | None |
| Spouse | Begum Sehba Musharraf |
(PA – 6920) General Pervez Musharraf (Urdu: پرويز مشرف;
Family background
Syed Pervez Musharraf, the second of three brothers, was born in Daryaganj in Delhi, India on August 11, 1943. Musharraf is married to Begum Sehba Musharraf, who is from Okara;
Early life
Musharraf attended Saint Patrick's High School, Karachi, graduating in 1958 before going on to attend Forman Christian College in Lahore.
Military career
In 1961, he entered the Pakistan Military Academy at Kakul, graduated 11th in his class and was later commissioned into the Artillery Regiment. A graduate of the Staff College, Quetta, and the National Defense College, Rawalpindi, Musharraf also a graduate of the Royal College of Defence Studies of the United Kingdom. In 1965, Musharraf reveals in his memoirs that he was charged with taking unauthorized leave and was about to be court-martialed for it, but was let off due to the war with India.
Musharraf participated in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 as the 2nd Lieutenant in the 16 (SP) Field Artillery Regiment.
Role in Kargil ConflictFrom April to June 1999, Pakistan and India were involved in the Kargil Conflict in which Musharraf was Pakistan's Army chief.
Coup d'état
Musharraf became de facto Head of Government (using the title Chief Executive and assuming extensive powers) of Pakistan following a bloodless coup d'état on 12 October 1999. That day, the constitutional Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif attempted to dismiss Musharraf and install Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Director Khwaja Ziauddin in his place. Musharraf, who was out of the country, boarded a commercial airliner to return to Pakistan. Senior Army generals refused to accept Musharraf's dismissal. Reportedly, the disagreement between Musharraf and Sharif centered around the democratically elected Prime Minister's desire to find a diplomatic resolution to the conflict. Musharraf formally made himself President on June 20, 2001, just days before his scheduled visit to Agra for talks with India.
Presidential elections
Shortly after Musharraf's takeover, several people filed court petitions challenging his assumption of power. On May 12, 2000, the Supreme Court of Pakistan ordered Musharraf to hold general elections by October 12, 2002.
Musharraf also forcibly removed many of the Supreme Court Justices who had voted against his usurpation of power.
General elections were held in October 2002 and a plurality of the seats in the Parliament was won by the PML-Q, a pro-Musharraf party consisting of feudal landlords whose power and hold on politics Musharraf had promised to destroy. However, parties opposed to Musharraf effectively paralysed the National Assembly for over a year.
The deadlock ended in December 2003, when Musharraf made a deal with the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal party, an alliance of Islamic parties sympathetic to Talibans agreeing to leave the army by December 31, 2004. With that party's support, pro-Musharraf legislators were able to muster the two-thirds supermajority required to pass the Seventeenth Amendment, which retroactively legalized Musharraf's 1999 coup and many of his decrees.
Electoral College elections
In a vote of confidence on January 1, 2004, Musharraf won 658 out of 1,170 votes in the Electoral College of Pakistan, and according to Article 41(8) of the Constitution of Pakistan, was "deemed to be elected" to the office of President until October 2007.
Role after 9/11
Support for the War on Terror
Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, Musharraf sided with the United States against the Taliban government in Afghanistan after an ultimatum by the United States. Musharraf agreed to give the United States the use of three airbases for Operation Enduring Freedom. Secretary of State Colin Powell and other administration officials met with Musharraf. Musharraf's reversal of policy and help to the U.S. military was necessary in the U.S. bombing that rapidly overcame the Taliban regime. On September 19, 2001, Musharraf addressed the people of Pakistan and stated while he supported the Taliban, unless Pakistan reversed its support, Pakistan risked being endangered by an alliance of India and the USA.. In 2006, Musharraf testified that this stance was pressured by threats from the U.S.
Relations with India
Musharraf was Chief of Army Staff at the time of Pakistani incursions into the Indian-held Kashmir, in the summer of 1999. Some reports suggest that Musharraf retreated after huge pressure from the former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from the American President, who feared the conflict could turn into a nuclear catastrophe.
However, in Battle Ready, a recent book co-authored by ex-CENTCOM Commander in Chief Anthony Zinni and novelist Tom Clancy, the former alleges that Musharraf was the one who pushed Sharif to withdraw the Pakistani troops after being caught in a losing scenario. According to an ex-official of the Musharraf government, Hassan Abbas, it was Musharraf who planned the whole operative and sold the idea to Nawaz Sharif. The view that Musharraf wanted to attempt the Kargil infiltrations much earlier was also revealed by Former Pakistani PM Benazir Bhutto in an interview to a leading daily newspaper, where he had supposedly boasted that "he would hoist the flag of Pakistan atop the Srinagar Assembly" if his plan was executed PML(N), a leading Pakistan party added that Musharraf had planned the Kargil intrusions but panicked when the conflict broke out with India and decided to brief then Pakistan premier Nawaz Sharif. As the Kargil incident came just after the Lahore Peace Summit earlier that year, Musharraf was viewed with mistrust in India. Musharraf that Pakistan's intelligence service and army will cease giving food, weapons and other logistical help to infiltrators who carry out raids into India and Indian-controlled Kashmir. The army will no longer provide mortar fire to cover the militants, who have been cut adrift by Musharraf".
In the middle of 2004, Musharraf began a series of talks with India to solve the Kashmir dispute.
As well as discussing the Kashmir dispute, both leaders discussed the following issues: Wullar Barrage and Kishangaga power project, Baglihar Dam on the Chenab River being built by India in Jammu and Kashmir, Disputed Sir Creek estuary at the mouth of the Rann of Kutch, Siachin glacier, Issues of Gurdaspur and Ferozepur's status, Hindu-Muslim Relations, Autonomy for the Sikhs in Indian Punjab, Minority rights, Indian contentions that Pakistan is sponsoring "cross-border" terrorism.
Denouncing extremism
On January 12, 2002, Musharraf gave a landmark speech against Islamic extremism. Musharraf also instituted prohibitions on foreign students' access to studying Islam within Pakistan, an effort which began as an outright ban but was later reduced to restrictions on obtaining visas. On December 7, 2004, Musharraf denounced the Hijab calling it "a backward view of Islam".
Assassination attempts
On December 14, 2003, General Musharraf survived an assassination attempt when a powerful bomb went off minutes after his highly-guarded convoy crossed a bridge in Rawalpindi. Eleven days later, on December 25, 2003, two suicide bombers tried to assassinate Musharraf, but their car bombs failed to kill the president;
Richard Armitage comments controversy
During a September 24, 2006 interview with CBS News's 60 Minutes program (interviewed by Steve Kroft), Musharraf described how then-U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage had called Musharraf's intelligence director shortly following the September 11, 2001 attacks and threatened military action if Pakistan did not support the U.S.-led War on Terror. Furthermore, during an interview with Jon Stewart of The Daily Show on September 26, 2006, Musharraf stated that then-Secretary of State Colin Powell also contacted him with a similar message: "You are with us or against us." Nevertheless, the opposition parties effectively deadlocked the National Assembly, refusing to accept the legitimacy of Musharraf's authority. In December 2003, as part of a compromise with the main Islamist opposition group, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, an alliance of Islamist radicals including the Jammat Islami whose leaders have known links to bin Laden, General Musharraf said he would step down as Army Chief by January 1, 2005. In return, the MMA agreed to support a constitutional amendment that would retroactively legalize Musharraf's coup, and restore some formal checks and balances to Pakistan's system of government.
Views and perceptions of Musharraf
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The neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. |
Musharraf is considered a moderate leader by Western governments. Musharraf's emotional ties to the United States may be conjectured to be significant since at least two close members of his family live there: his brother, a doctor, lives near Chicago, Illinois, and his son, who lives in Boston, Massachusetts.
Corruption
One of the expectations when Musharraf came to power was that the rampant corruption existing in government machinery would be cleaned up. Musharraf himself stated that a crackdown on corruption would be initiated but years into his administration, many neutral analysts have noted that the military regime is letting the corrupt go free.
Support for the War on Terror
Since his involvement as a senior officer of Pakistan's special forces during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Musharraf has had excellent personal relations with several sections of the US security establishment.
It is widely believed that Musharraf was coerced by the United States into turning his back on his former allies, the Taliban government of Afghanistan.
Musharraf's support for the USA was indispensable in defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan with the ease that it was routed.
Under U.S. pressure, Musharraf has launched a major military offensive in the tribal region of Wana, displacing many resident families in the hunt for militants, and has caused a national insurgency movement made up of disaffected militants and former residents of Wana whose homes were demolished by the army in its heavy bombing campaign.
However, after the more recent resurgence of the Taliban, the United States is taking a harder look at Pakistan's continuing role in the Taliban insurgency, according to reports in the New York Times Seth G. Whether the orders come from General Musharraf himself is not clear, Mr. Jones said, but he said it was clear that he knew about the support, and that he so far had failed to stop the militancy.
Musharraf speaks fluent English and has given many interviews and speeches on various US and European TV channels and other media. Musharraf has bluntly refused to send any Pakistani troops to Iraq without a UN resolution and also due to public pressure in Pakistan. Bush's visit to Islamabad early 2006 and Musharraf's pledge comes ahead of a trip to the United States and Cuba and an expected meeting with Bush.
Elections during Musharraf's administration
On 12 May 2000, the Supreme Court ordered Musharraf to hold national elections by 12 October 2002; In November 2002, Musharraf handed over certain powers to the newly elected Parliament.
On January 1, 2004 Musharraf won a confidence vote in the Electoral College of Pakistan, consisting of both houses of Parliament and the four provincial assemblies which are dominated by the landed elite of the country, most of whom have been given governmental posts under Musharraf. Musharraf received 658 out of 1170 votes, a 56% majority, but many opposition and Islamic members of parliament walked out to protest the vote. As a result of this vote, according to Article 41(8) of the Constitution of Pakistan, Musharraf was "deemed to be elected" to the office of President. Most of the ministers of the cabinet were senior members of other parties, who joined PML(Q) after the elections just because Musharraf promised them important offices in the government. Musharraf replaced Jamali due to his poor performance and in his place Musharraf appointed Shaukat Aziz, a former Vice President of Citibank and head of Citibank Private Banking as the new prime minister. Musharraf choose Shaukat Aziz due to his successful measures in revitalizing Pakistan's economy as the Finance Minister. The new government is mostly supportive of Musharraf, who remains the President and Head of State in the new government. Musharraf continues to be the active executive of Pakistan, especially in foreign affairs.
Nuclear proliferation
Recently, Musharraf has come under fire from the West after the disclosure of nuclear proliferation by Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the metallurgist known as the father of Pakistan's bomb. Musharraf has denied knowledge of or participation by Pakistan's government or army in this proliferation despite deep domestic criticism for singularly vilifying Khan, a former national hero.
Musharraf in the media
In the Time 100 Poll 2006 of "The People Who Shape Our World", he is currently ranked at number thirteen.
In a list titled "The World's 10 Worst Dictators" prepared by Parade magazine in 2005, Pervez Musharraf is placed at number 7 in the ranking for the first time, in previous years he never appeared .
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