[In interview with the Guardian, former Pakistan president voices
his support for Ashraf Ghani and hints that he cultivated the Taliban]
By Jon Boone
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Pakistan’s
former military ruler Pervez Musharraf during an interview in November.
Photograph:
Asif Hassan/AFP/Getty Images
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Pervez Musharraf, the former Pakistani military
ruler accused of sheltering and supporting the Taliban after 2001, has called
for an end to the backing of militant “proxies” in Afghanistan.
In an interview with the Guardian, Musharraf admitted that when
he was in power, Pakistan sought to undermine the government of former Afghan
president Hamid Karzai because Karzai had “helped India stab Pakistan in the back”. But now the time had
come to “totally cooperate” with Ashraf Ghani, the Afghan president since
September, who Musharraf believes is “the last hope for peace in the region”.
“In President Karzai’s times, yes,
indeed, he was damaging Pakistan and therefore we were working against his
interest. Obviously we had to protect our own interest,” Musharraf said. “But
now President Ashraf Ghani has come and he is trying to restore balance in Afghanistan.
We must totally cooperate with him.”
In his first months in office, Ghani
has sought to woo Pakistan in a way Musharraf could only have dreamed of in the
critical years between the US-led intervention in Afghanistan in 2001, and
2008, when Musharraf was finally forced from power. Ghani has not only
suspended a planned weapons deal with India, but also diverted troops to fight
against anti-Pakistan militant groups in eastern Afghanistan.
For Musharraf, the most welcome
development was Ghani’s decision this month to send
six army cadets for training at Pakistan’s officer academy in the town of
Abbottabad. Karzai infuriated both Musharraf and Ashfaq Kayani, his
successor as army chief, by spurning offers to help train Afghanistan’s
embryonic army. Instead, Karzai sent cadets to India, where Musharraf believes
they were “indoctrinated” against Pakistan.
Speaking in his luxurious Karachi
home, the former army chief repeatedly hinted at what is now widely accepted
among diplomats and analysts: that the nominal western ally assisted both Nato
forces in Afghanistan and the Taliban they
were fighting against in a bid to counter the perceived influence of arch-rival
India. “Pakistan had its own proxies, India had its proxies, which is
unhealthy. I do admit this, it is most unhealthy. It is not in favour of
Afghanistan, or Pakistan or India. It must stop,” he said.
Musharraf said Pakistani spies in the
Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) cultivated the Taliban after 2001
because Karzai’s government was dominated by non-Pashtuns, the country’s
largest ethnic group, and officials who were thought to favour India. “Obviously
we were looking for some groups to counter this Indian action against
Pakistan,” he said. “That is where the intelligence work comes in. Intelligence
being in contact with Taliban groups. Definitely they were in contact, and they
should be.”
The army remains deeply suspicious of
India, a country that has beaten Pakistan in three conflicts since independence
and played a critical role in the secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan in
1971. Musharraf insists he is not an “India hater”, but bristles at what he
says is western bias towards Pakistan’s giant neighbour. “‘India is the
greatest democracy, promoter of human rights and democratic culture’? All
bullshit,” he said. “There is no human rights. The religion itself is
anti-human rights. In the rural areas, if even the shadow of an untouchable
goes on a pandit, that man can be killed.”
Like many soldiers, he is convinced
that India, through its Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), backs regional
separatists in an effort to break up Pakistan. “The RAW of India, the ISI of
Pakistan have always been fighting against each other since our independence.
That is how it continued, it continues now also.
“It must stop, but it can only stop
when leaderships on both sides show the will to resolve disputes and stop
confrontation in favour of compromise and accommodation.”
Musharraf has become increasingly
vocal in recent months as his position in the country steadily improves after he
suffered a series of setbacks in the wake of his disastrous return from
self-exile in 2013. A ban on standing in elections quashed his hopes
of entering parliament. He was ensnared by a series of legal cases, including
one murder charge. Most seriously of all, Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister
Musharraf ousted in a coup in 1999, won a landslide victory and initiated a
treason trial for which the former dictator could be hanged if found guilty.
But Sharif’s power has been curbed by
a series of bruising fights with Pakistan’s powerful military establishment and
the treason case now appears tied up in legal wrangling. Musharraf is still
banned from leaving the country, which he says deprives him not just of the
lucrative international lecture circuit, but also access to his homes in London
and Dubai. He says he misses his old life in his two favourite cities, where he
could go to restaurants alone without the vast security required to protect him
in Pakistan.
But he says his problems are nearly
behind him, and that he has the army to thank. “I’m very proud of my
institution. Whatever they are doing to help me, to protect the honour and
dignity of their ex-chief, I’m proud of that,” he said.