Pakistan’s military dictator for the last eight years and now its President in civil clothes reminds one in more ways than one of the late Shah of Iran in the closing days of the fall of monarchy in Iran in 1979. General Musharraf like the Shah of Iran has become delusional and megalomaniac led by his self-exaltation that he is indispensable for Pakistan’s destiny. Like the Shah of Iran, General Musharraf is refusing to read the writing on the wall that as far as the people of Pakistan are concerned his time is up and that he must exit gracefully. The results of Pakistan’s General Elections are a stirring message for him that he stands rejected by the people of Pakistan.

In Pakistan it were the “bullets” from his own military people that first targeted him to remove him from the helm of affairs. Mercifully he survived. Now the “ballots” of Pakistan’s first free and fair elections conducted under external pressure that targeted him and have found their mark.

It needs to be recalled that the Shah of Iran was the most trusted ally of the United States in the region and was looked upon by America to serve US strategic interests in the region. The Imperial Iranian Armed Forces were built up into a highly powerful force with the latest and modern American military hardware.

However there were fatal flaws in the Shah of Iran and United States relationship.
Both were not aware of the tremendous hostility and contempt that the Shah of Iran was held in by the Iranian masses. The Shah’s rule was despotic and political dissent was not tolerated and further brutally suppressed. The Americans chose to be oblivious to this reality and were content to have the Shah of Iran at the helm of affairs in Iran as long as he served America’s strategic interests. The same fatal flaws are in evidence in Pakistan today.

Post-9/11, the United States built up General Musharraf as America’s most trusted protégé to serve and deliver on the objectives of the American global war on terrorism; this despite the fact that the Pakistani dictator was the main protagonist of global terror as an instrument of state-craft. The Pakistan Army was supplied with the latest military hardware which had no relevance to counter-terrorism warfare but it was done to massage the ego of General Musharraf and Pakistan Army Generals.

Eight years down the line, the picture of Pakistan that emerges is sordid in the sense that neither did General Musharraf deliver to the United States on the pledges that he made to America in terms of the global war on terrorism and nor with all the $12 billion US largesse that flowed into Pakistan he could transform Pakistan into a modern and progressive state.

General Musharraf was given a free run of Pakistan by the United States like that given to the Shah of Iran as a quid pro quo to deliver United States strategic objectives. American unquestioned backing for General Musharraf progressively led him to the delusioned belief that not only was he indispensable to the United States but also to Pakistan. For all practical purposes General Musharraf had started behaving in an imperial and arrogant manner as if he was really the “Shah of Pakistan”.

But then Pakistan in 2007 could not be compared to the Iran of the 1970s. In March 2007 the first assertive stirrings for democracy and the rule of law and constitutionalism were spearheaded by the Judiciary and the legal fraternity. Pakistan’s enlarging civil society and middle class too joined in with only one powerful signal- ‘Go Musharraf, Go”

The rural masses in Pakistan like in Iran were also becoming restive with food and power shortages and corruption as never before.

Pakistan had become politically explosive but General Musharraf even till the day of General Elections stoutly maintained that his popularity within Pakistan was high and that his sponsored political party would come back into power.

Now that the results of the General Elections have indicated an outright personal rejection of the General and further that the political parties that have won have given enough indications that they would impeach General Musharraf if he does not quit voluntarily, the “Shah of Pakistan” is defiantly swimming against the tide of massive public opinion.

The “Shah of Pakistan” seems destined to go the way that the Shah of Iran did.

March 2, 2008

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