Biography of Pervez Musharraf:- Pervez Musharraf was born in the Indian capital of New Delhi in 1943, into a wealthy family linked to the Punjab, the northern region of his still intact country In India and, subsequently, after the Pakistani independence in 1947, bordering on it.
His father had been a diplomat. The young Musharraf received primary education in the southern port city of Karachi, on the Indian Ocean coast.
Biography of Pervez Musharraf
- Born:- 11 August 1943 (age 73), Delhi, India
- Height:- 1.82 m
- Party:- All Pakistan Muslim League
- Spouse:- Sehba Musharraf (m. 1968)
- Books:- In the Line of Fire: A Memoir, Agnipath Meri Atmakatha
- Education:- Royal College of Defence Studies (1990–1991)
- Died:- February 5, 2023
From very young Musharraf he caressed the idea of becoming military, longing that he put to practice by means of his incorporation to the School of General Staff of the city of Quetta.
See Also: Biography of Mohammed Ali Jinnah
After completing his military training in 1964, he was assigned to command an artillery unit in the northern region of Kashmir, where he intervened actively in one of the first armed clashes in that area, a perennial cause of litigation between Pakistan and India.
In 1971, as a result of further clashes in the area, Musharraf returned to command of Pakistani military units and fueled new motivations for disagreements against the Indian state, from which Pakistan had segregated in a traumatic way after the emancipation of the subcontinent of the metropolis British.
In the post-independence process of India, the majority of Pakistanis belonging to the Muslim religion, such as Musharraf himself, had been a determining factor in the formation of the new State of Pakistan.
Initially, Pakistan had been split off into two territories, western and eastern, with an Islamic population, separated by 1,700 kilometers. From East Pakistan, in 1971, as its own independent State, Bangladesh, with capital in Dhaka,
Old links with the United States
At the end of the seventies, with the events following the overthrow of Shah Reza Pahlevi and the establishment of an Islamic republic by Khomeini in its southern neighbor Iran, the Soviet Union decided to direct military intervention of its army and its aviation in the territory Of Afghanistan, bordered by the then Soviet Socialist Republics of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
Given the proximity and multiple religious and ethnic ties of the Afghan country with Pakistan, the Pakistani government of Islamabad then decided to prepare on its soil mixed units of mujahedin, highly motivated Islamic guerrillas, to combat the Soviet outbreak in the country bordering.
As an officer of the General Staff and of deep-rooted Islamic convictions, Musharraf was then charged with the military training of units formed as international brigades consisting of young refugees from Afghanistan, Pakistani Pashtun ethnic minority, or from Muslim countries, Mainly Algerians, and Egyptians, as well as Eastern Arab States.
Thus, Musharraf met Osama bin Laden, then a young engineer of the Saudi high bourgeoisie, who also organized, from Pakistan first and from the interior of Afghanistan, later, the resistance against the Soviet troops; All with Saudi funds and under the supervision of US military advisers and espionage.
From this stage date the ties, considered bittersweet, of Musharraf with diplomats, spies and US military. Washington’s ascendancy over the Pakistani republic was a constant throughout the Cold War (1946-1989), as a result of the board of geopolitical and strategic interests designed in mainland Asia, where the Soviet Union was almost always aligned with the defense of The Indian Union, while China and the United States repeatedly supported Pakistan.
Rising career
Pervez Musharraf’s military career continued unobtrusively, but incessantly, until 1995, when he was promoted to lieutenant general.
He was then assigned the supreme command of the military region of Mangla, in the Punjab, bordering India, where his family came from. Meanwhile, the Pakistani military had married and had a son and a daughter.
His good disposition earned him the respect of Nawaz Sharif, then Prime Minister of Pakistan, who on 13 October 1998 appointed him Commander in Chief of the Army and Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces.
He succeeded General Jehangir Karamat in this position, relieved of his duties after criticizing Sharif’s government.
In October 1999, the prime minister also decided to remove Musharraf, whom he had initially elevated. The head of the Pakistani government took advantage of a visit of the general to Sri Lanka, old Ceylon, to remove it of the control.
However, with great political astuteness, General Musharraf maneuvered and, barely ten hours after his relay, obtained that Sharif was overthrown by soldiers revolted in his name, whose ascendancy on the Armed Forces of Pakistan was already a fact.
After an interim of eight months, on June 20, 2001, Pervez Musharraf was proclaimed president, he dissolved the federal Parliament and the autonomous parliaments and took over the absolute power in Pakistan, decision that was very criticized by some countries, among them States United.
Following the tradition of his military predecessors, accustomed to becoming involved in politics, Musharraf then promised to call new elections, and announced in August 2001 the call for legislative and autonomous elections by October of the following year.
Musharraf and India’s Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had held a summit in Agra in July 2001 to restore Indo-Pakistani relations, spurred by rivalries that led to the two states becoming members of the nuclear club, after suffering mutually three bloody wars. The summit gave me poor results.
Protagonism after September 11
Following the attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, Pakistan was, with Saudi Arabia, the only state in the world to recognize the rigorous Islamic regime installed in Afghanistan following the military and political defeat at the hands of the Taliban, Of a coalition of guerrilla organizations, later denominated Northern Alliance, that carried out much of the armed struggle against the Soviet occupiers.
The government of George W. Bush appealed to General Musharraf in a bid to force the extradition of his former friend bin Laden, allegedly based in Afghanistan, to which he attributed terrorist acts against United States diplomatic legations in Kenya, Tanzania and Saudi Arabia Years ago, with hundreds of dead, as well as personal responsibility for the preparation of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the attack on the Pentagon building in Washington.
Musharraf initially held controversy over Bush’s claims that Washington did not offer conclusive evidence of bin Laden’s responsibility in the commission of the attacks. This and other disagreements became apparent during a visit to Pakistan in mid-October 2001 by US Secretary of State Colin Powell.
On the other hand, the Pakistani president was suspicious of Washington’s plans to grant the mujahedeen of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan the alternative political alternative to the Taliban regime with which Musharraf, by US induction, ended up breaking relations, although reluctantly.
The status of Pakistan as a nuclear-armed country thus gave Pervez Musharraf’s mandate a politically and militarily relevant profile.
Despite its international role, Pakistan did not escape the risks of internal destabilization stemming from the mass protests of its population against US intervention in Afghanistan, whose chastened civilian population, which reached its borders massively, had close ties Ethnic and religious groups with Pakistanis.
