Getting to know the General

It is a tribute to Pervez Musharraf’s powers of persuasion that after reading this book you’re not entirely sure which country he rules. Is it Pakistan or Fantasististan? The rational choice is Pakistan, but the country he describes belongs to another world altogether. Women are empowered, the madrassahs are being curbed, democracy is waxing, terrorism is waning, investment is up, poverty down, the economy is booming, it’s all marvellous. How on earth did Pakistan get by before the general came along?

A quick corrective to this self-congratulatory tome is not difficult to find. Human Rights Watch, for example, says that in Azad Kashmir ‘the Pakistani government represses democratic freedoms, muzzles the press and practises routine torture’. In its 2005 report Transparency International found that corruption in the provision of public services was endemic, with between 11 and 30 per cent of people having paid a bribe in the past year. As for the general’s recent peace deal with tribal leaders in the safe haven for Taleban and al-Qa’eda in Waziristan, supposedly a major breakthrough in the war on terror, guess what? It is now enjoying a spate of murders and beheadings.

First objections first. There is something unseemly, or just wrong, about a sitting president writing his memoirs. Book tours and after-dinner speeches should come after political retirement, not before. Even those giants of self-promotion Tony Blair and President Clinton understand that. A president should have other things on his mind, like running his country. It wasn’t clear whether Musharraf’s recent visit to Washington was top-level international affairs or the launch of his book tour. It felt more like the latter. He is certainly combative about America in these pages, which might explain his cool reception in the US.

Musharraf promises to share some secrets from the war on terror, but in terms of what it reveals in this area In the Line of Fire is a disappointment.