Pervez Musharraf

Pervez Musharraf took power in Pakistan by coup in 1999 and held it for nine years, most of them as America's necessary partner. He was born in Delhi and his family migrated at partition; he was commissioned into the artillery, fought in 1965 and 1971, and was made army chief by Nawaz Sharif in 1998 over more senior officers. Within a year he had planned the Kargil incursion, which put Pakistani troops on the Indian side of the line of control, brought the two countries close to war and had to be ended under American pressure. When Sharif tried to dismiss him in October 1999 while his plane was in the air and refused it permission to land, the army took the government instead. He ruled as chief executive, then president, and his position was transformed by the attacks of September 2001: told to choose sides, he chose within a day, and Pakistan went from sanctions and isolation to billions in aid while the intelligence service went on keeping its own relationships across the border. He survived at least two assassination attempts, liberalised the media and the economy, and pursued a back-channel with India that came closer to a Kashmir settlement than anything before or since. It fell apart at home. Sacking the chief justice in 2007 produced a lawyers' movement he could not intimidate; the siege of the Red Mosque produced a domestic insurgency; Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in December on his watch. He resigned in 2008 facing impeachment, went into exile, returned in 2013 to be disqualified and charged, and was sentenced to death in absentia for treason in 2019, a verdict later set aside. He died in Dubai in 2023.

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