Pakistan’s former president, General Pervez Musharraf, died at the age of 79, Daily Mail reports. He seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999 and subsequently launched a campaign against Islamist extremism. A controversial military ruler, Musharraf led a reluctant Pakistan into supporting the U.S. war in Afghanistan against the Taliban—fighters his nation had previously backed. Islamic militants twice targeted him for assassination.
A former special‑forces commando, Musharraf became president through the last of a series of military coups that have plagued Pakistan since its founding amid the bloody 1947 partition of India. He governed the nuclear‑armed state through turbulent times, including tensions with India, an atomic‑proliferation scandal and an insurgency by Islamic extremists. He stepped down in 2008 while facing possible impeachment.
During his tenure, Musharraf emerged as an unlikely ally of the United States and NATO, supporting the war on terror and visiting the United Kingdom during Tony Blair’s premiership. After leaving office, he lived in self‑imposed exile in Dubai to avoid criminal charges, despite attempting a political comeback in 2012. His family announced in June that he had been hospitalized for weeks with amyloidosis, an incurable condition in which proteins accumulate in the body’s organs. Shazia Siraj, a spokeswoman for the Pakistani consulate in Dubai, confirmed his death and said diplomats were providing support to his family. “I have confronted death and defied it several times in the past because destiny and fate have always smiled on me,” Musharraf once wrote. “I only pray that I have more than the proverbial nine lives of a cat.”
Pakistan, now home to 220 million people, drew U.S. attention less than two years after Musharraf seized power because of its border with Afghanistan. After Al‑Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden launched the September 11, 2001 attacks from Afghanistan, sheltered by the Taliban, Musharraf anticipated the fallout. “America was sure to react violently, like a wounded bear,” he wrote in his autobiography. “If the perpetrator turned out to be al‑Qaeda, then that wounded bear would come charging straight toward us.” On September 12, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told Musharraf that Pakistan would be “with us or against us,” and another American official threatened to bomb Pakistan “back into the Stone Age” if it chose the latter. Musharraf chose the former.
A month later, he stood beside President George W. Bush at the Waldorf Astoria in New York to declare Pakistan’s unwavering support for fighting “terrorism in all its forms wherever it exists.” Pakistan became a crucial transit point for NATO supplies destined for landlocked Afghanistan, even though its powerful Inter‑Services Intelligence agency had previously backed the Taliban after they seized power in 1994. Earlier, the CIA and others had funneled money and arms through the ISI to Islamic fighters battling the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.
The U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan forced Taliban fighters, including bin Laden, to flee across the border into Pakistan. Bin Laden was later killed in 2011 at a compound in Abbottabad. The militants regrouped, and the Pakistani Taliban emerged, sparking a years‑long insurgency in the mountainous border region. With Musharraf’s blessing, the CIA began operating armed drones from Pakistan, using an airstrip built by the founding president of the United Arab Emirates in Balochistan province. The drone programme helped push back the militants but resulted in more than 400 strikes in Pakistan, killing at least 2,366 people, including 245 civilians, according to the Washington‑based New America Foundation think tank.
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