ISLAMABAD (AP) General Pervez Musharraf, who seized power in a bloodless coup after which he persuaded a reluctant Pakistan to support the US war in Afghanistan against the Taliban, has died, officials said Sunday he was 79 years old.
A former Special Forces commander, Musharraf is the latest president in a series of military coups that have rocked Pakistan since its birth in the bloody partition of India in 1947. He ruled the nuclear powers after the 1999 coup, through tensions with India, proliferation scandals, and Islamic extremist insurgency. He resigned in 2008 while facing possible impeachment.
Musharraf later attempted a political comeback in 2012, but lived in self-imposed exile in Dubai to avoid prosecution. However, his poor health did not haunt him in his later years. He retained the soldier’s fatalism even after avoiding a violent death that seemed to always haunt him when Islamic extremists attempted to assassinate him twice.
Musharraf’s family said he spent several weeks in Dubai in June 2022 while suffering from amyloidosis, an incurable disease that causes protein to build up in his body’s organs. They later said they also needed access to the drug daratumumab, which is used to treat multiple myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow that can cause amyloidosis.
“After 9/11, President Musharraf made a strategic shift to abandon the Taliban and support the United States in the war on terrorism, but neither side believed the other lived up to the expectations resulting from that decision. A 2009 US Telegram-WikiLeaks publication at the time, Ambassador Ann Patterson described what became the diplomatic equivalent of a loveless marriage.
Musharraf was born on August 11, 1943 in New Delhi, India, the second son of a diplomat. His family joined millions of Muslims who fled to the West when Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan split during independence from Britain in 1947. Hundreds of thousands died in riots and fighting during the partition.
Musharraf enlisted in the Pakistan Army at the age of 18 and made a career there while Islamabad fought his third war with India. He launched his own bid for territory in Kashmir’s disputed Himalayan region in 1999, shortly before he seized power from Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
Sharif had ordered Musharraf’s dismissal when he flew home from a visit to Sri Lanka and refused to allow the plane to land in Pakistan despite running out of fuel. On the ground, the army took control, and when he landed, Musharraf took command.
However, according to a US diplomat at the time, as ruler, Musharraf nearly reached an agreement with India over Kashmir. He also worked to make peace with Pakistan’s longtime rival.
World-renowned Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan, long involved in Iran’s nuclear bomb, sold his centrifuge design and other secrets to countries such as Iran, Libya and North Korea, and in the process I was making tens of millions of dollars. These designs helped arm North Korea with nuclear weapons, but centrifuges based on Khan’s designs are still spinning in Iran as nuclear deals between Tehran and world powers collapse. increase. Musharraf said he suspected Khan, but in 2003, when then-CIA Director George Tenet showed him detailed plans for the Pakistani centrifuge Khan had sold, he had no idea of what had happened. I realized how serious it was.
Khan confessed to state television in 2004 and Musharraf forgave him, but was subsequently placed under house arrest.
