Inside Musharraf's Mind!

Daily Times, December 11, 2005
Palloo unveiled: Gen Musharraf’s hidden side
Daily Times Monitor

Following is the transcript of an interview of President General Pervez, his wife Sehba and mother Zareen taken by the Times of India:

Daphne Barak: You are originally from India. You were raised partly in Turkey. You even speak Turkish.

Pervez Musharraf: Yes, I do. I stayed there seven years; a long part of my childhood was spent in Turkey.

DB: That is the most dominant part of your childhood. What is the part which most affected you?

PM: My living in Turkey broadened my vision. My upbringing in Turkey had an impact on my upbringing. It did affect the problem of my knowing my language because we went there in childhood and when I came back my best language was English, followed by Turkish, followed by Urdu, my own language.

DB: There have been several assassination attempts on you. How does that affect your daily life?

PM: I do not allow this to bother me or to affect my life much. Yes, it does affect it to a degree. My security people are more concerned about me than I am myself. I keep moving around, I dine out and I go to hotels for a cup of coffee quite frequently. I move around, socialising.

DB: Are you scared? Do you discuss it with your wife?

PM: No I am not scared, although it may sound very odd to you. I have lived with danger. I have faced danger. I have fought wars. I’m really not scared, but I am concerned. My wife gets scared more than me.

DB: You remember how the first assassination attempt felt?

PM: Yes, I remember every moment of it. The first one was a bridge which was blown right behind me. The car made a sort of jump. I didn’t feel it. When I got home - a minute or two minutes from where it happened - I realised there had been a big blast and the bridge was blown. The second one was much closer. I was in the thick of it. All the debris of the suicide bomb - car and body parts - fell on my car. The second attack was frontal and everything came on me and the car. The tyres moved on the rims. That was closer.

DB: Did it make you more fatalistic?

PM: On both occasions, I went out in the evening. I attended a conference and I gave an interview. Once I went to a marriage party and they were all amazed at how I had come. It made me more confident.

DB: Do you think it is still relevant whether Osama Bin Laden is alive? Is it still relevant to find him? We saw what happened in Jordan. He has successors.

PM: It is very important to finish terrorism. In terrorism, Al Qaeda has almost become a household name. A terrorist attack takes place and they say “we are Al Qaeda”. They may not have links with Osama, but it has become a phenomenon. Al Qaeda’s phenomenon is Osama. To move against them is important.

DB: Do you think to catch him has any meaning today?

PM: It will have a meaning, certainly. It is symbolic, but if you remove a leader of an organisation, it will certainly have effects.

DB: You were quite close to catching him a few months ago...

PM: Some time back, yes.

DB: It was in the spring?

PM: There were indications of his presence. Anyone who understands intelligence knows, opportunities come and either you succeed or you fail and miss for a long time. Moving against terrorism is easier. It is difficult to get intelligence on where the top move.

DB: Are you confident he is alive?

PM: Now? I was confident. But lately, since he is not in the picture, we are trying to evaluate all possibilities...

DB: You took power by a coup. Coups are perceived in a certain way. Yours was bloodless...

PM: It was not a coup. I call it a countercoup. I was in the air, coming from Sri Lanka. Suddenly I was told you cannot land in Pakistan. Being the army chief and not allowed to land in Pakistan? I did not know what was happening. When I landed, I was in charge of a country. What would you call that? When I addressed the nation, sweets were being distributed in all the streets because they were so fed up of the government and of the last 11 years of ‘democracy’. People were relieved to hear there was change. They did not know me but they thought there could be a better life.

DB: You said after a while you would leave the uniform. Last year you decided to maintain it. Why?

PM: I think I would have derailed democracy if I had done that. The things I had introduced would have been derailed if I had removed my uniform. No one could have provided that unity in functioning of the three organs of state. In addition, elected representatives of Pakistan voted in favour of me remaining in uniform until 2007. Constitutionally, I am allowed to stay in uniform until 2007. I had given a verbal promise in terms of me continuing in uniform. Pakistan was a greater issue, for which I would do anything; everything else is secondary.

DB: I hope the First Lady, who is joining us, is not secondary.

PM: Ask her.

DB: We were talking to your husband and I would like to know how you feel. He is probably a very secure person because of assassination attempts against him. He said he was not scared, but...

Sehba Musharraf: Frankly, I do go berserk when I hear something. The first attempt was muffled, but the second was loud and clear. I was in the process of sounding my prayers, so it shook me. By the time the cars arrived and I saw their condition, I just went crazy. I screamed.

PM: She never screams. When we face danger during our car journeys, she cries afterwards, but this time she was screaming while the events were taking place.

DB: Did you, like many husbands and wives, suggest, ‘Maybe you should not do that’ or ‘maybe you are going too fast’?

SM: No, not really. I know many things have to be done and the window of opportunity is always rather small. Whatever has to be done must be done within a short time. I suppose that it is fate; I am rather fatalistic in some ways.

PM: You are not saying I am a slowmover. I don’t like slow movement; I move quickly. SM: Yes - rather impatient.

DB: How did you meet?

SM: It was an arranged marriage. My parents knew one of his aunts, so she brought them along to ‘look me over’. We had a long engagement, during which we corresponded...

PM: For two years.

SM: And he corrected a lot of my spelling mistakes.

DB: When you staged the countercoup, you changed from being a general to head of state, and you from a general’s wife to First Lady. What were your thoughts?

SM: I was quite scared, because I am not an outgoing person, and I feel slightly uncomfortable at centrestage. I prefer to be on the sidelines, so it was scary for me. Even now, I am a little scared.

DB: Do you encourage her to go out?

PM: Yes, absolutely. I think, as she said, she is capable of doing it, so she should make use of her ability. She is good at interacting, so there is no reason why she should be withdrawn.

DB: I met your son in New York. Tell me about your children.

PM: I love them - I think that they are the best children in the world. Anyone would say that about their children.

DB: Your son is at Stanford, is he not?

PM: Yes, after working for eight years, he decided to start studying.

DB: Why in the US? People with misconceptions about Pakistan and the Muslim world might question that choice.

PM: Most people who can afford it send their children to the US, but also the UK. After 9/11, the balance has shifted in favour of the UK. My son has been in the US since 1990. He studied at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, after which he worked in Boston. He wanted to gain another degree, so he is now at Stanford.

DB: Are you concerned for his security, because people in the US know that he is your son?

SM: So far, we have had no problems.

PM: There was a problem after 9/11. Security personnel at the firm where he worked approached the manager and raised a security concern. He was summoned by the manager, who asked him whether he knew President Musharraf. He said, ‘Yes’. She asked, ‘How do you know him?’, and he said, ‘He is my father’. She asked, ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’, and he said, ‘You never asked, so why did I have to?’ That was interesting. They told him to stay at home and not come to office. He protested, saying, ‘No, that’s not the way I function’. They made adjustments and things went well.

DB: Are you expecting them to return to Pakistan?

SM: I think he wants to come back and he would like to work.

PM: He wants to come back. He loves Pakistan and wants to make a contribution. Even before the earthquake, many youngsters and older people were returning. There is a reverse ‘brain drain’, with 160 PhD doctors living abroad returning to Pakistan. He also wants to come back and contribute.

DB: I understand you had a picture taken with your dog, and there were misperceptions locally — what really happened?

SM: It was my idea. We had two Pekinese, one white and one russet-coloured. We were walking and I said, ‘Bring the dogs’.

PM: I brought both - I am not bothered. I love dogs and I still have three - one Pekinese and two cocker spaniels.

DB: Do you welcome his mother?

SM: Yes, where else can she go?

DB: We are at your son Pervez Musharraf ‘s private residence. Tell me about him as a small child.

Zarin Musharraf: He was a naughty boy. He is the second of my three sons and was closer to me than the others. My husband was in the diplomatic service. We used to go out to parties, but he used to cry so much, saying his father could go, but not me. He was very fond of sweets; if there was no sweet dish in the meal, he used to cry and make a lot of fuss.

DB: How did you bring him up?

ZM: He was very open-minded. All his friends used to look up to him to decide what games they would play next. I thought that he had the quality of leadership and I thought, ‘Inshallah, he will be chief of the army’, but I never thought that he would be president of the country. I was very humble.

DB: Did you think a child who cried for his mother would be a general?

ZM: He was the ringleader of his playmates. I wanted him to join the army because he wasn’t focused. I’d think, ‘My God, what is going to happen to this son of mine?’ My eldest son was a brilliant scholar, but not Pervez. He was good at mathematics. He is very logical. Perhaps not, if he became president of Pakistan in such dangerous times.

Never in my wildest dreams did I think he would become president. I just wanted him to reach the peak of his army career. That was my wish, but then God destined him to be president. It was dangerous times, and there were assassination attempts on him.

DB: There were three assassination bids. How did you hear about the first one?

ZM: I heard it on the news. It was while he was going to Karachi. Somebody tried to bomb the motorcade. I was so scared. I used to be scared whenever he went out, but I left it to God – it is in His hands.

DB: In Pakistan, you have extended families. You live with him and your daughter-in-law. Who ‘calls the shots’?

ZM: My daughter-in-law is the mistress of the house. When I was young, I was mistress of the house, running my home. This is my daughter-in-law’s house. We have a very good relationship.

DB: Do you remember the day he became head of state?

ZM: I was here, in this house, and he was in Sri Lanka. The PM at the time would not allow his plane to land. I heard on the news. They were saying the plane would not be allowed to land. I was worried because the military was behind him. He was made to surrender before being allowed to land. The commander in Karachi saw to it the plane was allowed to make a safe landing.

DB: That day, when he took over, how did he tell you? Did he call you and say, ‘Mum, I’m the president?’

ZM: He was due to address the nation once he landed, but more and more time passed until, at seven o’clock the next morning, he telephoned me. He said, ‘Ammi, I’m here and I’m safe’. He told me that he was the president and that he no longer had to worry for his safety.

DB: How did it sound to you?

ZM: I was thrilled. I bowed my head to Allah for having given my son this position, which I could not have dreamt about. I wanted him to be the chief of the army, but I had never thought of this.

DB: He calls you ammi, which means ‘mum’, but what do you call him?

ZM: I call him Pervez.

DB: Do you not have a nickname for him?

ZM: I used to call him ‘Palloo’, but then I stopped, because it spoils the name. Now I call him Pervez.