Book Launch: A General in Particular: Interactions with Pervez Musharraf

The closed-door dialogue on March 25, 2000 between US President Bill Clinton and Gen Pervez Musharraf, which is included in former Senator Javed Jabbar’s recent political memoir — A General in Particular: Interactions with Pervez Musharraf — became the topic of discussion at the book’s launch at the Pakistan Institute of International Affairs here on Thursday in the presence of Dr Masuma Hasan.

Reflecting on the aspects of that dialogue and the prospects for the future of Pakistan-US relations, Senator Jabbar, who was part of the cabinet of Gen Musharraf until 2000, said that when we talk about the two countries, we are talking about two very different countries. 

“Our relationship will always be in the foreseeable future. A relationship of inequality. A bilateral relationship in which the two are not equal but then that applies to every other country of the world. The US is so far ahead of other countries in terms of economy, in terms of the military that no country today, even China, is able to say that they can match the US in every respect. So, if every other country on the planet will have an unequal relationship with the USA, the challenge for Pakistan becomes how do we manage that inequality? It is not as if it is a hopeless situation. Other countries, which are also not equal to the US, have also shown that they can manage this inequality in a way that works for them.

“There are also symmetries when there are so many asymmetries. In the United Nations General Assembly, we are two equal nation states. There is also symmetry in the fact that the US and Pakistan are one of only nine nuclear powers of the world out of 200 nation states and that’s not to be disregarded,” he said, adding: “Our nuclear power does give us a semblance of symmetry with the US” and moreover quite positively:

We are nowhere near as powerful as the US but demeaning ourselves and losing self respect and self confidence is one of the worst things that we can do to ourselves when we are dealing with the US. We are very capable with tremendous potential. There is so much good in Pakistan

Moving to the dialogue between Gen Musharraf and President Clinton in 2000, he said that before the US president came he was the only one to oppose his visit due to the US ambassador’s outrageous conditions such as no photographs, eight hours, addressing the nation, etc. But he was overruled. Clinton was here to convince Gen Musharraf to spare ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif. The meeting, which was to go on for only 35 minutes, went on till 85 minutes. 

“Musharraf began tentatively but he very quickly acquired confidence as he spoke. Clinton was also very stiff in the initial part but lo and behold, within 15 minutes of the dialogue, he actually started to relax and smile. The meeting proceeded towards cordiality rather than tension. Conversation moved very smoothly, there were chuckles even. The president’s aides were surprised that the president was enjoying a conversation with a military dictator. It was the charm of Pakistan, obviously. Even after the 85 minutes, the two leaders wanted an exclusive one-on-one meeting. 

“I was not a part of that meeting but I suspect that General Musharraf must have conveyed to him obviously the need to avoid the death sentence or execution of Nawaz Sharif and he must have kept in mind the fact that not too long ago another US president Carter had appealed to General Ziaul Haq not to execute Z.A. Bhutto and that general had ignored not just the US president but virtually all other leaders who had also appealed for Z.A. Bhutto’s life. So Clinton’s wanting assurance from Musharraf was perfectly understandable. Musharraf, from what we know of him, did not ever have the temperament of being a cold-blooded, callous kind of killer. He was not built that way. His psyche was not of that kind,” he said.

Published in Dawn, 10 March 10, 2023

Former federal minister and former senator Javed Jabbar on Thursday launched his latest political memoir “A General in Particular: Intonations with Pervez Musharraf” at the Pakistan Institute of International Affairs, revealing the closed-door dialogue between former American present Bill Clinton and the late former president and army chief Gen Musharraf.

Addressing the book launch ceremony, Jabbar uncovered every aspect of Pakistan and US relations and also shed light on the dialogue and prospects for the future of both countries. “We should stop supplicating before the US. We have to establish strong diplomatic ties with the US rather than demeaning ourselves,” said Jabbar, adding that the reality is that the US helped us on various occasions but not that much which we were expecting.

He suggested that we should make collective efforts to transform Pakistan into a strong and stable state, and we have to stop blaming India, IMF and others.

Highlighting the role of the military, he said that the military has strong interference in the internal affairs of Pakistan, but this is not an exception, as the militaries of power countries also have a say in foreign relations and policies of their countries.

Talking about former US president Bill Clinton’s visit to Pakistan in 2000, Jabbar said that India had tried to create hurdles in the visit of the US president to Pakistan. For this, India even staged an attack on the Sikh community in Kashmir and started blaming Pakistan, but that idea didn’t work.

He said that before joining the camp of the war against terror, Clinton held a series of meetings with Musharraf and discussed various issues in a very tentative way. The former US president, at that time, informed Musharraf that terrorists can pose a serious to Pakistan. “A meeting between Clinton and Musharraf was scheduled for 35 minutes only, but when it started both the leaders took around 85 minutes ignoring all the reminders to end the meeting.”

Jabbar said Musharraf had no intention to execute Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif because he knew that General Zia had committed a mistake by executing Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

The former senator, while speaking about Musharraf’s progressive polices, said he brought massive reforms to the electoral system and one of them was that the minorities got the right to contest elections on general seats. This was the reason that three people from minority groups in Sindh won the general elections against their opponents.

He said Musharraf also tried to strengthen the Election Commission of Pakistan and introduced local governments. In addition, he said, the former president increased the number of seats for women and established several cultural centers. Above all, private TV channels flourished during the Musharraf era. “The electronic media enjoyed unprecedented freedom in Musharraf era.”

Jabbar, however, said that many unfortunate things also happened during the Musharraf regime. They were the tragedy of Lal Masjid, the dismissal of then chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, the issue of missing persons, and the killing of Nawab Akbar Bugti in a military operation. “Musharraf had no intention to kill Bugti.”

He said Musharraf was a president in uniform and also some of the generals became part of the cabinet, which created difficulties for him and the people around him. “I joined Musharraf because I thought there was a possibility to implement something positive and make reforms. I believe that Musharraf was a man with a constructive personality.”

Published in The News, 10 March 2023

PIIA Seminar on Hybrid Warfare: New Threats and Complexities for Pakistan

Security experts and social scientists have agreed that the growing advancement of technology has changed the mediums of conventional threats and it’s time for the country to develop skills and manpower using the latest technologies and aligning itself with the latest trends to meet emerging challenges especially in the context of future hybrid wars.

They shared these views while speaking at a seminar on ‘Hybrid Warfare: New Threats and Complexities for Pakistan’ organised by the Pakistan Institute of International Affairs (PIIA) in its library on Saturday.

“Terrorist attacks to subvert economic growth are on the cards of our enemies. Our armed forces and law enforcement agencies have bravely fought and are fighting against terrorism, but now we need to adjust our sails using the latest technologies and align ourselves with the latest trends,” said former additional director general of the Federal Investigation Agency and founder of Digital Pakistan Ammar Jaffri.

Speaking on the topic ‘Cyber security for the national security of Pakistan, he said: “Due to its geopolitical importance, Pakistan is subject to multiple grey zone threats. The enemy through constant propaganda campaigns is trying to portray Pakistan as a state which is responsible for sponsoring militancy and terrorism in the region. A discriminatory attitude was observed in the FATF where despite fulfilling most of the conditions, the country was still included in the grey list. After August 15, 2021, when the Taliban took control of Kabul, even the failure of Ashraf Ghani was being attributed to Pakistan. Despite acting as a facilitator of peace in Afghanistan, Pakistan is being doubted and projected in a bad light.”

“The new trends of fake/deep fake and disinformation/crimes on social media needs trained manpower in digital forensics. Future hybrid wars will be based on emerging technologies, which require trained manpower with demand-driven skills and first-hand knowledge of the latest trends of cyber warfare. Digital media is today more powerful than print and electronic media. Artificial intelligence has the power to make humans think what machines want them to understand,” he said.

Speaking about ‘Economic coercion as an instrument of hybrid war in the case of Pakistan’, the Principal of the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at NUST, Islamabad, Dr Ashfaque Hasan Khan, who joined the moot online, also said that the concept of war has changed from conventional to non-conventional.

“Economy is now the new battlefield. The main objective of this strategy is to incapacitate the ability of the country to strengthen its national security through weakening of economy, institutions and governance capacity. In the non-kinetic domain, economic warfare forms an important component of hybrid war,” the noted economist said. He pointed out:

The erosion of economic strength of any country is perhaps the most important element and likely the hardest to reverse once it is accomplished

Pakistan has the distinction of being the only nuclear power, which has sought financial support from the International Monetary Fund with great regularity. Since its inception, Pakistan has gone to the IMF 22 times, but from 1988 it has gone there 18 times. Barring four years [2004-2008], Pakistan has been taking the same medicine from the same doctor for 33 years in a row and with each passing day, Pakistan’s economic health has continued to deteriorate

We must realise that economic warfare has been imposed on us. We are in a hybrid war. We must say no to the IMF programme. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is a great potential to keep Pakistan away from the IMF programme.

Adviser at the Centre for Strategic and Contemporary Research, Islamabad, retired Lt Gen Naeem Khalid Lodhi, was also present virtually and spoke about ‘How to fight back in the hybrid environment’. He said that it is better to first understand the nature and purpose of warfare. 

“The actual and primary target here are the decision-makers. The second target is the youth,” he said, adding that tools are important if you want to fight back. “Without the wherewithal you can’t fight back,” he said.

“To fight the intricate war with finesse, you need a special force. Right now all think tanks are saying that we are in a hybrid war, but no one there talks about how to fight the war. A reinforced national security advisory secretariat needs to be revived and be directly responsible for planning how to fight this peculiar nature of war. They must combine under one roof all the requisite expertise to report directly to the prime minister, and give him continuous feedback,” he said.

PIIA Chairperson Dr Masuma Hasan also spoke.

Published in Dawn, 27 February 2023