Musharraf’s Life Story Tracked Pakistan’s Struggle with the U.S.

Feb 8, 2023
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Also published in The Hill
U.S. President George W. Bush and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf - source: U.S. government
About the Authors
Simon Henderson
Simon Henderson

Simon Henderson is the Baker Senior Fellow and director of the Bernstein Program on Gulf and Energy Policy at The Washington Institute, specializing in energy matters and the conservative Arab states of the Persian Gulf.

Articles & Testimony

The late leader’s funeral also shed light on the status of military-civil relations in Islamabad, where governments come and go but the military remains the most powerful party.

Pervez Musharraf, one-time military dictator of Pakistan, was buried on Feb. 7 in the port city of Karachi after dying in exile in the United Arab Emirates on Feb. 5. A headline in the Wall Street Journal described him as a “key U.S. ally.” Well, up to a point, to borrow the disbelieving jargon of British journalists who have read “Scoop,” the literary classic by Evelyn Waugh. Yes, it’s true that Musharraf sided with the U.S. after the 9/11 attacks by al Qaeda hijackers who had been sheltered by the Taliban in Afghanistan, with whom Pakistan was allied. But as Musharraf himself records in his 2006 memoir, “We had to decide whether we were with America or with the terrorists, but if we chose the terrorists, then we should be prepared to be bombed back to the Stone Age...”

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