IN last week’s column, I wrote about India’s impressive economic performance since the early 1990s. I suggested that one reason for India’s good and sustained performance was the deliberate pace at which it proceeded to open itself to the world outside. China too wished to become a part of the global economic system but at a pace dictated by it rather than by the transnational corporations.

It took fifteen years of intense bargaining before China was prepared to put its signatures on the document that was to give it full entry into the World Trade Organization. In refusing to rush into the arms of global capitalism by entering into the WTO, the Chinese bought sufficient protection for those parts of its economy that were still fragile.

China’s opening began in the late seventies and picked up pace in the eighties and nineties. It was produced by a combination of two policy initiatives. One, to change the incentive structural for small producers working in agriculture as well as in other parts of the economy. By allowing these people to produce for the market rather than for a state-dictated plan, China saw an enormous increase in the productivity of this class of entrepreneurs. The productivity increases realized by these producers added enormously to their incomes and savings and contributed to the equally impressive growth in the rate of increases in China’s gross domestic product and gross domestic savings. The stage had thus been set for the take-off of the Chinese economy.

The second element in China’s growth strategy was to permit the large and wealthy Chinese diaspora to invest in the country, in particular in the export processing zones that were located on the country’s east coast. A great deal of capital owned by “foreign Chinese” flowed into China’s east coast. Once this capital had begun to produce profits for itself, non-Chinese corporations followed. The rest, as they say, is history.

Indians followed a slightly different approach. India’s opening started fifteen years after that of China’s and was focused on dismantling the “licence raj.” India’s anaemic rate of economic growth for 45 years following the attainment of independence in 1947 was constrained by an overbearing state that sought to regulate everything. During this period of four and a half decades, the Indian GDP increased at a rate of 3 to 3.5 percent a year, slightly more than the increase in population. Raj Krishna, a well-known and highly respected Indian economist, coined the phrase of the “Hindu rate of growth” for this anaemic performance.

A GDP growth rate so close to the increase in population means that whatever is being added to national output is coming almost entirely from the extra hands that are being put to work by the increase in the number of people in the labour force. Productivity increase — when the same pair of hands are able to produce more — plays a very small role when GDP increases at a rate close to the increase in population growth.

Under the watchful eye of the Nehruvian state, the large-scale Indian industry could do little on its own — it had to seek licences for all kinds of activities. Deep crises can sometimes lead to positive change and this happened in India in 1991. The licence raj was gradually — that is to say not very quickly — dismantled under the programme of reform authored by finance minister Manmohan Singh.

While this was happening the Indian diaspora in the West — in particular in the United States — turned its attention towards its homeland. A very large number of overseas Indians had made vast amounts of money in the sector of information technology. With their encouragement which included finance, advice on product development, and access to the markets in the West, the Indian IT industry took off at an unprecedented rate. In the past several years the Indian IT exports have been increasing at the phenomenal rate of over 50 per cent a year.

As a consequences of these extraordinary changes in public policy in both China and India, it is likely that the two most populous countries of Asia — in fact, the two largest countries in the world — will experience unprecedented rates of growth over the next quarter century. In articles contributed earlier to Dawn and to Financial Times, I had predicted that the “elephant economies” of China and India will dominate the next “catching up” phase in the evolving history of the global economy. In the three earlier phases, America caught up with Britain, Japan with America and Europe, and the tiger economies of East Asia began to close the income gap with the world’s rich economies. In the fourth phase, which has now begun, China and India are set to move forward at an impressive pace.

By the year 2025 China, producing 25 per cent of the global output, will most likely be the world’s largest economy, followed by the United States. The US’s share in global production is likely to remain unchanged while that of other large industrial countries — Japan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Italy — will decline quite significantly. The sharp economic decline in Europe and Japan will almost entirely be the consequence of a significant decline in human fertility in these countries. It is exceedingly difficult — if not impossible — for economies to realize productivity gains when populations are declining and when, as a consequence, the proportion of the young in total population is being rapidly reduced.

This then is the situation in Japan and all of Europe. The more populous countries of Asia have a different demographic profile. The Chinese population will also begin to decline in about three to four decades — by about 2040. India, on the other hand, will continue to see an increase in population. By 2050, it might overtake China and become the world’s largest country. These demographic changes will have significant economic consequences, particularly in terms of the line-up of the national economies in the race towards economic prominence and domination.

Growing at about 6 per cent a year for the next 25 years — not an unlikely prospect but somewhat more difficult to achieve than China’s 7 to 8 per cent growth rate — India may also see a large increase in its share of global output. This could increase from the present 6 to an eventual 10 per cent of the world total. In other words, China and India together may account for more than one-third of the global product by the year 2025. This is about the same proportion currently accounted for by the United States and Western Europe.

What would be the most profound aspect of this massive shift in the centre of gravity of the global economy. All indications point to the fact that by 2025, the world economy’s centre of gravity will lie on the Asian mainland and will no longer be somewhere close to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The most significant aspect of this change will concern the competition for resources. And when there is intense competition for resources, it inevitably leads to conflict — even military conflict.

I am prepared to suggest that the war against Afghanistan launched by the United States along with a group of western nations is as much a war against terrorism as it is about access to and control of the world’s diminishing natural resources. Among them, of course is oil. Most of unexploited reservoirs of oil are in the Muslim countries of West Asia. The Muslim oil belt runs from Algeria and Libya and then moves south through Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. It then crosses the Persian Gulf and moves into Iran and then across the Caspian Sea into the “stans” of Central Asia.

The catch-up period in which the elephant economies of China and India will begin to first approach and then overtake several western economies has one unique attribute. This will be the first time that, among the four largest world economies, two will be poor. In 2025, China and India will be very large economies but they will also be very poor. In terms of purchasing power parity, China in 2025 will have a gross product of $25 trillion in the prices of 2001, equivalent to 25 per cent of world output which, in today’s prices, will be valued at $100 trillion. By that time, its population will have stabilized at 1.4 billion giving it a per capita income of about $17,900. This will be one-half of the average American income in 2001.

In the next 25 years, the American GDP and personal income will also increase to $22 trillion and $60,000, respectively. Putting it differently, the world’s richest economy in 2025 in terms of the size of its product will have less than one-third the average income of the world’s second largest economy. This difference between national wealth and persistent poverty of a large segment of the population will have significant consequences for the way the world’s major economies will interact with one another.

India will have an even larger gap between its projected per capita income of about $7,000 by 2025 to that of $60,000 in the United States — a gap of nearly one to nine. The Indian per capita income is also likely to be less than one-half of those I project for China. The only “catching-up” India would have done is in terms of the size of its economy. It will still have very large pockets of poverty and underdevelopment.

Having become large elephants, will China and India stampede and rampage through the forests of the world economy looking for the resources both lack and which both will need as they continue to move forward? Will they work with one another or against one another as they, in different ways, continue to give a new and different shape to the global economic system? What will be Pakistan’s situation in this scheme of things? Should Pakistan stay where it is today or should it “migrate” and move north and west, towards the oil and resource rich countries of Central and Western Asia?

Countries, of course, don’t move in a physical sense. The landmass on which states are situated cannot be transported. No matter what happens, Pakistan will continue to share a long border of some 1,800 miles with India. China will continue to tower above Pakistan’s eastern border. But countries can change their identity.

Jinnah wanted a break with Hindu India for the simple reason that he did not see much compatibility between his people and Hindus. His “two-nation theory” resulted in the creation of Pakistan. Now, 55 years later, General Musharraf may put greater distance between Pakistan and its neighbour to the south and develop a new economic and social identity of a West Asian rather than a South Asian country.

WHEN India and Pakistan became independent in 1947 there were more than 560 princely states in the subcontinent. The rulers of these states had been told to join either India or Pakistan in accordance with the principle of partition and keeping in view the wishes of their people.

The accession of most of these states took place smoothly except in the case of Junagadh, Hyderabad and Jammu and Kashmir. The Muslim ruler of Junagadh, a predominantly Hindu state, announced his decision to join Pakistan.

Similarly, Hyderabad, also a predominantly Hindu state, which had a Muslim ruler, wanted to opt for an independent status. India, however, forcibly occupied these two states using the argument that the rulers of these states had acted against the wishes of their people.

The Hindu ruler of the third state, Jammu and Kashmir, had entered into a Standstill Agreement with Pakistan on August 15, 1947. It was rightly assumed that this agreement was the prelude to full accession of the state to Pakistan.

However, when the people of the State of Jammu and Kashmir sensed that their Hindu ruler was clandestinely manoeuvring to accede to India against the established principle of partition and completely ignoring their wishes, they revolted against him, as a result of which he fled from Srinagar on October 25, 1947 and took refuge in Jammu, near the Indian border.

Thus, the Dogra rule, which, under the infamous Amritsar Treaty, the British government had imposed on Jammu and Kashmir in 1846, came to an end.

The former secretary of Indian States Department, V.P. Menon, in his book “The Story of Integration of States” has mentioned that he had also to leave Srinagar for New Delhi soon after the departure of the Maharaja for Jammu as, because of the turmoil in Kashmir, his own life was also in danger.

However, according to Menon, he went to Jammu on October 26, 1947, in a special plane, and obtained from the Maharaja an “Instrument of Accession” in favour of India. This makes it abundantly clear that if the Maharaja had indeed signed the so-called Instrument of Accession, India must have manipulated it fraudulently. The Maharaja, after having lost the control of his state and the confidence of his subjects, had no power to do so. Apparently, India wanted to use the so-called accession instrument as it did, as a pretext to occupy Jammu and Kashmir by force against the wishes of the people.

Ironically, even the governor-general of India, Lord Mountbatten, while acknowledging the so-called Instrument of Accession, informed the new powerless ruler that the question of the state’s accession should be settled by a reference to its people and the prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, on a number of occasions, categorically stated that the future of Kashmir would be decided by the people of the state. The subsequent events have, however, proved that all these pious pronouncements by the Indian leadership were made to buy time and to hoodwink the international opinion.

The UN Security Council, with which India had lodged a complaint against Pakistan’s alleged interference in the state’s affairs, also did not consider the accession of Jammu and Kashmir to India as valid. It, therefore, resolved that the future of the state should be decided through the democratic method of a free and impartial plebiscite held under the UN auspices.

However, in blatant violation of the Security Council resolutions, India continues to occupy the major part of the territory of Jammu and Kashmir since October 1947 and its people are being brutally repressed by it for demanding their inalienable right to self-determination. Needless to say, the denial of this right is an irrefutable evidence of India’s contempt for international law and morality and disdain for the United Nations.

India claims to be the defender of human rights and values but behaves savagely in occupied Kashmir. Taking advantage of the international community’s resolve to fight international terrorism and to detract the world’s attention from its own misdeeds in occupied Kashmir, India has raised the pitch of its propaganda against the freedom fighters in Jammu and Kashmir whom it portrays as terrorists.

It has also unleashed a reign of terror against them under the guise of “counter-terrorism”. To crush the freedom movement in occupied Kashmir, it has resorted to unbridled state terrorism, including the promulgation of a number of draconian laws, the most recent one being POTO, which is being used to further victimize the Kashmiris.

India has also launched vicious propaganda against Pakistan accusing it of sponsoring terrorism in occupied Kashmir. In flagrant violation of the UN Charter, it has massed its troops along the Line of Control and its international border with Pakistan. However, Pakistan cannot be intimidated by these tactics. It is exercising maximum restraint in the face of this grave provocation. President Pervez Musharraf has warned India that it would be paid in the same coin if it resorted to any adventurism against this country.

The people of Pakistan and those of Azad Kashmir observe February 5 every year as “Kashmir Solidarity Day”. Pakistan is committed to a peaceful settlement of the Kashmir problem and will, therefore, continue to extend its full political, diplomatic and moral support to the legitimate Kashmiri struggle for the right to self-determination as enshrined in the UN Charter and in its various resolutions.

In the bilateral context, Pakistan will continue to press India to hold meaningful and result-oriented negotiations with it in order to resolve all the outstanding issues between the two countries, including the core and long-standing issue of Kashmir, to ensure durable and lasting peace in South Asia.

The international community, particularly the big powers, as well as the United Nations, are also expected to persuade India to stop repression and genocide in the occupied territory and to resolve the Kashmir problem in accordance with the aspirations of the Kashmiri people.

WE have been in the news since September 11, not always for the right reasons and though we have received a ringing endorsement for the role that we have been playing as a coalition partner in the war against terrorism, one can’t help feeling that Pakistan is being watched closely.

The perception could be that Pakistan’s heart is not in the war against terrorism as it is being fought. So that, the only terrorist groups and organizations that have been targeted are those which are, in popular jargon, Islamic extremists. This could well be that other terrorists, such as the militant IRA or the Basque do not pose any kind of danger to the United States.

And Ariel Sharon’s Israel is a stout ally and is free to do what it likes and is doing so in spades, making war against the Palestinians with a vengeance. Therefore, there appears to be a selectivity. Terrorism is not a tangible enemy and the use of military force, such as we have seen in Afghanistan and the much heralded victory against the Taliban only tells us, what we already knew, that the United States is the mightiest military power on earth.

But the real danger is that the terrorists will be driven underground and because there is no attempt to address the root causes of terrorism, the disaffection, the despair, the desperation brought about by social injustice, lives without any kind hope that breed terrorism, there will be more terrorists not less than there were on September 11.

The asylum seekers who are being kept in a detention centre that resembles a concentration camp in a barren desert in South Australia, Woomera, is a case in point. They may have been illegal immigrants but what will they become when they are turned back? Surely, not model-citizens? I do not suggest that they had an automatic right of entry but is it right that they should have been treated as dangerous criminals? It used to be said that truth was the first casualty in war. Since the nature of war has changed, it would appear that the first casualty is human rights.

There is a surreal quality about how the world has been divided between the good guys and the bad guys. I would like to quote from Ronald Wright’s book Stolen Continents and though on a different subject, the American Indians, makes much the same point: “An entire vocabulary is tainted with prejudice and condescension: whites are soldiers, the Indians are warriors; whites live in towns, the Indians in villages; whites have kings and generals, Indians have chiefs, whites have states, Indians have tribes. Indians have ghost dances, whites have eschatology.

“In 1927, the Grand Council of Fire of American Indians told the mayor of Chicago: We know that [school histories] are unjust to the life of our people... They call all white victories, battles and all Indian victories, massacres... White men who rise to protect their property are called patriots — Indians who do the same are called murderers.”

The good guys can do no wrong and the bad guys have forfeited all their rights, they have been herded together and jailed in most inhuman conditions, their ultimate fate is not known nor do we know what specific crimes they have been charged with and whether they will get any kind of trial. Will they be ever set free or will they be caged for the rest of their lives?

In an earlier column, I had mentioned the penal colonies of Andaman Islands and the Devil’s Island. The general philosophy behind these penal colonies rests on that they were not a form of punishment but a means of redemption and transformation.

In Dombey and Son, Charles Dickens introduces the character of Alice Marwood. “There was a criminal called Alice Marwood — a girl still, but deserted and an outcast. And she was tried, and she was sentenced... and how grave the judge was on her duty, and on her having perverted the gifts of nature, and how he preached about the strong arm of the Law, and how solemn and religious it all was! So Alice Marwood was transported and was sent to do her duty, where there was twenty times less duty, and more wickedness, and wrong and infamy, than here.”

Hardened and vengeful, Alice returns from the colonies, after serving a twelve year sentence. Obviously, she found no means of redemption there. Are we returning to that rule of darkness that Dickens wrote about, a world without compassion?

I would have said that it would be best if the world returned to business as usual. But business as usual means things like the unravelling of Enron, besides which the scams and the white collar financial swindles to which we are routinely accustomed to in the Third World look like petty theft. The bigger they are, the harder they fall is not confined to boxing.

Enron is huge and it cannot be blamed on the terrorists! Some highly placed and eminently respectable have been found with their hands in the cookie-jar. And this is no ordinary cookie-jar. But like all scandals, it will be soon forgotten. Already the spin doctors are at work. Enron has claimed one death, a suicide of an executive and few others may end up going to jail and no one will say that it shows up the dark side of capitalism or the free enterprise system. But it may show up that corruption is not a Third World monopoly.

PAKISTAN had no nuclear programme till 1971 when it faced dismemberment as conventional strength was not adequate enough to defend its territory. As there was no other means to match India’s military strength, Pakistan decided to launch a nuclear programme for its defence.

Nuclear deterrence is a western illusion. This theory worked for more than 40 years between the US and the Soviet Union. They avoided not only a nuclear war but even a smallest armed clash throughout the cold war in their shared fear that any fighting might escalate out of control.

In South Asia nuclear deterrence also prevented war twice. In 1987 and 1990, there was a threat of war between India and Pakistan but a mutual deterrence between them prevented the out-break of war.

In the winter of 1986-87 as a result of the Indian military’s “Brass Tacks” exercise close to Pakistan border there was a fear that the Indian army might attack Pakistan. Though Pakistani forces made counter-deployments, that was not the only factor in defusing the crisis. The main reason that contributed to the prevention of a possible war was Pakistan’s nuclear capability. In 1990 again nuclear factor defused the crisis following the uprising in held-Kashmir. Krishnaswami Sundarji, a respected analysts of strategic issues has expressed the view that Pakistan and India would have had no wars in 1948, 1965 and 1971 if both had minimal nuclear deterrence.

After the terrorist attack on Indian parliament on December 13, India deployed its army, tanks, missiles and warplanes near Pakistan’s borders. They were disappointed over their inability to get Pakistan branded as a terrorist state. Furthermore, New Delhi was not happy over Pakistan’s role in the war against terrorism under the leadership of the US and the economic stability it gained as a result of this decision. New Delhi decided to suppress Kashmiris’ indigenous movement for self-determination through threat of force, coupled with diplomatic efforts and support from the coalition forces.

Indian army chief threatened a limited conventional war and warned Pakistan that there would be a massive retaliation if India was attacked by nuclear warheads. “Should any nuclear weapons be used against Indian forces, the perpetrators of that particular outrage shall be punished, and so severely that their continuation thereafter in any form will be doubtful”, he said.

Indian defence minister George Fernandes said that in case of the first use of nuclear weapons by Pakistan, India would be capable of retaliating so devastatingly as to wipe Pakistan off the map. The statements made by Pakistan government officials that Pakistan’s nuclear-missile capability would not be used in a war with India further convinced the Indians that in case of limited war Pakistan would not use nuclear weapons.

THE German election which is being held this year in September is likely to be a closely contested fight between two formidable opponents, both of whom believe they can lead the fatherland out of the economic morass in which it has found itself.

Both contestants are seasoned campaigners and tough politicians. And if the polls are anything to go by, Chancellor Schroeder will face the biggest battle of his political career as he tries to stave off the challenge posed by his rival Edmund Stoiber, the lean, silver-haired right-wing premier of Bavaria. Stoiber has been propped up by the opposition in preference to the liberal Christian Democratic leader, Angela Merkel, who had been lagging behind the chancellor in the opinion polls. Political observers are likening this contest to the one that took place 22 years ago when the centrist Helmut Schmidt from North Germany faced arch-conservative Franz-Joseph Strauss from Bavaria, which was won by the former. Will history repeat itself?

With growth faltering and unemployment hovering around 3.9 million mark — the largest figure in nearly two years — the state of the economy looks likely to dominate the election campaign. Slower growth has, of course, big implications for the euro, job prospects and fiscal finances. There are, however, other issues which too are likely to crop up in the coming months. Foreign policy and the European Union are unlikely to prove controversial. But Mr Stoiber might exploit the European Union’s impending enlargement of Eastern Europe, to turn immigration into a populist issue. He has already fiercely attacked Schroeder’s attempts to reform Germany’s archaic and outdated nationality laws to extend citizenship rights to non-Germans.

Immigration has always been an important issue in post-war Germany. In June 2001 Juergen Storbeck, director of Europol, told a conference in Berlin that crime was no longer lurking at Western Europe’s gates. It was already well dug in. The Balkans, over one million of whose citizens live in Germany, are now a big source of organized crime. Since 1955 more than thirty million outsiders have flooded into Germany, ten million of them in the past decade. Many went home but some seven million, including two million Turks, are still there, making up nine per cent of the population. In addition, three million ethnic Germans have come from the former Soviet Union. Now the native Germans are being told that for various worthy reasons they must accept more. They do not like it, especially when almost four million people are out of work.

No two contestants for the prime slot could be more different. Stoiber, a fiery orator, is a family man, married to the same woman for 33 years and is frequently photographed with his spouse and three children. A teetotaller who drinks non-alcoholic beer, he is a Roman Catholic and an ultra conservative who unflinchingly defends traditional and religious values and attacks liberal notions such as single-sex relationships.

He has a highly successful track record, having developed Bavaria, once one of (West) Germany’s poorest and most sluggish Laender into one of its richest, most modern and prosperous states. Bavaria is today a model of low unemployment, high quality education and strict enforcement of law and order through a mixture of traditional values and business friendly economics.

Schroeder on the other hand, is a Protestant and a pragmatist who moved from the far left to the centre. Neither religion nor geography has influenced his social agenda or his outlook on Germany. He has married four times, though, unlike Stoiber, he has no children of his own. He enjoys fat cigars and red wines from the vineyards of Europe. He is also an opportunist who adopted pro-business measures to cut taxes and curb budget-spending when it suited him.

But in retrospect, he appears to have made a critical miscalculation. He avoided tough economic reforms in the second half of his term, gambling that growth would pick up before the elections. Now it appears to be too late to cut unemployment. The time-honoured ploy of creating temporary government jobs in an election year will only scratch the surface. Schroeder briefly fed expectations by cutting corporate taxes (which has been criticized as helping only the large corporations) and reducing government debt. But he refused to loosen up the labour market. In fact, labour unions are presenting him with his biggest dilemma. They provide crucial campaign support but block efforts to reform the labour market.

Though recent data on the economy are dismal German executives are optimistic about a second-half recovery. They expect exports to go up. But this implies that other countries will turn around before Germany does. The fear that Germany will undershoot its upbeat forecast of 1.25 per cent has put downward pressure on the euro. After statistics on the employment situation was released in the second week of January, the euro slipped again against the US dollar. There is a danger that slower growth may lift Germany’s fiscal debt closer to the three per cent of GDP ceiling imposed by the euro zone policymakers.

Stoiber certainly has proved to be a formidable challenger, and shrugs off Schroeder’s claim that he will polarize German society. This point of view was supported by a German weekly journal which pointed out that even if Stoiber eventually made it to Berlin, “everybody knows where he is coming from.” The journal went on to suggest that Stoiber should try to shed his provincial image, think like a nationalist and move to the centre. he has already started to tone down his anti-immigrant rhetoric. But his reactionary record will make it tougher for him to attract the female vote and the floating vote which appear to be fairly solidly behind Schroeder.

Another area in which Stoiber is weak is in the eastern sector of the country, which is the home turf of Angela Merkel. Nevertheless, he radiates competence, authority and control and comes across as a successful administrator who has turned his state into Germany’s economic wonderland, where unemployment is half the national average.

Stoiber has been accused of using cheap loans partially backed by the state to attract businesses, and the fact that he has shown a remarkably interventionist streak to bail out local companies. But Bavarian businessmen dismiss these accusations as sour grapes.

It is still too early to predict who will be successful in the national election. Will it be the Social Democrats and their allies or the Christian Social Union of Bavaria with the assistance of the Christian Democratic Union? All it takes is a couple of scandals or a sudden bright light at the end of the economic tunnel, and the public mood can change fast. But despite the darkening economic landscape, Schroeder is marginally ahead in the polls, and Berlin’s Forsa Institut still shows him beating Stoiber 42 per cent to 37 per cent. Whether Stoiber can switch the percentages remains to be seen. Perhaps it might not be such a bad thing to see a Bavarian in a traditional London jacket giving orders in staid old Prussia.

SOME 22 years ago Zia-ul-Haq propounded four principles that in his wisdom were the guiding principles for the Pakistani society.

One, Pakistan should never return to democracy. Two, the press must always remain in chains. Three, jihad must be made Pakistan’s ideology and the country must become an ideal producer of the jihadis. Four, he must remain president and army chief till his death.

A small section of the people vehemently opposed Zia’s version of Islam. The US and other big powers deeply appreciated it. Zia crushed every dissenting voice with an iron fist. When the great objective — the dismemberment of the USSR — was met, the US became lukewarm and the ‘Jihad’ and ‘jihadis’ became abusive terms.

After Zia’s death, Pakistan was ruled by four civilian governments from 1988 to 1999. No one could reverse his policies. Pakistan’s foreign policy was hijacked by the ISI. The civilian rulers were helpless before it. The Sharif government accused it of masterminding the Kargil misadventure when it took the initiative of having friendly relations with India.

The follies of Sharif brought Musharraf into power. The latter had hatched no conspiracy at the GHQ to topple the former. Sharif would still have been in power had he not sacked Musharraf in a manner that was totally unacceptable. This was one of the reasons, besides Sharif’s misrule, that compelled the people to welcome a military regime.

Musharraf’s disposition revealed that he was secular, liberal, and audacious. Kemal Ataturk was his favourite personality. Soon after assuming power, he introduced several reforms. Unlike his predecessor, he gave the press an unprecedented freedom — to an extent that no democratic government could ever guarantee in Pakistan’s history.

The tragedy of September 11 was a blessing in disguise for the US and Musharraf. The US found a sound excuse to wage a war against global terrorism. A military government was in power in Pakistan. The ISI and the army could have created no problem. Musharraf was in a perfect position to extend the US every support.

Zia was under no pressure to dance to the US tunes. He was not asked, ‘Are you with us or with the terrorists?’ He could have made Pakistan one of the richest countries in the world had he been honest with the nation. The biggest consideration for him was his autocratic rule. Power had intoxicated him.

Luck seems to be on Musharraf’s side. The biggest consideration for him was to save Pakistan from becoming the US target like Afghanistan, and its 1.4 billion people from becoming homeless refugees.

While achieving the US objective, he could legitimize his stay in power until death to make Pakistan the type of state that Jinnah had envisioned and go down in the annals of the history as a great reformer like Kemal Ataturk by making right decisions at the right time. Or, he could become another Zia by following his realpolitik. Choice is his!

Musharraf will have to take many unpleasant decisions on a range of issues before they find their place on. He has been appreciated for reversing Zia’s controversial separate-electorate dogma for the minorities. He will have to scrap the infamous hudood and blasphemy laws. He will have to trade with India to improve Pakistan’s economy. He will have to abolish the feudal system the way India did for the prosperity of its wretched farmers.