AFTER hearing so many negative comments about President Pervez Musharraf’s autobiography titled In the Line of Fire, it was a pleasant surprise to find that this riveting adventure story is full of valuable information and well-written.

The pace is set by the prologue, which describes two assassination attempts and other brushes with death. This is followed by an absorbing account of the Musharrafuddin family’s migration to Pakistan in 1947 and the feisty Pervez’s early years in Turkey and then in Karachi.

The author’s adventurous army career comes next, from the time he was an officer cadet at the Pakistan Military Academy and almost got expelled for availing himself of a 200-yard shortcut in a nine-mile punishment run, to his unexpected selection as COAS by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The last chapter of Part 2 deals with the fateful Kargil conflict.

The Hijacking Drama in Part 3 highlights Pervez Musharraf’s growing differences with Nawaz Sharif and the latter’s maladroit attempt to dismiss him in absentia from the post of chief of army staff. Rebuilding the Nation (Part 4) outlines the measures taken by Musharraf in his self-appointed role as chief executive to restore the national economy and to reform the political and administrative system. Part 5 titled The War on Terror is an absorbing account of the consequences of 9/11 for Pakistan and includes chapters on Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar and the anti-terrorist operations. Assorted subjects such as nuclear proliferation, the emancipation of women and the 2005 earthquake are also covered.

Musharraf does not hide the fact that he owes primary loyalty to the Pakistan Army, which he equates with loyalty to Pakistan. This is evident not only from his repeated expressions of pride in military institutions to which he belongs, like the SSG, but also in his approach to history. During the 1965 war, for instance, he served in a mechanised artillery regiment and participated in the First Armoured Division’s offensive in the Khem Kharan sector (p. 45). By all accounts the advance failed and Pakistan lost a golden opportunity to make major strategic gains. Musharraf is silent about this major turning point in the 1965 war.

Musharraf’s account of the events leading to the 1971 war is more balanced but incomplete (pp. 52-53). He puts greater blame on the leadership in West Pakistan for the events that unfolded after Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s victory in the 1970 election, focusing on the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s directive to his party’s newly elected parliamentarians not to attend the inaugural session of the National Assembly in Dhaka. In this respect, the president’s views coincide somewhat with the views held by Bangladeshis. Musharraf does not broach the sensitive subject of the Pakistan Army’s attempt to disarm its Bengali officers in the East Wing or the atrocities committed by both sides in the civil war.

He exposes the army high command’s laxity at Siachen Glacier in 1984 when Pakistan lost almost 900 square miles of territory (pp. 68-69). As COAS he tried to make up for his seniors’ lapses 15 years later by seizing the Kargil heights.

Musharraf’s bold move, which initially had more modest goals, ended up threatening India’s main communication link with the Siachen and Ladakh sectors. By pushing the LoC southwards he hoped to pressure India to come to the negotiating table. Maps 2 and 3 on pages 92 and 94 show clearly that the Pakistan Army had occupied two or three salients deep inside Indian-held Kashmir. While this could hardly be termed a defensive operation, Pakistan was morally justified in trying to make India vacate territory it had seized in 1972 and again in 1984 in violation of the Simla Agreement and the 1971 ceasefire. The catch was that the authors of the operation had overestimated the army’s staying power to defend its gains.

As the Kargil operation followed so soon on the heels of the Lahore Declaration of 1999, Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee’s comment that the Lahore bus had been hijacked to Kargil was not without pathos. Predictably, world opinion supported India and turned against Pakistan. An emboldened India could safely transfer artillery assets from the international border to the Kargil sector to pound the Northern Light Infantry posts from the air and the ground before sending up its infantry to clear the precipitous heights. Even the normally reliable French withheld our brand new Agosta submarine and Mirage warplanes sent to France for repair.

Paradoxically, the Kargil conflict may have boosted the prospects of a lasting peace between India and Pakistan, by showing that in the nuclear age neither side could forcibly alter the status quo in Jammu and Kashmir. Similarly, the 2002 stand-off proved that India could not bend Pakistan to its will even by massing almost its entire army along the India-Pakistan border. If Kargil was a dash of cold water for Pakistan, the 2002 stand-off was a rude awakening for India. After the two close calls in 1999 and 2002, India and Pakistan are engaging in dialogue, albeit fitfully, to resolve their differences.

The 2002 crisis might have been averted if the Agra Summit of July 16, 2001, had not ended in a deadlock. Musharraf blames Indian hawks for vetoing at the last minute the agreement he had reached with Prime Minister Vajpayee (p 298). Some critics feel that Musharraf’s media one-upmanship put the BJP on the defensive and made an agreement impossible.

Musharraf’s account of the struggle for power between him and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has been challenged but it is undeniably thrilling. The reader is made privy to the growing tension on board the aircraft bringing Musharraf home, as well as on the ground at the prime minister’s house, Islamabad, and at the Karachi airport. Musharraf terms his own dismissal as a coup d’etat because “you cannot summarily dismiss the army chief, a constitutional appointee, without giving him just cause and affording him due process.”

To the counter question “What about dismissing the president or prime minister?”, his prescription is the consultative National Security Council, which has been created to prevent future conflicts between the president, prime minister and the army chief (p. 171).

Musharraf’s account of 9/11 is another high point of the book. Apart from US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s “Either you are with us or against us” telephone call, the director-general of ISI was given “a shockingly barefaced threat” by deputy secretary Richard Armitage that Pakistan might be bombed back to the Stone Age. While Richard Armitage has denied making such a threat, the import of the US ultimatum was not inaccurate in terms of the grim imponderables that Pakistan faced. Musharraf’s address to the nation on 19 September 19, 2001, warning that Pakistan would launch a do-or-die struggle in case India tried to take advantage of the situation reflected the gravity of the potential threat.

The book lays bare Musharraf’s inner thoughts on issues and personalities. It is a window on his soul. While his personal courage stands out, this admirable quality is regrettably marred by an excess of certitude. Perhaps he did not realise that the printer’s ink in his book was bound to turn into acid for some army colleagues, politicians and other personalities. Many Pakistanis are likely to be saddened by his denigration of Dr A. Q. Khan, especially in the light of the latter’s signal achievements, his services to Pakistan and his public apology to the nation.

In 1999, we may have rued the chief of army staff’s daredevil approach just as we appreciated a more mature president’s steady hand during the crises of 2001 and 2002. Musharraf’s initiative to start the dialogue with India has lowered tension in South Asia and given his embattled country breathing space to pursue more productive goals. His advocacy of enlightened moderation among Muslims suits the needs of Pakistan and other Islamic countries in this day and age.

Like the late Ayub Khan, Musharraf holds politicians in contempt, especially the exiled leaders of the two main parties of Pakistan in the 1990s. Transplanting a democratic system from one country to another will not work, according to him (p. 154). Unlike the Field Marshal, however, who instituted a system of Basic Democracy based on indirect elections, Musharraf favours direct elections on the basis of universal franchise to select members of the National Assembly. And unlike his predecessors, he has made no attempt to curb freedom of speech; politicians, media persons and academics may criticise him quite freely without inviting retribution.

In 1999 Pervez Musharraf inherited an array of such formidable problems that merely stabilising the economy was an achievement. He is now engaged in the daunting task of establishing the government’s writ in parts of Baluchistan and the NWFP, which is being challenged by tribalism and religious bigots. His regime has launched many initiatives with a long gestation period, so there is little to show on the ground in concrete terms, such as new airports, dams, power plants, roads and railways. The macro-economic indicators may be positive but the prices of essential commodities have kept rising. New jobs for civilians are scarce.

The president has explained why he went back on his promise to shed his uniform in 2002. But as he wishes to continue as president for another term, he has to decide how much longer he can hold the post of the COAS, bearing in mind that this could become a divisive issue. The second question relates to how he obtains a fresh mandate: should it be from the present parliament or from the parliament to be elected in 2007? Both questions will have to be faced squarely and soon as they have an important bearing on Musharraf’s renewed legitimacy and the country’s political and economic stability.

To sum up, the president’s autobiography is by no means a definitive history of the Musharraf era which we are all living through. Rather, the work should be viewed as an exciting contribution to the study of important events, subject to scrutiny, revision and criticism. Above all, it makes good reading.