Welcome Pervez Musharraf, a former army chief and President of Pakistan. He has become the one-man enterprise to sell brand Pakistan to a sceptical audience. He divides his time between the UK (London) and the USA (Boston where his son lives and Washington), and occasionally anchoring in Dubai. Anyone who thinks that he perambulates to dodge an arrest warrant in a Bugti killing he had ordered as the self-anointed chief executive of the country may be proved wrong; Notice the way he relishes trashing Pakistani’s permanent (India) and temporary (US) enemies with an admirable poise, self-praise and patriotic fervour that mocks the labours of the court back home.

Scan the Western media and it would appear that Musharraf is the number one, omnipresent drum-beater of Pakistan, grabbing far more space on international news channels and print media than his country’s crafty politicians and equivocal diplomats.  The wisest investment that Musharraf made in his exile is undoubtedly engaging an American PR agency for just $25,000 a month.   Who is bankrolling him is not important since he and his invisible backers have reason to sport a smile with the results thus far.  

Musharraf, the commando with nine-lives as he proclaims with a chuckle, is never known for his intellectual acumen. As president he was garrulous, highly opinionated and allowed himself to be carried away by self-praise. His detractors must be marvelling at his popularity today with the Western think-tanks, mostly US-based, and he way they are falling over each other to hear his profundities on a weekly basis.  
The adulation has not helped Musharraf to overcome one inherent weakness – the tendency to repeat himself.  It appears as though his weakness has turned out to be his biggest asset since the Western media and think-tanks see in him a chronicler of post- 9/11events which pushed Pakistan to the frontline of war on terror as an American ally. As Pakistan finds itself today at the receiving end of American ire, Musharraf is comfortable to put his spin on the events again and again to the great relief of his ‘friends’ in Rawalpindi.  Yes, Musharraf is never known for his command over English. And he has not profited from his new-found stardom in Western TV studios and plush think-tank surroundings.

His theme is always brief: hate and anger towards the US, the West and India, not always in that order. He has appeared on all major US TV channels and the BBC more than once and almost every month one or two leading newspapers in the West publish interviews with him. The media in Pakistan has never shown veneration towards him but today it dutifully keeps the readers posted up-to-date with Musharraf speak.

With uncanny political acumen, Musharraf has diagnosed for the benefit of global audiences the ills of Pakistan, including the scourge of terrorism that the present leadership is finding so hard to battle. It is all attributed to the Americans and Indians. It is a canard that the ISI uses terrorists to further its aims against India; intelligence agencies keep in touch with all kinds of people. The ISI links to terrorists is justified. QED!     His ire towards the US revolves round not only its transgressions into Pakistani territories in recent days but also goes back to the days of Afghanistan’s occupation by the then Soviet Union. The message from him comes out loud and clear in a style that does little justice to his consciously groomed figure with fine-cut suits, expensive ties and dyed hair. He tells his interviewers that the US had brought the uncontrollable disease of terrorism into Pakistan and after Afghanistan was rid of the Soviet yoke, the Americans abandoned it. “Our anger is justified”, the former strong man of Pakistan says in a matter of fact manner. Pakistan has always stood on American crutches, never mind the ‘all weather’ friend and the ‘brothers’ in the Middle East.

The Musharraf wisdom will have it that if Pakistan has an acute image problem in the world today it is solely because of India which has nothing better to do than malign the Land of the Pure. Ditto for the elusive peace in Afghanistan. ‘Keep the Indians away from Afghanistan and it will turn into the Taliban paradise’ that it once was under Pakistan’s benign patronage.

It can be said that the swagger of an army general, whether retired or living in exile, does not go easily; nor does the haughty tone. So when a BBC interviewer asked him why is it that the best intelligence in the world suggests that Mullah Omar (the Afghan Taliban head) is in Pakistan, Musharraf was at his imperious best. ‘I think it is all nonsense,’ he said contemptuously. Did it indicate Musharraf’s failure that bin Laden was found to be living next to a Pakistani military camp? ‘On one incident ….you think everything is a failure,’ he retorted with indignation.

Reminded that he had definitively said when he was the President that Osama bin Laden was not in Pakistan, he flatly denied it. As a quick afterthought he added that if bin Laden did happen to be in Pakistan, it was ‘bad luck.’ End of answer. Many who have followed Musharraf’s statements on bin Laden’s whereabouts will recall that his favourite expression was that he was ‘one hundred percent, two hundred percent’ sure that the Al Qaeda’s top man was not in Pakistan and was, instead, in Afghanistan.

The BBC interviewer, who looked somewhat bewildered by Musharraf’s replies, asked: ‘You accused India of trying to create, and I am quoting, an anti-Pakistan Afghanistan. Where is your evidence for that?’ Military dictators even when out of job tend to be rather chary of the word ‘evidence’. But Musharraf took the question sportingly. ‘Yes, there is tremendous amount of evidence. Their consulates in Kandahar and Jalalabad, what are they meant for?’

Is that all the ‘evidence’ that he has? No, of course, he has more. ‘All diplomats, military men, intelligence people of Afghanistan, they go for training to India, not one has come to Pakistan….They are indoctrinated and sent back.’ Phew, what an impressive ‘evidence’! Or, was it bitterness because the Afghans have been shunning their ‘twin brothers’ in Pakistan!

When asked ‘Isn’t it time for you to overcome your paranoia about India?’ he hit back: ‘It’s a time for the world to understand, for you to understand that this is the case.’ The Pakistani paranoia, shared by their men of ‘peace’, abrasive serving and retired generals and the multitude of radicalised populace obviously cannot be cured.