Getting to Know the General
By Ahmad Faruqui, PhD
Dansville, CA

While Musharraf was promoting his life story in the US, Pakistan was hit by a power blackout. Coming within days of an unscheduled medical check-up in Texas, this triggered rumors of a coup. An incensed general retorted that Pakistan was not a banana republic.
The quip played to the perception that banana republics were prone to coups. After all, the machinations of Latin American generalismos had contributed the word “junta” to the English lexicon. But Musharraf forgot that the banana republic that he had visited just a few weeks ago, Cuba, had not seen a coup since 1959. He also forgot that in Panama, General Omar Torrijos had ruled from 1968 to 1981, much longer than any of Pakistan’s uniformed rulers.
Torrijos never bothered to become president, nor did he feel any urge to declare martial law. This would have annoyed the Americans. In fact, to assuage their sensitivities, he continued to hold elections. Some of this sounds familiar to Pakistani ears.
Like most rulers, he wanted to preserve his legacy. But his way of doing that was indirect, unlike Musharraf’s. He enlisted the legendary British novelist and critic, Graham Greene, in his cause. Greene got an invitation to visit Panama in 1976, all expenses paid. Always fascinated with Spain and Latin America, he took up the offer and made the first of several visits to the country.
The strategy worked since he ended up befriending Torrijos and writing a best seller, “Getting to know the general.” In the end, Torrijos not only granted Greene a Panamanian diplomatic passport but also offered him a Captain’s position in the army that Greene wisely declined.
In Greene’s portrayal, Torrijos is a man devoid of Latin machismo. He represents the lesser evil, a necessary if not ideal ruler; a pragmatist nationalist, one who knows his country of two million can be no match for the United States. He consults with other heads of state in Latin America to develop his foreign policy toward the US. Even the fire-breathing Fidel Castro counsels patience. So Torrijos continues to negotiate endlessly with Washington in an attempt to get Panamanian sovereignty over the Canal.
But he has also war gamed Plan B. If the Treaty falls through, he will blow up the dam that contains much of the water through which ships traverse the canal. He would then lead his men into the hills from where they would wage guerilla war. While the dam would be rebuilt quickly by the US Army Corps of Engineers, it would take months for the rains to fill up the Canal. Shipping would be blocked and the US would have to send a hundred thousand troops to secure the surrounding areas.
Plan B was never needed, since the treaty was signed and ratified by the US Senate. Yet, soon afterwards, Torrijos was killed in a plane crash while flying to his home in the mountains of Panama in clear weather. Theories that the plane was bombed persist to this day, seemingly validating an assertion by his personal friend and bodyguard, Sergeant Chuchu. A former professor of mathematics and a poet, Chuchu was wont to say: “A revolver is no defense.”
Does Greene’s narrative about this bona fide banana republic general provide analogies of interest to Pakistan? Yes, it does. Panama is located in a vital part of the globe. It connects North and South America by land and the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans by the Canal that runs through the middle. And it is home to a sizeable American military force.
Pakistan is located in another vital part of the globe and while there is no visible American military presence on its soil, it is the recipient of billions of American aid. Its frontiers touch five nations and the American military is fighting a war next door in Afghanistan.
So, just like the US wants no interruption to world commerce that passes daily through the Panama Canal, it wants no interruption to the smooth flow of oil through the Hormuz Strait, located just off the southwestern tip of the restive province of Balochistan.
There are, of course, a few differences. Pakistan is 50 times larger than Panama. And Musharraf, unlike Torrijos, is not lacking in machismo. Unable to find his Graham Greene, he has penned his own story.
How would Musharraf have fared had Greene lived long enough to befriend him and written of “The Man of Destiny”? Perhaps Greene would have talked about Musharraf’s liberal upbringing at the hands of parents who were ballroom dancers, his childhood in secular Turkey and his high schooling at Karachi’s leading Catholic school for boys. Subsequently, he would fall in love with a Bengali girl and join the army. Her family would later move to the eastern province, which would ultimately secede from Pakistan, forcing him into penance.
Musharraf would be a modern day Odysseus, a reluctant general, sworn to keeping the army out of politics. He would say often that an army chief should never be the head of state. But as in all great epics, he would find himself violating these noble principles in order to protect a national interest that providence had only revealed to him.
He would come across as the man who was destined to bring to fruition Jinnah’s dream of an independent homeland for the Muslims of British India, a man who felt that if Jinnah could have governed Pakistan as a general, albeit a governor general, so could he.
His biggest achievement would not be the stabilization of the Pakistani economy. That had brought with it foreign bondage that would last for long after he was gone. Nor would it be his faltering military accomplishments, either against archenemy India, erstwhile friend Taliban or novo enemy Al Qaeda.
Instead, it would be his ability to convince the West that if he were swept from power, it would lose its freedom. By insinuating that elected civilians would never be able to govern Pakistan, the General would guarantee indefinite American support for himself.
During his book tour, more than one American reporter fell under his spell. Many called him a former general, since he was careful not to show off his “second skin” anywhere on American soil. In American eyes, he was an icon of moderation in a tempestuous, unruly and almost savage part of the globe. In the same breath, they would call him a pillar of Western democracy and a terror warrior. If nothing else, such encomiums must ensure that the general sleeps with a smile on his face.

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Editor: Akhtar M. Faruqui
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