ISLAMABAD // Yesterday, on his 65th birthday, Pervez Musharraf, the president of Pakistan, was facing the prospect of impeachment by the coalition government. Parliament was convened for a special session, which will lead to an impeachment motion, charges being laid against Mr Musharraf and finally a vote on whether he can continue in office. The impeachment, announced at the end of last week, is ironically driven by Nawaz Sharif, who was removed from power by his army chief - Mr Musharraf - in Oct 1999, jailed and then exiled.
The president shows no sign of quitting, seemingly the only way of avoiding impeachment. True to his self-styled "commando" character, built during 46 years in the military, he is going down fighting. In a recent speech, the president boasted: "I have not learnt fear." That bravado will now be put to the test. Beyond impeachment lies the possibility of being put on trial for treason, which carries the death penalty. After leaving office - with the massive security currently accorded to him - Mr Musharraf's personal safety will be no doubt threatened by those who see him as too close an ally of the United States.
Ayman al Zawahiri, al Qa'eda's deputy leader, speaking in an English-language recording for the first time, said: "Pervez has insulted and compromised Pakistan's sovereignty by allowing the CIA and FBI to operate freely in Pakistan and arrest, interrogate, torture, deport and detain any person, whether Pakistani or not, for as long as they like, thus turning the Pakistani army and security agencies into hunting dogs in the contemporary crusade."
Zawahiri was particularly incensed by two major episodes during Mr Musharraf's rule: the storming of Islamabad's radical Red Mosque last year - which led to 100 deaths - and the detention of AQ Khan, the renegade Pakistani nuclear scientist. While al Qa'eda does not appeal to mainstream Pakistan, there is widespread resentment of both these events. But amid all the Musharraf-bashing, inside and outside Pakistan, it is easy to forget that this former army strongman was once popular.
He came to power accidentally in 1999, staging a coup in reaction to Mr Sharif's attempt to sack him. Mr Sharif's rule had brought Pakistan to its knees economically, and it was internationally isolated as a result of the nuclear tests that were carried out in 1998. Mr Sharif, in his second term in power, had become increasingly authoritarian, and pushed Pakistan towards theocratic rule. That crowned a decade of democracy, which was restored in 1988 after the death of the military dictator, Gen Zia ul Haq. It was marked by feuding, corruption and mismanagement, as Mr Sharif and Benazir Bhutto alternated in power.
So there was relief when a coup was staged by Gen Musharraf, who came from the middle classes, unlike the landed or industrial elites that have dominated Pakistani politics. He believed he had come to save Pakistan from the politicians. In contrast to Gen Zia, the new military ruler neither imposed martial law nor was he religiously inclined. In fact, oddly for a dictator, Mr Musharraf was liberal by nature - he freed the press for the first time, leading to the current explosion in Pakistani media. He initially set up a technocratic government, with a strong element of serving and retired army officers.
Pakistan remained on the critical list, but then Mr Musharraf got one very lucky break: the September 11 terrorist attacks meant that Washington renewed its alliance with Pakistan and dollars started flooding in, precipitating a general economic revival. Mr Musharraf discarded Pakistan's policy of supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan, making himself and the country into an indispensible ally in the "war on terrorism". He made Pakistan so important to Washington that when it emerged that the head of the country's nuclear programme, Khan, was guilty of proliferation on a grand scale, the country was not punished.
It was the attempt to garner some democratic legitimacy that led to Mr Musharraf's downfall. He created a new political party to support himself, which was filled with exactly the kind of opportunistic, grasping politicians that he said he despised. The 2002 election was crudely fixed to make sure the party won. The "clean" general was becoming dirty. If Mr Musharraf had left in late 2006, he would have been credited with stabilising Pakistan. But he clung on too long, and began to believe his own propaganda: that he alone could "save" Pakistan, which made him totally intolerant of challengers. With elections due in 2007, he took the fateful decision in March that year of removing a chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, who had proven to be troublingly independent because he might have stood in the way of any electoral manipulation that was planned.
He may have got away with removing Mr Chaudhry were it not for the media, which, after the liberalising reforms he passed, covered the attempted firing of the chief justice, and the lawyers' movement that it spawned, in exhaustive and partisan detail. Mr Musharraf snapped in November. He removed all the judges, placed them under arrest and put the country under a six-week state of emergency, alienating any support he retained among the people of Pakistan.
Seeing him in trouble in 2007, Washington forced two solutions on Mr Musharraf: that he find accommodation with Bhutto, the former prime minister and one of the people he hated most in the world. The United States also pressed him to give up his post of army chief, thereby stripping him of the main source of his power. The "deal" with Bhutto never worked and broke down once she returned to Pakistan from exile in October - she was assassinated in December. But the elections, in February, under the glare of international scrutiny this time, were free and fair, resulting in the president's political opponents, including Mr Sharif's party, coming to power in a coalition.
Apparently still believing that the country would be doomed without him, Mr Musharraf clung to the office of president. He also continued to interfere in the running of government and scheming behind the scenes. Mr Sharif always sought vengeance. His coalition partners agreed only last week, perhaps concerned that Mr Musharraf was plotting another coup. Had he retained his uniform, the politicians would never have dared take him on.
Like the old soldier he is, Mr Musharraf has not surrendered. Like most Pakistani army generals, he believes that politicians cannot be trusted with the country. Pakistan's stability is now threatened by this one man's refusal to go. Email:sshah@thenational.ae