Noted terrorism expert and FP contributor Jarret Brachman had dinner with former Pakistani dictator President Pervez Musharraf last Friday, and wrote about it here (welcome to the world of new media, Pervez). For the record, Brachman describes Musharraf as "a gracious, humble and serious military man."
Some highlights of their conversation:
- He honestly believes that he transformed
Pakistan from a backwards third-world garbage pit to a land of new
opportunities and prosperity. That, for him, is the legacy that matters
most.
- He seemed disengaged from al-Qaida overall, at one point forgetting the name of the jihadi godfather, Abdullah Azzam.
- He had no working knowledge of
al-Qaida’s senior leadership below Bin Laden or Al-Zawahiri, which
makes me think that he outsourced the entire al-Qaida portfolio.
- He stonewalled me on every question I
asked involving Iran and Saudi Arabia. In fact, in his keynote
addressed later that night entitled, “Internal and External Dynamics of
Pakistan,” he didn’t mention either country. He also steered clear of
my questions on the Pakistani ISI.
- He advanced the (now well accepted as
false rumor) statement that Bin Laden is on kidney dialysis. When asked
if UBL was in Pakistan, he responded by saying that’s like him asking
if UBL is in the United States, “nothing more than unfounded
speculation…”
- He seems to truly believe that he did
everything he could against al-Qaida but that it was a series of
American missteps, historically and currently, in Afghanistan that
created the mess that exists today.
Makes you wonder who was running the al Qaeda portfolio in Pakistan, doesn't it?
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