He was the dictator in constant denial, now the truth's catching up

To be fair to Musharraf, he had given me my I-told-you-so moment much earlier than his arrest this week. That was when he was exiled in 2008. A few months after he had overthrown an elected government enjoying a two-thirds majority and jailed its popular prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, I had written ('Generally speaking', National Interest, IE, July 15, 2000, http://goo.gl/ XRx5q) that there were only four ways a dictator could end up in Pakistan: assassinated or jailed by successors or exiled or disgraced, usually after waging a war on India and losing. Ayub, Bhutto, Zia and Yahya Khan had each met one of these fates. This left Musharraf with no room for complacence. He had taken over power at the very young age of 55, and since the option of retiring at 60 and going home in peace to play golf was no longer available to him, he needed to plan his future seriously. The only way he could hope to escape the fate of all of Pakistan's earlier dictators was to become a legitimate politician quickly, allow real elections against real opponents (not by exiling Benazir, Nawaz Sharif and Altaf Hussain of MQM, as he did) and win or lose. Instead, he only proved us right, first by being exiled in disgrace, and then with his equally unceremonious (makes you wonder sometimes if that word was invented to describe the end of dictators) arrest. We cannot and will not wish him any fate worse than this now. We seek, and need, no further vindication.

In predicting this inevitable future for Musharraf, the one thing I was guilty of was repetitiveness. Between July 2000 and early 2001, I repeated the point in several 'National Interest' articles ('Peace needs daring', December 9, 2000, http://goo.gl/rKNaZ, 'Mindreading Musharraf', December 16, 2000, http://goo.gl/mtWmk, 'A guide to the Pak army', December 23, 2000, http://goo.gl/UA0gr) and it wasn't just because my guru in journalism and much else, Arun Shourie, had taught us a somewhat unconventional lesson  at least not something they'd teach you in journalism schools  that you should never underestimate the power of repetition. Because people have short memories and, more importantly, thick heads and thicker skins.

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