The military wants to eliminate me’

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Rediff.com owns India Abroad, the widely circulated newspaper published for the Indian-American community. In an exclusive interview with Senior Editor Shyam Bhatia in London, Bhutto had disclosed that Musharraf, then her Director General of Military Operations, outlined a plan to infiltrate Kashmir and start a war that would end up, he believed, with the Pakistani conquest of Srinagar. rediff.com presents the now controversial interview which was published in the August 22 issue of India Abroad. Is it true that you have met Condoleezza Rice because the Bush administration wishes to build bridges with you? No, I would love to meet her. I did meet her before she was National Security Adviser. I have tremendous respect for her being a woman and rising to such a high position. I think the Bush administration is very sensitive about contacts with the opposition. These days Musharraf is a key ally of the West. I am sorry about this because I think the more the West supports Musharraf, the stronger the extremist forces grow and the moderate forces are being marginalized, that's not good for Pakistan.

How long can Musharraf last?

As long as the army supports him, not as long as America supports him. The American support is one factor because the army will say, 'we need weapons or money and so we need Musharraf.' Right now they think good, he's getting us the money and our ideological perception continues. Since 1977 our security establishment was hijacked by Zia-ul Haq's officers. They think Pakistan should have a puppet government in Afghanistan so that we can get strategic depth all the way up to the Amur river. They think that through nuclear brinkmanship they can bring India to its knees because they think no matter how intense the insurgency gets in Kashmir what can India do? Ultimately, if India tries to have a war, the world community will have to intervene to stop it going nuclear and if the world community does not come in, India knows if it crosses into Lahore, Pakistan will throw a bomb. India might retaliate but it will still mean so many people in India will die. They have this strategy and they think having Musharraf on top allows them to pursue this strategy. There is also rising anti-Americanism in Pakistan. There is rising anti-Americanism for different reasons. One of them is that Musharraf is a dictator and people feel angry that the West talks about freedom but turns a blind eye to the empowerment of Pakistanis. The second reason is that we have a very large Pakhtun population and the bombing in Afghanistan led to many civilian deaths and people knew each other across the border, so there is that grief. The third thing is that we have a large military class wedded to the idea that Afghanistan is critical to Pakistan because of strategic depth. This class also has a pensioner class and there are constituencies within that who are anti-American. More...

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