Mr Musharaf's Interview
From the archive (2001): reading a Musharraf interview between the lines — close real-time analysis of official language, a skill worth teaching at scale.
I always admire Mr Musharraf’s cool and informal manners at the interviews. However, the context within which he talked to the Prime TV the other day, was not clear. If he was talking as a Muslim leader of Pakistan, an Islamic Republic, then nationalism should have not come into it – it ought to be upholding the interests of Islam and not Pakistan first. If he was talking from the point of a humanitarian, then he needed to acknowledge that what is happening in Afghanistan, despite all the sugar-coating and propaganda, is a struggle between oppressors and oppressed. If he believes, as he said, that Taliban emerged as saveirs and the cultivators of peace and justice in Afghanistan, then he should oppose those who condemn Talibans. In any case, it was sad to see that he failed to condemn the murder of innocent people in Afghanistan due to what echoed as being the “campaign”.