The General in His Labyrinth
Tunku Varadarajan reviews Pervez Musharraf’s autobiography:
Toward the end of “In the Line of Fire” — in a chapter on the emancipation of women that has all the passion of a government circular — Pervez Musharraf writes that “rape, no matter where it happens in the world, is a tragedy and deeply traumatic for the victim. My heart, therefore, goes out to Mukhtaran Mai and any woman to whom such a fate befalls.”
Ms. Mukhtaran is a woman from a benighted village in Gen. Musharraf’s Pakistan: After her brother broke a taboo by having a (consensual) sexual relationship with a woman from a tribe deemed superior to his own, a village tribunal decreed that the brothers of the higher-status woman could right this wrong by having their way with Ms. Mukhtaran.
Gen. Musharraf relates in his book that Ms. Mukhtaran was dragged into a room and “came out visibly ruffled and partly undressed” — which is one way to describe a woman’s state after gang rape. Generals are allowed to be coy, occasionally, I suppose. Yet so coy is this general that he does not tell us that he — the omnipotent chief executive of Pakistan — ordered a travel ban on Ms. Mukhtaran when an NGO wished to fly her to the U.S. to publicize her plight. He did not, he said last year, want her “to bad-mouth Pakistan” abroad.
Not content with muzzling Ms. Mukhtaran — a woman who had, through her fight for justice, become a genuine Pakistani heroine and a force for social good — Gen. Musharraf told the editorial board of the Washington Post last year that rape had become “a money-making concern” in Pakistan. “A lot of people say that if you want to go abroad and get a visa from Canada or citizenship and be a millionaire, get yourself raped.”
This jaunty little aperçu about entrepreneurial rape doesn’t appear on the pages of “In the Line of Fire.” Indeed, there’s much else that is missing from Gen. Musharraf’s account of his life and times. The book is not so much an autobiography as a highly selective auto- hagiography, by turns self-congratulatory, narcissistic and mendacious.
More.
I recall reading about that episode where she was “muzzled” and ordered that ridiculous travel ban on her, and how some folks thought that either she was exploiting her “rape” or she was allowing NGO’s exploit her. I’ve been reading some “reviews” of Musharraf’s work and how well-written it is but quite frankly, I do not wish to spend my money on a pack of omissions and lies.
Comment by ana — October 19, 2006 @ 6:42 pm