Pakistan's breaking of taboo shows ex-dictator Pervez Musharraf was disliked to the end
In Pakistan, it is taboo to speak ill of the dead. So much so, that politicians who have spent most of their careers cursing a rival for being everything from a blasphemer to a traitor, will praise them to the heavens once they are dead - especially if they are assassinated, like former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in December 2007.
Even in death, however, former military dictator Pervez Musharraf has proven to be as unwelcome in Pakistan as he was when forced to resign as president in 2008, after holding power for nearly nine years.
Most members of Pakistan's Senate on Monday flatly refused to endorse a resolution calling for prayers for the deceased.
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This was in stark contrast to the messages of condolences which have flooded in from around the world since Musharraf passed away in a Dubai hospital on Sunday, aged 79.
To the international community, Musharraf was a great statesman who arguably did more than any other national leader to help the United States capture many of the al-Qaeda operatives responsible for the September 2001 terrorist attacks.
President George W. Bush referred to the Pakistani dictator as his "best buddy".
Musharraf even came tantalisingly close to resolving Pakistan's enmity with India, agreeing in principle to a draft peace deal shortly before flying to New York in September 2006 to address the United Nations general assembly.
As part of the accompanying media entourage, I marvelled at the brazenness with which he played to American audiences.
Musharraf used the occasion to launch his memoir In the Line of Fire, which was found adorning the window displays of book shops in Manhattan.
With charm and wit, he handled awkward moments with aplomb, such as when The Daily Show's host Jon Stewart asked him "where's Osama bin Laden?".
Without missing a beat, Musharraf asked Stewart to lead the way to the doorstep of the terrorist chief, promising tongue in cheek that he would be right behind the presenter.
It is, therefore, no small irony that bin Laden was killed five years later by US special forces in a raid on a house located just a mile from Pakistan's top army academy or that the Taliban seized power again in Afghanistan in 2021.
By the time Musharraf undertook his September 2006 US visit, power had completely gone to his head.
Just weeks before travelling, he had ordered the killing of Nawab Akbar Bugti, a 1970s governor of the province of Balochistan, who launched a rebellion in the noughties in anger at the rape of a doctor on his tribe's land by a young army officer.
Politically speaking, the kill order was as unnecessary as it was ruthless. Politicians leading the civilian government which acted as a front for the military regime had persuaded Bugti to accept the terms of a negotiated surrender.
But Musharraf was not having it. Bugti, a man of great political stature, had dared to publicly stand up to the dictator and an example supposedly had to be made of him.
The outcome: Balochistan to this day is in a state of rebellion, much to the chagrin of China, for which the province is supposed to provide a secure overland logistics route to the Gulf via the port city of Gwadar.
Bugti's 2006 killing was the first in a series ordered by Musharraf, which ultimately led to his downfall.
The second bloody landmark came in May 2007, eight short months after Musharraf's conquest of the US media.
To put a decisive end to a series of lawyers' protests led by a sacked supreme court chief justice, Musharraf unleashed the armed militia of an allied political party in Karachi.
Working as TV news executive producer there at the time, I took an early morning drive in the centre of the city alongside the channel's technical director, so as to gauge where we could assign camera teams to cover what we expected to be a noisy protest and clashes with riot police.
At the first major road junction we encountered at around 6am, some 20 young gunmen carrying 9mm pistols had taken over the streets.
As the day progressed, dozens were murdered in cold blood as the military dictator sacrificed the sanity of Karachi, the heartbeat of Pakistan's economy, at the altar of his ego.
The following evening, I listened in shocked silence as two senior police officers - both friends of mine - wept as they told me that the entire Karachi police force had been disarmed on the orders of Musharraf's regime the day before the bloodshed. Later that year, he suspended the constitution and imposed martial law.
So, it isn't too difficult to see why so many Pakistanis are convinced Musharraf was behind two terrorist attacks - that same year - on Benazir Bhutto soon after she returned from exile to try to challenge his grip on power.
Sadly, she did not live to see him resign, a few months later, found guilty of high treason, or watch him flee the country.
It's also not difficult to see why so many of his fellow Pakistanis, more than a decade on, still hold a grudge against him.
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
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