By Peter Symonds
19 August 2008

Effectively abandoned by his domestic allies and international
backers, Pakistan’s military strongman Pervez Musharraf formally
resigned yesterday as the country’s president rather than
face impeachment proceedings that were due to commence this week.

Musharraf’s resignation followed more than a week of behind-the-scenes
manoeuvres involving US, British and Saudi officials as well as
the Pakistani army to pressure the government to grant the former
dictator immunity from prosecution. While Musharraf denied that
he had been given any favours in return for his resignation, there
is little doubt that a deal has been reached to allow him a “dignified
exit”.

The writing has been on the wall since Musharraf’s Pakistan
Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) suffered a humiliating defeat in national
elections in February at the hands of opposition parties—the
Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz
(PML-N). Musharraf is widely hated for his nine years of dictatorial
rule and support for Washington’s “bogus war on terrorism”
that has triggered what amounts to a civil war in Pakistan’s
tribal border areas with Afghanistan.

For months, the Bush administration and its allies pressed
the PPP-led coalition government to collaborate with Musharraf,
which the PPP endeavoured to do. The PML-N and its leader Nawaz
Sharif, who was ousted as prime minister by Musharraf in a military
coup in 1999, sought to exploit popular opposition by demanding
impeachment and the reinstatement of 57 supreme court judges sacked
by Musharraf last year. Sharif pulled the PML-N ministers out
of the cabinet in May and threatened to leave the coalition completely
if agreement could not be reached on these issues.

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