Costs of General Musharraf’s Dictatorship

[To understand the context of this post, please read At What Cost! Why Compute Economic Costs of Faulty Political Decisions]
This post analyzes the continuing accumulation of long term costs associated with General Musharraf’s dicatatorship 1999-2008 in the areas of ideological costs, economic costs, governance costs, foreign policy debacles and political engineering costs.

[Bullets are being detailed along with references: WIP]

Ideological Costs

  • Enlightened Moderation as an antidote to Gen Zia’s Islamization 
  • Liberalization of media; fashion shows → creates religious backlash 
  • Proliferation of INGOs; foreign agenda against Pak Ideology 
  • Good-Taliban-Bad-Taliban strategy → TTP terrorists 

Economic Costs

  • Plots doleouts + loan writeoffs strategy to buy loyalties 
  • PTCL, KESC, HBL, ABL, MCB, PS etc sell off in shady deals 
  • Establishment Commercialization → Spread to all economy sectors 
  • Demand Explosion of cars/ACs → energy crisis 

Governance Costs

  • NAB decapitated: Corrupt class let off; OCAC scam; circular debt 
  • NRO Muk-muka: Karachi/Lyari gang warfare; bhatta, street crimes 
  • NRB devolution without consensus → rolled back within a few years 
  • Consumer finance bubble → Stocks, Property bubble 

Foreign Policy Debacles

  • U-Turn: Pakistan made a tool of US’s War on Terror → $200Bn+ loss 
  • Good-Taliban-Bad-Taliban strategy → suicide bombers; 100k+ deaths 
  • Selloff: Air space, Shamsi base, US drones → CIA, Blackwater ops 
  • Kargil fiasco, Kashmir U-Turn, TTP backlash

Political Engineering Costs

  • NROed MQM; 12000 criminals let off, cases quashed 
  • NROed Chaudhrys’ PMLQ to support dictatorship; AZ as Pres thru his NRO 
  • Bugti terminated → RAW agents, Baloch insurgency →Disappearances 
  • PCO judges, emergency, Dogar, article-6

See other posts related to Pakistan History 101: 

References: 

  1. PTCL’s Privatization: The Biggest Financial Scam in Pakistan’s History?
  2. The Tale of PTCL’s Sale and How Etisalat Got Away without Paying USD 800 Million
  3. PTCL Selloff Etisalat Again Delays Payment
  4. Privatisation of Pakistan Steel termed biggest scam
  5. List of beneficiaries of NRO. Not a complete list
  6. Pakistan’s NRO and Corrupt Democracies of South Asia
  7. NRO and Pakistan in the Quagmire of Corruption
  8. NRO List Shows 34 out of 8000 Politicians
  9. Yeh Khamoshi Kahan Tak Pdf Book by Gen Shahid Aziz Free Download; Stories by Head of NRB who resigned when he found out about the truth of Gen Musharraf

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