He opted to be a refugee in Pakistan rather than remain a resident in India during Partition. He started his career as a soldier, the most prestigious job then and why even now, in his adopted country. Inspired by other gun-bearing Pakistan generals, he over threw democracy, captured power and turned into a politician but in uniform. This is the profile of President Musharraf. But he seems unfolding himself further as he now unveils yet another dimension of his.

His intimacy with the US in recent years seems to have honed skills as a businessman to make large money legitimately, which as a general and as politician he cannot. Obviously, as part of financial engineering, two days back he gave a 60-minute interview to CBS, a US TV broadcaster, on his book In the Line of Fire which has shocked the US as much as his own country and aroused great interest in his book in India also. In the process the book still under print when he spoke is turning into gold. The publisher of the book is the owner of the CBS TV also. Even as the CBS interview has assured both the publisher and Musharraf good business, it has served latter's political ends much more.

But what did Musharraf's tell CBS on his book which has shocked the US and Pakistan alike? Musharraf has breathtakingly disclosed, as the trailer to his book, the stunning reasons for his U-turn on terror three days after the Osama-inspired Islamic terror attack on the US on 9/11. Till that day Musharraf and Pakistan were proud partners of the global patent holders of terror, Taliban and Osama.

In his interview about what the book contains, Musharraf made a shocking disclosure that after the attack on World Trade Centre, the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, called him from an `important meeting' and warned him to make his choice `either to be with us or against us' in the war on terror. The choice to Musharraf was either `you are our captive' - not a friend, as no one can become a friend on gunpoint - `or our enemy'.

Things did not stop at this. Musharraf disclosed again stunningly - actually shamelessly - that the US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage had it conveyed to Musharraf through Pakistan's intelligence director that if he did not opt to be the US captive, Pakistan should be prepared to `get bombed' and `go back to stone age'. President Bush thought that Richard Armitage, the `huge', `bull-necked' `weightlifter' - who has a self-confessed record of lifting 440 pounds in bench-press! - was the right man to convey the threat.

The Musharraf disclosure has stunned and shamed the US, Bush and of course Armitage as much as Pakistan must have felt. The US diplomacy trusts that captives never tell the truth unless they turn shameless. But here, unbelievably, the captive did turn shameless and told the truth!

As is to be expected, Bush has distanced himself from the `threat episode' and Armitage has denied it took place in those words. But one thing is certain. It is not love of America that U-turned Musharraf and Pakistan from being the allies of Taliban and Osama into allies of the US against them. Yes there is no explanation for the about turn of Pakistan except what Musharraf claims.

But why did Musharraf choose to say the truth after five years. And why did he do this when in the US? By almost admitting that he was a captive of the US, he has humiliated himself before his countrymen of course. But that seems to be calculated to escape further humiliating demands on him from his captor. Obviously worried about his own capacity, as the head of a Talibanised Pakistan, to deliver all that the US asks him to, he seems to have finally taken a call to warn the Americans implicitly not to make further demands on him. This is clear from his second disclosure on September 26 that the CIA paid bribes of millions of dollars to Pakistan to get some a few hundred Al-Qaeda cadre! This disclosure by the receiver of the bribe must shame the Americans more than his share of shame on the previous day. Clearly Musharraf's CBS interview is not just business promotion.

Business is a fringe benefit out of something more serious. It is deliberately political, may be so even desperately. He has taken a high risk on the home front where knives of his former cousins in terror will be out on him. But obviously he thinks that such a risk is worth taking rather than the risk continued obeisance to the captor blindly and forever. That is why, like a girl friend turns shameless and shames a powerful man by disclosing her secret affair with him, Musharraf has made public Pakistan's privately suffered affair with the US to the shame of both. The signal is loud and clear.

A sort of cold war between the US and Pakistan has commenced. The cosy relation that brought about by threat and bribe in the past will never be the same after what Musharraf has said. But one this is clear. The book has, in any event, assured him of a decent superannuation, if he has not already arranged one for himself.

Tail piece: Yet, in his book, Musharraf claims to have formulated what he calls a four-point `out of box' solution for the Kashmir issue, and the Indian media seeking peace with Pakistan at any cost is serious about it though the man is a self-confessed US captive

Courtesy: www.newindpress.com, September 27 ,2006