Musharraf gave the institution 43 years of his life. He reorganised the armed forces, cut down the army’s flab, reequipped it, focused on the weapons requirement of the Air Force and the Navy. Musharraf oversaw the most difficult period for the Pakistan Army. He tried to ideologically reorient the army which was tutored to fight the Afghan war in the eighties in the name of national interest, religious zeal and international peace.

In his closing days as the Army Chief, Musharraf opted for another coup. He imposed a state of emergency on the country and issued a Provisional Constitutional Order and under the PCO, he has bestowed upon himself uncountable, unconstitutional and unlimited powers. Subsequently, General Musharraf has transferred those powers to his person, the civilian president. Hence, as he relinquishes the post of the Army Chief, the criticism against his person who still enjoys unconstitutional powers is likely to recede. Courtesy his November 3 blunder, General and President Musharraf has become much weakened as a transitional figure.

Despite his retirement, the Army will back President Musharraf. He is the one they are comfortable with, he remains their commander-in-chief and the Army commanders are his trusted men who also view him as a protector of national and corporate interest. The textbook wisdom that removing the uniform will automatically weaken Musharraf is not entirely true.

However, he will remain the Army’s man until such time that he becomes a politically costly figure for them. To what extent that will happen will depend on the Opposition’s politics and on Musharraf’s response. The Army leadership will remain acutely sensitive to any source of political turmoil at a time when it is engaged in the difficult task of establishing internal peace and security. Simultaneously, the Army leadership will have to deal with the problems of the institution becoming the target of major criticism for its interference in politics, for polarising the society, for mishandling the war on terrorism, for placing military men in civilian posts and no less for turning sections of the Army into a land mafia.

Musharraf’s weakest point remained political re-engineering. While second only to general Zia ul Haq as the longest serving Army Chief, like Zia ul Haq, Musharraf also attempted to engineer change in Pakistani politics. Zia wanted the end of the Bhutto name. He sent him to the gallows. Musharraf said he wanted an end to the Bhutto and the Sharif names. Their corruption he said disqualified them as leaders. He wanted new talent in Pakistani politics. However, he was no Zia ul Haq and the 21^st century allowed no military ruler the free hand to opt for judicial murder the Zia way. Instead in Musharraf’s tenure, Musharraf’s political mastermind brought in the Chaudaries to replace the Sharifs. Musharraf agreed to Sharif’s decade long exit from Pakistan, the MQM was strengthened, the MMA alliance was facilitated, the first ever split in the quarter century old party PPP was engineered, the pro-Musharraf PML-Q led alliance was garnered. His prime blunders also included the formation of the PML-Q, the holding of the presidential referendum and the killing of Bugti.

Other tools to re-engineer Pakistan’s political landscape included the use of Intelligence agencies to ‘tame’ and ‘frame’ politicians. Especially during the 2002 elections, the ISI and IB were involved in acquiring and clearing PML-Q candidates and the National Accountability Bureau helped to bargain with candidates.

All of Musharraf’s strong personality traits, including candidness, boldness and open-mindedness, were not sufficient for him to even understand the greys , the imponderables of politics. He never understood the power of the subtle and the unstated. He had hoped to create a new party using the elected nazims, he had hoped to train new leaders by appointing young minister of States. None of it worked.

Musharraf an unquestionable patriot was never fit to be the politician-president. Instead of remaining above the fray, he all but joined the PML-Q. With his anger and intolerance towards the PPP and PML-N, he could never have been the fair referee.

But often the influence of these personal traits end where the logic and power of the context begins. Musharraf a soldier who had vowed to serve his country and institution well fell prey to the power of the circumstances. He rebuked politicians, and yet it was the political intangible of legitimacy that caused the unravelling of his authority and stature that he enjoyed during his initial years.

Ultimately lack of legitimacy overrode everything else. Musharraf’s personal traits cracked under the weight of political illegitimacy. His tolerance and open-mindedness retreated and intolerance and impatience took over. He trashed the Constitution, he dismantled an independent judiciary, he imprisoned thousands and he gagged the media. He sought legitimacy through all the illegitimate means. It was never a winnable formula.

Despite all this for Musharraf’s contributions to handling Pakistan’s crisis periods, history will remember him as a patriot. He piloted Pakistan ably through the worst natural disaster, through the disastrous AQ Khan crisis and through the 2002 near-war situation with India. Despite the problems in handling the war on terrorism, Musharraf did negotiate Pakistan well internationally through the challenging post 9/11 period. He also emerged as an effective spokesman espousing the political causes of Muslims hitherto ignored by the West on one hand and called for internal reform within Muslim societies.

Finally, Musharraf’s khaki presidency should be a lesson for all generals on where never to tread, if their objective is to serve the country well. In moments of candid reflection, Musharraf may tell himself that ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’. Indeed it is. Pakistan’s politics is back to square one. The khaki-president barely understood the power of the process, of Constitutional democracy and above all, rule of law.

Nasim Zehra is an Islamabad -based national security strategist