ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN — Pervez Musharraf always considered himself first and foremost a soldier, a onetime commando who believed he could shoot his way out of almost any fight.
Not this time. But the Pakistani president, who resigned Monday rather than face imminent impeachment proceedings, nonetheless displayed a flash of his former battlefield sensibilities, refusing to acknowledge the victory of his political enemies.
"Whether I win or lose, the nation will lose," he said of the prospect of an impeachment fight. Bidding farewell to an honor guard a short time later, he was as stiff-backed in a business suit as he had once been in uniform.
Military life molded Musharraf, though he ostensibly left it behind nine months ago when, under intense international and domestic pressure, he finally relinquished his post as army chief of staff to become a civilian president. For the previous eight years, he had enjoyed near-absolute power in Pakistan, holding the post of president as well as military leader.
Even after his farewell to arms in November, Musharraf clung to the military milieu. He played regular rounds of golf with his handpicked successor, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani. When he celebrated his 65th birthday last week, the guests were his old comrades-in-arms, without so much as a nod to the new civilian power structure.
His authority significantly curtailed after his party's landslide loss in February's parliamentary elections, Musharraf continued to live in the army chief of staff's designated quarters, and maintained his offices at military headquarters in Rawalpindi, the garrison city adjacent to Islamabad, the capital.
Retreating into a figurehead role in the new civilian government, he kept a careful public silence about the country's new leaders. But he privately expressed to associates his contempt for what he saw as the bumbling, disorganized ways of the ruling coalition, led by Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
During decades of army life, climbing through the ranks to the level of senior command, Musharraf displayed a shrewd ability to manipulate subordinates and superiors alike, sometimes presenting a convincing show of loyalty to conflicting causes. Through decades of honing what became an extraordinary set of political survival skills, he displayed the ability to move decisively at critical junctures. When pushed to do so, he was capable of severing longtime bonds without once looking back.
