Jemima Khan is granted a rare interview with Pervez Musharraf. In The Independent, UK:
‘Since you were so kind as to greet us in London at Downing Street last month, the President would like to return the favour,” announces Major-General Rashid Qureshi, President Pervez Musharraf’s PR man over the phone. Only in Pakistan could the government’s head of spin be a retired major-general. He is referring to my last encounter with the President on 28 January – when, along with a 2,000-strong, placard-waving, slogan-jeering mob, I protested on the main road outside 10 Downing Street while Musharraf discussed democracy with Gordon Brown over lunch inside. On the way in he waved at us. Clearly he’s a man who is not afraid of confrontation. Much to the justifiable fury of every journalist in Islamabad, he has now granted me an exclusive half-hour interview despite or perhaps because of the fact that I have recently described him as one of the most repressive dictators Pakistan has ever known.
The politics of paranoia: Jemima Khan reports from Islamabad
Pakistani elections are excellent value for the spectator. There are the huge, colourful jalsas (rallies) providing free entertainment; the raucous but generally good-humoured demonstrations at which effigy-burning is a staple; the slanderous mud-slinging between candidates who will soon be making expedient last-minute deals with each other; and the endless titillating conspiracy theories.
As the wife and constant Achilles’ heel of a hapless former contestant, I, too, have been in the line of fire. In 2002, I was apparently a Rushdie-loving apostate after admitting I had read his novel Shame. The previous time, I was a Zionist conspirator with a £40m election budget provided by my (half) Jewish father to further the cause of Israel. Yet the fact that Pakistan has become a nation of conspiracy theorists is hardly surprising, given the decades of fraudulent and mendacious politics.
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