ABSTRACT
Yet another “new era” began in Pakistan on October 12, 1999. Many in the street danced with joy, and many were those who went into a swoon as the anxiety of the hours preceding Musharraf’s safe landing abated. He was not the most popular man in the country, but he had ousted a coterie that had lost credibility with the people. Interestingly, the militant Islamic groups were also jubilant but for different reasons. Abdullah Muntazir, spokesperson for Lashkar-i-Taiba (Army of the Pure), a religious-cum-militant group primarily operating in Indian Kashmir, declared that now Pakistan should have an Islamic system on the pattern of Afghanistan’s Taliban.1 Such elements perhaps were waiting for another General Zia ul-Haq, who had fathered them, not knowing that Musharraf was reputed to be cut from a very different cloth.
