The military and former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf has died at the age of 79 in a Dubai hospital after fighting a long illness, local media reported this Sunday. The politician led a coup in 1999 for which he came to power after an attempt to remove him as a general. He held the presidency until 2008.

During his tenure the country experienced rapid economic growth and tried to introduce socially liberal values ??to the conservative Muslim country, becoming a key US ally after 9/11.

Musharraf had been in self-imposed exile for years. He enjoyed strong support for many years, with the biggest threat from him being Al Qaeda and other Islamist militants who tried to kill him on at least three occasions. But his heavy-handed use of the military to quell dissent, as well as his continued support of the United States in its fight against al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban ultimately led to his downfall.

Born in New Delhi in 1943, Musharraf was four years old when his parents joined the mass exodus of Muslims to the newly created state of Pakistan. His father served in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, while his mother was a teacher. The family practiced a moderate and tolerant Islam.

He joined the military at the age of 18 and went on to lead an elite commando unit before becoming its boss. In 1999 he seized power by ousting then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who had tried to sack him for greenlighting an operation to invade Indian-controlled areas of Kashmir, bringing Pakistan and India to the brink of war.

In his first years in government, Musharraf won international plaudits for his reform efforts, pushing through legislation to protect women’s rights and allowing private news channels to operate for the first time.

With this vision, after 9/11 he became one of Washington’s most important allies, allowing US forces to operate armed drones from secret bases on Pakistani soil that killed thousands and ordering the deployment of national troops in tribal areas of Pakistan. the border with Afghanistan for the first time in history. That helped legitimize his rule abroad, but also plunged Pakistan into a bloody war against local extremist militant groups.

In a 2006 memoir, he took credit for saving Pakistan from US wrath, saying the country had been warned that it should be “prepared to be bombed into the Stone Age” if it did not ally with Washington. Musharraf successfully lobbied then President George W. Bush to invest money in the Pakistani military. Still, the army’s loyalties were in question: its powerful intelligence services struck deals with the Taliban and al Qaeda, and bolstered the insurgency fighting US troops in Afghanistan.

In other areas of foreign policy, Musharraf tried to normalize relations between New Delhi and Islamabad. Analysts say the Kashmir issue, which remains the most potent bone of contention between India and Pakistan, came close to being resolved during the Musharraf era. But the peace process derailed shortly after his government.

Despite strong economic growth and foreign investment under his government, the last years of his presidency were overshadowed by an increasingly authoritarian government. In 2006, Musharraf ordered a military action that assassinated a tribal chief in Balochistan province, laying the foundations for an armed insurgency that persists to this day.

The following year, more than a hundred students calling for the imposition of sharia law were killed after Musharraf rejected negotiations and ordered troops to storm a mosque in Islamabad. That led to the birth of a new militant group, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, which has since killed tens of thousands in suicide bombings and attacks.

In 2008, the country’s first democratic elections in 11 years were held. Musharraf’s party lost and faced with the possibility of impeachment he resigned as president and fled to London. He returned to Pakistan in 2013 to run for a seat in parliament, but was immediately disqualified. He went into exile in Dubai in 2016. In 2019, a court sentenced him to death in absentia for the imposition of a state of emergency in 2007, but the verdict was later overturned.