No place to hide

: Of the many questions raised by Pervez Musharraf’s resignation, one stands out as both the most mundane and the most difficult to answer — where will he live now? One senior Pakistani official [said] that initially it had been planned to fly the former president and his family to London [but] those plans had been changed...

After nine years in one of the world’s most dangerous political jobs, he and his family must soon return to a civilian world teeming with politicians, separatists and Islamists who would like to see him jailed or dead. His own choice would be to stay in a house that he is building on his five-acre farm on the outskirts of Islamabad. But he risks prosecution by his political enemies if he stays in Pakistan... He would also be a certain target for the Islamic militants who have already made three attempts on his life. Only last week, Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s number two, denounced Musharraf as “one of the biggest enemies of Islam, if not the biggest”.

As president, he was protected by a relatively well-trained army... now he is entitled to protection only by the police, whose shortcomings were exposed by Benazir Bhutto’s assassination last year. If the Government does not grant him military protection, as well as immunity from prosecution, he will probably be forced overseas... an alternative to London might be Turkey... Musharraf spent some of his childhood in Turkey and speaks Turkish, but diplomats say Ankara is also reluctant to take on the security risk. Another suggestion is the United States, where his son, Bilal, works. However, Condoleezza Rice [said] an asylum offer was “not on the table”.

Excerpted from an article in ‘The Times’