Javed Jabbar is one of those people who have spent quality time with General Pervez Musharraf as he served in the latter’s cabinet as a federal minister - in the initial period at least while Gen. Musharraf was the country’s Chief Executive. Later, it dawned on JJ that the General was not taking Pakistan along the path he had promised and he duly resigned.
However, while Javed Jabbar was in the Musharraf team, he served the General as a close confidante and acted as the much desired bridge between the military mindset of the General and the public at large. Military officers, as per their professional requirements, find themselves cut off from the general populace most of the time - oh, these civilians! - but when they assume responsibilities of authority, they wish to know what the people at large are saying and thinking and they desire to be more in touch with them. To such leaders, the public’s views about the style and quality of leadership are of prime importance; Javed Jabbar was able to provide these insights to General Musharraf in a more or less unsullied form.
In this context, all credit must go to General Pervez Musharraf that as the top dog of the military junta which had taken the reins of government from a rather inept Nawaz Sharif, he handed over the portfolio of Information and National Affairs to a man most suited for the job - Javed Jabbar. The General grew up in Karachi and so did Javed Jabbar. The two had known each other for some time and had met casually on several occasions. The General being a people’s person that he is, had been well-aware of Javed’s multifarious talents and when the opportunity came, he immediately opted for just the right person.
General Musharraf always had a sympathetic ear for Javed Jabbar because he knew the man had his fingers on the nation’s pulse. JJ’s not being a military man was his big advantage though he knew very well how the military mind worked.
The fact that Javed Jabbar had worked for late Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in the same capacity also served him well though Pervez Musharraf was a different sort of person, Javed Jabbar had had a prior taste of the inner workings of the government and the bureaucracy. He knew very well how to find his way through the maze and what to tell the Chief and when.
Pervez Musharraf’s style was much less wrapped in red tape and he always knew how to put the media persons at ease. This is the sort of benefits that JJ reaped in organizing interactions between the General and the media persons and in bringing the army closer to the people.
Javed Jabbar also found himself next to, or close to the Pakistan’s leader in his interactions with foreign leadership, both at home and abroad, and did his best to create cordialities based on human understanding rather than relying on official processes and procedures.
In ‘A General in Particular’, Javed Jabbar has brought out the very humane aspects of General Musharraf’s personality that people would like to know more about. Alas, in his time, Gen. Musharraf was never the typical ‘dictator’ that many would have liked him to be and many even imagined he was.
That is the quality of Javed Jabbar’s encapsulation of General Musharraf’s persona in ‘A General in Particular’ - down to earth.
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