In the line of fire book free download

Telling them that this was perhaps the best time in recent years to get some. Includes index Face-to-face with terror -- Train to Pakistan -- Settling in Karachi -- Turkey : the formative years -- Home -- Leaving the nest -- The potter's wheel -- Into the fire -- Life in the fire -- Living through the dreadful decade -- From chief to chief executive -- The Kargil conflict -- Plan to Pakistan -- The conspiracy -- The countercoup -- Anatomy of suicide -- Pakistan first -- The quest for democracy -- Putting the system right -- Kick-starting the economy -- One day that changed the world -- Omar and Osama -- The war comes to Pakistan -- Manhunt -- Tightening the noose -- Al Qaeda in the mountains -- The symbiosis of terrorism and religion -- Nuclear proliferation -- International diplomacy -- The social sector -- The emancipation of women -- The soft image of Pakistan -- Leadership on trial : the earthquake -- Reflections According to Time magazine, Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf holds 'the world's most dangerous job.

His forces have caught more than members of al Qaeda in the mountains and cities, yet many others remain at large and active, including Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri. Long locked in a deadly embrace with its nuclear neighbor India, Pakistan has come close to full-scale war on two occasions since it first exploded a nuclear bomb in As President Musharraf struggles for the security and political future of his nation, the stakes could not be higher for the world at large.

He was killed in a road accident but left with me a lifelong love of dogs. I prefer small dogs, though, not the huge ones. This surprises my friends, for they expect a commando to have some- thing like a rottweiler.

I think people who keep rottweilers, and similar dogs, have a need to cultivate a macho image. Our seven years in Turkey passed in a flash. We departed with very heavy hearts, saying good-bye to a country that we had come to love, to our relatives, and to our many good friends. We were all crying. Those were among the most enjoyable and formative years of my life.

Our journey back was filled with wonder, too, for my father drove his small Austin Mini up to Basra. We drove through Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon. We crossed Jordan into Iraq, ending at the port city of Basra. From there our car was put into the hold of a ship and we returned to Karachi by sea, just as we had left it seven years earlier. The sheer hassle of settling down dulled much of the pain of leaving Turkey and our many friends and relatives there.

Coming home has its own charm, too, of course, even though our home was very different now. In the seven years that we had been away, Karachi had exploded into a large and vibrant cosmopolitan metropolis. The city was humming with life. My father reported back to the foreign office, still located in Mohatta Palace. We soon found a house in Nazimabad Block 3, one of many new settlements that had mushroomed after independence to accom- modate the millions who had fled India.

It was well planned, with wide roads and boulevards. Most of its neighborhoods were middle- class or lower-middle-class. Ours was one of the few families on the street to own a car. My mother soon found another job. My parents were friendly with a Dutch couple, Mr.

Brink was the general man- ager of the Philips factory, located in a new industrial area called SITE, and my mother became his secretary. Her pay was good, and one of the perks of the job was that she got a Philips radio at a discount. She worked there for a long time. That fall, Javed and I took the entrance examination for classes nine and eight, respectively, at St.

Patrick's, the old and highly regarded Catholic missionary school for boys that we had attended earlier. Javed got in anyway, because of his excellent showing in every other subject. I didn't, and was temporarily admitted to a school called Mary Colaco. My parents immediately worked to bring our Urdu up to scratch. We picked it up quickly, it was, after all, their tongue. They both taught it to us, and they also hired a tutor. I became good enough to get into St.

Patrick's after three or four months, though I suspect that my swift admission may also have had something to do with Javed's high score on the first quarterly examination he took. They must have thought that the brother of such a bright boy couldn't be a completely hopeless case. My younger brother, Naved, joined St. Patrick's School later, in class six, in He was a steady boy who earned average grades. In Ankara we had walked to school through beautiful fields. In Karachi our school was too far for walking, and the route wasn't pretty either.

Sometimes my father dropped us off in his car; usually we went by bus. The bus was always brimming with people, with hardly ever any vacant seats. To return home, Javed and I walked from school to the Regal Cinema nearby, where the bus had to slow down at a turning. There, we would both jump onto the moving bus, thanks to our gym- nastics—a dangerous practice, but boys at that age normally throw caution to the wind.

It would take us half an hour to get home, dead beat from the heat and the humidity. Our neighborhood, Nazimabad, was a tough place to live, and it has become tougher since. I would not call it the Harlem of Karachi, but perhaps it was the South Bronx.

A boy had to be street-smart to survive. There were the inevitable street gangs, and needless to say, I joined one. Needless to say, too, I was one of the tough boys. Flying kites is a favorite sport in Pakistan, but it is done with a dif- ference.

Here, as in Afghanistan, people dip the string in glue filled with crushed glass. There are kite fights, with one flier trying to cut the string of the other to make him lose his kite. The flyers' fingers always get cut, and bleed. The cuts are very painful, much worse than paper cuts. The severed kite floats slowly to the ground and, in an unspoken tra- dition, the boy who catches it gets to keep it. There was a bully in our area who would walk up to the boy who had caught a kite and demand that he hand it over, or else.

Most boys would oblige. One day my older brother got hold of some string from a cut kite. The bully, accompanied by two other boys, rudely asked him to hand it over. I held my brother's hand and said, "Why should we give you the string?

A fight ensued, and I really thrashed him. After that people recognized me as a sort of boxer, and I became known as a dada geer—an untranslatable term that means, roughly, a tough guy whom you don't mess with. The lesson I learned was that if you call a bully's bluff, he crumbles. The secret is to stand your ground for a few seconds, and your initial fright vanishes.

This lesson later stood me in good stead as a commando. I remember St. Patrick's with great affection. I learned a lot there, and not only from books. Of course I couldn't help being naughty, and I would get punished, especially by one teacher, Mr. De Lima. I think that at the back of their minds, my teachers compared me unfavourably with my brother, who continued to get superb grades.

Sometimes I was made to kneel in a corner; sometimes I had to stand outside the class- room. Once when I was standing outside, I saw my father coming to meet with the principal. I sneaked behind the building so that he wouldn't see that I was being punished.

The punishment I remember best happened when Father Todd caught me throwing chalk at another boy in class and gave me six of the choicest blows on my posterior with a sturdy cane. It stung like hell. When, as president of Pakistan, I returned to St. Patrick's for a reunion, I reminded Father Todd of the caning. An old classmate of mine came to the microphone and said, "Father, did you know at that time that you were caning the presidential seat?

Father Todd is a good soul and I have great regard for him, as I do for all my teachers. One teacher was Mr. He was very good and worked on building our character. I can never forget how he would try to inculcate in us the attributes that make a gentleman. He himself personified the qualities of a gentleman.

My romantic uncle Ghazi Ghulam Haider, the one who married the half-Turkish woman, was great at mixing with youngsters and would take the lead in many practical jokes. He would pile eight or ten of us boys into his car—a German Opel Rekord—and go looking for mischief. One day, he took us to Frere Gardens, where people go to relax in the evenings.

He spotted a man who was as bald as a golfball, sitting on a bench. For some reason, the man had oiled his bald pate, making mat- ters worse, for it was shining like a mirror and inviting trouble. We all shrank back, asking him how we could do such a thing and get away with it. He walked right up behind the man and gave him a tight smack right in the middle of his shiny head, saying, "Bashir, there you are.

I've been searching for you. The baldy spun around in shock, but before he could say anything my uncle apologized pro- fusely.

You are a carbon copy of a good friend of mine and I mistook you for him. He was supposed to be here. We were aghast but also relieved: that was the end of that, we hoped, and Uncle Haider would think up something less dangerous and embarrassing next.

Lo and behold, he raised the stakes. To get away with it once was a miracle. To get away with it twice was asking for very serious trouble. When we demurred, Uncle Haider said, "Watch me. I just saw a man who looks exactly like you and smacked him on the head. Before he could get a word out, Uncle Haider started acting contrite.

He apologized even more profusely, asking in mock dismay, "How was I to know that you had shifted seats? We all rolled on the grass with laughter. He was in the air force and had won the sword in the Indian Air Force before Partition. Before I reached class ten, at the age of fifteen, I had been an above- average student, usually among the first four in my class. That year, however, my grades dropped dramatically.

The cause: my first romance. A first crush is a distraction that all young people must suffer sooner or later, but different people handle it differently. The later a man gets it, the more of an ass he makes of himself I let it become the focus of my life, not least because it came out of the blue.

Truth to tell, she made the first move. I was still too shy to initiate a romance, let alone woo a girl. She was a neighbor, about my age, perhaps a year older. I found it far more convenient to be wooed than to have to court a girl myself Any- way, I could think of nothing else except her.

She didn't know English, and I wasn't brilliant in Urdu. A friend would read her letters to me in Urdu, and I would dictate my reply to him in Urdu. The person who would deliver the letters was my younger brother's friend. He was slightly built and could squeeze in and out of most places. He would deliver my letters and pick up hers, by quietly sneaking into her house. I went so far as to get my Nani Amma, my maternal grandmother, into the act without her realizing it.

She was a lovely woman who used to wear a burka, as conservative Muslim women do. I would tell Nani Amma that she must visit the neighbors, and then direct her to the girl's house. Before she went, I would hide a letter in a pocket of her burka and pass a message to the girl explaining where to find it. Poor Nani Amma would go to the girl's house as an unwitting courier with a romantic letter in her pocket.

Had she known, she would have been quite upset, to put it mildly. Certainly my mother would have come to know of it. This girl was very beautiful. It was puppy love, really, just an infatu- ation, and it lasted only until my parents moved to another house, far away on Garden Road, near the Karachi Zoo with its beautiful gardens. On Garden Road, I fell straight into my next romance. She was a beautiful Bengali girl from East Pakistan now Bangladesh.

This crush was somewhat less frivolous than my first. I think my mother suspected all along, because I suddenly slipped in my studies. She wasn't sure, but she became very annoyed with me for my poor results. I did well enough on my finals for class ten, ranking in the second division and missing the first by just four points.

I earned the first prize in mathematics. At that point, my mother decided that Javed would go into the civil service of Pakistan CSP , the most prestigious branch of our bureau- cracy. Her youngest son, Naved, she decreed, would become a medical doctor. With my excess energy and mischievousness, I would go into the army.

And so it came to pass. First I had to go to college to get through classes eleven and twelve, which we call freshman of arts FA or, if you take science, freshman of science FSc. This is unlike the American and British systems, where grades eleven and twelve are part of high school. I chose nonmedical science. Only after doing my FSc would I be eligible to join the army, provided I passed the military's highly exacting entrance examinations and arduous physical tests.

Frankly, none of the colleges in Karachi were good enough at the time, so my parents sent me to the famous Forman Christian College in Lahore, better known as FC College, which is run by American mis- sionaries.

Lahore was the obvious choice. It has long been a center of learning, art, culture, poetry, and literature, not just of Pakistan but of the entire subcontinent. The college principal was a wonderful Amer- ican gentleman who mixed with all the students. Another American I remember there was our director of physical education, Mr. He was very good at organizing athletic tournaments. Javed went to Government College—now a university—in Lahore, a school for the brightest students.

Yet another of Lahore's famous colleges is Islamia College, which among other things produced most of our international cricketers in the early years of Pakistan.

Forman Christian College was known as a college for anglicized "modern" students; Government College attracted the more studious types, and Islamia the more earthy types.

I was keenly aware of never having lived away from home on my own. I didn't realize then that I would never return to live with my par- ents as a dependent. A time would come, as it naturally does in life's course, when roles would be reversed and my parents would come and live with me. But for now, I was on my own and terribly homesick. However, I soon got into the swing of things and made good friends.

I was assigned room and board in Kennedy Hall. Its warden, Mr. Dutta, was also our English teacher. He was a good man, tough but fair. Forman Christian is a beautiful college and has fine facilities for stud- ies and sport, the latter being compulsory. You had to play at least one game. Athletically I became a jack-of-all-trades, competing in gymnas- tics, cross-country running, bodybuilding, and athletics.

I was fourth in cross-country, was the top gymnast, and was third in the "Mr. FC College" bodybuilding competition. All in all I earned the most cer- tificates.

Muhammad Iqbal Butt, who had competed creditably in the Mr. Universe competition, told me at the time that I had a most mus- cular physique. Campus life taught me independence. I interacted with boys from all backgrounds, even from abroad. Some were rich, some not; some were modern, some religious. There were quite a few East Africans. There were female students, too. I got along with all of them.

I made friends with boys from the Niazi tribe, especially Amanullah Niazi, who was senior to me and was later to become a brigadier. They per- suaded me to run in the elections for first-year representative. That is when I gave my first public speech. They made me stand on a table. Trembling with nervousness, I managed to tell the listeners that if they elected me I would look after their interests.

I didn't enjoy it a bit. Tariq Aziz, who was my principal secretary after I became president and was later appointed secretary to the national security council, was there too.

He was senior to me and we were not that friendly, probably because he was a "good boy," reluctant to join me in mischief-making. As early as seven or eight in the evening the hostel gates would shut, and no student could go out, nor could any vis- itor come in. However, there was a mango tree next to a hedge at the hostel periphery, and thanks to my gymnastics, I could climb the tree and jump over and across the high hedge.

So would some of my friends. We would take in a movie from nine PM to midnight, usually at the Regal Cinema, and return to college on foot because tonga drivers refused to go that far at night. Obviously, we couldn't get back in, but just outside the main gate of the college there was a mosque, and no one could stop us from sleeping there, as mosques have traditionally been a haven for wayfarers.

Early in the morning, when the college gates opened, we would sneak back in. It was in FC College that I learned how to make a time bomb, which I later used as a commando to good effect. In today's age of terror, this is hardly the thing to say, but those were relatively innocent times, and the only kind of homemade bomb then known was the Molotov cocktail. I discovered that if you take a normal firecracker and attach a filterless cigarette to its fuse, it becomes a timed fuse, depending on the length of unsmoked cigarette.

One day, three or four of us decided to give Mr. Datta, the warden, a scare. We left a timed firecracker in a big steel trash can outside his house so that it would make an awful bang. We placed another outside the assistant warden's house, and a third inside a mail- box at the entrance. Then I went back to my room. The firecracker in Mr. Datta's trash can went off first, with a defeaning bang, just like a small bomb. The trash can made it worse, for it amplified the sound.

Everyone started running toward the warden's house. I did, too. As soon as we got there, the "bomb" in the assistant warden's trash can exploded.

We all ran there, at which point the firecracker in the mailbox exploded. There was utter confusion. It was terrible. A few days later Mr. Datta got hold of one of my friends, Hameed, and asked him for the name of the boy behind the bombs. If he didn't reveal it, he was told, he would be either suspended or expelled. Hameed, who was from Hyderabad, Sindh, told me about the sword hanging over his head. I knew it would be unconscionable if he were punished so severely for something that I had done, so I told him to tell Mr.

Datta the truth. He said that Pervez Musharraf was the culprit. Datta called me to his house that evening. On the way, I won- dered what I would tell my parents if I were thrown out. Datta began by asking me who was behind the "bombing episode. I really felt ashamed of myself. I said that I was very sorry and it would not happen again. He did not do anything.

All he said was, "OK, never do this again," and let me go. That is when I learned the power of truth, a lesson that has never left me. My first brush with death, as silly as it was, happened at FC College, thanks to a mango tree.

It was laden with fruit. My friends told me to use my skill as a gymnast and climb the tree to pluck some mangoes. I shimmied up. Hanging high up from a branch, I would swing upward and pluck the fruit with my feet.

Things went fine and I had plucked quite a few mangoes when on a high swing the branch in my hands broke. I came crashing down, hit the ground very hard, and passed out. My friends thought that I was dead. I opened my eyes quite some time later in Mr.

Dutta's house, under a doctor's care. I was young and strong and soon recovered. I was always getting into scrapes. Lahore's most famous girls' college is Kinnaird, and you invariably see a lot of boys hanging around outside it, especially in the evenings. One day there was a debate at FC College in which some girls from Kinnaird had been invited to participate.

A boy sitting behind me kept hitting my chair with his foot, really irri- tating me. I repeatedly told him to stop, but he would not. With girls from Kinnaird there, my testosterone level had probably shot up, so I told him to step outside. He did, and a big fight ensued, but soon the other boys separated us. They told me that he belonged to a club of wrestlers headed by Badi Pehalwan and they would return to beat me up. But they never did. If, from all this, you have concluded that I was not intensely focused on my studies, you would not be far wrong.

I was more involved in extracurricular activities, both healthy and naughty. Lahore is a great city, with numerous attractions, particularly for a young boy free of direct parental supervision, but in reality my mother and father were always with me through the values that they had inculcated in their sons.

Of course, my parents were very con- cerned about my studies, but I had already appeared before the Inter Services Selection Board and been selected for the prestigious Pakistan Military Academy as a cadet before my final examinations for FA. After a three-year course, if successful, I would get my commission as an offi- cer of the Pakistan Army. So I took my FSc finals somewhat noncha- lantly and managed to get through, because the actual result had no bearing on my selection by the army, as long as I passed.

My life as a carefree teenager was over. His forces have caught more than members of al Qaeda in the mountains and cities, yet many others remain at large and active, including Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri.

Long locked in a deadly embrace with its nuclear neighbor India, Pakistan has come close to full-scale war on two occasions since it first exploded a nuclear bomb in As President Musharraf struggles for the security and political future of his nation, the stakes could not be higher for the world at large. It is unprecedented for a sitting head of state to write a memoir as revelatory, detailed, and gripping as In the Line of Fire. Here, for the first time, readers can get a firsthand view of the war on terror in its central theater.

President Musharraf details the manhunts for Osama and Zawahiri and their top lieutenants, complete with harrowing cat-and-mouse games, informants, interceptions, and bloody firefights. He tells the stories of the near-miss assassination attempts, not only against himself but against Shaukut Aziz later elected prime minister and one of his top army officers later the vice chief of army staff , and of the abduction and beheading of Daniel Pearl -- as well as the forensic and shoe-leather investigations that uncovered the perpetrators.

Over time, Weisberg became recognized, both nationally and internationally, as the dean of writers critical of the official version of the JFK assassination known as the Warren Commission Report. Harold Weisberg donated the world's largest accessible private collection of government documents and public records relating to the assassination of President John F. There are no reviews yet. Be the first one to write a review. Additional Collections.