KOTA KINABALU: One day in late 1999, Pervez Musharraf was on an official trip to India. The Pakistani army chief who had just been appointed the year before was apparently airborne when he received news that he had been fired by his civilian boss, the Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif, perhaps in an effort to forestall what the latter saw as increasing military interference in civilian rule, which was, of course, not a new phenomenon in Pakistani political discourse.

In any case, Musharraf's plane was being prevented from landing in any Pakistani airport, a sure sign that he was not welcome home. It would be both unthinkable and unseemly for the airplane to turn back and land in India, then as now Pakistan's arch-rival, and for Musharraf to seek asylum there. It would also have been too rash for Musharraf to negotiate on air for his own asylum in one of the Islamic Middle Eastern countries. Plus, it might be too far to fly for the airplane which might soon run out of jet fuel.