Predictions that Pervez Musharraf will have to flee Pakistan to escape treason charges have died along with the coalition that drove him from the presidency. The ex-general can now eye a comfortable – though high-security – retirement in the luxury villa, complete with a swimming pool and strawberry bed, that he is building in an elite suburb of the capital. Musharraf, a gregarious 65-year-old who counted US President George W. Bush as a personal friend, has received a stream of guests at Army House in Rawalpindi, south of the capital, where he continues to live even though he stepped down as army chief nine months ago. He has taken to the tennis court and the golf course to unwind after a tumultuous nine-year reign in which he took Pakistan into America's war on terror, warded off economic calamity and dealt with the aftermath of the devastating 2005 earthquake. “He's laughed off the reports that he is about to leave the country,” said Tariq Azim, a leader of the main pro-Musharraf party defeated in February elections. “He said, ‘I'm not going anywhere, I'm staying in Pakistan. My house is being built and it will take another three or four months”' to complete, Azim said. As well as a bogeyman for his feuding political enemies, Musharraf remains a prime target for extremists who hate him for allying the Muslim world's only nuclear power with the West. He has escaped several assassination attempts and officials say the army will continue to guard its former commander closely. But a visit to 1-A Park Road in Islamabad's Chak Shahzad district on Friday suggested that Musharraf and his wife Sehba are unwilling to live in a bunker, however well-appointed. Behind a hedge, the spacious villa on a five-acre plot is protected only by a wall of less than six feet (1.8 meters) in places. Coils of shiny barbed wire run along the top of the barrier to thwart would-be intruders. But for now at least, traffic can move freely on the roads along two sides and there was nothing to stop someone pressing through the bushes to get a clear view of the house. Hammad Husain, the architect and a family friend, said the low-key security was all Musharraf's idea. “Many people said the wall should be very high considering the security threats,” Husain said. “But somehow, Mr. Musharraf has such a relaxed and cool personality that he said, ‘I don't want it to look like a huge, fortified castle.”' Husain, whose father served with Musharraf in Pakistan's special forces, said the house might be finished in as little as four weeks. However, only a handful of laborers could be seen resting in the shade of the house on Friday, which has yet to be glazed or plastered.
