Within the 9 years that he led Pakistan, Gen. Pervez Musharraf generally referred to as himself a “tightrope walker” — somebody who might steadiness opposing forces, or straddle Pakistan’s dizzying political and ideological divides.

Contradictions abounded. Mr. Musharraf was the darling of the West who performed footsie with the Taliban; he was the whiskey-swilling liberal who made concessions to extremists; or the swaggering military commando who tried to make peace with India.

However the tragedy for Mr. Musharraf, who died in Dubai on Sunday on the age of 79, is that he’s now principally seen because the chief who couldn’t maintain his footing and finally fell off the tightrope: the final navy common who overtly held energy in Pakistan.

As plans had been being made on Monday to fly Mr. Musharraf’s stays residence from exile — a journey he couldn’t make in life — historians and others in Pakistan started to grapple together with his conflicted legacy as a central determine within the post-Sept. 11 world who finally misplaced his grasp on any Pakistani constituency.

“Immediately’s Pakistan is the product of Musharraf,” stated Adil Najam, a professor of worldwide affairs at Boston College. “The forces that form the nation at the moment had been unleashed throughout his time in energy. However I don’t assume he supposed it that approach.”

It’s been over 4 many years since Pakistanis mourned a frontrunner who died in mattress. The final two funerals had been for former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in 2007; and the navy dictator Gen. Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, who died in a mysterious aircraft crash in 1988 — each unforgettable emblems of the nation’s perilous politics.

Even so, there was little hesitation to cross judgment on Mr. Musharraf in current days. Some squarely blame him for the precarious state of the nation — a nuclear-armed nation of 220 million with tottering establishments, fractious politics, a crumbling economic system and empowered spiritual extremism. “A lot of the ills of at the moment could be traced again to the Musharraf period,” Cyril Almeida, a political commentator, wrote on Twitter.

His legacy is most uncomfortable for the navy he as soon as led.

Since his ouster in 2008, the military had sought to defend Mr. Musharraf from the total wrath of Pakistan’s justice system. As offended Pakistanis pursued him by way of the courts with accusations of abuses throughout his time in energy, together with homicide and treason, he by no means spent an evening in jail. That was largely as a result of the navy made positive he was allowed to slide into exile a number of instances, most just lately in 2016.

But the military has additionally appeared glad have Mr. Musharraf fade into obscurity in Dubai. Many throughout the nation’s safety sector blame him for troubles that battered the military’s status and, finally, precipitated the navy management to transform the best way they exert energy in Pakistan.

Some level to his alliance with america and President George W. Bush after the Al Qaeda terrorist assaults of 2001 that introduced in billions of {dollars} in navy help, but in addition triggered a militant rebellion inside Pakistan that led to vicious preventing, suicide bombings and tens of hundreds of deaths.

Others had been resentful of the cooperation that Mr. Musharraf gave the People, permitting the C.I.A. to arrange a secret drone base for a number of years — solely to be humiliated, in 2011, when a Navy SEAL workforce swooped right into a home in Abbottabad and killed the founding father of Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, barely a couple of hundred yards from a serious Pakistani navy base.

Nonetheless others have condemned what they see as Musharraf’s “double sport” — together with his intelligence providers searching some militants to earn American favor and cash, whereas they quietly coddled others who had been deemed to serve Pakistan’s strategic pursuits in Afghanistan or Kashmir.   

Harsh public criticism of the navy turned louder and extra frequent, altering a relationship with a Pakistani public that had beforehand been characterised by deference — or not less than silence.

“The navy in Pakistan has gone by way of a serious change previously 20 years,” Mr. Najam stated. “It has gone from being an establishment that most individuals revered, or saved quiet about, to 1 that’s now very publicly below assault — and that shift began with Pervez Musharraf.”

That period modified the calculus of energy for the Pakistani navy, which has dominated the nation a method or one other because the nation’s independence in 1947. Not bent on seizing energy instantly after Musharraf’s tenure, it permits civilians to be elected in democratic polls, whereas retaining a maintain on the levers that rely: management of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons; steering the nation’s coverage towards Afghanistan and India; and directing the connection with America and, more and more, China.

It isn’t, most likely, the nation that Mr. Musharraf hoped to forge after he seized energy in a cold coup in 1999. He portrayed himself as a swashbuckling modernizer who was decided to steer Pakistan away from the dour Islamism of its earlier navy ruler, Basic Zia.

He sat within the entrance row at trend exhibits, let it’s recognized that he loved a glass of whiskey, and was photographed clutching his two Pekingese poodles, which infuriated conservatives who take into account canines to be soiled.

He printed a memoir whereas nonetheless in workplace by which he in contrast himself to Napoleon and boasted about his muscle mass and the variety of instances he had cheated demise. He appeared on the Jon Stewart’s “The Day by day Present,” the place he ate Twinkies, made jokes about Mr. bin Laden and referred to as himself a “tightrope walker.”

For a time, the West lapped it up. The US lavished billions in help on Pakistan. In return, Mr. Musharraf handed over for detention on the People’ Guantánamo Bay lots of of suspected Qaeda members — a few of whom turned out to be harmless.

However it quickly turned clear that Mr. Musharraf couldn’t maintain his guarantees, and frustrations started to construct. Schisms emerged inside his personal navy about the right way to counter Islamist extremism. There have been disagreements about the right way to battle the Pakistani Taliban, or whether or not to chop military assist to militant teams like Lashkar-e-Taiba, which in 2008 carried out terrorist assaults in Mumbai that killed 175 folks.

Huge road protests rose towards Mr. Musharraf, and he was compelled to resign in 2008.

The results of that period proceed to reverberate.

The insurgency in Baluchistan that ignited below Mr. Musharraf rumbles on. The nation’s safety institution seemingly stays ambivalent about the right way to take care of jihadist teams. The legacy of empowered Islamic extremists remains to be inflicting chaos on Pakistan’s streets, whether or not within the type of large protests or lynch mobs that kill accused blasphemers with impunity. Simply final weekend, the Pakistani authorities banned the web site Wikipedia, claiming it contained blasphemous materials.

The dysfunctional relationship between civilian and navy leaders has taken a brand new twist. Imran Khan, the cricket legend turned politician, got here to energy in 2018 with the calmly disguised assist of the navy, which noticed him as a biddable ally.

However after Mr. Khan was ousted in a no-confidence vote final 12 months, he directed his supporters’ anger towards foes contained in the navy whom he blamed for his downfall. Since then, he has devoted his energies to a public excoriation of senior navy figures that might have as soon as been unthinkable.

“Imran Khan got here to energy touting that he was on the identical web page because the navy,” stated Madiha Afzal, a Pakistan knowledgeable on the Brookings Establishment. “And he has ended on a surprising anti-establishment notice in a approach that no Pakistani politician has achieved earlier than.”

Nonetheless, she added, it might be unfair responsible Mr. Musharraf for all of Pakistan’s issues, and even for the navy’s continued maintain on energy. These, she stated, are rooted in pathologies that return to the nation’s break up with India in 1947.

“It traces again to 2 pillars — reliance on Islam and opposition to India — that the entire nation’s leaders have tried to observe,” she stated. “Musharraf wasn’t chargeable for that — he was a product of it.”

Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan.