M ahmud Durrani, a long retired Pakistani Major General, was taken away at 84 last week by the heart condition he had dealt with for more than four decades. It was detected while he was in service and probably prevented the celebrated cavalryman from rising much higher.

But, he used that setback to transform himself into a different figure altogether. A man of peace, the mostly India-hating Urdu press in Pakistan often derided him as General Shanti. The Indian term for peace was preferred to the Urdu, aman , only to pile on the ridicule.

Despite his decade in peacemaking, in 2008, the new (post-Musharraf) Pakistan People’s Party government appointed him National Security Adviser. Benazir Bhutto had been assassinated in the run-up to that election and her husband Asif Ali Zardari was

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