DESPITE General Musharraf's growing irrelevance to local or international politics, except for the bad recollections his stint of military dictatorship would evoke in the minds of the people of Pakistan, his recent comments on the country's present predicament in an interview at London would raise many an eyebrow. He seems to absolve himself from the blame of failure in controlling militancy, ignoring the glaring reality that it was during his tenure and because of his policies that terrorism had dug its roots in FATA's soil, which is very much a part of Pakistan, with tentacles in other parts of the country. Rather, he accuses the current set-up of not effectively checking the scourge. The evident truth is that the prevalent state of militancy and the widespread sense of insecurity are a continuum of his days. Strangely, he should be warning the government that in case terroristic tendencies were not controlled, relations with other countries would worsen. People's memory is no doubt short, but not that short that they would have forgotten the year-long massing of troops on the Indo-Pakistan border with all the military paraphernalia ready to go into action, nor other incidents of tense relations both with the eastern and western neighbours when they had been levelling allegations of Pakistan's involvement in such acts without providing any evidence, as he held the reins of the country's governance. The Mumbai carnage and New Delhi's unsubstantiated charges are just a re-run of past scenarios. No one would like to stop him from jotting down his memoirs and trying his talent for writing, but his recent observations, presenting a distorted perspective of the time he had been in power, give a foretaste of what the reader should expect to see in print. Similarly, with his learned audience when he takes up lecturing at universities. It is unlikely that critics take a favourable view of his assessment. He should be prepared for a good deal of grilling.