evidence: Pervez Musharraf was one of Pakistan’s better dictators [...] WHEN PERVEZ MUSHARRAF was appointed army chief of Pakistan in 1998, he was considered a surprising choice. A hot-headed former artilleryman, with a reputation for bravery under Indian fire and occasional indiscipline, he was number three on a list of generals that Nawaz Sharif, then prime minister, had been given to pick from. He was also an outlier in a top brass dominated by ethnic Punjabis and Pushtuns. Mr Musharraf hailed from the southern Pakistani city of Karachi; his Urdu-speaking family had migrated there in 1947 from Delhi, where he was born. Mr Sharif, it was clear, envisaged Mr Musharraf as a weak army chief whom he could control. [...] Amid an explosive data and AI boom the superpower contest hots up