In Pakistan, President Musharraf’s re-election is now seen as a foregone conclusion. He probably no longer needs Bhutto but he probably wants her on side in some way, even if his team still believes that he can be elected without her. A veneer of democracy is necessary to avoid future civil strife and sustain Western political backing for a national security strategy that is as much that of the State Department as of Islamabad.

Pakistani liberals now have a problem – Musharraf is positioned to their Western allies as an ‘unpopular regime’ and yet he is about to win an election, albeit one based on an electoral college in which nearly 200 opposition politicians had boycotted the contest.  Unfortunately for them, although there are important issues surrounding the rule of law in Pakistan, if the people want Musharraf and his offer of military-backed security and are not prepared to take to the streets, then the more rounded liberal position starts to look a little weak.  It is even weaker if, as seems likely, the PPP give their grudging abstention to his accession in return for the right of their leadership group to participate in politics.

Nevertheless, the Supreme Court, despite permitting Musharraf to run, remains a liberal force – on 1 October it acted against senior officials after the crack down on liberal lawyers and journalists on 29 September. It acts as an important constraint on military solutions of any sort. Musharraf is unlikely to want to see protests continue for much longer or be prepared to use troops, Burmese-style, to suppress them. The palaver over the decision to go into the Red Mosque showed that the Government has a 'British' attitude to the use of troops in domestic order situations and few Pakistanis and Indians are unaware of the Amritsar factor in mobilising forces that can eventually be unstoppable against an existing elite.

Certainly Musharraf seems in no hurry to cut a deal with the PPP except on his terms: he has managed to soil its reputation within Pakistan by forcing it into collusion with the military in protracted negotiations that seem to have achieved little except to split the opposition into two camps.  These camps, the PPP and the PML(N), may unite later but it will be a forced marriage and not a love match. 

The negotiations between the PPP and the Government Party, which originally looked as if they had been forced on the President by his weakness, have, in fact, weakened the leadership of the democratic protest. The PML(N) has even managed the remarkable feat, given the history of its leader, of displacing the PPP as champion of radical democracy thanks to Bhutto’s misjudgements. The PPP was reduced to considering joining an electoral boycott which has been led by its rival in order to reduce Musharraf’s mandate. Whether many Pakistanis are impressed with the manouevrings of these political barons in the name of democracy and the rule of law will be clearer after the vote on October 6th.

Musharraf has also confirmed General Ashfaq Kiyani (the US’ preferred choice) as head of the army.  Kiyani was head of the ISI and at the centre of the debate over reining in the ISI's historic rather dubious links to some Islamist groups.

The recent Parliamentary resignations are scarcely sufficient to dent Musharraf’s re-election chances. Matters are moving to a scenario where a quasi-democratic Pakistani strong man, backed by the US, not only integrates Pakistan further into the Western camp alongside its closest friend and ally Saudi Arabia but engages with vigour in a more direct confrontation with a minority Islamist faction. 

The Pakistani alliance with Saudi Arabia was a matter of grave concern to the US in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 but both countries have demonstrated a slow but sure commitment to the Western project of extirpating Islamist extremism so long as their own national interests are not affected adversely and the 'war' is mounted against insurgents and not Islam itself. If anything demonstrates the shift from the pre-Iraq War mentality of labelling all Islamic states as potential threats by default, it is this steady reintegration of the Sunni conservative political community into the Western camp as allies against insurgency.

The long-term scenario suggests that a new electoral mandate and the corralling of the PPP into the political process as the President's Loyal Opposition will mean a further and more vigorous extension of the 'war on terror' into the North West Provinces. In response, we can expect more bombings in the cities, more military law in troubled zones and much more direct NATO-Pakistani co-operation against both the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. The SCO is likely to be supportive and to see Pakistan as a natural part of the Western sphere of influence so long as its mission includes the extirpation of Central Asian (notably Uzbek) foreign fighters. One thing seems to be clear – the short, sharp Islamist attempt to destabilize the Pakistani state has failed, the liberals are largely sidelined and the US is back in firm control with the more radical nationalists being purged by stealth.

We now have a situation in which the US, the Pakistani Army and the business community have collaborated from mutual interest to create ‘military rule with a democratic face’ centred on the primacy of both economic modernisation and the elimination of all ethnic and faith-based attempts to disintegrate the state.  

Pakistan is one of those made-up post-war states which could easily fall prey to centrifugal tendencies if the centre does not hold. Baluchistan has shown tendencies to go its own way and the Iranians were able to send a warning that further interference by the West amongst their Baluchis might result in the Iranians taking an interest in the rights of our Baluchis, thus repeating the same pattern that emerged on the Iraqi and Turkish sides of a split Kurdistan. Things have gone much quieter since the two countries started to co-operate against bandits, no doubt to the irritation of some terror-warriors in the murkier reaches of neo-con Washington.

It may seem tasteless to cast democratic Pakistan in this way but it is in the same general political model as Burma without all the very nasty bits. A constructed post-1945 state privileges the military in holding the territory together under a nationalist banner in a situation where strong ethnic and faith elements act as challenges to coherence. In that context, we might be grateful that Pakistan's sophisticated military at least try to maintain and extend the forms of democracy and do not flout the rule of law too directly.  

We will now see some years of violent attrition and brutality in selected areas and a diversion of Islamist activity towards spreading jihad into North India. Jihadism now becomes a problem for every West Asian state equally and it is this threat that may help to bring Pakistan and India together and so reduce the chances of a nuclear exchange. What is for sure is that any remaining pro-Islamist elements left in the ISI are going to have to make some very tough career decisions.