Uniform response

Discreet advertisements in some newspapers in Pakistan this week told a story in themselves. The government announced a tender for image consultants for the Pakistan Image Project, an embryonic initiative that aims to shift negative perceptions about the country in the international media.

Consultants have been invited to submit their visions of how Pakistan can project a more positive face to the outside world a challenge for a country that is often characterised in the Western media as a haven for jihadi militants.

For General Pervez Musharraf, the need for marketers is more urgent than ever in the wake of the London bombings on July 7.

The attacks, carried out by a quartet of young Britons that included three men of Pakistani origin, of whom two had recently visited Pakistan, were the latest incident to shake the confidence of those in the West who have supported Musharraf's rule.

The bombers' links to Pakistan, however tenuous in reality, revived fears that the general's lack of legitimacy a democratic deficit all the more glaring as neighbouring Afghanistan prepares for parliamentary elections next month has constrained his ability to enforce a crackdown on religious extremists.

Can-do image

The gloss is fast coming off Musharraf's can-do image. His history of broken promises, dependency on and appeasement of the religious right and repression of moderate democratic parties is catching up with him.

Frustration at his failure to force reform of the madrassa network of Islamic religious schools, promised in 2002, follows growing unease at retrograde developments on the civil liberties front that have dented his claim to stand for "enlightened moderation".

Like military rulers before him, Musharraf has maintained his grip on power by forming a party that provides a veneer of democracy: the PML(Q). But the legitimacy this affords the general in his battle to root out religious extremism is minimal.

The PML(Q), for example, is divided over his demand that madrassas register with the authorities by December, reform their curriculums, declare sources of funding and throw out foreign students.

At the same time, he has squeezed liberal democratic political parties by refusing to allow their leaders to return from exile and entered an awkward marriage of convenience with religious hardliners in a six-party alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA).

Musharraf's opponents say MMA should in fact stand for Military-Mullah Alliance.

There are signs that, under intense pressure following the London bombings, Musharraf could make a historic break with the MMA, which has opposed his promised crackdown on madrassas.

Such a move could allow a rapprochement with either Benazir Bhutto or Nawaz Sharif, which would be welcomed in the West.

It is a prospect he does not relish. For now, at least, Musharraf prefers to concentrate power in Rawalpindi and call in the image consultants.

- Financial Times