Pakistan at the crossroads

As Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf slips and slides towards the pale these days, forever condemned to err on the side of dictatorship, at least one thing is amply clear. This is the beginning of the end of the Pervez Musharraf chapter in Pakistan's history. The army chief, a self-confessed "enlightened moderate", professing to swing on the side of Kemal Ataturk, was given his chance to usher in democracy and rewrite his nation's history. He blew it.

So as Musharraf went over his "I am Pakistan and Pakistan is me" motion in a 50-minute-long address to the nation last week, most Indians who watched the live transmission on Pakistan TV couldn't believe their ears. This was the most powerful man in all Pakistan, but in all his oratory he only once referred to the awaam, or "the people". Compared to him, we said, the smallest-time politicians from India's most backward villages are positively eloquent, especially in their invocation of "the people"!

Significantly, though, India's reaction to Musharraf's soft coup, ironically against himself, has been muted but critical. There is an expression of "regret," but unlike the US or the European Union, there has been no condemnation. India's high commissioner to Pakistan Satyabrata Pal, along with a host of other envoys based in Islamabad, was invited to a meeting with the Pakistan president earlier this week, but he kept his counsel. India watches and waits, but there is not the remotest suggestion that Musharraf should give up his army uniform or end human rights violations at home.

Behind the "regret", though, there was careful criticism about the current state of affairs, on Musharraf's refusal to return to full democracy. And the implied comment that the real victims were the people of Pakistan, caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand in Pakistan, democratic parties have been so enfeebled by long periods of dictatorship that they have been virtually paralysed into action. On the other, the monster of terrorism has grown so large that it is increasingly feeding not on outsiders but on moderate Pakistanis within.

Irony

Once again, Pakistan stands on the crossroads of history. Unlike in the past, though, when dictators were treated with resignation, even a certain fawning acceptance, Musharraf's comeuppance will take place sooner than later. The irony is that Pakistan, circa 2007, is a different country, because Musharraf the "enlightened moderate", has opened up the country in the past eight years in so many ways, including the growth of a liberal and free press.

Clearly, the Pakistani press has never had it so good. Not only have private television broadcasters been determinedly airing footage of the past few days to the outside world - and so what if they can't be seen within Pakistan! - but over the past few years and months, Pakistani papers have displayed an impudence and a free spirit that could be the envy of many aggrandised western democracies.

Truth is, when a liberal press tastes real freedom, it tends to disregard the hand that feeds it. Freeing the mind can have its share of problems.

Musharraf's tragedy is that, in the end, he wasn't able to let go. Even after eight years, he wanted to control the flow of politics, he still hankered after the limelight on centre-stage. He didn't understand that his labyrinth had become outdated, that the people of Pakistan wanted to participate in the highs and lows, the agony and ecstasy of politics, just like people all over the world.

Oddly enough, Musharraf, the architect of the Kargil conflict, was such a popular figure in India, especially in recent years. The self-confident swagger with which he walked into a room, the willingness to answer any question from any journalist, the number of times he proposed various solutions to the Kashmir issue.

It is said, both in India and in Pakistan, that both establishments, through their back-channels, had found a solution to the Kashmir issue, one that both sides could live with. The visit of the Indian prime minister to Pakistan, in the pipeline for the last many months, was supposed to have sealed it. That will now have to wait.

Just like Musharraf, Manmohan Singh failed to create the right opportunity to finally lay the Kashmir issue to rest. Singh, juggling between coalition politics at home and piloting the nuclear deal with America, could also miss his chance of going down in history on making peace with Pakistan. That's the problem with people. Just like the Americans found in Vietnam - and now Iraq - they're just too messy to deal with. That's probably why the subcontinent is such an interesting place to live in.

Jyoti Malhotra is the Diplomatic Editor of The Telegraph newspaper, India.