Back from the brink

Just a month ago, when Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency in Pakistan and cracked down on courts and the media under the pretext of tackling terrorists, very few people were willing to believe that Pakistan had not taken another step down the road to becoming a 'failed' state.

Civil society had turned against army rule for the first time, and an unpopular president seemed willing to wreck all in order to hang on to absolute power. No one wants an already problematic neighbour to implode, so it is a matter of relief that Pakistan has stepped back from the brink.

In the last two weeks, with a great deal of pushing, pulling and prodding by the US, Pakistan has clambered out of the hole into which it had pushed itself. Musharraf has shed his uniform and given up his command of the army, and his presidency has been confirmed by the Supreme Court of Pakistan (admittedly because the judges were handpicked).

The army has withdrawn to the barracks as much as it can in Pakistan, and the two main opposition leaders, Benazir Bhutto of the Pakistan Peoples' Party and Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League, are back in Pakistan to fight each other in next month's general election, before which the emergency will also be ended and the country's Constitution fully restored.

Even 10 days ago, no one would have thought all this to be possible. Sharif had tried once earlier to return home from his exile in Saudi Arabia, and been sent back. This time he has returned, in the Saudi king's plane, and stayed. This made it clear to the whole world, and especially to Pakistanis, that the US was not plumping for Bhutto as the person with whom Musharraf would share power.

It does seem possible to hope now that a popular government will be back in the country after a lapse of eight years, with a system of shared power between president, prime minister and army chief ensuring that no one person is completely in control, and that some degree of judicial restraint will operate.

It is early days, so no one can be absolutely certain that this is how things will pan out. In the last 60 years, there have been far too many false starts when the world expected Pakistan to start behaving like any other normal democracy. At this point, everyone can only hope for the best.

All the principal players will now be on test. Musharraf continues to pretend that Pakistan is not ready for what he thinks are western-style democracy and human rights, so he could be unpredictable.

Neither Sharif nor Bhutto was a model prime minister in their previous incarnations, nor did they act as a brake on the Pakistan army's sponsorship of the Taliban. And the army will not have changed its colours because it has a new general, who after all has earlier led the Inter-Services Intelligence.

This saga leads to the thought that American political intervention in troubled countries may not always lead to disaster""provided the intervention is in favour of democratic rule. This has important ramifications for South Asia where five of the eight countries are excellent candidates for joining the club of failed states.

The reasons why the US has taken a special interest in Pakistan are well known: it is the home of jehadis and it has nuclear weapons. It would be too much to expect the US to bestow the same attention on Bangladesh, Myanmar and Nepal. But, it would do Indian interests no harm if some discreet prodding led to a restoration of normalcy in these three countries as well.