IN RESIGNING on Monday Pakistan's president Pervez Musharraf has at last grudgingly honoured his commitment to restore democracy to his country. His voluntary - well, almost - departure, ahead of likely impeachment, is a welcome first for Pakistan. Previous military rulers have either been overthrown or died in suspicious circumstances in office, and no civilian leader has served out a term. Indeed, Nawaz Sharif, prime mover behind the impeachment, was forced out by Musharraf in the 1999 bloodless coup that brought him to power.
Musharraf's promise was always greater than his delivery, not least in his domestically controversial relationship with President Bush. In the wake of 9/11 he had thrown his country's weight behind the "war on terror" promising to help with the crackdown against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The result, the appearance of being a US puppet notwithstanding, was $10 billion in US aid money supposed to help train the army in counterinsurgency. While the army, at no small cost, has taken on militants in the northwest of the country, and Musharraf turned a blind eye to US operations, much of the aid went into general state coffers. But the uncontrollable intelligence organisation, the Inter-Services Agency (ISI), continued to play footsey with the Taliban, while many madrassa schools continued to sow the seeds of extremism. As recently as last month the Pentagon and the CIA confronted the Pakistan government with evidence that the ISI was involved in the planning of the bomb attack in Kabul on the Indian embassy.
Musharraf's inability to rein in the agency was mirrored in his gradual loss of authority over the hugely powerful and heavily Islamicised army from whose command he resigned under pressure in November. The man he appointed as his successor, Gen Ashfaq Kayani, was notably silent as impeachment loomed. And the president's other prop, the US, made it clear it was no longer prepared to back him, declaring the issue of his removal an "internal matter". In the aftermath of resounding defeat of his supporters in February's general election and the appointment of a hostile coalition government Musharraf had increasingly become, to borrow Mao's phrase, a paper tiger.
Few imagine, however, that his departure will usher in a period of stability in this important nuclear-armed regional power wracked by inflation and faced by major security challenges. Pakistan may well have sacrificed dictatorship for democratic but bad government - a deeply unstable coalition of two parties, the late Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party under her husband Ali Zardari, and Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League. The previous record of corruption and incompetence of both in government leaves much to be desired, and their first challenge will be to lift the suspension of Chief Justice Iftiqhar Chaudhry. Then, once they agree constitutional legislation to reduce the powers of a future president, they may well end up heading into a messy and bitter general election. It is a prospect that Pakistan can ill afford, however welcome the end of the Musharraf era.