When it comes to being “our S.O.B.,” Pakistani president Perez Musharraf has the “S.O.B.” part down. We just wish we could have more confidence in the “our.”

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Musharraf declared a state of emergency over the weekend that brought back memories of the coup that took him to power in 1999. In the context of Pakistani political history, this move isn’t shocking — it’s the norm. Pakistan isn’t a failed state, but it is a failure as a state; it has never managed to create a stable constitutionalist politics. The latest constitutional crisis has been brewing since Musharraf suspended the head of the country’s politicized supreme court earlier this year, and was probably fated to come to an unfortunate end once the court — bizarrely — said it would rule on Musharraf’s eligibility to stand as a presidential candidate after he had already won reelection in early October. (His victory was the outcome of a deeply flawed vote in the legislature.) It was the possibility that the court might rule against him which prompted Musharraf to act, although he justified his strong-arm tactics by pointing to Pakistan’s growing instability.

That instability is deeply alarming, and the primary U.S. interest in Pakistan is that Musharraf — whether he is ruling constitutionally or not — act to control it. Since his initial crackdown on Islamic militants in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 — a crackdown that came under extreme diplomatic pressure from the U.S. — Musharraf’s effort has been maddeningly on-and-off. The Pakistani army has sustained real losses fighting the Taliban in the tribal areas (1,000 killed over the last six years). But the government has also cut ineffectual peace deals with Taliban-allied tribal leaders and, as a recent Newsweek cover story convincingly documents, allowed Islamic militants to establish crucial beachheads in Pakistan’s urban areas.

The U.S. should make clear to Musharraf that it is willing to forgive a lot, so long as the Pakistani government shows a commitment to the anti-Islamist campaign that has long been lacking. If Musharraf is determined to govern for now as dictator, we should at least expect him to be an effective dictator acting in our interests.
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