pakistan

Until it hit the headlines after the Mumbai attacks, India did not tend to receive much attention in the international press - at least not as much attention as China, Asia's other major rising power. Even with the Olympics over, China has been the subject of innumerable recent news stories and feature pieces. In noting this, I am not trying to suggest that China gets too much attention; my point is only that India could use a little more. (To this end, openDemocracy has just launched a new editorial section on India, which had been planned for some time.) In the absence of detailed reporting on India, three images of the country have tended to coexist (somewhat uneasily) in Westerners' imaginations.

Leaders around the world have greeted the resignation of Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf as a positive step forward for a country still in the throes of instability. Irfan Husain assesses the mixed legacy of a leader who once enjoyed the support of most Pakistanis. Musharraf's nine years at the helm of the country were not without their successes. The military coup through which he came to power nipped at the bud Nawaz Sharif's attempt to bring sharia law to the country. Musharraf presided over an upturn of Pakistan's economic fortunes. His deregulation of powers to provincial governments came as a long overdue measure in building "democracy" from the bottom up. Given that the disastrous Kargil invasion of 1999 was his brainchild, Musharraf's overtures to hulking neighbour India (the ultimate bête noire of Pakistani diplomacy and strategy) in recent years came as a welcome sign of progressive and wise leadership in Islamabad.

Ironically, his rule was undone by the very factors that sustained it. Pakistan's entanglements in the American-led "war on terrorism" at once bankrolled the military (so enmeshed in the workings of the state) and compromised Musharraf's position abroad and within Pakistan. Yet what suited Washington irked many Pakistanis, particularly those along the eternally restless and lawless Pashtun borderlands. Domestically, Islamabad was damned if it did. Internationally, it was damned if it didn't. In the end, Musharraf's spluttering administration could neither stem the terrorist tide in Afghanistan and India nor could it cool the heated sentiments of its own people, as a new branch of the Taliban insurgency takes shape in Pakistan.

Yes, he was between a rock and a hard place. But his inability to control Pakistan's shadowy intelligence agencies - coupled with Islamabad's unwillingness to shed its anarchic doctrine of "strategic depth" - made the job impossible. Musharraf was further weakened by the loss of the support of urban and secular liberal elites after his authoritarian handling of the judiciary and the period of emergency rule. A fairly-elected government - thin on democratic credentials, thick with track records of corruption - now takes centre stage. One can only hope that its inevitable failures of imagination are not as bad as Musharraf's.

Pervez Musharraf yesterday swore in the fifth prime minister to take office during his tenure as president of Pakistan. This one may very well be the last. While Pakistan's last four prime minister have been little more than parliamentary puppets, the election of Yousaf Raza Gilani poses a real challenge to the imbalance of presidential power that has allowed Musharraf to hold sway over Pakistani politics since 1999.