No military ruler in Pakistan has gone gently into that good night. They have raged against the dying of the light until events have forced them to accept the inevitable and step down. General Pervez Musharraf, who formally doffed his uniform on November 28, has remained true to form. Having carefully installed a loyal successor, General Ashfaq Kiyani, as the next Chief of Army Staff, he and his political acolytes hope that they will be able to carefully rig the elections that are now scheduled for January 8, 2008.

But the situation does not look good for Musharraf. His troubles started in March of this year when he dismissed a popular Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. Chaudhry fell afoul of the regime when he started to ask uncomfortable questions about the whereabouts of hundreds of Pakistanis swept up by Islamabad's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate due to their alleged jihadi connections. But Musharraf failed to anticipate the depth of resentment, anger, and public discontent that his summary dismissal of the Chief Justice would generate. For weeks, lawyers in their elegant black and white suits faced police batons and tear gas to challenge Musharraf's high-handed decision. Undeterred by police repression of the legal community, the Supreme Court challenged Musharraf's decision and chose to reinstate the Chief Justice, a decision that was applauded by wide sections of the Pakistani population.

This outcome was clearly not to Musharraf's liking because Chaudhry and his colleagues were now empowered to pass judgment on Musharraf's questionable election as president in October of this year. Meanwhile, at the behest of the Bush administration, Musharraf launched extensive negotiations about a possible power-sharing arrangement with former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, whom the military had twice helped remove from office on grounds of corruption and mismanagement. Bhutto returned to the political fray in Pakistan only after Musharraf dismissed the pending corruption charges by executive fiat. Despite a vicious bomb attack on her entourage within hours of her arrival, Bhutto's deal with Musharraf appeared secure until early November.

Unfortunately for Bhutto, the newfound autonomy of the Supreme Court rekindled Musharraf's anxieties about his ability to stay in office. Accordingly, on November 3, Musharraf declared a state of emergency and dismissed Justice Chaudhry for a second time. Widespread protests ensued and Bhutto was forced, somewhat coyly, to distance herself from an increasingly beleaguered military dictator. As both domestic and external pressures to lift the state of emergency mounted, the Saudis, who have long dabbled in the internal politics of Pakistan, chose to complicate matters further. Quite abruptly, the Saudi leadership decided that former prime minister Nawaz Sharif--who had been living in exile in their country since 1999 and was summarily deported after attempting to return to Pakistan in September--should now return to Pakistan and enter the political arena. The Saudis, no doubt sensing Musharraf's increasing isolation, feared that Benazir Bhutto might win the upcoming elections despite her troubled and checkered past. Consequently, they chose to back their own horse, a more conservative, religious-minded politician, who had once been a minion of the Pakistani military establishment.

Suddenly, despite his court-packing, Musharraf now faces the possibility of a three-way election with an uncertain outcome. The crucial question is whether or not the military, which remains the country's most powerful institution, will seek to ensure Musharraf's victory in the January elections by collaborating with a newly pliant Supreme Court and Musharraf's cronies on the Election Commission. Such an outcome would simply exacerbate Pakistan's current political crisis. Musharraf's popularity, which was at its zenith after his coup in October 1999, has reached its nadir. Apart from his former colleagues at Army Headquarters, members of his rump PML-Q Party (Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid-e-Azam), and a small sliver of well-heeled Pakistanis, his support base has shrunk beyond recognition.

Under these circumstances, a rigged election with the tacit support of the United States would be a virtual guarantee of continued political turmoil and upheaval. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the U.S. government has consistently given a pass to General Musharraf and the Pakistani Army in its attempt to elicit their cooperation in the "war on terror." The results, to put it very mildly, have been distinctly uneven. When faced with pressure from Washington, the Musharraf regime has predictably delivered an al Qaeda operative or two. However, it has also permitted the Taliban to reorganize, allowed a range of radical groups to flourish within Pakistan, and proceeded to steadily dismantle the last vestiges of a constitutionally-based political system. Ironically, granting such extraordinary leeway to the regime has significantly bolstered existing anti-American sentiment throughout Pakistan while yielding few tangible security benefits for the United States.

The policy options before the Bush administration are clear. It should eschew any temptation to tacitly grant its blessing to Musharraf's desperate quest to extend his tenure by a second five-year term. Despite Musharraf's pledge to lift the state of emergency on December 16, his continuing ban on public rallies will make a mockery of an already restricted election campaign. If the Bush administration--which constantly professes its commitment to democracy promotion--hopes to win back some semblance of credibility, it must remind Musharraf and the Pakistani Army that a carefully contrived election will do little to resolve Pakistan's present dilemmas. Moral imperatives aside, there are also powerful pragmatic grounds for ending the U.S. government's embrace of this dictator in mufti. His support for American goals and interests in the region, despite having benefited from considerable largesse, has been anemic at best. There is little reason to believe that a mere change of garb will miraculously produce more desirable results. Instead it is a likely recipe for Musharraf's political demise and the emergence of an increasingly poisonous political milieu, which will make it even more difficult for the United States to pursue its interests.