AN army can pursue the path of self-destruction by fighting wars it cannot win but it cannot successfully be confronted at home as long as its internal unity remains intact. The PPP failed to understand this elementary lesson in statecraft in its time just as Begum Kalsoom Nawaz is finding it difficult to understand it now.

The Papadopoulos junta in Greece fell when it tried to annex Cyprus. The Argentinian generals had to go home when they provoked the Falklands war and could not win it. Nearer home, the Yahya junta collapsed because of the debacle it faced in East Pakistan. Otherwise, there was no way it would have been cowed by any politician.

The Musharraf regime for all its tough-talking vis-a-vis India will not be trapped in any adventure along the Line of Control, certainly not after Kargil whose ghosts, because of what this adventure cost Pakistan, still haunt the minds of the high command. With or without public support, the army's domestic position is therefore secure. If it abides by the three-year timeframe set down by the Supreme Court, the people of Pakistan, unused to such exercises in self-denial, will treat this event as the minor miracle that it will undoubtedly be. But if there are twists on the road to Damascus, if the army feels that the task of 'national reconstruction' (a dread phrase) remains unfulfilled, the nation will take that too in its stride and resign itself to events not in its power to alter. As for the Supreme Court, whenever the national interest has so demanded, it has risen to the occasion. There is no reason to think it will not do so again.

The only danger lies in the last temptation: the beckoning example of Indonesia before Suharto's fall when the military had permeated every facet of national life. Already a disturbing trend is visible with serving and retired officers making smart career moves and getting cushy appointments. Once entrenched such attitudes are difficult to eradicate.

General Musharraf may well be free of guile or vaulting ambition. But what about others under him? Where there is power there are also perks and privileges. And there is patronage. All politics is about jobs, said the American politico, Tip O'Neil. Which is as true of civilian governments as anything dressed in martial regalia. Forms change, the runners are different but the substance of patronage remains the same.

Anyhow, three years may not be a long time for a nation used to measuring its misfortunes in decades, but it is a long time for people of my generation who have crossed the psychological watershed of fifty. I have a few black hair still left. After three years how many will remain? If great things are happening the excitement thereby generated carries one along. But what if, like so often in the past, instead of progress there is only paralysis? How then to fight the onset of ennui, the worst of human afflictions? What did Nawaz Sharif say about his nights in jail? That they never seemed to come to an end. I would have put such poetry past him but then jail is a harsh teacher.

All the same, military rule in countries such as ours always comes with the promise of movement and ends up delivering stagnation. Not because intentions are insincere, very often the opposite being true. But because an army such as ours is a force for social stability, not a force for social reform. It is not a people's liberation army shaped by the etching experience of something like the Long March but an institution which, despite a thin veneer of Islamic rhetoric, remains very much true to its British moorings. Where in the world has a British-trained army led a social revolution? Why should it be any different in Pakistan? Yet, cutting through the opaque verbiage of the seven-point agenda, what General Musharraf and his team avowedly want to deliver is a radical transformation. They may lack the means or indeed an understanding of cause-and-effect but they continue to aspire for the moon.

What is actually happening is a bit different. The nation and the junta are set on two different tracks, parallel if you will, with no meeting point between them. The government is in a self-created bubble convinced both of the correctness of its chosen path and of the support of public opinion. In contrast to this, anyone not totally blind or prejudiced can have little difficulty in sensing the extent of public frustration that has built up over the government's lack-lustre performance or in seeing how completely the euphoria that had set in after the military takeover has evaporated.

True, traders are fighting a losing battle, their defiance more irrational than principled. How long can they withstand the might of the state? But even if the hoped-for revenues start coming in (although dissident voices can be heard saying these are being over-projected) what happens to the task of reforming the state which is the key to national renewal or redemption, the second word being more in accord with the messianic psychology of the Pakistani masses?

The Chief Executive wants the press to be his eyes and ears. A laudable aim but one not founded on reality. Who reads newspapers in Pakistan? Certainly not anyone in authority. Benazir had no time for them nor did Nawaz Sharif. From what I have been able to gather, things are no different nowadays. Freedom of the press is being tolerated not because of any eyes-or-ears reason but because of external considerations. A crackdown on the press would invite international censure and further spoil the image of a regime being asked to restore democracy.

Who are the leading figures in this dispensation? The Chief Executive of course, followed, at a short distance, by his two principal field marshals heading respectively the General Staff and the ISI. Behind them a couple of other staff officers at GHQ. The corps commanders are supreme in their own areas of jurisdiction but the aforementioned nucleus at GHQ constitutes the nerve-center of the junta, the source from where the key decisions flow.

The governors are figureheads in their sprawling provincial mansions much in the way President Rafiq Tarar is a figurehead (and a living nightmare) in the presidential mansion. The provincial ministers, as is only to be expected, are nobodies. In the federal cabinet the majority of ministers are nonentities while a few, such as Moinuddin Haider and the inevitable Javed Jabbar, enjoy a derivative importance because of their putative closeness to the source of all light, the Chief Executive. Munshi remains useful, as any law minister in a military government would, for his legal skills. But, if appearances are not deceptive, the person truly spreading his wings is Citibank's gift to Pakistan, the finance minister. When he first arrived on these shores after October 12 last year he had to appear before a selection committee at GHQ. It is a measure of how far he has come that his position now needs no buttress from any quarter.

How did the Soomro, who was a banker, get appointed as Sindh governor? Who's brought in the new PIA chief? While feverish guesswork in this connection could be right or wrong, what seems fairly certain is that the new PIA chief has no airline experience. What's more, an uncertain reputation follows him from the time he worked for the Saigols in Saudi Arabia. After listening to such tales I am inclined more than ever to respect the transparency and the ascendancy of merit which are as much features of the New Republic as they have been of all governments past. The more things change...