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Is anyone in charge in Islamabad?

You Indians are making the headlines outside India. The Pakistanis are making news for what they are doing in their own nation." That was the judgment of an old friend, a senior British journalist, as we met for lunch in London recently.

He flipped idly through a bunch of newspapers. The sports pages in all of them praised Rahul Dravid for his magnificent, gritty century on the first day of the Leeds Test. The foreign news pages carried account of Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani's visit to Britain, and one or two newspapers mentioned it on the editorial page too. But the pride of place went to a young girl, Geeta, who had made it to the front page. Geeta -- I cannot quite recall her surname -- had apparently become the youngest person in Britain to become a certified computer professional.

I found it amusing -- and truth be told, rather heartening -- that the amount of column inches devoted to these three Indians was in inverse proportion to their age, with young Geeta taking the palm. There will, I am sure, be more than my fill of bad news to digest when I get back home, but for now I am happy to read only good things about India.

(To digress a little, by a curious coincidence the Indian cricket team always does exceedingly well when both they and I are in England. The last time this happened was in 1999, during the World Cup; I was present at the ground in Taunton when Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid slaughtered the Sri Lankan attack, and then again when they bundled England out of the tournament.)

But my happiness at Indians' achievements are more than counterbalanced by worries about our neighbour. Is there anyone in charge of the office in Islamabad?

Nobody expected anything great when General Pervez Musharraf overthrew Nawaz Sharif in 1999. He was, after all, the brain behind Kargil. But India had the comfort of knowing that it was dealing with a rational man. Is this still true? Some of General Musharraf's recent remarks, assuming that he was quoted properly by the British media, are truly mind-blowing!

Did he really say, 'It is in the Constitution. It is in the Constitution because I say it is there?' (When referring to a new law that would enshrine the Pakistan Army forever in that country's highest councils, simultaneously giving him the power to dismiss elected parliaments or a prime minister.) Did he really use that grandmother of all oxymorons 'democratic dictatorship'?

I pass lightly over Pakistan's recent wild remarks that the Indian army and air force had attacked in strength over the international border. This might carry some conviction with the people of Pakistan. It was a silly bluff to use elsewhere when American satellites are clustered over South Asia. Or was the general merely trying to lay the foundation for a second Kargil, using the attack-that-never-was as an excuse?

Whichever it was, it was not the act of a rational man. India reacted forcefully to the first invasion of Kargil. What has happened in the past three years that leads General Musharraf to expect that Delhi would behave any differently today? The attack on Parliament House last December brought South Asia to the brink of war. What does the general think would happen if there was an open invasion of India?

When I look at General Musharraf today the name that comes to mind is Ngo Dinh Diem. He too was the president of an American client state in Asia -- South Vietnam. He too had reached that high office by dubious means -- polls that were as rigged as that silly referendum organised by Musharraf in April. (Both men apparently got a positive vote of over 90 per cent!) Diem too was once hailed by Americans as their bulwark against the enemy of the day. And, finally, both Diem and Musharraf got entangled in a web of plots and counter-plots by trying to be too clever. The difference is that Diem was upset in a coup while Musharraf is still hanging on, but the Vietnamese leader had enjoyed seven years in power before he got the chop...

Musharraf's descent has been more rapid. Six months ago he was Washington's most trusted ally; today the sentiment seems to be, "Well, he is the best available option, and we must make do with what we have!" Not exactly a ringing endorsement, and it is getting increasingly tough to back given the general's erratic pronouncements.

Maintaining the general in power is the United States' headache, not that of India. What should worry us, however, is what might happen if Musharraf chooses to opt for a war in a bid to give the people of Pakistan another focus of hatred. It would be a completely irrational behaviour of course, but what has General Musharraf done recently to present a picture as a rational man?

T V R Shenoy