Reuters

OSCILLATING between military takeover and civilian disarray, Pakistan often seems consigned to a classical form of governmental perdition. Yet the coup that General Pervez Musharraf, the country's president, launched on Saturday November 3rd, was in fact something new. His first coup, in 1999, was designed to restore order after civilian misrule. Now General Musharraf wants to shore up his own unpopular, and perhaps illegal, government.

He has suspended the constitution—a step the government has inaccurately described as constituting a state of emergency—and sacked most of the Supreme Court's judges. This includes the chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, a champion of swelling opposition to the general. The courthouse in Islamabad is now sealed off by barbed wire and armed police. Private television news channels, foreign and Pakistani, have been hauled off-air. On November 4th the prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, suggested that a general election due in January could be postponed for a year though the next day he insisted that it would go ahead as planned in mid-January.

Over 500 lawyers, opposition politicians and human rights activists have been arrested. They include Asma Jahangir, boss of the country's human-rights commission and a former UN special rapporteur. In an e-mail from house arrest, where she has been placed for 90 days, Ms Jahangir regretted that General Musharraf had “lost his marbles”.

General Musharraf's view, expressed in a midnight televised address, is that his intervention is required to prevent instability: “I cannot allow this country to commit suicide.” He identified two urgent challenges: combating Islamist militancy, which is fuelling a small, but disastrous, war in north-western Pakistan; and his urge to “preserve the democratic transition that I initiated eight years back”.

The second motive, properly understood, seems to be uppermost in the general's mind. The Supreme Court's judges had been due to rule on the legality of his recent re-election as president. In a poll boycotted by most opposition parties, he was restored to office in military uniform, though the constitution seems to forbid it, by the same rigged assembly that had already elected him once. Rumours last week suggested that, in a surprising turnaround, the judges were minded to conclude that this was illegal.

Around a dozen of the court's 17 judges, including Mr Chaudhry, condemned the coup as an illegal act, and have been sacked. Five approved it, including Abdul Hamid Doger, an artful ally of the general, who has been rewarded with the job of chief justice. General Musharraf will now hope to restock the court with loyalists.

Once that is done, he may indeed restore the constitution. General Musharraf is right that Pakistan faces serious instability. But in a country itching for democracy and increasingly resentful of his autocratic and pro-America stance, he is partly to blame. Early this year, after the general tried thuggishly to sack Mr Chaudhry, tens of thousands of protesters rallied against him. Last month, in a more ambiguous challenge to the general, 200,000 supporters of Benazir Bhutto, leader of the opposition Pakistan People's Party (PPP), rallied in Karachi to welcome her back from eight years in exile.

General Musharraf's campaign in the north-western tribal areas, an American-ordained policy that has come to symbolise his rule to many Pakistanis, is meanwhile threatened with disaster. The army is demoralised and increasingly suffering defeat at the hands of local zealots. In recent weeks, several hundred troops have surrendered; on November 5th 200 of these were reported to have been released by the militants in exchange for some 25 militants freed by the government. In his address to the nation, General Musarraf admitted that: “the extremists don't fear law enforcement agencies.”

Yet America, and the general's other western allies, have frowned on his intervention. Condoleezza Rice, America's secretary of state, urged General Musharraf to hold the election as planned. She also hinted that American aid to his government—which has amounted to over $10 billion since 2001—might be cut.

Ms Bhutto's response is also likely to be crucial. She had been negotiating with General Musharraf to share power: indeed, her return from self-imposed exile, after General Musharraf issued her with an amnesty from corruption charges, was the sign of a tentative accommodation. In similar fashion, few PPP members have been arrested in the recent crackdown. General Musharraf may hope that Ms Bhutto and her party will offer him support.

Ms Bhutto's dalliance with the general has cost her popularity—even within her fanatically loyal party. Failing to oppose his coup wholeheartedly would be a further blow to her credibility. Which way will she go? So far, Ms Bhutto has roundly condemned the emergency as martial law by another name. But she has not yet rallied her followers against it.