Not since September 12 2001 has Pervez Musharraf found himself under such pressure. The morning after the attacks on the US, Colin Powell, then secretary of state, insisted that Pakistan's president leave a meeting to take his call, saying: "You are either with us or against us."
Later that day, Richard Armitage, Gen Powell's deputy, warned that Pakistan had to abandonthe Taliban or prepare to be bombed "back to the Stone Age", Gen Musharraf recalls in adisputed passage of his recent autobiography.
On September 19, his choice made, Gen Musharraf went on national radio and television to explain the decision to the Pakistani people. Five and a half years later, as blowback from the war in Afghanistan pushes anti-American sentiment in Pakistan to new levels, the political cost to Gen Musharraf of being seen as a puppet of the administration of President George W. Bush is becoming unsustainable.
This week, Gen Musharraf revealed his own mounting unpopularity when he provoked nationwide protests by unceremoniously suspending the chief justice of the Supreme Court. The top judge, Iftikhar Chaudhary, is understood to have alarmed Gen Musharraf by taking an independent stand on a number of controversial cases and potentially jeopardising the general's re-election plans.
By accepting, in particular, that there should be an investigation into suspected "disappearances" of terror suspects, Mr Chaudhary seems to have overstepped the mark.
Human Rights Watch, the New York-based non-governmental organisation, says it has found a pattern of such disappearances among terrorism suspects detained by Inter-Services Intelligence, a Pakistani military agency, for interrogation by US law enforcement agents in illegal detention centres. Human Rights Watch called on the US and other governments to urge Gen Musharraf to take steps to restore the rule of law in Pakistan, including the release of the chief justice.
Gen Musharraf's clumsy attempt to rid himself of the judge betrays a mounting insecurity ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections due this year. By packing the Supreme Court with allies who could be relied on to reject constitutional challenges to his re-election as a president-in-uniform, analysts say, the military hoped the ritual exercise in democracy left nothing to chance. The court would give Gen Musharraf's re-election a veneer of constitutionality, enabling a US administration that has made the spread of democracy the cornerstone of its foreign policy to continue backing an authoritarian regime.
Mr Chaudhary has in effect been under house arrest since he was declared "non-functional" by Gen Musharraf. The judge - who claims to have been roughed up and stripped of his mobile phone, car and passport - has become the rallying point for all the disaffected of Gen Musharraf's Pakistan. The protests, initially led by lawyers outraged at the executive's latest brazen assault on judicial independence, now also involve the country's mainstream political and religious parties and could expand into a broader pro-democracy movement that the government would struggle to control.
In a further sign of nerves, a clampdown on the media is under way, marking a change of tactic for Gen Musharraf, who used to pride himself on being more tolerant towards his critics than previous civilian governments. Two leading television stations, Geo TV and Aaj TV, were forced off the air on Monday after they ignored government requests to stop broadcasting protests against Mr Chaudhary's suspension. Pakistan's English-language newspapers showed images of injured lawyers and of a senator, Lathif Khan Khosa, who suffered minor head injuries.
Human rights groups say the government's dismissal and detention of the chief justice contravenes provisions for the removal of judges under Pakistan's constitution and severely undermines judicial independence in the country. "By brazenly and unlawfully dismissing, detaining and humiliating the chief justice of the Supreme Court, President Musharraf has created a constitutional crisis," Human Rights Watch warns.
The government has not released details of the charges, which will be heard by Pakistan's Supreme Judicial Council, a body constitutionally mandated to hear complaints against the senior judiciary.
Arriving at his own Supreme Court on Tuesday for his first appearance before the council, the suspended chief justice received a hero's welcome from hundreds of lawyers and opposition politicians. Revelling in his unexpected incarnation as the cause célèbre of the pro-democracy movement, Mr Chaudhary drove so slowly through the crowd in first gear that his vehicle overheated. The country's judicial system has ground to a similar standstill since the weekend, as lawyers observe a nationwide strike. "It's a whirlpool right now," says Taffazul Rizvi, a US-trained Pakistani lawyer. "It's an emerging situation, which can take down anyone, including Musharraf."
"This is the first shot of what will be a very unstable year," says Samina Ahmed of the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based NGO. "Musharraf now faces a real problem in getting a seal of approval from the US on his re-election plans, as the minimum international standard for a free and fair election is an independent judiciary."
Indeed, since taking control of the US Congress, Democrats have made a show of demanding tougher restrictions on US aid to Pakistan, requiring this to be made conditional not just on Islamabad "doing more" to crack down on al-Qaeda and the Taliban but also on progress towards meaningful democracy.
"The fact that the Taliban and al-Qaeda have established critical sanctuaries in Pakistan from where they continue to launch and plan attacks five years after 9/11 is simply unacceptable. It reflects the misguided priorities and policies of this administration in fighting the war on terror," said Senator Chris Dodd, Democratic party senator for Connecticut, commenting on a resolution co-sponsored by fellow Democrats John Kerry and Joe Biden. "The government of Pakistan must do more in apprehending members of the Taliban and al-Qaeda and preventing their operations on its territory."
Vice-president Dick Cheney, on a visit to Islamabad late last month, is also believed to have reiterated US demands that Pakistan be more aggressive in hunting down al-Qaeda and the Taliban along the porous Afghan border. But US officials say this does not mean the Bush administration's backing of a "key ally" is weakening. There is little sign, for example, that Washington is putting any meaningful pressure on Gen Musharraf to allow the return of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, the exiled leaders of the two largest mainstream political parties. "We are nowhere near ending this relationship - there's too much at stake," says one US official.
Both parties argue that their marginalisation by the military has allowed religious radicals to occupy a political vacuum and left an exaggerated impression in Washington of genuine popular support for fundamentalists, a situation that they say Gen Musharraf has exploited. "For too long, the international perception has been that Musharraf's regime is the only thing standing between the west and nuclear-armed fundamentalists. Nothing could be further from the truth," Ms Bhutto wrote recently, noting that Islamic parties had never garnered more than 13 per cent in any free parliamentary election. "The notion of Musharraf's regime as theonly non-Islamist option is disingenuous and the worst type of fear-mongering."
Gen Musharraf's political weakness will, in time, inevitably undermine his relations with the US, his chief patron, and prompt Washington to look for ways to bolster the credibility of its ally, possibly by encouraging the general to co-opt one or other of the two exiled political leaders in a broad coalition. "There is so much anti-Americanism in Pakistan that Musharraf cannot hope to deliver on things that the Americans want in Pakistan," says Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, a leader of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, a six-party alliance of Islamists. "The reason why the Americans want Musharraf is because they expect him to deliver and he clearly has not".
For the mullahs, every opportunity to defy the government is an opportunity to defy the US. Gen Musharraf is at increasing pains to try to appease Islamists. Several days of public protests by burqa-clad women recently forced the government to order the rebuilding of six mosques demolished to make way for roads. "The government's agenda is simply to promote the US agenda. We know Bush doesn't want to see anyone with a beard or a turban walk around Islamabad," says Mohammad Riaz Chaudhary, an administrator of the radical Lal (red) mosque in the centre of the capital, which co-ordinated the protests.
Senior figures from Ms Bhutto's Pakistani People's party and Mr Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League will gather in London this month for what promises to be the largest conference of opposition politicians since Gen Musharraf took power. "The widespread coverage of the case of Iftikhar Chaudhary has brought the government under great pressure. The illegality and constitutionality has been just too provocative," says Farhatullah Babar, a PPP leader. "The question is, would Gen Musharraf be prepared to pacify this situation by retreating or would he still press ahead?"
Given Gen Musharraf's falling popularity, it will be considerably harder than in the past for him to broaden his base of political support by co-opting Ms Bhutto or Mr Sharif into his ruling alliance.
The military remains adept at playing divide and rule, however, and Gen Musharraf still has several tools at its disposal, the most potent of which is the ability to manipulate the legal system in such a way that outstanding cases can be quietly dropped. He can also offer to rescind a law that prevents both leaders, each of whom has served twice as prime minister, from running the government for a third time.
Diplomats in Islamabad worry it may be too late for such political fixes. Religious radicalism is spreading so rapidly that there is little time left to save Pakistan's moderate political parties and institutions such as the Supreme Court that are central to the functioning of any future democracy. "It's hard to know how long the Americans will keep on pretending that Musharraf is their man," says a European diplomat. "If protests against Musharraf intensify, our American friends may have to look for other men on the ground."
