Seven years after seizing control of Pakistan in a coup d'état, President Pervez Musharraf faces the kind of political challenge that army generals tend to find both puzzling and daunting: thousands of middle-class people, many of them lawyers in suits and ties, have taken to the streets to demand democracy and to protest against Gen Musharraf's assault on the remaining vestiges of Pakistan's independent judiciary.

Both Gen Musharraf and Shaukat Aziz, the ex-Citigroup banker who serves as prime minister, argue that they have restored the country's economic fortunes since the corrupt government of Nawaz Sharif was deposed in 1999. Growth has hit 7 per cent a year and the doors have been opened for foreign investors in sectors from energy to banking.