Pervez Musharraf took the inevitable decision to step down as Pakistan’s president on the very day that his brother-officer-turned-president, General Zia-ul- Haq, was killed 20 years ago in a mysterious plane crash, which ended one of the darkest chapters in the short political history of Pakistan. Musharraf announced his decision the following day to his nation, which has been waiting for this denouement for months. Musharraf made up his mind to quit — in the face of declarations to the contrary throughout last weekend by his aides and his dwindling band of supporters — hours after the American secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, told a Sunday television talk show that asylum for the United States of America’s ally of almost seven years “is an issue that is not on the table”.

Musharraf is a smart man. He correctly calculated that with eroding support from the Bush administration in its twilight months, his options were rapidly closing. George W. Bush and Rice have stood by Musharraf through thick and thin while Rice’s predecessor, Colin Powell, another army general, had nothing but praise for this Pakistani in uniform after he tossed the Taliban out of his backyard a month after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. For the wily former president of Pakistan, the proverbial tail that managed to wag the dog during much of the last six years when it came to Pakistan’s engagement with Bush, matters could only have got worse under a new American president from January 20 next year, whether that president is Barack Obama or John McCain. Neither of them trusted Musharraf the way Bush and his aides did even if the trust of the latter was at a diminishing rate in the last several years.

Notwithstanding Rice’s assertion immediately after Musharraf’s farewell to his nation that “we strongly support the democratically elected civilian government” in Islamabad, officials who deal with Pakistan in key government agencies in Washington say privately that they would have preferred the army chief, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, to have taken over. When Musharraf nominated Kayani last November to succeed him as chief of army staff, there was jubilation at the Pentagon: Kayani is a graduate of the US Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. Its other distinguished alumni include Dwight D. Eisenhower, General George C. Marshall and General George S. Patton.

Last week, when the crisis over Musharraf’s impeachment was building up, reporters asked the White House if it would accept another military coup in Pakistan. The logical answer from the world’s oldest democracy would have been to repudiate a possible coup d’etat and charge forward in assertive US support for democracy in Pakistan with the same enthusiasm with which the Bush team supports democracy in Georgia, Ukraine or Lebanon. But the White House spokesperson, Dana Perino, sounded as wistful as she could in public for another takeover by the Army General Headquarters in Rawalpindi. “I haven’t heard of a military coup in the cards,” she replied in what sounded like a lament.

The US, at least, is clear about its priorities in Pakistan. Sadly, the same cannot be said of the United Progressive Alliance government and the confusion that has attended its Pakistan policy since Musharraf suspended the constitution and jailed several supreme court judges and lawyers last year. Since India’s Pakistan policy at this time will have an impact on the deteriorating situation in Jammu and Kashmir, it is a crisis that is, in real terms, far more serious for the country than the cosmetic crisis that was precipitated by the possibility of a change in government in New Delhi last month on account of the Indo-US nuclear deal. Only historians will judge whether Musharraf was genuine about his declarations to end — or at least limit in practice — terrorist activity against India from Pakistani soil and his professed desire to seek a solution to the Kashmir dispute.

Shortly after one of his several meetings with Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Musharraf sent one of his advisers, who has an extensive network of connections in India, to New Delhi to prepare the ground for what he thought would be his successful initiative to settle Kashmir. This columnist was among those who met the unofficial envoy at the residence of a common friend. The Pakistani in question had earlier gone into exile after Musharraf overthrew the prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, but was eventually persuaded by the General to return to Islamabad and work for him. At several meetings in New Delhi, the envoy insisted that New Delhi had a historic opportunity in Musharraf to end the unfinished business of partition by agreeing to a Kashmir settlement that went at least half way in satisfying all parties to the dispute: Kashmiris, Pakistan and the rest of India.

The visitor from across the border realistically calculated that this window of opportunity may not last more than five years. He passionately held forth late into the nights in the drawing rooms of south Delhi, through swirls of cigar smoke and the aroma of single malts and cognacs, that if this opportunity was lost it may not come back for many decades. His words now appear prophetic in the light of what is happening in Jammu and Kashmir, and along the Line of Control.

Vajpayee recognized that such an opportunity existed and believed that it should not remain unexplored. He concluded that India had nothing to lose by responding to this situation as long as it was not approached from a position of weakness. Vajpayee’s speech in Srinagar on April 18, 2003, in which he overruled himself and offered the hand of friendship to Pakistan in what was to be his final peace overture as prime minister to Musharraf, was meant to test the General, who had communicated his change of heart towards India through a series of emissaries to New Delhi.

Unlike Vajpayee, Manmohan Singh did not have the credentials with the people of India to attempt any settlement with Pakistan. The UPA government compounded this weakness by sending conflicting signals across the border once Musharraf got into a political quicksand last year in his confrontation with Nawaz Sharif and on account of the US-inspired, fatal attempt to incorporate Benazir Bhutto into the establishment.

When the Americans decided, last year, that regime renovation in Islamabad was necessary in their strategic interest, the UPA government bit off more than it could chew by trying to deal simultaneously with Bhutto, Sharif and Musharraf. When the Mumbai police commissioner, A.N. Roy, accused Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence of masterminding the Mumbai train bomb explosions in 2006, the national security adviser, M.K. Narayanan, chose to contradict Roy in public.

After the formation of the civilian government in Pakistan following Bhutto’s assassination, the external affairs minister, Pranab Mukherjee, rushed to Islamabad even as other countries that had strategic interests in Pakistan feared to tread there. If anything more was needed to convince those in Islamabad who are waiting to strike at India that New Delhi had a dysfunctional Pakistan policy, Narayanan provided proof of that last week when he wondered aloud to a Malaysian media outlet if Musharraf’s exit would create a vacuum in Islamabad.

Musharraf’s exit is not a calamity for India. But the UPA government’s handling of the events that led to a change of government in Islamabad is a disaster, which will add to the problems that the prime minister is personally trying to damp down in Jammu and Kashmir. If the clock is put back to 1989-90 in the troubled northern state, the roots of the regression can be found in the Pakistan policy followed by the Manmohan Singh government during its term in office.