Four elected governments had come and gone in the decade since the military last ruled, two each headed by Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. Ms Bhutto was sacked twice for corruption and abuse of power and Mr Sharif once, before Gen Musharraf deposed him. Their misrule drove Pakistan into near-bankruptcy and buckled its institutions. The stakes rose alarmingly when India and Pakistan tested nuclear devices in 1998 and fought a limited but scary mountain war over Kashmir the following year.

Inside Pakistan, meanwhile, Islamist militias, swaggering at the victory of the Taliban in Afghanistan and given free rein to stoke the insurgency in India's half of Kashmir, were in the ascendant. The army looked like the last functioning institution, a bulwark against a failed state run by "mullahs with nukes". It was as though nation- building had to start anew. And the general did start well.

There was no bloodshed and he accepted the Supreme Court's order to restore democracy by 2002, in parliamentary elections happening today. He restored the country's finances and a measure of public probity.

After the September 11 attacks Gen Musharraf courageously, if inevitably, sided with the US and broke links with the Taliban. Rewarded with soft loans and a resumption of weapons sales, he told his people they had to seize back their destiny from jihadi fanatics. Blocked by Islamist sympathisers in his security services, he cracked down on militants. But then he responded to their violence by taking more power, vitiating today's poll and squandering an opportunity to stabilise Pakistan.

Instead of running against discredited, feudal politicians he could easily have defeated, Gen Musharraf banned them, got himself confirmed as president for five more years in a manufactured referendum and changed the constitution so that a national security council he will dominate oversees parliament and the new government. He has thus set himself on a path to confrontation with modern and secular forces that he should mobilise in the struggle to modernise Pakistan. The US, desperate for allies in the cauldron of central Asia, has not demurred. But these highly restrictive elections will not produce a stable ally for the west.

President Musharraf should think again, perhaps in terms of a new constitution, produced by an elected constituent assembly. So should the Bush administration, which, in its national security strategy, announced last month, argued that the advance of democracy was in the US national interest. It is hard to think of anywhere where that is more true than Pakistan, where a flawed election could help turn a failing state into a failed one.