Each time it just seems to get worse.
Perpetual cycles of democracy followed by military rule have marked much of the period since the end of the Raj, the departure of British military and political forces from the sub-Continent, and the creation of Pakistan in 1947.
With each repetition of the cycle, however, the consequences have been even more fraught, more deadly and more potentially catastrophic for Pakistan's neighbors and much of the rest of the world. General Pervez Musharraf is only the latest such military dictator (let's call a spade a spade).
At one point in the trajectory of any dictator, you own him. At another point, he owns you. We've reached that point now with General Musharraf. We should have known better. Because it's happened before, in that very country and, if we don't learn our lesson, it will happen again -- in fact it already has.
In 1919, when the Allied powers met in Paris after World War I to remake the globe, Pakistan was one part of a region that failed to come under their gaze. The tacit agreement? That none of the colonies of the victorious western nations would be tinkered with. In many respects, this may have been for the best - certainly these peacemakers managed to poison much of what they touched, as I point out in my new book, A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today.
Instead, it was left to Britain to rule this colonial nation for another quarter-century and ultimately bring it to independence. Clearly ill prepared, Pakistan embarked on a series of repeated cycles of chaotic rule.
I knew, quite well it turns out, the previous military ruler of Pakistan -- General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq. On July 5, 1977, Zia and a group of fellow officers seized power in a swift, dramatic and initially bloodless coup that removed from office the democratically elected prime minister of Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
After news of the coup reached the outside world, I flew immediately to Pakistan for The New York Times. Two days later, I sat in a large conference room of the Rawalpindi Intercontinental, just behind the military camp where Zia and his fellow officers were based, and met General Zia for the first time. It was quite a performance. The man who strode to the podium carrying a small swagger stick, had a ramrod-straight bearing and was every inch the British military officer that had marked the early years of his career. (He was later trained at the U.S. Army's Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth.)
General Zia bore a remarkable resemblance to the British comedian Terry Thomas, but there was nothing comic about this individual. He was all business as he faced a skeptical world press and described the nature of the rule he planned to bring to his impoverished nation.
It would be, he said, a rule of law -- ending the chaos that he said had gripped his nation -- but a rule of Shariya, or Islamic law. He described, with way too much relish and in clinical detail, how the right hand of convicted thieves would be amputated by a surgeon, peeling back the skin of the wrist, then separating the bones at the joint.
Conviction for a higher crime of robbery would cost the unfortunate individual both his right hand and his left foot (at the ankle).
Without question, there had been chaos in Pakistan in the months leading up to General Zia's seizure of power. A close lieutenant of Bhutto had been murdered by a bomb blast in the town of Peshawar in the Northwest Frontier Province that is today considered a likely refuge of a number of Al Qaeda leaders, possibly Osama bin Laden himself. And there were battles between a host of other political leaders as well.
General Zia ended all that -- declaring martial law and proclaiming himself Chief Martial Law Administrator. When he met with us in Rawalpindi, he also pledged (as he did to his own nation) to hold national and provincial assembly elections within 90 days and to hand over power to those elected in this process. The nation's constitution, he added, had not been repealed, simply suspended. But three months later, there were no national elections - they were "postponed."
Instead, Zia demanded an accountability process for all politicians who hoped to stand for elections - meaningless exercises, as it turned out, as Zia continued to hold all the reins of power.
A year later, the general proclaimed himself President of Pakistan, a post he would hold until his death. And on April 4, 1979, Bhutto was hanged for alleged complicity in the murder of the father of an opposition politician. The Supreme Court affirmed his death sentence in a four-to-three vote.
Still, from the start, the United States did pay lip service to a desire to return Pakistan to democratic rule. And when General Zia began to press ahead with plans to develop a nuclear weapon, President Carter and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance cut off all U.S. military aid to the country. That was still the point in the historical trajectory when we thought we owned the dictator.
All this changed on December 25, 1979 when the Soviet Union invaded neighboring Afghanistan. American military aid to General Zia returned and with the arrival in office of Ronald Reagan in January 1981, the pace of military assistance to a Pakistani military that had sworn defiance to the Soviet Union and its newest military adventure turned into a tsunami of funding. Suddenly, then as now, Pakistan was in a unique geopolitical position. The U.S. had no choice but to support the man who was defying its enemy.
Gone were any demands for a return to democratic norms, and when I renewed my acquaintance with General Zia in 1984, he was riding very high indeed. Pakistan was on the cusp of becoming a nuclear power. Zia was, it would appear, President for life, though he was making some gestures to increasing demands at home and abroad for a return to at least a fig leaf of democracy. But not for long.
Four years later, fed up with continued bickering with the National Assembly, he had suffered to be elected, he dissolved that body and again promised democratic elections within 90 days. With Bhutto's brilliant, popular, Harvard-educated daughter now pledging to stand for election herself, Zia was trapped in a quandary. But one that he would never have to resolve.
On August 17, 1988, the C-130 Hercules military aircraft he was riding with a number of his top officers and the United States Ambassador to Pakistan, exploded in mid-air killing all on board. Though an FBI team dispatched to the scene declared it an accident, rumors persisted of more nefarious causes. There was talk that the only way to restore democratic rule to Pakistan and for America to rid itself of an embarrassing dictator was to remove him -- and that the CIA had managed that mostly deftly.
Indeed, his death did return the nation to democratic rule. A President and National Assembly were elected. The United States continued to expand its military and civilian aid. And on October 12, 1999, General Pervez Musharraf and his fellow officers seized power in another bloodless coup. The cycle had begun again.
David A. Andelman, executive editor of Forbes.com, is the author of A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today.