The key to understanding how Musharraf will navigate this minefield is his background as a military man. Pakistani soldiers learn all about the art of survival, and Musharraf remains a soldier to his core. Indeed, he still bids farewell to civilians and even foreign journalists with a crisp salute. The trouble is, politics—both local and international—requires a different set of skills: the art of compromise, the popular touch, Machiavellian guile, a rare gift for persuasion. Those are skills they don't teach at the military academy.

musharraf is a natural charmer: hospitable and humorous, eager to share delicate samosas and cloying sweets from the kitchen of Army House, prepared to venture anywhere in a conversation—and compulsively eager to convince you that he means what he says. A lot of his public support since October 1999 has been based on that palpable sincerity. A Musharraf speech on television—the most memorable came last January when he explained why he had to crack down on Islamic fundamentalism—is an emotional appeal to the people, a for-Allah's-sake-understand-me entreaty. A good proportion of the populace responded to the aura of a military man who seemed neither haughty nor deceitful.

He was never the brightest boy, even in his own family. His mother, Zohra, predicted grand futures for bookworm older brother Javed, a Rhodes scholar who now works at the Food and Agricultural Organization in Rome, and younger sibling Naved, who practices anesthesiology in Chicago. Hearty Pervez, she decreed, should be a soldier. "For all of us," Musharraf says today, "she selected the right profession." Zohra lives with Musharraf in Army House, breakfasts with him most days, reading headlines aloud and checking if her son looks overly stressed. Says Musharraf: "She sees me off in the morning."

The partition of India in 1947 forced Musharraf, then age 3, from the bustling, cosmopolitan center of New Delhi to a refugee ghetto in Karachi. A seven-year posting in Turkey secured his father's future in the foreign service and the family's rung in the middle class. For the short, pudgy Musharraf, who was nicknamed "Gola" (which means ball), finding his own avenue for achievement would prove more challenging. But at Forman Christian College, a Presbyterian boarding school in Lahore, he discovered competitive athletics. Nasrullah Khan, a schoolmate who now heads the botany department, remembers Musharraf entering a bodybuilding competition in freshman year in which students struck poses before a panel of teachers in the gymnasium. Gola's baby fat had melted away: he took third place.

The brawn-over-brains pattern continued through his career. At the military academy, someone else won Best in Class, but Musharraf carried the flag at graduation, an honor awarded to the cadet who best combined academics with physical training and drilling. In the early '90s when he was anointed a three-star general and head of the Mangla army base, located at the most sensitive stretch of the Line of Control dividing Kashmir, he was famous for speeding through work by 2 p.m. so he could spend the rest of the day canoeing or playing Ping-Pong, tennis or squash with the men. "There wasn't a game he couldn't learn," says Major General Rashid Qureshi, who served with Musharraf at Mangla and is now his official spokesman. "We found him everywhere the troops were. He was able to inspire them."

It's a refrain you hear often in military circles: Musharraf was excellent with "the men." Kind, fair, engaged, disciplined. Of course, the men were trained exactly as Musharraf was: to look up to their officers, admire them, and obey.

As military dictators go, Musharraf is exactly the type for these liberal times. To begin with, he took power reluctantly. In 1999, he was on the outs with Prime Minister Mian Mohammed Nawaz Sharif—the kind of conflict that always spells danger in Pakistan. Earlier that year, Musharraf as Army Chief of Staff had engineered the Kargil campaign, the capturing of a few mountain peaks on the other side of the Line of Control, which was essentially a mini invasion of India. Bill Clinton forced Nawaz Sharif to pull Pakistani troops out, infuriating the military. On Oct. 12, following an army visit to Sri Lanka, Musharraf boarded a commercial flight to Karachi with his wife by his side. Nawaz Sharif waited for the general's plane to take off, then signed his dismissal papers. He ordered the flight diverted to a smaller airport, where police were waiting to arrest Musharraf, and later to India, where Musharraf would have been delivered to his country's enemies, who hated him for his role in Kargil. Sensing something amiss, Musharraf strode into the cockpit and ordered the pilot to stay on course to Karachi. His loyalists on the ground rapidly engineered a coup. Musharraf later claimed that Nawaz Sharif could have killed him, along with 198 fellow passengers on the plane. The message: he was the victim of political shenanigans, and that's why the coup happened.

Musharraf suspended the constitution and had the Prime Minister arrested. But that was about as tough as he got. The print media were allowed almost complete freedom, and Musharraf vowed to hold elections within a few years. Unlike Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the last politician to be ousted in a coup, Nawaz Sharif escaped execution and was sent into comfortable exile in Saudi Arabia. He wasn't missed: Pakistanis were sick of civilian governments that had done little for the country for the previous 11 years. They were willing to give Musharraf some time to clean things up. The general has since lived up to his reputation as an honest man who would never steal from the till. Since taking power, he hasn't awarded fat government contracts to relatives, and the only salary he takes is the army chief pay he earned before the coup. He still uses commercial flights rather than commandeering aircraft for foreign trips.

Musharraf, who tends to rely on the advice of a small circle of army commanders, bureaucrats and provincial governors, remains ill at ease in the political realm he now occupies. The people he appears to trust least are other politicians. They play by different rules, gaining power through the popular vote—not by taking orders from superiors, patiently climbing the ranks or winning medals. "He can't understand democracy," says a longtime friend. "In the army, you live in your own world."

1 | 2 | 3 | Next >>

Get the Magazine — Try 4 Issues Free!

	MALAYSIA Anwar Runs Out of Options The saga of the ex-Deputy PM continues KOREA Guns and Crustaceans There are plenty of things for North and South Korea to fight over. Crabs too? BUSINESS Dhirubhai Ambani Remembering India's Prince of Polyester CINEMA Hooray for Bollywood The exotic, rhapsodic world of Indian pop cinema honors itself at the fourth annual Bollywood Awards