ISLAMABAD - Only hours after the end of the first wave of attacks on Afghanistan, Pakistan's military ruler, President Pervez Musharraf, was unsentimental about the fate of the Taleban.
Pakistan may have created them, armed, financed and guided them, but at a press conference the General displayed no emotion at the pounding they are receiving.
"Pakistan condemns all forms of terrorism in general," he said, "and the attacks of the 11th September in particular ... We tried to bring moderation in the Taleban Government, we made all possible efforts ... We tried our utmost but unfortunately we could not achieve."
He said Pakistan's national interest was his only concern. And to make sure the national interest is protected in the way he favours, it emerged yesterday that he has quietly removed two of his most senior colleagues who were closely involved with shoring up the Taleban - and who two years ago enabled him to seize power.
His first appearance before the media since September 11 was impressive: cool, clipped, efficient, quietly ruthless. He has called this the greatest crisis Pakistan has faced since the Bangladesh war of 1971.
He knows there have been relentless noisy anti-American protests in Pakistan's cities for weeks now. But he has set about putting his country on a course diametrically different from its existing one.
Taleban the friends and allies become Taleban the terrorists. Musharraf has now committed himself to their replacement - even though the only substitute, the Northern Alliance, remains Pakistan's confirmed foe because of its patronage by Russia and - Pakistan believes - India, and because it is the enemy of the 50 per cent of Afghans who are Pushtuns.
Pakistan has a large and volatile Pushtun minority within its borders.
Musharraf was unsparing in his hostility to the Northern Alliance yesterday.
"We know the atrocities they committed after the Soviets left and before the Taleban came," he said. "I have heard stories that would make your hair stand on end.
"After this [American military] action there will be a void in the parts of Afghanistan now controlled by the Taleban. If it is filled by the Northern Alliance we will see a return to anarchy and atrocities."
It was with a view to filling the void that Musharraf broached another idea unthinkable in Pakistan until yesterday: official backing for the return of former Afghan King Zahir Shah.
The ex-monarch, deposed in 1974 and now living in exile in Rome, was a consistent nuisance to Pakistan while King, voting against Pakistan's accession to the United Nations and fuelling demands for a homeland, called Pukhtunistan, for Pushtuns in the western tribal belt of Pakistan.
But now the arch-pragmatist is in charge.
"There is going to be a leadership vacuum in 90 per cent of Afghanistan," said Musharraf. "Should it be filled by the Northern Alliance? No, because they only represent 10 per cent of the population. We need to find a new dispensation. In that vacuum, maybe Zahir Shah has a role to play. Why should Pakistan hesitate because 35 years ago he was doing this or the other thing?"
General Musharraf gave himself elbow room to make these breathtaking changes in Pakistan's policy by unsentimentally disposing of the three men with whom until yesterday he shared power.
Although he came to the press conference in his general's uniform, he is showing a keen grasp of the wiles a politician needs. When asked about the early retirement of Lieutenant-General Mahmood Ahmed, chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, Pakistan's military intelligence agency and the most powerful institution in the country, he made light of it. "This is normal military activity," he said. "It's absolutely nothing to do with the events that are going on now."
But according to well-placed sources, nothing could be further from the truth.
Two years ago on Friday, when Musharraf, then Army Chief of Staff, was returning from Sri Lanka, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif tried to get the Army under his thumb by sacking Musharraf and replacing him with a pliable ally. Two of his closest colleagues, Mahmood and Lieutenant-General Muhammad Aziz Khan, managed to foil the plot and set in motion the events that led to Musharraf ousting Sharif.
Musharraf rewarded his friends with high office. "Policy was made by Musharraf in alliance with Mahmood and Aziz," the sources said. "They became very powerful - they selected the cabinet, for example." Now, neither suits his plans. Mahmood is seen as sympathetic to the hardline Islamists; he took part in the fruitless delegations to the Taleban recently and the suspicion arose that he was not interested in them bearing fruit.
Aziz, according to the same source, is "an ideologue, very anti-Indian - the architect of many things that are now being challenged."
Musharraf has now replaced them with Lieutenant-General Muhammad Yousuf and Lieutenant-General Ehsanul Haq, who both harboured doubts about Pakistan's earlier Taleban policy.
Having also awarded himself another three years as Chief of Army Staff, President Musharraf is now poised to lead Pakistan through the present crisis. If all goes according to plan.
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