Solution to the opposition's problem is actually easy. Let us borrow and adapt the strategy from the Nepalese parties. Their strategy, despite the two countries being vastly different, can serve as a model, though adaptation will be needed. Nepalese parties had begun their campaigns separately. It was during the campaigning that one-point unity emerged.

They recognized that parties had different ideals. So they devised a two-stage program: first, prevent the King from running the government and strip him of his powers. An all-party interim government will be necessary. After six months, a free national election is to be held for electing a Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution, and to decide whether monarchy should survive.

Pakistanis can follow this model. Begin with separate political (non-violent) campaigns by major parties. Once momentum is generated, the struggle itself will force one-point unity for getting rid of the army's control. Since differences are over fundamental issues the reforms will require fundamental changes in the constitution.

After such changes, the constitution will become a new social concordat. Issues will be clarified while the interim government lasts; one or several alliances of parties will emerge, advocating separate ideals. The best way out will be to seek approval from the people. Let the people vote for the set of ideas or ideals they approve of, without any "management" of election.

Amorphous unity has been tried many times and it always broke down, signaling to the army to march in. This is how the 1964, 1969, 1977, and 1983 movements backfired. The main reason for this pattern is that Muslim Leaguers and generals, who have ruled the country, have pushed basic differences under the carpet and harped on unexceptional and irrelevant ideals. The rhetoric propagated was Muslim nationalism, Islamic brotherhood, Pakistan ideology or even Islamic ideology, and Kashmir. It was as if Pakistanis faced no concrete problems; successive governments have ignored the actual problems.

Basic differences remained. First East Bengalis agitated that the centre has ignored their needs and development: their resources were being exploited by West Pakistanis. Military rulers took evasive action, beat the ideological drums, and whipped up the Kashmir issue. In 1965 the Kashmir propaganda led to a war that could not be won, and sealed the fate of Kashmir as well as East Pakistan. No lessons were learnt from the Ayub regime's collapse.

An overarching polarization should be noted first. The first 25 years were dominated by East Bengal's demand for autonomy for managing their economic development. The centre, dominated by the Punjabi-dominated army, opposed this, and countered with the rhetoric of Islam and Islamic brotherhood. The Bengalis had learnt lessons from the history of constitution-making: the West Pakistani elite, with the Pak army's help, were determined to deny them their due share in decision-making. That led to the first major conclusion: that if injustices prevail, Islam alone cannot keep a Muslim country together.

This polarization did not disappear with the demise of East Pakistan. The residual Pakistan has not only inherited it, but has made it worse. In the Bhutto interlude, the army-led elite carried on their vendetta against the parties that had demanded regional autonomy. Bhutto's sacking of the National Awami Party government in Balochistan in February 1973, and banning of NAP, followed by the Hyderabad conspiracy case, worsened this polarization, the way the Agartala conspiracy case had done earlier.

The military crackdown on Balochistan in 1973, for no valid reason, made matters worse still. It was simple bloody-mindedness against those demanding their share of power. Bitterness between the centre-loving elite and those who demand autonomy is much greater today than it was between West and East Pakistan in the 1960s.

Recent military operations in Balochistan have made the situation explosive. It is time for the political parties to face the problem realistically and urgently. This problem should be solved democratically. Whenever an ethnicity-driven demand is made for running their own affairs, it should be acceptable. Democrats should be prepared for re-writing of the Constitution if substantive amendments to the existing Constitution are not likely to satisfy.

Meantime, the Pakistani elite, who rely on pointless Islamic sloganeering, were trumped by religious parties. They demanded a unique Islamic state in which Quran and Sharia shall be the basic law. Muslim Leaguers were non-plussed and embarrassed. They tried to ignore the problem.

Later, a military dictator, Zia-ul Haq, stole the religious parties' clothes and himself began to Islamize the predominantly Muslim Pakistan. He used the religious parties, taking army cooperation with religious elements much further by making it a near-formal alliance, especially with parties like Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamiat-i-Ulemai Islam.

The army helped other militant groups to meet the needs of Zia's revival of the Kashmir issue, after Bhutto's quiet on it. Zia's successor put the mullahs in the business of jihad in Kashmir, converting a purely indigenous, spontaneous and secular protest movement in Indian-controlled Kashmir into an Islamic jihad against the infidel India. This military-mullah alliance has so far strengthened the military more than the mullahs. It may be now under strain, but is by no means dead.

The world now knows what an Islamic State -- of JUI and JI concept -- will be like. It will be quite like the Taliban's Islamic state in Afghanistan which was recognized as an ideal Islamic dispensation by orthodox Sunnis, especially of the Deobandi school. An opposition agitation is again on the agenda, even the one-point programme for the army's ouster from politics is in jeopardy.

What the MMA demands is General Pervez Musharraf's resignation from the army, and his contesting the election for presidentship as a civilian. What precisely does that mean?

Is it demilitarization of Pakistan's political system, or is it about a person rather than a systematic change? It is by no means certain that all the constituents of MMA will abide by the verdict of a fair election -- if Pakistanis are fortunate enough to get to it.

Many religious parties and groups, pretending to be Islamists, had condemned western-style elections as non-Islamic during the Zia regime. Where do religious parties stand on democratic values and the federal principle in their desired Islamic state?

These are not the only issues that divide the people. There has been the US-Pakistan alliance. America has been involved even in domestic issues; they have bank-rolled all military dictators, and have often caused military coups. The dictators' anti-democratic policies came from America.

It is an alliance that began with an army C-in-C signing an agreement for military aid on October 14, 1953, behind the backs of the federal government and parliament, to which Messrs Ghulam Muhammad, Iskandar Mirza, and Chaudhry Mohamed Ali helped give a legal cover later. Pakistan's foreign policy has been made in Washington for a long time, and when a particular PM or dictator diverged from the US-given line a change usually followed soon enough. Foreign policy has kept the people divided.

Then there are the economic problems of the common people, especially their low living standards. There is the shocking situation of a feudal-dominated agriculture in which vast numbers are dirt poor while a small number of bigger absentee landlords roll in wealth. Do the major parties agree or differ on any given plan of action? Have they produced an economic reform plan?

MB Naqvi is a leading columist in Pakistan.