A few weeks ago, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said in an interview that if he ever felt that the people didn’t support him, he would stand down. The Pakistani people have spoken: Musharraf’s party was trounced in the Feb. 18 election, earning only 42 seats out of 272 elected positions in the National Assembly, far fewer than the parties of the recently assassinated Benazir Bhutto and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The question is, Will Musharraf listen? And more important, does the U. S. Administration, which has always seen him as its best ally in the war on terrorism, want him to? Aryn Baker (’01) reports for TIME.

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Photograph by Stephanie Sinclair for TIME