TREASON, murder, mayhem and assassinations — the brash ex-commando and former military dictator Pervez Musharraf has been accused of much since his stubborn return to Pakistan this year. But in at least one of his many bombastic predictions, Mr Musharraf has been proved right: he would eventually walk free. Bail for an accused like Mr Musharraf in the kind of cases he has been entangled in is a kind of purgatory — the cases never quite go away, but the fear of conviction will henceforth remain distant and improbable. Perhaps the game was up when no one seemed interested in probing the October 1999 coup, preferring instead to enmesh the former army chief in a slew of populist but legally weak cases. With Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif preferring to look forward not back and the born-again superior judiciary facing awkward questions about its own role in sanctifying the original coup, there was really no one else left who could nudge the prosecutor or the judge into an honest reckoning with the past in the genuine national interest.

If anything, the country has been given another lesson in the politics and hidden structures of power. Raucous and irreverent at the best of times, the political class and legal community has watched the carefully managed untangling of Mr Musharraf’s legal woes in near silence. Why? Perhaps that euphemism known as the civil-military imbalance can provide the answer. That Mr Musharraf is the first former dictator to even face charges in a court of law probably has more to do with his stubborn insistence on returning to Pakistan. But then, perhaps he could afford to be stubborn because he knew the code of loyalty would still apply and he could count on being given discreet, behind-the-scenes help from his old institution. The boys really do look after their own.