Islamabad: President General Pervez Musharraf's declaration of emergency rule was not the first time the army has demonstrated its supremacy in Pakistan.
It is also unlikely to be the last.
The imposition of a state of emergency one week ago has put the prospect of the world's second-largest Muslim nation making a democratic breakthrough into cold storage.
And analysts caution that Pakistan's position on the front line of America's war on terror and the army's increasing involvement in the economy suggest the generals are well-equipped to defend their privileges.
"As long as there is the context of the war on terror for the next decades - goodness knows how long - that is going to continue to create a security-focused situation [that the military can exploit]," said Professor Shaun Gregory, a Pakistan expert at the University of Bradford in Britain.
Pakistan, a nation of 160 million people, has spent more than half of its 60-year history under military rule. The army has also helped make and unmake the few civilian governments to take office.
Since its inception, Pakistan has been preoccupied with its national security due to its rivalry with India. They have fought three wars, the first within months of independence in 1947. Even as part of the British Empire, much of the territory that became Pakistan was viewed primarily as a security buffer against Russia.
As a result, Pakistan was born with an oversized security apparatus and little else.
"Unfortunately, Pakistan did not inherit a strong political system. In the first nine years we couldn't even find a constitution," said Mirza Aslam Beg, a former army chief. "It was in this time the military physically took over." Some historians see that legacy in the harsh attitude of Pakistan's military-dominated elite toward dissent, its bickering politicians and any aspiration toward regional autonomy.
The country's first and longest period of military rule - more than 13 years - followed General Mohammad Ayub Khan's coup in October 1958. He stepped in to end chronic political infighting.
Ayub Khan handed over to General Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan in 1969. He stepped down two years later after his disastrous military intervention in East Pakistan failed to prevent it from breaking away to form Bangladesh.
Having lost its eastern wing and more than half its population, the generals have cracked down hard on nationalist movements elsewhere in a country made up of diverse ethnic and linguistic groups, notably in the gas-rich southwestern province of Balochistan.
General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq, who staged his coup in 1977, tried to use Islam to bind this fractious nation together and lend his dictatorship legitimacy, but ended up fanning sectarian tensions.
His death in a plane crash 11 years later was followed by a decade of ineffectual civilian rule that Musharraf ended with the bloodless coup of October 1999.
Musharraf insists his latest suspension of the constitution amounts to a state of emergency, though critics note he acted in his capacity as army chief and have called it "mini martial law."
