Pakistanis are celebrating, but their nation is on the edge of an abyss.

Eighty-three percent of them wanted Pervez Musharraf gone. On Monday he obliged them by resigning from the presidency. It was a final, decisive step in a months-long process that has taken the nation from being a wobbly ally in America’s “war on terror” to facing an uncertain and possibly catastrophic future.

Musharraf’s support for the United States never went over well among his people. Facing intense public disapproval in the world’s second-most-populous Muslim country, he allowed the U.S. to conduct military operations and air strikes against terrorist targets in Pakistan and provided intelligence and operational assistance. For his efforts, the U.S. looked past his warts—and awarded his country with billions of dollars.

From an American perspective, Musharraf wasn’t without his problems. His efforts to confront extremists were halfhearted; the military over which he long ruled harbors Islamist elements; he pardoned Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan for selling sensitive nuclear secrets to nations such as Iran. But at least he wasn’t openly acting in direct contradiction to U.S. interests.

At some point last year, however, key American officials began to complain about the lack of democracy in Pakistan. They decided that it was time for Musharraf—with his military credentials and anti-democratic habits—to go. “Washington, keen to burnish its credentials as a harbinger of global democracy, had set its key ally in the ‘war on terror’ an almost impossible task last year: to step down as army chief, hold free and fair elections and to remain in power,” the Telegraph said.

That is a horrible mistake, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote at the time. “American leaders are telling Musharraf to take off his military uniform and give real freedom to that country. However, the military is the only institution that gives stability to that extremely divided country! This is another example of how little our leaders know about Pakistan” (Trumpet, January 2008).

Mr. Flurry compared the situation to how the U.S. abandoned the shah of Iran in the late 1970s and paved the way for Ayatollah Khomeini to overthrow him. “America’s ignorance and weakness helped to push Iran into the arms of radical Islam. It could very well do the same to Pakistan—unless we learn from our history with Iran,” he wrote. “We can’t afford to make the same mistake twice. If we do, it will become a nightmare for the whole world!”

Such warnings were ignored. American pressure continued. Musharraf caved, and Pakistanis seized their opportunity. In elections on February 18, they dealt a deadly blow to Musharraf with his billions in American money, empowering a collection of opposition parties that formed a coalition government. The alliance with Washington—which had only existed because of an autocratic military leader’s willingness to defy the public—was dealt a deadly blow. The new government quickly made clear its disdain for Musharraf’s dealings with Washington. The president’s role was reduced to nothing; finally he was threatened with impeachment and forced from office.

Now, we are about to see just how prescient Mr. Flurry’s statements were.

The Pakistan that Musharraf leaves behind is a mess.

It is a world-renowned incubator of Islamism. Huge swaths of the country are ruled, independently, by Islamists. “The tribal areas of northwest Pakistan have become a Taliban playground,” says the Middle East Times. The success of allied efforts in Afghanistan depends in large measure on the U.S.’s ability to seal that nation’s border with Pakistan. As long as the Afghani Taliban can find sanctuary and support in Pakistan, efforts to knock it out will come up short. The Taliban will live to fight another day.

This is the last thing the U.S. and allied forces need in an area they had at one time considered all but won. Afghanistan is quickly becoming an even greater problem than Iraq. And the destabilization within Pakistan’s government bears no small part of the blame. The more fragmented, disunited and gridlocked the government becomes, the greater is these extremists’ opportunity to wax strong. Yet that is exactly what the post-Musharraf government is: a political tangle of competing parliamentarians, judges and military men.

The decline and fall of the Musharraf government was accompanied by and gave rise to the increasingly clamorous and powerful forces of democracy and Islamism—a volatile mix made worse by runaway inflation and other economic problems.

“As a result, for the first time in the history of the country the army is no longer in a position to step in and impose order as before,” Stratfor wrote. “Recognizing that any attempt to impose order military style to a growing crisis of governance would only further destabilize the country, the army’s new leadership has put its weight behind the civilian government. But since Pakistani civilian institutions historically have never really functioned properly, serious doubts about the viability of the newly democratic Pakistan arise” (August 19).

“The most likely possible dangers are these,” wrote Frederick W. Kagan and Michael O’Hanlon in the New York Times: “a complete collapse of Pakistani government rule that allows an extreme Islamist movement to fill the vacuum; a total loss of federal control over outlying provinces, which splinter along ethnic and tribal lines; or a struggle within the Pakistani military in which the minority sympathetic to the Taliban and al Qaeda try to establish Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism.”

These are exactly the sorts of nightmares that Musharraf, while he maintained control of the military, was able to hold at bay. At that time, the White House could make its requests known with a single phone call to a sympathetic and powerful ear. No longer.

“Almost every day the U.S. seems to learn something new about the limits to its capacity as the world’s one remaining superpower,” the Middle East Timeswrote.

America has itself to blame for the loss of influence it has in this volatile situation. As Mr. Flurry wrote in January, “America’s problem is even worse than a weak will. We even help push our allies into the hands of radical Islam. That is a dangerous kind of ignorance.

“We helped get rid of Iran’s ‘corrupt’ shah in 1979. He was replaced by Ayatollah Khomeini, who began state-sponsored terrorism in the Middle East. Are we about to see another ayatollah rise to power? This time in nuclear Pakistan? And will America be mostly to blame?”

Mr. Flurry’s article in January raised one final, frightening prospect that could become reality in the event of a governmental collapse. “Pakistan also has the nuclear bomb and could be taken over by radical Islam, with plenty of help from Iran,” Mr. Flurry wrote. “That means it could become a proxy of the Iranian mullahs. This would be the worst possible disaster!” We would do well to watch for it.