Pakistan’s Political Rift May Pose Test for Obama

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The intensifying political battle between the pro-American president and the main opposition leader is shaping up as a potential crisis for the Obama administration as it tries to focus the government on fighting the Qaeda and Taliban insurgency here.

The domestic struggle will almost certainly deflect attention from that fight as President Asif Ali Zardari and his archrival, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, duke it out and as street protests persist, politicians and analysts said.

It could also result in shifting political alliances, including new opportunities for the religious right that would be inimical to Washington’s interests, and even serve to make the Pakistani military restive for power again if the situation continued to worsen, they said.

The crisis was set off by a Supreme Court ruling on Wednesday that bars Mr. Sharif, and his brother, Shahbaz, from elected office. The decision was widely interpreted in Pakistan as a raw political maneuver engineered by Mr. Zardari to diminish the power of the two popular opposition figures.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani described the ruling as damaging to democracy. A daily newspaper published by a major supporter of Mr. Zardari’s said the resulting political battle could be so debilitating that nuclear-armed Pakistan could end up in the ranks of failed nations alongside Somalia and Zimbabwe.

“The two parties are going for the kill,” said The Daily Times. “As in the past they might both come a cropper,” it added, suggesting that each would lose out if the military stepped in again.

Spokesmen for Mr. Zardari denied the ruling had been politically driven, and said that Mr. Zardari deplored the Sharifs’ disqualification from public office. But they said Mr. Sharif’s intemperate statements after the ruling and the street protests made it imperative for the president to impose executive rule in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous and most important province, where Shahbaz Sharif served as chief minister.

“After the demonstrations it became obvious the province could not be run in accordance with the Constitution,” said Farhatullah Babar, the presidential spokesman.

For Pakistan, where the military has ruled for more than half of the 61 years since independence and civilian governments have rarely completed a full term, combat between senior politicians is quite familiar.

In the 1990s, Mr. Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, the wife of Mr. Zardari who was assassinated in December 2007, dislodged each other as prime minister.

But in the 1990s, Pakistan was under a broad swath of American sanctions. This time, American interests are more intensely intertwined with the outcome of domestic politics.

The Obama administration, which this week hosted the Pakistani foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, and the military chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, in Washington, has had little to say about the unfolding political drama.

“Washington was certainly surprised by the court move and very concerned, both in political and military circles,” said Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council.

The United States has backed Mr. Zardari as president, arguing that as a man whose wife was killed by terrorists he understands the importance of the fight against what the American military is now calling an industrial-strength insurgency in Pakistan.

Missile strikes by C.I.A.-operated drones against militants in the tribal areas increased significantly after Mr. Zardari came to power in September. Mr. Zardari has given the Americans his support for the strikes, although the Pakistani government publicly complains about them.

But his reputation in Washington would be likely to suffer as a consequence of his moves against the Sharif brothers, said Talat Masood, a retired army general, who frequently meets with American officials when they come to Pakistan.

“He is deflecting the attention of the whole country to something that is so irrelevant,” said Mr. Masood. “He is banking on the United States, but America will only support him up to a point.”

The moves against the Sharif brothers are likely to have upset the army, even though Nawaz Sharif was ousted from his second term as prime minister by an army coup. The army “must be boiling inside,” Mr. Masood said. “How can they tolerate this state of affairs?”

The bulk of army soldiers come from Punjab, are nationalistic in their outlook, and have a natural inclination toward Mr. Sharif’s party, the Pakistan Muslim League-N, he said.

General Kayani has vowed to keep the army out of politics, and was serious about his pledge, Pakistani officials said. But there could come a point where political instability became so great, the army would feel to compelled to step in, they said.

By ordering one of his main political allies, the governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, to take over governance of the province, Mr. Zardari was hitting directly at the power center of the Sharif brothers, and, in effect, humiliating them, politicians said.

Some said Nawaz Sharif was now likely to work assiduously to bolster his popularity against Mr. Zardari. The president’s pro-American stance is anathema to large segments of the population, and Mr. Sharif could seek Islamist religious parties that have opposed American policy in Pakistan to come to his side, some politicians said.

Or the religious forces could gravitate to Mr. Sharif without his open encouragement, said Ishaq Khan Khakwani, a member of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, and a former minister in the Musharraf government.

“The religious forces will come with Nawaz Sharif,” Mr. Khawani said.

Since Wednesday’s court ruling, Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist party that advocates Islamic law in Pakistan, has declared that its supporters will join the lawyers’ movement in a long march planned for March 12 to mark the dismissal two years ago of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

Nawaz Sharif said he and his brother would spearhead the lawyers’ march, and join in a sit-in planned at the conclusion of the march in Islamabad.

The size of the crowd during the lawyers’ protest from Lahore to Islamabad, and the composition of the march could be a defining moment in the contest between Mr. Zardari and the Sharif forces, politicians said.
New York Times