United for Peace of Pierce County, WA - We nonviolently oppose the reliance on unilateral military actions rather than cooperative diplomacy.

The political alliance that succeeded in ousting Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has broken up over the reappointment of judges Musharraf had dismissed, the Washington Post reported Monday afternoon (or the middle of the night in Islamabad). -- "With only 10 days to go before the presidential election, the outcome of a three-way race for the presidency appeared far from certain Monday as leaders of several smaller parties in the coalition began to reassess their alliances," wrote Candace Rondeaux.[1] -- The Los Angeles Times said Sunday that Pakistan has a "propensity for lightning-fast changes in the national mood" and that the mood has recently shifted "from euphoria over Musharraf's long-awaited exit to deep foreboding."[2] -- Laura King described the economy as in a dire state: "Amid the turmoil, economic indicators have marched steadily downward. With the inflation rate at 25%, prices for staples such as rice and bread have doubled or tripled in recent months. -- High gasoline prices mean many people can barely afford to drive, or even buy a bus ticket to get to work. . . . [O]nce-robust stock prices slid so sharply that investors rioted last month outside the main Karachi exchange, which has lost almost a third of its value this year. The national currency, the rupee, has plunged to historic lows. -- In the debilitating summer heat, frequent power cuts fray tempers and interrupt daily routines. Rolling blackouts afflict the entire country, including the once-orderly capital. . . . The country's downward spiral has left many of Pakistan's educated professionals feeling they have no choice but to leave, further depleting a politically moderate middle class that has served as a bulwark against extremism." -- But all the talk of "chaos," "foreboding," "turmoil," and "downward spiral" seemed overdone, particularly in the context of U.S. national security state élites' eagerness to intervene militarily in Pakistan's autonomous tribal regions. -- In a Reuters blog, Myra MacDonald observed: "Juan Cole in Informed Comment writes that 'although the wrangling over who will be president is being reported in the U.S. press as a crisis, I don’t see it that way. It is, rather, an ordinary political process in which eventually there will be a winner who will garner enough votes to be elected. No one is brandishing a gun over all this to my knowledge. You might as well call the current presidential campaign in the U.S. to determine who will succeed George W. Bush a crisis.'" ...

ISLAMABAD -- Pakistan plunged deeper into political chaos Monday as a top party in the country's coalition government vowed to quit the coalition and support an opposition candidate for the presidency.

Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-N party, said he plans to vigorously oppose his one-time political partner, Asif Ali Zardari, leader of the Pakistan People's Party and widower of slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. The announcement, which came a week after Pervez Musharraf resigned as Pakistan's president, set off a heated race for the presidency and raised questions about the future of the shaky alliance between the United States and Pakistan's top political leaders.

Sharif said he decided to quit the coalition government after Zardari, who assumed leadership of his party after Bhutto's assassination in December, announced plans to run for president on Saturday and reneged on a promise to reinstate dozens of judges deposed by Musharraf.

"We have been forced to take this decision, which we take with great regret," Sharif said during a nationally televised news conference in Islamabad on Monday. "Zardari pledged in writing to reinstate the judges within one day of Musharraf leaving."

Sharif's party selected former Supreme Court chief justice Saeed-uz-Zaman Siddiqui to run for president. Siddiqui, a longtime ally of Sharif, was appointed chief justice in July 1999. He was later ousted from the bench when he refused to legally endorse the military coup led by Musharraf that ended Sharif's term as prime minister in 1999. A stalwart critic of Musharraf and Pakistan's military and intelligence agencies, Siddiqui is a highly respected figure in Pakistan's increasingly powerful legal community and could pose a serious challenge to Zardari.

"I believe he is the most suitable candidate. He is the one who refused to take an oath under Musharraf's rule," Sharif said. "This is a great Pakistani. His service to this country is unmatched."

The split in the coalition came a little more than two weeks after Sharif and Zardari mounted an aggressive political putsch against Musharraf, who stepped down after the coalition leaders called for his impeachment on Aug. 7. United in their opposition to Musharraf, the two politicians nonetheless failed to reach an agreement on when and how to reinstate 60 judges sacked by Musharraf. Sharp divisions between Sharif and Zardari emerged within days of Musharraf's resignation when Sharif vowed last week to quit the coalition if the judges were not restored by a parliamentary measure Monday.

At the center of the split is the status of Pakistan's deposed chief justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry. Chaudhry became a symbol of opposition to Musharraf's rule after he was suspended, then fired, by the former army chief last year. Since then he has become the public face of a powerful movement led by thousands of Pakistani lawyers that has pushed aggressively for greater balance between the country's judiciary and executive branches.

Sharif has been a vocal advocate for Chaudhry's return to the bench. But Zardari, who spent 11 years in prison on financial corruption charges and is facing money-laundering charges in Switzerland, has been reluctant to endorse Chaudhry's reinstatement. With only 10 days to go before the presidential election, the outcome of a three-way race for the presidency appeared far from certain Monday as leaders of several smaller parties in the coalition began to reassess their alliances.

Late last week, members of Musharraf's Pakistan Muslim League-Q party said they plan to field their own candidate for the presidency when elections are held Sept. 6. No official announcement has been made on the party's presidential selection, but speculation was high Monday that the party's general secretary, Mushahid Hussain, would run for the country's second most powerful political office. Hussain, a Georgetown University-educated former journalist who chairs the Pakistani Senate's foreign affairs committee, is a well-known figure in both Islamabad and Washington political circles.

Currently, Zardari's Pakistan People's Party holds the largest share of seats in the National Assembly and in at least two provincial assemblies. But a last-minute shift in alliances could stymie Zardari's efforts to come to power eight months after his wife's assassination.

A candidate needs a total of 352 votes out of 702 combined votes in the National Assembly, Senate and four provincial assemblies of Pakistan to win the presidency.

** Jubilation quickly gives way to anxiety over the sinking economy and growing militancy, and the bickering government that appears incapable of handling the situation. **

For Rashid Shahbaz, a rail-thin day laborer, the surge of happiness he felt over President Pervez Musharraf's resignation last week leached away all too swiftly, replaced by the same sense of anxiety that has tugged at him for months.

"How can I feed my family? How can I give my children a future?" he said, falling into step with other worshipers heading to afternoon prayers at a run-down neighborhood mosque in the capital. "That's what I am asking God every day. Every single day."

Pakistan, with its propensity for lightning-fast changes in the national mood, has swung in recent days from euphoria over Musharraf's long-awaited exit to deep foreboding over whether its remaining leaders are up to the tasks of pulling the country out of an economic free fall and confronting a burgeoning Islamic insurgency.

Early signs were not auspicious. The coalition government, already paralyzed for months by infighting, fell to quarreling again within hours of Musharraf's resignation. Some fear the alliance of the two main parties will unravel altogether.

Only three days after the sudden exit of Musharraf, who was military chief for most of his nearly nine years in power, Pakistan's Taliban movement struck one its strongest blows yet at the military establishment, staging a spectacular attack on a huge munitions compound near the capital. Nearly 80 workers, almost all of them civilians, were killed in suicide blasts carefully timed to coincide with shift changes at the weapons complex.

Moreover, the Taliban threatened to reignite a campaign of suicide bombings that plagued urban areas across Pakistan last year, killing and maiming hundreds.

In big cities such as Lahore and Karachi, the sites of suicide bombings have become local landmarks, macabre reference points for mundane tasks such as providing directions.

"The restaurant is just down the street from the police post that was blown up," someone will say, or "His office is across from the courthouse -- you know, the one where that attack happened."

Amid the turmoil, economic indicators have marched steadily downward. With the inflation rate at 25%, prices for staples such as rice and bread have doubled or tripled in recent months.

High gasoline prices mean many people can barely afford to drive, or even buy a bus ticket to get to work.

"Sometimes people look like they want to cry when they are paying for their groceries," said shopkeeper Ali Mustafa, whose business is teetering because he has extended credit to so many of his longtime customers. "They are searching their handbags and their pockets for every single coin. I look away when this happens."

Amid the long political deadlock over Musharraf's political fate, once-robust stock prices slid so sharply that investors rioted last month outside the main Karachi exchange, which has lost almost a third of its value this year. The national currency, the rupee, has plunged to historic lows.

In the debilitating summer heat, frequent power cuts fray tempers and interrupt daily routines. Rolling blackouts afflict the entire country, including the once-orderly capital, which was largely shielded from such disruptions until this year. The unreliable electricity supply has created a new class of haves and have-nots: those who can afford home generators, and those who cannot and must swelter and suffer.

"My schoolwork is affected, because it is too hot and too dark to study inside my home," said Karim Iqbal, a shy and studious 17-year-old. "I sit out on the roof until the light fades too much for me to read anymore. I want to become educated, and better myself. But it is very hard."

Many analysts see the country's most pressing problems as inextricably linked: the fractious and disorganized government, the gloomy economic outlook, and the emboldened Islamic insurgency.

"Unless the government appears to the outside world to be competent and stable, which it most certainly does not at the moment, foreign investment won't be coming back, and economic recovery will be very difficult," said Marie Lall, a South Asia analyst at the British think tank Chatham House.

"And a bad economy generates support for the insurgency -- even in Pakistan, where people on the whole really do not want to be ruled by Islamists," Lall said. "But the extremists are seen as the main alternative to the government, so in bad times, people turn to them."

The United States' ability to influence events in Pakistan is probably at its lowest ebb in a generation, according to analysts and even some U.S. officials.

Among Pakistanis, there is a strong sense of grievance against the Bush administration for its years of patronage of Musharraf. Although that support finally faded in the final months of his tenure, it continued long after his compatriots had decisively turned against him.

The United States' close ties to Musharraf were a long-chafing sore point, especially over the last 18 months as a nationwide pro-democracy movement emerged. Pakistani commentators routinely derided their leader as "Busharraf," and demonstrators shouted in the streets, "Musharraf is America's pet dog!"

Particularly repugnant in the eyes of Pakistani civil activists was the Bush administration's failure to condemn the firing of dozens of judges during a six-week stint of emergency rule late last year, when Musharraf also suspended the constitution and threw thousands of opponents into prison.

But even among the many Pakistanis who rejoiced at Musharraf's fall, his fate was viewed as a cautionary tale of what becomes of a leader who has outlived his usefulness to Washington.

"This has reinforced the very cynical feeling Pakistanis have had for many years about the relationship with the United States -- 'They'll use you, and then they'll ditch you,'" said retired Brig. Gen. Naeem Salik, now a visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

The country's downward spiral has left many of Pakistan's educated professionals feeling they have no choice but to leave, further depleting a politically moderate middle class that has served as a bulwark against extremism.

Omar Quraishi, the op-ed editor of the nationally circulated daily the News, listed the destinations of well-educated acquaintances who have recently emigrated, or are preparing to do so. "One to America, one to Canada, two more to the U.K.," he said.

"It's not just whatever hardship they are experiencing at the moment," he said. "It's the loss of hope, the sense that there is nothing good ahead here for their children. That's what makes people decide to go."

SHARIF vs. ZARDARI: A FIGHT TO THE FINISH OR REVIVAL OF DEMOCRACY?
By Myra MacDonald

The resignation of President Pervez Musharraf has, as expected, unleashed a new power struggle within Pakistan’s fractious coalition. Asif Ali Zardari, leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and widower of Benazir Bhutto, has staked a claim to the presidency, setting him on a collision course with former prime minister Nawaz Sharif. Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) sees Zardari’s candidacy as an attempt to garner more power and delay the restoration of judges sacked by Musharraf last November. PML (N) officials are already saying the row could break up the six-month-old coalition cobbled together after elections in February.

So will there be a fight to the finish between Zardari and Sharif that will drag Pakistan deeper into the mire? Or are the two men simply manoeuvring themselves into the best position they can find in the post-Musharraf era?

Pervez Musharraf after his resignation speechIndian writer M.J. Akbar says Zardari and Sharif, having set aside Musharraf, ”have begun the far more vicious process of trying to eliminate each other. This is a power-play in which there can be only one victor. Musharraf was the semi-finals. Islamabad is not a big enough town to find space for both Zardari and Sharif.

“The final resolution of this conflict will only come after another general election,” he writes. “In the meantime, the two will try to maximize their control over the instruments and institutions of state. Sharif has his sights on the Supreme Court, which has become the only reserve bank of credibility in a nation where the Constitution has been amenable to the doctrine of necessity -- in simpler words, where the judiciary has legalised events rather than law being the determinant of fact. Zardari is more audacious, seeking the supreme office in the land, that of the President, since he is surely convinced that he will not get office through a popular vote.”

In an op-ed in the Daily Times, U.S.-based lawyer Rafia Zakaria bemoans the lack of leadership in Pakistan, creating what she calls a stagnant and elitist political system which is driving young talented Pakistanis abroad to join the thriving Pakistani diaspora. ”Politics in Pakistan, plagued as it is by political opportunism and expedience, has devolved to a level of absurdity where even Ms. (Paris) Hilton would be a viable candidate for president,” she writes.

But is the current row the beginning of the end for Pakistan’s latest experiment in civilian democracy or its opposite -- ie. evidence of a new and perhaps chaotic vigour in Pakistani politics as the country re-emerges from years of military rule?

Juan Cole in Informed Comment writes that “although the wrangling over who will be president is being reported in the U.S. press as a crisis, I don’t see it that way. It is, rather, an ordinary political process in which eventually there will be a winner who will garner enough votes to be elected. No one is brandishing a gun over all this to my knowledge. You might as well call the current presidential campaign in the U.S. to determine who will succeed George W. Bush a crisis.”

And leaving ideological debate aside, would Pakistan’s closest allies -- China, Saudi Arabia and the United States -- really be prepared to stand back and let the country descend into chaos?

Saudi Arabia, facing a challenge of its own from al Qaeda, has no interest in seeing it growing stronger in Pakistan, and may demand stability in return for its pledge to defer oil payments, as I wrote in a previous post. China has always called for a stable Pakistan, although like Saudi Arabia, it has been careful not to be seen to be interfering in its domestic politics.

And the United States so badly needs Pakistan’s help in tackling the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan that it is likely to work hard to build a good relationship with whoever emerges as the strongest leader in Pakistan, including Zardari. According to the *New York Times*, doubts are growing among American officials over the level of cooperation they can expect from Pakistan Army chief Pervez Kayani “who has appeared less interested in how to deal with the Taliban than with the sagging morale of his undertrained, underequipped troops.” Sharif, the newspaper says, is seen as too close to conservative Islamic forces in Pakistan. ”To the surprise of many here, the civilian with the trump card, then, may be Mr. Zardari,” it says.

Winston Churchill famously noted: “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” Cause for optimism in Pakistan’s new civilian democracy? Or have the hopes raised by February’s elections been dashed?