U.S. Relying on Two in People's Party to Help Stabilize Pakistan

With the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the Bush administration is now depending on two politicians -- one accused in the 1990s of being a crook and the other still viewed as almost powerless -- to help prop up President Pervez Musharraf and stabilize volatile Pakistan, according to U.S. officials, regional experts and Pakistanis.

Asif Ali Zardari, who has assumed the regency of his wife's Pakistan People's Party, is nicknamed "Mr. 10 Percent" for alleged corruption by profiting off government contracts when Bhutto was prime minister in the 1990s, charges for which he spent 11 years in prison. He will remain caretaker of Pakistan's largest opposition movement until their 19-year-old son finishes studies at Oxford and is ready to assume party control -- potentially many years away.

"He represents the old, entrenched faction of the PPP that resisted modernization of politics and sees parties as an extension of family politics, which is connected to the aura of corruption around him," said Isobel Coleman of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Makhdoom Amin Fahim, who led the party during Bhutto's eight-year exile, is the party candidate to become prime minister if the PPP wins the largest vote in the Feb. 18 elections and forms a coalition government. First elected to parliament in 1970, he lacks both charisma and clout, according to U.S. officials and Pakistani experts.

"Fahim is unknown and not a strong player. As a feudal landlord, he represents the Pakistani elite in a party dependent on the poor for the majority of its membership. As long as he is tied to Zardari, it will also be difficult for him to gain leverage with Musharraf or pressure him into reform," said Farhana Ali of the Rand Corp.

Although the United States has contact with an array of politicians, Washington is still hoping that the deal it tried to broker between Bhutto and Musharraf last fall -- to forge a new moderate center and work together after elections -- remains the way to salvage Musharraf's government. But the personality and political dynamics have changed dramatically with Bhutto gone, especially within the PPP, U.S. officials said.

"Not only are the individuals weak and vulnerable, but the party is less coherent than it was under Bhutto as the standard-bearer and disciplinarian," acknowledged a senior U.S. official involved in Pakistan policy.

The biggest unknown is which way the PPP will lean. For the Bush administration, the worst-case scenario is the PPP aligning with the party of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif in a coalition to try to change the constitution and oust Musharraf, said Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution.

A political alliance between the PPP and Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-N Party was once as unlikely as a Democratic-Republican coalition in the United States, said Lawrence K. Robinson, a former U.S. diplomat in Pakistan who knows all the current players. But both parties now share more common views of Musharraf.

Sharif will not rest until Musharraf, who toppled him in a 1999 military coup, is ousted, Robinson said. "And there's such a strong feeling now in the PPP that Musharraf is just like Zia ul-Haq, just another Islamist-loving military dictator who had a role in the death of a Bhutto," he added. Former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Benazir's father, was hanged during Mohammed Zia ul-Haq's rule.

Zardari and Musharraf also have a history of hostility. Zardari was in prison under Musharraf and has been an outspoken critic of Musharraf since his release. After Bhutto's death, he accused Musharraf of criminal negligence, and referred repeatedly to a party allied with the president as "the killer league."

U.S. officials counter that no two parties are likely to win enough votes to be able to change the constitution, noting that an International Republican Institute poll in November gave the PPP about 35 percent support and Sharif's party about 25 percent. The poll was taken before Bhutto's death, however, and does not factor in potential sympathy or anger votes.