It's Curtains for Musharraf

After months of prevarication, the Pakistani government, led by Asif Zardari and Nawaz Sharif, has finally decided to impeach President Pervez Musharraf. Although a fighting man, Mr. Musharraf is expected to quit within the week. He doesn't have enough parliamentary backing to thwart the move, and the army and America, his main sources of support, have abandoned him in the face of popular pressure.

Ken Fallin

The government has been mulling this move for months. Mr. Zardari, of the People's Party of Pakistan (PPP), and Mr. Sharif, of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML), both hate the president for political and personal reasons.

Mr. Musharraf ousted Mr. Sharif from power in 1999, exiled him to Saudi Arabia, and only allowed him to return last year to contest the February elections because of Saudi pressure. Mr. Zardari was imprisoned for six years, then permitted to leave the country to join his wife Benazir Bhutto in exile in Dubai. Thanks to American pressure, she was allowed to return last October to contest the elections, and he only returned after she was assassinated in December.

The popular Bhutto accused Mr. Musharraf of an assassination attempt last October. When she was killed two months later, many Pakistanis remembered that accusation.

The Zardari-Sharif cooperation has been driven by political missteps on all sides. Mr. Zardari's decision to work with Mr. Musharraf -- under American urging -- alienated the PPP's rank and file, which has been historically antiarmy and anti-American. At the same time, Mr. Sharif took an anti-Musharraf and anti-America stance, boosting his popularity. Mr. Musharraf didn't help matters when he tried to oppose Mr. Zardari's prime minister pick. Later, he also criticized the new government's "dysfunctionality" in the face of an "impending economic meltdown."

Mr. Musharraf's biggest mistake was to lose focus on the war on terror, alienating his Washington backers without winning domestic public support. For months now, the U.S. has been upset at Pakistan's lackluster cooperation with coalition forces in the war on terror in Pakistan's tribal areas. Washington also accused Pakistan's powerful Interservices Intelligence (ISI) agency, which is associated with Mr. Musharraf, of complicity in the Taliban attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul last month. On the eve of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani's state visit to Washington last month, the government decreed the ISI would henceforth be answerable to the home ministry, instead of to the army chief or President Musharraf.

Mr. Musharraf couldn't countenance this loss of power. He accused the government of trying to "politicize the ISI and undermine national security" at America's prodding, forcing it to backtrack clumsily and lose face. To stave off a possible sacking at Mr. Musharraf's hands, Mr. Zardari joined hands with Mr. Sharif to impeach the president.

Washington, which had not so long ago advocated "working relations" between Mr. Zardari and Mr. Musharraf -- and later shifted its stance to a "dignified exit" for Mr. Musharraf -- responded with a studied silence. "The impeachment of President Musharraf is an internal matter for Pakistan that must be resolved in accordance with the law and constitution," said a White House spokesman on Aug. 7, the day the impeachment decision was announced.

In other words, "go Musharraf go." The U.S. realizes that Mr. Musharraf is extremely unpopular at home, and has concluded that the army is not prepared to risk propping him up any longer. So he is no longer useful. A working relationship with the new civilian order is a better bet.

The Pakistan army is the key to what happens next. Formally, the impeachment of Mr. Musharraf is a numbers game. The ruling coalition needs 295 votes out of 442 in a joint sitting of both houses of parliament to clinch it. They claim the motion will sail through.

But the result will critically depend on about 27 independent members of parliament, and members from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. If the ISI chooses to support Mr. Musharraf, it could probably manage to sway the tribal votes for the president. But it would need the green light from the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, before doing this.

It's unlikely Gen. Kayani will dive into this fray. The army is hugely unpopular at home for fighting "America's war on terror." It is dispirited because it is being criticized by its American ally not just for not doing enough, but for complicity in harboring and protecting the Afghan Taliban. It is demoralized, having lost over 2,000 men fighting terrorists in the tribal areas without sufficient training or motivation. The army remains the prime target of suicide bombers in the urban areas of the country, so much so that its officers no longer go about town in uniform.

Gen. Kayani successfully salvaged some public respect by refusing to tilt the February election results in favor of Mr. Musharraf's party. Therefore, while the officers abhor the "corrupt and bungling civilians," the grudging view is that any overt or covert military backing for Mr. Musharraf would be hugely unpopular, and any formal intervention untenable in the difficult economic and political environment facing the country.

If Mr. Musharraf throws in the towel this week, the current political paralysis might end, but the instability will remain. Mr. Sharif will play to public opinion and press Mr. Zardari to punish Mr. Musharraf for treason. He wants the deposed chief justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Chaudhry, and his erstwhile colleagues restored with full powers.

Mr. Zardari, for his part, may heed advice from the army and Washington and facilitate a safe exit for the president. He will, in all likelihood, refuse to reinstate the chief justice for fear that a reinvigorated judiciary will hold every Musharraf action to date as illegal, including the amnesty from corruption charges granted to him in November. Mr. Zardari also wants to become president himself, a prospect Mr. Sharif cannot stomach.

Pakistan's neighbors India and Afghanistan, and its strategic ally America, cannot be too sanguine about this continuing political instability. Their core interests require Pakistan's civilian leadership to lean on the Pakistan army to rein in and retool the ISI, support the war on terror in Afghanistan, and refrain from refueling Islamist jihad in India-administered Kashmir. But with the army sulking politically and licking its wounds militarily, the Zardari government looks unlikely to deliver on these fronts -- with or without a President Musharraf.

Mr. Sethi is editor of the Friday Times and Daily Times in Lahore, Pakistan.