Pakistan's power brokers consider options

LARKANA, Pakistan — The sudden disappearance of Benazir Bhutto from Pakistan's political scene leaves behind a dangerous period of uncertainty for the country, forcing leaders from Islamabad to Washington into difficult choices about how to protect their interests and keep the nuclear-armed, Islamist-threatened country from descending further into chaos.

As rioting and protests spread after Bhutto's assassination Thursday, most of the power brokers in the country — from President Pervez Musharraf to the army generals to the demoralized opposition to the Bush administration — were busy considering their options, eyeing each other in what will be a game of wills playing out in the coming days and weeks.

For Musharraf, the goal will be finding the right moves to quell further unrest that would continue to undermine his weakened hold on power. For his former colleagues in the army command, avoiding a brutal crackdown on protesters is key to maintaining their power and standing — and perhaps avoiding being forced to move against Musharraf himself.

For Bhutto's fellow opposition leaders, struggling to overcome shock and disarray after the loss of the opposition's most famous icon, the challenge is whether the fractured groups can work together against Musharraf's party and military rule.

In Washington, where Pakistan's stability is considered crucial in the battle against resurgent Islamic extremists on the border with Afghanistan, U.S. officials were reaching out to an array of political figures, assessing whether they could turn the loss of the woman who shouldered their hopes for Pakistan into a more serious commitment to battle the Islamic militants who may have killed her.

"What we are looking at is whether there is a way, given that this event was such an extreme shock, to take advantage of it to reset politics in Pakistan," a senior U.S. administration official said.

Others dismissed that idea, noting that most Pakistanis already deeply resent U.S. intervention in their country. One of the biggest fears in Washington is a growing vacuum of power that could provide troublesome opportunities for the radical Islamists who already are spreading their influence beyond the mostly lawless tribal areas along the border.

If Pakistan becomes more chaotic and "there's a feeling nobody is providing any kind of leadership, those who are really well organized could begin to fill the void," said Rick Barton, a Pakistan expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, "and that could be some of the religious groups."

More sustained turmoil could be devastating for U.S. hopes in the region. Pakistan's fate reverberates far past the country's borders. Al-Qaida and pro-Taliban militants have long found shelter here, and have gained strength in Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan while Musharraf has been distracted over the past year by a series of challenges to his rule.

Investigators have traced many terrorist plots in the West — from the Sept. 11 attacks to last year's London plane plot — to militants hiding out in the country's border areas near Afghanistan. Pakistan also is the first Islamic nation to possess nuclear weapons, and the ultimate nightmare scenario is any of those weapons falling into the hands of radicals.

Musharraf has been considered an indispensable ally in containing the radicals since soon after the Sept. 11 attacks. In recent months, as the U.S. and Britain sought ways to help stabilize his government, they had backed a potential power-sharing deal between Musharraf and Bhutto, calculating that her popular standing would widen his base of support.

U.S. officials now are hoping that Bhutto's assassination changes what Pakistanis view as the most serious threat to their country — not longtime rival India, but the Islamic militants within their borders.

On Friday, Pakistani officials blamed one of the militants, a Taliban commander named Baitullah Masood, for the attack on Bhutto, though Masood's group on Saturday denied any links to the killing, even as Bhutto's aides accused the government of a cover-up. Pakistani officials, meanwhile, have quietly begun consulting with other nations about the conduct of their investigation despite a public insistence that they need no foreign help, U.S. officials say.

Criticized in the past for unwisely making their policy too dependent on the fate of individuals such as Musharraf and Bhutto, U.S. officials quickly reached out to other opposition figures after Bhutto's death Thursday. That included her possible successor in the Pakistan People's Party, Makhdoom Amin Fahim, and Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister and rival party leader whom the U.S. had long had kept at arm's length.

Administration officials said Friday they had no plans to throw their support behind Sharif or another candidate. They say they are continuing to push for elections to go forward Jan. 8 as scheduled. One thing almost all agree on: Musharraf, who has managed to ride out a continuing political crisis this year, is now in an even more intense fight for his political survival.

On Saturday, he ordered his security chiefs to quell rioting by Bhutto's grieving followers that has killed at least 44 people over three days and caused tens of millions of dollars in damage.

Nine election offices have been destroyed amid the unrest — along with the voter rolls and ballot boxes inside, the election commission said. The commission has called an emergency meeting for Monday.

Musharraf's aides say he has no plans to cancel elections but will talk with all the political parties before deciding how to proceed.

The army, meanwhile, is focused mainly on not losing control of the volatile situation, though it would likely hold back from too bloody a crackdown against protesters, analysts said.

For the opposition, always notoriously splintered, Bhutto's death is an enormous setback in efforts to end the military's long intervention and control over public affairs.

Her Pakistan People's Party has been the most popular faction in the country, but many now worry that the party itself will fracture. Since its founding by her father, there has never been a Pakistan People's Party without a Bhutto — not even when she fled into exile in 1999 to avoid charges of corruption. Under her, the party managed to hold together its two disparate wings — the urban, middle-class and progressive side and its feudal rural supporters — by offering feudal-style patronage with progressive social attitudes, analysts said.

Some believe that her vice chairman, Fahim, could become the first non-Bhutto to lead the party, but he lacks the charisma or acumen necessary to be successful, political analysts said.

Other analysts said Bhutto's death could energize the opposition. "The Pakistani opposition will find greater momentum," Haqqani said. "Whether it can find direction is a different issue."

Among those who could emerge stronger are Sharif, leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, who has largely been in Bhutto's shadow but in recent months has become the most outspoken major opposition critic of Musharraf and military rule. But a major obstacle for Sharif is the personal enmity between him and Musharraf, who overthrew the former prime minister in 1999.

But another possible scenario is that Musharraf takes advantage of the uncertainty and disarray within the opposition to hold on to power, while persuading Washington yet again that he is its best bet to stanch a slide into chaos in the region.

"I think, if anything, this latest tragedy is likely to reinforce beliefs within those [Washington] offices that Pakistan is a dangerous, messy place, potentially very unstable and fragile," said Daniel Markey, a Pakistan expert with the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, "and that they need to cling to Musharraf more even that they did in the past."

Information from The Associated Press is included in this report.