A Strong-arm Tactic That Only Exposes Weakness

As Pakistan's latest political theatre unfolded yesterday one question loomed larger than ever: is this the endgame for President Pervez Musharraf?

After eight years of rule, he has never been more vulnerable: his popularity is plummeting; his friends are getting cold feet; and the political fires that have slowly burned for six months are licking at his ankles.

The commando general, ever the proud strategist, is scrambling to douse the flames. But time is against him.

The most immediate threat comes from the judiciary. Yesterday's banishment of Mr Sharif will almost certainly trigger a fresh confrontation with the supreme court, which last month said Mr Sharif could return. Gen Musharraf's recent record in the court is poor. He lost several legal battles in a disastrous attempt to fire the chief justice, Muhammad Iftikhar Chaudhry, last March; now his government faces damaging contempt charges.

The clock is also ticking for Gen Musharraf's political ambitions. He wants to be re-elected president by the current parliament between September 15 and October 15. Powerful allies are behind him, most notably Britain and the US, which see Gen Musharraf as their safest best in stabilizing the nuclear-armed country while fighting al-Qaida.

Many Pakistanis disagree. They despise the Americans' fairweather friendship and are alarmed by Gen Musharraf's failure to contain Islamist violence. To curry favour with the electorate, he needs a power-sharing arrangement with Benazir Bhutto, the other exiled premier and one of Pakistan's most popular figures. But the deal being thrashed out in Dubai is in serious jeopardy.

Key supporters on both sides are in quiet revolt. Some Benazir officials consider the general to be politically toxic; the general's political lieutenants realize that in any compromise their party - composed largely of opportunists and sell-outs - will be unceremoniously sacrificed.

Yesterday's deportation of Mr Sharif also means that Ms Bhutto must extract a high price to retain her credibility. Not only must Gen Musharraf resign as army chief, she says, but he must also abandon the right to fire the prime minister. This may be too much for Gen Musharraf to stomach.

Besieged at his army HQ, he may be justifiably sore that Mr Sharif is being lionized as a hero of democracy. When he seized power in 1999 many Pakistanis, including liberals, were happy to see the back of Mr Sharif, whose authoritarian tendencies and reputation for greed had endeared him to few.

Now Mr Sharif is the comeback kid, his reputation burnished by yesterday's events, and in the coming days his supporters are likely to take to the streets, particularly in his homeland of Punjab province. Significantly, the army also draws most support from Punjab.

For now Mr Sharif is marooned in Jeddah after an unprecedented intervention by the Saudi intelligence chief, who traveled to Pakistan last weekend. Pakistan's intelligence head, Lt Gen Ashfaq Kiyani, also played a key role in recent Bhutto talks.

If nothing else, the supremacy of the spy chiefs underlines the parlous state of democracy in America and Britain's key allies in the Muslim world.