Impact on US diplomacy amid division

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto on Thursday left in ruins the delicate diplomatic effort the Bush administration had pursued in the past year to reconcile Pakistan deeply divided political factions. Now it is scrambling to sort through ever more limited options, as American influence on Pakistan's internal affairs continues to decline.
On Thursday, officials at the American Embassy in Islamabad reached out to members of the political party of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, according to a senior administration official. The very fact that officials are even talking to backers of Mr. Sharif, who they believe has too many ties to Islamists, suggests how hard it will be to find a partner the United States fully trusts.
The assassination highlighted, in spectacular fashion, the failure of two of President Bush's main objectives in the region: his quest to bring democracy to the Muslim world, and his drive to force out the Islamist militants who have hung on tenaciously in Pakistan, the nuclear-armed state considered ground zero in President Bush's fight against terrorism, despite the administration's long-running effort to root out al-Qaeda from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
Administration officials say the United States still wants the Pakistani elections to proceed, either as scheduled on Jan. 8 or soon after. But several senior administration officials acknowledged that President Pervez Musharraf may decide to put off the elections if the already unstable political climate in Pakistan deteriorates further.
The administration official said American Embassy officials were trying to reach out to Pakistani political players across the board in the aftermath of the Bhutto assassination.
"Look, most of the people in Musharraf's party came out of Nawaz's party, the official said, referring to Mr. Sharif and speaking on condition of anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities. While he acknowledged that an alliance between Mr. Sharif and Mr. Musharraf was unlikely given the long enmity between the men, he added, I wouldn't predict anything in politics."
Foreign policy analysts and diplomats said that if there were one thing that Ms. Bhutto's assassination has made clear, it was the inability of the United States to manipulate the internal political affairs of Pakistan. Even before the assassination, the United States had limited influence and did not back Ms. Bhutto to the hilt.
"We are a player in the Pakistani political system, said Wendy Chamberlin, a former United States ambassador to Pakistan, adding that as such, the United States was partly to blame for Mr. Musharraf's dip in popularity. But, she added: This is Pakistan. And Pakistan is a very dangerous and violent place."
That said, Pakistan has never been more important for the United States than it is right now as it teeters on the edge of internal chaos. Bush administration officials have been trying mightily to balance the American insistence that Pakistan remain on the path to democracy and Mr. Musharraf's unwillingness to risk unrest that would allow al-Qaeda and the Taliban to operate more freely, particularly with American and NATO troops next door in Afghanistan.
That is why the administration had been fighting so hard, amid skepticism from many of its allies, to broker an agreement in which the increasingly unpopular Mr. Musharraf would share power with Ms. Bhutto after presidential and parliamentary elections. American officials viewed the power-sharing proposal partly as a way to force Mr. Musharraf onto a democratic path, and partly to relieve the growing pressure for his ouster.
On the basis of that plan, Ms. Bhutto returned to Pakistan in October after eight years of self-imposed exile.
But the power-sharing deal never came to fruition, as the increasingly besieged Mr. Musharraf imposed a series of autocratic measures that left him politically weakened.
Administration officials continued to prod Ms. Bhutto toward an arranged marriage with Mr. Musharraf even during the emergency rule. Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte traveled to Pakistan in November, and spoke by telephone to Ms. Bhutto while Mr. Musharraf had her under house arrest. With both sides balking at the power-sharing deal -- an agreement one Bush official acknowledged was 'like putting two pythons in the same cage' -- Mr. Negroponte continued to push Ms. Bhutto to agree to the plan according to members of Ms. Bhutto's political party.
"I think it was insane," said Teresita Schaffer, a Pakistan expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, of the proposed alliance. "I don't think Musharraf ever wanted to share power."
Until this week, Bush administration officials were still hoping that Mr. Musharraf and Ms. Bhutto would form an alliance between their political parties after Pakistan's Jan. 8 elections, which would bring about as close to a pro-American governing coalition in Pakistan as the United States was likely to get.
The Bhutto assassination upends that plan, but Bush administration officials on Thursday had still not given up hope that Mr. Musharraf may be able to strike a ruling coalition with whoever becomes Ms. Bhutto's successor in her Pakistan Peoples Party.
The problem with that scenario, though, is that Pakistani political parties are much more about strong, powerful individuals -- like Mr. Musharraf, Ms. Bhutto, or Mr. Sharif -- than about the parties themselves. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telephoned Ms. Bhutto's second-in-command, Makhdoom Amin Fahim, to offer sympathy, and she pledged to continue to support elections in Pakistan, administration officials said.
Mr. Bush's continued strong support for Mr. Musharraf could further erode his already declining popular support, even if the administration still sees his leadership as the best guarantor of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.
"The danger is the centrist elements of Pakistan will be so demoralised," said Stephen P. Cohen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He criticised the administration for not nurturing Pakistan's opposition for so long after Mr. Musharraf's coup in 1999. He expressed hope that the United States could still urge moderate parties to ally themselves with Mr. Musharraf, forming a governing coalition, assuming that the elections go ahead.
"It should wake up anybody who thinks that Pakistan is a stable country and that we can deal only with Musharraf," Mr. Cohen said of the assassination.
Ms. Schafer and other Pakistan experts say the administration was making a mistake by viewing Mr. Sharif with suspicion. They said that he was a moderate who will work with the United States in fight against terrorism, citing his cooperation with Clinton administration. Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, was in Islamabad with Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, Democrat of Rhode Island, on a scheduled trip and preparing to meet Ms. Bhutto at 9pm Thursday when the news of the bombing broke. They watched the news in their hotel, with initial reports that she had escaped injury giving way to confirmation of her death.
"I think our foreign policy relied on her personality as a stabilizing force," Mr. Specter told reporters by telephone. "Now, without her, we have to regroup."
This article is taken from The New York Times, December 28, 2007.