ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s U.S.-backed president, Asif Ali Zardari, appears to have survived a campaign to oust him, a storm that had threatened to sidetrack the country from its battle with Islamic extremists.
Although there were predictions in the last few months of 2009 that he was finished, Zardari has defended himself aggressively in recent days and won some political allies. The news media and the judiciary had appeared to be closing in on him, but in a world of political shadow boxing, many analysts and politicians think that Pakistan’s powerful military has been behind the drive to force the president out of office.
“I think he is fighting back admirably,” said Abida Hussain, a senior member of Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party. “He threw down the gauntlet, fair and square, and the conspirators, if any, seem to be backing off.”
The confrontation had sparked fears that the army, which has ruled Pakistan for most of its existence, would intervene again, perhaps to force fresh elections when the country is under pressure from the Obama administration to launch an offensive in North Waziristan, a Pakistani refuge for al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
The importance of North Waziristan, in northwestern Pakistan, was underscored Wednesday by another U.S. missile strike in the area, which is a stronghold for the Haqqani network, considered a close ally of al-Qaeda and the most dangerous insurgent group in Afghanistan. It was the fifth such strike since a suicide bomber killed a group of CIA officers in the adjacent Afghan province of Khost last week.
According to news reports, 12 people were killed in the latest strike.
Separately, a suicide bomber hit a military camp Wednesday in the Pakistani portion of the Kashmir region, which Pakistan and India both claim, killing three soldiers.
Many members of Pakistan’s military establishment despise Zardari for his past alleged corruption and for interfering in sensitive security policy since he was elected in 2008.
The Supreme Court appeared to deal the final blow to Zardari last month when it ruled that an amnesty that had ended pending corruption cases against the president and some ministers was unconstitutional.
