Posted by: zanshin, 2008-12-06 06:54

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Man in the News: Asif Ali Zardari
James Lamont and Farhan Bokhari, 2008-12-05 (Friday), FT
When Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, arrived in Islamabad this week, Asif Ali Zardari’s daughter, Aseefa, was presented to her at the presidential palace. Your mother was an inspiration, Ms Rice told the 15-year-old in an aside from telling Pakistan to give no quarter to those responsible for last week’s terror attacks on Mumbai.

Against tremendous odds, President Zardari is trying to keep alive his late wife and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s spirit of inspiration, while burying their chequered reputations. His task is nothing short of rescuing a nuclear-armed state, beset by Islamist militants and economic collapse, from failure.

The smiling political consort-turned-president has surprised many with his purposefulness since he took office in September. His civilian government has negotiated a financial rescue package with the International Monetary Fund to pull Pakistan out of a balance of payments crisis that threatened default on its external debt. The president has pushed to consolidate civilian rule in Pakistan, which for most of its 61-year history has been under military control. One recent move has been to curb the political powers of the notorious military spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

He has also sought reconciliation with India, against which Pakistan has fought three wars in 61 years. He made one of the boldest steps of any Pakistani leader by offering to withdraw Pakistan’s first strike nuclear weapons doctrine and enter an economic union with India to bring peace to south Asia.

Described as an accidental president thrown into the job after his wife’s assassination a year ago, Mr Zardari, 58, is also a sentimental one. He has reason to be. The political dynasty he married into is characterised by lives cut short. The inlaid throne from which he likes to make televised addresses is flanked by two enormous portraits. One is of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan; the other is of Ms Bhutto, the leader of the Pakistan People’s party.

In conversation, he refers repeatedly to his wife; the “love of his life”. As best he can, he has tried to continue where she left off. Three weeks after Ms Bhutto’s death, Mr Zardari picked up her Blackberry and began sending messages to her contact list, seeking support for her cause. A few months later he was president.

Leading a nuclear-armed nation, split between the menace of hardline Islamists, an all-powerful military establishment and a liberal elite, Mr Zardari is riding the proverbial tiger. The dangers are ever present. Shortly after his inauguration, the Marriott hotel in Islamabad was bombed to rubble – a revenge attack for the US bombing militants along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan. Little wonder, then, that the president enjoys a little gallows humour, quipping about how much time his predecessor, General Pervez Musharraf, has to play golf.

As a young man, from a landowning family in Sindh who also ran cinemas, he too enjoyed his leisure – he was then known as a polo-playing playboy. Growing up in Karachi and a regular on the party circuit, he gained respect for his generosity. Talib Rizvi, a close friend and the president’s lawyer, remembers Mr Zardari selling a piece of land to help one of his friends pay for his sister’s wedding. “Asif Zardari has always had a reputation of being so very generous. It is a trait that has stayed with him for all these years,” says Mr Rizvi.

Mr Zardari’s marriage to Ms Bhutto in 1987 was arranged by his parents and her mother. Their needs were practical. Ms Bhutto’s political career required her to be accompanied by a consort. For Mr Zardari, marriage to the country’s attractive, Oxford-educated politician brought him the prize many affluent young Pakistani men of his generation dreamed of. Less than a year after their wedding, Ms Bhutto became the first woman prime minister of an Islamic country, sweeping to power in elections after the death of General Zia ul Haq, the military dictator, in an aircraft crash in 1988.

For Mr Zardari, his wife’s high office was a crash course. He had had little exposure to the trauma suffered by Ms Bhutto in her political life under Gen Zia. The general oversaw the hanging of her father Zulfikar on a questionable charge of ordering the assassination of a political foe.

But Mr Zardari quickly gained notoriety for political dealings. He was dubbed “Mr 10 per cent” in the months that followed her election as prime minister. He was accused of demanding kickbacks on government contracts. After only 20 months, Ms Bhutto’s government was dismissed on charges of corruption, mostly linked to her husband.

Mr Zardari left the prime minister’s house to occupy a prison cell. Corruption trials kept him there from 1990 until 1993. One friend of that period says prison turned “an easy-going man into a hard-nosed, savvy politician?.?.?.?It taught him a valuable lesson about the hardcore side of Pakistani politics”.

His misfortunes were reversed in 1993. The collapse of a government led by Nawaz Sharif forced Ghulam Ishaq Khan, the president, to turn again to Ms Bhutto. Mr Zardari was released from jail and made a minister. “In Pakistan, you don’t go from dirt to sky without a reason,” recalls one of Mr Khan’s advisers. But the PPP victory in the 1993 elections failed to translate into a new beginning. Mr Zardari was again embroiled in corruption allegations. By 1996, his wife’s tainted government was out.

His friends eagerly defend him. “You cannot underestimate the fact that Asif Zardari has never been conclusively found guilty,” says Mr Rizvi. Others fault him for being excessively loyal to his friends to the extent that he would overlook misconduct at the cost of his own reputation.

Today, Mr Zardari faces new challenges. One is to defeat the Islamist militants besieging his country. Another is to keep the Pakistani military out of government. These are big asks for a man who cuts a naïve figure on the world stage. He was jeered at home for a flirtatious meeting with Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, in Washington, in which he called her “gorgeous”.

Many, not least Ms Rice and India’s Manmohan Singh, wish him firm resolve to combat a sophisticated terror threat. But many Indian officials dismiss his prospects, saying he counts for nothing in a military state. “Asif Zardari is a wartime president,” says a friend. “Who would want to stick his neck out and do the job that he is doing right now?”

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

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2008-05-26The Failed States Index 2007
2008-05-27Laptop Jihadi
2008-05-29Defense Issues for the Next Administration
2008-05-17Planned US Israeli Attack on Iran: Will there be a War against Iran?
2008-05-15Commentary: Iran's pawns move
2008-06-11The History of the House of Rothschild
2008-04-05Oil, Geopolitics, and the Coming War with Iran
2008-03-22"Allah Will Not Change the Condition of a People"
2008-03-23Dissecting the Danish Cartoon Controversy
2008-04-24A Dissenter’s Guide to Foreign Policy
2008-04-22The March to War: Israel Prepares for War against Lebanon and Syria
2008-04-29The Pentagon's New Map