[Political wrangling
over Pakistan’s relationship with America formed part of the general criticism
of Mr. Zardari, the departing president, who otherwise spent much of his
five-year term in rolling battles with judicial and military leaders, all the
while struggling to shake off longstanding corruption accusations.]
By Declan Walsh
 |
Reuters
The Taliban attacked a jail in Dera Ismail Khan, where the police and soldiers gathered Tuesday. |
LONDON — The troubling gap
between politics and governance in Pakistan came into stark relief on Tuesday,
when lawmakers elected the country’s 12th president just hours after Taliban
militants shot their way into a major jail, freeing about 250 prisoners.
As predicted, Mamnoon
Hussain, a little-known textiles magnate from Karachi and a loyalist of Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif, won the presidential vote in the national and provincial
legislatures. He will take over from President Asif Ali Zardari, a contentious
figure who is due to step down on Sept. 8.
The election was another
important democratic step in a country that has seen four military coups since
the 1950s, the most recent in 1999. It confirmed Mr. Sharif, whose party
emerged victorious from May’s general election, as the most powerful civilian leader.
But away from the
democratic process lay sobering reminders that Taliban insurgents, not
power-hungry generals, now present the most pressing challenge to state
authority in Pakistan.
In the northwest,
heavily armed militants mounted an audacious jailbreak just before midnight on
Monday at a century-old prison at Dera Ismail Khan. The site is just outside
the tribal belt, where the majority of C.I.A. drone strikes have taken place.
Up to 150 fighters,
armed with guns and grenade launchers, blew holes in the perimeter wall, the
police said. Some fighters were disguised as policemen, while others wore
suicide-bomb vests.
As they stormed the
building, breaking open cells, the attackers used a megaphone to call out names
of specific prisoners and cried, “God is great” and “Long live the Taliban,”
security officials said.
The provincial
authorities said the escaped prisoners included 25 militants with the Taliban
and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a sectarian militant group that has killed hundreds of
minority Shiites this year.
At least 14 people died
in the assault, including 6 Shiite prisoners, several of whom were beheaded.
The police said a squad of foreign militants, some from Uzbekistan, had helped
secure a road to ensure that the militants could escape back to South
Waziristan in the tribal belt.
The assault followed a
week of countrywide bloodshed that underscored the state’s crumbling ability to
fight militant violence. Baluch nationalists attacked a coast guard post on the
Arabian Sea in Baluchistan Province, killing seven people.
In Sukkar, in
neighboring Sindh Province, Taliban militants attacked a regional office of the
Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency, resulting in at least nine deaths. A
double suicide bombing in the tribal belt, targeting Shiites, killed 57 people
and wounded more than 150.
And in Baluchistan on
Tuesday, militants shot a police officer who had been guarding health workers
administering polio vaccination drips to children in Pishin, a Taliban refuge
near the Afghan border.
Analysts said the spate
of violence highlighted the failure of the country’s civilian and military
leaders to deliver on promises of a coordinated counterterrorism strategy.
“Every day it seems the
state is losing more and more control,” said Ahmed Rashid, an analyst and
author of several books on the Taliban. “The attacks are occurring across the
country, and becoming more pernicious. The militants can see that the
government doesn’t have a national security plan.”
Mr. Rashid said there
seemed to be “a lot of dithering and debate” between the army, led by Gen. Ashfaq
Parvez Kayani, and the government, led by Mr. Sharif. “And we still don’t have
a plan,” he said.
Some blame for the
Taliban jailbreak fell on the former cricketer Imran Khan, whose party has led
Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, where Dera Ismail Khan is, since the election in
May.
Mr. Khan favors talking
to the Taliban instead of fighting them, and has frequently attributed the
chaos in the region to the presence of American troops in Afghanistan and
C.I.A. drone strikes in the tribal belt.
His provincial government
faced fresh criticism on Tuesday after it emerged that the intelligence
services had warned of the jailbreak just three days earlier. In a letter
marked “secret,” which The New York Times has seen, intelligence officials
warned that militants led by Umer Khitab had obtained a map of the jail and
were preparing an assault similar to a jailbreak in Bannu in April 2012.
Speaking outside
Parliament on Tuesday, Mr. Khan blamed administrative failures of officials of
the previous government for the lapses, saying they “had allowed themselves to
be part of America’s war.”
Political wrangling over
Pakistan’s relationship with America formed part of the general criticism of
Mr. Zardari, the departing president, who otherwise spent much of his five-year
term in rolling battles with judicial and military leaders, all the while
struggling to shake off longstanding corruption accusations.
Mr. Zardari’s political
authority stemmed largely from his status as the widower of Benazir Bhutto, the
former prime minister, who was assassinated in 2007. He confounded his many
critics, who regularly predicted his political demise, through adroit
maneuvering. He survived intense pressure from the Supreme Court, led by Chief
Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.
And he initiated
constitutional changes that drained the presidency of power in a bid to make it
more difficult for the military to meddle directly in politics.
If Mr. Zardari owed much
of his power to his high-profile marriage, Mr. Hussain’s main qualification
seems to be his low profile.
Born in India in 1940,
Mr. Hussain served briefly as the governor of Sindh Province in 1999, when Gen.
Pervez Musharraf toppled Mr. Sharif’s previous government in a bloodless coup.
Mr. Hussain remained a steadfast ally of Mr. Sharif in those days, defying
military pressure and intimidation.
But his ventures into
electoral politics were less successful; he failed to win a parliamentary seat
in 2002 and since then had concentrated largely on his textile business.
Political analysts say
the presidency may be his reward for his unflinching loyalty to the Sharif
family. Before his victory on Tuesday, he promised to use the office to restore
peace in Karachi, his native city, which is splintered by ethnic political
violence.
Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar,
Pakistan, and Salman Masood from Islamabad, Pakistan.
