Pakistan’s Supreme Court forced the removal of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from office late last month, based on allegations of corruption that involved him, two of his sons and a daughter, Maryam. Sharif is accused of trying to conceal assets, some of them offshore, some chronicled in last year’s Panama Papers revelations.
Pakistan’s Supreme Court forced the removal of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from office late last month, based on allegations of corruption that involved him, two of his sons and a daughter, Maryam. Sharif is accused of trying to conceal assets, some of them offshore, some chronicled in last year’s Panama Papers revelations.
Sharif’s removal marks the third time he has been ousted as prime minister since first assuming the position in 1990. It comes in the context of the complex Afghanistan-India-Pakistan issue that the Trump administration is wrestling with. Second, it raises again the internal Pakistani political drama carried out since independence between Pakistan’s civil and military authorities.
Even though the military did not cut short Sharif’s term as prime minister this time, it is nonetheless considered that the Supreme Court moved against him for corruption with a green light from the country’s strong military, which has never trusted him.
The Pakistan military’s beef with Sharif this time and in the past is his continuing efforts to improve relations with India. The Pakistan military opposes this approach because it uses the conflict with India, over Kashmir and the religious differences between predominantly Muslim Pakistan and mainly Hindu India, to maintain its grip on the lion’s share of Pakistan’s aid and revenues.
America’s principal problem with Pakistan, under Sharif and in general, under civil and military political direction, has been its insufficient zeal in preventing Pakistan-based Taliban and Haqqani network involvement in Afghanistan. Since 2001, the United States has been trying to put into place a stable enough Afghan government to sustain itself in the face of Taliban and other Islamic extremist forces’ efforts.
As for Pakistan, with a population of nearly 200 million and armed with nuclear weapons, it will now go through a period of some political uncertainty until elections are held in mid-2018. Sharif’s party, which holds a majority in the lower house of parliament, has named a temporary prime minister, petroleum minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, while it prepares Sharif’s brother, Shehbaz Sharif, currently chief minister of Pakistan’s most important state, Punjab, to take his brother’s place as prime minister.
In the meantime, the ousted prime minister will continue to call the shots through his political party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, unless the Pakistan military carries out another coup d’etat.
The Pakistan political opposition, led by ex-cricket star Imran Khan, who is notably and openly anti-American, is now in an improved position with the formal fall of Sharif. It will be busily preparing for next year’s elections.
The United States will be obliged to continue to try to develop a winning policy in Afghanistan in the face of widening Taliban gains, with ambivalent positions on Pakistan’s part that are unlikely to be clarified until at least the middle of next year.
Government in Pakistan has to be called a mess at the moment, even though the Supreme Court’s move to force out a corrupt prime minister and his family does merit praise.
— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette