The world's only nuclear-armed Islamic state has a new president. Asif Ali Zardari, 53, the widower of Benazir Bhutto, was chosen by Pakistan's electoral college on Saturday to succeed Pervez Musharraf, who was forced to resign August 19.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.
Photo: AP [file]

Zardari spent more than a decade, on and off, in prison on charges of murder, influence-peddling and money laundering. His moniker is "Mr. 10 Percent" - though others insist it is 30% - for the kickbacks he reportedly demanded from those wanting to do business with his wife's government.

In a country where fully two-thirds of the population survives on $2 a day, Zardari's personal fortune is estimated variously at $30 million to $1 billion. In a 2006 case involving how he came to own a 355-acre property in the English countryside, his own psychiatrists attested to the fact that was demented and thus could not participate in his own defense.

Zardari is an unlikely figure to stabilize the country or give average Pakistanis a reason not to side with its fanatics.

Under Musharraf, the economy expanded by 5.8 percent. With him gone, inflation is up, the stock markets and foreign exchange reserves are down and the country is deemed among the riskiest in the world for investors.

When treasury officials recently challenged pressure from Zardari to bust the budget so he could subsidize Punjabi farmers, whose support he courts, he told them: Print more money.

WHAT HAPPENS in Pakistan is of more than passing interest to Israelis given that Islamabad may have 150 nuclear warheads and has a history of nuclear proliferation to pariah states, including Iran. So our security establishment is monitoring Pakistani events from every angle.

The integrity of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is, in fact, the world's number one concern. An 18-member National Command Authority, led by Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, reportedly has control over Pakistan's nuclear bombs. Zardari now sits, at least nominally, as chair of that authority.

Pakistan is a violently fragmented polity. Suicide bombings - like the one in its northwest province that claimed 33 lives Saturday - occur with numbing frequency. The toll so far this year is 2,000 lives lost.

As Dexter Filkins explained in Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Pakistan has long been playing a double game - supporting both the war on terror and the terrorists. Islamabad wanted to influence events in Afghanistan by championing the Taliban. In the process, it created an Islamist Frankenstein: Indigenous Taliban grew strong enough to challenge the central government's authority.

The penny may finally have dropped for the country's shadowy Inter-Services Intelligence Agency and the military, which explains why they've lately been cracking down on the fundamentalists. At the same time, because they may not have the capacity to defeat the monster they created, the authorities have been quick to reconstitute the old arrangement: So long as the fundamentalists focus their violence outside Pakistan's border, it's "Live and let live."

American security officials have become increasingly convinced that despite the $10 billion Washington has transferred to Islamabad since September 11, 2001, Pakistan is as much part of the problem as it is the solution. Exasperated by Pakistani duplicity, US forces have begun operating more openly within the borders of Pakistan - drawing the ire of Pakistani masses and officials.

SEVERAL lessons may be drawn from the Pakistan experience: