ISLAMABAD, 5 June 2003 — President Pervez Musharraf’s government yesterday removed two senior officials in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP), where an Islamist-led leadership enforced Shariah law two days ago, officials said.

“The chief secretary and inspector general of NWFP police have been asked to report to Islamabad,” Daniyal Aziz, chairman of the National Reconstruction Bureau, told reporters. “New officers will be taking charge in the province,” said Aziz, who is also a minister in the federal Cabinet.

The reshuffle in the top bureaucracy sets the stage for a showdown between the central government and the province, currently being ruled by an alliance of six hard-line Islamic parties. Aziz described the removal of provincial Chief Secretary Shakeel Durrani and Inspector General of Police Saeed Khan as “completely under the law.”

The changes follow criticism over recent rampaging by youth in the provincial capital Peshawar in a campaign against “obscenity” during which they tore down billboards featuring women and Western products. Musicians and dancers have been driven from the province as police enforced unofficial bans on music and performance and mobs pulled cassette players from buses and trashed music shops.

The announcement came despite a warning by NWFP Chief Minister Akram Durrani that any administrative reshuffle would be a “violation” of the country’s constitution. The move seems to be a “reaction to the NWFP government’s decision to introduce Shariah law” in the province, he told reporters late Tuesday.

Dominated by the six-party Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), the NWFP administration Monday adopted a bill declaring Shariah as the supreme law in the province bordering Afghanistan.

The unanimous passage of the bill marked the “fulfillment of the people’s wishes of the past 56 years,” Durrani said amid thumping of desks and chants of Allahu Akbar (God is Great) by deputies in the provincial legislature.

The Shariah Law 2003 also proposes establishment of a department of vice and virtue, which critics have compared to the Afghan Taleban’s notorious Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Discouragement of Vice.

MMA which shares power with the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) of Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali in southwestern Balochistan, sits in opposition in the federal Parliament where it holds 18 percent of 342 seats.

A key MMA component, Jamiat Ulemae Islam (JUI), led by Maulana Fazlur Rehman was a one-time supporter of the now ousted Taleban. JUI’s Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, who is MMA parliamentary leader, reacted strongly to yesterday’s move.

“The government after pelting stones on us should not expect flowers in return,” he said. “What the federal government is doing in NWFP, its reaction now will be felt in the center.”

The MMA has joined the main opposition Pakistan People’s Party and the PML-N of former Premier Nawaz Sharif in demanding that Musharraf quit as army chief and submit to a standard presidential election.

The demands have brought to standstill the seven-month-old parliament — the first after Musharraf seized power in a military coup in October 1999.

Musharraf, a key ally in the US-led “war on terror”, is facing mounting pressure from hard-line Islamists and other opponents that analysts say threatens his political agenda, but not his presidential position.

Musharraf’s opponents, led by the six-party Muttahida Majles-e-Amal (MMA) religious alliance, also want him to undo constitutional changes that give him sweeping powers to dissolve elected assemblies and the army a dominant role in government.

The MMA has raised the stakes by passing a series of radical steps in the strategic NWFP. This has been an embarrassment for Musharraf, just weeks ahead of a visit to Washington to meet President George W. Bush on June 24, when he is expected to discuss cooperation in the war against Taleban remnants and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Already the standoff with the opposition has almost paralyzed Pakistan’s Parliament and also threatens a smooth presentation of next fiscal year’s budget on Saturday. The budget bill is expected to pass, given the small pro-military National Assembly majority, but the debate is expected to be noisy and uncomfortable for Musharraf and Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali.

“The positions have hardened on both sides,” said political analyst Irshad Ahmed Haqqani. “Now it is a major crisis.”

Haqqani said Musharraf’s position as president was not threatened. But the general’s efforts to portray himself as a democrat rather than a dictator certainly would be, if he was forced to dissolve troublesome elected assemblies, analysts say.

Information Minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed acknowledged there had been no easing of the impasse, but the situation was not so serious as to threaten either the president or cause him to dissolve the National Assembly.

“No, no. Nothing will happen,” he said when asked if Musharraf might move to do away with the Parliament elected last October, the first to sit since the general ousted the last democratically elected government in 1999.

However, opposition parties are girding for such a battle. Farhatullah Babur, spokesman for the Pakistan People’s Party of former prime minister in exile Benazir Bhutto, told Reuters there could be no compromise over Musharraf’s dual roles. “Our position is clear. Uniform and presidency cannot stay together,” he said.

He said democracy and the civil society would have to pay a heavy price if the opposition accepted that a military ruler could change the constitution at will. “Even if assemblies are dissolved, I think it is a lesser evil,” he said.

MMA spokesman Shahid Shamsi said it would not give way. “The whole system has been threatened by the obstinacy of one individual (Musharraf),” he said. “We are ready to negotiate everything, but he has to give a date when he will take off his uniform or leave the presidency.”

The government, clearly rattled by the speed with which the MMA has embarked on Islamization in North West Frontier, has warned of unspecified “administrative measures” to control the situation in the province.

Political commentators have suggested these could involve dissolving the provincial assembly and imposing direct rule. Information Minister Ahmed refused to say what the steps might be, but added: “If things improve, it is fine. Otherwise, something will have to be done.”