The domestic struggle will almost certainly deflect attention from that fight as President Asif Ali Zardari and his archrival, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, clash and as street protests persist, politicians and analysts said.

It could also result in shifting political alliances, including new opportunities for the religious right that would be inimical to Washington’s interests, and even serve to make the Pakistani military restive for power again if the situation continued to worsen, they said.

The crisis was set off by a Supreme Court ruling on Wednesday that bars Sharif and his brother, Shahbaz, from elected office. The decision was widely interpreted in Pakistan as a raw political manoeuvre engineered by Zardari to diminish the power of the two popular opposition figures.

The Obama administration, which this week hosted the Pakistani foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, and the military chief, Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, in Washington, has had little to say about the unfolding political drama.

The US has backed Zardari as President. But his reputation in Washington would likely suffer as a consequence of his moves against the Sharif brothers, said Talat Masood, a retired army general, who frequently meets with US officials when they come to Pakistan.

“He is deflecting the attention of the whole country to something that is so irrelevant,” said Masood. “He is banking on the United States, but America will only support him up to a point.”

The moves against the Sharif brothers are likely to have upset the army, even though Nawaz Sharif was ousted as Prime Minister by an army coup. The army “must be boiling inside”, Masood said. “How can they tolerate this state of affairs?”

The bulk of army soldiers come from Punjab, are nationalistic in their outlook, and have a natural inclination toward Sharif’s party, the PML(N), he said.

Kayani has vowed to keep the army out of politics, and was serious about his pledge, Pakistani officials said. But there could be a point where political instability becomes so great that the army would feel to compelled to step in, they said.