ISLAMABAD, Pakistan  These days, politics here look more and more like a movie Pakistanis have seen before.

Anti-Americanism is peaking. Enemies of the state lurk around every corner, if the nationalist media is to be believed. President Asif Ali Zardari could hardly be more unpopular. Political insiders make a sport of handicapping how long it will be before he falls.

It is a familiar plot line. The question on Pakistani minds now is whether the movie will end differently this time. It is an increasingly urgent concern in a country where no elected civilian government  undone by its own vices and undercut by a powerful military and intelligence establishment  has ever survived a full term.

The last time Pakistan was in this situation was in the early 1990s, when the United States was fighting a war in the Persian Gulf and Nawaz Sharif, then the prime minister, and Benazir Bhutto, the opposition leader, were accused of corruption and traitorous sellouts to Pakistan’s archenemy, India.