Benazir Bhutto's legacy is mixed, but she was the nearest thing to a real leader that Pakistan had
December 27, 2007 8:30 PM
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto was an event as terrible as it was bleakly predictable. She was a brave and charismatic democrat for all her barely hidden flaws, and her death will be perilous not just for Pakistan but for the world. If anyone could have unified her country after decades of military misrule, it was her. No other Pakistani leader can hope to fill her place. Hopes that political chaos would end with elections on January 8 were dim before Ms Bhutto's death. They have all but been extinguished now.
There are two certainties in the immediate aftermath of the suicide bombing that took her life and those of many others at an election rally yesterday. The first is that her decision to return to Pakistan last October after eight years of exile was an act of great personal bravery. It was controversial at the time, because of the amnesty on corruption charges that she had obtained from Pervez Musharraf. This was both selective and legally dubious. But the furore over the amnesty obscured the physical risks she was taking by returning to the land where old enemies were lying in wait. She spoke often of the dangers of assassination. She said she put her life in danger by returning home because she felt her country was in danger. It was a good piece of election rhetoric, but it was also true.
Her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had been executed by General Zia-ul-Haq. Her two brothers Shahnawaz and Mir Murtaza both died in mysterious circumstances. Islamic militants had vowed to kill her, because of her close ties to Washington and the attention she had paid to the madrasas when she was in power. Twice prime minister, and a woman of substantial personal wealth, Ms Bhutto could have opted for a life of luxury and security in exile in London or Bahrain. It is to her credit that she chose not to remain on the cushioned sidelines of exile.
Within hours of her return, Ms Bhutto narrowly escaped injury when a suicide bomber struck her convoy in Karachi, killing 136 people and injuring more than 450. She blamed four of Mr Musharraf's close associates for allowing the attack in Karachi to take place, although she was careful not to point the finger at the president himself. Which brings us to the second certainty: there is no reason to believe that the suicide attack took place without the involvement of elements within Pakistan's security forces.
Ms Bhutto was not campaigning in Quetta or Swat, or other parts of the lawless tribal areas where militants roam. She was in Rawalpindi, a garrison town in the heart of the territory controlled by the Pakistan army. The threat her return represented to Islamic militants was as nothing to the one that it posed to dark elements within the military establishment who had waged a 30-year war against her family. Had Ms Bhutto succeeded in her ambition to drag Pakistan from military dictatorship to civilian rule she would have posed an intolerable threat to the security and personal wealth of some of Pakistan's most corrupt generals. What better way to dispose of her and turn off the light of publicity that she would have shone on their dark and lucrative affairs, than to direct the suicide bombers her way? One eventually would get through, and yesterday he did.
Within hours, President Musharraf addressed the nation, expressing his resolve to not rest until he had uprooted terrorism. This is by now a familiar speech. He made it when he first seized power as chief of the army eight years ago. He had made it when he launched a mini-coup by declaring a state of emergency on November 3. And he made it again last night. Each time he claims that the chaos in society justifies emergency powers, he fails to deliver that stability.
As the news of her assassination triggered angry demonstrations around the country, the claims of a conspiracy also spread their tentacles around the embattled president and his entourage. Ms Bhutto's supporters in the Pakistan People's party will not be bound by the tactical reticence their leader showed when she was alive. Mr Musharraf, on the other hand, will do anything to stay in power. He needs the elections scheduled for January 8 to manufacture his legitimacy as a civilian president. But he knows that no election can take place in these circumstances. The most likely outcome is that he will have to postpone them, but all options are bad ones for him. The assassination also deals a blow to Washington's plans to use Ms Bhutto as cover for the military president turned civilian leader. The nearer Ms Bhutto got to assuming real power as prime minister (and success in the elections would have demanded it), the greater the threat she would have posed to Mr Musharraf. Now even that fig leaf has disappeared and there is no one, least of all the former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, prepared to take her place. Washington is back to square one: how to shore up an ally who is desperately unpopular in his own land.
Ms Bhutto's legacy is mixed. She promised more than she could deliver. Her two terms as Pakistan's first woman prime minister failed to cement civilian rule, although she rightly claimed some success in modernising the madrasas and advancing the cause of women in her country. She left her country with a hefty foreign debt and would be pursued along with her husband around the world for the next eight years on corruption charges. To the end, her resistance to Mr Musharraf's attacks on civil society was equivocal. Her demands for the release from house arrest of Pakistan's former chief justice Iftikhar Chaudry were tempered by the knowledge that if the supreme court were restored to its pre-emergency rule state, the amnesty she had obtained from Mr Musharraf would be up for judicial review.
She boxed and weaved to stay in the running. But for all this, Ms Bhutto was the nearest thing to a real leader that Pakistan had got. Recalling a visit to her father before his execution in 1979, she said that she told him in his death cell that she would carry on his work. Yesterday she paid with her life for that promise, a life that ended, like her father's, in Rawalpindi.
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MeandYou
Comment No. 1014666
December 27 20:48
As I have written in other blogs, Pakistan is a country known for one thing. Terrorism. The exportation, training and financing of it.
Pakistan is a country that belong to the stone age and showing itself to be exactlty that.
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donoevil
Comment No. 1014679
December 27 21:00
GBR
"As I have written in other blogs, Pakistan is a country known for one thing. Terrorism. The exportation, training and financing of it.
Pakistan is a country that belong to the stone age and showing itself to be exactlty that."
As opposed to your country, the US, well known for arming dictators/militants/serial abusers of human rights etc....
On those other threads where you have posted your opinions have been trashed for the bigotted nonsense that they are. Why not stick to some neo-con/xenophobic sites where you will feel more at home?
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geoffreyclarke11
Comment No. 1014688
December 27 21:06
GBR
Revise the British Muslim Agenda.
Events such as these [the killing of PPP Leader, Benazir Bhutto] bring home to Muslims everywhere that such madness can only result in worse relations between Muslims and the West.
Some signs have recently emerged that British Muslims have begun to realise that extremism in religion can only harm one's own co-religionists. I refer particularly to the recognition by prominent people in the Muslim Council of Britain that the teddy bear incident in Sudan was unadulterated, short-sighted intolerance.
Whilst it is more difficult to go back and find the reaction to Salman Rushdie's offence unsupportable, I now see the way clear to complete forgiveness of his mistakes. Muslims should take this direction now because the outrages against liberality that have gone unchecked have only led us further into difficulties with the host population with whom we live.
At base, Islam is a tolerant religion. Yet events conspire continually to portray modern day Muslims as hate-crazed extremists whose lack of emotional control leads to mayhem.
Continuing to stress Islam's pacific intentions does not bear much weight in a secular British environment -- one in which we must live.
Yet, undeniably the Judeo-Christian tradition is no different from Islam in its moral code of forgiveness and compassion for others.
Christianity has its arenas of intolerance too, in exhortations like "Marching as to war", "tooth for a tooth and eye for an eye", and National Anthems encouraging one to "Scatter her enemies", "rebellious Scots to crush" and so on.
Unless Muslims now rally around the cause of uniting against those who take our religion to its outer limits, we will not prosper. We must, to survive, rein in the madness in our midst. Call a halt to the insane focus on literalistic, interpretive representations of the Koran and return to the spirit of Islam, not the letter. The spirit of Islam -- redemption, compassion and a belief in the ability to reform ourelves.
Jaffer Clarke
Deputy Leader
Muslim Parliament of Great Britain
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EdmundIronsides
Comment No. 1014690
December 27 21:07
GBR
I don't think your average Pakistani man in the street would agree with your assessment of Bhutto. She was Oxford educated and said all the right things to go down well in the editorial offices and drawing rooms of the west, but she was a rapacious feudal leader whose reign was remarkable for its corruption even in a country pretty much used to corruption. How she is the acceptable face of Pakistani 'democracy' is beyond me (and I would say a great swathe of Pakistan). Saying that, her marriage of convenience with Musharraf appeared to be the only game in town for the next few years, and now the latter can't count on Bhutto's guarunteed ballot box windfall, its difficult to see how he's going to get by in normal politics.
I reckon he'll be back in an army uniform by Wednesday.
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GiyusandTrolls9
Comment No. 1014693
December 27 21:09
BEL
'It's NOT THE ENERGY POLICY, STUPID'
'This is not about energy' said the cynic, 'and the conflict between the US/UK/Western axis and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation'
''The SCO was founded in June 2001 [(a few months before 911 coincidentally)] by China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Its stated goal was to facilitate "cooperation in political affairs, economy and trade, scientific-technical, cultural, and educational spheres as well as in energy, transportation, tourism, and environment protection fields". Recently, however, the SCO is beginning to look like an energy-financial bloc in Central Asia consciously being developed to serve as a counter-pole to US hegemony.''
(See www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/Geopolitics)
'Pakistan became an observer to the SCO in 2006?' asked the little boy
'Yes' implied the wikipedia entry
'And then the general loyalty of the military figure in general became generally undermined?' said the wise fool,' perhaps and ironically by those who helped propel him to power in the first place?'
'Surely not' said the echo
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maninthemoon
Comment No. 1014717
December 27 21:30
GBR
The Deputy Leader of the muslim parliament tries to cloud the issue when he tries to compare exhortations like "Marching as to war", "tooth for a tooth and eye for an eye", and National Anthems encouraging one to "Scatter her enemies", "rebellious Scots to crush" and so on'. The admonition 'eye for eye and tooth for tooth' was not for the general population, rather for the use of power by the judiciary. The other exhortations are no longer believed in by the general population. They are about events from the past, mere historical references that no one believes in or tries to fulfill. The trouble with many muslims is that they do believe in their old outdated beliefs, and tragically, as we see in many countries, try to fulfill the medieval nonsense that they have been suckered into believing. Most UK residents see France, Germany and Japan as places to visit and enjoy, even though we once waged war with them all. We have moved on. Only when muslims do the same will they join the modern world. Looking at todays events in Pakistan, we are all in for a long, violent wait.
