PAKISTAN: BENAZIR BHUTTO - THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE

Inter Press Service

by Beena Sarwar (27 December 2007)

LAHORE (Dec 27): Benazir Bhutto has paid the
heaviest price possible for her insistence on
engaging in participatory, democratic politics in
Pakistan. Bhutto was killed on Thursday evening
in what was apparently a suicide bombing
following gunshots that injured her as she was
leaving a pre-election rally she had just
addressed in the garrison town of Rawalpindi.

Twice-elected former prime minister Benazir
Bhutto, the 54-year old mother of three children,
died in hospital in Rawalpindi at about 6.15 pm –
barely an hour after an unidentified man fired
shots at her as she left the rally venue, a
fenced off park, before blowing himself up. Some
twenty others were killed and dozens more injured.

"She feared something like this would happen, but
she was so brave," said PPP spokesperson
Farhatullah Babar, who was with Benazir Bhutto at
the rally minutes before the tragedy struck,
speaking to IPS from Rawalpindi shortly before
Bhutto’s body was transferred to her hometown
Larkana on a C-130 plane. "She waved at the
people, and then there was firing and the blast.“”I don’t think people realize this, but she was
one of the last hopes we had in Pakistan for a
peaceful transition to democracy," said
Karachi-based economist Haris Gazdar, who
supported Bhutto’s much-criticised ’deal’ with
the military government that allowed her to
return to the country and participate in politics.

President and Chief of Army Staff General Pervez
Musharraf’s National Reconciliation Ordinance
(NRO) promulgated on Oct. 5, a day before the
presidential elections that he was a nominee for
despite being in military uniform, gave Bhutto
immunity against corruption charges brought
against her after she was ousted from power in
1996 (none of these charges were proved in
court). In return, her Pakistan People’s Party
(PPP) lent the election legitimacy by abstaining
from the vote – the rest of the opposition
boycotted the proceedings.

Explaining his support for Bhutto, Gazdar added,
"The Americans think we are a dangerous state,
and they want to come and sort things out here.
This was a chance to do this peacefully… Make no
mistake about it, the state is responsible for
her death. They may think that by removing the
vehicle for a peaceful change, they can stop the
change. But that will not happen. Now that the
peaceful mediator has been killed, they
(Americans) will use armed force.“”I was nine when ZAB was killed by a General. Now
my son is nine and another general has killed his
daughter. I grew up with Benazir. It’s a
personal loss. I want to cry forever,"
text-messaged a lawyer in Lahore. The military
regime of General Ziaul Haq overthrew and later
executed the democratically elected prime
minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (ZAB), Benazir’s
father, in 1979.

News of the tragic incident ignited violence all
over the country, particularly in Sindh, Bhutto’s
home province. "They’ve shut down all the shops,
and there is firing all around," said Abdul
Jabbar who works as a driver in the Sindh capital
and Pakistan’s largest city and business center
Karachi. “People are just overcome with grief.”

By 9 pm, violence had claimed at least five lives
in Karachi. Protestors in Sindh evacuated two
trains and set them on fire. Angry mobs attacked
police stations and other symbols of state
authority. Commuters were reported to be
stranded in towns and cities all over the
province.

Benazir Bhutto had chosen to return to Pakistan
after almost nine years of exile, leaving a
comfortable life of exile in London and Dubai,
defying warnings by Musharraf to delay her
arrival due to the danger of suicide attacks.

“This is why I am here,” she said, radiant atop
her armoured truck soon after her arrival from
Dubai at Karachi on Oct 18. Waving to the sea of
people that surrounded her truck as far as the
eye could see, she added as thousands of arms
rose in response, "These people are the reason I
am here."

Hours later, her slow-moving convoy bogged down
by thousands of exuberant supporters on foot had
only covered a few kilometers when two bombs
struck soon after midnight. Initially thought to
be a suicide attack, the blasts claimed over 130
lives and 500 injuries.

Addressing a press conference the following day,
a defiant Bhutto implied the involvement of
Pakistan’s intelligence agencies in the attacks
by mentioning three anonymous men whom she said
she had named in a letter of Oct 16 to Musharraf.
"I said that if something happens to me, I will
hold them responsible rather than militant groups
like the Taliban, Al Qaeda or the Pakistani
Taliban."

The PPP also demanded the removal of the
Intelligence Bureau chief, Ijaz Shah, hinting at
Pakistani intelligence agencies’ linkage with
militancy. Bhutto’s later claim that the Oct 18
blasts were remote-controlled further implied the
involvement of forces other than the ’religious
militants’ who are traditionally held responsible
for such acts.

Despite the threats, Bhutto hit the campaign
trail after the Election Commission announced on
Nov 20 that polls would be held on January 8,
2008. With elections barely two weeks away,
Bhutto was engaged in a series of public rallies
around the country. Also on the campaign trail
was her major political rival, another
twice-elected former prime minster who like
Bhutto had recently returned from several years
of exile, Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim
League-Nawaz (PML-N). Despite their political
rivalry, the two leaders had developed what
Sharif termed as a “rapport” over the last couple
of years. In May 2006, the two exiled leaders in
London signed a Charter of Democracy aimed at
pushing the military out of Pakistani politics.

Speaking to the media from the hospital in
Rawalpindi where he arrived soon after hearing of
the incident, Bhutto’s death, Sharif termed it as
“very tragic”. He said that the tragedy reflected
a “lapse in security” and said that the
government should have taken greater measures to
protect her.

As they embarked on their election campaigns, the
two leaders drew huge crowds marked by a passion
that the ’kings’ party’, the Pakistan Muslim
League-Quaid (PML-Q) was unable to muster. The
campaigning was also marked by violence. Several
political workers, mostly PPP, died in various
incidents. On Dec 20, a suicide bomb in a mosque
in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) killed
over 20 people and injured 200 in an attack
apparently aimed at former PPP stalwart and
ex-interior minister Aftab Sherpao. On Dec 27,
barely three hours before the blast that killed
Bhutto, gunfire killed four PML-N supporters in a
welcome rally for Nawaz Sharif outside the
capital city Islamabad.

Bhutto’s decision to contest elections "under
protest" went against the move to boycott the
polls, initiated by ’civil society’-lawyers,
students, human rights activists, non-government
organisations and the smaller political parties –
who argued that participating in the elections
would only legitimize Musharraf’s role in
Pakistani politics. Bhutto maintained that a
boycott would not solve anything. Her stand
forced Sharif to reconsider his initial position
and announce that his party would contest rather
than boycotting the polls.

The participation of these political forces posed
a major challenge to the PML-Q which ruled the
roost along with Musharraf for five years since
the 2002 general elections – that Bhutto and
Sharif had both been barred from contesting.
Democratic electoral politics were also expected
to push back the ’jihadists’, the right-wing
religious parties who had joined hands as the
Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) and made
significant electoral inroads during the 2002
elections. MMA was also weakened by internal
divisions as some of its components were in the
boycott camp while others were contesting
elections.

Bhutto’s assassination "sends a very frightening
signal to those who aim to pursue liberal
politics in Pakistan," commented Ali Dayan Hasan,
Pakistan-based South Asia Researcher for Human
Rights Watch. "This will leave a huge vacuum at
the heard of Pakistani politics. It is the most
significant political event to happen in Pakistan
since the death of General Zia." Gen. Zia’s death
in 1988 had paved the way for fresh elections
that brought Benazir Bhutto into power as the
world’s first Muslim woman prime minister.
Condoling with Bhutto’s family and other affected
people in a brief, televised address, President
Musharraf announced a three-day mourning period
during which the Pakistani flag will be flown at
half-mast.

"It is important now for Asif Ali Zardari
(Bhutto’s husband) to call for peace, and to give
Benazir Bhutto a decent burial that she
deserves," said Nusrat Javeed, the banned head of
current affairs for Aaj Television who appeared
in a special transmission along with another
banned host, Talat Hussain. "We need to sit and
think, and transform the grief and the anger into
strength." (ends)

---

 BEYOND BELIEF

The Guardian

December 27, 2007

In exile, in power, in opposition, Benazir Bhutto
was ever present. It is hard to imagine Pakistani
politics without her

by Kamila Shamsie

A few hours ago I was talking to my sister in
Karachi, asking her if she knew whether or not my
name was on the electoral role. It’s been one of
the features of my nomadic life - and of
Pakistan’s sporadic forays into elections - that
I’ve never been in Pakistan during elections
since I was too young to vote. That there was no
one running who I had any interest in voting for
– my most recent notion was to write in
“Chewbacca” - and that rumour had it that massive
pre-poll rigging was under way didn’t entirely
destroy my desire to be present and participating
on polling day itself.

I ended the phone call - without any conclusive
news about my presence on the electoral role -
and logged on to Geo TV’s live streaming
bulletins. While the news anchors were talking
about rising prices of commodities the banner
running across the bottom of the screen announced
a suicide attacks at Benazir Bhutto’s rally in
Rawalpindi.

I thought it was a horrific comment on the
frequency of such attacks in Pakistan that it
wasn’t reason to cut to live reporting. And
obviously, I recall thinking, Benazir is fine.
Always the massive security around the leadership
– and the poor supporters get the brunt of the
violence. For the space of a few seconds I
stopped to imagine an alternative scenario, but
then I brushed the thought away.

Impossible: despite the October 18 attack on her
homecoming rally, despite knowing how may people
must want her dead, it was still impossible to
imagine Benazir as anything other than an
insistent presence in the world of Pakistani
politics. In exile, in power, in opposition - but
always present, always a factor. It had been that
way since Zia-ul-Haq took power in 1977, when I
was four years old. I’ve never known a Pakistan
in which hers wasn’t a name to conjure with.

A few minutes later Geo was reporting that
Benazir had left the rally just prior to the
explosion. Of course, I thought, and logged off.

And so when a Pakistani friend called from a
small village in Devon to say “Benazir’s dead” my
first reaction was to simply disbelieve her.

She must have heard there was a suicide blast at
the rally and incorrectly surmised Benazir had
been caught up in it. But no, she insisted and
insisted again - and then my phone’s display
showed another call coming through from a friend
in Karachi, and I knew.

A little later a friend from Calcutta texted his
horror at the news, but added, "It’s the least
surprising assassination since Malcolm X."

If that’s so, why is it that every one of my
compatriots I speak to can find little to say
beyond, “I can’t believe it.”

What happens next? Only two things are certain:
whatever happens, Benazir will continue to be an
insistent presence in Pakistan’s politics for
quite a while; and it is a tremendously bleak day
for Pakistan.

---

 BHUTTO’S DEATH ROCKS PAKISTAN

The Christian Science Monitor - December 28, 2007 edition

The assassination of the former prime minister
raises questions about the Musharraf government’s
security measures.

by Shahan Mufti and Mark Sappenfield

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN; AND NEW DELHI - The assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto by a suicide bomber Thursday threatens to bring to a halt Pakistan’s stuttering steps toward democracy.

It is the starkest evidence yet that the forces aligned against law and order, once contained to the remote border region with Afghanistan, are now spilling into the heart of Pakistan, disrupting the country’s ability to function.

The death of Ms. Bhutto, one of Pakistan’s most beloved leaders and head of its largest political party, is an emotional event for many. Rioting broke out in several cities late Thursday night. The unrest could lead to the declaration of martial law, experts say, and the postponement of parliamentary elections scheduled for Jan. 8, 2008.

It is the sort of instability that Western nations had sought to avoid by persuading President Pervez Musharraf to allow Bhutto back into the country – hoping her vows to tackle terrorism would help in the fight against Taliban militants and put Pakistan on a more moderate path. Now, they appear to have made her a target. Her death marks a moment of decision for Pakistan’s leaders and lays bare the terrorists’ capabilities.

“Her death in such a manner – when the government had taken responsibility for her security – tells a lot about the situation in Pakistan,” says Hassan Abbas, a Pakistan expert at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. “What is evident is a complete lack of command and control.”

It brings a close to a year drawn in persistent, violent turmoil. Details of Bhutto’s death – the Muslim world’s first female prime minister – were not yet confirmed at press time, but reports suggest she was shot before a suicide bomber blew himself up. The attack took place minutes after she had finished her address at a large rally in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, near the capital, Islamabad.

The killing of Bhutto leaves a question mark over whether elections can go forward. A political field without her will profoundly affect the larger political dynamic that Mr. Musharraf has been carefully crafting to remain in power. But more immediately, the death of one of Pakistan’s most prominent political leaders has shaken the country. “The country has been pushed into another dark period of uncertainty,” says Rasul Baksh Rais, a political scientist at the Lahore University of Management Sciences.

Riots erupted in Rawalpindi soon after the news of her death was confirmed. The city has been the site of several suicide bombings in past months, though most have targeted security forces. Private television channels also reported riots in major towns across the country, especially in Sindh, Bhutto’s home province.

The magnitude of Bhutto’s death obscured another act of political violence Thursday. Four supporters of Bhutto’s opposition, the Pakistan Muslim League–Nawaz (PML-N), were shot dead at a political rally in Islamabad.

“I think the elections will be canceled,” says Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani security analyst and author of “Taliban.” “We can’t have elections when the country is in this state of violence. We may see the imposition ... of extraordinary measures like martial law or a state of emergency.”

In an interview with the BBC, PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif also hinted that elections could be postponed: “None of us is inclined to think about the election.”

It is unclear who was responsible for the attack, but initial anger turned against Musharraf’s government.

Supporters outside the hospital where Bhutto’s body was taken chanted “dog, Musharraf, dog,” the Associated Press reported.

It is an instinctive reaction born of generations of mutual mistrust between Bhutto and the Army, which Musharraf led until last month. Bhutto’s father, also a prime minister, was hanged after being deposed by one of Pakistan’s previous military rulers, Zia ul-Haq.

Certainly, the threat was not unforeseen. When Bhutto returned from exile in October in a triumphant procession through Karachi, she narrowly escaped a suicide bombing that left 150 dead. Moreover, Baitullah Mesud, a Taliban commander in Waziristan, had several times openly threatened her life.

The circumstances of Bhutto’s death, and the failure of security, will be a subject of immense scrutiny. “There are going to be very big questions asked,” says Najmuddin Shaikh, who served as foreign minister during one of Bhutto’s terms as prime minister.

Bhutto was the only major political figure whose campaign included a strong stance against extremism. “Benazir Bhutto may have been killed by terrorists, but the terrorists must not be allowed to kill democracy in Pakistan,” British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Thursday. But Dr. Abbas at Harvard predicts “fewer people will challenge extremism openly.”

Bhutto’s life and career followed a trail of tragedy in her political family comparable to that of the Kennedys, or Gandhis of India. Bhutto died just a few miles from where her father was hanged. One brother died from poisoning, and another was killed in a police shootout. Her two tenures as prime minister (1988 and 1993), neither of which she could complete, were marred by charges of corruption and fraud. She went into exile after Musharraf came into power in 1999 before returning in October.

Bhutto declared herself lifetime chairman of the party she inherited from her father. Observers are unsure who might take over the reins of the party now.

“It may take months for the party to decide their new leader,” says Hassan Aksari Rizvi, an independent political scientist in Lahore. “I don’t see how they can contest an election scheduled in a few days without a coherent leadership.”

David Montero contributed from Lahore, Pakistan.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1228/p01s01-wosc.html

---

 AFTER BENAZIR

Indian Express

December 28, 2007

Whoever did this wants two things: create unrest
through violence; and get the elections postponed
sine die.

by Ejaz Haider

Benazir Bhutto is dead, assassinated. A grave
tragedy, this could likely have even graver
consequences. She was walking back to her vehicle
after addressing a rally at Rawalpindi’s Liaquat
Bagh on December 27 when, according to reports, a
man approached her, started shooting and then
blew himself up. The bullet that entered her neck
proved fatal.

That Bhutto was attacked is not surprising; it
wasn’t the first time. What is surprising is that
someone could so easily get close to her and had
enough time to start shooting before activating
his suicide belt.

Who could have done it? The answer to this
obvious question, unfortunately, is not so
obvious. If motive is the benchmark, culprits can
range from the rightwing elements - Al-Qaeda and
its affiliate groups had repeatedly threatened to
take her out - to her political rivals, to
elements within the establishment and
intelligence agencies. Anyone, singly or in
tandem, could be behind this murderous act.

Bhutto had, after the gruesome Karachi bombings,
pointed the finger at what she called the "Zia
remnants"; later, however, she had decided not to
press with that line. But the manner in which
Pakistan’s politics is configured, the PPP rank
and file will entertain no other thought except
that the dark deed was committed by Bhutto’s
rivals - and rivals range from the army (for whom
Bhutto was a bete noire) to intelligence
agencies, to right-of-centre political parties,
to the extremist groups on the loose.

PPP cadres are already in a foul mood and in the
coming days the possibility of increasing
violence in the party’s strongholds cannot be
discounted. The consequences of Bhutto’s
assassination have to be seen on the basis of the
vertical fault-line that has historically run
through Pakistan’s politics and where the army
has overtly and covertly tried to do everything
possible to keep the PPP on the margins since its
very inception (the former director-general of
Inter-Services Intelligence, Lt Gen Hamid Gul,
has publicly confessed that he put together the
Islami Jamhoori Ittehad in 1988 to thwart the
PPP).

Even now, while President Pervez Musharraf began
to make overtures to the PPP, partly because he
realised that the next phase of politics would
require a much stronger PPP presence and partly
because the Americans pushed him in that
direction, Musharraf’s allies were extremely
unhappy. It doesn’t bear repeating that Musharraf
presides over a system where many functionaries
of the government are not particularly enamoured
either of his policy of alliance with the US or
his idea of cultural liberalism and moderation.

An alliance between Musharraf and Bhutto, even
one based on self-interest, was not in the
interest of such players. That her rally in
Karachi was targeted within hours of her landing
on Pakistan’s soil shows that these elements
meant business. It also proved that they
considered her a grave threat and would strike
again.

Turmoil suits extremist groups; the absence of
Bhutto suits some political groups as well as
some elements within the establishment. But
unlike the extremist groups, those who are in
this game to seek power must realise that some
basic rules of the game are important all round -
for themselves as well as the rivals. Without
règle du jeu, the country can never acquire the
stability which makes politics the only
profitable game in town.

Where does Pakistan go from here?

That’s the question now and its answer will
depend on Musharraf. He will have to make a
decision and a smart one. And the only sensible
decision is to not postpone the elections.
Whoever did this wants two things: create unrest
through violence; and get the elections postponed
sine die. The postponement of elections will only
increase the possibility of violence by
signalling to an already bereaved PPP rank and
file that the dastardly act of killing Bhutto was
aimed at eliminating a political threat and
keeping the country away from democracy.

In fact, the only way Musharraf can show his
sincerity and even get himself, the army and
perhaps his political allies absolved of the
accusations that will now fly thick and fast,
such being the nature of Byzantine politics, is
to go ahead with the elections.

The talk about imposing another emergency will be
akin to playing with fire. Investigations into
this tragedy need sincerity, not a blanket
imposition of drastic measures curtailing basic
rights, not least because emergency in and of
itself can have no impact on the efficacy of
investigations intended to unearth the culprits
who did this. Indeed, imposition of emergency and
postponement of elections will serve to do just
the opposite: convince the PPP cadres as also the
majority of Pakistanis that Bhutto was targeted
only so the ancien regime could carry on merrily.

This is a death whose shadow will linger over
Pakistani politics for many years to come.
There’s also a lesson here for those who have
ruled Pakistan for so long and defied the logic
of establishing a succession principle. If
Pakistan were a stable state, this death would
still be mourned but no one would consider even a
tragedy as big as this to be the undoing of the
state itself.

Bhutto was fighting for just such stability; the
only way to honour her and her sacrifice is for
the country to return to democracy and to the
creation of a legal-normative framework. And the
first step to that is free and fair elections.

President Musharraf has announced a three-day
mourning and appealed to Pakistanis to stay calm.
By not announcing emergency measures, he seems to
be signalling that elections will go ahead as
planned.

---

 ’HER DEATH HAS LEFT A VACUUM IN PAK POLITICS WHICH WILL BE IMPOSSIBLE TO FILL’

Indian Express

December 28, 2007

by Murtaza Razvi

What utter madness. And what a disgrace for Pakistan. The country will not be the same anymore without Benazir Bhutto. With her death, gone are the hopes of millions of her supporters spread across the length and breath of the country; those whose eyes shone in Karachi on October 18 when she returned.

Two of Sindh’s most brilliant and promising leaders have now been killed in Punjab. This does not augur well for Sindh-Punjab relations, or inter-provincial relations for that matter, which at the best of times have been far from smooth. This, in a country managed by its generals even if a facade of people’s representation is allowed to come to the fore.

Rawalpindi, the headquarters of the Pakistan Army, has so far claimed the lives of three of the country’s prime ministers. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged here in 1977; Liaquat Ali Khan, like Benazir, was assassinated in 1951 after being shot at close range at the same venue: the old Company Bagh, later rechristened as Liaquat Bagh.

Ever since her return to Pakistan, Bhutto had complained of not being provided adequate security. Her party spokesperson, Shery Rehman, time and again accused the government of soft-peddling on the issue and making light of the threat Bhutto believed she faced from Islamist militants or even intelligence agencies. It is no secret that the latter very much have a life of their own, one that does not always reflect stated government policy.

In the case of Bhutto’s security, the state reluctantly provided jamming devices to the police escorting her motor trips out of her fortressed home in Karachi. According to Rehman, the jamming device never worked, and the October 18 attempt on Bhutto’s life in Karachi was cited as a potent example.
Bhutto’s assassination now puts a big question mark on the January 8 elections. Her party has been virtually left adrift, with no consensus party head under whose banner the second and third-tier PPP leadership can stay united — not that Bhutto allowed such a cadre to emerge while she was in exile. A clear split within Pakistan’s most popular party is on the cards. The PPP is likely to dig its roots deeper in Bhutto’s home province of Sindh while dumping its leaders in Punjab. With Bhutto gone, the Punjab PPP belongs as much in the past as the party’s founding fathers, who founded the party in Lahore under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s leadership, back in tumultuous 1967.

Will Musharraf be able to control the situation that will now ensue in the aftermath of Bhutto’s assassination? Not very likely. Rural Sindh’s grief and anger will be well near impossible to contain. Any misadventure there on the part of the military can have dire repercussions.

Karachi, Sindh’s capital and the country’s economic hub, is perhaps at the highest risk of being dragged into violence, given the history of lawlessness in a city which on the whole had little love lost for Bhutto.

The vacuum created in Pakistan’s politics will be impossible to fill, for unlike after her father’s assassination, there is no heir apparent to the Bhuttos’ political legacy. Her children are too young to play any political role any time soon. Other factions of the PPP led by breakaway leaders, including Benazir’s slain bother Murtaza’s Syrian-born widow, are not a patch on her popularity. The party’s one-time stalwart in the Frontier province, Aftab Sherpao, who also has been targeted by Islamist militants twice in the last seven months, is closer to Musharraf and the army than to the old, die-hard Bhutto fans. Sherpao was the interior minister in the last government.

— The writer is a Karachi-based editor with Dawn

http://www.indianexpress.com/story/255100.html

---

 MURDEROUS BLOW TO PAKISTAN’S STABILITY

Financial Times

Published: December 27 2007 19:14 | Last updated: December 27 2007 19:14

The assassination on Thursday of Benazir Bhutto,
the twice former prime minister of Pakistan who
was staging a formidable comeback from exile
ahead of elections next month, is a disaster for
a country that was already flirting with state
failure.

That is not because she was credible in the role
she scripted for herself as Pakistan’s saviour
and the spearhead of a democratic restoration.
Her preference had been to try to cut a deal with
General Pervez Musharraf to join forces in a
manipulated transition from his military rule to
a regime that left the general as president and
his allies in command of the army - with an
amnesty for Ms Bhutto from the corruption charges
that have clouded her career.

But her violent death leaves a hole in national
politics and adds a vicious extra dimension of
disintegration to a country that is already
falling apart after decades of civilian and
military misrule.

The regime of Gen Musharraf, Ms Bhutto’s Pakistan
People’s party, and the Pakistan Muslim League
faction of Nawaz Sharif - another ousted former
prime minister - now need to set aside personal
advantage and rise to the challenge of the
emergency facing their country. Little in their
records suggests they will. The removal of Ms
Bhutto from the equation also leaves the Bush
administration adrift.

Washington’s commitment to Gen Musharraf as a
vital asset in the “war on terror” led it to
promote an alliance between the general and Ms
Bhutto. This was shortsighted. Rather than
support the democratic revival of civil society,
seen above all in this year’s lawyers’ movement
against the regime and the vigour of the local
press, the US sought to use Ms Bhutto as a
figleaf of democracy - widening further the
already extensive circle of her enemies.

Her motorcade was the target of a massive
suicide-bombing in Karachi when she returned in
October, probably by jihadis who turned against
Gen Musharraf this summer.

Her death in Rawalpindi, where her father, the
deposed prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was
hanged by a previous military regime in 1979,
ends the baroque and bloody saga of a political
dynasty that also saw two of her brothers perish,
one shot, another found dead in southern France
in murky circumstances.

Ms Bhutto presented a plausible face of
modernity: a young, glamorous woman in a
male-dominated society, educated at Oxford and
Harvard, fluent in the political idiom of western
capitals. But she was also tough and ruthless -
south Asian politics is not for the faint-hearted
– and the PPP remained more feudal hierarchy than
political party under her command.

Her two spells in power in the 1980s and 90s were
marked by venality and incompetence - just as Mr 
Sharif’s were - as well as a willingness to
temporise with the generals and Islamists. Yet,
however badly civilians misruled, Gen Musharraf’s
marginalising the mainstream PPP and PML offered
power not only to the army but gangster
politicians and radical Islamists, sinking
Pakistan deeper in the mire.

It is in danger of dissolution, with the tribal
areas that harbour al-Qaeda in revolt, an
increasingly Talibanised Pashtun nationalism
ablaze in North West Frontier Province,
nationalist insurgency in Balochistan, rekindled
ethnosectarian conflict in Ms Bhutto’s Sindh
fief, and jihadis openly challenging a state
whose institutions have buckled under Gen
Musharraf’s rule.

The general will no doubt see in this violent
turn of events proof of his indispensability. Mr 
Sharif becomes the unquestioned head of the
opposition. A headless PPP will struggle to
regroup.

Yet all Pakistan’s leaders need to regroup around
a national accord, to defeat extremism by
restoring the legitimacy of its rulers and the
credibility of its institutions. That should be
the object of the January 8 elections - even if
they are postponed - because the challenge for
Pakistan is no less than to restart the process
of nation-building.

---

 PAKISTAN AT THE EDGE

The Hindu - 28 December 2007

Editorial

“I am not afraid,” Benazir Bhutto declaimed at
her father’s mausoleum two months ago, "of anyone
but Allah." In the last weeks of her life,
Benazir demonstrated that she possessed a depth
of conviction that was, beyond dispute,
exceptional. When she returned to Pakistan
earlier this year after long exile, she made
clear to family and confidantes that she was well
aware of the great dangers lying ahead. She was
undeterred by the murderous bombing that greeted
her on her return home. During her two tenures as
Prime Minister of Pakistan, she was charged by
adversaries and critics with corruption, with
sponsoring Islamist terrorism directed at India,
with dilettantism. Whatever be the truth in
relation to these accusations, the Pakistan
People’s Party chief showed, in word and deed,
that she possessed the raw courage needed to set
past wrongs right. In his last interview before
his execution by the military regime of General
Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto said: "I
am not afraid of death. I am a man of history and
you cannot silence history." Democrats across
Pakistan will recall these words as they ponder
how best to respond to a despicable act by
terrorists who made no secret of their loathing
at the prospect of a progressive, secular woman
emerging as Pakistan’s ruler.

With this body blow to democracy in Pakistan,
what is clear is that epic struggles lie ahead
for its hard-pressed people. Some analysts fear
the assassination will spell the end of the
tentative movement towards democracy witnessed in
recent months. While such an outcome will suit
the military establishment as well as the
Islamists, it will have dangerously destabilising
consequences. As Benazir pointed out movingly in
a recent interview, "people are just being
butchered and it has to stop, somebody has to
find a solution and my solution is, let’s restore
democracy." It was this combination of
extraordinary courage and well-reasoned
commitment to democracy that made Benazir stand
out among Pakistan’s political leaders. Her death
illustrates in stark relief the failure of Pervez
Musharraf’s regime, which continues to be
underwritten by the United States, to confront
al-Qaeda- and Taliban-linked religious
neoconservatives who are working to obliterate
the last traces of democracy in Pakistan. It is
one of the grimmer ironies of history that
Benazir was killed at the gates of Rawalpindi’s
Liaqat Bagh - the very location where a gunman
shot dead Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan in 1951,
an action some believe was provoked by his
opposition to clerics’ calls for Pakistan to be
declared an Islamic state. In the decades since,
the country has lurched ever closer towards the
abyss. All those who care for its future - and
for the future of our shared region - must join
hands to ensure it is pulled back from the edge.
The Hindu shares the deep grief of the people of
Pakistan over this terrible loss during a time of
troubles.