The Dream that was Benazir Bhutto
December 31, 2007
Shahid Mahmood with more on Benazir’s alleged commitment to democracy.
“There was a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish, it was so fragile.”
- Marcus AureliusThere was also a dream that was Benazir Bhutto. Picture – a young, seemingly articulate attractive woman defying a military, which had sent her father to the gallows. Educated at Harvard and Oxford, she spent years in house arrest and exile before becoming the youngest person, and the first woman, to head the government of a Muslim-majority state. She was initially swarmed by a deprived Pakistani population and was (and still is) adored by the western media and governments. I too was swept-up in that initial euphoria and as a budding political cartoonist remember drawing my first Bhutto-cartoon for Karachi’s evening paper, The Star, in 1988. The editorial cartoon depicted a young, attractive woman, headscarf fluttering in the wind, tiptoeing across a political minefield that was Pakistan.
Iraqi Women Liberated
December 31, 2007
Rejoice colonial feminists. You have liberated Iraqi women both from their country, and their dignity.
I have already witnessed the women of Afghanistan face the same fate as a result of never ending war. Now courtesy of the feminists who cheered on Bush’s armies, we have Iraqis subjected to the same indignities. I hope I am not the only one revolted by the sight of the Gulf Arabs who enabled this war through material assistance now swoop in like vultures on their morally emaciated prey.
The Perfidy of Pakistan’s Rulers
December 31, 2007
It’s ‘business as usual‘ for Pakistan’s rulers, writes Liaquat Ali Khan.
The Bhutto assassination might force Pakistani rulers to reconsider supporting the war on terror that has been forced upon the entire Muslim world. Just as Spain withdrew from the war in Iraq after the Madrid terrorist bombings, Pakistan too might use Bhutto’s death to withdraw from the war in Afghanistan. For sure, Pakistan is no Spain. It will be much harder for corrupt Pakistani rulers to say no to billions of dollars coming from America. If Islamabad does not change its devious ways, however, the war on terror will consume and destroy Pakistan.
Pakistan’s Feudal Charade
December 31, 2007
‘My heart bleeds for Pakistan,’ writes Tariq Ali, but it ‘deserves better than this grotesque feudal charade’
Six hours before she was executed, Mary, Queen of Scots wrote to her brother-in-law, Henry III of France: “…As for my son, I commend him to you in so far as he deserves, for I cannot answer for him.” The year was 1587.
On 30 December 2007, a conclave of feudal potentates gathered in the home of the slain Benazir Bhutto to hear her last will and testament being read out and its contents subsequently announced to the world media. Where Mary was tentative, her modern-day equivalent left no room for doubt. She could certainly answer for her son.
How Bhutto Won Washington
December 30, 2007
The New York Times‘ Elisabeth Bumiller on how Bhutto’s power in Pakistan over the years was ensured through her contacts in Washington.
BENAZIR BHUTTO always understood Washington more than Washington understood her.
Ms. Bhutto, the Pakistani opposition leader and two-time prime minister, who was assassinated in Rawalpindi on Thursday as she campaigned for the office a third time, had a more extensive network of powerful friends in the capital’s political and media elite than almost any other foreign leader. Over the years, she scrupulously cultivated those friends, many from her days at Harvard and Oxford. She was rewarded when her connections — at the White House, in Congress and within the foreign policy establishment — helped propel her into power in Pakistan.
Democracy: An Existential Threat?
December 30, 2007
‘A single state in historic Palestine, based on equality, is the most promising alternative to the already dead two-state dogma’, argue Ali Abunimah and Omar Barghouti.
As two of the authors of a recent document advocating a one-state solution to the Arab-Israeli colonial conflict, we intended to generate debate. Predictably, Zionists decried the proclamation as yet another proof of the unwavering devotion of Palestinian – and some radical Israeli – intellectuals to the “destruction of Israel”. Some pro-Palestinian activists accused us of forsaking immediate and critical Palestinian rights in the quest of a “utopian” dream.
Inspired in part by the South African Freedom Charter and the Belfast Agreement, the much humbler One State Declaration, authored by a group of Palestinian, Israeli and international academics and activists, affirms that “the historic land of Palestine belongs to all who live in it and to those who were expelled or exiled from it since 1948, regardless of religion, ethnicity, national origin or current citizenship status”. It envisages a system of government founded on “the principle of equality in civil, political, social and cultural rights for all citizens”.
Serfs and Feudals
December 30, 2007
So here is proof, if any were needed, of the deeply anti-democratic values of the West’s champion of democracy. Benazir Bhutto’s has left a will naming her successor and — surprise, surprise — she choose her 19-year-old son, and her husband, Mr. 10 percent. Pakistani politics still remains an essentially feudal affair, with elite entitlement its sole index of legitimacy. Knowing the Pakistani people, I’ll venture a guess that Zardari will soon be exonerated of all past sins, and he’ll make the best of the “martyr’s” halo for a new assault on Pakistan’s treasury.Forbes reports,
The 19-year-old son of Benazir Bhutto was appointed Sunday as leader of the assassinated Pakistani opposition leader’s party, with her husband as co-chairman, party officials said.
The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) named Bhutto’s son Bilawal, an Oxford University student, as its chairman after a marathon meeting at the family’s ancestral home, three senior party officials told AFP.
CSI Pakistan
December 30, 2007
Conspiracy theories abound. This is the kind of junk that is proliferating in both the Pakistani and Western press. Some of it reminds me of the scene from Jerry Lewis’s Which Way To The Front? where the various members of the American assassination squad describe Hitler’s walk in fundamentally different ways based on their race or backgrounds.
Exhibit A: this is what a Pakistani journalist writes under a pseudonym in the Guardian:
From a respected senior journalist, I was given a first-hand account of the assassination.
“Benazir popped her head out of her armoured car for about two or three seconds, during which a gunmen armed with a 9mm pistol fired three shots from 30 feet away, two of which landed in her neck,” he told me. There was an ongoing discussion at the club’s canteen between eyewitnesses, and the consensus was that anyone that can land so many shots in a frame of a few seconds had to have been trained by the military or the intelligence agencies.
The video has been seen by millions, and the ‘senior journalist’ seems to be in a clash with reality both on counts on time and space. Benazir never ‘poppped her head out’ for ‘two or three seconds’ — she was out of the sun-roof for the whole duration. Secondly, he puts the assassin ’30 feet’ away. As a matter of fact he was standing no more than 10 feet from the target. After misreporting both the time and distance, our pseudo-sleuth then tells us: “the consensus was that anyone that can land so many shots in a frame of a few seconds had to have been trained by the military or the intelligence agencies”. Indeed, anyone who can land two bullets into a human sized target from a distance of 10 feet must indeed require ‘military or intelligence agency’ training. (An even more airy variation holds the assassins haircut as telltale proof of military involvement)
Pakistan’s Flawed and Feudal Princess
December 30, 2007
The beatification of Benazir Bhutto continues apace, and to the extent that democracy has been dealt a setback, it is not because a ‘democrat’ was killed but simply because all the legitimate voices of democracy will be overwhelmed by the cult of ‘the martyr’. As Dalrymple correctly points out, Bhutto was no Aung San Suu Kyi. ‘Her legacy is far murkier and more complex ‘, he reminds Western readers who seem particularly sentimental since to them she appeared ‘so much like us’.
One of Benazir Bhutto’s more dubious legacies to Pakistan is the Prime Minister’s house in the middle of Islamabad. The building is a giddy, pseudo-Mexican ranch house with white walls and a red tile roof. There is nothing remotely Islamic about the building which, as my minder said when I went there to interview the then Prime Minister Bhutto, was ‘PM’s own design’. Inside, it was the same story. Crystal chandeliers dangled sometimes two or three to a room; oils of sunflowers and tumbling kittens that would have looked at home on the Hyde Park railings hung below garishly gilt cornices.The place felt as though it might be the weekend retreat of a particularly flamboyant Latin-American industrialist, but, in fact, it could have been anywhere. Had you been shown pictures of the place on one of those TV game-shows where you are taken around a house and then have to guess who lives there, you may have awarded this hacienda to virtually anyone except, perhaps, to the Prime Minister of an impoverished Islamic republic situated next door to Iran.
Tariq Ali on Zia and Bhutto (BBC Urdu)
December 29, 2007
Tariq Ali is speaking about his play, The Leopard and the Fox commissioned initially by the BBC. The play dealt with the relationship between Pakistan’s former dictator, General Zia-ul-Haq, and former Prime Minister (and Benazir’s father) Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. In the play, Tariq wrote about the direct US involvement in ZAB’s execution who had earlier been warned by Henry Kissinger that he will be made an example of unless he ceased his provocations of the US. Zia was seen by Bhutto as a meek and obsequious figure, and hence the latter promoted him over many others to become the chief-of-staff. In the end, Bhutto, who despite his failures remained an immensely popular figure, was hanged by Zia. The courageous Leopard (Bhutto) was outsmarted by the wily Fox (Zia). Benazir essentially inherited the father’s legacy.
BBC, back then, got cold feet at the mention of US complicity, and asked Tariq to drop any mention of it. Tariq refused, and hence the play was scrapped. Channel 4 showed interest, but they did not have the resources. This year, the book was finally republished in India.
