When Benazir Bhutto entered Rawalpindi Garrison Town on 27 December, it was a challenge and an opportunity for those planning her permanent exit from the political Jurasic Park that Pakistan has become today. The venue, Liaquat Bagh, was symbolic, where, on 16 Oct 1951, Pakistan’s first Prime Minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, was gunned down. It is ironic that she promised a better future for her compatriots when her own was about to come to a bloody end no sooner than her speech ended.
The assassin’s bullets followed by a suicide blast near her bullet-proof car extinguished a courageous and liberal woman who defied the three dreaded Ms (Musharaff, Mullahs and Militants) in Pakistan to return from exile to reclaim her political legacy. Her premature departure from the scene is likely to spur the jehadis and religious fanatics’ efforts to turn Pakistan into a Taliban like Islamist state.
However, the tragic end of ‘Pakistan’s Daughter’, cannot wipe out history. Bibi Benazir was no Aung San Suu Kyi, and much of the praise now being heaped upon her is misplaced. In reality, Benazir’s own democratic credentials were far from impeccable. She colluded in massive human rights abuses, and during her tenure, government death squads in Karachi were responsible for the abduction and murder of hundreds of her MQM opponents. Amnesty International accused her government of having one of the world’s worst records of custodial deaths, killings and torture.
Within her own party, she declared herself the lifetime president of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), and refused to let brother Murtaza challenge her for the post. When he was shot dead in highly suspicious circumstances outside her home, Benazir was implicated. Murtaza’s wife, Ghinwa, his daughter Fatima and her very own mother, Nusrat, all firmly believed that she gave the order to have him killed.
Recently, Benazir did nothing to stop President Musharaff from deporting Nawaz Sharif to Saudi Arabia, and so remover from the election scene her most formidable political rival Many of her supporters regarded her deal with Musharraf as a betrayal of all her party stood for.
Benazir also, famously, presided over the looting of Pakistan. In 1995, during her rule, Transparency International named Pakistan one of the world’s three most corrupt countries. Benazir and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari – widely known as ‘Mr 10 percent’ – faced corruption charges in Pakistan, Switzerland, the UK and the US.
Personally, as well as intellectually, she was a lightweight, with little grasp of economics, geopolitics or philosophy. Her favorite reading was royal biographies and slushy romances. Her Karachi bedroom had stacks of well thumbed Mills & Boon lining the walls.
As a result of this lack of ideological direction, Benazir was a notably inept administrator. During her 20-month long premiership, she failed to pass a single piece of major legislation, and during her two stints in power, she did almost nothing to help the liberal causes she so enthusiastically espoused to the Western media. It was under her regime, that Pakistan’s secret service the ISI, helped install the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan..
She did nothing to rein in the ISI’s disastrous policy of training terrorists and jehadis to do Pakistan’s dirty work in India and Afghanistan.
Real democracy has never thrived in Pakistan in part because landowning remains the principal social base from which politicians emerge. Between military government and democracy lies a surprising continuity of interests: to some extent, Pakistan’s industrial, landowning and military elites are all inter-related and look after one another. The recent deal between Musharraf and Benazir, intended to exclude her only rival Nawaz Sharif, was typical of the way that the Army and the politicians have shared power with minimal reference to the actual wishes of the electorate. Benazir did more than anything to bring Pakistan’s strange variety of democracy – really a form of ‘elective feudalism’ – into disrepute and fuel the growth of Islamists.
Amid the mourning and shock, there is some hope that Benazir’s death could yet act as a wake up call for secular and moderate majority in Pakistan. Regret at the brutal manner of assassination of this courageous woman should not mask the fact that she was as much part of Pakistan’s problems as its solution.
Sources: Outlook Jan 14, BBC and Article by William Dalrymple
The assassin’s bullets followed by a suicide blast near her bullet-proof car extinguished a courageous and liberal woman who defied the three dreaded Ms (Musharaff, Mullahs and Militants) in Pakistan to return from exile to reclaim her political legacy. Her premature departure from the scene is likely to spur the jehadis and religious fanatics’ efforts to turn Pakistan into a Taliban like Islamist state.
However, the tragic end of ‘Pakistan’s Daughter’, cannot wipe out history. Bibi Benazir was no Aung San Suu Kyi, and much of the praise now being heaped upon her is misplaced. In reality, Benazir’s own democratic credentials were far from impeccable. She colluded in massive human rights abuses, and during her tenure, government death squads in Karachi were responsible for the abduction and murder of hundreds of her MQM opponents. Amnesty International accused her government of having one of the world’s worst records of custodial deaths, killings and torture.
Within her own party, she declared herself the lifetime president of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), and refused to let brother Murtaza challenge her for the post. When he was shot dead in highly suspicious circumstances outside her home, Benazir was implicated. Murtaza’s wife, Ghinwa, his daughter Fatima and her very own mother, Nusrat, all firmly believed that she gave the order to have him killed.
Recently, Benazir did nothing to stop President Musharaff from deporting Nawaz Sharif to Saudi Arabia, and so remover from the election scene her most formidable political rival Many of her supporters regarded her deal with Musharraf as a betrayal of all her party stood for.
Benazir also, famously, presided over the looting of Pakistan. In 1995, during her rule, Transparency International named Pakistan one of the world’s three most corrupt countries. Benazir and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari – widely known as ‘Mr 10 percent’ – faced corruption charges in Pakistan, Switzerland, the UK and the US.
Personally, as well as intellectually, she was a lightweight, with little grasp of economics, geopolitics or philosophy. Her favorite reading was royal biographies and slushy romances. Her Karachi bedroom had stacks of well thumbed Mills & Boon lining the walls.
As a result of this lack of ideological direction, Benazir was a notably inept administrator. During her 20-month long premiership, she failed to pass a single piece of major legislation, and during her two stints in power, she did almost nothing to help the liberal causes she so enthusiastically espoused to the Western media. It was under her regime, that Pakistan’s secret service the ISI, helped install the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan..
She did nothing to rein in the ISI’s disastrous policy of training terrorists and jehadis to do Pakistan’s dirty work in India and Afghanistan.
Real democracy has never thrived in Pakistan in part because landowning remains the principal social base from which politicians emerge. Between military government and democracy lies a surprising continuity of interests: to some extent, Pakistan’s industrial, landowning and military elites are all inter-related and look after one another. The recent deal between Musharraf and Benazir, intended to exclude her only rival Nawaz Sharif, was typical of the way that the Army and the politicians have shared power with minimal reference to the actual wishes of the electorate. Benazir did more than anything to bring Pakistan’s strange variety of democracy – really a form of ‘elective feudalism’ – into disrepute and fuel the growth of Islamists.
Amid the mourning and shock, there is some hope that Benazir’s death could yet act as a wake up call for secular and moderate majority in Pakistan. Regret at the brutal manner of assassination of this courageous woman should not mask the fact that she was as much part of Pakistan’s problems as its solution.
Sources: Outlook Jan 14, BBC and Article by William Dalrymple
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