Pakistan may not make it

The country's future now depends on a power struggle between the army and Bhutto's son

Peter Galbraith
Monday December 31, 2007
The Guardian


With the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's survival depends on the outcome of a struggle between the army and Bhutto's Pakistan People's party, now headed by her 19-year-old son Bilawal. The protagonists are mismatched and the odds are that Pakistan will not make it.

For all its flaws, the PPP is Pakistan's only true national institution. As well as overwhelming support in the Bhutto family's home province of Sindh, it has substantial support in Punjab and North-West Frontier Province. Like many south Asian political parties, it is a family affair, but it has an enduring platform: opposition to military rule.

Pakistan's army has long defined itself as the guardian of the nation, and successive generals have used this role as their excuse to seize and hold power. But the army is not a national institution. Historically, the Punjab has produced 90% of the officer corps while the Sindh, with 25% of Pakistan's population, is essentially unrepresented. Sindhis tend to see army rule as equivalent to Punjabi rule. The Bhutto killing sparked widespread attacks on federal property in Sindh and could galvanise separatist sentiment in the province.
The PPP's decision to make Bilawal Bhutto chairman is not just about dynastic succession or garnering a sympathy vote. It is also an effort to save the Pakistani federation, which was a central point made at yesterday's news conference announcing the new leadership. But will it work?

Benazir was an extraordinarily gifted politician. She was a brilliant strategist who focused not only on finding a way back to power for a third time but also on constructing a moderate coalition - including power-sharing with Pervez Musharraf - that could defeat extremism, make peace with India and thus create conditions that would get the army out of politics for good. Benazir honed her tactical skills and strategic thinking over nearly 30 years at the helm of the PPP and it is unrealistic to think that her son - by all accounts a bright, studious and forthright young man - could do the same, even with the help of family and Benazir's political associates.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2233476,00.html#article_continue

Just a word about Peter Galbraith: He's one of the more knowledgable people around on the subject of Pakistan. He's also a longtime friend of Bhutto's, having met her when they were small children, and his father was Ambassador to India.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Galbraith

I nominated this without having finished reading it. His father was, of course, a complex character, who had been in India during some of the most important of times.

and Galbraith is a very sharp guy. I tend to listen when he speaks out about that part of the world.

grew up in that area. His father served there for decades, then my friend did for a shorter period of time. His father was familiar with Jinnah, who he considers the most capable political leader of that period. Having lived in India/Pakistan/Afghanistan for that long gives him a perspective than one simply cannot get from reading books and watching tv. I called him a few days ago, and he said that things will almost certainly get worse in Pakistan in 2008.

The country is in the unhappy situation of having clear geographic boundaries coinciding with not only ethnic but politico-religious divisions. This makes civil war a far more clear-cut proposition.

The distinction between Sindh and Punjab is very old, and simple: the mountaineers raided the valley people.

Sindh is much less deeply Islamicized, having been predominantly Hindu still when the English took the place over in the 1840s: it is one of the first places "John Company" officials set out to suppress suttee. In recent local election in the mountain provinces, fundamentalist parties gained coalition leadership.

None of this bodes well for the future, either immediate or long term.

about Sindh and Punjab. Civil war is a frightening prospect.

the population was an estimated 152,960,000, excluding Afghan refugees and Jammu and Kashmir residents. Of those, the breakdown was Punjabi: 48.2%; Pashto: 13.1%; Sindhi: 11.8%; Saraiki: 9.8%; and Urdu: 7.6%. (Oxford Encyclopedia of World History) There are differences in everything from religion to language. If a nation/state/community shares many of the same cultural traits, they tend to be more cohesive in times of stress; when there are significant differences, stress tends to shatter the nation/state/community into smaller. often competing groups. In places where traditional societies have long-standing conflicts, even when those are masked by the modern world, stress breaks the groups apart at the seams. Thus, I believe you are correct in saying civil war is very possible.

Most of my knowledge of the area is rooted in an old interest of the colonial campaigns in the Victorian period, and an abiding faith that very little really changes too much....

poor chap. Not only did the lad lose his mother, he is about to lose his country.

His family has the unfortunate habit of getting killed for their cause.

For a 19 year old this must be daunting.

12/30/07
The Father and the Son
Benazir Bhutto's 19-year-old son is picked to lead her former political party. But her husband will be in charge for now.

Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, eldest child of Pakistan's assassinated opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, today was named co-chairman of his mother's Pakistan Peoples Party alongside his father Asif Ali Zardari. "My mother always said, 'Democracy is the best revenge'," Bilawal said in a short statement at an emotionally-charged press conference this evening at the Bhuttos' ancestral home in Naudero, Sindh.

more...
http://www.newsweek.com/id/82444

Democracy will only happen if THEY want it.


The military also has enough power to keep things together in the country. This isn't Haiti, or Somalia.

It is a mess and give me a brake. A 19 year old boy? What can his father be thinking? I think the only thing keeping any order, if that is what one calls it, is the military. In the long run I am willing to bet the people will win and they will rule them self but not in my life time. To many old style people who want to rule and right now hold the power to keep it. One wonders why we think we can force them into our style of govt.? They will do it when they get ready for it and in their own way. I think Bush has just set it back years with this force he is using. And why is he getting into the working of that country any how? He has trouble running the USA.

Well they talked about her all the time. Saudi had TV and the ones I knew spent hours watching it. A lot of 'soaps' from India, sports and news. You would see groups out side watching TV. I am talking men not women. I swear the women were off some place working but I can not say that is a fact. They did not seem to sit around even with each other, as far as I could see.

she was being sent in by the neocons as a more pliable lapdog to replace Musharraf.
that's why the administration is so upset at her assassination.
I think she had a lot of chutzpah to take the risks she did, but let's not look at things through rose-colored glasses.
Musharaff was not being an obedient enough puppet and the neocon hegemony required a better puppet.

the people just saw through that.

Or why didn't Bush's thugs provide security for here if she was their new puppet?

What you are saying doesn't make sense.

Don

if it doesn't make sense to you, I can't help that.

"One size fits all fits no one."