Pakistan in Turmoil after Benazir Bhutto’s AssassinationHundreds and thousands of Pakistanis attend the funeral of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Pakistan’s political future remains unclear and riots erupted as news of Bhutto’s assassination spread across the country. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has blamed Islamic militants for carrying out the assassination, but several associates of Bhutto have accused Musharraf himself of having a role. In an email sent to a confidant in the US two months ago, Benazir Bhutto wrote that Musharraf should be held “responsible” if she was assassinated, because his government did not do enough to provide for her security. We go to British-Pakistani author and activist Tariq Ali in London and historian Manan Ahmed in Chicago for analysis of the current crisis and Benazir Bhutto’s checkered history.
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AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to go now to Britain to Tariq Ali, the British Pakistani historian, activist, commentator, one of the editors of the New Left Review, author of more than a dozen books, was recently back in Pakistan, where he was born. Tariq, talk about your response on Thursday when you heard the news, and talk about why Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan.
TARIQ ALI: Well, Amy, my first reaction was anger. I was livid that Bush and his acolytes in Britain had fixed this deal, pushing her to do a deal with Musharraf, forcing her to play a role, which, of course, she agreed to do—it has to be admitted—in Pakistan, which she was not capable of playing. She made some extremely injudicious remarks, saying that she would go back, she was the only person who could deal with terrorism, etc., etc. The fact was that this was not the case.
And, you know, to—I wrote at the time that it is a big, big problem when you try and arrange a political marriage between two parties who loathe each other. And so, Musharraf very rapidly, after her return, embarrassed her by instituting a state of emergency. And she then didn’t know whether to defend the state of emergency; finally, she attacked it. So the whole situation was a complete mess.
And now, everyone in Pakistan knows that an election organized in this fashion, under the leadership of a guy who’s become a master at rigging elections, is not going to achieve anything.
So Benazir was advised by close advisers, including one of the central leaders of her party, Aitzaz Ahsan, who is still in prison, by the way, saying we must not participate in this election, it’s totally fake and rigged, it should be boycotted. She refused to accept that, because Washington insisted that she participate in this election, and she was torn in her loyalties. And finally, she, a woman of great physical courage, lacked the political courage to defy Washington. And I have to say this, it’s cost her her life. Had she decided to boycott the election, this would not have happened.
And for Washington to send her to Pakistan, reassuring her that she would be safe, is shocking. At the very least, if they were insistent on doing this, they could have provided her with a Marine guard like Karzai gets in Kabul. But, you know, they depended on the locals to guard her, and they obviously couldn’t do it. So she’s now dead. And it’s a tragedy. It’s a personal tragedy for her and her family. And it sort of has begun, embarked on a new crisis for Pakistan, which is going to get worse.
And...
TARIQ ALI: Well, Juan, this is absolutely right, and it’s been her tragedy and the country’s tragedy. When she came to power, elected for the first time, it is absolutely true she was hemmed in by the military on one side and an old rogue of a bureaucrat who had been made president on the other.
And she told me very openly, “I can’t do anything.” And I said to her at the time in Prime Minister’s house in Islamabad, “I understand that, but there are two things you have to do. One, you have to make it very clear to the people publicly that this is the reason I can’t deliver my promises on land reform, on health, on education. They won’t let me do anything. This is why I can’t make any readjustments in foreign policy. They have imposed their own foreign minister, Yacoub, on me, who insists we carry on as before,” etc. etc. She didn’t do that.
And I think by this time she had become a very different person politically from what she had been earlier and had decided that she didn’t want to be on the wrong side of history, so to speak. She more or less said that to me.
And she realized or she thought that the only way to survive in this world was basically to do the bidding of the army at home and Washington abroad, two institutions which had led to the—which had basically bumped off her dad in 1979 and which were not going to do her any favors.AMY GOODMAN: Tariq, explain that, how her father died and who was involved in his assassination, in his execution.
TARIQ ALI: Her father was probably the most popular politician in Pakistan, pledging massive social reforms. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who had been elected in the 1970 elections, had won a large majority in the country that we now know as Pakistan and had been elected on a very radical platform. He came to power.
He implemented some of his reforms, not all, became extremely autocratic, clashed with the United States on a number of issues, including Pakistan’s right to have nuclear weapons.
Henry Kissinger warned him in private that if you do not desist on the nuclear issue, we will make a terrible example out of you. That’s what Bhutto wrote from his death cell. The United States organized a military coup d’etat. General Zia-ul-Haq took power in 1977, organized a trial against Bhutto, charging him with an absurd charge of murdering someone. The judges were pressured, and they found him guilty, and Bhutto was hanged in April 1979. It could not have happened without US support and approval, because Zia was a nobody, and Washington clearly green-lighted the murder.
And Bhutto, from his death cell, wrote a very moving document called “If I Am Assassinated,” in which he said there are two hegemonies—these are his words. He said, “There are two hegemonies that dominate our country. One is an internal hegemony, and the other is an external hegemony. And unless we challenge the external hegemony, we will never be able to deal with the internal one,” meaning Washington is the external hegemony and the army is the internal one. And this is a problem which still haunts Pakistan and which, I have to say, has now created this new crisis.And...
AMY GOODMAN: That was Benazir Bhutto in August. Tariq Ali, you begin an extended piece that you wrote over this twenty-four hours by talking about who in Washington, people like John Negroponte, who were instrumental in her return.
TARIQ ALI: Well, yeah. I mean, John Negroponte was the ghoulish go-between fixing up—trying to fix up the marriage between Benazir and Musharraf, backed, as always, by the ever-loyal acolytes in the British Foreign Office, who were also pushing this deal without any real understanding, in my opinion, of what was going on in the country or what the country needed.
And essentially, Amy, if one has to ask the question, what was the desperation? The notion that the Jihadis in Pakistan are on the verge of achieving power is total nonsense. There is no danger, in my opinion, of any Jihadis coming close to Pakistan’s nuclear facilities. The army is half-a-million strong, one of the toughest armies in the world. It will not permit anyone to get close to the nuclear facility, the Jihadis or the United States, if they tried. So that is not on.
The real crisis is a crisis in Afghanistan, which they don’t like talking about, an occupation which is going badly wrong, seeing the revival of the Taliban. The United States knows this fully well and is negotiating with the Taliban behind the scenes. They don’t even bother denying it.
So this is what is going on, and they needed a politician in Pakistan who could act on their behalf, like Karzai does in Kabul. And they picked Benazir, because they didn’t trust the Sharif brothers. They thought they were too close to the Saudis, which is true, by the way. So they picked on Benazir to do the deal, because they thought Musharraf on his own was too closely attached to extremely retrograde elements and that Benazir would be able to swing it. But, you know, nothing in Pakistan can be swung without the army.
So they were the key players, and they, ’til now, have been backing Musharraf. And they backed Musharraf’s decision to impose an emergency, which completely pulled the rug underneath Benazir’s feet. And it’s at this point that the United States should have realized that an election in these conditions is completely foolish. It was not going to deliver anything. It was going to be rigged. There was no secret about it. Benazir herself said this: “I fear this is going to be a rigged election.” Well, if that is the case, why participate in it?<snip>
More:
http://www.democracynow.org/2007/12/28/pakistan_in_turmoil_after_benazir_bhuttosSound familiar???
:shrug:
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