[Peace-discuss] Death of Benazir Bhutto

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Tariq Ali's recent article in the London Review of Books is the best 
thing I've seen on US-Pakistan relations. --CGE]

	A tragedy born of military despotism and anarchy
	The assassination of Benazir Bhutto heaps despair upon Pakistan. 	Now 
her party must be democratically rebuilt
	Tariq Ali
	Friday December 28, 2007
	The Guardian

Even those of us sharply critical of Benazir Bhutto's behaviour and 
policies - both while she was in office and more recently - are stunned 
and angered by her death. Indignation and fear stalk the country once again.

An odd coexistence of military despotism and anarchy created the 
conditions leading to her assassination in Rawalpindi yesterday. In the 
past, military rule was designed to preserve order - and did so for a 
few years. No longer. Today it creates disorder and promotes 
lawlessness. How else can one explain the sacking of the chief justice 
and eight other judges of the country's supreme court for attempting to 
hold the government's intelligence agencies and the police accountable 
to courts of law? Their replacements lack the backbone to do anything, 
let alone conduct a proper inquest into the misdeeds of the agencies to 
uncover the truth behind the carefully organised killing of a major 
political leader.

How can Pakistan today be anything but a conflagration of despair? It is 
assumed that the killers were jihadi fanatics. This may well be true, 
but were they acting on their own?

Benazir, according to those close to her, had been tempted to boycott 
the fake elections, but she lacked the political courage to defy 
Washington. She had plenty of physical courage, and refused to be cowed 
by threats from local opponents. She had been addressing an election 
rally in Liaquat Bagh. This is a popular space named after the country's 
first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, who was killed by an assassin in 
1953. The killer, Said Akbar, was immediately shot dead on the orders of 
a police officer involved in the plot. Not far from here, there once 
stood a colonial structure where nationalists were imprisoned. This was 
Rawalpindi jail. It was here that Benazir's father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, 
was hanged in April 1979. The military tyrant responsible for his 
judicial murder made sure the site of the tragedy was destroyed as well.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's death poisoned relations between his Pakistan 
People's party and the army. Party activists, particularly in the 
province of Sind, were brutally tortured, humiliated and, sometimes, 
disappeared or killed.

Pakistan's turbulent history, a result of continuous military rule and 
unpopular global alliances, confronts the ruling elite now with serious 
choices. They appear to have no positive aims. The overwhelming majority 
of the country disapproves of the government's foreign policy. They are 
angered by its lack of a serious domestic policy except for further 
enriching a callous and greedy elite that includes a swollen, parasitic 
military. Now they watch helplessly as politicians are shot dead in 
front of them.

Benazir had survived the bomb blast yesterday but was felled by bullets 
fired at her car. The assassins, mindful of their failure in Karachi a 
month ago, had taken out a double insurance this time. They wanted her 
dead. It is impossible for even a rigged election to take place now. It 
will have to be postponed, and the military high command is no doubt 
contemplating another dose of army rule if the situation gets worse, 
which could easily happen.

What has happened is a multilayered tragedy. It's a tragedy for a 
country on a road to more disasters. Torrents and foaming cataracts lie 
ahead. And it is a personal tragedy. The house of Bhutto has lost 
another member. Father, two sons and now a daughter have all died 
unnatural deaths.

I first met Benazir at her father's house in Karachi when she was a 
fun-loving teenager, and later at Oxford. She was not a natural 
politician and had always wanted to be a diplomat, but history and 
personal tragedy pushed in the other direction. Her father's death 
transformed her. She had become a new person, determined to take on the 
military dictator of that time. She had moved to a tiny flat in London, 
where we would endlessly discuss the future of the country. She would 
agree that land reforms, mass education programmes, a health service and 
an independent foreign policy were positive constructive aims and 
crucial if the country was to be saved from the vultures in and out of 
uniform. Her constituency was the poor, and she was proud of the fact.

She changed again after becoming prime minister. In the early days, we 
would argue and in response to my numerous complaints - all she would 
say was that the world had changed. She couldn't be on the "wrong side" 
of history. And so, like many others, she made her peace with 
Washington. It was this that finally led to the deal with Musharraf and 
her return home after more than a decade in exile. On a number of 
occasions she told me that she did not fear death. It was one of the 
dangers of playing politics in Pakistan.

It is difficult to imagine any good coming out of this tragedy, but 
there is one possibility. Pakistan desperately needs a political party 
that can speak for the social needs of a bulk of the people. The 
People's party founded by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was built by the activists 
of the only popular mass movement the country has known: students, 
peasants and workers who fought for three months in 1968-69 to topple 
the country's first military dictator. They saw it as their party, and 
that feeling persists in some parts of the country to this day, despite 
everything.

Benazir's horrific death should give her colleagues pause for 
reflection. To be dependent on a person or a family may be necessary at 
certain times, but it is a structural weakness, not a strength for a 
political organisation. The People's party needs to be refounded as a 
modern and democratic organisation, open to honest debate and 
discussion, defending social and human rights, uniting the many 
disparate groups and individuals in Pakistan desperate for any halfway 
decent alternative, and coming forward with concrete proposals to 
stabilise occupied and war-torn Afghanistan. This can and should be 
done. The Bhutto family should not be asked for any more sacrifices.

· Tariq Ali's book The Duel: Pakistan on the Flightpath of American 
Power is published in 2008 tariqali3 at btinternet.com

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