This is from the Star. Of course one could also say that the US helped create the Taliban since they created jihadists to combat the Soviet (Evil Empire) regime in Afghanistan. However, as the article notes working through Pakistan Intelligence Bhutto hoped to create a client state next door, unlike Bush who likes to create client states half way round the world! Anyway Bhutto soon changed her mind about the Taliban and hitched her rising and then sinking star to allying herself with the US--or as Al Qaeda mincing no words put it becoming an American asset! By becoming a US ally Bhutto became a target not only for Al Qaeda and the Taliban but elements within the Pakistani govt. It is not surprising that she was assassinated.
Bhutto helped create Taliban monster
TheStar.com - World - Bhutto helped create Taliban monster
January 02, 2008
Rosie DiManno
In 1991, Pakistan's intelligence services stashed a massive cache of assault rifles and ammunition at a secret weapons dump in Spin Boldak, rushing armaments across the border as a (phony) deadline loomed for ending direct supply of their favoured combatants in Afghanistan's civil war.
Seventeen tunnels beneath the dump contained enough weaponry to arm thousands of soldiers.
Three years later, the Taliban broke the depot open and handed out rifles – still wrapped in plastic – to volunteers summoned from local madrassas, an incident documented in the authoritative book Ghost Wars.
Within 24 hours, the Taliban captured Kandahar, Mullah Omar took possession of the governor's headquarters, and the airport was seized – with its six MiG-21 fighter jets, four Mi-17 transport helicopters, fleet of tanks and armed personnel carriers.
The Taliban gutting of Afghanistan was on, nearly all opponents swept aside, Kabul falling with barely a whimper.
As Ghost Wars author Steve Coll so dryly put it: "Benazir Bhutto was suddenly the matron of a new Afghan faction."
The late – twice – but no longer future prime minister of Pakistan was far, far from a stupid woman. The Taliban was a gamble she took, cunningly if not without considerable trepidation – and certainly at the behest of a powerful intelligence service, the ISI, she feared but had to accommodate, in the doomed hope of retaining office.
But make no mistake: The woman who is now being so widely mourned – assassinated last week, perhaps by the very elements she empowered more than a decade ago – was nurturing stepmother to terrorists incubated under her watch; the same Islamist fanatics she inveighed against during the election campaign that came to a screeching halt in the calamitous assault on her motorcade.
She was a brave woman, without question, but Bhutto was much to blame for the tinderbox that Pakistan became during her exile in Dubai and London – the toxic military entanglement with the Taliban – having helped to create a monster that not even the sponsoring ISI can control any longer.
For years, during her second tenure as PM, Bhutto lied brazenly to Washington about the extent to which Pakistan, with her approval, was covertly arming and funding the Taliban. As Bhutto admitted in a 2002 interview: "Once I gave the go-ahead that they should get the money, I don't know how much money they were ultimately given ... I know it was a lot. It was just carte blanche."
For Bhutto, the objective was to keep a new Afghanistan yoked to Pakistan and out of India's orbit. (Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud was considered far too Delhi-friendly.) Out of this relationship would flow the riches of a Pakistan-controlled trucking industry circumventing Kabul – a modern Silk Road trade incorporating the markets of Central Asia – the never realized gas pipeline from Turkmenistan, and training camps, off the Pakistan reservation, for fighters deployed to Kashmir.
Bhutto had an economic and political vision for Pakistan, one that depended largely on creating a compliant client state next door. It all got away from her, as it did also from the ISI. Indeed, Al Qaeda – now firmly interwoven with the Taliban – was contemptuous of Bhutto from the start, plotting her political demise, at the invitation of some ISI officers, as early as 1989.
Maybe by 2007, Bhutto had learned from her mistakes. Perhaps there was more to her than the democratic platitudes she espoused, as Washington's latest putative ally in the region. But this was a woman who lied and connived with brio, bewitching even the most garrumphing skeptics with her intelligence, charm and beauty.
She's already a better martyr than she ever was a leader of state.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.
Showing posts with label Benazir Bhutto. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Benazir Bhutto. Show all posts
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Monday, December 31, 2007
Pakistan to delay elections
The government is no doubt surprised by the fact that Bhutto's party is going to contest the elections. This forced Sharif's party to reverse its decision to boycott the elections. Musharraf no doubt will delay the elections for some time to try and cool the anger against him and also to make arrangements to rig the results if he can make appropriate deals or even if he can't!
The move to make the son the symbolic head of the party was clever in that Bhutto's husband's reputation for corruption is legendary. The son cannot run for office until 25!
I am a bit mystified by all the fuss over exactly how Bhutto died. What possible value the government could gain from saying she died from hitting her head as against a bullet wound is not clear to me. Certainly the government has not denied that she was shot at and that there was a suicide blast. What on earth difference does it make if these events in themselves were not the immediate cause of her death. If they had not happened she would not have banged her head cracking open her skull.
Pakistan to delay elections
Monday, December 31, 2007
ISLAMABAD: Elections in Pakistan appear likely to be delayed by several weeks, despite demands by the party of the slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and other politicians that they take place as scheduled on Jan. 8, officials said Monday.
The Election Commission said that it had recommended an unspecified delay in the parliamentary polls following the unrest that was triggered by the assassination of Bhutto last week. It said its final decision would be made Tuesday.
Separately, a senior government official predicted that the elections would be postponed by "six weeks or so, as the environment to hold free and fair elections is not conducive." The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose the information.
Despite being in mourning, Bhutto's political party and that of Pakistan's other major opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, want the polls held on time, perhaps sensing that major electoral gains are possible amid sympathy over Bhutto's death and a widespread belief that political allies of President Pervez Musharraf were behind the killing. Sharif's party reversed an earlier decision to boycott the election.
On Sunday, Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party named her 19-year-old son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, as its symbolic leader and left day-to-day control to her husband, Asif Ali Zardari. The announcement was made at a chaotic news conference at the family's ancestral home in Naudero, in southern Pakistan.
The decision to place the burden of blood and history on Bhutto's first-born son, an Oxford undergraduate with no political experience, reflects not only an abiding dynastic streak in South Asian politics - three generations of the Nehru-Gandhi family have dominated politics in India, and hereditary politics pervade Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, as well - but also how much the Pakistan People's Party relies on the Bhutto family name and legacy to bind its supporters.
In keeping with his new mantle, the new chairman added his mother's maiden name to his, becoming the newly anointed Bhutto scion. "My mother always said democracy is the best revenge," he said in a brief address.
The elder Zardari said he would manage the chairmanship on his son's behalf until he finishes his university degree - a minimum of three years. The father instructed reporters not to ask his son any further questions, saying he was "of a tender age."
Later, in the backyard of the family's house, Bhutto Zardari said in an interview that he had been tutored by his mother to play a role in Pakistani politics. "There was always a sense of fear I wouldn't be able to live up to her expectations," he said. "I hope I will."
Asked about his most immediate challenge, he said, "First, to finish my degree."
That would appear to rule out any possibility that Bhutto Zardari could become the new leader of Pakistan before he is significantly older. Nonetheless, the elder Zardari said in an interview, "As her son, he will become a uniting force."
Senior party officials said Bhutto Zardari would be a far less controversial titular head than his father, who had been accused of a raft of corruption charges, jailed for a total of 11 years and blamed in some quarters for some of Bhutto's political woes.
It could not be a more difficult time for the party. Bhutto had held together a large and diverse organization, and even if, on the back of public grief, it were to win the coming elections, it would be likely to be under great pressure to bring a semblance of stability to a nation racked by a wave of extremist violence.
At the news conference, the elder Zardari said he would not run in the election and therefore would not be the party's prime ministerial candidate. That job, he said, would probably go to the party vice president, the veteran party leader Makhdoom Amin Fahim, but that was a decision, he added, that would have to be made by party leaders.
Bhutto was killed in a suicide bomb and gun attack Thursday, but disagreements between her supporters and the government over the precise cause of death are undermining confidence in Musharraf and adding to calls for an international investigation.
New video footage, obtained by Britain's Channel 4, shows a man firing a handgun at Bhutto from close range as she stands in an open-topped vehicle. Her hair and shawl then move upward, suggesting she may have been shot. She then falls into the vehicle just before an explosion rocks the car.
The government has insisted that Bhutto was not hit by any of the bullets, and that she died after the force of the blast slammed her head against the sunroof. Bhutto's family and supporters say she died from gunshot wounds to her head and neck.
Zardari confirmed Sunday that he had refused a request to perform an autopsy, saying he did not trust the government of Musharraf to carry out a credible investigation. This means that short of exhuming her body - something her supporters have already ruled out - the cause of her death will be difficult to establish.
Zardari urged the United Nations to establish a committee like the one investigating the 2005 assassination of the former prime minister of Lebanon, Rafik Hariri. Several leading U.S. politicians have made similar calls.
Musharraf agreed to consider international support for the investigation when he spoke by phone Sunday with Gordon Brown, the British prime minister's office said. But Rashid Qureshi, a spokesman for the Pakistani president, said Monday that Musharraf had made no such promises.
Copyright © 2007 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
The move to make the son the symbolic head of the party was clever in that Bhutto's husband's reputation for corruption is legendary. The son cannot run for office until 25!
I am a bit mystified by all the fuss over exactly how Bhutto died. What possible value the government could gain from saying she died from hitting her head as against a bullet wound is not clear to me. Certainly the government has not denied that she was shot at and that there was a suicide blast. What on earth difference does it make if these events in themselves were not the immediate cause of her death. If they had not happened she would not have banged her head cracking open her skull.
Pakistan to delay elections
Monday, December 31, 2007
ISLAMABAD: Elections in Pakistan appear likely to be delayed by several weeks, despite demands by the party of the slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and other politicians that they take place as scheduled on Jan. 8, officials said Monday.
The Election Commission said that it had recommended an unspecified delay in the parliamentary polls following the unrest that was triggered by the assassination of Bhutto last week. It said its final decision would be made Tuesday.
Separately, a senior government official predicted that the elections would be postponed by "six weeks or so, as the environment to hold free and fair elections is not conducive." The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose the information.
Despite being in mourning, Bhutto's political party and that of Pakistan's other major opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, want the polls held on time, perhaps sensing that major electoral gains are possible amid sympathy over Bhutto's death and a widespread belief that political allies of President Pervez Musharraf were behind the killing. Sharif's party reversed an earlier decision to boycott the election.
On Sunday, Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party named her 19-year-old son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, as its symbolic leader and left day-to-day control to her husband, Asif Ali Zardari. The announcement was made at a chaotic news conference at the family's ancestral home in Naudero, in southern Pakistan.
The decision to place the burden of blood and history on Bhutto's first-born son, an Oxford undergraduate with no political experience, reflects not only an abiding dynastic streak in South Asian politics - three generations of the Nehru-Gandhi family have dominated politics in India, and hereditary politics pervade Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, as well - but also how much the Pakistan People's Party relies on the Bhutto family name and legacy to bind its supporters.
In keeping with his new mantle, the new chairman added his mother's maiden name to his, becoming the newly anointed Bhutto scion. "My mother always said democracy is the best revenge," he said in a brief address.
The elder Zardari said he would manage the chairmanship on his son's behalf until he finishes his university degree - a minimum of three years. The father instructed reporters not to ask his son any further questions, saying he was "of a tender age."
Later, in the backyard of the family's house, Bhutto Zardari said in an interview that he had been tutored by his mother to play a role in Pakistani politics. "There was always a sense of fear I wouldn't be able to live up to her expectations," he said. "I hope I will."
Asked about his most immediate challenge, he said, "First, to finish my degree."
That would appear to rule out any possibility that Bhutto Zardari could become the new leader of Pakistan before he is significantly older. Nonetheless, the elder Zardari said in an interview, "As her son, he will become a uniting force."
Senior party officials said Bhutto Zardari would be a far less controversial titular head than his father, who had been accused of a raft of corruption charges, jailed for a total of 11 years and blamed in some quarters for some of Bhutto's political woes.
It could not be a more difficult time for the party. Bhutto had held together a large and diverse organization, and even if, on the back of public grief, it were to win the coming elections, it would be likely to be under great pressure to bring a semblance of stability to a nation racked by a wave of extremist violence.
At the news conference, the elder Zardari said he would not run in the election and therefore would not be the party's prime ministerial candidate. That job, he said, would probably go to the party vice president, the veteran party leader Makhdoom Amin Fahim, but that was a decision, he added, that would have to be made by party leaders.
Bhutto was killed in a suicide bomb and gun attack Thursday, but disagreements between her supporters and the government over the precise cause of death are undermining confidence in Musharraf and adding to calls for an international investigation.
New video footage, obtained by Britain's Channel 4, shows a man firing a handgun at Bhutto from close range as she stands in an open-topped vehicle. Her hair and shawl then move upward, suggesting she may have been shot. She then falls into the vehicle just before an explosion rocks the car.
The government has insisted that Bhutto was not hit by any of the bullets, and that she died after the force of the blast slammed her head against the sunroof. Bhutto's family and supporters say she died from gunshot wounds to her head and neck.
Zardari confirmed Sunday that he had refused a request to perform an autopsy, saying he did not trust the government of Musharraf to carry out a credible investigation. This means that short of exhuming her body - something her supporters have already ruled out - the cause of her death will be difficult to establish.
Zardari urged the United Nations to establish a committee like the one investigating the 2005 assassination of the former prime minister of Lebanon, Rafik Hariri. Several leading U.S. politicians have made similar calls.
Musharraf agreed to consider international support for the investigation when he spoke by phone Sunday with Gordon Brown, the British prime minister's office said. But Rashid Qureshi, a spokesman for the Pakistani president, said Monday that Musharraf had made no such promises.
Copyright © 2007 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Benazir's son, husband hold key to legacy
This is from the Khaleej Times. Bhutto's husband sounds like a prime candidate to visit the Bush ranch at Crawford Texas. Maybe he could become part of the circle of crony capitalists around Bush and his crew.
Benazir’s son, husband hold key to legacy
(AFP)
30 December 2007
ISLAMABAD - The son and husband of Benazir Bhutto are among the main contenders for the leadership of the slain Pakistani opposition leader’s party, which is likely to be decided Sunday.
A senior aide to Bhutto said the former premier’s son was not keen to enter politics yet, leading to speculation that her widower Asif Ali Zardari could effectively take charge of the party until he is older.
Whatever the outcome, both will remain key figures in the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) founded four decades ago by Bhutto’s father and now the crisis hit country’s biggest opposition group.
BILAWAL: At just 19, the mantle of the Bhutto family’s bloodstained legacy would lie heavy on the head of Benazir’s only son, Bilawal.
If picked for the top slot in the PPP he would be the third leader in its history after his mother and his grandfather, Zufilqar Ali Bhutto, who founded the party and was executed under martial law in 1979.
But he has already shown signs of following in his mother’s footsteps, enrolling earlier this year at Oxford University, where Benazir Bhutto was head of the prestigious Oxford Union debating society.
Bilawal -- meaning one without equal -- was born in September 1988, a month before his mother won general elections under military dictator Zia-ul-Haq to become Pakistan’s first female premier.
“I went back to sleep and woke up to the sound of a congratulatory gunshot being fired outside the hospital, the beating of drums and cries of “Jiye (Long Live) Bhutto. The most celebrated and politically controversial baby in the history of Pakistan had been born,” Bhutto said in her autobiography.
He and his two sisters went into exile with their mother in 1999, dividing their time between London and Dubai, where Bilawal attended school. Reports in local newspapers said he was keen on outdoor sports including target-shooting and horse riding.
At Benazir’s funeral on Friday he was pictured looking composed despite his grief, but analysts say he is currently too young to lead the party.
“Bilawal is just 19 years old, he needs to be groomed,” political analyst and retired general Talat Masood said.
“They should let him complete his education. When he is in a position to assume he should be given the mantle.”
ZARDARI: Nicknamed “Mr. Ten Percent” by Pakistanis because of allegations about kickbacks from his wife’s time in power, Asif Ali Zardari, 51, has gone from playboy to villain and now to grieving political widower.
When he married into the Bhutto political dynasty in 1987, Zardari, then 31, was the little known scion of a landowning polo-playing family from southern Sindh province.
He was born on July 21, 1956 in the rural Sindh district of Nawabshah and schooled in the commercial capital Karachi at the Saint Patrick High School, alma mater of President Pervez Musharraf.
He graduated from the Petaro Cadet College in 1972, an army-run institution known for its discipline and regimented life.
After their arranged marriage Zardari gradually carved out an influential position for himself under his wife’s two tenures in power.
But he was back behind bars within half an hour of the dismissal of Bhutto’s second government in 1996.
Zardari spent eight years in jail -- five of them while his family lived in exile -- before being freed in November 2004 after being cleared over the last of 17 cases of corruption, murder and drug smuggling.
His passion for thoroughbred horses was well known and landed into trouble. One of the charges against him was that he maintained a costly stable in the prime minister’s official residence in Islamabad at state expense.
“Zardari has a very tainted record. He may not consider himself suitable for the party leadership,” Masood said.
“He may leave it to some senior member to lead the party. It will be more appropriate for the party and for him.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benazir’s son, husband hold key to legacy
(AFP)
30 December 2007
ISLAMABAD - The son and husband of Benazir Bhutto are among the main contenders for the leadership of the slain Pakistani opposition leader’s party, which is likely to be decided Sunday.
A senior aide to Bhutto said the former premier’s son was not keen to enter politics yet, leading to speculation that her widower Asif Ali Zardari could effectively take charge of the party until he is older.
Whatever the outcome, both will remain key figures in the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) founded four decades ago by Bhutto’s father and now the crisis hit country’s biggest opposition group.
BILAWAL: At just 19, the mantle of the Bhutto family’s bloodstained legacy would lie heavy on the head of Benazir’s only son, Bilawal.
If picked for the top slot in the PPP he would be the third leader in its history after his mother and his grandfather, Zufilqar Ali Bhutto, who founded the party and was executed under martial law in 1979.
But he has already shown signs of following in his mother’s footsteps, enrolling earlier this year at Oxford University, where Benazir Bhutto was head of the prestigious Oxford Union debating society.
Bilawal -- meaning one without equal -- was born in September 1988, a month before his mother won general elections under military dictator Zia-ul-Haq to become Pakistan’s first female premier.
“I went back to sleep and woke up to the sound of a congratulatory gunshot being fired outside the hospital, the beating of drums and cries of “Jiye (Long Live) Bhutto. The most celebrated and politically controversial baby in the history of Pakistan had been born,” Bhutto said in her autobiography.
He and his two sisters went into exile with their mother in 1999, dividing their time between London and Dubai, where Bilawal attended school. Reports in local newspapers said he was keen on outdoor sports including target-shooting and horse riding.
At Benazir’s funeral on Friday he was pictured looking composed despite his grief, but analysts say he is currently too young to lead the party.
“Bilawal is just 19 years old, he needs to be groomed,” political analyst and retired general Talat Masood said.
“They should let him complete his education. When he is in a position to assume he should be given the mantle.”
ZARDARI: Nicknamed “Mr. Ten Percent” by Pakistanis because of allegations about kickbacks from his wife’s time in power, Asif Ali Zardari, 51, has gone from playboy to villain and now to grieving political widower.
When he married into the Bhutto political dynasty in 1987, Zardari, then 31, was the little known scion of a landowning polo-playing family from southern Sindh province.
He was born on July 21, 1956 in the rural Sindh district of Nawabshah and schooled in the commercial capital Karachi at the Saint Patrick High School, alma mater of President Pervez Musharraf.
He graduated from the Petaro Cadet College in 1972, an army-run institution known for its discipline and regimented life.
After their arranged marriage Zardari gradually carved out an influential position for himself under his wife’s two tenures in power.
But he was back behind bars within half an hour of the dismissal of Bhutto’s second government in 1996.
Zardari spent eight years in jail -- five of them while his family lived in exile -- before being freed in November 2004 after being cleared over the last of 17 cases of corruption, murder and drug smuggling.
His passion for thoroughbred horses was well known and landed into trouble. One of the charges against him was that he maintained a costly stable in the prime minister’s official residence in Islamabad at state expense.
“Zardari has a very tainted record. He may not consider himself suitable for the party leadership,” Masood said.
“He may leave it to some senior member to lead the party. It will be more appropriate for the party and for him.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Bhutto's Rival Blames Death on Government
This is from the New York Times. According to this article the Pakistan People's Party that Bhutto led has not decided whether or not to participate in the January elections if they are held. If the party decides to run then Sharif's party will probably be forced to run as well. Sharif is not favored by the US and he blames the US for supporting Musharraf and he also blamed Bhutto for trying to make deals with Musharraf. Bhutto and the US have said little about the lawyers and supreme court judges who were removed from their posts and jailed for some time. Sharif on the other hand has made restoring the judges one of his prime aims.
Bhutto’s Rival Blames Death on Government
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: December 29, 2007
NAUDERO, Pakistan — A former prime minister of Pakistan came and laid a wreath Saturday on the grave of his former political rival.
There were riots Friday across Pakistan, including the eastern city of Peshawar, near the Afghan border.
But just before he did it, Nawaz Sharif blamed the military government of Pervez Musharraf for pulling Pakistan into the “grave crisis” that resulted in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. His words were terse, his eyes dry.
“His policies are responsible,” Mr. Sharif said in an interview on a specially chartered propeller plane that took him to Ms. Bhutto’s ancestral village. “Whether he is responsible or not, an independent commission will have to investigate. No commission can be independent if Musharraf is in charge of this government.”
Mr. Sharif’s antipathy to Mr. Musharraf runs deep. The former general ousted Mr. Sharif in a 1999 coup, which Mr. Sharif tried to prevent by blocking the landing of Mr. Musharraf’s plane in Karachi. Mr. Sharif was tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison for that, though the sentence was later modified to exile in Saudi Arabia, from which he returned last month.
On Saturday, Mr. Sharif flew to an airstrip in Mohenjo-Daro, where South Asian civilization was born some 5,000 years ago, and from there to the ancestral village of Ms. Bhutto, Naudero, where senior leaders of both their parties met briefly to give their sympathies and discuss the way forward. Mr. Sharif has already said his party would boycott the polls, scheduled for Jan. 8.
He said on his way to Naudero that he hoped Ms. Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party would join the boycott. “With Musharraf, Pakistan doesn’t have a future,” he said in the interview.
Farha Tullah Babar, a spokesman for the Pakistan People’s Party, said it was too early for his organization to make a decision about whether to go ahead and contest the elections. The party’s executive council is to meet Sunday afternoon to discuss their plans, including “how the party will be led and by whom,” he said.
Mr. Sharif’s journey the day after Ms. Bhutto was buried traveled the road to Naudero still lined with portraits of Ms. Bhutto’s beaming face, where she was embraced as its native daughter and the town being the stronghold of her party. Mr. Sharif met with Ms. Bhutto’s husband, Asif Ali Zardari, as well as members of the executive council, inside the Bhutto family home.
In the courtyard, hundreds of party members had gathered to mourn for the last two days. Some sat quietly; others shouted slogans when Mr. Sharif’s entourage came in: “By the name of God and his prophet, Benazir is innocent.”
In one corner of the courtyard, a party member named Kaiser Bengali said that he could not help but be struck by the slogan. “I see more anger than grief,” he said.
There is plenty of bad blood between the two parties. It was Mr. Sharif who initially brought a raft of corruption charges against Ms. Bhutto and her husband and Mr. Sharif became prime minister, after her government was dismissed in 1996, charges that Mr. Musharraf continued to pursue until recently.
Mr Sharif was also making a journey across the divide between his native Punjab, the richest and most populous province of Pakistan, and Sindh, its poorer, harsher neighboring province, one of Pakistan’s three minority provinces.
Even political leaders said they noticed a hardening rage against the Punjabi elite that dominates Pakistan’s military and government institutions. The spokesman Mr Babar, himself a Pashtun, one of Pakistan’s other minorities, described the mood as a “strange kind of resentment against the federation itself.” He and other members of the party have warned that the central government under Mr. Musharraf has alienated the three minority provinces and placed dangerous strains on the unity of the country.
“People were shouting slogans,” he said, “The frightening thing was that the federation had lost meaning for them. Yesterday hundreds of thousands of people gathered, they were angry, they were sad, their eyes were full of fire which is hard to describe,” he said.
Mr. Sharif, in the interview, railed against the Bush administration for its “blind support to the Musharraf government.”
He continued: “Now that a major Pakistani political leader has been assassinated, why is he still supporting this man? The whole nation is asking these questions. Does Mr. Bush consider Musharraf his friend or Pakistan his friend?”
He warned that Mr. Bush’s support of the Musharraf government would only heighten anti-American sentiment in Pakistan and the region.
Asked whether he would do anything differently to counter terrorist groups in his country, Mr. Sharif offered no specific remedy except a return to democratic rule. “Terror cannot be fought by one single man,” he said. “A truly elected sovereign parliament is the only answer. Otherwise, Mr. Musharraf is leading this country into a very grave crisis. We are in that crisis.”
Mr. Sharif ruled out negotiations with Mr. Musharraf. “No negotiations with this man,” he said. “Any negotiations and I will be offending the feelings of a 160 million people in this country.”
Muhammad Mian Soomro, the caretaker prime minister, told reporters in Islamabad on Friday that the government would hold talks with all political parties to chart a plan of action, but that “right now, the elections stand as they were announced.”
The Pakistan Peoples Party has not decided on its election plans, though it could be expected to win an overwhelming sympathy vote, which could give it a majority in Parliament, analysts and politicians said. Other parties could also suffer in the polls from a backlash after the death of a national leader.
Several leading politicians said they did not think the government could go ahead with elections so soon after what is being described as a national tragedy that has dismayed people across the political spectrum.
“Speaking on a personal level, there is no mood or inclination to have an election,” said Mushahid Hussain Sayed, secretary general of the Pakistan Muslim League faction that backs Mr. Musharraf. He said the elections could be postponed until March to allow people time to regroup. “Right now there is so much uncertainty.”
The death toll from continuing violence across the country since Ms Bhutto’s death rose Saturday to 38, Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema, a spokesman for the Ministry of Interior said. The worst violence has been in Sindh province where protesters have burned buildings and looted shops, but Brigadier Cheema said criminal elements were taking advantage of the situation and Ms. Bhutto’s supporters were not to blame.
He warned anti-government elements of dire consequences if they continued in their destruction. Over 750 shops had been torched and 18 railways stations had been burned, he said.
The controversy over how Ms. Bhutto died has further fueled tension in the country. Three women who washed her body before burial dismissed the government’s version that she had died from hitting her head on a lever in the car roof and said they had seen a bullet wound in the back of Ms Bhutto’s head.
A party spokeswoman, Sherry Rehman, said she was present when they bathed Ms. Bhutto’s body after her death and said she had seen a wound where a bullet has passed through her neck and exited through the back of her head.
Brigadier Cheema stood by his earlier statement that she died from a fractured skull caused by a fall against a lever of the car.
“What we gave you were facts, absolute facts corroborated by the doctors’ reports,” he said at a news briefing Saturday. The medical report released by the government, signed by six doctors, makes no mention of a bullet wound and describes a single wound “on the right temporoparietal region.” It gave the cause of death as “open head injury with depressed skull fracture, leading to cardiopulmonary arrest.”
Brigadier Cheema ruled out an inquiry by international experts into Ms Bhutto’s death, saying that Pakistan did not need any help in the investigation.
Bhutto’s Rival Blames Death on Government
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: December 29, 2007
NAUDERO, Pakistan — A former prime minister of Pakistan came and laid a wreath Saturday on the grave of his former political rival.
There were riots Friday across Pakistan, including the eastern city of Peshawar, near the Afghan border.
But just before he did it, Nawaz Sharif blamed the military government of Pervez Musharraf for pulling Pakistan into the “grave crisis” that resulted in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. His words were terse, his eyes dry.
“His policies are responsible,” Mr. Sharif said in an interview on a specially chartered propeller plane that took him to Ms. Bhutto’s ancestral village. “Whether he is responsible or not, an independent commission will have to investigate. No commission can be independent if Musharraf is in charge of this government.”
Mr. Sharif’s antipathy to Mr. Musharraf runs deep. The former general ousted Mr. Sharif in a 1999 coup, which Mr. Sharif tried to prevent by blocking the landing of Mr. Musharraf’s plane in Karachi. Mr. Sharif was tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison for that, though the sentence was later modified to exile in Saudi Arabia, from which he returned last month.
On Saturday, Mr. Sharif flew to an airstrip in Mohenjo-Daro, where South Asian civilization was born some 5,000 years ago, and from there to the ancestral village of Ms. Bhutto, Naudero, where senior leaders of both their parties met briefly to give their sympathies and discuss the way forward. Mr. Sharif has already said his party would boycott the polls, scheduled for Jan. 8.
He said on his way to Naudero that he hoped Ms. Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party would join the boycott. “With Musharraf, Pakistan doesn’t have a future,” he said in the interview.
Farha Tullah Babar, a spokesman for the Pakistan People’s Party, said it was too early for his organization to make a decision about whether to go ahead and contest the elections. The party’s executive council is to meet Sunday afternoon to discuss their plans, including “how the party will be led and by whom,” he said.
Mr. Sharif’s journey the day after Ms. Bhutto was buried traveled the road to Naudero still lined with portraits of Ms. Bhutto’s beaming face, where she was embraced as its native daughter and the town being the stronghold of her party. Mr. Sharif met with Ms. Bhutto’s husband, Asif Ali Zardari, as well as members of the executive council, inside the Bhutto family home.
In the courtyard, hundreds of party members had gathered to mourn for the last two days. Some sat quietly; others shouted slogans when Mr. Sharif’s entourage came in: “By the name of God and his prophet, Benazir is innocent.”
In one corner of the courtyard, a party member named Kaiser Bengali said that he could not help but be struck by the slogan. “I see more anger than grief,” he said.
There is plenty of bad blood between the two parties. It was Mr. Sharif who initially brought a raft of corruption charges against Ms. Bhutto and her husband and Mr. Sharif became prime minister, after her government was dismissed in 1996, charges that Mr. Musharraf continued to pursue until recently.
Mr Sharif was also making a journey across the divide between his native Punjab, the richest and most populous province of Pakistan, and Sindh, its poorer, harsher neighboring province, one of Pakistan’s three minority provinces.
Even political leaders said they noticed a hardening rage against the Punjabi elite that dominates Pakistan’s military and government institutions. The spokesman Mr Babar, himself a Pashtun, one of Pakistan’s other minorities, described the mood as a “strange kind of resentment against the federation itself.” He and other members of the party have warned that the central government under Mr. Musharraf has alienated the three minority provinces and placed dangerous strains on the unity of the country.
“People were shouting slogans,” he said, “The frightening thing was that the federation had lost meaning for them. Yesterday hundreds of thousands of people gathered, they were angry, they were sad, their eyes were full of fire which is hard to describe,” he said.
Mr. Sharif, in the interview, railed against the Bush administration for its “blind support to the Musharraf government.”
He continued: “Now that a major Pakistani political leader has been assassinated, why is he still supporting this man? The whole nation is asking these questions. Does Mr. Bush consider Musharraf his friend or Pakistan his friend?”
He warned that Mr. Bush’s support of the Musharraf government would only heighten anti-American sentiment in Pakistan and the region.
Asked whether he would do anything differently to counter terrorist groups in his country, Mr. Sharif offered no specific remedy except a return to democratic rule. “Terror cannot be fought by one single man,” he said. “A truly elected sovereign parliament is the only answer. Otherwise, Mr. Musharraf is leading this country into a very grave crisis. We are in that crisis.”
Mr. Sharif ruled out negotiations with Mr. Musharraf. “No negotiations with this man,” he said. “Any negotiations and I will be offending the feelings of a 160 million people in this country.”
Muhammad Mian Soomro, the caretaker prime minister, told reporters in Islamabad on Friday that the government would hold talks with all political parties to chart a plan of action, but that “right now, the elections stand as they were announced.”
The Pakistan Peoples Party has not decided on its election plans, though it could be expected to win an overwhelming sympathy vote, which could give it a majority in Parliament, analysts and politicians said. Other parties could also suffer in the polls from a backlash after the death of a national leader.
Several leading politicians said they did not think the government could go ahead with elections so soon after what is being described as a national tragedy that has dismayed people across the political spectrum.
“Speaking on a personal level, there is no mood or inclination to have an election,” said Mushahid Hussain Sayed, secretary general of the Pakistan Muslim League faction that backs Mr. Musharraf. He said the elections could be postponed until March to allow people time to regroup. “Right now there is so much uncertainty.”
The death toll from continuing violence across the country since Ms Bhutto’s death rose Saturday to 38, Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema, a spokesman for the Ministry of Interior said. The worst violence has been in Sindh province where protesters have burned buildings and looted shops, but Brigadier Cheema said criminal elements were taking advantage of the situation and Ms. Bhutto’s supporters were not to blame.
He warned anti-government elements of dire consequences if they continued in their destruction. Over 750 shops had been torched and 18 railways stations had been burned, he said.
The controversy over how Ms. Bhutto died has further fueled tension in the country. Three women who washed her body before burial dismissed the government’s version that she had died from hitting her head on a lever in the car roof and said they had seen a bullet wound in the back of Ms Bhutto’s head.
A party spokeswoman, Sherry Rehman, said she was present when they bathed Ms. Bhutto’s body after her death and said she had seen a wound where a bullet has passed through her neck and exited through the back of her head.
Brigadier Cheema stood by his earlier statement that she died from a fractured skull caused by a fall against a lever of the car.
“What we gave you were facts, absolute facts corroborated by the doctors’ reports,” he said at a news briefing Saturday. The medical report released by the government, signed by six doctors, makes no mention of a bullet wound and describes a single wound “on the right temporoparietal region.” It gave the cause of death as “open head injury with depressed skull fracture, leading to cardiopulmonary arrest.”
Brigadier Cheema ruled out an inquiry by international experts into Ms Bhutto’s death, saying that Pakistan did not need any help in the investigation.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Tariq Ali: On Bhutto's Assassination
Guardian - December 28, 2007
Tariq Ali is a well know leftist commentator who knows Bhutto and the situation in Pakistan quite well. He is quite critical of Bhutto but notes that her party has the many poor in Pakistan as its base and could if reformed provide a foundation for democracy in Pakistan.
On the news this morning I see that the US is calling for elections to go ahead. However the main opposition party remaining that of Sharif plans to boycott the elections so if they go ahead they will have almost zero legitimacy.
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
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
___________________________________
Tariq Ali is a well know leftist commentator who knows Bhutto and the situation in Pakistan quite well. He is quite critical of Bhutto but notes that her party has the many poor in Pakistan as its base and could if reformed provide a foundation for democracy in Pakistan.
On the news this morning I see that the US is calling for elections to go ahead. However the main opposition party remaining that of Sharif plans to boycott the elections so if they go ahead they will have almost zero legitimacy.
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
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
___________________________________
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Al Qaeda claims responsibility for Bhutto death.
This is from this site. It is not surprising that Bhutto was killed.
The accounts vary. Some say that she was first shot when she stuck the top of her body through her SUV to wave at the crowd. Immediately afterward there was a suicide bomber who badly damaged her vehicle.
Both the extreme Islamists and some in the government wanted her dead. Al Qaeda probably did it but just claiming responsibility doesn't clinch the matter. Both Musharraf and the US want to blame it on Al Qaeda of course. Bhutto was widely seen as the US candidate for president and that did not help her at all. Sharif's party also experienced attacks on a rally that killed several people.
Bhutto certainly did not fear death but perhaps it would have been better if she had been more careful as is Musharraf. I am reminded of Aristotle's concept of courage as a mean between cowardice (too much fear of danger) and foolhardiness (too little fear of danger). Bhutto tended toward the foolhardiness end of the scale.
Pakistan: Al-Qaeda claims Bhutto's death
Karachi, 27 Dec. (AKI) - (by Syed Saleem Shahzad) - A spokesperson for the al-Qaeda terrorist network has claimed responsibility for the death on Thursday of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
“We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat [the] mujahadeen,” Al-Qaeda’s commander and main spokesperson Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid told Adnkronos International (AKI) in a phone call from an unknown location, speaking in faltering English. Al-Yazid is the main al-Qaeda commander in Afghanistan.
It is believed that the decision to kill Bhutto, who is the leader of the opposition Pakistan People's Party (PPP), was made by al-Qaeda No. 2, the Egyptian doctor, Ayman al-Zawahiri in October.
Death squads were allegedly constituted for the mission and ultimately one cell comprising a defunct Lashkar-i-Jhangvi’s Punjabi volunteer succeeded in killing Bhutto.
Bhutto had just addressed a pre-election rally on Thursday in the garrison town of Rawalpindi when the bomb went off.
She had come to Rawalpindi after finishing a rapid election campaign, ahead of the January polls, in Pakistan's volatile North West Frontier Province (NWFP) where she had talked about a war against terrorism and al-Qaeda.
Reports say at least 15 other people were killed in the attack and several others injured.
As news of Bhutto's death spread throughout the country, there are reports that people have taken to the streets to protest the death of the leader of the PPP, which has the largest support of any party in Pakistan.
In the southern port city of Karachi, Bhutto's hometown, residents reportedly threw stones at cars and burnt tyres.
The accounts vary. Some say that she was first shot when she stuck the top of her body through her SUV to wave at the crowd. Immediately afterward there was a suicide bomber who badly damaged her vehicle.
Both the extreme Islamists and some in the government wanted her dead. Al Qaeda probably did it but just claiming responsibility doesn't clinch the matter. Both Musharraf and the US want to blame it on Al Qaeda of course. Bhutto was widely seen as the US candidate for president and that did not help her at all. Sharif's party also experienced attacks on a rally that killed several people.
Bhutto certainly did not fear death but perhaps it would have been better if she had been more careful as is Musharraf. I am reminded of Aristotle's concept of courage as a mean between cowardice (too much fear of danger) and foolhardiness (too little fear of danger). Bhutto tended toward the foolhardiness end of the scale.
Pakistan: Al-Qaeda claims Bhutto's death
Karachi, 27 Dec. (AKI) - (by Syed Saleem Shahzad) - A spokesperson for the al-Qaeda terrorist network has claimed responsibility for the death on Thursday of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
“We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat [the] mujahadeen,” Al-Qaeda’s commander and main spokesperson Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid told Adnkronos International (AKI) in a phone call from an unknown location, speaking in faltering English. Al-Yazid is the main al-Qaeda commander in Afghanistan.
It is believed that the decision to kill Bhutto, who is the leader of the opposition Pakistan People's Party (PPP), was made by al-Qaeda No. 2, the Egyptian doctor, Ayman al-Zawahiri in October.
Death squads were allegedly constituted for the mission and ultimately one cell comprising a defunct Lashkar-i-Jhangvi’s Punjabi volunteer succeeded in killing Bhutto.
Bhutto had just addressed a pre-election rally on Thursday in the garrison town of Rawalpindi when the bomb went off.
She had come to Rawalpindi after finishing a rapid election campaign, ahead of the January polls, in Pakistan's volatile North West Frontier Province (NWFP) where she had talked about a war against terrorism and al-Qaeda.
Reports say at least 15 other people were killed in the attack and several others injured.
As news of Bhutto's death spread throughout the country, there are reports that people have taken to the streets to protest the death of the leader of the PPP, which has the largest support of any party in Pakistan.
In the southern port city of Karachi, Bhutto's hometown, residents reportedly threw stones at cars and burnt tyres.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Ex-PM Sharif drops plan to boycott Pakistan elections
This makes sense since Bhutto's decision not to support a boycott would leave him completely out in the cold. In fact Bhutto and Musharraf would have the field to themselves. Bhutto shows that she is still hankering for a deal with Musharraf in effect if not openly. Unlike Sharif I have not heard Bhutto clamoring for the re-instatement of the deposed and jailed justices.
Ex-PM Sharif drops plan to boycott Pakistan elections
Bhutto rejected plea for joint boycott
Last Updated: Sunday, December 9, 2007 | 11:47 PM ET
CBC News
One of the main opposition leaders in Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, has gone back on his plan to boycott January's elections.
Sharif had hoped that rival opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and her Pakistan People's Party would join an alliance seeking to isolate President Pervez Musharraf in protest against his declaration of emergency rule.
Bhutto has said a boycott would leave the field open for a takeover by Musharraf's allies.
Ahzan Iqbal, a spokesman for Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-N, offered similar reasons Sunday for taking part in the election.
"It was considered that if we did not now contest elections, the field will be open for those parties which have supported General Musharraf and he will be able to bring about a constitutional-law amendment with two-thirds majority to indemnify his 3rd November action of dismissing the judiciary," Iqbal said.
Sharif and Bhutto, both former prime ministers, met Dec. 3 for the first time since they returned to Pakistan from years in exile. Sharif failed to enlist Bhutto in a joint boycott
Ex-PM Sharif drops plan to boycott Pakistan elections
Bhutto rejected plea for joint boycott
Last Updated: Sunday, December 9, 2007 | 11:47 PM ET
CBC News
One of the main opposition leaders in Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, has gone back on his plan to boycott January's elections.
Sharif had hoped that rival opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and her Pakistan People's Party would join an alliance seeking to isolate President Pervez Musharraf in protest against his declaration of emergency rule.
Bhutto has said a boycott would leave the field open for a takeover by Musharraf's allies.
Ahzan Iqbal, a spokesman for Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-N, offered similar reasons Sunday for taking part in the election.
"It was considered that if we did not now contest elections, the field will be open for those parties which have supported General Musharraf and he will be able to bring about a constitutional-law amendment with two-thirds majority to indemnify his 3rd November action of dismissing the judiciary," Iqbal said.
Sharif and Bhutto, both former prime ministers, met Dec. 3 for the first time since they returned to Pakistan from years in exile. Sharif failed to enlist Bhutto in a joint boycott
Monday, December 3, 2007
Sharif barred from Pakistan Election
This is from NY Times.
It is rather surprising that Musharraf even left Sharif back into Pakistan. Bhutto also had charges against her but those were dropped. No such luck for Sharif. Sharif has been outspoken in his criticism of Musharraf for his treatment of the judiciary. Of course those that remain in the supreme court are all loyal Musharraf supporters. It looks as if Bhutto might not boycott the elections. There could very well be more unrest before this is over.
Sharif Barred From Pakistan Election
By CARLOTTA GALL
Published: December 4, 2007
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Dec. 3 — Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has been barred from running in January’s parliamentary elections because of a prior conviction, Pakistan’s election commission announced today.
A spokesman for Mr. Sharif, Ahsan Iqbal, said the barring of Mr. Sharif was part of a plan by President Pervez Musharraf and his supporters to rig the elections, and that Mr. Sharif’s lawyers would contest the decision.
Mr. Sharif, a leading opposition figure who was overthrown in a military coup in 1999, was allowed to return from exile last week, and filed nomination papers to represent a district of his home city of Lahore in the parliamentary elections scheduled for Jan. 8. But other candidates in the district challenged his nomination on the grounds that he was convicted in 2000 of hijacking a plane carrying Mr. Musharraf, who was then head of the army, an act that precipitated the bloodless coup.
“His nomination papers are rejected because of his convictions,” said the presiding election official in Lahore, Raja Qamaruzaman, Reuters news agency reported.
Mr. Sharif arrived in Islamabad today to meet with another former prime minister and opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto, to discuss a joint stance on the elections.
Mr. Sharif had called for a boycott of the elections in protest at the state of emergency imposed by Mr. Musharraf on Nov. 3, when Mr. Musharraf suspended the Constitution and dismissed the Supreme Court.
Yet a boycott without Ms. Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party would be largely ineffective. Ms. Bhutto has said that a boycott would just hand a victory to Mr. Musharraf and his supporters.
The emergency is still in place, but Mr. Musharraf last week announced that he would lift it on Dec. 16.
Mr. Sharif was ousted from power in 1999 when he ordered that Mr. Musharraf, who was returning from a trip to Sri Lanka, be dismissed and refused permission for his plane to land.
However, the army took control of the airports and allowed the plane to land. Mr. Sharif was arrested, imprisoned and convicted on corruption and hijacking charges and sentenced to life imprisonment.
A year later he was allowed to go into exile to Saudi Arabia but his sentences were never quashed.
Mr. Musharraf, who resigned from his military post as chief of the army and became a civilian president last week, allowed Mr. Sharif and his brother Shahbaz Sharif to return in time to contest the parliamentary elections. But both men have now been disqualified because of the outstanding court cases against them.
Both can appeal the election commission’s decision.
“This proves our point that without an independent judiciary there cannot be free and fair elections,” Ahsan Iqbal, Mr. Sharif’s spokesman, said.
»
It is rather surprising that Musharraf even left Sharif back into Pakistan. Bhutto also had charges against her but those were dropped. No such luck for Sharif. Sharif has been outspoken in his criticism of Musharraf for his treatment of the judiciary. Of course those that remain in the supreme court are all loyal Musharraf supporters. It looks as if Bhutto might not boycott the elections. There could very well be more unrest before this is over.
Sharif Barred From Pakistan Election
By CARLOTTA GALL
Published: December 4, 2007
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Dec. 3 — Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has been barred from running in January’s parliamentary elections because of a prior conviction, Pakistan’s election commission announced today.
A spokesman for Mr. Sharif, Ahsan Iqbal, said the barring of Mr. Sharif was part of a plan by President Pervez Musharraf and his supporters to rig the elections, and that Mr. Sharif’s lawyers would contest the decision.
Mr. Sharif, a leading opposition figure who was overthrown in a military coup in 1999, was allowed to return from exile last week, and filed nomination papers to represent a district of his home city of Lahore in the parliamentary elections scheduled for Jan. 8. But other candidates in the district challenged his nomination on the grounds that he was convicted in 2000 of hijacking a plane carrying Mr. Musharraf, who was then head of the army, an act that precipitated the bloodless coup.
“His nomination papers are rejected because of his convictions,” said the presiding election official in Lahore, Raja Qamaruzaman, Reuters news agency reported.
Mr. Sharif arrived in Islamabad today to meet with another former prime minister and opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto, to discuss a joint stance on the elections.
Mr. Sharif had called for a boycott of the elections in protest at the state of emergency imposed by Mr. Musharraf on Nov. 3, when Mr. Musharraf suspended the Constitution and dismissed the Supreme Court.
Yet a boycott without Ms. Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party would be largely ineffective. Ms. Bhutto has said that a boycott would just hand a victory to Mr. Musharraf and his supporters.
The emergency is still in place, but Mr. Musharraf last week announced that he would lift it on Dec. 16.
Mr. Sharif was ousted from power in 1999 when he ordered that Mr. Musharraf, who was returning from a trip to Sri Lanka, be dismissed and refused permission for his plane to land.
However, the army took control of the airports and allowed the plane to land. Mr. Sharif was arrested, imprisoned and convicted on corruption and hijacking charges and sentenced to life imprisonment.
A year later he was allowed to go into exile to Saudi Arabia but his sentences were never quashed.
Mr. Musharraf, who resigned from his military post as chief of the army and became a civilian president last week, allowed Mr. Sharif and his brother Shahbaz Sharif to return in time to contest the parliamentary elections. But both men have now been disqualified because of the outstanding court cases against them.
Both can appeal the election commission’s decision.
“This proves our point that without an independent judiciary there cannot be free and fair elections,” Ahsan Iqbal, Mr. Sharif’s spokesman, said.
»
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Sharif urges Bhutto to boycott vote
It is surprising that Musharraf let Sharif back into Pakistan. I wonder if he was pressured to do this by the US. I am not sure the US would be happy if Sharif actually won. The US would prefer Bhutto. Perhaps there will still be some understanding between Bhutto and Musharraf. Notice that Sharif is the one calling so strongly for re-instatement of the chief justice and others. He is right that the court is now stacked with Musharraf supporters. As with other leaders Sharif is saddled with corruption charges. Before he can run they must be dropped or ignored so he can probably run only if Musharraf thinks it is a good idea! Sharif is wise enough not to be too principled. If Bhutto decides to run he will also in spite of his denouncing of the election. These chaps sound very much like Western politicians.
Sharif urges Bhutto to boycott vote
(AFP)
27 November 2007
LAHORE, Islamabad - Pakistani ex-premier Nawaz Sharif called on Tuesday on rival opposition leader Benazir Bhutto to join his party in boycotting upcoming general elections.
Sharif, who returned home from exile Sunday, said he had been in telephone contact with Bhutto three or four times in the last few days as they consider their strategy against President Pervez Musharraf.
A Bhutto party aide earlier said the two had not spoken.
‘I shall try to convince Benazir Bhutto to boycott the polls,’ Sharif told reporters in his home city of Lahore, in eastern Pakistan, adding that he had already asked her to take a ‘firm stance’ against the vote.
He said Musharraf wanted to rig the January 8 polls in order to secure a sufficient majority in parliament that would indemnify him over his imposition of emergency rule and his sacking of many of the nation’s top judges.
Bhutto and Sharif, both two-time former premiers and now Pakistan’s main opposition leaders, are jockeying for position as they seek to lead a united front against Musharraf.
Sharif will preside a meeting Thursday of a broad coalition of opposition groups to decide whether they should boycott the polls, senior party leader Raja Zafarul Haq said.
Bhutto’s party, however—the largest opposition party in Pakistan—is not part of the alliance and is widely expected to take part in the vote.
Her spokesman Farhatullah Babar said Bhutto sent flowers to Sharif with a message welcoming him home Sunday.
But he said there had been no telephone contact, and that while Bhutto was ready to meet Sharif, nothing had been planned.
‘If they meet they will discuss how to make the elections free and fair or whether they should boycott the vote,’ Babar told AFP.
However a formal electoral alliance is out of the question, and observers believe neither will want to cede electoral advantage to the other.
Sharif has said he would be ready to boycott the elections if there is a consensus to do so—code for saying that if Bhutto takes part, so will he.
He is a religious conservative while Bhutto, a secular leader, is seen by the United States—anxious to preserve Pakistan’s role in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taleban—as pro-Western.
Sharif urges Bhutto to boycott vote
(AFP)
27 November 2007
LAHORE, Islamabad - Pakistani ex-premier Nawaz Sharif called on Tuesday on rival opposition leader Benazir Bhutto to join his party in boycotting upcoming general elections.
Sharif, who returned home from exile Sunday, said he had been in telephone contact with Bhutto three or four times in the last few days as they consider their strategy against President Pervez Musharraf.
A Bhutto party aide earlier said the two had not spoken.
‘I shall try to convince Benazir Bhutto to boycott the polls,’ Sharif told reporters in his home city of Lahore, in eastern Pakistan, adding that he had already asked her to take a ‘firm stance’ against the vote.
He said Musharraf wanted to rig the January 8 polls in order to secure a sufficient majority in parliament that would indemnify him over his imposition of emergency rule and his sacking of many of the nation’s top judges.
Bhutto and Sharif, both two-time former premiers and now Pakistan’s main opposition leaders, are jockeying for position as they seek to lead a united front against Musharraf.
Sharif will preside a meeting Thursday of a broad coalition of opposition groups to decide whether they should boycott the polls, senior party leader Raja Zafarul Haq said.
Bhutto’s party, however—the largest opposition party in Pakistan—is not part of the alliance and is widely expected to take part in the vote.
Her spokesman Farhatullah Babar said Bhutto sent flowers to Sharif with a message welcoming him home Sunday.
But he said there had been no telephone contact, and that while Bhutto was ready to meet Sharif, nothing had been planned.
‘If they meet they will discuss how to make the elections free and fair or whether they should boycott the vote,’ Babar told AFP.
However a formal electoral alliance is out of the question, and observers believe neither will want to cede electoral advantage to the other.
Sharif has said he would be ready to boycott the elections if there is a consensus to do so—code for saying that if Bhutto takes part, so will he.
He is a religious conservative while Bhutto, a secular leader, is seen by the United States—anxious to preserve Pakistan’s role in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taleban—as pro-Western.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
US trying to revive Musharraf-Bhutto deal
From interviews I have seen on TV with Bhutto she is adamantly opposed to any renewal of the agreement with Musharraf. Perhaps she thinks Musharraf is finished. He has left the door open. While other opposition leaders especially the lawyers languish in jail Bhutto is placed under house arrest but has daily press conferences which the jailbirds never have of course.
It is interesting that the US is intervening so clearly and transparently in the political process in Pakistan. This could kill Bhutto's chances of going anywhere but to the grave.
U.S. seen trying to revive Musharraf-Bhutto deal
Sat Nov 17, 2007 2:27 AM EST
By Simon Cameron-Moore
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - U.S. envoy John Negroponte met President Pervez Musharraf on Saturday to exert pressure on him to revoke two-week-old emergency rule and make peace with opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.
Fearful of undermining a crucial ally at a time when al Qaeda has regrouped in Pakistan's tribal lands, Deputy Secretary of State Negroponte was expected to try to revive a deal between Bhutto and Musharraf, despite the antipathy between their camps.
"The Americans are nervous about not having Musharraf in charge of Pakistan," an official in the Pakistani presidency said. "They were told that the situation is very, very fluid."
Soon after arriving in Islamabad Negroponte spoke by telephone with Bhutto in the eastern city of Lahore, where she was released after being held for three days under house arrest to stop her leading a protest.
Negroponte also met Tariq Aziz, Secretary of the National Security Council and a close aide of Musharraf, on Friday.
Consultations have also been held by telephone with U.S. National Security Advisor Steve Hadley, and the U.S. administration is anxious that anyone who replaced Musharraf would be unable to deliver as much support in the war against terrorism, the Pakistani official said.
While Musharraf has said a general election will be held before January 9 and he expects to step down as army chief and be sworn in as a civilian president beforehand, both Bhutto and the United States want more.
Musharraf is upset at the bad press he has been getting from the international and domestic media after resorting to emergency powers, despite his liberal, western-friendly leanings, and blamed judges and rivals for derailing the political process.
"Did I go mad? Or suddenly, my personality changed? Am I Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?" Musharraf asked the British Broadcasting Service in an interview.
On Saturday he persuaded the United Arab Emirates to block satellite channel Geo News, Pakistan's top Urdu-language independent news channel and broadcast from Dubai, because of its critical coverage.
"SPANNERS IN THE WORKS"
Negroponte is expected to push for the release of thousands of lawyers, opposition and rights activists and an end of emergency rule as a pre-requisite for a "free and fair" election.
On Friday, Musharraf swore in a caretaker government, made up of people seen as friendly to his allies in the Pakistan Muslim League (PML), after the National Assembly was dissolved following the completion of its five-year term a day earlier.
Bhutto doesn't trust Musharraf to let her Pakistan People's Party (PPP) get a clear run, and wants the Election Commissioner replaced and the caretaker government disbanded and replaced with a mutually agreed figures to oversee the run-up to polls.
Earlier this week she said Musharraf should quit, and ruled out any chance of serving as prime minister under his presidency, although the United States had earlier helped broker an understanding for them to share power following an election.
Speaking to America's Public Broadcasting Service television's "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," Bhutto said Negroponte should seek an orderly transition of power from Musharraf.
"I believe engaging with General Musharraf is just to set myself up for failure again," she said.
"He's not a bad man... He must think of Pakistan now and if it's in Pakistan's best interest, he must quit. If he doesn't, I'm afraid the instability will continue."
Musharraf's camp still wants the support of Bhutto's PPP, the opposition party with the strongest national support base.
But it is unclear whether it would go back to holding out the prospect of the PPP getting the post of prime minister.
While the president's side formerly had been willing to countenance a PPP prime minister, it had never committed to accepting Bhutto as prime minister.
She has alienated Musharraf and his political allies in the PML by going on the offensive as soon as he allowed her to return last month from eight years of living abroad without fear of prosecution in old corruption cases.
Sources in the presidency say that aside from accusing members of the establishment of conspiring to kill her and of being secretly allied to militant and Islamist forces, she had also sought to reach out to chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry.
Musharraf's decision to invoke an emergency on November3 was principally aimed at purging Supreme Court judges, including Chaudhry, before they could rule his October 6 re-election null and void because he contested while still army chief.
"The chief justice had thrown a spanner in the works, then Bhutto threw another spanner in," the Pakistani official said.
(Additional reporting by Sheree Sardar; Editing by David Fox)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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It is interesting that the US is intervening so clearly and transparently in the political process in Pakistan. This could kill Bhutto's chances of going anywhere but to the grave.
U.S. seen trying to revive Musharraf-Bhutto deal
Sat Nov 17, 2007 2:27 AM EST
By Simon Cameron-Moore
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - U.S. envoy John Negroponte met President Pervez Musharraf on Saturday to exert pressure on him to revoke two-week-old emergency rule and make peace with opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.
Fearful of undermining a crucial ally at a time when al Qaeda has regrouped in Pakistan's tribal lands, Deputy Secretary of State Negroponte was expected to try to revive a deal between Bhutto and Musharraf, despite the antipathy between their camps.
"The Americans are nervous about not having Musharraf in charge of Pakistan," an official in the Pakistani presidency said. "They were told that the situation is very, very fluid."
Soon after arriving in Islamabad Negroponte spoke by telephone with Bhutto in the eastern city of Lahore, where she was released after being held for three days under house arrest to stop her leading a protest.
Negroponte also met Tariq Aziz, Secretary of the National Security Council and a close aide of Musharraf, on Friday.
Consultations have also been held by telephone with U.S. National Security Advisor Steve Hadley, and the U.S. administration is anxious that anyone who replaced Musharraf would be unable to deliver as much support in the war against terrorism, the Pakistani official said.
While Musharraf has said a general election will be held before January 9 and he expects to step down as army chief and be sworn in as a civilian president beforehand, both Bhutto and the United States want more.
Musharraf is upset at the bad press he has been getting from the international and domestic media after resorting to emergency powers, despite his liberal, western-friendly leanings, and blamed judges and rivals for derailing the political process.
"Did I go mad? Or suddenly, my personality changed? Am I Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?" Musharraf asked the British Broadcasting Service in an interview.
On Saturday he persuaded the United Arab Emirates to block satellite channel Geo News, Pakistan's top Urdu-language independent news channel and broadcast from Dubai, because of its critical coverage.
"SPANNERS IN THE WORKS"
Negroponte is expected to push for the release of thousands of lawyers, opposition and rights activists and an end of emergency rule as a pre-requisite for a "free and fair" election.
On Friday, Musharraf swore in a caretaker government, made up of people seen as friendly to his allies in the Pakistan Muslim League (PML), after the National Assembly was dissolved following the completion of its five-year term a day earlier.
Bhutto doesn't trust Musharraf to let her Pakistan People's Party (PPP) get a clear run, and wants the Election Commissioner replaced and the caretaker government disbanded and replaced with a mutually agreed figures to oversee the run-up to polls.
Earlier this week she said Musharraf should quit, and ruled out any chance of serving as prime minister under his presidency, although the United States had earlier helped broker an understanding for them to share power following an election.
Speaking to America's Public Broadcasting Service television's "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," Bhutto said Negroponte should seek an orderly transition of power from Musharraf.
"I believe engaging with General Musharraf is just to set myself up for failure again," she said.
"He's not a bad man... He must think of Pakistan now and if it's in Pakistan's best interest, he must quit. If he doesn't, I'm afraid the instability will continue."
Musharraf's camp still wants the support of Bhutto's PPP, the opposition party with the strongest national support base.
But it is unclear whether it would go back to holding out the prospect of the PPP getting the post of prime minister.
While the president's side formerly had been willing to countenance a PPP prime minister, it had never committed to accepting Bhutto as prime minister.
She has alienated Musharraf and his political allies in the PML by going on the offensive as soon as he allowed her to return last month from eight years of living abroad without fear of prosecution in old corruption cases.
Sources in the presidency say that aside from accusing members of the establishment of conspiring to kill her and of being secretly allied to militant and Islamist forces, she had also sought to reach out to chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry.
Musharraf's decision to invoke an emergency on November3 was principally aimed at purging Supreme Court judges, including Chaudhry, before they could rule his October 6 re-election null and void because he contested while still army chief.
"The chief justice had thrown a spanner in the works, then Bhutto threw another spanner in," the Pakistani official said.
(Additional reporting by Sheree Sardar; Editing by David Fox)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Thursday, November 15, 2007
Aunt Benazir's False Promises
Much in the western media is very pro-Bhutto. The link between Bhutto and US policy in Pakistan and US involvement in arranging a deal between Musharaff and Bhutto is also downplayed. This article by a relative shows a side to Bhutto that is studiously ignored in the West by most mainstream media. The article is from this site.
Aunt Benazir's false promises
Bhutto's return bodes poorly for Pakistan -- and for democracy there.
By Fatima Bhutto
November 14, 2007
KARACHI — We Pakistanis live in uncertain times. Emergency rule has been imposed for the 13th time in our short 60-year history. Thousands of lawyers have been arrested, some charged with sedition and treason; the chief justice has been deposed; and a draconian media law -- shutting down all private news channels -- has been drafted.
Perhaps the most bizarre part of this circus has been the hijacking of the democratic cause by my aunt, the twice-disgraced former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto. While she was hashing out a deal to share power with Gen. Pervez Musharraf last month, she repeatedly insisted that without her, democracy in Pakistan would be a lost cause. Now that the situation has changed, she's saying that she wants Musharraf to step down and that she'd like to make a deal with his opponents -- but still, she says, she's the savior of democracy.
The reality, however, is that there is no one better placed to benefit from emergency rule than she is. Along with the leaders of prominent Islamic parties, she has been spared the violent retributions of emergency law. Yes, she now appears to be facing seven days of house arrest, but what does that really mean? While she was supposedly under house arrest at her Islamabad residence last week, 50 or so of her party members were comfortably allowed to join her. She addressed the media twice from her garden, protected by police given to her by the state, and was not reprimanded for holding a news conference. (By contrast, the very suggestion that they might hold a news conference has placed hundreds of other political activists under real arrest, in real jails.)
Ms. Bhutto's political posturing is sheer pantomime. Her negotiations with the military and her unseemly willingness until just a few days ago to take part in Musharraf's regime have signaled once and for all to the growing legions of fundamentalists across South Asia that democracy is just a guise for dictatorship.
It is widely believed that Ms. Bhutto lost both her governments on grounds of massive corruption. She and her husband, a man who came to be known in Pakistan as "Mr. 10%," have been accused of stealing more than $1 billion from Pakistan's treasury. She is appealing a money-laundering conviction by the Swiss courts involving about $11 million. Corruption cases in Britain and Spain are ongoing.
It was particularly unappealing of Ms. Bhutto to ask Musharraf to bypass the courts and drop the many corruption cases that still face her in Pakistan. He agreed, creating the odiously titled National Reconciliation Ordinance in order to do so. Her collaboration with him was so unsubtle that people on the streets are now calling her party, the Pakistan People's Party, the Pervez People's Party. Now she might like to distance herself, but it's too late.
Why did Ms. Bhutto and her party cronies demand that her corruption cases be dropped, but not demand that the cases of activists jailed during the brutal regime of dictator Zia ul-Haq (from 1977 to 1988) not be quashed? What about the sanctity of the law? When her brother Mir Murtaza Bhutto -- my father -- returned to Pakistan in 1993, he faced 99 cases against him that had been brought by Zia's military government. The cases all carried the death penalty. Yet even though his sister was serving as prime minister, he did not ask her to drop the cases. He returned, was arrested at the airport and spent the remaining years of his life clearing his name, legally and with confidence, in the courts of Pakistan.
Ms. Bhutto's repeated promises to end fundamentalism and terrorism in Pakistan strain credulity because, after all, the Taliban government that ran Afghanistan was recognized by Pakistan under her last government -- making Pakistan one of only three governments in the world to do so.
And I am suspicious of her talk of ensuring peace. My father was a member of Parliament and a vocal critic of his sister's politics. He was killed outside our home in 1996 in a carefully planned police assassination while she was prime minister. There were 70 to 100 policemen at the scene, all the streetlights had been shut off and the roads were cordoned off. Six men were killed with my father. They were shot at point-blank range, suffered multiple bullet wounds and were left to bleed on the streets.
My father was Benazir's younger brother. To this day, her role in his assassination has never been adequately answered, although the tribunal convened after his death under the leadership of three respected judges concluded that it could not have taken place without approval from a "much higher" political authority.
I have personal reasons to fear the danger that Ms. Bhutto's presence in Pakistan brings, but I am not alone. The Islamists are waiting at the gate. They have been waiting for confirmation that the reforms for which the Pakistani people have been struggling have been a farce, propped up by the White House. Since Musharraf seized power in 1999, there has been an earnest grass-roots movement for democratic reform. The last thing we need is to be tied to a neocon agenda through a puppet "democrat" like Ms. Bhutto.
By supporting Ms. Bhutto, who talks of democracy while asking to be brought to power by a military dictator, the only thing that will be accomplished is the death of the nascent secular democratic movement in my country. Democratization will forever be de-legitimized, and our progress in enacting true reforms will be quashed. We Pakistanis are certain of this.
Fatima Bhutto is a Pakistani poet and writer. She is the daughter of Mir Murtaza Bhutto, who was killed in 1996 in Karachi when his sister, Benazir, was prime minister.
Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Times
Aunt Benazir's false promises
Bhutto's return bodes poorly for Pakistan -- and for democracy there.
By Fatima Bhutto
November 14, 2007
KARACHI — We Pakistanis live in uncertain times. Emergency rule has been imposed for the 13th time in our short 60-year history. Thousands of lawyers have been arrested, some charged with sedition and treason; the chief justice has been deposed; and a draconian media law -- shutting down all private news channels -- has been drafted.
Perhaps the most bizarre part of this circus has been the hijacking of the democratic cause by my aunt, the twice-disgraced former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto. While she was hashing out a deal to share power with Gen. Pervez Musharraf last month, she repeatedly insisted that without her, democracy in Pakistan would be a lost cause. Now that the situation has changed, she's saying that she wants Musharraf to step down and that she'd like to make a deal with his opponents -- but still, she says, she's the savior of democracy.
The reality, however, is that there is no one better placed to benefit from emergency rule than she is. Along with the leaders of prominent Islamic parties, she has been spared the violent retributions of emergency law. Yes, she now appears to be facing seven days of house arrest, but what does that really mean? While she was supposedly under house arrest at her Islamabad residence last week, 50 or so of her party members were comfortably allowed to join her. She addressed the media twice from her garden, protected by police given to her by the state, and was not reprimanded for holding a news conference. (By contrast, the very suggestion that they might hold a news conference has placed hundreds of other political activists under real arrest, in real jails.)
Ms. Bhutto's political posturing is sheer pantomime. Her negotiations with the military and her unseemly willingness until just a few days ago to take part in Musharraf's regime have signaled once and for all to the growing legions of fundamentalists across South Asia that democracy is just a guise for dictatorship.
It is widely believed that Ms. Bhutto lost both her governments on grounds of massive corruption. She and her husband, a man who came to be known in Pakistan as "Mr. 10%," have been accused of stealing more than $1 billion from Pakistan's treasury. She is appealing a money-laundering conviction by the Swiss courts involving about $11 million. Corruption cases in Britain and Spain are ongoing.
It was particularly unappealing of Ms. Bhutto to ask Musharraf to bypass the courts and drop the many corruption cases that still face her in Pakistan. He agreed, creating the odiously titled National Reconciliation Ordinance in order to do so. Her collaboration with him was so unsubtle that people on the streets are now calling her party, the Pakistan People's Party, the Pervez People's Party. Now she might like to distance herself, but it's too late.
Why did Ms. Bhutto and her party cronies demand that her corruption cases be dropped, but not demand that the cases of activists jailed during the brutal regime of dictator Zia ul-Haq (from 1977 to 1988) not be quashed? What about the sanctity of the law? When her brother Mir Murtaza Bhutto -- my father -- returned to Pakistan in 1993, he faced 99 cases against him that had been brought by Zia's military government. The cases all carried the death penalty. Yet even though his sister was serving as prime minister, he did not ask her to drop the cases. He returned, was arrested at the airport and spent the remaining years of his life clearing his name, legally and with confidence, in the courts of Pakistan.
Ms. Bhutto's repeated promises to end fundamentalism and terrorism in Pakistan strain credulity because, after all, the Taliban government that ran Afghanistan was recognized by Pakistan under her last government -- making Pakistan one of only three governments in the world to do so.
And I am suspicious of her talk of ensuring peace. My father was a member of Parliament and a vocal critic of his sister's politics. He was killed outside our home in 1996 in a carefully planned police assassination while she was prime minister. There were 70 to 100 policemen at the scene, all the streetlights had been shut off and the roads were cordoned off. Six men were killed with my father. They were shot at point-blank range, suffered multiple bullet wounds and were left to bleed on the streets.
My father was Benazir's younger brother. To this day, her role in his assassination has never been adequately answered, although the tribunal convened after his death under the leadership of three respected judges concluded that it could not have taken place without approval from a "much higher" political authority.
I have personal reasons to fear the danger that Ms. Bhutto's presence in Pakistan brings, but I am not alone. The Islamists are waiting at the gate. They have been waiting for confirmation that the reforms for which the Pakistani people have been struggling have been a farce, propped up by the White House. Since Musharraf seized power in 1999, there has been an earnest grass-roots movement for democratic reform. The last thing we need is to be tied to a neocon agenda through a puppet "democrat" like Ms. Bhutto.
By supporting Ms. Bhutto, who talks of democracy while asking to be brought to power by a military dictator, the only thing that will be accomplished is the death of the nascent secular democratic movement in my country. Democratization will forever be de-legitimized, and our progress in enacting true reforms will be quashed. We Pakistanis are certain of this.
Fatima Bhutto is a Pakistani poet and writer. She is the daughter of Mir Murtaza Bhutto, who was killed in 1996 in Karachi when his sister, Benazir, was prime minister.
Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Times
Monday, November 12, 2007
Musharraf's Gambit
This is from the Star.
Bhutto may actually be fortunate if Musharraf manages to stop her protest march. Any mass gathering will be a perfect target for Islamic extremists (and others) who want Bhutto dead. Maybe Bhutto is counting on being stopped. She may end up with another deal with Musharraf yet. Other opposition parties are not buying
the elections under emergency rule and the lawyers of course want the chief justice and others in their suits and ties to be released! Strange to see a whole street full of mostly men in suits shirts and ties being rounded up and roughed up by police.
Musharraf’s gambit
LAHORE, Pakistan–Chanting supporters welcomed Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto to the city of Lahore yesterday, ahead of a mass protest she plans against President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's emergency rule.
Waving the black, red and green flags of her Pakistan People's Party, hundreds of activists shouted "Benazir Prime Minister!" and "Long live Bhutto," thrusting their arms in the air and making V for victory signs.
Bhutto intends to lead a procession of marchers and vehicles to Islamabad tomorrow to demand Musharraf quit as army chief, end the emergency rule he imposed Nov. 3, restore the constitution and free thousands of detained lawyers and foes.
Police have vowed to block the protest, just as they stifled a planned rally in the city of Rawalpindi on Friday – when Bhutto was held under house arrest for most of the day.
"I am here for democracy," the former prime minister said on arrival at Lahore airport, where several hundred party activists and supporters managed to negotiate their way past barricades manned by police in riot vests wielding batons and shields.
Bhutto said she welcomed Musharraf's announcement yesterday that elections would be held Jan. 9, but it wasn't enough.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reuters News Agency
Nov 12, 2007 04:30 AM
Mitch Potter
TORONTO STAR
ISLAMABAD–It is a Pakistani crisis featuring Pakistani politicians, all of whom are angling to harden their hold on the reins of this volatile, nuclear-armed nation in a way that will not provoke the Pakistani people to rise up against them.
Why then, when beleaguered President Gen. Pervez Musharraf finally broke silence yesterday on the emergency rule he imposed eight days before – and to announce elections in January – did he explain his behaviour entirely in English?
One theory holds that if the president had chosen his native Urdu tongue, his words would have ebbed away like the sound of one hand clapping, given that so much of the Pakistani media have been silenced by Musharraf's crackdown there is now little left to convey them.
The truth, foreign diplomats here say, is not quite so deliciously ironic. After a weeklong drubbing in the global media, Musharraf pushed back against his critics over the heads of the Pakistani people with a message carefully calculated to quell the world's worry.
"I found myself between a rock and a hard surface," Musharraf said, caught between the choice "to preserve this nation, to safeguard it and to risk myself, or to let it go, hoping that the nation may improve later in the turmoil that one leaves."
But some observers say what is most telling isn't simply Musharraf's choice of words.
"The fact that his first public address since the imposition of emergency rule was given in English to a room full of foreign media says it all, really," one Western diplomatic source told the Toronto Star last night.
"You would think the average Pakistani would be quite incensed. Nevertheless, the meaning is clear. Musharraf has calculated – perhaps incorrectly – that his biggest worry is the external crisis, the international pressure. He has calculated that he still will be able to manage the internal crisis, so long as he retains two critical ingredients – the support of his army and the support of the American government."
Musharraf's headline announcement – a pledge to hold parliamentary elections by Jan. 9 – won warm welcome abroad, but only lukewarm praise within.
Opposition leader and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto said the promise fell short, given the president's refusal to set a date for the repeal of emergency rule, restoration of the constitution and the reinstatement of deposed judges.
"It is not correct to say these steps defuse the situation," she said last night in Lahore, where she renewed a vow to lead a 300-kilometre protest march to the capital Islamabad tomorrow in what is expected to be a full mobilization of her Pakistan People's Party faithful.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was heartened by the election promise, but acknowledged the need for more concessions from Musharraf.
"It's not a perfect situation and nobody would suggest that it is," Rice told reporters in Washington.
"Obviously we are encouraging that the state of emergency has got to be lifted, and lifted as soon as possible."
The United States, which values Musharraf as an ally in its war on terror, has been increasing pressure on Musharraf to quit the army and become a civilian leader.
Pakistani journalist and author Zahid Hussein characterized Musharraf's address as "a move forward, no doubt. Finally the ambiguity is gone and we have a clear deadline for elections, which at least will defuse much of the international outcry.
"But when he turns around and looks back at Pakistan, he still has multiple crises on his hands rather than just a single crisis. Beneath this open-ended state of emergency, there is the growing militancy on the northern frontier with terrorists expanding their base of control. And on the other side, the opposition parties who simply will not accept the terms he described," said Hussein, author of the recently published Frontline Pakistan: The Struggle With Militant Islam.
"I think Musharraf's camp estimates that once these elections get going, they will serve as a distraction to all the other very difficult problems. I'm not sure they are right. And the other question is how can fair elections happen under emergency rule?"
During his news briefing, Musharraf, who seized power in a coup in 1999, said he would order the release of detained opposition party members for the upcoming elections, adding that international observers would be invited to "ensure absolutely fair and transparent elections.
He also insisted the state of emergency was necessary.
"Certainly, the emergency is required to ensure peace in Pakistan, to ensure an environment conducive for elections," Musharraf said.
"It was the most difficult decision I have ever taken in my life," he told the news conference.
"I could have preserved myself, but then it would have damaged the nation ... I have no personal ego and ambitions to guard. I have the national interest foremost."
The Pakistani government says 2,500 people have been detained during the emergency.
Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, however, insists more than 5,000 of its activists have been rounded up.
Musharraf refused to set a time limit for the state of emergency, claiming it was essential for fighting terrorism and ensuring a free and fair vote.
"The emergency contributes towards better law and order and a better fight against terrorism, and, therefore, all I can say is I do understand the emergency has to be lifted, but I cannot give a date for it," he said.
Musharraf, who addressed the news conference wearing a dark blue blazer instead of his military uniform, was exceptionally obstinate on the question of restoring the deposed Supreme Court, which had been expected to challenge his victory in Oct. 6 presidential elections when it was dismissed.
A newly formed court is expected to take up the question and validate Musharraf's re-election as president. He declared yesterday he would then give up his uniform.
Bhutto may actually be fortunate if Musharraf manages to stop her protest march. Any mass gathering will be a perfect target for Islamic extremists (and others) who want Bhutto dead. Maybe Bhutto is counting on being stopped. She may end up with another deal with Musharraf yet. Other opposition parties are not buying
the elections under emergency rule and the lawyers of course want the chief justice and others in their suits and ties to be released! Strange to see a whole street full of mostly men in suits shirts and ties being rounded up and roughed up by police.
Musharraf’s gambit
LAHORE, Pakistan–Chanting supporters welcomed Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto to the city of Lahore yesterday, ahead of a mass protest she plans against President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's emergency rule.
Waving the black, red and green flags of her Pakistan People's Party, hundreds of activists shouted "Benazir Prime Minister!" and "Long live Bhutto," thrusting their arms in the air and making V for victory signs.
Bhutto intends to lead a procession of marchers and vehicles to Islamabad tomorrow to demand Musharraf quit as army chief, end the emergency rule he imposed Nov. 3, restore the constitution and free thousands of detained lawyers and foes.
Police have vowed to block the protest, just as they stifled a planned rally in the city of Rawalpindi on Friday – when Bhutto was held under house arrest for most of the day.
"I am here for democracy," the former prime minister said on arrival at Lahore airport, where several hundred party activists and supporters managed to negotiate their way past barricades manned by police in riot vests wielding batons and shields.
Bhutto said she welcomed Musharraf's announcement yesterday that elections would be held Jan. 9, but it wasn't enough.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reuters News Agency
Nov 12, 2007 04:30 AM
Mitch Potter
TORONTO STAR
ISLAMABAD–It is a Pakistani crisis featuring Pakistani politicians, all of whom are angling to harden their hold on the reins of this volatile, nuclear-armed nation in a way that will not provoke the Pakistani people to rise up against them.
Why then, when beleaguered President Gen. Pervez Musharraf finally broke silence yesterday on the emergency rule he imposed eight days before – and to announce elections in January – did he explain his behaviour entirely in English?
One theory holds that if the president had chosen his native Urdu tongue, his words would have ebbed away like the sound of one hand clapping, given that so much of the Pakistani media have been silenced by Musharraf's crackdown there is now little left to convey them.
The truth, foreign diplomats here say, is not quite so deliciously ironic. After a weeklong drubbing in the global media, Musharraf pushed back against his critics over the heads of the Pakistani people with a message carefully calculated to quell the world's worry.
"I found myself between a rock and a hard surface," Musharraf said, caught between the choice "to preserve this nation, to safeguard it and to risk myself, or to let it go, hoping that the nation may improve later in the turmoil that one leaves."
But some observers say what is most telling isn't simply Musharraf's choice of words.
"The fact that his first public address since the imposition of emergency rule was given in English to a room full of foreign media says it all, really," one Western diplomatic source told the Toronto Star last night.
"You would think the average Pakistani would be quite incensed. Nevertheless, the meaning is clear. Musharraf has calculated – perhaps incorrectly – that his biggest worry is the external crisis, the international pressure. He has calculated that he still will be able to manage the internal crisis, so long as he retains two critical ingredients – the support of his army and the support of the American government."
Musharraf's headline announcement – a pledge to hold parliamentary elections by Jan. 9 – won warm welcome abroad, but only lukewarm praise within.
Opposition leader and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto said the promise fell short, given the president's refusal to set a date for the repeal of emergency rule, restoration of the constitution and the reinstatement of deposed judges.
"It is not correct to say these steps defuse the situation," she said last night in Lahore, where she renewed a vow to lead a 300-kilometre protest march to the capital Islamabad tomorrow in what is expected to be a full mobilization of her Pakistan People's Party faithful.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was heartened by the election promise, but acknowledged the need for more concessions from Musharraf.
"It's not a perfect situation and nobody would suggest that it is," Rice told reporters in Washington.
"Obviously we are encouraging that the state of emergency has got to be lifted, and lifted as soon as possible."
The United States, which values Musharraf as an ally in its war on terror, has been increasing pressure on Musharraf to quit the army and become a civilian leader.
Pakistani journalist and author Zahid Hussein characterized Musharraf's address as "a move forward, no doubt. Finally the ambiguity is gone and we have a clear deadline for elections, which at least will defuse much of the international outcry.
"But when he turns around and looks back at Pakistan, he still has multiple crises on his hands rather than just a single crisis. Beneath this open-ended state of emergency, there is the growing militancy on the northern frontier with terrorists expanding their base of control. And on the other side, the opposition parties who simply will not accept the terms he described," said Hussein, author of the recently published Frontline Pakistan: The Struggle With Militant Islam.
"I think Musharraf's camp estimates that once these elections get going, they will serve as a distraction to all the other very difficult problems. I'm not sure they are right. And the other question is how can fair elections happen under emergency rule?"
During his news briefing, Musharraf, who seized power in a coup in 1999, said he would order the release of detained opposition party members for the upcoming elections, adding that international observers would be invited to "ensure absolutely fair and transparent elections.
He also insisted the state of emergency was necessary.
"Certainly, the emergency is required to ensure peace in Pakistan, to ensure an environment conducive for elections," Musharraf said.
"It was the most difficult decision I have ever taken in my life," he told the news conference.
"I could have preserved myself, but then it would have damaged the nation ... I have no personal ego and ambitions to guard. I have the national interest foremost."
The Pakistani government says 2,500 people have been detained during the emergency.
Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, however, insists more than 5,000 of its activists have been rounded up.
Musharraf refused to set a time limit for the state of emergency, claiming it was essential for fighting terrorism and ensuring a free and fair vote.
"The emergency contributes towards better law and order and a better fight against terrorism, and, therefore, all I can say is I do understand the emergency has to be lifted, but I cannot give a date for it," he said.
Musharraf, who addressed the news conference wearing a dark blue blazer instead of his military uniform, was exceptionally obstinate on the question of restoring the deposed Supreme Court, which had been expected to challenge his victory in Oct. 6 presidential elections when it was dismissed.
A newly formed court is expected to take up the question and validate Musharraf's re-election as president. He declared yesterday he would then give up his uniform.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Bhutto's persona raises distrust, as well as hope.
This is from the NY Times. This a bit unusual for a prominent Western mainstream news outlet. Usually articles are very much pro-Bhutto. One thing you cannot fault her with and that is lacking courage. In fact if anything she is lacking in caution. Musharaff is not just making up the fact that she may face suicide attacks against her and her supporters.
Bhutto’s Persona Raises Distrust, as Well as Hope
David Guttenfelder/Associated Press
The Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, above, climbed into her vehicle after joining a protest Saturday in Islamabad.
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By JANE PERLEZ
Published: November 11, 2007
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 10 — A day after she was barricaded in her home, surrounded by police officers and barbed wire, the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was quickly back to a world to which she is more accustomed on Saturday.
Skip to next paragraph
Related
Closely Watched, Bhutto Is Allowed to Move (November 11, 2007)
Times Topics:
Pakistan
Benazir Bhutto
By the evening Ms. Bhutto was guest of honor at a high-flying diplomatic reception in the Parliament building here, greeting ambassadors and exchanging nods before television cameras, even as anxieties about the future of Pakistan, now entering its second week of de facto martial law, intensified at home and abroad.
If the sudden turnabout seemed incongruous with the troubles that have befallen her nation, it was telling of just how fluid the crisis here remains — and of how easily Ms. Bhutto moves from rallying her supporters on the streets to soaking up the trappings of power and ceremony with which she has long been familiar.
Such paradoxes have only added to the skepticism that swirls around her here, less than a month after her return from eight years in exile to avoid corruption charges. And it has added to the speculation that, tense as the situation remains, she and her old nemesis, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, may yet have enough ambition in common to run Pakistan together.
Ms. Bhutto, 54, returned to Pakistan to present herself as the answer to the nation’s troubles: a tribune of democracy in a state that has been under military rule for eight years, and the leader of the country’s largest opposition political party, founded by her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, one of Pakistan’s most flamboyant and democratically inclined prime ministers.
But her record in power, and the dance of veils she has deftly performed since her return — one moment standing up to General Musharraf, then next seeming to accommodate him, and never quite revealing her actual intentions — has stirred as much distrust as hope among Pakistanis.
A graduate of Harvard and Oxford, she brings the backing of Washington and London, where she impresses with her political lineage, her considerable charm and her persona as a female Muslim leader.
But with these accomplishments, Ms. Bhutto also brings controversy, and a legacy among Pakistanis as a polarizing figure who during her two turbulent tenures as prime minister, first from 1988 to 1990 and again from 1993 to 1996, often acted imperiously and impulsively.
She also faces deep questions about her personal probity in public office, which have resulted in corruption cases against her in Switzerland, Spain and Britain, as well as in Pakistan.
Ms. Bhutto has long seen herself as the inheritor of her father’s mantle, her colleagues say, and she has talked often about how he encouraged her to study the lives of legendary female leaders ranging from Indira Gandhi to Joan of Arc.
Following the idea of big ambition, Ms. Bhutto calls herself chairperson for life of the opposition Pakistan Peoples Party, a seemingly odd title in an organization based on democratic ideals and one she has acknowledged quarreling over with her mother, Nusrat Bhutto, in the early 1990s.
Saturday night at the diplomatic reception, Ms. Bhutto showed how she could aggrandize. Three million people came out to greet her in Karachi on her return last month, she said, calling it Pakistan’s “most historic” rally. In fact, crowd estimates were closer to 200,000, many of them provincial party members who had received small amounts of money to make the trip.
It is such flourishes that lead to questioning in Pakistan about the strength of her democratic ideals in practice, and a certain distrust, particularly amid signs of back-room deal-making with General Musharraf, the military ruler she is said to oppose.
“She believes she is the chosen one, that she is the daughter of Bhutto and everything else is secondary,” said Feisal Naqvi, a corporate lawyer in Lahore who knows Ms. Bhutto.
When Ms. Bhutto was re-elected to a second term as Prime Minister, her style of government combined both the traditional and the modern, said Zafar Rathore, a senior civil servant at the time.
But her view of the role of government differed little from the classic notion in Pakistan that the state was the preserve of the ruler who dished out favors to constituents and colleagues, he recalled.
As secretary of interior, responsible for the Pakistani police force, Mr. Rathore, who is now retired, said he tried to get an appointment with Ms. Bhutto to explain the need for accountability in the force. He was always rebuffed, he said.
Finally, when he was seated next to her in a small meeting, he said to her, “I’ve been waiting to see you,” he recounted. “Instantaneously, she said: ‘I am very busy, what do you want. I’ll order it right now.’“
She could not understand that a civil servant might want to talk about policies, he said. Instead, he said, “she understood that when all civil servants have access to the sovereign, they want to ask for something.”
Today Ms. Bhutto still rules the party with an iron hand, jealously guarding her position, even while leading the party in absentia for nearly a decade.
While Ms. Bhutto has managed to maintain much of her freedom of movement this week, her biggest rival in the party, Aitzaz Ahsan, the leader of the lawyers’ movement against General Musharraf, was jailed on the first night of the emergency rule.
Mr. Ahsan is a Cambridge University-educated lawyer who served in her father’s cabinet, and then hers, and he defended Ms. Bhutto in a series of corruption cases in the early 1990s.
But in an illustration of Ms. Bhutto’s attitude to competition, he was quickly frozen out by Ms. Bhutto after he was introduced around Washington last year as a possible counterbalance to General Musharraf, senior members of the party said.
Mr. Ahsan’s wife, Bushra Ahsan, said Ms. Bhutto, a frequent e-mailer who is addicted to her Blackberry, failed to congratulate her husband when he won the case to reinstate the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, in July.
Both men have spearheaded the resistance to General Musharraf’s military rule this year at great personal risk.
When Mr. Ahsan won election as the leader of the Supreme Court Bar Association this month, again he heard nothing from Ms. Bhutto, Ms. Ahsan said. “She has not shown any approval of my husband,” Ms. Ahsan said.
Members of her party who have rallied around Ms. Bhutto on her return argue that she has attributes in Pakistan’s sparse political landscape that make her the best choice against General Musharraf. Chief among them, they say, is sheer determination.
“I’ve tried to suggest to her that Musharraf is not willing to share power,” said Syeda Abida Hussain, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington. “If he can dodge the world, why can’t he dodge you?” Ms. Hussain said she asked Ms. Bhutto.
But in returning to Pakistan, Ms. Bhutto believed that it was possible to join General Musharraf in some kind of transition to democracy, she said.
Of Ms. Bhutto’s personal qualities, Ms. Hussain said: “I see her as a vulnerable, hurt person. She’s a chilly, imperial person. She’s firm.”
In the last few months, as she has prepared her comeback, Ms. Bhutto has attended a swirl of public and private events, including a black-tie dinner for 150 at the Royal Air Force Club in London, and she has sought to bring her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, back into the public fold.
Ms. Bhutto’s marriage to Mr. Zardari was arranged by her mother, a fact that Ms. Bhutto has often said was easily explained, even for a modern, highly educated Pakistani woman.
To be acceptable to the Pakistani public as a politician she could not be a single woman, and what was the difference, she has asked, between such a marriage and computer dating?
Ms. Hussain, the former ambassador, described Mr. Zardari as “a warm-hearted fool,” who lacked Ms. Bhutto’s education. He is known for his love of polo and other perquisites of the good life like fine clothes, expensive restaurants, homes in Dubai and London, and an apartment in New York.
He was minister of investment in Ms. Bhutto’s second government. And it was from that perch that he made many of the deals that have haunted the couple in the courts, said a former prosecutor general at the National Accountability Court, Farooq Adam Khan, who in 2000 headed the body set up to investigate corruption among public officials.
In an interview, he said the court believed the couple had illegally taken $1.5 billion from the state. It is a figure that Ms. Bhutto has vigorously contested.
Indeed, one of Ms. Bhutto’s main objectives in seeking to return to power is to restore the reputation of her husband, who was jailed for eight years in Pakistan, said Abdullah Riar, a former senator in the Pakistani Parliament and a former colleague of Ms. Bhutto’s.
“She told me, ‘Time will prove he is the Nelson Mandela of Pakistan,’” Mr. Riar said.
One of Ms. Bhutto’s informal advisers is a longtime friend, Peter W. Galbraith, a former senior staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a former American ambassador to Croatia.
Mr. Galbraith said he and Ms. Bhutto believed they first met in 1962 when they were children: he the son of John Kenneth Galbraith, the American ambassador to India; she the daughter of the future Pakistani prime minister. Mr. Galbraith’s father was accompanying Jacqueline Kennedy to a horse show in Lahore.
They met again at Harvard, where Mr. Galbraith remembers Ms. Bhutto arriving as a prim 16-year-old fresh from a Karachi convent who liked to bake cakes.
Cohabitation — with Ms. Bhutto as prime minister and General Musharraf as president — made a lot of sense for Ms. Bhutto and the Bush administration before last week, Mr. Galbraith said.
As prime minister, Ms. Bhutto would not be able to control the military, the institution that mattered most in Pakistan, he said. But she would confer legitimacy to a government that has seen its authority steadily erode under General Musharraf.
By this weekend, with General Musharraf giving little sign of when he would let up on his emergency powers, Ms. Bhutto was straddling a fine line, Mr. Galbraith said.
“Now,” he said, “Benazir can only cohabit with him at great cost to her legitimacy.”
Bhutto’s Persona Raises Distrust, as Well as Hope
David Guttenfelder/Associated Press
The Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, above, climbed into her vehicle after joining a protest Saturday in Islamabad.
Sign In to E-Mail or Save This Print Reprints Share
Del.icio.usDiggFacebookNewsvinePermalink
By JANE PERLEZ
Published: November 11, 2007
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 10 — A day after she was barricaded in her home, surrounded by police officers and barbed wire, the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was quickly back to a world to which she is more accustomed on Saturday.
Skip to next paragraph
Related
Closely Watched, Bhutto Is Allowed to Move (November 11, 2007)
Times Topics:
Pakistan
Benazir Bhutto
By the evening Ms. Bhutto was guest of honor at a high-flying diplomatic reception in the Parliament building here, greeting ambassadors and exchanging nods before television cameras, even as anxieties about the future of Pakistan, now entering its second week of de facto martial law, intensified at home and abroad.
If the sudden turnabout seemed incongruous with the troubles that have befallen her nation, it was telling of just how fluid the crisis here remains — and of how easily Ms. Bhutto moves from rallying her supporters on the streets to soaking up the trappings of power and ceremony with which she has long been familiar.
Such paradoxes have only added to the skepticism that swirls around her here, less than a month after her return from eight years in exile to avoid corruption charges. And it has added to the speculation that, tense as the situation remains, she and her old nemesis, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, may yet have enough ambition in common to run Pakistan together.
Ms. Bhutto, 54, returned to Pakistan to present herself as the answer to the nation’s troubles: a tribune of democracy in a state that has been under military rule for eight years, and the leader of the country’s largest opposition political party, founded by her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, one of Pakistan’s most flamboyant and democratically inclined prime ministers.
But her record in power, and the dance of veils she has deftly performed since her return — one moment standing up to General Musharraf, then next seeming to accommodate him, and never quite revealing her actual intentions — has stirred as much distrust as hope among Pakistanis.
A graduate of Harvard and Oxford, she brings the backing of Washington and London, where she impresses with her political lineage, her considerable charm and her persona as a female Muslim leader.
But with these accomplishments, Ms. Bhutto also brings controversy, and a legacy among Pakistanis as a polarizing figure who during her two turbulent tenures as prime minister, first from 1988 to 1990 and again from 1993 to 1996, often acted imperiously and impulsively.
She also faces deep questions about her personal probity in public office, which have resulted in corruption cases against her in Switzerland, Spain and Britain, as well as in Pakistan.
Ms. Bhutto has long seen herself as the inheritor of her father’s mantle, her colleagues say, and she has talked often about how he encouraged her to study the lives of legendary female leaders ranging from Indira Gandhi to Joan of Arc.
Following the idea of big ambition, Ms. Bhutto calls herself chairperson for life of the opposition Pakistan Peoples Party, a seemingly odd title in an organization based on democratic ideals and one she has acknowledged quarreling over with her mother, Nusrat Bhutto, in the early 1990s.
Saturday night at the diplomatic reception, Ms. Bhutto showed how she could aggrandize. Three million people came out to greet her in Karachi on her return last month, she said, calling it Pakistan’s “most historic” rally. In fact, crowd estimates were closer to 200,000, many of them provincial party members who had received small amounts of money to make the trip.
It is such flourishes that lead to questioning in Pakistan about the strength of her democratic ideals in practice, and a certain distrust, particularly amid signs of back-room deal-making with General Musharraf, the military ruler she is said to oppose.
“She believes she is the chosen one, that she is the daughter of Bhutto and everything else is secondary,” said Feisal Naqvi, a corporate lawyer in Lahore who knows Ms. Bhutto.
When Ms. Bhutto was re-elected to a second term as Prime Minister, her style of government combined both the traditional and the modern, said Zafar Rathore, a senior civil servant at the time.
But her view of the role of government differed little from the classic notion in Pakistan that the state was the preserve of the ruler who dished out favors to constituents and colleagues, he recalled.
As secretary of interior, responsible for the Pakistani police force, Mr. Rathore, who is now retired, said he tried to get an appointment with Ms. Bhutto to explain the need for accountability in the force. He was always rebuffed, he said.
Finally, when he was seated next to her in a small meeting, he said to her, “I’ve been waiting to see you,” he recounted. “Instantaneously, she said: ‘I am very busy, what do you want. I’ll order it right now.’“
She could not understand that a civil servant might want to talk about policies, he said. Instead, he said, “she understood that when all civil servants have access to the sovereign, they want to ask for something.”
Today Ms. Bhutto still rules the party with an iron hand, jealously guarding her position, even while leading the party in absentia for nearly a decade.
While Ms. Bhutto has managed to maintain much of her freedom of movement this week, her biggest rival in the party, Aitzaz Ahsan, the leader of the lawyers’ movement against General Musharraf, was jailed on the first night of the emergency rule.
Mr. Ahsan is a Cambridge University-educated lawyer who served in her father’s cabinet, and then hers, and he defended Ms. Bhutto in a series of corruption cases in the early 1990s.
But in an illustration of Ms. Bhutto’s attitude to competition, he was quickly frozen out by Ms. Bhutto after he was introduced around Washington last year as a possible counterbalance to General Musharraf, senior members of the party said.
Mr. Ahsan’s wife, Bushra Ahsan, said Ms. Bhutto, a frequent e-mailer who is addicted to her Blackberry, failed to congratulate her husband when he won the case to reinstate the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, in July.
Both men have spearheaded the resistance to General Musharraf’s military rule this year at great personal risk.
When Mr. Ahsan won election as the leader of the Supreme Court Bar Association this month, again he heard nothing from Ms. Bhutto, Ms. Ahsan said. “She has not shown any approval of my husband,” Ms. Ahsan said.
Members of her party who have rallied around Ms. Bhutto on her return argue that she has attributes in Pakistan’s sparse political landscape that make her the best choice against General Musharraf. Chief among them, they say, is sheer determination.
“I’ve tried to suggest to her that Musharraf is not willing to share power,” said Syeda Abida Hussain, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington. “If he can dodge the world, why can’t he dodge you?” Ms. Hussain said she asked Ms. Bhutto.
But in returning to Pakistan, Ms. Bhutto believed that it was possible to join General Musharraf in some kind of transition to democracy, she said.
Of Ms. Bhutto’s personal qualities, Ms. Hussain said: “I see her as a vulnerable, hurt person. She’s a chilly, imperial person. She’s firm.”
In the last few months, as she has prepared her comeback, Ms. Bhutto has attended a swirl of public and private events, including a black-tie dinner for 150 at the Royal Air Force Club in London, and she has sought to bring her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, back into the public fold.
Ms. Bhutto’s marriage to Mr. Zardari was arranged by her mother, a fact that Ms. Bhutto has often said was easily explained, even for a modern, highly educated Pakistani woman.
To be acceptable to the Pakistani public as a politician she could not be a single woman, and what was the difference, she has asked, between such a marriage and computer dating?
Ms. Hussain, the former ambassador, described Mr. Zardari as “a warm-hearted fool,” who lacked Ms. Bhutto’s education. He is known for his love of polo and other perquisites of the good life like fine clothes, expensive restaurants, homes in Dubai and London, and an apartment in New York.
He was minister of investment in Ms. Bhutto’s second government. And it was from that perch that he made many of the deals that have haunted the couple in the courts, said a former prosecutor general at the National Accountability Court, Farooq Adam Khan, who in 2000 headed the body set up to investigate corruption among public officials.
In an interview, he said the court believed the couple had illegally taken $1.5 billion from the state. It is a figure that Ms. Bhutto has vigorously contested.
Indeed, one of Ms. Bhutto’s main objectives in seeking to return to power is to restore the reputation of her husband, who was jailed for eight years in Pakistan, said Abdullah Riar, a former senator in the Pakistani Parliament and a former colleague of Ms. Bhutto’s.
“She told me, ‘Time will prove he is the Nelson Mandela of Pakistan,’” Mr. Riar said.
One of Ms. Bhutto’s informal advisers is a longtime friend, Peter W. Galbraith, a former senior staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a former American ambassador to Croatia.
Mr. Galbraith said he and Ms. Bhutto believed they first met in 1962 when they were children: he the son of John Kenneth Galbraith, the American ambassador to India; she the daughter of the future Pakistani prime minister. Mr. Galbraith’s father was accompanying Jacqueline Kennedy to a horse show in Lahore.
They met again at Harvard, where Mr. Galbraith remembers Ms. Bhutto arriving as a prim 16-year-old fresh from a Karachi convent who liked to bake cakes.
Cohabitation — with Ms. Bhutto as prime minister and General Musharraf as president — made a lot of sense for Ms. Bhutto and the Bush administration before last week, Mr. Galbraith said.
As prime minister, Ms. Bhutto would not be able to control the military, the institution that mattered most in Pakistan, he said. But she would confer legitimacy to a government that has seen its authority steadily erode under General Musharraf.
By this weekend, with General Musharraf giving little sign of when he would let up on his emergency powers, Ms. Bhutto was straddling a fine line, Mr. Galbraith said.
“Now,” he said, “Benazir can only cohabit with him at great cost to her legitimacy.”
Friday, November 9, 2007
Bhutto placed under house arrest
The story is at MSNBC. among other places. Apparently Bhutto has decided not to deal with Musharaff for the present. I am surprised that Musharaff ever let her fly back in to Pakistan twice. He must have been counting on some sort of deal with her but her decision to join demonstrations has quashed that for now. Bhutto tried to leave her house earlier but was blocked.
The US is a strong backer of Bhutto because she is keen on attacking the tribal zones. I would not be surprised if she is assasinated soon not only the Islamists but many within the military and intelligence service oppose her.
The US is a strong backer of Bhutto because she is keen on attacking the tribal zones. I would not be surprised if she is assasinated soon not only the Islamists but many within the military and intelligence service oppose her.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Bhutto visits Dubai as Musharraf ruling looms
One just wonders what is going on. Is Bhutto getting out while the getting is good?
If the court rules against Musharraf he is not likely to accept it but could declare a state of emergency. Having been almost assasinated perhaps Bhutto has decided that perhaps discretion is the better part of valor and that she should wait and see what happens before entering the hornet's nest of Pakistan again.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bhutto visits Dubai as Musharraf ruling looms
Mark Tran and agencies
Thursday November 1, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Benazir Bhutto, who survived an assassination attempt after returning home to Pakistan, today left for Dubai despite fears that the government would impose a state of emergency in her absence.
The former Pakistan prime minister went to see her husband and three children in the Arab emirate, where she had been living in self-imposed exile for the past eight years.
Her departure ended days of confusion over her travel plans. She said initially she would postpone her departure amid speculation that the president, General Pervez Musharraf, might impose emergency rule.
She said at a news conference yesterday that senior party aides had told her such a move was possible if the supreme court found that Gen Musharraf's recent presidential election win was unconstitutional. A ruling could come as soon as tomorrow.
The government has denied any intention to declare emergency rule.
Ms Bhutto said at the news conference: "I wanted to go to Dubai. But when these rumours surfaced, I decided to change my programme.
"If a state of emergency is imposed, we will not accept it," she said, speaking on behalf of her Pakistan People's party. "If fundamental human rights are suspended, we will not accept it."
A state of emergency would shatter long-standing efforts to create a power-sharing deal between Ms Bhutto and Gen Musharraf, the scenario favoured by the west as Pakistan faces an emboldened Islamist movement.
Ms Bhutto has strenuously stated her opposition to emergency rule, which would make it impossible for her to ally herself with Gen Musharraf.
Relations between Ms Bhutto and the government are already strained after an assassination attempt during her October 18 homecoming in Karachi, which killed 145 people. Ms Bhutto suspects that elements of Pakistan's intelligence services, the powerful ISI, had a hand in the plot.
The government has vowed to track down those responsible for the atrocity, which was widely blamed on Islamist extremists fighting security forces near the Afghan border. But Pakistan's top judge, whom Gen Musharraf tried to fire earlier this year, has expressed impatience with the investigation and said he would open his own inquiry.
The supreme court, led by the chief justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, will review the case to ensure the "perpetrators of this barbaric act are brought to book, which will result in restoring the confidence of the nation in the system of governance," the court said.
The court is already in the spotlight with its pending decision on the legality of Gen Musharraf's landslide victory. Opposition MPs have challenged the vote on the grounds that Gen Musharraf, who seized power in a coup in 1999, was ineligible to stand because he had retained his position as army chief.
Gen Musharraf has said he would give up his military role before starting a new presidential term. But he declined on election night to say whether he would accept a negative verdict from the court.
The court is also considering whether Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister ousted by Gen Musharraf eight years ago, should be allowed to return from exile to make a political comeback.
As Gen Musharraf awaits the court's decisions, his government has to deal with almost daily attacks from extremists. In the latest show of force by militants, a suicide bomber on a motorbike rammed into a Pakistan air force bus, killing at least eight men and wounding about 40.
The assailant struck at about 7am local time (2am GMT) near an airbase in Sargodha, about 125 miles south of Islamabad. All the dead were air force employees, said hospital officials.
If the court rules against Musharraf he is not likely to accept it but could declare a state of emergency. Having been almost assasinated perhaps Bhutto has decided that perhaps discretion is the better part of valor and that she should wait and see what happens before entering the hornet's nest of Pakistan again.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bhutto visits Dubai as Musharraf ruling looms
Mark Tran and agencies
Thursday November 1, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Benazir Bhutto, who survived an assassination attempt after returning home to Pakistan, today left for Dubai despite fears that the government would impose a state of emergency in her absence.
The former Pakistan prime minister went to see her husband and three children in the Arab emirate, where she had been living in self-imposed exile for the past eight years.
Her departure ended days of confusion over her travel plans. She said initially she would postpone her departure amid speculation that the president, General Pervez Musharraf, might impose emergency rule.
She said at a news conference yesterday that senior party aides had told her such a move was possible if the supreme court found that Gen Musharraf's recent presidential election win was unconstitutional. A ruling could come as soon as tomorrow.
The government has denied any intention to declare emergency rule.
Ms Bhutto said at the news conference: "I wanted to go to Dubai. But when these rumours surfaced, I decided to change my programme.
"If a state of emergency is imposed, we will not accept it," she said, speaking on behalf of her Pakistan People's party. "If fundamental human rights are suspended, we will not accept it."
A state of emergency would shatter long-standing efforts to create a power-sharing deal between Ms Bhutto and Gen Musharraf, the scenario favoured by the west as Pakistan faces an emboldened Islamist movement.
Ms Bhutto has strenuously stated her opposition to emergency rule, which would make it impossible for her to ally herself with Gen Musharraf.
Relations between Ms Bhutto and the government are already strained after an assassination attempt during her October 18 homecoming in Karachi, which killed 145 people. Ms Bhutto suspects that elements of Pakistan's intelligence services, the powerful ISI, had a hand in the plot.
The government has vowed to track down those responsible for the atrocity, which was widely blamed on Islamist extremists fighting security forces near the Afghan border. But Pakistan's top judge, whom Gen Musharraf tried to fire earlier this year, has expressed impatience with the investigation and said he would open his own inquiry.
The supreme court, led by the chief justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, will review the case to ensure the "perpetrators of this barbaric act are brought to book, which will result in restoring the confidence of the nation in the system of governance," the court said.
The court is already in the spotlight with its pending decision on the legality of Gen Musharraf's landslide victory. Opposition MPs have challenged the vote on the grounds that Gen Musharraf, who seized power in a coup in 1999, was ineligible to stand because he had retained his position as army chief.
Gen Musharraf has said he would give up his military role before starting a new presidential term. But he declined on election night to say whether he would accept a negative verdict from the court.
The court is also considering whether Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister ousted by Gen Musharraf eight years ago, should be allowed to return from exile to make a political comeback.
As Gen Musharraf awaits the court's decisions, his government has to deal with almost daily attacks from extremists. In the latest show of force by militants, a suicide bomber on a motorbike rammed into a Pakistan air force bus, killing at least eight men and wounding about 40.
The assailant struck at about 7am local time (2am GMT) near an airbase in Sargodha, about 125 miles south of Islamabad. All the dead were air force employees, said hospital officials.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Bhutto: The Kleptocrat in an Hermes Headscarf.
This is not the picture of Bhutto you will get from the mainstream media. Khan actually does not mention the fact that Bhutto along with other members of the opposition swore not to make any deals with Musharraf. But this is exactly what she did and added to that it is a US brokered deal. Her pro-US stand and her promise to clear radical Islamists out of the border territories makes her a marked woman. She has numerous enemies of numerous kinds in Pakistan. This fellow is probably one of the milder types!
Return of Benazir Bhutto
The Kleptocrat in an Hermes Headscarf
By JEMIMA KHAN
She's back. Hurrah! She's a woman. She's brave. She's a moderate. She speaks good English. She's Oxford-educated, no less. And she's not bad looking either.
I admit I'm biased. I don't like Benazir Bhutto. She called me names during her election campaign in 1996 and it left a bitter taste. Petty personal grievances aside, I still find jubilant reports of her return to Pakistan depressing. Let's be clear about this before she's turned into a martyr.
This is no Aung San Suu Kyi, despite her repeated insistence that she's "fighting for democracy", or even more incredibly, "fighting for Pakistan's poor".
This is the woman who was twice dismissed on corruption charges. She went into self-imposed exile while investigations continued into millions she had allegedly stashed away into Swiss bank accounts ($1.5 billion by the reckoning of Musharraf's own "National Accountability Bureau").
She has only been able to return because Musharraf, that megalomaniac, knows that his future depends on the grassroots diehard supporters inherited from her father's party, the PPP.
As a result, Musharraf, who in his first months in power declared it his express intention to wipe out corruption, has dropped all charges against her and granted her immunity from prosecution. Forever.
Notably, he did not do the same for his other political rival, Nawaz Sharif, who was recently deported after attempting his own spectacular return to Pakistan.
But the difference is that Benazir is a pro at playing to the West. And that's what counts. She talks about women and extremism and the West applauds. And then conspires.
The Americans and the British are acutely aware that their strategy in the region is failing and that Musharraf's hold on power is ever more tenuous. They have pressed hard for Benazir and the General to cut a deal that would allow them to share power for the next five years in a "liberal forces government".
It's all totally bogus. Benazir may speak the language of liberalism and look good on Larry King's sofa, but both her terms in office were marked by incompetence, extra-judicial killings and brazen looting of the treasury, with the help of her husband--famously known in Pakistan as Mr 10 Per Cent.
In a country that tops the international corruption league, she was its most self-enriching leader.
Benazir has always cynically used her gender to manipulate: I loved her answer to David Frost when he asked her how many millions she had in her Swiss bank accounts. "David, I think that's a very sexist question."
A non sequitur (does loot have a gender?) but one that brought the uncomfortable line of questioning to a swift end.
Of all Pakistan's elected leaders she conspicuously did the least to help the cause of women. She never, for example, repealed the Hudood Ordinances, Pakistan's controversial laws that made no distinction between rape and adultery.
She preferred instead to kowtow to the mullahs in order to cling to power, forming an expedient alliance with Pakistan's Religious Coalition Party and leaving Pakistan's women as powerless as she found them.
The problem is that the West never seems to learn; playing favourites in a complicated nation's politics always backfires. Imposing Benazir on Pakistan is the opposite of democratic and doubtless will cause more chaos in an already unstable country.
Make no mistake, Benazir may look the part, but she's as ruthless and conniving as they come--a kleptocrat in a Hermes headscarf.
Jemima Khan is an ambassador to Unicef.
Return of Benazir Bhutto
The Kleptocrat in an Hermes Headscarf
By JEMIMA KHAN
She's back. Hurrah! She's a woman. She's brave. She's a moderate. She speaks good English. She's Oxford-educated, no less. And she's not bad looking either.
I admit I'm biased. I don't like Benazir Bhutto. She called me names during her election campaign in 1996 and it left a bitter taste. Petty personal grievances aside, I still find jubilant reports of her return to Pakistan depressing. Let's be clear about this before she's turned into a martyr.
This is no Aung San Suu Kyi, despite her repeated insistence that she's "fighting for democracy", or even more incredibly, "fighting for Pakistan's poor".
This is the woman who was twice dismissed on corruption charges. She went into self-imposed exile while investigations continued into millions she had allegedly stashed away into Swiss bank accounts ($1.5 billion by the reckoning of Musharraf's own "National Accountability Bureau").
She has only been able to return because Musharraf, that megalomaniac, knows that his future depends on the grassroots diehard supporters inherited from her father's party, the PPP.
As a result, Musharraf, who in his first months in power declared it his express intention to wipe out corruption, has dropped all charges against her and granted her immunity from prosecution. Forever.
Notably, he did not do the same for his other political rival, Nawaz Sharif, who was recently deported after attempting his own spectacular return to Pakistan.
But the difference is that Benazir is a pro at playing to the West. And that's what counts. She talks about women and extremism and the West applauds. And then conspires.
The Americans and the British are acutely aware that their strategy in the region is failing and that Musharraf's hold on power is ever more tenuous. They have pressed hard for Benazir and the General to cut a deal that would allow them to share power for the next five years in a "liberal forces government".
It's all totally bogus. Benazir may speak the language of liberalism and look good on Larry King's sofa, but both her terms in office were marked by incompetence, extra-judicial killings and brazen looting of the treasury, with the help of her husband--famously known in Pakistan as Mr 10 Per Cent.
In a country that tops the international corruption league, she was its most self-enriching leader.
Benazir has always cynically used her gender to manipulate: I loved her answer to David Frost when he asked her how many millions she had in her Swiss bank accounts. "David, I think that's a very sexist question."
A non sequitur (does loot have a gender?) but one that brought the uncomfortable line of questioning to a swift end.
Of all Pakistan's elected leaders she conspicuously did the least to help the cause of women. She never, for example, repealed the Hudood Ordinances, Pakistan's controversial laws that made no distinction between rape and adultery.
She preferred instead to kowtow to the mullahs in order to cling to power, forming an expedient alliance with Pakistan's Religious Coalition Party and leaving Pakistan's women as powerless as she found them.
The problem is that the West never seems to learn; playing favourites in a complicated nation's politics always backfires. Imposing Benazir on Pakistan is the opposite of democratic and doubtless will cause more chaos in an already unstable country.
Make no mistake, Benazir may look the part, but she's as ruthless and conniving as they come--a kleptocrat in a Hermes headscarf.
Jemima Khan is an ambassador to Unicef.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Pakistan plans all-out war on militants
South Asia
Oct 19, 2007
The US by furthering a deal between Bhutto and Musharaff has created a situation where it was certain Pakistan would engage in this campaign. The results are just starting with the many casualties already for both sides in the tribal areas and in Karachi bomb blasts that narrowly missed killing Bhutto.
The Islamists are already being blamed but Bhutto's husband claims it is the Pakistan intelligence services. Actually in spite of the West's vision of her as a symbol of democratic change she is hated by many in the opposition. For one thing the opposition partie's agreed that there would be no deals with the military and Musharaff but this is exactly what Bhutto has done! She is regarded as a sell-out both to Musharaff and the West. This precisely what she is, albeit a very brave woman who thinks the deal is best for her and Pakistan. The result will be bloody and probably undending civil conflict in Pakistan and quite possibly her own death.
Pakistan plans all-out war on militants
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
An all-out battle for control of Pakistan's restive North and South Waziristan is about to commence between the Pakistani military and the Taliban and al-Qaeda adherents who have made these tribal areas their own.
According to a top Pakistani security official who spoke to Asia Times Online on condition of anonymity, the goal this time is to pacify the Waziristans once and for all. All previous military operations - usually spurred by intelligence provided by the Western coalition - have had limited objectives, aimed at specific
bases or sanctuaries or blocking the cross-border movement of guerrillas. Now the military is going for broke to break the back of the Taliban and a-Qaeda in Pakistan and reclaim the entire area.
The fighting that erupted two weeks ago, and that has continued with bombing raids against guerrilla bases in North Waziristan - turning thousands of families into refugees and killing more people than any India-Pakistan war in the past 60 years - is but a precursor of the bloodiest battle that is coming.
Lining up against the Pakistani Army will be the Shura (council) of Mujahideen comprising senior al-Qaeda and Taliban commanders, local clerics, and leaders of the fighting clans Wazir and Mehsud (known as the Pakistani Taliban). The shura has long been calling the shots in the Waziristans, imposing sharia law and turning the area into a strategic command and control hub of global Muslim resistance movements, including those operating in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"All previous operations had a different perspective," the security official told ATol. "In the past Pakistan commenced an operation when the Western coalition informed Pakistan about any particular hide-out or a sanctuary, or Pakistan traced any armed infiltration from or into Pakistan.
"However, the present battle aims to pacify Waziristan once and for all. The Pakistani Army has sent a clear message to the militants that Pakistan would deploy its forces in the towns of Mir Ali, Miranshah, Dand-i-Darpa Kheil, Shawal, Razmak, Magaroti, Kalosha, Angor Ada. The Pakistani Army is aiming to establish permanent bases which would be manned by thousands of military and paramilitary troops."
According to the security official, an ultimatum had been delivered to the militants recently during a temporary ceasefire. The army would set a deadline and give safe passage into Afghanistan to all al-Qaeda members and Taliban commanders who had gathered in Waziristan to launch a large-scale post-Ramadan operation in Afghanistan. They, along with wanted tribal warrior leaders, would all leave Pakistan, and never return.
After their departure, under the direct command and surveillance of newly appointed Vice Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani (who will replace President-elect Pervez Musharraf as Chief of Army Staff), fresh troops and paramilitary forces would be sent in to establish bases at all strategic points and disarm the local tribes. The Durand Line (the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan), would be fenced and border controls would be tightened.
The militants rejected the ultimatum.
What's at stake
A qualified estimate by intelligence officials is that Pakistani military pacification of the Waziristans would slash the capability of the Afghan resistance by 85% as well as deliver a serious setback to the Iraqi resistance.
The militants have little option but to stand and fight, rather than slip across the border or melt into the local population. Aside from the sanctuary and succor afforded them in the Waziristans, most of the fighters there are either Waziris, or from other parts of Pakistan, or foreigners. They would be unable to support themselves in Afghanistan, especially as most of the non-Waziris do not speak Pashtu - a fact that also prevents them from disappearing into the Waziristan populace.
Their presence in the Waziristans also has a direct bearing on their funding: money can be transferred through bank and non-bank channels, including the informal fund transfer system known as "hawala".
Western intelligence that has been shared with Pakistan has determined that the two Waziristans alone provide the life blood - a steady stream of fighters, supplies and funds - for the resistance in all of southeast Afghanistan, including the provinces of Ghazni, Kunar, Gardez, Paktia and Paktika, as well as for attacks on Kabul. In addition, the Waziristans supply trainers to guerrillas in the Taliban heartland of Zabul, Helmand, Kandahar and Uruzgan provinces.
According to intelligence sources, during Ramadan, the Taliban's entire top command, including Moulvi Abdul Kabeer, Jalaluddin Haqqani, Sirajuddin Haqqani, Nasiruddin Haqqani, and Mullah Mansoor Dadullah were in North Waziristan to launch a post-Ramadan offensive in southeast Afghanistan. The Pakistani military engaged the militants well in advance to block their offensive plan, but the same militant command is believed to still be in North Waziristan.
In addition, the town of Shawal hosts the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan’s command. The Uzbeks are trying to reorganize themselves to stage an armed revolt against the government of Uzbekistan.
There is also a Kurd presence in the area, which has a direct bearing on the US's Iraqi occupation. A small number of fresh Kurd recruits come through Iran into Waziristan, get few months' training, and then return to Iran before infiltrating Iraq to fuel insurgency in Iraqi Kurdistan against this important US ally.
"If the planned battle is successful and Waziristan is pacified, the global Islamic resistance would be back where it was in 2003, when it had fighters but no centralized command or bases to carry out organized operations, said a Pakistani security official. "As a result, the guerrilla operations were sporadic and largely ineffective."
The safety of Taliban and al-Qaeda assets in Waziristan is a matter of life and death and, therefore, the militants have devised a forward strategy to target the Pakistani cities of Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad, hoping to break the will of the Pakistani armed forces. The Pakistani military, meanwhile, is trying to break the will of the militants with ongoing bombing raids.
Underscoring the seriousness with which the military is planning for the coming battle, it is reported that Shi'ite soldiers from northern Pakistan are being sent to the Waziristans. In the past, the Pakistani Army has been plagued by desertions of Pashtun and Sunni troops who refuse to fight fellow Pashtuns or Sunnis.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Pakistan Bureau Chief, Asia Times Online. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
Oct 19, 2007
The US by furthering a deal between Bhutto and Musharaff has created a situation where it was certain Pakistan would engage in this campaign. The results are just starting with the many casualties already for both sides in the tribal areas and in Karachi bomb blasts that narrowly missed killing Bhutto.
The Islamists are already being blamed but Bhutto's husband claims it is the Pakistan intelligence services. Actually in spite of the West's vision of her as a symbol of democratic change she is hated by many in the opposition. For one thing the opposition partie's agreed that there would be no deals with the military and Musharaff but this is exactly what Bhutto has done! She is regarded as a sell-out both to Musharaff and the West. This precisely what she is, albeit a very brave woman who thinks the deal is best for her and Pakistan. The result will be bloody and probably undending civil conflict in Pakistan and quite possibly her own death.
Pakistan plans all-out war on militants
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
An all-out battle for control of Pakistan's restive North and South Waziristan is about to commence between the Pakistani military and the Taliban and al-Qaeda adherents who have made these tribal areas their own.
According to a top Pakistani security official who spoke to Asia Times Online on condition of anonymity, the goal this time is to pacify the Waziristans once and for all. All previous military operations - usually spurred by intelligence provided by the Western coalition - have had limited objectives, aimed at specific
bases or sanctuaries or blocking the cross-border movement of guerrillas. Now the military is going for broke to break the back of the Taliban and a-Qaeda in Pakistan and reclaim the entire area.
The fighting that erupted two weeks ago, and that has continued with bombing raids against guerrilla bases in North Waziristan - turning thousands of families into refugees and killing more people than any India-Pakistan war in the past 60 years - is but a precursor of the bloodiest battle that is coming.
Lining up against the Pakistani Army will be the Shura (council) of Mujahideen comprising senior al-Qaeda and Taliban commanders, local clerics, and leaders of the fighting clans Wazir and Mehsud (known as the Pakistani Taliban). The shura has long been calling the shots in the Waziristans, imposing sharia law and turning the area into a strategic command and control hub of global Muslim resistance movements, including those operating in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"All previous operations had a different perspective," the security official told ATol. "In the past Pakistan commenced an operation when the Western coalition informed Pakistan about any particular hide-out or a sanctuary, or Pakistan traced any armed infiltration from or into Pakistan.
"However, the present battle aims to pacify Waziristan once and for all. The Pakistani Army has sent a clear message to the militants that Pakistan would deploy its forces in the towns of Mir Ali, Miranshah, Dand-i-Darpa Kheil, Shawal, Razmak, Magaroti, Kalosha, Angor Ada. The Pakistani Army is aiming to establish permanent bases which would be manned by thousands of military and paramilitary troops."
According to the security official, an ultimatum had been delivered to the militants recently during a temporary ceasefire. The army would set a deadline and give safe passage into Afghanistan to all al-Qaeda members and Taliban commanders who had gathered in Waziristan to launch a large-scale post-Ramadan operation in Afghanistan. They, along with wanted tribal warrior leaders, would all leave Pakistan, and never return.
After their departure, under the direct command and surveillance of newly appointed Vice Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani (who will replace President-elect Pervez Musharraf as Chief of Army Staff), fresh troops and paramilitary forces would be sent in to establish bases at all strategic points and disarm the local tribes. The Durand Line (the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan), would be fenced and border controls would be tightened.
The militants rejected the ultimatum.
What's at stake
A qualified estimate by intelligence officials is that Pakistani military pacification of the Waziristans would slash the capability of the Afghan resistance by 85% as well as deliver a serious setback to the Iraqi resistance.
The militants have little option but to stand and fight, rather than slip across the border or melt into the local population. Aside from the sanctuary and succor afforded them in the Waziristans, most of the fighters there are either Waziris, or from other parts of Pakistan, or foreigners. They would be unable to support themselves in Afghanistan, especially as most of the non-Waziris do not speak Pashtu - a fact that also prevents them from disappearing into the Waziristan populace.
Their presence in the Waziristans also has a direct bearing on their funding: money can be transferred through bank and non-bank channels, including the informal fund transfer system known as "hawala".
Western intelligence that has been shared with Pakistan has determined that the two Waziristans alone provide the life blood - a steady stream of fighters, supplies and funds - for the resistance in all of southeast Afghanistan, including the provinces of Ghazni, Kunar, Gardez, Paktia and Paktika, as well as for attacks on Kabul. In addition, the Waziristans supply trainers to guerrillas in the Taliban heartland of Zabul, Helmand, Kandahar and Uruzgan provinces.
According to intelligence sources, during Ramadan, the Taliban's entire top command, including Moulvi Abdul Kabeer, Jalaluddin Haqqani, Sirajuddin Haqqani, Nasiruddin Haqqani, and Mullah Mansoor Dadullah were in North Waziristan to launch a post-Ramadan offensive in southeast Afghanistan. The Pakistani military engaged the militants well in advance to block their offensive plan, but the same militant command is believed to still be in North Waziristan.
In addition, the town of Shawal hosts the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan’s command. The Uzbeks are trying to reorganize themselves to stage an armed revolt against the government of Uzbekistan.
There is also a Kurd presence in the area, which has a direct bearing on the US's Iraqi occupation. A small number of fresh Kurd recruits come through Iran into Waziristan, get few months' training, and then return to Iran before infiltrating Iraq to fuel insurgency in Iraqi Kurdistan against this important US ally.
"If the planned battle is successful and Waziristan is pacified, the global Islamic resistance would be back where it was in 2003, when it had fighters but no centralized command or bases to carry out organized operations, said a Pakistani security official. "As a result, the guerrilla operations were sporadic and largely ineffective."
The safety of Taliban and al-Qaeda assets in Waziristan is a matter of life and death and, therefore, the militants have devised a forward strategy to target the Pakistani cities of Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad, hoping to break the will of the Pakistani armed forces. The Pakistani military, meanwhile, is trying to break the will of the militants with ongoing bombing raids.
Underscoring the seriousness with which the military is planning for the coming battle, it is reported that Shi'ite soldiers from northern Pakistan are being sent to the Waziristans. In the past, the Pakistani Army has been plagued by desertions of Pashtun and Sunni troops who refuse to fight fellow Pashtuns or Sunnis.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Pakistan Bureau Chief, Asia Times Online. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Next step: Regime Change in Pakistan
This article and the following article together show that most likely the US the UK -and to some extent with propoganda help from the CBC that has had a constant replay of a documentary on Benazir Bhutto- are planning to promote a regime change in Pakistan. This is either in lieu of a military intervention in the tribal areas or perhaps to get permission to enter the areas. The whole plan will just widen the area of conflict and perhaps lead to civil war in Pakistan. Musharraf has already met with Bhutto and no doubt hopes to achive some power-sharing agreement. Free elections will then bring in Bhutto who will either step up the attacks in tribal areas or invite the US to help. I have yet to see any reporter who actually bothered to look into the corruption charges against Bhutto but after all she is the good girl, at least for now. Once she is in power she may show that she does not think that what is good for the US is good for Pakistan. But here is a quote that no doubt will endear her to the US and UK etc. Strange that these places are always "lawless". This just means that the central government control is marginal in the areas. Of course they still are part of Pakistan and any attempt to occupy them by the US is bound to provoke a much wider reaction something the US doesn't seem to care a fig about.
MONTREAL (AFP) - Pakistan's exiled former leader Benazir Bhutto warned that the threat of terrorism in northwestern Pakistan's lawless tribal zones will not go away while a military government is in power.
"The root cause of the problem lies in the inability of the government of Pakistan to assert governmental authority and state authority in the tribal areas," Bhutto told Canada's CBC public television channel Saturday.
"As long as we have a cabinet ... that needs the threat of terrorism to sustain a military dictatorship in Pakistan we're never going to get rid of terrorism," she said of the leadership of President Pervez Musharraf.
Militants end S Waziristan peace deal
Sailab Mahsud & Mushtaq Yusufzai
TANK/PESHAWAR: As a tribal Jirga is set to secure the release of 15 kidnapped FC soldiers from the captivity of militants today (Sunday), tribal militants of South Waziristan on Saturday unilaterally announced the scrapping of a peace accord with the government over allegations of its violation by the latter.
A spokesman for the Baitullah Mahsud group while accusing the government of violating the agreement signed with the Mahsud tribal militants in February 2005 in South Waziristan said the accord no more existed following the recent operations by the Pakistan Army in the agency.
Zulfiqar Mahsud, who introduced himself as a spokesman for Baitullah Mahsud, commander of the Mahsud tribal militants, phoned the office of The News and other media organisations from an undisclosed location that it was in fact the government that violated the peace agreement by sending troops in such large numbers to the agency and conducting military operations there without any need.
He said they had already brought the issue of reinforcing the forces at various places in the Mahsud inhabited areas to the notice of military officials as well as the 21-member peace committee that had helped broker the 2005 truce but nobody paid any heed to their reservations.
Tribal militants in the neighbouring North Waziristan Agency have already scrapped the peace agreement with the government over similar allegations.
Baitullah Mahsud, who was one of the most wanted tribal militants in South Waziristan, had signed the peace agreement with the government in 2005 in the presence of a tribal Jirga to resolve disputes with the government in Mahsud-inhabited areas.
A 21-member Jirga led by leading religious scholar Maulana Ainullah, which also comprised 11 Mahsud tribal elders and 10 ulema (religious leaders), had brokered the peace deal.
However, Senator Maulana Saleh Shah, who belongs to Maulana Fazlur Rahman’s Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, declined reports that Baitullah Mahsud and his men had scrapped the peace agreement.
“I just spoke to Baitullah and then his spokesman and both explained that they had not scrapped the peace agreement yet. They said it was actually the government that violated the peace agreement and carried out unnecessary military operations at Chag Malai, Sarwakai and Spinkai Raghzai areas of South Waziristan tribal agency,” Maulana Saleh Shah said when approached by The News over telephone at his home in Gomal area near Tank.
He said Baitullah Mahsud and his men were still standing by the peace agreement. “I met Baitullah two days ago at Chag Malai and he explained that he would never fight the Pakistan Army but it was the army that imposed a war on them,” he said.
Saleh Shah felt that situation in the agency deteriorated two days ago when his suggestion to Brig Hanif, Pakistan Army commandant in Wana, that an army convoy should not travel on the Wana-Jandola road for security reasons was turned down. “I assured him of my full cooperation and explained to him that there would be no danger if the military officials delay the convoy for a day or two. But they did not listen to my advice and as usual ordered the convoy to leave Wana for Tank. The convoy came under the attack of militants at Chag Malai in which several innocent Jawans lost their lives and many sustained serious injuries,” the senator said.
Meanwhile, some of the 21-member peace committee representatives, who again held decisive talks with Baitullah Mahsud and Qari Hussain somewhere at Chag Malai area on Saturday, hoped to secure the release of 15 paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC) soldiers from the captivity of the militants probably today (Sunday).
While commenting on the issue, Senator Saleh Shah said he was in contact with representatives of the 21-member peace committee that had gone to Chag Malai to hold talks with the militants for the release of FC men and hoped that they would soon be handed over to them.
He said Baitullah Mahsud and Qari Hussain were ready to hand the hostages over to him a few days ago but the situation suddenly turned violent there due to the military operation in the area.
He said about 11 vehicles of the army convoy still remained stranded at Chag Malai while four bodies and 11 injured army soldiers were retrieved from the area on Saturday through efforts of the tribal elders and Ulema.
Meanwhile, Commander Masoodur Rahman Mahsud, successor of the slain commander Abdullah Mahsud, held a meeting with Mulla Nazeer, commander of the Wazir tribal militants, and regretted the detention of Wazir tribe people and seizing their vehicles at Dargai area near Wana a few days ago.
Sources close to Mulla Nazeer told The News that Commander Mahsud promised to send a Jirga to seek pardon from the Wazir tribe over what had happened a few days ago.
Also, all the 14 vehicles which the Mahsud men had snatched were returned to their owners.
According to sources, Mulla Nazeer sent his representative to army officials based in Wana to explain that the Wazir tribal militants would not allow the army to target hideouts of Mahsud tribal militants from their soil following the meeting.
Here is a Newsweek article a typical public consciousness massage piece--of course this is not to disupute that many of the facts are true enough.
State of Anxiety
By Michael Hirsh And Ron Moreau
Newsweek
Aug. 20-27, 2007 issue - Pervez Musharraf has always been a dubious ally in George W. Bush's War on Terror—the kind of guy you avert your eyes from while patting him on the back. It's not that Bush doubts the Pakistani leader's sincerity—"He shares the same concern about radicals and extremists as I do and as the American people do," the president said at an Aug. 9 news conference—it's just that Musharraf is never going to make it into Bush's democracy club. And Musharraf's ability to stop his nation's Islamist radicalism from spilling over into terrorism has always been limited. A genial autocrat who seized power in a 1999 coup and has refused to relinquish his general's uniform, Musharraf has succeeded in keeping Washington on his side by regularly handing over second-tier Qaeda suspects and by keeping tenuous control over his increasingly Islamicized country. But now Musharraf may be losing his grip on power amid rising concerns by senior U.S. officials that a new safe haven for Al Qaeda has emerged in Pakistan's rocky, ungoverned tribal regions, especially Waziristan.
As a result, an increasing number of voices in Washington—from Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama to hard-line officials in the Bush administration—are calling for unilateral military action inside Pakistan. NEWSWEEK has learned that for weeks Pentagon officials have been debating the current policy of not violating Pakistani sovereignty, coming down in favor of restraint. But some officers in Joint Special Operations Command are "pawing the ground to go into Waziristan," says one Pentagon consultant who is privy to the debate but would speak about classified discussions only anonymously. Congress, meanwhile, has passed legislation that threatens to cut off aid to Pakistan if President Bush can't certify that Musharraf is doing all he can. "It's very humiliating for Musharraf," says retired Pakistani Lt. Gen. Talat Masood. "It could even destabilize him." That's one reason Bush continues to stand by him. Administration officials fear that if Musharraf falls and Pakistan descends into political chaos, then a nuclear-armed state could fail and Pakistan's nuclear know-how might end up in the wrong hands.
Even short of that doomsday scenario, senior U.S. officials, both active and retired, say that without more decisive action Al Qaeda will grow, if not flourish, in the tribal areas. And someday the U.S. homeland will likely be attacked from there, they say, just as Al Qaeda once used Afghanistan as a base from which to plot the 9/11 attacks. In late July a National Intelligence Estimate—a periodic assessment that is considered the most authoritative issued by the U.S. government—concluded Al Qaeda has "regenerated key elements" of its ability to attack the United States from the tribal regions of North Waziristan and Bajaur. Hank Crumpton, a near-legendary CIA clandestine service officer who retired last year as the State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, says Washington needs to do more than rely on the Pakistani military and intelligence services. "I'd go in there [tribal areas] with a hard-core counterinsurgency effort," Crumpton told NEWSWEEK. He would seek Pakistan's consent—"but I wouldn't pretend that this is sovereign territory. It is not."
Another recently retired senior CIA official, Bruce Riedel, says that Pakistan remains fatally conflicted about cracking down on Islamic extremists. That's even though Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri (who along with Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding in the Pakistani tribal areas) has tried to assassinate Musharraf at least twice. As eager as Musharraf may be to get bin Laden and Zawahiri, his enthusiasm is not necessarily shared by Pakistani intelligence. Riedel says: "It has no desire to either take on its Frankenstein or to see its Frankenstein removed."
Pakistani officials angrily dispute that assessment, and they say they are doing all that can be done. They note that some 350 Pakistani soldiers were killed in tribal actions in 2004 and 2005, leading Musharraf to try to reach a peace agreement with tribal elders that has since frayed. "There are no safe havens," Mahmud Ali Durrani, Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, told NEWSWEEK, saying the NIE is "absolutely incorrect." "This is preposterous. We will agree there may be odd people in hideouts. But ... whenever we get information we take them out. Even after we signed the agreement, we went into Waziristan and Bajaur five or six times this year. We went after the training camps." Still, Durrani confirmed that the government is very concerned about the extremists "creeping outside the tribal areas" and said Musharraf had launched "a new push" that includes adding 20,000 more paramilitaries to the 100,000 troops already bordering those areas. That, and additional training, "will take about six months," Durrani says.
Whether Musharraf has that much time is another question. Since he faced down an Islamist rebellion at a mosque in the heart of his capital city, Islamabad, he has appeared to lose control of his country's security. Al Qaeda-affiliated armed militants have retaliated strongly, killing nearly 200 people, chiefly police and soldiers, in a spate of IED attacks and suicide bombings in the lawless tribal region along the Afghan frontier, as well as two suicide attacks in Islamabad.
In response, the Pakistani leader has flirted with the idea of declaring a state of emergency that would extend his rule for at least one year, postponing both the presidential election, scheduled for late next month, and the general election, due early next year. The state of emergency would give him sweeping powers and allow him to curb civil liberties sharply. After an early-morning call from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Aug. 9, however, Musharraf agreed to back down "for the time being," a U.S. official said, speaking as usual on condition of anonymity about high-level discussions.
Yet another measure of Musharraf's waning power is the eagerness with which he has politically courted a woman he once publicly called a "thief" for alleged corruption during her two terms as prime minister—Benazir Bhutto. In early August Musharraf flew secretly to Abu Dhabi to meet Bhutto, whose secular Pakistani People's Party remains the most popular in the country. Musharraf had been reaching out to Bhutto halfheartedly for a year, but after he summarily ousted the nation's Supreme Court justice in March, provoking widespread demonstrations, his popularity plummeted. Now he seems desperate to bring her into a coalition government that will blunt the calls for his resignation. "Musharraf is in a tough place," says Riedel. "She knows she has the upper hand now." In an Aug. 10 interview, Bhutto said the "ground reality" has changed in Pakistan. She confirmed that she and Musharraf are discussing the creation of a "caretaker government," but said she would not join it "while he is wearing his uniform."
For the United States, the No. 1 concern is figuring out a way to crush the resurgence of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Waziristan and Bajaur, without doing fatal damage to Musharraf. Some U.S. officials say the Pakistani military is simply not up to the job—but no one else may be, either. "This is a part of the country that has not been effectively governed since Alexander the Great was there," says Deputy Assistant Secretary of State John Gastright. Pakistani officials point to the successes they've had inside their cities in arresting Qaeda bigwigs like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.
Ambassador Durrani says the real fault lies with Washington. After KSM was captured in Rawalpindi in March 2003—just as Bush was invading Iraq—"I think Al Qaeda was almost destroyed in an operational sense. But then Al Qaeda got a vacuum in Afghanistan. And they got a motivational area in Iraq. Al Qaeda rejuvenated. And what Pakistan is getting now is the blowback from that, rather than the other way around." The worry now is that blowback will some day cross the Atlantic—and no one is effectively stopping it.
© 2007 Newsweek, Inc. | Subscribe to Newsweek
MONTREAL (AFP) - Pakistan's exiled former leader Benazir Bhutto warned that the threat of terrorism in northwestern Pakistan's lawless tribal zones will not go away while a military government is in power.
"The root cause of the problem lies in the inability of the government of Pakistan to assert governmental authority and state authority in the tribal areas," Bhutto told Canada's CBC public television channel Saturday.
"As long as we have a cabinet ... that needs the threat of terrorism to sustain a military dictatorship in Pakistan we're never going to get rid of terrorism," she said of the leadership of President Pervez Musharraf.
Militants end S Waziristan peace deal
Sailab Mahsud & Mushtaq Yusufzai
TANK/PESHAWAR: As a tribal Jirga is set to secure the release of 15 kidnapped FC soldiers from the captivity of militants today (Sunday), tribal militants of South Waziristan on Saturday unilaterally announced the scrapping of a peace accord with the government over allegations of its violation by the latter.
A spokesman for the Baitullah Mahsud group while accusing the government of violating the agreement signed with the Mahsud tribal militants in February 2005 in South Waziristan said the accord no more existed following the recent operations by the Pakistan Army in the agency.
Zulfiqar Mahsud, who introduced himself as a spokesman for Baitullah Mahsud, commander of the Mahsud tribal militants, phoned the office of The News and other media organisations from an undisclosed location that it was in fact the government that violated the peace agreement by sending troops in such large numbers to the agency and conducting military operations there without any need.
He said they had already brought the issue of reinforcing the forces at various places in the Mahsud inhabited areas to the notice of military officials as well as the 21-member peace committee that had helped broker the 2005 truce but nobody paid any heed to their reservations.
Tribal militants in the neighbouring North Waziristan Agency have already scrapped the peace agreement with the government over similar allegations.
Baitullah Mahsud, who was one of the most wanted tribal militants in South Waziristan, had signed the peace agreement with the government in 2005 in the presence of a tribal Jirga to resolve disputes with the government in Mahsud-inhabited areas.
A 21-member Jirga led by leading religious scholar Maulana Ainullah, which also comprised 11 Mahsud tribal elders and 10 ulema (religious leaders), had brokered the peace deal.
However, Senator Maulana Saleh Shah, who belongs to Maulana Fazlur Rahman’s Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, declined reports that Baitullah Mahsud and his men had scrapped the peace agreement.
“I just spoke to Baitullah and then his spokesman and both explained that they had not scrapped the peace agreement yet. They said it was actually the government that violated the peace agreement and carried out unnecessary military operations at Chag Malai, Sarwakai and Spinkai Raghzai areas of South Waziristan tribal agency,” Maulana Saleh Shah said when approached by The News over telephone at his home in Gomal area near Tank.
He said Baitullah Mahsud and his men were still standing by the peace agreement. “I met Baitullah two days ago at Chag Malai and he explained that he would never fight the Pakistan Army but it was the army that imposed a war on them,” he said.
Saleh Shah felt that situation in the agency deteriorated two days ago when his suggestion to Brig Hanif, Pakistan Army commandant in Wana, that an army convoy should not travel on the Wana-Jandola road for security reasons was turned down. “I assured him of my full cooperation and explained to him that there would be no danger if the military officials delay the convoy for a day or two. But they did not listen to my advice and as usual ordered the convoy to leave Wana for Tank. The convoy came under the attack of militants at Chag Malai in which several innocent Jawans lost their lives and many sustained serious injuries,” the senator said.
Meanwhile, some of the 21-member peace committee representatives, who again held decisive talks with Baitullah Mahsud and Qari Hussain somewhere at Chag Malai area on Saturday, hoped to secure the release of 15 paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC) soldiers from the captivity of the militants probably today (Sunday).
While commenting on the issue, Senator Saleh Shah said he was in contact with representatives of the 21-member peace committee that had gone to Chag Malai to hold talks with the militants for the release of FC men and hoped that they would soon be handed over to them.
He said Baitullah Mahsud and Qari Hussain were ready to hand the hostages over to him a few days ago but the situation suddenly turned violent there due to the military operation in the area.
He said about 11 vehicles of the army convoy still remained stranded at Chag Malai while four bodies and 11 injured army soldiers were retrieved from the area on Saturday through efforts of the tribal elders and Ulema.
Meanwhile, Commander Masoodur Rahman Mahsud, successor of the slain commander Abdullah Mahsud, held a meeting with Mulla Nazeer, commander of the Wazir tribal militants, and regretted the detention of Wazir tribe people and seizing their vehicles at Dargai area near Wana a few days ago.
Sources close to Mulla Nazeer told The News that Commander Mahsud promised to send a Jirga to seek pardon from the Wazir tribe over what had happened a few days ago.
Also, all the 14 vehicles which the Mahsud men had snatched were returned to their owners.
According to sources, Mulla Nazeer sent his representative to army officials based in Wana to explain that the Wazir tribal militants would not allow the army to target hideouts of Mahsud tribal militants from their soil following the meeting.
Here is a Newsweek article a typical public consciousness massage piece--of course this is not to disupute that many of the facts are true enough.
State of Anxiety
By Michael Hirsh And Ron Moreau
Newsweek
Aug. 20-27, 2007 issue - Pervez Musharraf has always been a dubious ally in George W. Bush's War on Terror—the kind of guy you avert your eyes from while patting him on the back. It's not that Bush doubts the Pakistani leader's sincerity—"He shares the same concern about radicals and extremists as I do and as the American people do," the president said at an Aug. 9 news conference—it's just that Musharraf is never going to make it into Bush's democracy club. And Musharraf's ability to stop his nation's Islamist radicalism from spilling over into terrorism has always been limited. A genial autocrat who seized power in a 1999 coup and has refused to relinquish his general's uniform, Musharraf has succeeded in keeping Washington on his side by regularly handing over second-tier Qaeda suspects and by keeping tenuous control over his increasingly Islamicized country. But now Musharraf may be losing his grip on power amid rising concerns by senior U.S. officials that a new safe haven for Al Qaeda has emerged in Pakistan's rocky, ungoverned tribal regions, especially Waziristan.
As a result, an increasing number of voices in Washington—from Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama to hard-line officials in the Bush administration—are calling for unilateral military action inside Pakistan. NEWSWEEK has learned that for weeks Pentagon officials have been debating the current policy of not violating Pakistani sovereignty, coming down in favor of restraint. But some officers in Joint Special Operations Command are "pawing the ground to go into Waziristan," says one Pentagon consultant who is privy to the debate but would speak about classified discussions only anonymously. Congress, meanwhile, has passed legislation that threatens to cut off aid to Pakistan if President Bush can't certify that Musharraf is doing all he can. "It's very humiliating for Musharraf," says retired Pakistani Lt. Gen. Talat Masood. "It could even destabilize him." That's one reason Bush continues to stand by him. Administration officials fear that if Musharraf falls and Pakistan descends into political chaos, then a nuclear-armed state could fail and Pakistan's nuclear know-how might end up in the wrong hands.
Even short of that doomsday scenario, senior U.S. officials, both active and retired, say that without more decisive action Al Qaeda will grow, if not flourish, in the tribal areas. And someday the U.S. homeland will likely be attacked from there, they say, just as Al Qaeda once used Afghanistan as a base from which to plot the 9/11 attacks. In late July a National Intelligence Estimate—a periodic assessment that is considered the most authoritative issued by the U.S. government—concluded Al Qaeda has "regenerated key elements" of its ability to attack the United States from the tribal regions of North Waziristan and Bajaur. Hank Crumpton, a near-legendary CIA clandestine service officer who retired last year as the State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, says Washington needs to do more than rely on the Pakistani military and intelligence services. "I'd go in there [tribal areas] with a hard-core counterinsurgency effort," Crumpton told NEWSWEEK. He would seek Pakistan's consent—"but I wouldn't pretend that this is sovereign territory. It is not."
Another recently retired senior CIA official, Bruce Riedel, says that Pakistan remains fatally conflicted about cracking down on Islamic extremists. That's even though Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri (who along with Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding in the Pakistani tribal areas) has tried to assassinate Musharraf at least twice. As eager as Musharraf may be to get bin Laden and Zawahiri, his enthusiasm is not necessarily shared by Pakistani intelligence. Riedel says: "It has no desire to either take on its Frankenstein or to see its Frankenstein removed."
Pakistani officials angrily dispute that assessment, and they say they are doing all that can be done. They note that some 350 Pakistani soldiers were killed in tribal actions in 2004 and 2005, leading Musharraf to try to reach a peace agreement with tribal elders that has since frayed. "There are no safe havens," Mahmud Ali Durrani, Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, told NEWSWEEK, saying the NIE is "absolutely incorrect." "This is preposterous. We will agree there may be odd people in hideouts. But ... whenever we get information we take them out. Even after we signed the agreement, we went into Waziristan and Bajaur five or six times this year. We went after the training camps." Still, Durrani confirmed that the government is very concerned about the extremists "creeping outside the tribal areas" and said Musharraf had launched "a new push" that includes adding 20,000 more paramilitaries to the 100,000 troops already bordering those areas. That, and additional training, "will take about six months," Durrani says.
Whether Musharraf has that much time is another question. Since he faced down an Islamist rebellion at a mosque in the heart of his capital city, Islamabad, he has appeared to lose control of his country's security. Al Qaeda-affiliated armed militants have retaliated strongly, killing nearly 200 people, chiefly police and soldiers, in a spate of IED attacks and suicide bombings in the lawless tribal region along the Afghan frontier, as well as two suicide attacks in Islamabad.
In response, the Pakistani leader has flirted with the idea of declaring a state of emergency that would extend his rule for at least one year, postponing both the presidential election, scheduled for late next month, and the general election, due early next year. The state of emergency would give him sweeping powers and allow him to curb civil liberties sharply. After an early-morning call from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Aug. 9, however, Musharraf agreed to back down "for the time being," a U.S. official said, speaking as usual on condition of anonymity about high-level discussions.
Yet another measure of Musharraf's waning power is the eagerness with which he has politically courted a woman he once publicly called a "thief" for alleged corruption during her two terms as prime minister—Benazir Bhutto. In early August Musharraf flew secretly to Abu Dhabi to meet Bhutto, whose secular Pakistani People's Party remains the most popular in the country. Musharraf had been reaching out to Bhutto halfheartedly for a year, but after he summarily ousted the nation's Supreme Court justice in March, provoking widespread demonstrations, his popularity plummeted. Now he seems desperate to bring her into a coalition government that will blunt the calls for his resignation. "Musharraf is in a tough place," says Riedel. "She knows she has the upper hand now." In an Aug. 10 interview, Bhutto said the "ground reality" has changed in Pakistan. She confirmed that she and Musharraf are discussing the creation of a "caretaker government," but said she would not join it "while he is wearing his uniform."
For the United States, the No. 1 concern is figuring out a way to crush the resurgence of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Waziristan and Bajaur, without doing fatal damage to Musharraf. Some U.S. officials say the Pakistani military is simply not up to the job—but no one else may be, either. "This is a part of the country that has not been effectively governed since Alexander the Great was there," says Deputy Assistant Secretary of State John Gastright. Pakistani officials point to the successes they've had inside their cities in arresting Qaeda bigwigs like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.
Ambassador Durrani says the real fault lies with Washington. After KSM was captured in Rawalpindi in March 2003—just as Bush was invading Iraq—"I think Al Qaeda was almost destroyed in an operational sense. But then Al Qaeda got a vacuum in Afghanistan. And they got a motivational area in Iraq. Al Qaeda rejuvenated. And what Pakistan is getting now is the blowback from that, rather than the other way around." The worry now is that blowback will some day cross the Atlantic—and no one is effectively stopping it.
© 2007 Newsweek, Inc. | Subscribe to Newsweek
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