Pakistan:
Bhutto's Murder
Rekindles Ethnic Suspicions
By
Irfan Ahmed
07 January,
2008
Inter
Press Service
LAHORE,
Jan 5 (IPS) - The assassination of Benazir Bhutto, leader of
the powerful Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and twice prime minister,
has pushed to the brink a country already known for regionalism and
ethnic suspicion.
Bhutto was
widely acknowledged as the only leader who enjoyed popularity in the
four ethnically distinct provinces of the country, Punjab, Balochistan
and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) besides her own Sindh.
Punjab, the
biggest province in terms of population and resources, has long been
accused of treading on the rights of other provinces. Punjab’s
dominance also rests on the fact that the top military leadership has
traditionally been drawn from the province.
Bhutto's
husband Asif Ali Zardari and other Sindhi leaders have been at pains
to dispel threats to the federation, exhorting unity in the volatile
situation that developed after the Dec. 27 assassination pitted one
ethnic group against another.
At Bhutto’s
funeral, mourners raised the slogan, ‘Pakistan nakhabey’
(we don’t want Pakistan) leaving it to Zardari to emphasise at
other meetings and at press conferences that the PPP stood for a united
nation and was not opposed to the army’s dominance.
Reacting
to countrywide protests and the ethnic unrest, Pakistan President Pervez
Musharraf said, in an address to the nation on Jan. 2, that troops stood
ready in Sindh to deal sternly with ‘’law-breakers and those
trying to carry out agitations’’.
Musharraf’s
tough speech infuriated many. The PPP’s Punjab unit president
Shah Mehmood Qureshi told IPS that Musharraf's speech did not bode well
for Pakistan's integrity. ‘’There was no need to use such
a harsh tone and use the word 'miscreants' without discriminating between
mourners and vandals.’’
Qadir Magsi,
a Sindhi nationalist leader who chairs the regional Sindh Taraqqi Passand
Party (STPP), told IPS that Bhutto was killed because of her Sindhi
origins and because of her unwillingness to toe the army line. ‘’Benazir's
fault was that she spoke about democracy, supremacy of parliament and
constitution,’’ he said.
Magsi who
is also a central figure in the All Parties Democratic Movement (APDM)
and in the Pakistan Oppressed Nations Movement (PONM), which demands
equal treatment for all the provinces, believes that Benazir's sympathetic
stance towards Balochistan nationalists and her strong condemnation
of Nawab Akbar Bugti's killing in an army raid on the province may have
infuriated the Punjabi-dominated establishment.
But it was
the fact of Bhutto’s murder in the Punjab city of Rawalpindi,
that is dominated by the army, that has raised fears of Pakistan fracturing
along ethnic lines. Such fears are not unfounded given that in 1971
ethnic differences that set off a civil war caused Pakistan the loss
of its eastern wing, which then became Bangladesh.
It is being
pointed out that top, non-Punjabi leaders end up being assassinated
in Rawalpindi with some regularity. Two other former prime ministers,
Bhutto’s father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and Liaquat Ali Khan also
met with sticky ends in Rawalpindi.
The founder
and leader of the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) party Altaf Hussain,
who is currently in exile, issued a statement from London immediately
after her death. "I wish to bring this on record that this is the
third assassination of a prime minister belonging to the Sindh province,"
he said. He termed the murder an act to harm the country and create
a sense of isolation among the people of Sindh province.
Perhaps,
more than ever before, the realisation is dawning that Pakistan is home
to various ethnicities that have, for more than 60 years, been in disagreement
with each other over a plethora of issues such language, water distribution
and finances. Sindh has been opposing central plans to build large dams
which may give more control of river waters flowing downstream.
While the
PPP is a national party its power base is firmly rooted in Sindh. And
the fact that ethnic particularities, and even family ties, matter in
Pakistan’s politics can be seen from the fact that Bhutto's eldest
child, Bilawal, has been nominated party chairman, though only after
adding the charismatic word 'Bhutto' to his name.
Bilawal Bhutto
Zardari is 19 and has just begun his studies at Oxford. Should the PPP
come to power in the elections, now set for Feb. 18, Makhdoom Amin Fahim,
a Sindhi by origin, will be the party's candidate for prime minister.
Other possibles
for the top job include Aitzaz Ahsan, PPP leader from Punjab and president
of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA), but his Punjabi ethnicity
seems to have gone against him.
Ahsan, still
under house arrest for leading agitations to press reinstatement of
top members of the judiciary sacked by Musharraf, is among those who
believe that the assassination has put the federation in serious jeopardy.
‘’The burden rests on the Punjab and the Punjabis to demonstrate
their solidarity with the people of Sindh,’’ he says.
Ahsan says
‘’certain forces’’ feared that Bhutto would
become a dominant partner in any alliance or arrangement within the
structure of the state. ‘’She was not expected to be a Shujaat
Husain, Zafarullah Jamali or Shaukat Aziz (handpicked former prime ministers
always ready to demonstrate allegiance to President Musharraf),’’
Ahsan said, when asked about possible reasons behind her assassination.
Copyright
© 2007 IPS-Inter Press Service
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