A
Tragedy Born Of Military Despotism And Anarchy
By
Tariq Ali
29 December, 2007
The
Guardian
Even those of us sharply critical
of Benazir Bhutto's behaviour and policies - both while she was in office
and more recently - are stunned and angered by her death. Indignation
and fear stalk the country once again.
An odd coexistence
of military despotism and anarchy created the conditions leading to
her assassination in Rawalpindi yesterday. In the past, military rule
was designed to preserve order - and did so for a few years. No longer.
Today it creates disorder and promotes lawlessness. How else can one
explain the sacking of the chief justice and eight other judges of the
country's supreme court for attempting to hold the government's intelligence
agencies and the police accountable to courts of law? Their replacements
lack the backbone to do anything, let alone conduct a proper inquest
into the misdeeds of the agencies to uncover the truth behind the carefully
organised killing of a major political leader.
How can Pakistan
today be anything but a conflagration of despair? It is assumed that
the killers were jihadi fanatics. This may well be true, but were they
acting on their own?
Benazir,
according to those close to her, had been tempted to boycott the fake
elections, but she lacked the political courage to defy Washington.
She had plenty of physical courage, and refused to be cowed by threats
from local opponents. She had been addressing an election rally in Liaquat
Bagh. This is a popular space named after the country's first prime
minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, who was killed by an assassin in 1953. The
killer, Said Akbar, was immediately shot dead on the orders of a police
officer involved in the plot. Not far from here, there once stood a
colonial structure where nationalists were imprisoned. This was Rawalpindi
jail. It was here that Benazir's father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was hanged
in April 1979. The military tyrant responsible for his judicial murder
made sure the site of the tragedy was destroyed as well.
Zulfikar
Ali Bhutto's death poisoned relations between his Pakistan People's
party and the army. Party activists, particularly in the province of
Sind, were brutally tortured, humiliated and, sometimes, disappeared
or killed.
Pakistan's
turbulent history, a result of continuous military rule and unpopular
global alliances, confronts the ruling elite now with serious choices.
They appear to have no positive aims. The overwhelming majority of the
country disapproves of the government's foreign policy. They are angered
by its lack of a serious domestic policy except for further enriching
a callous and greedy elite that includes a swollen, parasitic military.
Now they watch helplessly as politicians are shot dead in front of them.
Benazir had
survived the bomb blast yesterday but was felled by bullets fired at
her car. The assassins, mindful of their failure in Karachi a month
ago, had taken out a double insurance this time. They wanted her dead.
It is impossible for even a rigged election to take place now. It will
have to be postponed, and the military high command is no doubt contemplating
another dose of army rule if the situation gets worse, which could easily
happen.
What has
happened is a multilayered tragedy. It's a tragedy for a country on
a road to more disasters. Torrents and foaming cataracts lie ahead.
And it is a personal tragedy. The house of Bhutto has lost another member.
Father, two sons and now a daughter have all died unnatural deaths.
I first met
Benazir at her father's house in Karachi when she was a fun-loving teenager,
and later at Oxford. She was not a natural politician and had always
wanted to be a diplomat, but history and personal tragedy pushed in
the other direction. Her father's death transformed her. She had become
a new person, determined to take on the military dictator of that time.
She had moved to a tiny flat in London, where we would endlessly discuss
the future of the country. She would agree that land reforms, mass education
programmes, a health service and an independent foreign policy were
positive constructive aims and crucial if the country was to be saved
from the vultures in and out of uniform. Her constituency was the poor,
and she was proud of the fact.
She changed
again after becoming prime minister. In the early days, we would argue
and in response to my numerous complaints - all she would say was that
the world had changed. She couldn't be on the "wrong side"
of history. And so, like many others, she made her peace with Washington.
It was this that finally led to the deal with Musharraf and her return
home after more than a decade in exile. On a number of occasions she
told me that she did not fear death. It was one of the dangers of playing
politics in Pakistan.
It is difficult
to imagine any good coming out of this tragedy, but there is one possibility.
Pakistan desperately needs a political party that can speak for the
social needs of a bulk of the people. The People's party founded by
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was built by the activists of the only popular mass
movement the country has known: students, peasants and workers who fought
for three months in 1968-69 to topple the country's first military dictator.
They saw it as their party, and that feeling persists in some parts
of the country to this day, despite everything.
Benazir's
horrific death should give her colleagues pause for reflection. To be
dependent on a person or a family may be necessary at certain times,
but it is a structural weakness, not a strength for a political organisation.
The People's party needs to be refounded as a modern and democratic
organisation, open to honest debate and discussion, defending social
and human rights, uniting the many disparate groups and individuals
in Pakistan desperate for any halfway decent alternative, and coming
forward with concrete proposals to stabilise occupied and war-torn Afghanistan.
This can and should be done. The Bhutto family should not be asked for
any more sacrifices.
Tariq Ali's
book The Duel: Pakistan on the Flightpath of American Power is published
in 2008 [email protected]
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