To
Pindi Station
By
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
06 January,
2008
Countercurrents.org
Nearly
every report of Benazir Bhutto's terrible demise began by noting her
historic distinction of being the first female head of government in
an Islamic country. Mentioned far below, if at all, was a far more notable
legacy -- that it was her administration that orginated the Taliban.
Granting
that the cacophony of You Tube, permanent audio, IM's and suchlike mediations
is apt to dull the sensibilities a mite, few noted the utter irony of
Benazir's life: The first female prime minister of the entire Islamic
Universe -- chic personified with degrees from Oxford and Harvard to
boot -- kicking off a madrasah-muscle-muzzle culture which would result
in every woman in Afghanistan being confined to her home as a rule,
forced to don the head-to-toe burqa when outside the home, such outings
too permissible only under strict rules of chaperone!
So much for Ms. Bhutto's Western impact. On Pakistan's Eastern front
a similar effort attended Benazir's first stint as PM. Pakistani surrogates
in Kashmir kidnapped the Indian Home Minister's daughter for ransom,
demanding the release of their colleagues from Indian jails. The Indian
government's subsequent capitulation is widely regarded as the beginning
of the current turmoil in Kashmir, a tragedy which has resulted in thousands
of deaths, ethnic cleansing of Hindus in the Kashmir Valley, the unleashing
of an iron-fist by the Indian government and a human rights nightmare
all around.
Along the
way, the jehadis in Kashmir have frequently coerced women to follow
7th century Islamic codes. They have even threatened women newsreaders
with disfigurement if they did not eschew makeup and don the veil. It
is worth mentioning that Ms. Bhutto, meanwhile, was hardly inattentive
to her own appearance, winning tabloid acclaim as one of the most beautiful
women in the world.
It is thus
hard to resist a "those who live by the sword..." sigh, but
in truth such cynicism is not entirely confined to Pakistan: India,
nurturing early visions of big-power status, trained and sustained the
Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka (in a similar twist of irony, the chelas would
end up killing the erstwhile patron, Rajiv Gandhi). The results of America's
sponsorship of the Afghan mujahideen (a force raised by Jimmy Carter
and Zbigniew Brzezinski and later hailed by Ronald Reagan as the moral
equivalent of America's founding fathers) are too raw to require retelling,
especially in the wake of the recent movie, Charlie Wilson's War. For
that matter, one may go all the way back to 1917, when the Germans sought
to undermine the Tsar by promoting a famous Russian subversive, Vladimir
Ilich Lenin, a contrivance we can be sure they had ample time to reflect
upon all those decades when East Germany was under the Russian thumb.
Ninety years after Lenin's journey via the sealed train, the US, seized
with panic following
the popularity of the lawyers' revolt against Musharraf, pushed through
a hasty deal between the general and the lady (Ek Musharraf Ek Hasina,
to cannibalize an old Hindi film title), whereby Musharraf would hold
elections, Bhutto would win, and together they would turn back Fundamentalist
resurgence in Pakistan and live happily ever after.
This fairy
tale 21st century renactment of Edmund Wilson's To Finland Station was
slated to end eight years of exile for Benazir with all outstanding
criminal cases against her withdrawn. If Lenin's sealed train was about
a beleaguered big power of the day trying to extricate itself, Benazir's
flight back to Pakistan in 2007 was viewed by many as a farce orchestrated
by another big power, equally beleaguered. That farce would inevitably
turn to tragedy was not only not unexpected, it was forseen by several
Pakistan observers, including US diplomat Peter Galbraith, Benazir's
close friend and college-mate. In 1917, Lenin soon made good on his
deal with the Germans (with Trotsky playing negotiator at Brest-Litovsk).
The unfortunate Benazir died before she could do anything for her benefactors.
The two events
are emblematic of the transformation of geopolitics in the past 90 years:
It is hard to imagine that any Western Democracy of the Victorian Age
would, for instance, have thought of arming Communists or Anarchists
to destabilize a state. It was an era when the State was a sacrosanct
notion, even if states themselves warred constantly. Yet this is exactly
what America and others have done in recent years. Looked at another
way, the Afghan mujahideen and the Taliban were early forays into privatizing
war, a wheel we shall see turning full circle in the years to come as
Blackwater and other private armies impinge on life in American back
at home.
But the larger
lesson, that of fostering private armies, even if initially for use
against other states, sooner or later results in some terrible blowback
on the patron, has remained unlearned. One of the most haunting passages
in the Mahabharata relates to the persistent idiocy of mankind -- which
Yudhishtira says is the most wondrous thing in the world: We see death
every day around us, but presume that we ourselves are somehow exempt
from it. Pakistan probably disavows the Mahabharata, as it is wont to
do all things pre-Islamic. But some eternal verities, to recall Einstein's
quip about astrology, work whether or not you believe in them.
R.I.P.
Leave
A Comment
&
Share Your Insights
Comment
Policy
Digg
it! And spread the word!
Here is a unique chance to help this article to be read by thousands
of people more. You just Digg it, and it will appear in the home page
of Digg.com and thousands more will read it. Digg is nothing but an
vote, the article with most votes will go to the top of the page. So,
as you read just give a digg and help thousands more to read this article.