Benazir
Bhutto Faced
Death With Courage
By
Mirza A. Beg
29 December, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Banazir
Bhutto, fell victim to the politics of endemic violence in Pakistan.
She called herself “the Daughter of Destiny” in her autobiography
and often styled herself as the daughter of Pakistan. She had more upheavals
in one life time than most can imagine. In her untimely death, she followed
her slain father and two brothers.
She was the
daughter of former President, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, appointed under emergency
rule when former dictator Yahya Khan abdicated in the wake of civil
war of 1971. The war was brought on by hubris of Yahya Khan and Zulfiqar
Bhutto, resulting in East Pakistan breaking away to form Bangladesh.
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto later became the Prime Minister under a parliamentary
constitution designed by him. He rigged the next election and was overthrown
in a military coup in 1977 by General Zia ul Haq, who hanged him in
1979 for the murder of a political opponent.
With courage
and perseverance, twenty-six year old Oxford and Harvard educated Benazir
Bhutto became the undisputed leader of her father's Pakistan Peoples
Party (PPP). The PPP was hounded by General Zia, an ally of the US in
the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. After the death
of dictator-President Zia ul Haq in a plane crash, she returned from
exile to lead PPP to victory twice to become the Prime Minister in 1988
and again in 1993. And twice she was dismissed from office under a cloud
of corruption and nepotism in 1990 and 1996 by the ceremonial president.
In 1999,
General Parvez Musharraf overthrew the government of her political rival
Nawaz Sharif. General Musharraf has ruled Pakistan through some very
difficult times in the wake of 9/11 and the US war on Al Qaeda and the
Talibans in neighboring Afghanistan.
After eight
years of dictatorship, and close cooperation with the United States,
Musharraf has not been able to contain the virulent Talibanist ideology
that has spilled over among the kith and kin of Afghan Pashtuns in the
very porous frontier areas of Pakistan. With regular indiscriminate
bombings of Pashtun villages in Afghanistan by the US lead forces and
occasional stealth bombings in Pakistan, claiming hundreds perhaps thousands
of innocent lives, the Pashtuns have become much more anti-American
and anti-Pakistan government than ever before, resulting in Iraq style
suicide bombings in civilian areas of Pakistan.
Unable to
defeat the Talibanist ideology and unable to safeguard the civilian
population in the heartland of Pakistan, Musharraf has become quite
unpopular. He found his power slipping and made the mistake of firing
the Chief Justice of the Pakistan Supreme Court in March 2007. Unexpected
widespread protest followed and Musharraf was forced to reinstate the
Chief Justice. It weakened him further.
Over the
summer of 2007, the United States brokered a power sharing deal between
General Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto to provide a gradual shift in power.
Musharraf dropped the pending corruption charges against her and allowed
her return to Pakistan after a decade of self exile. She was a candidate
for Prime Minister again in the upcoming election on January 8, 2008.
On again, off again political maneuvering by General Musharraf and Benazir
Bhutto further weakened Musharraf who declared emergency in early November,
but was forced to relinquish his military dictator’s uniform to
become a newly minted civilian president.
Whatever
the veracity of behind the scene deal may have been, Bush took credit
for it, trying to shore his sagging popularity in the United States.
To the Pakistanis the very idea of Bush meddling and controlling the
two top political figures, made Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto appear
to be stooges of Bush, who while preaching democracy has a record of
supporting dictatorships and bullying other countries. An average Pakistani
does not support the Talibanist ideology and feels caught between the
devil and the deep sea, unable to decide which is which.
Benazir Bhutto
was a polarizing figure in a country that had aspirations of nationhood,
but keeps loosing to the vested interests based on many conflicting
ethnic, linguistic and economic fissures held together or perhaps suppressed
together by the domineering presence of the military. For sixty years,
its leaders have gone for quick fixes of military dictatorships rather
than let the imperfect civilian institutions grow and mature.
As polarizing
leaders often are, she was intensely loved by many and was hated by
many others. In the past Benazir Bhutto had political opponents, but
this time she had deadly enemies. The bullets of an assassin and the
suicide bomber not only killed Benazir Bhutto, but have set Pakistan
further back, denying another possible chance for an imperfect democracy
to take root.
I was not
an admirer of Benazir Bhutto’s political compromises and considered
her father to be one of the architects of the dismemberment of Pakistan
when Bangladesh broke away in 1971. But criticism aside one has to admire
her courage and persistence. She tried to bring sanity to Pakistan's
many-sided murky politics choked with a strangle-hold of military on
all the intermittent civilian governments, including hers.
Finally she
went down fighting courageously trying to do some good for her beleaguered
country. She was less than what critics like me would have liked her
to be, but then critics have the luxury of not being in the rough and
tumble of politics. They do not have to swallow principles and make
calculated imperfect or at times far from perfect compromises. As Theodore
Roosevelt said,
"It
is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong
man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face
is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs
and comes up short again and again ... who spends himself in a worthy
cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement,
and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly."
Banazir Bhutto
knew the dangers she faced. About 150 people died in an attempt on her
life when she arrived in Pakistan from exile in mid-October this year.
She was not intimidated but pursued on with vigor. She died valiantly
fighting for her and Pakistan's future as she saw it. She was cut down
in her prime by those who have a very narrow jaundiced view of their
religion and no vision of the future. They court death, killing innocent
bystanders in ignorance of the ideals of religion and nobility of human
spirit.
After six
years of war of death and destruction the US should realize that bombing
in anger wins battles and destroys an enemy, resulting in a blowback
price to pay. War of ideas is won by convincing the enemy of a better
future. Instead of supporting military dictatorships the United States
should invest in better schools, universities, hospitals and infrastructure
to help Pakistan alleviate poverty and build a more equitable society.
After six
years of war, death and destruction the US should realize that bombing
wins battles and destroys some enemies while creating many more, resulting
in a heavy blowback price to pay. War of ideas is won by convincing
the enemy of a better future. Instead of supporting military dictatorships
the United States should invest in better schools, universities, hospitals
and infrastructure to help Pakistan alleviate poverty and build a more
equitable society.
Pakistan
is again at fateful cross roads. It is sixty years late, but not too
late, because what else can a people or a nation do, but to take up
the fallen standard and persevere. Pakistanis can reject the politics
of fear imposed by the quick-fix promises of military dictatorships.
They should take up the difficult long journey of slowly building civil
institutions of imperfect political give and take to reach an internal
cohesion and become a nation at peace with itself and its neighbors.
Mirza
A. Beg can be contacted at [email protected]
or read at http://mirzasmusings.blogspot.com/
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