Although the outgoing year, in its usual mixed bag way, threw up a number of good times and bad sides, for the Asian nation of Pakistan, 2007 was an exceptionally terrible year.
Founded on August 14, 1947, the receding year marked Pakistan’s Diamond Jubilee, but instead of celebrations and projections of this nation’s strong sides expected of its maturity, 2007 brought to the fore Pakistan’s frailties and weak underbelly.
For countless Pakistanis, 2007 would remain unforgettable, for their country was humiliated by archrival India in the 2007 Cricket World Cup. But, there certainly were worse events to make 2007 the classic annus horribilis (a horrendous year), for Pakistan. The pinnacle of woes for Pakistan in 2007 struck last Thursday, when Ms Benazir Bhutto and some 15 others were killed at the end of a political rally.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) states that Pakistani Interior Ministry said al-Qaeda leader Baitullah Mehsud ordered the murder of Ms Bhutto. According to the BBC, Pakistani authorities got that information from telephone call interception. However, BBC’s Security Correspondent, Frank Gardner, warned that “it is too early to establish the truth of what happened.”
Even before last Thursday’s strike, which claimed the life of Ms Bhutto and over a dozen others, another 44 people had earlier lost their lives in violence-related incidents all apparently aimed at discouraging political opposition in Pakistan. Moreover, on October 18, the day Ms Bhutto set foot on Pakistan after five-years in exile, some 50 of her tens of thousands of supporters that had turned up to welcome their idol, were blown to death, when suspected suicide bombers detonated their lethal parcels.
Also, 2007 was made worse for Pakistanis by President Pervez Musharraf’s attempt to sack widely respected judges, seen as unwilling to kowtow to the turncoat former soldier and now civilian president. Observers believe it was the unwavering pressure from respectable judges, independent media and unrelenting struggles on the part of opposition politicians that forced Musharraf to abdicate office as Army Chief. Unfortunately, barely a month after picking his former chief spy catcher as his successor as head of the army in a colourful parade; the proverbial hell would break loose over Pakistan.
On January 12, 2002, the then General Musharraf, who seized power in 1999, after a coup overthrowing President Nawar Sharif, had declared that the eradication of extremism, violence and terrorism was his government’s highest priority but six years down the road, the three vices seem more bent to dethrone Musharraf than he has succeeded in reining them in. This was pointedly driven home last Thursday, when a suicide bomber cut short not only the campaigns of Ms Bhutto for election, slated for January 8, 2007 but also her very life itself.
Before full sunset on the second day, in keeping with Islamic funerary injunction, the remains of Ms Bhutto were interred next to her father’s grave in the clan’s Larkana country home in southern Pakistan. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was Benazir’s father and Pakistan’s next elections, scheduled for January 8, 2008, were due to hold three days after the posthumous 80th birthday of the late Ali Bhutto. The late Mr. Bhutto, President and Prime Minister of Pakistan for 1971 to 73 and 1973 to 77 respectively, was hanged on April 4, 1979 in Rawalpindi after trial for alleged complicity in the murder of a political opponent in 1974.
Ali Bhutto sired four children but with Benazair’s demise only his widow Nusrat and one daughter, Sanam, survive him to this day. Benazair met a violent death, like her father before her, and historians recalled that two of her brothers had also died in similar circumstances.
Series of family tragedies, such as the deaths of former Prime Minister Ali Bhutto, two of his sons, and most recently, the assassination of Ms Benazir Bhutto, have led to the Bhuttos being called the Kennedys of Southeast Asia. Such observers find a parallel in the vicissitudes of the US New England elite clan, which lost an American President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, to an assassin’s bullet in 1963 and Robert Kennedy to fatal shots by one Sirhan Sirhan after the latter’s triumph in the Democratic Primaries in California, among others. However, in next-door India, the Bhutto political dynasty depleted by assassinations has a closer neighbour in the Ghandhi family.
Across Pakistan, there was weeping, mourning and slapping of the chest, a traditional expression of bereavement last Friday as the remains of Ms Benazir Bhutto were lowered into the earth. However, the national outpouring of grief was almost overwhelmed by arson and other forms of destruction, which prompted the Pakistani authorities to issue a shoot-at-sight order against troublemakers.
A security spokesman’s attempt to extenuate the government’s decision to resort to such draconian measure was that, while recourse to burning of tyres by genuine mourners was understandable, there had arisen the need to contain hoodlums hiding under a national tragedy to perpetrate looting. But critics of the Musharraf-led government wonder why the authorities were not similarly proactive concerning the preservation of the life of the now slain leading Pakistani opposition politician.
Pakistan is not a stranger to the killing of a leading political figure in public. It could be recalled that the founding Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan was mortally hit by an assassin’s bullet in October 1951, barely four years after the amalgamation of former East and West Pakistan to form another sovereign nation out of India. Thus, last Thursday’s murder of Ms Bhutto was not the first assassination of a leading political figure in Pakistan. However, this latest play out of a shameful recourse to violence assumed uncommon significance because of the pedigree, gender and character of the principal casualty.
Born in Karachi on June 21, 1953, the early education of Benazir, who was wife of Asif Zardari, took place in America before she finally took a degree from Oxford University. Subsequently, at the age of barely 25 years old, the responsibility of leading Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), an organization her father helped to found, was thrust upon Benazir Bhutto. And in 1988 Ms Bhutto was voted into office as Prime Minister, making her the first woman in modern history to lead an Islamic nation like Pakistan, whose capital’s name, Islamabad, translates as Land of Islam.
Although her rule was cut short, two years later, by allegations of corruption, Benazair would be voted to the same office a second time in 1990. She held that office for three years until 1996, when she was again removed over the same suspicions of misconduct. Nonetheless, Ms. Bhutto was an extraordinary personality. Whatever her warts, rather than dispatch her to the garbage can of opportunistic politicians, last Thursday’s denouement actually foisted a toga of martyrdom on Ms Bhutto. To the mother of four, the interest of her pauperized and oppressed fellow citizens apparently outweighed her concerns for personal safety. Even at the risk of losing her life each time she stepped outdoors, as she eventually did, Ms Bhutto carried on with her campaigns undeterred.
In fairness to Mr. Musharraf, it could be recalled that the ruling regime actually advised Ms Bhutto against returning to Pakistan, over fears for her safety. After the tragedy last Thursday, Pakistani agencies reiterated that Ms Bhutto’s name had been on al Qaeda’s hit list. But not everyone is keen to share the Pakistani government’s position on this score. One of the prominent personalities, who hold a different view, is ex-international Pakistani cricket squad star Imram Khan.
In a telephone interview from his India base, Mr. Khan, who is an in-law to the influential Goldsworth clan, told BBC World TV, “It is very easy for the Pakistani Government to blame everything on al Qaeda, …General Musharraf is using the war on terrorism to stay in power.” The former cricket star, who is now an opposition politician in his country, went on to describe 2007 as “the bloodiest year in Pakistan’s history.” Interestingly, Mr. Khan was among millions of Pakistanis, who welcomed Musharraf’s seizure of power in 1999.
Today, Khan believes that the only way to move Pakistan out of its current political impasse is to reinstate sacked judges as a prelude to launching full-scale independent enquiries into the series of attacks at rallies by various opposition politicians, whereas the ruling party has suffered no similar fate to date.
Mr. Khan also wants a thorough review of Musharraf’s stance on terrorism. It would seem that Musharraf was getting away with various abuses under the camouflage of fighting terror. In fact, Khan was once thrown into detention over allegations of terrorism. The interpretation of this is that in the minds of most conspiracy theorists, the Musharraf regime would remain the prime suspect for Bhutto’s murder; even though the hydra-headed monster called al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for this action widely condemned around the world. This is a terrible misfortune for President Musharraf.
For the grieving people of Pakistan, and other peace-loving folks around the world, one can only hope that last Friday’s burial of Ms Bhutto would be the last earth-shattering event of 2007, and that the supreme price she paid for the sake of Pakistanis and democracy would not be in vain. Interestingly, the sudden nature in which Ms. Bhutto’s fiery life was extinguished may well guarantee that the fire of democracy, which she helped to stoke, would burn forever.
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