Pakistan in a State of Emergency

[anitram]

Sad day.

Pakistan is a cesspool and Musharraf is no ally. Pumping $1billion a year in there for what? It's an outrage all around and we should be outraged.

 

[U2democrat]

On CNN they were saying it's $10 billion per year


We can only hope that people get pissed off and stand up to al Qaeda and the extremists, rather than falling in line. Either way I fear much more blood will be shed.

 

[anitram]

On CNN they were saying it's $10 billion per year

We can only hope that people get pissed off and stand up to al Qaeda and the extremists

Why would they when a good number of them believe it's the military (and Musharraf) and not al Qaeda that had anything to do with this? And not like we are in a position to tell them they're wrong either.

 

[U2democrat]

Right, I was just stating what would be best for not only the US but the world's interest if it was realized how dangerous it would be for extremists to take control in a country with nukes, but the likelihood of some successful uprising and move toward democracy is slim. I don't see much good coming out of the situation there.

 

[financeguy]

We can only hope that people get pissed off and stand up to al Qaeda and the extremists, rather than falling in line.

Has the investigation into the assassination already been completed?

 

[U2democrat]

al Qaeda claimed responsibility. I'm not sure if this has been confirmed independently.

 

[anitram]

Pakistan has a history of political assassination and other similar murderous activities for a good 60 years - long before al Qaeda was ever around. I wouldn't put too much stock into their claims. It is a convenient boogeyman to blame; certainly more palatable than the alternative?

 

[U2democrat]

I believe both al Qaeda and our "ally" Musharraf are to blame here. There is no good "alternative" in Pakistan at this point in time.

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

parade.com

Editor's note: We are all saddened by the murder this morning of Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto. The assassination adds more danger and confusion to the already chaotic situation in the region.

In late November, PARADE sent Contributing Editor Gail Sheehy to Pakistan. Sheehy traveled with former prime minister Benazir Bhutto as she campaigned through her home provinces. Sheehy had two long interviews with her—the first in Bhutto’s home in Islamabad, a second at her residence outside Karachi. Bhutto told Sheehy that she had long been a target of terrorists. She knew she was also now a target of the Musharraf government. Today’s suicide bombing mirrors the earlier attempt on her life that Bhutto described to Sheehy.

The interview with Bhutto will be the cover story of PARADE on January 6, 2008.

. . .

Dust spirals from village to village across the countryside of Pakistan. Drums lead men to dance in the streets as they witness the reappearance of their revered leader. No matter how long and hard I look, there are no women. Except her.

Ben-a-zir, zindabd! the men chant. Long live Benazir!

Benazir Bhutto has returned to her fractured country to run for prime minister this Tuesday. She has ruled twice before—and twice been overthrown. Her caravan continually switches direction to foil suicide bombers. Only a few weeks earlier, she narrowly escaped blasts that slaughtered 170 of her supporters. Now I watch her stand tall atop a truck, waving, white-scarved. Serenely smiling.

That evening, Bhutto invites me to her ancestral home in Larkana, where she still presides over several thousand acres of feudal lands. Meeting me alone on the men’s side, she is ready to let down her veil.

Today I saw you campaigning essentially unprotected, I say. How do you do it?

In answer, she invokes her late father, Zulfikar Bhutto, a populist reformer and the nation’s first democratic prime minister. “From the day my father was hanged—I was 25—whenever there is a crisis, I go into a kind of detachment. ‘What should I be doing?’ I just start ticking off steps. I don’t feel.”

Like her country, Bhutto is a riddle. Brilliant, beautiful, fearless, she is also ruthlessly ambitious, devious and corrupt. The first question that perplexes an American: How could Bhutto — Harvard- and Oxford-educated, unapologetically secular — have become the first woman elected to lead a Muslim country? In part, the answer is that in dynastic Pakistan, she is effectively royalty. The second question: Why should this election matter so much to America? That answer is simpler. Pakistan has nuclear weapons. Also, the most dangerous place in the world is Pakistan’s lawless border with Afghanistan. It is a Ho Chi Minh Trail of terrorism where Osama bin Laden is believed to enjoy sanctuary.

Bhutto maintains that the Pakistani army’s decision to overthrow her in 1996 came after she announced plans to crack down on terrorism. “I am what the terrorists most fear,” she tells me, “a female political leader fighting to bring modernity to Pakistan. Now they’re trying to kill me."

Talat Masood, a retired general who has advised Bhutto, foresees his nation breaking in half. “ The only option left to the people of Pakistan,” he says, “is the military or the militants.”

Or another try at democracy under Bhutto.

. . .

During our talk in Larkana, Bhutto weeps in describing her struggles after being ousted 12 years ago on charges of plundering the treasury. Her husband was jailed without charges. She faced constant harassment by the courts. Even while living with her three children in self-imposed exile in London and Dubai, she could not open a bank account or use a credit card because of the charges against her in Pakistan. “I didn’t have the press, I didn’t have the judiciary, I was all alone,” she whimpers. As if on cue, tears fall. “I only had God,” she moans.

Bhutto still insists that there are no foreign bank accounts in her name. I suggest that most are in the names of her mother or of friends. She feigns surprise—what could others’ finances have to do with her? “I’m an independent legal entity!” she protests. “What’s the difference between you and me?”

“One point five billion dollars,” I reply—the amount the Pakistani government contends that she and her husband pocketed while in power. She also allegedly siphoned funds from the U.N. Oil for Food program. Her defense: “Six other companies in Pakistan did it. Nobody investigated them.”

Beneath the theatrics Bhutto uses to such effect is an ominous reality. “She’s the No. 1 target of the terrorists right now,” says Humayun Gauhar, a confidant of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

Bhutto says she first heard the name Osama bin Laden in 1989, when he sent $10 million to the ISI, Pakistan’s infamous intelligence service, to help it overthrow her first government. The ISI has close ties to radical Islamists and was responsible for the Taliban’s rise to power in Afghanistan. America’s CIA, which also supported the Afghan holy warriors in their guerrilla struggle against the Soviet Union in the 1980s, continues to work with the ISI today—theoretically in suppressing the very terrorist legions it helped to create.

“Benazir tried to push the intelligence service out of politics in her first term,” acknowledges America’s ambassador to Pakistan at the time, Robert Oakley. “It was a bold move, but it failed."

“I was ignorant of the extremist war of these new radical Islamists until my second term,” Bhutto tells me. Upon re-election in 1993, she learned of more attempts to assassinate her from the interrogation of a Pakistani terrorist named Ramzi Yousef—the mastermind of the 1993 bombing of New York’s World Trade Center. That investigation also revealed to her the existence of madrassas, or Islamic schools, preaching jihad against the West.

Bhutto tried once more to break the ISI. Again, she failed and was overthrown—and, with ISI support, Taliban-controlled Afghanistan became the staging ground for 9/11.

. . .

To understand why Bhutto is so driven, one must imagine her huddling with her mother in a cold jail cell through a long April night in 1979, waiting for her father to be hanged by the military strongman who had overthrown him. The young woman and her mother subsequently lived through repeated raids, arrests and solitary confinement.

Have you healed? I ask this 54-year-old survivor. Or is avenging your father your solace?

“I feel that a wrong must be righted,” she says. She recalls her father’s parting words: “You can walk away. You’re young. You can go to live in London or Paris or Geneva.”

“No,” she told him. “I have to keep up this mission of yours, of democracy.”

Bhutto’s own family dismisses her little-girl-lost script. “Her father’s death was enormously convenient for her politically,” her American-educated niece, Fatima Bhutto, tells me. “She has no legacy of her own except for corruption and violence, so she rests on her father’s laurels.” Fatima blames her aunt for her own father’s assassination in 1996.

Reflecting on the lessons of her two terms as prime minister, Bhutto tells me, “It’s only now that America has awakened to what we were already fighting—Islamic jihadis.” Fortunately for her, the West’s urgent fear of Pakistan as a breeding ground for terrorists has given Bhutto the chance to redefine herself. During most of her exile, she was considered irrelevant by Washington. Then she hired Hillary Clinton’s image-maker, Mark Penn, and began playing up to Musharraf.

When Musharraf’s popularity dove in 2007 after his jailing of judges, lawyers and journalists, Bhutto suddenly emerged as America’s “ideal.” U.S. politicians needed her—progressive, secular, female, willing to compromise—to put a face of democracy on their support for Musharraf’s autocratic rule.

True to form, Bhutto manipulated Musharraf to erase the charges against her, promising not to return to Pakistan until after national elections. She then broke that promise. But once she sensed that even her stalwarts were appalled at an arranged political marriage to a dictator, she spurned Musharraf and became her own woman again.

I sense a dark reflection in both Bhutto’s psychological history and her country’s constant turmoil—a compulsion to repeat past traumas. A prime example is the way she returned to her country on Oct. 18.

Ignoring warnings of terrorist cells plotting to kill her, Bhutto presided from atop a caravan over a parade that took 10 hours to snake through Karachi. Near midnight, the streetlights went out. The police disappeared. Her feet swollen from standing, Bhutto ducked below into a steel command center to remove her sandals. Moments later, a bomb went off. “I had a sickening, sickening feeling,” she tells me. She now believes the bomb was wired to an infant that a man had been trying to hand to her. She recalls saying to the people with her, “Don’t go outside—another blast will follow.” It did.

When she finally emerged, Bhutto saw bits of brain and flesh and fingers from 20 members of Benazir’s Brigade—the young guards who wear red shirts proclaiming “I Give My Life for Bhutto” — decorating the platform from which she had waved. All told, 170 of her supporters died. Tellingly, the Musharraf government has mounted no investigation.

Her friend Abida Hussain, a former Pakistani ambassador to the U.S., tells me that Bhutto later felt sad and asked, “How many lives did I risk?” Bhutto herself indignantly protests this anecdote to me. “I said no such thing! We must be out on the streets, or the terrorists win.”

Such is politics in Pakistan.

. . .

Musharraf called the attempt on Bhutto a suicide attack by Islamic extremists. Bhutto believes it was the work of Musharraf’s allies. “There are rogue elements within ISI that are ideologically jihadist and less than enthusiastic about Benazir Bhutto becoming prime minister a third time,” says a Bhutto adviser. However, Musharraf’s confidant Gauhar argues to me: “We don’t want a dead Benazir on our hands! She’d be just another unlikely martyr that we don’t need.”

If Bhutto returns to power this week, Gauhar predicts the U.S. will finally get what Musharraf has refused it: “She will allow NATO boots on the ground in our tribal areas and a chance to neuter our nuclear weapons.” Yet President Bush remains reluctant to give up on Musharraf, despite the fact that two-thirds of Pakistanis want him to resign immediately. If the election is rigged, as expected, public outrage is likely to erupt. Bhutto says she won’t join an illegitimate government. But her niece, Fatima Bhutto, says, “She’ll work with anyone to get back into power.”

Despite the corrosion of her reputation by corruption and compromise, Bhutto appears to be America’s strongest anchor in the effort to turn back the extremist Islamic tide threatening to engulf Pakistan. What would you like to tell President Bush? I ask this riddle of a woman.

She would tell him, she replies, that propping up Musharraf’s government, which is infested with radical Islamists, is only hastening disaster. “I would say, ‘Your policy of supporting dictatorship is breaking up my country.’ I now think al-Qaeda can be marching on Islamabad in two to four years.”

 

[U2democrat]

Thanks for posting. Unfortunately the terrorists won today.

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

Today on "The Situation Room," Wolf Blitzer revealed an exclusive e-mail he received from Benazir Bhutto's US spokesman Mark Siegel in October. "This is a story she wanted me to tell the world on her behalf if she were killed," Blitzer said, before reading the e-mail.

In the e-mail, Bhutto wrote that, if anything were to happen to her, "I wld [sic] hold Musharaf [sic] responsible. I have been made to feel insecure by his minions, and there is no way what is happening in terms of stopping me from taking private cars or using tinted windows or giving jammers or four police mobiles to cover all sides cld [sic] happen without him."

video

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/12/27/blitzer-exclusive-bhutto_n_78475.html

 

[U2democrat]

She definitely did not have the security she needed. As I said earlier, both al Qaeda and Musharraf are at blame here, but if I were Musharraf I'd go hide in a cave myself because his actions (or lack thereof) have ticked off the people, the US, and he's always in disfavor with the terrorists.

Then there's al Qaeda, it'll be interesting to see if there will be any sort of civilian or military backlash against them as well.

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

boston.com

Benazir Bhutto, shown above in 1972, graduated the following year from Radcliffe College at Harvard University.

By Anna Badkhen and Andrew Ryan, Globe Staff

Benazir Bhutto came to Harvard University as a freshman in 1969 and, despite being the daughter of the prime minister of Pakistan, was a shy 16-year-old.

"She quickly made the transition from a shy girl, very protected and two years younger than almost everybody else, to being part of the community,” recalled Peter Galbraith, Bhutto's classmate, close friend, and a former US ambassador to Croatia. “She quickly made friends."

Bhutto's signature gesture in college was to bake cakes for her friends' birthdays -- chocolate cakes with chocolate icing, which she often decorated with her favorite American Halloween staple -- candy corn, Galbraith said today by phone.

"I do remember one birthday party, where I met my future wife. That was in April and [the candy corn] had become quite stale," Galbraith said. "It was a wonderful gesture, but it’s good that she went into politics instead. She was not a very good cook, but she was a great friend."

Bhutto, who served twice as Pakistan's prime minister between 1988 and 1996, was killed this morning in a suicide attack at a campaign rally in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, that also killed at least 20 others.

When the phone rang at Abbas Hassan's Leominster home this morning for the seventh time, he sensed that something had happened in his native Pakistan.

“This is such a tragic thing,” said Hassan, who served in the administrations of Bhutto and President Pervez Musharraf.

Bhutto had returned to Pakistan from an eight-year exile on Oct. 18. She narrowly escaped injury that day when her homecoming parade in Karachi was targeted in a suicide attack that killed more than 140 people.

"Pakistanis were quite clear that she was taking risks that were endangering her life," said Hassan, a fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a doctoral candidate at Tufts' Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. "It became clear she would be eliminated, if not by the terrorists, then by the establishment.”

Bhutto, who had been convicted for failing to appear in court on charges of massive corruption, was a divisive figure among the Pakistani community, said Tahir Chaudhry, president of the Pakistan Association of Greater Boston. Nonetheless, he said, "anybody you talk to right now is upset about this."

"The people I’ve talked to so far feel that this will set Pakistan back," Chaudhry said. "We were moving toward democracy, the military rule was going to go away, there were going to be elections. And now we don’t know what is going to happen."

"This is a huge step backward" for Pakistan, he said.

Bhutto came to Harvard at a time of great social upheaval and joined in antiwar protests, listened to Carly Simon, and attended basketball and hockey games, friends told the Harvard Crimson in a story published in 1989.

"I quickly shed the shalwar khameez [traditional South Asian dress] and reemerged in jeans and sweatshirts from the Harvard Coop," Bhutto wrote in her autobiography, according to the Crimson story. "I let my hair grow long and straight and was flattered when my friends in Eliot Hall told me I looked like Joan Baez."

 

[Dreadsox]

I am sick to my stomach. This just tears at my heart.

 

[Zoots]

Sad but not surprising like many have said already. I remember the CNN interview that was aired I think a month or two back when she said she was aware that she was a target and that she was not afraid.

May Benazir's soul rest in peace.

 

[joyfulgirl]

She definitely did not have the security she needed.

Indeed she appeared to even be an easy target, given the recent attempt. So sad.

 

[ntalwar]

She definitely did not have the security she needed. As I said earlier, both al Qaeda and Musharraf are at blame here, but if I were Musharraf I'd go hide in a cave myself because his actions (or lack thereof) have ticked off the people, the US, and he's always in disfavor with the terrorists.

Then there's al Qaeda, it'll be interesting to see if there will be any sort of civilian or military backlash against them as well.

Not to blame her, but standing through the sunroof of the car (i.e. when she was shot) probably wasn't the wisest decision. That is a huge security mistake.

Musharraf in power is still preferable to total anarchy. I doubt there'll be a backlash against the extremists in the tribal areas - the military has tried and failed in the past. It's sort of the same difficulty NATO faces in Afghanistan against the Taliban -i.e. NATO is losing there.

 

[financeguy]

Pakistan has a history of political assassination and other similar murderous activities for a good 60 years - long before al Qaeda was ever around. I wouldn't put too much stock into their claims. It is a convenient boogeyman to blame; certainly more palatable than the alternative?

Yep. It's way too early to blandly go for the Fox News/CNN 'Al Qaeda must have done it. Dem's de bad guys' type of conclusion -mind you, on the other hand I can't see the benefit from Musharraf's point of view of assassinating Bhutto either. He is certainly not a stupid person, and I do not see a positive outcome from these events for him

Actually, if one looks at the question from a 'cui bono' perspective one might look in the direction of the Islamist politicians, like Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan - the latter of whom said some pretty unpleasant things about Bhutto in an article in the UK Daily Telegraph a few months ago.

 

[U2democrat]

Actually, I didn't hear it from CNN, and they are not just speculating. Islamist websites linked to al Qaeda are claiming responsibility.

How much truth there is to the claim I don't know, but al Qaeda has been targeting Bhutto for a long time now, and I don't understand why some find it so hard to believe that yes, al Qaeda actually kills people and not just corrupt governments!

 

[anitram]

I don't understand why some find it so hard to believe that yes, al Qaeda actually kills people and not just corrupt governments!

?

 

[financeguy]

How much truth there is to the claim I don't know, but al Qaeda has been targeting Bhutto for a long time now, and I don't understand why some find it so hard to believe that yes, al Qaeda actually kills people and not just corrupt governments!

Who and/or what are 'Al Qaeda'?

 

[ntalwar]

Balochistan has seen recent killings of Bhutto supporters. A group like the Baloch Liberation Army can't be ruled out.

 

[may]

I am deeply saddened by the untimely death of the beautiful Benazir Bhutto. What a tragedy. She was such a bright light for a country in chaos and was so brave to reach out to the Pakistani people. I sincerely hope that someone will step up to the plate and be as brave as she was to help Pakistan become a nation of peace.

Furthermore, I have concerns about the money the U.S. is sending to Pakistan to "stop" the war on terror. We have given in excess of 5 billion dollars yet the Taliban and al Queda (sp?) is getting stronger? This doesn't make sense to me. I think the president of Pakistan may be (or someone within) may be filtering our money to the ones we are trying to fight.

 

[DaveC]

I am deeply saddened by the untimely death of the beautiful Benazir Bhutto. What a tragedy. She was such a bright light for a country in chaos and was so brave to reach out to the Pakistani people. I sincerely hope that someone will step up to the plate and be as brave as she was to help Pakistan become a nation of peace.

She was not the saint you make her out to be.

RIP.

 

[ntalwar]

Furthermore, I have concerns about the money the U.S. is sending to Pakistan to "stop" the war on terror. We have given in excess of 5 billion dollars yet the Taliban and al Queda (sp?) is getting stronger? This doesn't make sense to me. I think the president of Pakistan may be (or someone within) may be filtering our money to the ones we are trying to fight.

The same could be said for the tens of billions of dollars that the US and NATO have spent in Afghanistan. Military funding does not guarantee results or "victory". NATO is losing in Afghanistan.

 

[may]

She was not the saint you make her out to be.

I understand that there was quite a scandal before her exile, but she was for helping the people of Pakistan.

 

[dazzledbylight]

shit................


I've actually been on vacation {day/nite #3 of 4}......

and I mean REALLY on vaction .....
News Junkie that I am..........EVEN when I'm on vacation
i usually read the papers/listen to All News station, plus another one with a particular POV.........

Except this time THATparticular news station-- I can barely get in the part of NYC I am vacationing in (vs my home in another part of NYC)............
SO i figured OK... I'll make it truely a vacation and NOT LISTEN TO the news...............


WHAT the fuck WAS I THINKING coming into FYM tonight !??!!

i just caught the full thread's title then--
I scrolled SO QUICKLY thru the pasted item that I missed the whole assasination thing........UNTIL I looked down the rest of FYM threads.........

*runs around in a metaphorical circle yelling "aaaccccckkkkkkk!!!"*


*puts on Metaphorical Blinders*
I'm going home to drool over Bono & Co{ R&H/Zoo TV DVD's} and Dr Dianel Jackson {SG1} RIGHT NOW!!!!!

oh & BTW since a bunch of you don't know me- since i rarely post here in the past 1 1/2 yrs.......and will think I'm either being sarcastic/?sardonic/ or plain serious about the stuff right above this paragraph here^^^^^^

I was already precocious socio-politically by the time I was 12-13 in 65/66 ( Mayor Lindsey- "it's the second hardest job in America" campaign slogan). I lived (wailed through) 1968 .... & [& other awful times] beyond.
I earned my "drooling rights" a long time ago.

anyway by the time sat will roll around i'll be back in the news stream, and i'll read at least part of this thread.

and for the few who do know me here unico, u2dem, vert. (VP if you're still dropping in)..... S

 

[maycocksean]

She was not the saint you make her out to be.

RIP.

Who is?

Especially in politics. . .

 

[verte76]

I found out about the assassination last night. First I read she'd died, then I found out she'd been shot. RIP.

 

[melon]

Actually, if one looks at the question from a 'cui bono' perspective one might look in the direction of the Islamist politicians, like Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan - the latter of whom said some pretty unpleasant things about Bhutto in an article in the UK Daily Telegraph a few months ago.

Even U.S. officials referred to Bhutto as one of the worst PMs ever several years ago.