BENAZIR BHUTTO, REQUIEM IN PASSAT

The savage, calculated killing December 27 of Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan’s two-time former prime minister, who returned to her homeland to seek a third term after eight years of exile in Dubai at the hands of former Pakistan leaders and current military dictator-President Perez Musharraf, has caused riots throughout Pakistan and upset the apple-cart so far as United States hopes to beat terrorist Al Qaeda are concerned. This lady who had such dignity, beauty, intellectual and political savvy was daughter and eldest child of Pakistan’s hanged former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a Pakistani of Sindhi descent. Bhutto, a champion of democracy in this crazy tribal warfare country for centuries also saw two brothers executed before she went into self-imposed exile. She was educated in the United States at Radcliffe College in Boston, and at the time of her assassination was campaigning to bring democracy to her country and rid it of military dictatorship and Islamic extremism. Greta Van Susteran of Fox News did an extensive interview with Bhutto when she decided to return to Pakistan to organize election of a majority in parliament and become prime minister. Van Susteran said she told Bhutto off-camera: “Are you nuts? We know you’re going to get killed. She said Bhutto responded: “I’m really committed. I believe in democracy.” Van Susteran commented on Fox News after her assassination: “She was fearless. She had a sense of mission. She really believed in separation of church and state. Nothing was going to deter her.” Van Susteran reported as a result of her interview and private discussions with Bhutto that the exiled former prime minister had lengthy discussions with Musharraf about her coming back to Pakistan, and that the goal was a power-sharing agreement that would put the country on a sure road from martial rule to democracy. “She was much loved and much hated, yet she remained fearless about going home to bring democracy to Pakistan and save her country [from Islamic extremists and terrorists],” Van Susteran reported. It is yet to be determined whether Bhutto was gunned down by “murderous extremists,” that is agents of Al Qaeda, as President George W. Bush said in his statement at Crawford, Texas, or whether President Musharraf’s army or intelligence service operatives organized the assassination. The man who shot Bhutto in the neck and chest after a political rally in Rawalpindi, the headquarters of Pakistan’s army, killed himself with a suicide explosive pack strapped around himself after what veteran journalist-commentator Lally Weymouth termed “a targeted killing.” News reports the day after the shooting in Bhutto’s neck and chest, as she stood through the roof of her slowly traveling Landcruiser waving to crowds, said she fell back and hit her head on the back of the roof opening of the vehicle, which was the actual cause of her death an hour later. But this is speculation as there was no medical autopsy before she was buried. Pakistan authorities have the assassin’s body, which has surely been fingerprinted for identification if his hands were still intact, but we have to watch and see how this plays out. Bhutto was the first woman elected to lead a Muslim state, having been twice elected prime minister of Pakistan. She was sworn in for the first time in 1988 but removed from office 20 months later under orders of then-president Ghulam Ishaq Khan on grounds of alleged corruption. In 1993 Bhutto was re-elected but was again removed in 1996 on similar charges, this time by President Farooq Leghari. Bhutto went into self-imposed exile in Dubai in 1998, where she remained until she returned to Pakistan on October 18, 2007, after reaching an agreement with Musharraf and was granted amnesty on all corruption charges. The charges were withdrawn. Bhutto’s mother was Begum Nusrat Bhutto, a Pakistani of Iranian-Kurdish descent. Her paternal grandfather was Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto, who came to Larkana Sindh before partition from his native town of Bhatto Kalan, which was situated in the Indian state of Haryana. The assassination followed a political rally of the Pakistan People's Party in the Liaquat National Bagh in Rawalpindi. Ex-government spokesman Tariq Azim Khan said that, although it appeared that she had been shot, it was unclear whether her wounds had been caused by a shooting or shrapnel from the bomb. Eyewitnesses to the assassination stated to various news agencies that Bhutto had stood up through the sunroof of her Landcruiser to wave at supporters who were cheering her. It is then that a "thin man" on a motorcycle apparently shot her in the neck with a 9-millimeter handgun. Then the unidentified assassin detonated an explosive strapped to him which killed him and about 20 of Bhutto’s supporters. Many others were injured. Bhutto was rushed to Rawalpindi General Hospital, where she died at 6:16 p.m. Pacific Standard Time on December 27. The Pakistani Interior Ministry said the cause of death was the gunshot to the neck, despite news reports that the actual cause of death was her bashing her head on the vehicle sunroof after being shot. Either way, she died as a result of being shot and was the victim of a targeted murder. According to U.S. military experts and John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, "the immediate concern" is to “get control of nuclear weapons” in Pakistan because the assassination of Bhutto shows that “radical Islamists want to get a radical Islamist government [in Pakistan] to get control of the nuclear weapons.” Bolton blamed the Bush administration, for whom he worked, for pushing Musharraf to let Bhutto back in the country,” saying civilian leaders such as Bhutto could not get control over Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. China and Pakistan for many years have exchanged nuclear expertise and equipment, so this is a huge issue for the United States and other Western powers. Bolton’s views were echoed by former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlain after Bhutto was murdered that “stability was needed [in Pakistan] before democracy.” Chamberlain said that U. S. policy has been “focused too much on the border [between Pakistan and Afghanistan.] Stability is need throughout the country,” Chamberlain said. This story is going to be with us for some time after the New Year and as the presidential campaign on both Republican and Democratic sides heats up.