Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March 2008, pages 14-17

Five Views

The Assassination of Benazir Bhutto

A Courageous Soul

By Eric Margolis


	Before a banner bearing the images of recently assassinated Benazir Bhutto and her late father, former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (r), Pakistan People’s Party supporters hold a Dec. 30 candlelight vigil in Lahore. (AFP photo/Arif Ali).

I SPENT AN afternoon in London with Benazir Bhutto and her chief security adviser just before she returned to Pakistan. “You cannot afford to go into crowds,” I told her. “Yes, Eric, I know that, but I must. My people want to see me and know I am not afraid.”

On Thursday, Dec. 27, 2007, the courageous former prime minister of turbulent Pakistan again risked her life, this time in an open car, and was killed by an assassin. Some years back, she told me, “I am fatalistic. What will happen will happen.”

Bhutto’s death is an earthquake for Pakistan’s political landscape and derails U.S. efforts to forge a political cohabitation between her and former military, and now civilian, dictator, President Pervez Musharraf. In Washington’s laboriously developed plans, Musharraf was to retain de facto dictatorship with support from the army, while Benazir was to provide democratic window dressing for the regime. Benazir’s plan, as she told me, was to regain the prime ministership, and then slowly marginalize Musharraf.

Shortly after the first attempt on her life in Karachi, Benazir, who always wrote to me as “Bibi,” told me that she suspected Punjabi politicians in Musharraf’s Muslim League-Q Party were behind the attempt. Her supporters will now repeat these charges. Angry mobs have been attacking pro-Musharraf party locations. But the attack also bore all the hallmarks of al-Qaida or one of its local Pakistani allies. Other Pakistanis accused the army and its intelligence agency, ISI. Bhutto had enemies across the political spectrum.

Bhutto’s murder leaves her party, the Pakistan People’s Party, in disarray and without strong leadership. She surrounded herself with pliant yes-men and brooked no competition in the party. The party has been decapitated.

As I write, I’m trying to analyze this frightful news with proper journalistic detachment. But it’s very hard after knowing this unique woman for 20 years. Having uncovered a major corruption scandal involving her in-laws, I was long on her blacklist. But in the past decade I have come to admire her brilliant mind, willpower, courage and determination.

“Bibi” and I spent a good deal of time together after she was ousted for a second time by the army, when she was in exile in the political wilderness. It was in this, her darkest hour, that her character and grit really came through. She certainly won my admiration. Some angry Pakistani readers claimed she had “bewitched” me. We spoke or corresponded regularly. Shortly before her death, she asked me to develop a political strategy for her and her party. One of my recommendations was for her to extend an olive branch to her old foes, the Islamist parties, who denounced her as a Western tool.

Her death appears to end the tragic saga of the benighted Bhutto family. Her flamboyant father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s former prime minister, was hanged. Her two brothers were murdered, one by poison. Her mother has Alzheimer’s. Her husband was jailed for years and severely tortured. Now, her party will try to sustain the dynasty by pushing her children into Pakistan’s political inferno. I was with her son in London. There is no way he is ready for the murderous mélée of political life. In India, Sonia Gandhi, whose mother-in-law and husband were assassinated, faces the same dilemma: her party is pushing her son and daughter into the dangers of Indian politics.

It is inexpressibly tragic that so gifted, brave and vivacious a woman has been snuffed out at this time of supreme danger in Pakistan’s life. While many Pakistanis disliked or even detested her as a cat’s paw of the West, and as a closet scorner of traditional Islam—which she probably was—all must recognize that she was the most remarkable woman in her nation’s history and a towering historical figure who set a standard for South Asia’s women. Pakistan’s murderous politics has taken its latest victim. Worse is likely to follow.

Eric Margolis is a Canadian-based foreign correspondent and commentator. This column was first posted on his Web site, <www.ericmargolis.com>, Dec. 28, 2007. Reprinted with permission.

Bhutto’s Deadly Legacy

By William Dalrymple

When, in May 1991, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of India was killed by a suicide bomber, there was an international outpouring of grief. Recent days have seen the same with the death of Benazir Bhutto: another glamorous, Western-educated scion of a great South Asian political dynasty tragically assassinated at an election rally.

There is, however, an important difference between the two deaths: while Mr. Gandhi was assassinated by Sri Lankan Hindu extremists because of his policy of confronting them, Ms. Bhutto was apparently the victim of Islamist militant groups that she allowed to flourish under her administrations in the 1980s and 1990s.

It was under Ms. Bhutto’s watch that the Pakistani intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, first installed the Taliban in Afghanistan. It was also at that time that hundreds of young Islamic militants were recruited from the madrassas to do the agency’s dirty work in Indian Kashmir. It seems that, like some terrorist equivalent of Frankenstein’s monster, the extremists turned on both the person and the state that had helped bring them into being.

While it is true that the recruitment of jihadists had started before she took office and that Ms. Bhutto was insufficiently strong—or competent—to have had full control over either the intelligence services or the Pakistani army when she was in office, it is equally naïve to believe she had no influence over her country’s foreign policy toward its two most important neighbors, India and Afghanistan.

Everyone now knows how disastrous the rule of the Taliban turned out to be in Afghanistan, how brutally it subjected women and how it allowed al-Qaeda to train in camps within its territory. But another, and in the long term perhaps equally perilous, legacy of Ms. Bhutto’s tenure is often forgotten: the turning of Kashmir into a jihadist playground.

In 1989, when the insurgency in the Indian portion of the disputed region first began, it was largely an amateur affair of young, secular-minded Kashmiri Muslims rising village by village and wielding homemade weapons—firearms fashioned from the steering shafts of rickshaws and so on. By the early ’90s, however, Pakistan was sending over the border thousands of well-trained, heavily armed and ideologically hardened jihadis. Some were the same sorts of exiled Arab radicals who were at the same time forming al-Qaeda in Peshawar, in northwestern Pakistan.

By 1993, during Ms. Bhutto’s second term, the Arab and Afghan jihadis (and their Inter-Services Intelligence masters) had really begun to take over the uprising from the locals. It was at this stage that the secular leadership of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front began losing ground to hard-line Islamist outfits like Hizbul Mujahedeen.

I asked Benazir Bhutto about her Kashmir policy and the potential dangers of the growing role of religious extremists in the conflict during an interview in 1994. “India tries to gloss over its policy of repression in Kashmir,” she replied. “India does have might, but has been unable to crush the people of Kashmir. We are not prepared to keep silent, and collude with repression.”

Hamid Gul, who was the head of the intelligence agency during her first administration, was more forthcoming still. “The Kashmiri people have risen up,” he told me, “and it is the national purpose of Pakistan to help liberate them.” He continued, “If the jihadis go out and contain India, tying down their army on their own soil, for a legitimate cause, why should we not support them?”

Benazir Bhutto’s death is, of course, a calamity, particularly as she embodied the hopes of so many liberal Pakistanis. But, contrary to the commentary we’ve seen in the last week, she was not comparable to Myanmar’s Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Ms. Bhutto’s governments were widely criticized by Amnesty International and other groups for their use of death squads and terrible record on deaths in police custody, abductions and torture. As for her democratic bona fides, she had no qualms about banning rallies by opposing political parties while in power.

Within her own party, she declared herself the president for life and controlled all decisions. She rejected her brother Murtaza’s bid to challenge her for its leadership and when he persisted, he was shot dead in highly suspicious circumstances during a police ambush outside the Bhutto family home.

Benazir Bhutto was certainly a brave and secular-minded woman. But the obituaries painting her as dying to save democracy distort history. Instead, she was a natural autocrat who did little for human rights, a calculating politician who was complicit in Pakistan’s becoming the region’s principal jihadi paymaster while she also ramped up an insurgency in Kashmir that has brought two nuclear powers to the brink of war.

William Dalrymple is the author, most recently, of The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857. This op-ed first appeared in The New York Times, Jan. 4, 2008. Copyright 2008 The New York Times. Reprinted with permission.

The Proper U.S. Role in Pakistan

By Paul Findley

Should the U.S. government attempt to be a major player in resolving the Pakistan crisis intensified by the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto? One presidential candidate suggested sending in U.S. troops. Others had milder thoughts. My advice: Stand back, stay cool, and consider offering recommendations or taking other action only if the established governmental authority requests it.

The status of Pakistan as a nuclear weapon power is a special reason for restraint by the United States. Identifying and sequestering nuclear weapons is a massive, dangerous undertaking requiring the full attention of a large number of well-trained troops.

Whether President Pervez Musharraf should stay or go should not be settled in Washington. Pakistan will hopefully have a fair election soon, but such decisions should be left to domestic political forces. The U.S. should consider intervention only if our government will be a part of a multinational mission authorized by an international institution.

America needs to shed the persistent but false notion that foreign countries welcome our guidance and intervention. For one thing, they recognize the flagrant hypocrisy in our foreign policies, past and present.

Early in the Eisenhower administration, U.S. intelligence services headed by Kermit Roosevelt conspired with the British to overthrow a popularly elected government in Iran and replace it with the imperial shah. The purpose was to retain U.S. and British control of Iran’s oil reserves. U.S.-Iranian relations have been rocky ever since.

For 40 years the U.S. government has conspired against the human rights of mostly Muslim Palestinians by giving unqualified support to Israel’s territorial expansion, a bloody outrage that spurs anti-American passions in Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, and other nations where Muslims predominate.

National pride is a powerful emotion, even in citizens who believe their country is poorly led. Almost everyone resents criticism and interference from abroad. How would we feel if France or Russia tried to tell us how to behave?

In my 40-year experience as a close observer of U.S. foreign policy and policymakers, including several years on a congressional committee specializing in nuclear issues, I have concluded that the U.S. government should routinely treat heads of government in public utterances with respect for the office they hold, carefully avoiding any appearance of self-righteousness. We should offer criticism and unsolicited advice only in private councils.

The Pakistan crisis is a part of a larger question. Does the problem of terrorism require the U.S. government to police the world?

In 2002, grossly overreacting to 9/11, President George W. Bush approved radical changes in our national security doctrines. The changes effectively trashed the doctrine of national sovereignty by declaring the right of the U.S. government to intervene with acts of war against the territory of any nation where our government perceived a threat to America’s security. The new doctrines also announced an administration decision to maintain a system of U.S. military bases and forces sufficient to police the world. These doctrines destroyed the majesty and moral authority of the presidency.

Rescinding these doctrines and hoisting once more to pre-eminence the banner of justice as our national goal should be the top priority of America’s next president.

Former Congressman Paul Findley (R-IL) is the author of They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby; Deliberate Deceptions: Facing the Facts About the U.S.-Israeli Relationship; and Silent No More: Confronting America’s False Image of Islam, all available from the AET Book Club. This op-ed was first published Jan. 7, 2008 in the Illinois State Journal-Register. Reprinted with permission.

Pakistanis See U.S. as Greatest Threat

By Jim Lobe

Amid reports that the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush is considering aggressive covert actions against armed Islamist forces in western Pakistan, a new survey released Jan. 7 suggested that such an effort would be opposed by an overwhelming majority of Pakistanis themselves.

The survey, which was funded by the quasi-governmental U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) and designed by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), also found that a strong majority of Pakistanis consider the U.S. military presence in Asia and neighboring Afghanistan a much more critical threat to their country than al-Qaeda or Pakistan’s own Taliban movement in the tribal regions along the border with Afghanistan.

Only 5 percent of respondents said the Pakistani government should permit U.S. or other foreign troops to enter Pakistan to pursue or capture al-Qaeda fighters, compared to a whopping 80 percent who said such actions should not be permitted, according to the poll, which was based on in-depth interviews of more than 900 Pakistanis in 19 cities in mid-September.

As a result, the survey did not take account of the tumultuous events that have taken place in Pakistan since then, including the six-week state of emergency declared by President Pervez Musharraf, the sacking of the Supreme Court, the return from exile of former Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, and Bhutto’s Dec. 27 assassination which has led to the delay of scheduled parliamentary elections from Jan. 8 until February.

To what extent those events may have influenced public opinion in Pakistan on the range of issues covered by the survey—particularly toward the Pakistani Taliban, one of whose leaders, Baitullah Mehsud, has been accused by the government of carrying out Bhutto’s killing—cannot be known.

But the underlying attitudes revealed in the poll, especially toward the U.S., can offer very little comfort to the administration, which has become increasingly alarmed about recent events in Pakistan, particularly Bhutto’s death, the Pakistani army’s reluctance to take on the Taliban, and intelligence reports that al-Qaeda and its local allies, including the Taliban, have intensified their efforts to destabilize the government.

The Jan. 6 New York Times ran a front-page article regarding a White House meeting the previous Friday in which top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, reportedly debated pressing Musharraf and his new military leadership to permit the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) to carry out more aggressive covert operations against selected targets in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), the quasi-autonomous tribal areas that have come become increasingly dominated by the Pakistani Taliban, who have more recently extended their influence into the North West Frontier Province. The U.S. currently has about 50 soldiers in Pakistan acting primarily in an advisory and intelligence capacity.

While some administration officials reportedly believe that recent events have persuaded Musharraf and the army that they need such assistance to curb the growing Taliban-al-Qaeda threat, regional specialists both in and outside the administration have argued that such an intervention risked further destabilizing the country by triggering what the Times called “a tremendous backlash” against the U.S. and any government that was seen as its accomplice.

Despite the nearly four-month hiatus since the USIP-PIPA survey was conducted, its findings would certainly appear to support the latter prediction.

While the survey found that a large majority of Pakistanis hold negative views of radical Islamists, including the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and strongly reject their use of violence against civilians, their views of the United States and its intentions toward Pakistan appear to be considerably more hostile and distrustful.

A whopping 84 percent said the U.S. military presence in the region was either a “critical” (72 percent) or an “important” (12 percent) threat to Pakistan’s “vital interests.”

By comparison, 53 percent of respondents said they believed tensions with India—with which Pakistan has fought several wars—constituted a “critical threat”; 41 percent named al-Qaeda as a “critical threat”; 34 percent put “activities of Islamist militants and local Taliban” in the same category.

Asked to choose from a list of alleged U.S. goals in the region, 78 percent cited Washington’s alleged desire “to maintain control over the oil resources of the Middle East” (59 percent said it was “definitely” a goal, 19 percent said “probably”); 75 percent (53 percent “definitely”) cited “to spread Christianity”; and 86 percent (70 percent “definitely”) said it was “to weaken and divide the Islamic world.” Only 63 percent (41 percent “definitely”) chose the option “to prevent more attacks such as those on the World Trade Center in September 2001.”

Moreover, a majority of respondents said they believed that the U.S. controls either “most” (32 percent) or “nearly all” (24 percent) of the recent major events that have taken place in Pakistan, compared to 22 percent who attributed “some” control to the U.S. and 4 percent who said “very little.” Eighteen percent declined to respond.

As to Pakistan-U.S. security cooperation, fewer than one in five respondents said it had either benefited Pakistan primarily or both equally. Forty-four percent said it had mostly benefited the U.S.; and 11 percent said neither party had benefited.

Distrust of the U.S., however, did not translate into support for radical Islamists, the Taliban, or al-Qaeda, according to the survey. While they were considered much less of a threat than the U.S., 6 out of 10 respondents said they considered the Taliban and al-Qaeda either a “critical” or an “important” threat” to Pakistan.

And even as huge majorities opposed any U.S. or foreign military intervention against the two groups in Pakistan, pluralities approaching 50 percent said they would support the Pakistani army entering the FATA to capture al-Qaeda fighters or Taliban insurgents who have crossed over from Afghanistan.

Comparable pluralities said they favored phasing out FATA’s special legal status and integrating its areas into the country’s overall legal structure, but also prefer taking a gradualist approach that includes negotiating with the local Taliban over using military force to impose the central government’s control.

The survey also found overwhelming support for government based both on “Islamic principles” and on democratic ideals, including an independent judiciary and being governed by elected representatives. While 6 in 10 respondents said they supported a larger role for Islamic law, or shariah, in Pakistan’s legal system, only 15 percent said they wanted to see more “Talibanization of daily life,” a common phrase used in Pakistani media to refer to extreme religious conservatism.

Indeed, more than 8 in 10 said it was important for Pakistan to protect its religious minorities; more than three out of four said attacks on those minorities are “never justified”; and nearly two out of three said they support government plans to regulate religious schools, or madrassas, to require them to teach secular subjects, such as math and science. Only 17 percent said they oppose those reforms.

In general, those respondents who supported the expansion of shariah and government based on “Islamic principles” also tended to favor both democratic ideals and educational reforms at higher rates than others.

Pakistani-Americans Offer Unsolicited Advice

By Delinda C. Hanley

Has anyone in President George W. Bush’s administration asked Pakistani Americans for advice on U.S. foreign policy in Pakistan? Days after the Dec. 27 assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the Washington Report asked Dr. Agha Saeed, a well-known professor of political science and philosophy who teaches at California State University East Bay Hayward, for his opinions on the crisis in his native country.

Born in Quetta, Pakistan, Dr. Saeed received his Ph.D. in political science jointly from Harvard University and Berkeley. Chairman of the American Muslim Alliance, a national organization which seeks political empowerment of the American Muslim community, he is also the host of Global Forum TV, a program which focuses on international issues. Dr. Saeed had just spent weeks traveling across the U.S. speaking to Pakistani Americans about the crisis in their homeland.

“This administration hasn’t asked for our advice because it’s in league with President Pervez Musharraf,” Dr. Saeed bluntly told us. “Even The New York Times is in cahoots. There has been no serious analysis of the crisis.”

On Nov. 3 of last year General Musharraf issued the Provisional Constitution Order No. 1 of 2007, immediately amending Pakistan’s Constitution. Dr. Saeed showed us a translation of this stunning document, which, he explained, turns Pakistan’s constitution into a sham. Not only does it allow the president “from time to time to amend the constitution, as is deemed expedient,” but it also ensures that the Supreme Court, a High Court, or any other court “shall not have the power to make any order against the president or the prime minister or any person exercising powers or jurisdiction under their authority.” In addition, Dr. Saeed pointed out, “no judgment, decree, writ, order or process whatsoever shall be made or issued by any court or tribunal against the president or the prime minister or any authority designated by the president.” Finally, no court “shall call…into question this Order.” As a result, Pakistan’s courts are powerless to rein in Musharraf.

“No one man should be able to amend a country’s constitution. This is a farce,” Dr. Saeed said. The day after he tampered with the constitution, Musharraf “handcuffed Pakistan’s media,” Dr. Saeed noted, showing us another document. Musharraf took away the freedom of the press to report on, or to criticize, the government by insisting that every reporter sign “a 14-page government-mandated code of conduct.” While it’s understandable that no criticism is permitted from Pakistan, Dr. Said argued that there is no excuse for TheNew York Times and the mainstream U.S. press to ignore Musharraf’s actions.

“The media, the U.S. State Department, civil society, and most especially, President George W. Bush should take a stand on American principles of democracy, accountability and transparency,” Dr. Saeed said. “Pakistan’s constitution must be restored along with the freedom of Pakistan’s press and courts. Musharraf should free all the political prisoners he detained during his crackdown, and reinstate the judges he dismissed in November.

“President Bush should also insist on free and fair elections. If Musharraf refuses to restore Pakistanis’ civil rights, we should deny U.S. aid,” Dr. Saeed advised. (Washington has given more than $10 billion to Pakistan in the six years since the Sept. 11 attacks.)

So far Pakistan’s elections, postponed until Feb 18, are a charade, according to Dr. Saeed. “Musharraf has engaged in pre-poll rigging,” he charged. “He has eliminated all independent forums and intimidated voters, threatening people with prison if they do not switch loyalties.

“In Pakistan there is a huge movement seeking democracy,” Dr. Saeed said. “While only 50 percent of Pakistanis are literate, the educated middle class is committed to democracy and fighting terrorism. They have instant global access, thanks to cell phones and the Internet, and they want to be part of the global community. Why is the United States siding with Musharraf instead of Pakistan’s citizens?”

Dr. Saeed estimates that there are 600,000 to a million people of Pakistani origin living in United States. They are cab drivers, multi-millionaires, doctors, and scientists who live mostly in New York, New Jersey, California, Texas, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Washington, DC, Virginia and Maryland. “We are pained that Pakistan has become a political football in this country [with presidential candidates even debating strikes on al-Qaeda in northern Pakistan],” he said, “but we are not part of the political discussion.”

This administration and future ones should solicit advice from Pakistani Americans, who want their homeland to enjoy democracy. And candidates for political office might want to keep in mind that this bloc, as well as other Muslim Americans, can vote in large numbers for a common goal.

Delinda C. Hanley is news editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.