Posts Tagged ‘Benazir Bhutto’

Benazir Bhutto And Her Commitment To Democracy?

January 6, 2011
By Shahid R. Siddiqi. Axis of Logic, Jan 5, 2011

Editor’s Comment: December 27, 2011 was the 3rd anniversary of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination and Shahid R. Siddiqi updates the essay he wrote for publication on Axis of Logic on the second anniversary of her death.

Associated Press of Pakistan reported Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani’s words on this third, sad anniversary. Gilani told the Pakistani people that the life of Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto is “a classic study of courage, commitment towards people’s welfare, and steel like determination to accomplish the goals she set before herself.” The PM continued, calling Bhutto “an incarnation of steadfastness, perseverance and determination.” He said that her name would be “chronicled in golden words in the annals of history.”

It is curious to consider how difficult it is for human beings to speak in plain language and write honestly about the dead. Notions of “honoring the dead” seem to compel most to ignore or paint over the wrongs committed by them when they were alive. It’s a sin of kindness that can be easily forgiven in personal and family atmospheres where loved ones suffer loss and are in need of comfort. But when the person who dies is a public figure such as a head of state with great responsibility for many people, it is important to look honestly at the life lived, service rendered, values exemplified and decisions made. It’s important to measure the gains and failures wrought by that life for the historical record and for lessons to be learned by others. Shahid Siddiqi has done just this on the second and third anniversary of Benazir Bhutto’s death.

– Les Blough, Editor

Benazir Bhutto was assassinated
three years ago, December 27, 2007

South Asians are sentimental people. Over the centuries, their romanticism about revered religious deities and historical social icons has shaped their psyche of nurturing personality cults. To this when you add pervasive illiteracy and ignorance about political realities of the present times, it is not difficult to understand why some political leaders have managed to achieve their meteoric rise to power merely on the strength of their charisma.

For lack of substance, such political heroes did not last very long. They owed their fall to incompetence in management of the affairs of the state and misuse of power and often met violent fate. Their warts were posthumously removed by their hangers-on who, for their own self aggrandizement, transformed them into martyrs, clearing the way for their dynasties to rule after them. Those who survived, ensured that their parties became more like their personal “jageers” where they were surrounded by sycophants and succeeded by immediate family members.

Continues >>

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Did Benazir Bhutto stand for democracy in Pakistan?

January 5, 2010
By Shahid R. Siddiqi,  Axis of Logic, Jan 5, 2009
Benazir Bhutto was assassinated
two years ago, December 27, 2007

DID BENAZIR DIE FOR DEMOCRACY?

Or is she being exalted in death to sanitize her successors who have leapfrogged into power?

South Asians are sentimental people. Their romanticism and devotion to revered historical icons and deities over several thousand years has shaped their political psyche of nurturing personality cults. To this add their ignorance about modern day political realities due to pervasive illiteracy and you will understand the reason behind the meteoric rise to power of charismatic albeit controversial leaders in recent history.

Continues >>

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American UN envoy’s ties to ‘Mr 10 Per Cent’ are questioned

August 26, 2008

Keith Bedford/Reuters
Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, on August 11, 2008. Khalilzad is facing questions from senior Bush administration officials over what they describe as unauthorized contacts with Asif Ali Zardari, a contender to succeed Pervez Musharraf as president of Pakistan.

International Herald Times, August 26, 2008

WASHINGTON: Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to the United Nations, is facing angry questions from other senior Bush administration officials over what they describe as unauthorized contacts with Asif Ali Zardari, a contender to succeed Pervez Musharraf as president of Pakistan.

Khalilzad had spoken by telephone with Zardari, the leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party, several times a week for the past month until he was confronted about the unauthorized contacts, a senior United States official said. Other officials said Khalilzad had planned to meet with Zardari privately next Tuesday while on vacation in Dubai, in a session that was canceled only after Richard Boucher, the assistant secretary of state for South Asia, learned from Zardari himself that the ambassador was providing “advice and help.”

“Can I ask what sort of ‘advice and help’ you are providing?” Boucher wrote in an angry e-mail message to Khalilzad. “What sort of channel is this? Governmental, private, personnel?” Copies of the message were sent to others at the highest levels of the State Department; the message was provided to The New York Times by an administration official who had received a copy.

Officially, the United States has remained neutral in the contest to succeed Musharraf, and there is concern within the State Department that the discussions between Khalilzad and Zardari, the widower of Benazir Bhutto, a former prime minister, could leave the impression that the United States is taking sides in Pakistan’s already chaotic internal politics.

Khalilzad also had a close relationship with Bhutto, flying with her last summer on a private jet to a policy gathering in Aspen, Colorado. Bhutto was assassinated in Pakistan in December.

The conduct by Khalilzad, who is Afghan by birth, has also raised hackles because of speculation that he might seek to succeed Hamid Karzai as president of Afghanistan. Khalilzad, who was the Bush administration’s first ambassador to Afghanistan, has also kept in close contact with Afghan officials, angering William Wood, the current American ambassador, said officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter of Khalilzad’s contacts. Khalilzad has said he has no plans to seek the Afghan presidency.

Through his spokesman, he said he had been friends with Zardari for years. “Ambassador Khalilzad had planned to meet socially with Zardari during his personal vacation,” said Richard Grenell, the spokesman for the United States Mission to the United Nations. “But because Zardari is now a presidential candidate, Ambassador Khalilzad postponed the meeting, after consulting with senior State Department officials and Zardari himself.”

A senior American official said that Khalilzad had been advised to “stop speaking freely” to Zardari, and that it was not clear whether he would face any disciplinary action.

In 1979, Andrew Young was forced to resign as the American ambassador to the United Nations over his unauthorized contacts with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Administration officials described John Negroponte, the deputy secretary of state, and Boucher as angry over the conduct of Khalilzad because as United Nations ambassador he has no direct responsibility for American relations with Pakistan. Those dealings have been handled principally by Negroponte, Boucher and Anne W. Patterson, the American ambassador to Pakistan. Both Negroponte and Patterson served as the United Nations ambassador.

“Why do I have to learn about this from Asif after it’s all set up?” Boucher wrote in the Aug. 18 message, referring to the planned Dubai meeting with Zardari. “We have maintained a public line that we are not involved in the politics or the details. We are merely keeping in touch with the parties. Can I say that honestly if you’re providing ‘advice and help’? Please advise and help me so that I understand what’s going on here.”

This is not the first time Khalilzad has gotten into trouble for unauthorized contacts. In January, White House officials expressed anger about an unauthorized appearance in which Khalilzad sat beside the Iranian foreign minister at a panel of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The United States does not have diplomatic relations with Iran, and a request from Khalilzad to be part of the United States delegation to Davos had been turned down by officials at the State Department and the White House, a senior administration official said.

Continued . . .

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The Return of Benazir Bhutto

October 19, 2007

(The last sentence in the following editorial shows how the MSM in the US make the misleading claim that America can help Benazir Bhutto and Pakistan move towards democracy. I believe it is more of a joke than a serious view! However, being a Pakistani I have got used to all the nonsense emanating from various sources about the American deeds over the past 60 years in and around Pakistan in the service of ‘democracy’. –Nasir Khan)
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The New York Times, Editorial, October 19, 2007

It’s no surprise that Benazir Bhutto’s return to Pakistan was painstakingly choreographed: She emerged from her plane in Karachi yesterday clutching a Koran and dressed in Pakistan’s national colors. Comebacks, after all, are her specialty. Since her father, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was executed in 1979, she’s been elected prime minister twice, deposed twice on charges of corruption and self-exiled twice. Now, at 54, she’s back for another try.

Ms. Bhutto got a swift and horrifying reminder of how close Pakistan is to the brink — and of what she’s up against — when explosions ripped through the crowds near her motorcade last night, killing scores of people.

It’s hard to see her return as a victory for democracy, especially since it is the result of a dubious deal with Gen. Pervez Musharraf that grants him another five years in the presidency. Nor is it a great triumph for the rule of law, since, in exchange for playing ball with the general, Ms. Bhutto has been handed a convenient amnesty that wipes out serious corruption charges dating back to her years as prime minister. Without that protection, she would have risked possible imprisonment by returning home.

Still, letting her back in to lead her party’s ticket in the soon-to-be-held parliamentary elections is an important step forward for a country that has been subjected to eight years of essentially one-man rule and has grown ever more polarized.

Ms. Bhutto’s greatest challenge will be to redeem this tawdry trade-off by using her popularity and skills to leverage this modest political opening into something resembling genuine democracy. Her first step should be to insist that those parliamentary elections are open to all, including her longtime political rival, Nawaz Sharif, another former prime minister. His previous tenure, like hers, was badly flawed. But they are Pakistan’s two most popular politicians, and without the participation of both of them there can be no Pakistani democracy.

Washington’s help will be crucial in this effort. For too long it has coddled General Musharraf for his supposedly stalwart policies against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. But recently, those policies have seemed scarcely more credible than his hollow promises to accept the constraints of law and democracy or his commitment to free elections.

After belatedly recognizing that the general’s misrule was dangerously strengthening, not weakening, extremist forces in Pakistan, Washington helped engineer the deal that permitted Ms. Bhutto’s return. Now, it must help her and Pakistan truly move toward democracy.

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