When one blames those 'for trying' it is because they are unable to even try.
Benazir Bhutto was attempting to shift the paradyme of leadership in a place where al Qaeda calls home.
Would you try?
Would you attempt to shift power within a country corrupted by a coup?
I dare anyone, any world leader to render an answer to Pakistan now dominated by a man that has little answers except oppression that discards democracy.
Benazir tired. Musharraf assisted by al-Qaeda for still another coup, won this as well.
Why the Death of Benazir Matters
Rasheed Abou-Alsamh (click here)
The assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has sent shock waves around the world, and rightly so. She symbolized the struggle of all secular-minded Muslims who are fighting for democratic and non-religious rule in Muslim countries. Her opponents, Al-Qaeda, Osama Bin Ladin and all of his followers, are fighting for a suffocating form of leadership where dissent is not allowed and where women are treated as second-class citizens.
This is why all democratically-minded people, including Filipinos, should be shocked by her violent death, and should be concerned about what happens next in Pakistan. That country is at a strategic crossroads between East and West, and the battle between tolerance and intolerance.
I found out about the tragic death of Benazir in a text message on the evening of Dec. 27 while in a taxi going home from a mall in Abu Dhabi.
I was shocked and saddened. I had always been a supporter of Benazir and of the whole Bhutto family. To me they, and the Pakistani People’s Party that Benazir’s father the late Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto founded in 1967, represented progressive and secular ideals that would help propel Pakistan from the ranks of dysfunctional Third World countries to that of developing nations that were successful such as Brazil and Malaysia. This hope in a bright future for Pakistan perhaps reached its peak in me when Benazir was elected the first-ever female prime minister of a Muslim country in 1988.
Benazir ruled until 1990 when the president ousted her. She won re-election in 1993, but was again dismissed in 1996 for alleged incompetence and corruption.
Benazir unfortunately never really was a good leader while in office, due I think to her imperious attitude and a coalition of conservative Pakistanis, both in the government and military, who did not want to see a woman succeed in governing a Muslim nation. To them having Benazir lead them was both horrible and shameful.
In 1995 I went to Karachi for a week on assignment from Arab News to interview politicians and businessmen about the raging violence in that city that Benazir was not able to control. The resulting series was called “Karachi: City of Death.”
Two American employees of the US Consulate were shot dead at a traffic crossroads in Karachi when I was there. I remember rushing to the scene with Pakistani journalist colleagues and then attending a press conference given by Benazir to talk about what had happened. She literally sneered at the gathered press and it was quite clear that she was not being successful (nor was she happy) at governing Karachi and the rest of Pakistani.
That week, I visited the Bhutto family home at 70 Clifton in Karachi and met Benazir’s mother, Nusrat, and brother Murtaza, who had just launched a splinter group of the PPP. The house was steeped in the ghosts of Benazir’s father who had been hung by Gen. Zia ul-Haq in 1979, with pictures of him everywhere.
In the interview, which appeared in Arab News on March 16, 1995, Murtaza sharply criticized Benazir for failing to govern the country wisely, and most importantly, for surrounding herself with people who had helped bring their father down. Tragically, a year later in 1996, Murtaza was shot and killed outside the very same home where I had interviewed him.
When I asked him why Benazir was seemingly not doing anything for Karachi, he replied: “I don’t know. She doesn’t listen to people. She doesn’t listen to advice or any report that is contrary to her thinking. ...She forgot the only lesson that she learnt. She doesn’t ask, doesn’t seek advice.
“Her choice of people is bad, her judgment of people is wrong. Her policies are wrong. She’s surrounding herself with those people who opposed her father, who are responsible for his overthrow, who celebrated at his hanging. She’s just inept,” he said.
People who knew Benazir well have said that if she had been re-elected for a third time in the elections originally scheduled for Jan. 7, but which have now been postponed to the end of February, perhaps she would have been a better leader, having learned from her previous mistakes.
We will never know now that she is dead, but we can only hope that her son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, will be able to carry her on her legacy of trying to build a fairer and more democratic Pakistan for all of its citizens, both male and female.
* * *
Comments or questions? Email me at: rasheedaboualsamh@yahoo.com. Visit my blog at: http://rasheedsworld.blogspot.com.
Cold wave continues in Northern India, claims at least 90
New Delhi - The death toll in a cold wave sweeping across northern India rose to 90 Thursday with the weather office forecasting the harsh conditions were likely to continue for a couple of days, news reports said.
Most of the deaths occurred in Uttar Pradesh where at least 38 people were reported to have died over the past two weeks, while the rest of the deaths occurred in the eastern state of Jharkhand, northern Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir states, NDTV news channel and IANS news agency reported.
Schools in some cities like Agra, home to the famous Taj Mahal, were closed for the rest of the week.
Most of those who died were beggars and homeless people who spend the bitterly cold nights on the streets with little protection beyond plastic sheets and jute sacks, the reports said.
Temperatures dipped to between 2 and 3 degrees Celsius in several places in India's northern plains with the coldest temperature of minus 2.2 degrees recorded in the Punjab town of Adampur.
Jammu and Kashmir state capital Srinagar recorded a minimum temperature below minus seven degrees as water froze in taps and along the peripheries of the famous lakes in the picturesque city.
Residents of national capital Delhi continued to shiver with the mercury hovering at 2 degrees minimum, about 5 degrees below the normal temperature for this time of the year.
The Indian Meteorological Department said night temperatures may rise marginally over the next four to five days, but the cold wave conditions would continue over parts of Punjab, Haryana and Rajsthan states as well as Uttar Pradesh.
One cannot address Kashmir without also addressing Jammu, where soldiers and police commit suicide in acts of desperation frequently, as a matter of fact one occurred immediately after the assassination of Bhutto. I don't know if it was connected to anything or not, it would appear not at first glance. Yet, the West chronically addresses only the issues of Kashmir because Jammu is a provice of India.
In reality, China really needs to reassess the region and take it back from two countries, namely Pakistan and India, which can't seem to establish a peaceful resolve.
...The region is divided among three countries in a territorial dispute: Pakistan controls the northwest portion (Northern Areas and Azad Kashmir), India controls the central and southern portion (Jammu and Kashmir) and Ladakh, and China controls the northeastern portion (Aksai Chin and the Trans-Karakoram Tract). India controls the majority of the Siachen Glacier area including the Saltoro Ridge passes), whereas Pakistan controls the lower territory just southwest of the Saltoro Ridge. India controls 101,387 km² of the disputed territory, Pakistan 85,846 km² and China, the remaining 37,555 km².
Though these regions are in practice administered by their respective claimants, neither India nor Pakistan has formally recognised the accession of the areas claimed by each other. India claims those areas, including the area "ceded" to China by Pakistan in the Trans-Karakoram Tract in 1963, are a part of its territory, while Pakistan claims the entire region, excluding Aksai Chin and Trans-Karakoram Tract.
The two countries have fought several declared wars over the territory. The Indo-Pakistani War of 1947 established the rough boundaries of today, with Pakistan holding roughly one-third of Kashmir, and India two-thirds, with a dividing line of control established by the United Nations. The Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 resulted in a stalemate and a UN-negotiated ceasefire....
Benazir Bhutto
I have to take issue with the Op-Ed today in The New York Times by Dalrymple. It isn't difficult either. Like all historians Dalrymple is 'stuck in a time warp' and doesn't realize the changes that have occurred in Islam since the Former and Late Prime Minister was in leadership in Pakistan.
There was no war in Kashmir when she guided progress within Pakistan. There was a rise of the underclass, including women. Women were and still are a taboo in Islam when it comes to clout and leadership, Benazir created the only women's bank of Pakistan.
What Dalrymple trys to do in his very poor authorship of Benazir is to allow the imagination to create a monster, which he coins as Frankenstein. It's the furthest from the truth. When Benazir was displaced the country returned to disproportionate discrimination against the lower classes of Pakistan, today in Pakistan people are still enslaved by their heritage to work off debt created by their ancestors.
Before Benazir was displaced the underclasses learned they had power within consolidation of their common will. That is what ignited the region's extremists in a way that could not be contained. It was further fueled by Western interests that wanted, and still want to confront Russia. The West and primarily the USA armed the mujahedeen. It created al Qaeda along with an infusion of monies from Osama bin Laden himself.
In true right wing politics and an attempt to buoy Musharraf and Bush, Dalrymple begrudges 'the true history' of the region which ignited after Benazir was displaced, as if operating in a vacuum of Western influence and power. Her assassination occurred because she came back to recapture her country and bring into power the minorities and tribes she aligned with so long ago.
Dalrymple should be ashamed of his exuberance in trampling the name of a women dedicated to democracy. When one looks at the entire region of Islam during 'the time' of Bhutto, I doubt seriously there was one country, including India that didn't have a negative opinion of any human rights organization seeking to improve the circumstances of those most at risk, that's how change begins, with criticism. After all Mother Teresa's mission (click here) didn't exist for no reason.
If Dalrymple was so sure of his opinion, it should have existed before her death and not after. The New York Times editorial staff should be ashamed of this attempt to discredit the very words of a woman that dedicated her life to change the face of the people now victimized and suffering under a Western bolstered dictator. Honestly, to what extreme will the right wing go next? Do they believe in democracy at all or simply the manipulation of it to gain wealth?
