The assassination of Ms. Bhutto may well be the tragedy that finally brings down the Musharraf regime. It is certainly a great blow to U.S. policy, since we "brokered" her return. From the Washington Post:
Bhutto's assassination leaves Pakistan's future -- and Musharraf's -- in doubt, some experts said. "U.S. policy is in tatters. The administration was relying on Benazir Bhutto's participation in elections to legitimate Musharraf's continued power as president," said Barnett R. Rubin of New York University. "Now Musharraf is finished."
That last judgment may well be true whether or not Musharraf was responsible for the assassination. Either he was willing to assassinate a rival rather than face her in a fair election, or he was too weak or had too little control over his own security forces to protect her. Either is very bad, and the latter is probably worse.
Bhutto was only a little less ambiguous a figure than Musharraf. David Ignatius of the Washington Post calls her "modern, liberal, and unafraid."
She believed in democracy, freedom and openness -- not as slogans, but as a way of life. She wasn't perfect; the corruption charges that enveloped her second term as prime minister were all too real. But she remained the most potent Pakistani voice for liberalism, tolerance and change.
But here is Ralph Peters from the New York Post:
In fact, Bhutto was a frivolously wealthy feudal landlord amid bleak poverty. The scion of a thieving political dynasty, she was always more concerned with power than with the wellbeing of the average Pakistani. Her program remained one of old-school patronage, not increased productivity or social decency.
The really dismal thing is that both may be true. She may well have been the "most potent Pakistani voice for liberalism" and a typical member of a "thieving political dynasty." Such is the state of Pakistan.
It is hard to believe that Musharraf engineered this assassination. If he didn't want to face Ms. Bhutto in an election, it would have been much safer to prevent her return. Al Qaeda had much more to gain. See Newsweek:
Bruce Riedel, a former defense and intelligence official who helped make South Asia policy in the administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, says he believes Benazir Bhutto's assassination "was almost certainly the work of Al Qaeda or Al Qaeda's Pakistani allies." He says, "Their objective is to destabilize the Pakistani state, to break up the secular political parties, to break up the army so that Pakistan becomes a politically failing state in which the Islamists in time can come to power much as they have in other failing states."
Whether or not Al Qaeda was behind the assassination, there is every reason to suppose that their interests have been advanced.
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