I haven’t posted for awhile and though unusual to comment on international news, I am copying below the Times of London story on the assasination of Benazar Bhutto yesterday.
This is a truly sad development in Pakistan. Bhutto’s recent return to Pakistan and the scheduling of elections in early January were steps in the right direction, towards a more secular politics in that country. Bhutto was educated in Britain and the United States, and was twice Prime Minister. Whatever the pundits and “experts” might say, her success would have been a good thing for the free world. Given her father, a former President of Pakistan, was executed by a subsequent government, and that Islamo-fascists had vowed to kill her if she returned from a self-imposed exile, and now that they have succeeded, her return to politics in Pakistan can only be viewed as courageous and patriotic.
I am copying the Times of London story below because in the early reports in the New York Times I have noted that, while the stories are almost indentical, the New York Times edited out the London Times comment that “Islamic militants had vowed to kill” Bhutto. Instead, the New York Times story seems to focus on current President Musharraf’s supporters as the culprits.
The politics of Pakistan is very confusing. But one can come to some conclusions using a little brain power. I think the London Times has made a point that our own newspapers somehow don’t want to accept, or prefer to leave “open.” This assasination is indeed the work of Islamo-fascists.
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Benazir Bhutto had earlier escaped a devastating attack on a previous rally
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Zahid Hussain, Islamabad, Jenny Booth and agencies
Benazir Bhutto, the Pakistani opposition leader and former Prime Minister, has been killed in a suicide bombing on her political rally today.
Ms Bhutto had been addressing crowds at the garrison city of Rawalpindi, ahead of Pakistan’s general election next month, when the bomber detonated his explosives, killing at least 15 people. She was taken to hospital, but could not be saved.
“At 6:16 p.m. she expired,” said Wasif Ali Khan, a member of Ms Bhutto’s party who was at Rawalpindi General Hospital.
“It may have been pellets packed into the suicide bomber’s vest that hit her,” Javed Cheema, an interior ministry spokesman said.
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Her supporters at the hospital began chanting “Dog, Musharraf, dog,” referring to Pakistan’s President, Pervez Musharraf. Some of them smashed the glass door at the main entrance of the emergency unit, others burst into tears.
Islamic militants have vowed to kill Ms Bhutto, who returned to Pakistan in October. Today’s bombing is the second major attack on her since her return.
A suicide bomber killed nearly 150 people on October 18 as Ms Bhutto paraded through the southern city of Karachi after returning home from eight years in self-imposed exile.
The latest bombing was the second outbreak of political violence in Pakistan today. Earlier, gunmen opened fire on supporters of another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, from an office of the party that supports President Musharraf, killing four Sharif supporters, police said.
Mr Sharif was several kilometres away from the shooting and was on his way to Rawalpindi after attending a rally.
Ms Bhutto, 54, served twice as Pakistan’s prime minister between 1988 and 1996. She was born on June 21, 1953, into a wealthy landowning family. Her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, founded the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and was president and later prime minister of Pakistan from 1971-77.
After gaining degrees in politics at Harvard and Oxford universities, she returned to Pakistan in 1977, just before the military seized power from her father. She inherited the leadership of the PPP after her father’s execution in 1979 under military ruler General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq.
First voted in as prime minister in 1988, Bhutto was sacked by the then-president on corruption charges in 1990. She took power again in 1993 after her successor, Nawaz Sharif, was forced to resign after a row with the president.
Bhutto was no more successful in her second spell as prime minister, and Mr Sharif was back in power by 1996. In 1999, both Bhutto and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, were sentenced to five years in jail and fined $8.6 million on charges of taking bribes from a Swiss company hired to fight customs fraud. A higher court later overturned the conviction as biased.
Ms Bhutto, who had made her husband investment minister during her period in office from 1993 to 1996, was abroad at the time of her conviction and chose not to return to Pakistan.
Mr Sharif meanwhile was deposed by General Pervez Musharraf in a military coup, and went into exile from which he too only returned in the last few weeks.
In 2006 Ms Bhutto joined an Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy with her arch-rival Mr Sharif, but the two disagreed over strategy for dealing with President Musharraf. Ms Bhutto decided it was better to negotiate with him, while Mr Sharif refused to have any dealings with the general.