Adil Najam
News is just breaking that former Prime Minister and head of the Pakistan People’s Party, Benazir Bhutto was killed in Rawalpindi in a terrorist attack.
She was gunned down by an assassin who then blew himself up in a suicide attack. This happened at the end of her rally in Liaquat Bagh, Rawalpindi; the same place where Liaqat Ali Khan, Pakistan’s first Prime Minister was assassinated. Major news networks are now reporting that following bomb blasts at Benazir Bhutto’s rally in Rawalpindi, shots were fired directly targeting her. Her husband, Asif Ali Zardari says that one of these shots hit her in the neck and killed her.
According to early BBC reports:
Pakistani former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has been killed in a presumed suicide attack, a military spokesman has announced on TV. Earlier reports said Ms Bhutto had only been injured and taken to hospital.
Ms Bhutto had just addressed a pre-election rally in the town of Rawalpindi when the bomb went off. At least 15 other people are reported killed in the attack and several more were injured. Ms Bhutto had twice been the country’s prime minister. She was campaigning ahead of elections due in January.
‘She expired’
The explosion occurred close to an entrance gate of the park in Rawalpindi where Ms Bhutto had been speaking. Benazir Bhutto had been addressing rallies in many parts of Pakistan
PPP spokesman Farhatullah Babar initially said that Ms Bhutto was safe. But later he told the BBC that Ms Bhutto had died. Another member of the PPP, Wasif Ali Khan, told the Associated Press news agency from the Rawalpindi General Hospital: “At 6:16 pm (1316 GMT) she expired.”
I, like most Pakistanis, am still too numb with shock and grief to think coherently about what has happened or what the implications of this are for the country and for the world. But this I know, whether you agreed with her political positions or not you cannot but be in shock. Even as I type these lines I am literally shaking. Hers was a tragic life story. So tragic that had it not been real no one would have believed it.
At this point all sorts of thoughts float through the politics of this. Why did this happen? Why was it not stopped? What could have been done to stop this senseless murder? Maybe she should not have come back? Who did this? What will this mean for the elections? What will this mean for the PPP? What will this mean for Gen. Musharraf? What will this mean for Pakistan? But all of these are paled by thoughts about Benazir as a person. The woman. The wife. The mother. The human being. What about her?
I have not always agreed with her politically but there was always a respect for her political courage. I had met her many times, first as a journalist covering her when she had just returned to Pakistan in the Zia era and before she became Prime Minister. Later a number of times in her two stints as Prime Minister and thena few times during her exile. In that last period she toll to referring to me as “Professor sahib” and some of our exchanges were more candid (at least on my part) than they had been earlier.
At a human level this is a tragedy like no other. Only a few days ago I was mentioning to someone that the single most tragic person in all of Pakistan - maybe all the world - is Nusrat Bhutto. Benazir’s mother. Think about it. Her husband, killed. One son alledgedly poisoned. Another son assassinated. Daughter rises to be Prime Minister twice, but jailed, exiled, and finally gunned down.
Today, in shock, I can think only of Benazir Bhutto the human being. Tomorrow, maybe, I will think of politics.
RE,
Lies, frauds. tricks propaganda against Islamists
@ Al Qaidah and Taliban have catagorically denied
their involvement in the murder of Benazir, now,
the responsibility is on your Mushy and his Godfathers
where ever they are, they will be hunted down even have
to look for them in USA.
Your jokers and buffoons of Ministry of Defence,
we have enough of them.
Subconti’s Taghoots
@ Even Mourning style is of 16th century Moghal
Darbari manners and its regrettable how Icons
are carved out of mud and worshipped to arrive
at nothing except creating rival Taghoots, father
brothers, daughters, grand daughters, sons etc.
They should stop this Shakespearine Drama.
@ Sherry Rehman, Naheed Khan who were critically
injured ” Nehayat Nazuk ” Halat, have recovered
so quickly and survived, why the journalists have
to lie. ?? Geo has become Politicised, its now third
day Geo is rediffusing constantly 24 hrs the same
pictures and news and propaganda.
Har Ghar sey Bhutto Nikley Ga Tum Kitney Bhutto Maro Gey??????????????????????????????????????????????? ???????????????????????????????????????????????
Yes , where was the security ?
It is a sad moment for the Bhutto family and the nation as a whole.
Bhutto erred in her moments of triumph to greet the people and exposed herself to the risk and paid the ultimate price. She was fully aware of the risks of holding rallies rather than using the elextronic media to explain to the voters what she stood for and how it would be different to her previous government. She had twice been deposed as a result of corruption something Bhutto denied. The Swiss Courts after her demise have dropped charges against her but have announced that charges against her husband would stand.
The opposition have quickly taken to the streets and announced boycot of the elections. The statements made by these irresponsible leaders include that better protection shold have been provided to her. Are they thick and do not understand that one can be protected to some extent but to guarantee 100% protection is impossible especially when there are such large gatherings. There were others in the same car including Mr Makhdoom Amin Faheem but none including the driver was injured. It proves that that Bhutto erred in exposing herself to become an easy target to a suicide bomber.
Before the thick politicians of Pakistan including the thick Sharifs that even the Americans have failed to provide 100 percent protection in Iraq or Afghanistan or the British failed to protect their citizens in the underground suicide bombing. All of them rely on intelligence and sometimes it is not clear or the politicians dismiss it as pure government interference.
To all the thick politicians I will say take part in the elections as it achieves nothing and secondly stop these stupid rallies, it causes disruption to the common man and use the electronic media. The political parties could and should demand of the election commissioner equal time on television for each stake holder to explain their political manifesto and how the plan to achieve their targets followed by a live presidential style debate before the election.
Dawn’s Editorial sums up the situation following Benazir’s death quite adequately.
http://www.dawn.com/2007/12/29/ed.htm
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Benazir Bhutto’s death: a catalyst for change?
BENAZIR Bhutto will be remembered only and forever as a martyr, not just by her own party but by every politically conscious person in this singularly blighted land. Whatever her motivation — ideological belief, spirit of defiance, or just plain stubbornness — she stuck to her appointed task to the very end and left a mark on Pakistan’s political map that no generalissimo or government flunkey can ever airbrush out of history. All shortcomings, real or contrived, will be forgiven and forgotten. Starting in life as the daughter of a titan as towering as Zulfikar Ali Bhutto she became in due course a force in her own right. Given her extraordinary privilege, the options before Benazir Bhutto were limitless, yet she chose a life that was marked so much more by struggle than acquiescence. She was her father’s chosen successor in a family with feudal underpinnings and two able-bodied sons. This was and continues to be a glaring exception in the patriarchal and misogynistic order that sadly rules our lives to this day in the 21st century. As a teenager she accompanied her father to Shimla where Pakistan and India negotiated the unfinished business of the war of 1971. Benazir’s presence alongside her father at this crucial point in history set the stage for her political career. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was smarter than most people and he made his intentions clear at the outset, in no uncertain terms. His daughter went on to the hallowed halls of Radcliffe and Oxford.
When Z.A. Bhutto was killed by presidential order, she chose imprisonment over exile in plush surroundings. She needn’t have done that but she did. And what adulation she got in return. Throngs of admirers followed her wherever she went during the course of her political struggle. Poignantly, the flood of tears as she was laid to rest besides her father on Friday was but a manifestation of this adulation.
There are questions to be answered by people we suffer today in the name of national interest and ‘Pakistan-first’. Benazir Bhutto was apparently never given the security she requested following her much-criticised agreement with Pervez Musharraf which facilitated her return to Pakistan after eight years in exile. Why not? The detractors of the current dispensation will ask if the death of Pakistan’s most internationally recognisable, and outspokenly secular, leader in any way benefits those who have seemingly convinced the Bush administration that only they stand between the Taliban and the nuclear button. More questions will inevitably follow when the statement of day one that Ms Bhutto was killed by gunfire is changed the next day by the interior minister to say that that the former prime minister’s killing was the result of a shrapnel injury. Why wasn’t a scientific attempt made to ascertain the exact cause of her death as would have happened anywhere else in the world? This may have been the result of nervousness or ineptitude on the part of the administration but will lead to more questions. Was the killer actually the suicide bomber? Or was there a sniper somewhere out of sight?
The nation’s attention will remain focused now on Ms Bhutto’s assassination and it will obviously be distracted from the issues that have occupied centre-stage for months now. Agreed, that this is not the time to raise contentious issues. It is time to grieve. But once the emotion dies down it should be recognised, calmly and coolly, that the status quo cannot persist. As a nation we have to get our heads round the fact that change is inevitable.
This tragedy ought to be the catalyst for this change. As we move forward we would do well to remember that Benazir Bhutto and her party represented politics of the federation of Pakistan. In these troubled times, this is of paramount importance. Her supporters appeared equally committed to her cause — or their collective cause — whether she was in Peshawar, Quetta, Karachi, Rawalpindi, Lahore or Larkana. The way forward, in terms of toppling dictatorship, lies not in burning buses. Instead we all need to reflect dispassionately and, once and for all, decide as a nation where to point the finger.
The sins of politicians are, almost without exception, said to be grave and despicable. But there is a tendency, almost inbred, which we must check if we are to move forward as a nation and in due course pin the blame where it ought to be affixed. It is not the politicians who have let this country down. They have never been allowed a free hand in the running of Pakistan even when they were elected by the people. Can they still be blamed?”
I found this site after hearing you talk about Pakistan and your blog on NPR today. You were very articulate there and this is an excellent site for anyone interested in Pakistan. Most importantly, your very humane and heartfelt thoughts on Ms. Bhotto are inspiring.
My thoughts and prayers are with the people of Pakistan.