Hope for democracy may have died with Bhutto

by Stan Lowe, Chairman (retired), Wyoming Veterans’ Commission
Wednesday, January 2, 2008 12:09 PM MST

The assassination last week of Pakistan’s opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and the attendant violence that followed typifies the troubled past of that nation, the sixth most populated in the world.

Pakistan became a sovereign nation in 1947, when the former British Empire of India gained independence and was partitioned into two countries, Pakistan populated by Muslims and India by Hindus.

To include the areas where most Muslims reside on the India-Pakistan sub-continent, Pakistan was allocated two territories, West Pakistan and East Pakistan separated by India, nearly a thousand miles apart.

Several seeds of discontent in that split nation ultimately led to East Pakistan’s secession to become Bangladesh in 1971. It triggered a civil war, which was short-lived after India intervened on the side of the secessionists.

David A. Andelman, executive editor of Forbes magazine, aptly described Pakistan’s rocky experience with democracy in his Dec. 27 article, “Benazir Bhutto: Hope Denied.”

“While India has managed in the course of the last half-century to adopt a free and democratic government and, more recently, a vibrant economy that is among the world’s fastest growing, Pakistan has sunk into a morass of feuding political factions and violent extremists,” he noted.

“Peaceful transitions have throughout much of its history, proved to be but illusory interludes between coups and violent electoral campaigns,” he said.

Confirming this, a review of Pakistan’s history reveals that though nominally a democracy, more than half of its 60 years of nationhood were under a military dictatorship, currently President Pervez Musharraf, the fourth general.

Conversely, there have been times when democracy flourished, relatively speaking. Those were times associated with the name Bhutto.

From 1972n77 Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Benazir’s father, was president, but was deposed by Gen. Zia-ul-Haq, the country’s third military president. Zia prosecuted him for complicity in a political murder, and he was sentenced to death in a highly criticized judicial proceeding.

The second was in 1988, soon after Zia was killed in a mysterious airplane explosion. Democratic rule returned in November 1988 elections in which a president and National Assembly were elected, and Benazir was named prime minister, the first woman leader of any Muslim nation.

Over the next decade, she alternated power with her rival, Nawaz Sharif.

While prime minister, Sharif got in a squabble with the military. He fired the army chief, Gen. Musharraf. This triggered a bloodless coup, and Musharraf assumed power in 2001.

He won his first five-year presidential term by referendum in 2002. Recently, he won a second, and he gave up his military position to bet his future on gaining political legitimacy after the upcoming elections, now tentatively scheduled for Jan. 8.

However, Andelman says, “Any chance of a peaceful transition to a semblance of democratic rule in Pakistan died Thursday with Benazir Bhutto.”

He adds, “Above all, the one person who might have found a way to bring together key factions -n from military officers to Islamic fundamentalists n- and unite them in a battle against the extremists who promised to turn this nation into a staging ground for international terrorists is dead.

“Ironically,” he says, “her last important action before her assassination was a meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The subject? Joining forces to fight the war on terror.”

Musharraf, of course, has been fighting terrorists in Pakistan, but having Benazir on board blunting opposition criticism would have helped greatly.

This is not the only dismal news from analysts and security experts.

They predict Musharraf has been weakened and may not be able to survive, particularly since he lost his powerful Pakistani army ties.

For the U.S., loss of a proven friend in the War on Terror, combined with the uncertainties of unknown new leadership of a vital ally, could be very serious.

A worse nightmare scenario for world leaders is the prospect of continuing chaos in Pakistan and jihadists gaining control over its nuclear weapons. Those leaders believe President Musharraf is standing between order and that cataclysm.

S. Eugene Poteat, a former CIA official, stated recently what is well known: al Qaida and affiliates have the ability to infiltrate and take over, and they’ve made known their plans: they intend to kill us.

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