Another Ugly Day in Pakistani Politics

Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet at 1:47 PM on December 27, 2007.

Here's Bush's spin on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto:

"The United States strongly condemns this cowardly act by murderous extremists who are trying to undermine Pakistan's democracy," said Bush, who looked tense and took no questions.

It's clearly too early to say, but the "murderous extremists" are just as likely to have been elements of the Pakistani military as anyone else. But more on that in a minute.

There are a few narratives that are being reinforced by the media today, all of which are, at best, badly oversimplified. They are:

• Benazir Bhutto was a brave democracy activist, a symbol of women of color breaking down the doors and storming the corridors of power. She was a much-beloved figure who gave up a cushy life in exile to return to Pakistan to bring stability and democracy to a troubled land.


• Musharraf is a "moderate Islamic leader" whose reckless abuses of power are tolerated by the international community because he stands as a bulwark against Al Qaeda radicals.


• It's simply a given that the assassination was directly related to the struggle against "Islamofascism" -- or whatever silly label one prefers.

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto is a shocking and tragic occurance that’s going to have terrible repercussions in Pakistan and beyond. That doesn't mean, however, that we should white-wash her background or lionize her as some sort of saint. She was a hero to many when she came to power, and she was the prominent face of the Pakistani democracy movement this time around. But she and her husband also robbed the country blind during her time in office and went into "self imposed exile" with tens of millions of dollars tucked away in a series of secret accounts.

Many in Pakistan saw her as the petty kleptocrat that she was. Although Bhutto always claimed that all the corruption charges against her (and her husband) were trumped up, they were tried in Western courts as well as in Pakistan; the couple were found guilty of laundering millions of dollars in bribes and kick-backs after a 6-year trial in Switzerland.

When Bhutto first came to power, her administration tried to push back against the religious fundamentalists who are a fixture in Pakistani politics but made little progress. During her time as Prime Minister, she supported and aided the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan, viewing them as a stabilizing force after all years of chaos under the Russian occupation and during the anarchy that followed. Although Bhutto joined the rest of the world in condemning them after 9/11, when it suited her, she had played footsie with religious fundamentalists just like everyone else in Pakistani politics has, ever since the founding of the nation.

As for Musharraf, it's just a marvel that anyone could call him a "moderate" with a straight face. Just as dozens of petty dictators during the Cold War realized that they could receive American aid, military assistance and political cover for cracking down on internal dissent simply by saying those magic words: "I'm an anti-Communist," Musharraf's declaration of war against Islamic extremism has been a model of cynical super-power manipulation. It's worked out great; after seizing power in a military coup, the guy's passed laws effectively outlawing his political opponents' candidacies, suspended the Constitution and the judiciary and placed half of the country's elites under house arrest, yet the media continue to portray him as a moderate leader. He's a moderate like I'm Miss America.

Here's Najum Mushtaq, of the Pak Institute for Peace Studies:

He portrayed himself as a liberal Muslim and parroted moderate Islam to appease the West. Yet, in the eight years of his military rule General Musharraf too displayed an ambiguous attitude towards the religious right in Pakistan. On the one hand, his regime is an ally of the United States in the campaign to curb extremism and militancy. On the other hand, the religious parties, some of them overtly pro-Taliban, have been his political allies and helped to sustain his illegitimate rule by acquiescing in his post-2002 experiment of controlled democracy. Under General Musharraf, the religious parties were able to win elections in one of the four provinces and became the major coalition partner in another in partnership with the pro-Musharraf faction of the Pakistan Muslim League.

Mushtaq points to a report (PDF) by the International Crisis Group:

Despite his propensity to rule through decrees and ordinances, President Musharraf has been unwilling to use his powers to implement his pledges to control religious extremism. On the contrary, his constitutional amendments, contained in the Legal Framework Order 2002, have undermined the domestic standing of moderate secular parties. Moreover, the military has actively supported the religious parties during and after the October 2002 elections. The MMA, an alliance of religious parties, is a major beneficiary of the military's use of all available means to manipulate parliamentary alliances and forge acceptable governments."

In the lead-up to the current elections -- which everyone seems to agree will now be suspended -- the pro-Taliban Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party has been busy trying to strike a partnership with Musharraf's supporters in the Muslim League. That's our bulwark against Al Qaeda, right there.

So who killed Benazir Bhutto? I'm writing this a few hours after the news broke and can safely say that I don't know. What I do know is that it will be -- is already being -- taken as a given that the killing was carried out by Islamic extremists. That's entirely possible, but Musharraf and/or his supporters in the Pakistani military are also prime suspects, with motive, means, etc.

What I can also say with certainty is that while all Pakistani politics are influenced by religious conflict, and have been since the country was founded, the recent crisis had little to do (directly) with Musharraf's supposed crack-down on extremists. Musharraf said he was going to war against pro-Taliban extremists, but he cracked down on his political opponents, on democracy activists and lawyers and judges -- it was not about rolling back militancy, but rolling back Pakistan's beaten and bruised democracy movement.

As Spencer Ackerman points out at TPM, both Bhutto's advisors and Nawaz Sharif (who escaped a possible assassination attempt himself an now becomes the most prominent face of the opposition) are accusing Musharraf of being behind the killing. At the same time, as Ali Eteraz notes, Al Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the attack. We will see (or maybe not).

I think it's important to understand that the U.S. had a key role in the events leading up to today's tragedy. It was becoming increasingly difficult for the Bush administration to support Musharraf while spewing the usual rhetoric about democratization and the rule of law and all that, so they played a very active role in brokering the deal between Musharraf and Bhutto that led to her return from exile and brought her to this unhappy end. The idea was that as long as Musharraf was unlikely to cede real power, Bhutto's presence would help legitimize the Pakistani regime. But the administration seriously overestimated the degree of popular support Bhutto had. Essentially, we pushed Bhutto into the mix, and, as Tom Daschle noted in testimony before Congress last week (PDF) Musharraf, who was pushed to hold elections by Congress (which threatened and then did put conditions on U.S. aid to Pakistan), did exactly nothing to create a secure environment in which the process could take place.

It's a pretty typical U.S. foreign policy clusterfuck: support an illegitimate dictator because he's "our" dictator, ignore his abuses until they become too embarrassing to ignore, then get together some State Department staff to start mucking around in the domestic politics of a country even if they don't have a really firm handle on the nuances of its political culture and, while the specific chain of events may come as a surprise, the fact that the outcome will be bad is entirely predictable. Wash, rinse and repeat.

The sad irony here is that because of the baggage she carried, Benazir Bhutto will probably be much more effective as a martyr to democracy than she would be as it's spokesperson. But that's not good news; reports filtering out of Pakistan suggest widespread chaos has broken out in various states, and the prospects for a lot more blood shed to follow are simply frightening.

Tagged as: bush, musharraf, bhutto, pakitan

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet.