| January 08, 2008 | Tuesday | Zilhaj 28, 1428 |
What (who!) next?
ON Dec 14, 2006, a full year and more ago, I had said about the rumours circulating at the time that the People’s Party was talking to the then COAS Gen Pervez Musharraf about a certain power-sharing deal: “And what about the establishment’s hatred for the People’s Party; and true to his office, Pervez Musharraf’s hatred of its founder, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto?
“Not once, not twice has he bad-mouthed Bhutto, even in his quite ridiculous ‘book’ he has gone off the deep end referring to him as the ‘worst thing that happened to Pakistan’! Is Benazir all right with that? Does she really think that the destruction of the People’s Party is not the main objective of the establishment? That the latest stratagem is the same old faithful one: to give it power and then throw it out citing corruption and misgovernance, weakening Bhutto’s party even further?
“No, Ms Bhutto, no. Seek rapprochement by all means, but do it in the company of your fellow politicians, under the aegis of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. After which you must convince the army leadership that it simply has no right to rule the country; that its main duty and task is to guard the country’s physical borders, and to train for the (most unlikely) eventuality that it might fight one day. Indeed, that it behave like the armies of any civilised country.”
Fast forward to Dec 27, 2007, that awful, awful day on which Benazir Bhutto was gunned down by a cool and collected gunman, in broad daylight, and in not too much of a crowd. Er, how, good sirs, did the assassin so easily come within seven or eight feet of Benazir and shoot her dead with two classic assassination shots: one to the head, one to the upper neck? Where were all your spooks good sirs, aka intelligence agents who infest every public gathering, please?
This was Benazir Bhutto, the undisputed leader of millions of Pakistanis and head of the most powerful political family in all the land; a woman who had already been the target of a deadly bombing (I did not say suicide bombing) on the evening of her arrival in Karachi barely two months before her Rawalpindi public appearance. So where were the thousands of spooks aka goons employed by our myriad ‘agencies’?
Where were they on that vile and dreadful day when the two-time prime minister of this luckless country was shot dead with such élan? Or are the goons only meant to shadow civil society protests, taking photographs of and filming the protesters, and helping the Punjab Puls thrash the women, lawyers and students as they are being arrested?
Why were they not there at Liaquat Bagh in their droves?
Consider this too: While Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf is now admitting, in the face of overwhelming evidence both witnessed and on film, that Benazir was killed by gun-shots he is putting the blame for getting killed on her because she stood up through the sunroof to greet her supporters. He takes no responsibility on to his own shoulders, simply because he has lorded it over us for well on eight very long years now, for bringing the country to its present sorry pass.
Since this was quite obviously a targeted assassination by an organisation that knew exactly what it was doing, is it at all possible that there was only one assassin on the ground to do Benazir in? I would say there were a half-dozen or more of them interspersed along the route she was to take. They were there to kill her that day, and they were going to do it come hell or high water. So where were the goons?Then there is, of course, the matter of the interior ministry ably led by Lt-Gen (retd) Hamid Nawaz and represented publicly by the peerless Cheema. Why did it dissemble and obfuscate and lie if it had nothing to hide? Why did it look so very stupid before the whole world and so very transparent to us when it trotted out the sunroof ‘lever’ theory? Why, indeed, are Nawaz and Cheema still in their jobs?
What is done is done, however. The question to ask is what next, or rather who next? I sent Nawaz Sharif an SMS on the night of Benazir’s assassination: “Please look after yourself; ‘they’ will kill our leaders one by one.” My heart trembles, for popular political leaders are our establishment’s worst nightmare. Indeed, if it is the aim of Al Qaeda/the Taliban to disrupt the electoral process, how come the Chaudhries of Gujrat Sharif have never been targeted?
May the Almighty have mercy on us and on poor old Pakistan.
By the by, who saw the Commando (once a Commando, always a Commando!) addressing foreign journalists the other night? Whilst most of his performance was such that he had them rolling in the aisles with derisive laughter, what took the cake was when he described his four-hat, three-hat; two-hat and one-hat experiences as Pakistan’s head honcho. His harangue is too long and too tiresome to repeat, but what I loved best was when he said if he had not been wearing the two hats of the chief of army staff and the president, the army might have taken its own sweet time to send its engineers to repair the Sukkur Barrage! I mean, what else is there to say?
Except to ask Musharraf once more to realise the extent of the trouble he and his buddies have got the country in to: no atta; no electricity; no gas; no law; no order; the Americans threatening to actually hit targets inside our borders overtly (covert operations we already know about); and an economy about to implode. Can he just go away, please? Please?
Endpiece: The so-called intercept that the junta is touting as proof that Baitullah Mehsud ordered Benazir’s assassination is pure poppycock and nothing else. Mehsud is innocent enough to say to ‘Maulvi Sahib’: “I am at Makeen, come over, I am at Anwar Shah’s house”?!? And to ask “were they our men”? Er, if he ordered Benazir’s assassination he should know it was his men, what? I believe Baitullah; I do not believe the junta and its quite pathetic, lying minions. Baitullah did not kill Benazir.
The times are too fraught for any stupid Bushisms. Sorry.
P.S. My customary Rs100 rides on the wager that there will be no elections on Feb 18. We are in for rougher weather, my friends.
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
