[Marxism] Benazir's husband blasts regime's pinning of murder on Al Qaeda: Two news articles and my comments

[Fred Feldman]

I want to make some comments about the two articles that follow. They are
very valuable.

First, it is very important that Zardari, Benazir's widower and selected
cochair of the clan-plus-mass-popular-party PPP, rejects the frameup of Al
Qaeda by Musharraf, with clear though not yet official backing from the Bush
administration.

Few know, and Zardari does not note, that Al Qaeda has not only denied the
charges, but within a day or two of the assassination DENOUNCED the brutal
reactionary assassination of Benazir Bhutto and placed the blame on
Musharraf.  Even fewer probably know that Al Qaeda has called for the
overthrow of Musharraf since the slaughter at a mosque occupied by Islamists
in opposition to Musharraf's policies.

All the evidence -- not just some -- points to the Musharraf military as the
main source of the assassination and the sole effective political motivator.

I have to admit that I feel a certain psychological identification with
Benazir in her very, very bourgeois-feudal situation.  She knew that
politically in the new situation she must return to Pakistan.  But if she
returned  simply as a straight-up oppositionist, her rapid death was
certain. If, on the other hand,  she attempted to work with Washington,where
she always had supporters ,and was open to a live and let live deal with
Musharraf, she MIGHT -- NOT A PROBABILITY BUT A POSSIBILITY -- have a chance
to stay alive and be elected president. 

And of course, she did present herself  as an opponent of Islamism and
advocate of "secularism" in Pakistan, appealing strongly to those of all
classes who feel oppressed or intimidated by this third bourgeois- feudal
current. Bhutto was not at all afraid to die -- indeed, she expected to be
killed -- but, from her deeply bourgeois-feudal standpoint, there was no
reason not to try to achieve her goals without death if that was possible.
How argue with that? Of course her goals were not the same as the
aspirations of Pakistani workers, peasants, poor people, and youth. 

I thought that Benazir Bhutto's assassination was almost certain after her
return and I awaited it every day.  What are the chances  that Benazir, who
knew the territory so much better than I did, was not much more aware than I
was about the price of returning to Pakistan?  There is something heroic
about this. I can't shake it.

In fact, I think the phony version of her death put out by the government --
that she was not shot, as she clearly was, but killed accidentally by
hitting the sunroof in a desperate attempt to get out of the car under
attack --  is simply an attempt to counter the fact of her equanimity in
facing death.

Note very clearly the second article.  This makes it clear that Benazir
Bhutto and her supporters saw the Bush administration as an opponent, not an
ally. She too, like so many others, had hopes in the Democrats as her rod
and staff.  But she considered the current US administration as opposed to
her, and for her enemy.  A factual assessment reinforced by the Bush
administration's hints of support for making Al Qaeda a patsy for the real
killers in the top echelons of the Musharraf military, including the chief
himself.

So when leftists call Benazir Bhutto a puppet, they ignore the fact that she
returned to Pakistan as an opponent of the continuing US policy of
supporting Musharraf as well as a leader offering forms of collaboration
with both. Benazir Bhutto was murdered partly because US imperialism was
unwilling and unable to provide strong political, diplomatic, and public
support to her. 

The kind of support that they HAVE provided, for example, to Aung San Suu
Kyi, the Benazir Bhutto of Burma, which has helped keep that heroic
bourgeois woman -- with whom I have only very limited points of agreement --
alive for quite a few years now, in the face of a regime more than eager to
remove her from this world.

Bhutto is known (today) as a strong opponent of Islamism, although she was
involved in the development of Pakistani policy toward the Taliban, which
was not notable for putting US imperialist interests ahead of Pakistani
bourgeois interests. 

I think some of us may tend to view Islamism too much as a progressive trend
worldwide. I have never been convinced.  Frankly, I have seen little sign of
anything progressive about Islamism in Pakistan -- in sharp contrast to
Islamism in Iran, Lebanon, or even Palestine.

Islamism in Pakistan seems to me primarily a third bourgeois-feudal current,
opposed to both the military and the PPP. On the one hand, the Islamists in
Pakistan stress  opposition to US domination. But on the other hand, in the
Northwest Frontier and elsewhere, they seem to represent traditional bosses
-- tribal, feudal, military, patriarchal, whatever, but not a popular
movement for progressive change.. Do they take progressive stands on
ANYTHING else? The evidence is very limited if not nonexistent.  They gang
-- or "family"-rape--women.  They silence music.  They attempt to forbid
sexual attraction. Can anybody really live this way? 

In fact, no -- and that
includes the Islamist bosses themselves, let me tell you for sure.

The Islamic currents I see seem to be reactionary and backward across the
board, except for their anti-imperialist stance.  And their hostility to
women seems deep, brutal, and actually obsessive -- women are their
scapegoats for everything that is wrong with their lives, including
imperialist domination.  My read is that there is not only no Pakistani
Castro on the immediate horizon (although one may well be developing
somewhere) but no Pakistani Khomeini, either.  


Zardari, Bhutto's widower, complains about the thousands of madrasas in
Pakistan. Easy to challenge this -- at least they try to educate the people.
But do they? But how different this is than the rise of mass education under
the Islamic Republic in Iran, where Islamists were the dominant force in a
real popular revolution. Do the madrasas really teach literacy? I am not
sure. Reciting the Koran from signals on paper, as I learned to do with the
Torah in Hebrew school, is not the same as becoming literate, for I am  (and
always was) completely illiterate in Hebrew.

But in Iran, the masses have learned some basics of how to think about the
world even though they are often forbidden to do so by the regime. The
difference is qualitative.  I think it would be dangerous to label Pakistani
Islamism unconditionally as a progressive or really popular current, despite
its anti-imperialist stances which are its main -- if not sole --
progressive selling points. This was not true in Iran or Lebanon or even
Iraq, where Shia Islamism has represented, among other things, majority rule

Of course, I unconditionally  defend any and all Islamist currents, and that
includes any and all alleged to be Al Qaeda whether they are or not, against
the imperialist attacks that are coming down the line. But I also defend
Benazir Bhutto, her husband Zardari and indeed everyone who differs from US
imperialism's game plans for their country.

In any case, I see no sign that an Islamic revolution is a real possibility
or that a Taliban-style government would be a real step forward for
Pakistan.  

Frankly, my main difference with Tariq's always valuable observations about
Pakistan is that his deep and understandable frustration doesn't seem to
suggest anyway that the people can move forward in this situation, as they
strive to do.  His articles reflect very little noticeable contact with
masses of the country beyond crying for them.

I also disagree with his constant repetition of the fact that Zardari,
Bhutto's husband whom she selected to head the People's Progressive Party
for practical purposes while her son is readied for the job, faces
corruption charges in several European countries. I don't think the
imperialist governments have any more right to take on such matters, which
remain internal to the oppressed nations where they occurred.  

I had no sympathy at all for the imprisonment of Pinochet in Britain, at the
orders of the Spanish judge, the vanguard imperialist judge of all
misbehavior among the natives, Baltazar Garzon. It is for the people of
Pakistan, Chile, and elsewhere to deal with these matters, and until they
are ready to do so, the imperialists should not be allowed to pose as a
handy-dandy substitute.

I have a strong sympathy with the Pakistan Labor Party and with the
Pakistani cadres of the Grant/Woods group who work in Bhutto's
feudal-bourgeois but also mass and popular PPP. At least they start with
politics as it is in Pakistan. By doing so, they start as a matter of course
with the elementary human necessity (as Tariq also does to the extent that
he responds instinctively) to rage, rage against the murder of Benazir
Bhutto.

It is imperialist intervention, not just the internal dynamics that faces
Pakistan today with the possibility of a Somalia-style collapse, which I
think is greater than Tariq suspects. He dismisses Pakistan as another
Somalia but he may underestimate the sheer destructiveness of imperialist
intervention, interference, and military occupation today.  Zardari, who is
not even unconditionally opposed to this intervention, may be more in touch
with its potential ruinous consequences for the nation.  

The depth of the internal conflicts deepened by the imperialist interference
is measured by Pakistan's unique role as a country which fights in effect
and at every level (yes, to the very top) on both sides of the US
imperialist-led war on "terror."

That is the threat that opponents of imperialism must rally against today:
the attempt to turn Pakistan into a full-scale front of the US imperialist
war for the Middle East and South Asia. Whether this is done is done in
defense of Musharraf or a military successor, or in the name of Bhutto and
her heirs and assigns, or somewhere in between, this is what we in other
countries must center our fight onright now.  US hands off Pakistan!  US out
of Pakistan

But please, please.  Without any radical hauteur and snobbery toward the
Pakistani people, and their distaste for having their leaders or preferred
presidential candidates murdered in their presence.

I took the slaughter of Benazir Bhutto (a martyr though not a saint, and I
would argue that most martyrs have not been saints, despite the efforts of
the Catholic Church to impose this qualification) as a blow to everything I
stand for.  And I think I am on the right track to that extent.
Fred Feldman


 










   
  http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article3298383.ece:
   
  31 December 2007 19:55 
  
  
  Pakistan 'could be another Somalia'   By Saeed Shah in Naudero
Published: 01 January 2008       

    Asif Zardari, husband of murdered Pakistani opposition leader Benazir
Bhutto, has called for President Pervez Musharraf to resign and warned that
the country could turn into another Somalia.
  He also poured scorn on the government's claim that al-Qa'ida was behind
the attack on Ms Bhutto. Instead he blamed "the establishment, which is
bigger than Musharraf himself".
  "I don't think we're as yet a threat to Al-Qa'ida. We weren't in
government. Why aren't they killing off the existing structure of the
government? Why would they come after us?" he said. "There are definitely
some in-house games going on, which either nobody is aware of or are scared
to unearth," he said, speaking from his wife's home in her ancestral village
of Naudero, where he and the children continued to mourn her loss yesterday.
  He said that the government's claims of al-Qa'ida involvement was simply
"muddying the waters". He described Pakistan's role in the so-called war on
terror, which he described as "shadow boxing". "That shadow-boxing is going
to turn into a giant and take over the country one day," he said.
  Mr Zardari, 51, and his son Bilawal, 19, were made co-chairmen of the
People's Party, after Ms Bhutto's assassination, replacing her at the head
of Pakistan's most popular political group.
  Asked whether she was killed because of the election and the evidence she
said she had of the government's election-rigging, he said he thought that
this was one of the motives. "I think this assassination is larger than just
these polls. This [election] is definitely one of the reasons. That they
didn't want her coming into power because these shadow-boxing games could
not go on."
  He warned that Pakistan was hurtling towards disintegration, a failed
state. "My fears are of Pakistan being totally broken up," he said. "Being
converted into Somalia. I think that is a great possibility. And I think
that everybody, every intellectual, is not really paying attention to it
because they have got their head in the ground, like ostriches."
  Underlining the severity of the threat, he continued: "Somalia had 30
million population. We're 175 million. Somalia did not have the Afghan arms
on the border. Somalia did not have hundreds and thousands of madrassas
[Islamic schools]."
   
  AND,
   
  http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article3298382.ece
   
  Bhutto had 'proof' of plan to rig election 
  By Saeed Shah in Naudero and Andrew Buncombe in Islamabad   Published: 01
January 2008       

    On the day she was assassinated, Benazir Bhutto had planned to reveal
what she claimed was damning evidence that revealed the involvement of a
shadowy Pakistani intelligence agency in a plan to rig the country's
upcoming elections.
  Colleagues of Ms Bhutto have revealed she was due to meet visiting US
politicians to hand over a report compiled by her Pakistan People's Party
(PPP) into an operation it says was being run by the ISI military
intelligence agency to fix the polls in the favour of President Pervez
Musharraf. Safraz Khan Lashari, a member of the PPP election monitoring
cell, said the report was "very sensitive" and the party wanted to initially
share it with trusted US politicians rather than the government of George
Bush, which has backed Mr Musharraf.
  The revelation came as the government prepared to postpone the upcoming
election, despite demands from the opposition parties that they go ahead as
scheduled on 8 January. A spokesman for the Election Commission said it had
recommended an unspecified postponement and the government is due to
announce a final decision later today.
  The report compiled by the PPP apparently includes information on an
alleged "safehouse" being run by the ISI in a neighbourhood of Islamabad
called G-5, from which the rigging operation was run. "It was compiled from
sources within the [intelligence] services who were working directly with
Benazir Bhutto," said Mr Lashari.
  The report names a recently retired ISI officer who has allegedly been
running the rigging unit and claims he worked in tandem with another named
senior intelligence officer. It also claims that US aid funds were being
used for the projects.
  At the heart of the scheme, the report says, was a project in which ballot
papers - stamped in favour of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q), which
supports Mr Musharraf - were to be produced by the intelligence agencies in
about 100 constituencies. Mr Lashari said the effort was directed at
constituencies where the result was likely to be decided by a small margin,
so it would not be obvious. "They diverted money from aid activities. We had
evidence of where they were spending the money," he added.
  The PPP has not claimed that Ms Bhutto was killed in order to stop her
from revealing the information the party had gathered. However, last
Thursday - the day that she was killed in Rawalpindi - Ms Bhutto was due to
meet Senator Arlen Specter, a Republican, and the Democratic Congressman
Patrick Kennedy. It is unclear whether the two US lawmakers had any
indication that they were to be provided with the report.
  After Ms Bhutto's death, Mr Specter said: "Our foreign policy had relied
on her presence as a stabilising force. I knew her personally... She was, as
you know, glamorous, beautiful, smart. Her loss is a setback. But you have
to face what is. And now, without her, we have to regroup."
  Last night, an ISI spokesman could not be reached for comment. However, a
source within the agency dismissed the allegations as "a lot of talk but not
much substance".
  It is certain, however, that the allegations of vote manipulation will
trigger fresh controversy in Pakistan. Likewise, if the government does
decide to postpone the election, there will be many who will believe it is
acting purely to try to gain an advantage from the delay. "No one among us
wants elections to go beyond 8 January," said Nawaz Sharif, head of the
Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N), as he again called on Mr Musharraf to step
down. "He is a one-man calamity. He is responsible for all the trouble in
Pakistan. The country is burning."
  Meanwhile, controversy continued to rage over the precise cause of Ms
Bhutto's death. Having initially said she was killed by a gunman, the
government has since claimed Ms Bhutto died after striking her head on a
lever that controlled the sunroof of her bullet-proof car. The claim drew
accusations of a cover-up from members of her party who said the government
was seeking to avoid criticism for not having provided adequate security.
  Yesterday a member of the board of the hospital where Ms Bhutto was rushed
last Thursday, said doctors had been prevented from carrying out a
post-mortem examination by the local police chief. Athar Minallah, a leading
lawyer, released medical notes from the hospital which showed Ms Bhutto had
suffered a single wound to her head. Mr Minallah said the doctor who had
written the report, the head of surgery at Rawalpindi General Hospital, had
told him he believed Ms Bhutto had died of a bullet wound, though the
medical notes make clear that a post-mortem examination was required.
  "The doctors have said they were not allowed to perform an autopsy," said
Mr Minallah.
  While the government has offered to exhume Ms Bhutto's body in order to
perform a post-mortem examination, her husband has said he will not allow
her to be disturbed. He said the government could not be trusted to carry
out tests.
  The belief that she was shot has received support from several pieces of
video footage, showing a man firing a gun at Ms Bhutto.
  HAVE YOUR SAY on Pakistan's future after Bhutto: 'Her faults have been
ignored to make her a martyr'
  Benazir's faults and flaws have been overlooked in favour of exalting her
to the status of some kind of martyr for freedom and democracy. Nothing
could be further from the truth. The appointment of her son as the chair of
the PPP is just another demonstration of this.
  Benazir's husband Zardari is no saint either. That he has been allowed to
take such a position of power is an insult to Pakistanis.
  Haroon Khan
  Talking about democracy for the country is one thing, how about democracy
in the party itself? For all the tragedy in the killing of Benazir Bhutto,
we cannot but state the fact that she led the party in an autocratic manner,
appointing herself chairperson for life. The hope was that a more democratic
set-up might emerge, but the people of Pakistan are being treated to more of
the same.
  Asif Rehman
  The problem with all modernist analysis is the linking of democracy with
individualism. Asian societies are collectivist in nature. That is why they
choose in a feudal manner. You might say this is not democratic as per
Western norms. But this is the tradition from the time before the advent of
European ideas of democracy. Can't the Tariq Alis of the world ever take a
non Euro-centric look at Asian variants of democracy?
  Naras
  Pakistan is a feudal society and the Bhutto family is the local royalty so
it's not surprising that Benazir left the business to her son.
  David Roberts
  Pakistan is not an unsophisticated country where people vote for a
dynasty. People know better, and given that Asif Ali Zardari is now in
charge, who would vote for the king of thieves? He makes Richard Nixon look
like Bambi.
  Akram
  It is a shame that a party claiming to represent democracy for Pakistan is
run as the property of a particular family. Benazir would still be alive if
she had represented her party's policies rather than the party representing
her ambitions and the ambitions of her family. Then thorough debate and
strategy would have decided how to confront the military and fundamentalism.
But this desire for power and destiny clearly affected her judgement. Her
will sullies her reputation.