fessie, get a map. One with a scale on it.
You assume that those in charge of foreign affairs in the U.S. have some inkling of what the hell they are doing. As has been proven over and over again, this is usually an overly generous assumption. (Did I mention I’m re-reading “The Best and the Brightest” over the holidays?) In any event, any objective assessment of U.S. foreign policy since World War II will conclude that the White House rarely understood any part of the world beyond this nation’s borders.
And only on the Dope would we get reports direct from the people living the news.
I’m so sorry to read this news. One of my work friends told me about it late this afternoon; it’s depressing to see Pakistan forced to take a giant step back. 
Please come back and give us an update, ShakWave.
Also, I’d love to see a thread just discussing what it feels like to be in Karachi (and elsewhere in Pakistan) right now.
GT
I do not assume that they know what their doing.
I do assume they have thought about it.
Well, I have finally reached home safely now, after spending the night at my (married) sister’s place which was near my office. I reached there around 1:00 am after a quick look around the roads to check there were no rioters around. Throughout the way, I was struck by how few vehicles were on the normally congested roads and by the still-burning cars piled on the roads. I drove all the way from my sister’s place to mine, and the situation seems normal (well, if you call roads without cars and people just walking around in a daze normal). I expect a lot of agitation on the roads once the Friday prayers are offered, even though Asif Zardari (Benazir’s husband) has called for restraint and asked rioters to calm down.
I was going through the thread above and was amazed by how little people know about the actual political situation in Pakistan but act like they know it all. The majority portray Benazir as a kind of hero (I have no political affiliations myself), which is the view that the Western media seems to project.
If you guys have any questions, please go ahead and ask them. I’ll try to answer them to the best of my ability.
I’m glad you’ve made it home safely, ShakWave.
Can you give us an idea of what you think the political situation will be like now? The BBC is reporting that the January elections are going to go on.
Who will be in the running (if that’s known already)? Will someone step in to run from Ms. Bhutto’s party? Can you give us an idea of the political forces in Pakistan? Who makes up the various political parties? (Do the parties represent specific political views or ethnic or religious or some other view or constituency?)
I’d also like to know a little bit about who you are (I’m assuming you’re Pakistani - am I right?), where you live and work, what type of job you have etc. so that we have a better idea of who’s reporting.
Thanks.
GT
Or quite possibly both together. One of the biggest problems in Pakistan is that the line between the fanatics and the military is very blurred indeed. The Taliban and their associates have a very long and intimate relationship with Inter-Services Intelligence, so anyone trying to promote secular democracy is up against a heck of a challenge these days.
Deeply depressing, but at least we can console ourselves with the thought that complete social breakdown and possible civil war in a nuclear-armed country slap-bang in the GWOT warzone with a population of 170million and a diaspora covering most of the western world will have little effect on the rest of the world. Oh wait, no we can’t. Deeply depressing and very very scary.
i was wondering how fatima bhutto (niece) fits into the political climate? is she with a different party? i know there was a family split and wonder how that plays out in pakistan?
in u.s. news there isn’t mention of any of her siblings other than that her brothers were killed before her time. isn’t there a sister as well? how political are other members of her family?
ShakWav, what do you want? Has Musharraf’s leadership brought you a good quality of life? Was Bhutto’s liberalism something you desired? I saw her talking about the high poverty rate in your country - what do you think can be done about that?
Are you worried that your country’s nuclear weapons will be seized by someone who’ll use them?
American news and government blather is quite puzzling, especially if one is rather ignorant (such as me). I don’t get the “Democracy!” drumbeat, as though a freely elected leader is automatically a good leader. We elected Dubya. Our country is full of corruption and nobody seems to care. Yet my day-to-day living is pretty much absent immediate fears (big-picture worries are another matter). Other people, living in other areas of the U.S., might not feel the same.
acsenray thank you for your patience, and for answering my questions.
She was very talented at painting a certain picture of herself, as a sort of Pakistani Aung San. The level of response she got in America and elsewhere in the West was indicative of how effective that technique can be. To me she always seemed more a Cleopatra, and her inability to speak to the press without dropping words like “democracy” into every other sentence made it clear who she wanted for Caesar. Anyway, I’d like to hear your opinion on her, and hope that you stay safe.
Whether anyone is a hero remains to be seen. I have tried to make it clear that although Bhutto has major faults, at the very least she has publicly espoused secular democratic government, something that Musharraf hasn’t. And you have to give at least grudging admiration to someone who returned from exile knowing that it was almost certain that she would be killed in this way.
I’ll try to answers as many questions as I can. Firstly, a little background about Benazir - it is true that she has always seemed a very pro-Western and progressive politician, which most of the educated people in Pakistan want. Educated at Oxford and Harvard, she initially seemed to be the sort of person who could change the country with her liberal policies. But you have to understand, the common perception is that she herself has not lived the values that she espoused during her campaigns. As is common in South Asian countries, she got a lucky break in politics because of her ‘assasinated’ father, Zulfiqar A. Bhutto. She lost a bit of her credibility when she married Asif Zardari, who consequently became known as Mr 10 Per Cent, due to his offer of selling lucrative government contracts at throwaway prices for 10% of the share. And then of course there was the Surrey palace scandal as well as the Swiss accounts scandal, which was endorsed by the Swiss Government. It seems that the Mohtarma (Lady) had managed to squirrel away a lot of money into different bank accounts throughout the world due to her position as Prime Minister.
And to answer specific questions raised by some of the people here:
GardenTraveller, the political situation was already quite murky before and I guess people were already afraid something would happen to disrupt the elections. So its anyone’s guess what the future holds. The Pakistan People’s Party leadership will probably pass onto Maqdoom Amin Fahim, the senior most member in her party. In the near future, her kids could also take up a position in her party (the PPP was formed by Benazir’s father and the party leadership is likely to remain in her family in the near future). Political parties are roughly organised on ethnic lines, although the parties will deny this, of course, and will claim to represent the whole country. The initially left-leaning PPP has its strongest support in the Sindh province especially the rural areas in Sindh (The Bhuttos are feudals from the Sindh province). The biggest city in Sindh and in Pakistan, Karachi, is a Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) dominated city. This party, headed by the exiled Altaf Hussain, was set up in order to protect the rights of the Mahajirs, which, as someone pointed out earlier, was the name given to those people who had migrated to Pakistan from India after the Partition in 1947. The Pakistan Muslim’s League (Nawaz Group), is a Punjabi dominated party which has its stronghold in the Punjab province. The rest of the parties are religious or local nationalist parties, which mainly act as support to the major political parties depending to whom they are allied with at the moment.
Rockingchair, Fatima Bhutto, daughter of Benazir’s brother, Murtaza Bhutto, is a political unknown. But it seems certain she will follow her family’s profession and enter politics soon. The split you talked about occured when Murtaza Bhutto was killed in a police encounter. Murtaza’s wife, Ghinwa, blamed |Benazir for engineering the entire incident and split off to form PPP Shaheed Bhutto group, so in all probability, Fatima will not join PPP but her step mother’s PPP SB. Benazir’s sister, Sanam, is not involved in politics at all, but her family has been associated with politics since the time of her grandfather.
Fessie, I’m not a big fan of President Musharraf, as I think he is becoming power hungry day by day. Whether it is motivated by lust for power or a genuine concern to stay in power in order to improve the quality of life for his countrymen is not certain. But life under him is better than life was ever under Benazir’s rule. Benazir is often praised for her ‘democratic policies’, lets take the example of electronic media. When Benazir was in power, there were 2 television channels in the country, one was the national government sponsored channel, PTV (which had three or fours slots a day for news) and the other PTN (People’s Television Network, named after her party). Now there are around 40 channels, with around 5 or 6 dedicated 24-hour channels for news. Formerly, you couldn’t criticize the government, now we have programmes in which all politicians (Mushharaf included) are lampooned as bumbling idiots. Benazir talking about poverty alleviation is like an oil company talking about solar technology. If she had been committed to the cause, she would have first stamped out poverty in the rural areas of her native Sindh province, but being a feudal herself, would have decreased her power over her ‘subjects’. I personally am not worried about the nuclear weapons, I think they are now well under control in the hands of the Army, although admittedly I have as much knowledge about the command and control structure as you.
Grossbottom, I agree with you completely. Just because Benazir was an eloquent speaker and could charm the Western media with her English, as well as being the sole woman leader in a male dominated country, doesn’t mean she was the best person to lead the country.
Ascenray, as I have mentioned before, talking about democracy is easy, actually implementing it in a country where feudalism is still rampant is not. Benazir Bhutto was from a feudal family herself, implementing a true democratic movement at the grass roots level would have diminished her (and other feudal lords’) power. Do you know that in certain rural parts of Pakistan, it is possible to ‘buy’ the votes of entire villages during elections. Do you think the ballot box will fix these all problems if implemented this way? I once read some graffiti on a wall which said “Change the system, not the faces”. That is what has been happening to Pakistan all these years, the same type of people have kept on occupying seats of power and have not bothered to fix the core problems in the country. About her return, I say sometimes greed can be a pretty big motivator too.
Thank you, ShakWave, for your valuable perspective and insight. I hope you and your loved ones stay safe in this difficult time.
According to the Washington Post, the U.S. Brokered Bhutto’s Return to Pakistan. And that the White House Would Back Her as Prime Minister While Musharraf Held Presidency.
No clue how realistic this was… and brokering generally involves providing some assurances to both parties, but what those assurances were is unclear. Possibly the dropping of some outstanding corruption charges against her, probably some other carrot for Musharraf.
The story also says that a US envoy was a go-between in negotiations between Bhutto and Musharraf for more than a year.
This is sounding echoes of the Philippines. IIRC the US did some “brokering” between the the Marcos’s and Ninoy(sp?) Acquino that put him square into their hands with a gun to his head. Bad times all around.
Welcome to the Straight Dope.
thank you for your answers, shakwave. after poking around a bit on the net i got a bit more of a handle on the bhutto picture.
good heavens!!! i read there is an over all 700,000 person bhutto clan!!?? is that true? that is a stunning number. (the kennedys better get going if they want to catch up!). are there other families like this there?
i was also gobsmaked at the size of the family mausoleum!!! when they were showing the funeral this am (east coast us time) i thought it was a mosque. then they said mausoleum! that’s just for the dead of the bhutto clan? are there other families that have this sort of thing?
from what you said up thread, i am given to understand that the bhutto family was a ruling one for quite some time (eons?). that they held onto power through different types of governments and since wwii were able to lead a political party keeping and increasing their ruling power.
do the other parties in the system have the same type of families in them?
I having nothing to add other than she looked good for her age, a MILF you could say.
Rockingchair, from where did you get the 700,000 number? I am not sure if that is a valid size of the Bhutto family. It may refer to the whole clan, instead of the Bhutto family. I think they are including everyone with the Bhutto surname, and that could very well include her great great great great grandfather’s brother’s family. The mausoleum is indeed quite big, and is an indication of typical grandiosity from a feudal family. The family started in poltitics when Shanawaz Bhutto (Benazir’s grandfather) entered the then-princely state Junagadh’s government administration and consequently became the Prime Minister of Jungadh. Shahnawaz Bhutto founded the Sindh People’s Party, which later became the Pakistan People’s Party.
i was poking around on line at work, but i did find this at home. it does give a helpfull over all picture. i didn’t think she had that many people in her immediate family. but had no clue the clan was that big. cheese and crakers! they could be thier own country.
Just read that Bhutto’s 19 year old son is going to lead the party now.
Aw geez.