Urgh. This is pointless-RO material if anything ever was. Former PM Nawaz Sharif recently returned to Pakistan to challenge Musharraf in the coming election – and was immediately arrested and deported by Musharraf’s police. Now Bhutto comes back and she immediately gets it from, apparently, the other end of the political spectrum there (if a spectrum can even be envisioned) – the Islamic extremists. Meanwhile Musharraf has no intention of sitting out the coming election, which we can be reasonably certain means he has no intention of allowing it to be a fair one. And Pakistan remains an indispensable ally in the region, or at least the Bush Admin seems to think so – Afghanistan is rather inaccessible without it. Perhaps the best thing that can be realistically hoped for at this point is that Musharraf will maintain his dictatorship and at least forestall civil war (that might conceivably draw in the U.S.) – except that that is probably not a thing to be realistically hoped for; the “military-mosque alliance” on which he has based his power is unraveling.
All I can say is, it’s a good time not to be a Pakistani.
NPR reported the Bhutto group saying that the street lights had been turned off and their cell phones jammed at the time of the attack, which consisted of grenade(s), suicide bombers and small arms fire.
That shows excellent coordination of resources. Either Islamists can operate very easily in non-tribal Pakistan or it was not just them trying to off her.
I don’t think Musharraf tried to kill her, frankly. He needs her support desperately, because he has pissed off too many people over the years. This is probably the big reason he’s going democrat - without Bhutto, he can’t maintain control except over the army. If she gets killed, he’s in very deep shit. The democrats would ever trust him and will continue to screw with him.
The irony, of curse, is that Bhutto is very corrupt. Musharraf is a dick, but he’s actually more or less honest (at least as far as dictators go). Maybe the two fo them will have kids, half of whom will become pure evil and the other half will be Saints.
In any case, I doubt Musharraf would have failed if he’d tried to kill her.
Hmm…allow for the public promotion of a willingness for reconciliation and potential power-sharing scenario, allow Bhutto to be publicly welcomed by her adoring supporters, have her whacked, and reap the benefit of perception from the unwashed hordes that he was prepared to do what was right for Pakistan, but the opportunity was stolen by Islamic extremists. Sounds like a win-win for Musharaff. …but D’oh! Bhutto survived the assassination attempt. Oh well.
Important moral lesson: Do enough bad things, and people will believe the worst of you even when you’re innocent. (This lesson is valid regardless of whether Musharraf is innocent in this particular instance or not. Sooner or later, he’s fated to take the blame for something he didn’t do.)
But the sentiment is the same, I think. She is a woman AND secular. The Radical Islamic factions have sworn to assisinate her or, failing that, to disrupt any power sharing role she may get out of this return.
So Bhuttofhuko is back. Must have run out of money from her last rapacious assault on the government coffers. And they’re probably just stupid enough to put her back in office.