by the Corporate Media and their spokesmen and women? Think the world is a bit more complicated than that? Wonder why she was praised as so uniformly?
On last night's Nightline Brian Ross (ABC reporter) mentioned that her re-entry into Pakistan politics was pushed strongly by the CIA, and that these forces are now pushing US trained General Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani as the new strongman to replace Musharraf.
A lot of the background information needed to understand what is really going on can be gleaned from Amy Goodman's interview on Democracy Now! today with Tariq Ali and Manan Ahmed. Worth reading - a bit of a primer on how things work.
http://www.democracynow.org/2007/12/28/pakistan_in_turmoil_after_benazir_bhuttos"Tariq Ali, acclaimed British-Pakistani historian, activist, and commentator joins us now on the phone from London. He is one of the editors of the New Left Review and the author of a dozen books.
"Manan Ahmed, historian of Pakistan and South Asian Islam. He blogs at Chapati Mystery and at Juan Cole’s Informed Comment."
A brief excerpt:
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TARIQ ALI: Well, Juan, this is absolutely right, and it’s been her tragedy and the country’s tragedy. When she came to power, elected for the first time, it is absolutely true she was hemmed in by the military on one side and an old rogue of a bureaucrat who had been made president on the other.
And she told me very openly, “I can’t do anything.” And I said to her at the time in Prime Minister’s house in Islamabad, “I understand that, but there are two things you have to do. One, you have to make it very clear to the people publicly that this is the reason I can’t deliver my promises on land reform, on health, on education. They won’t let me do anything. This is why I can’t make any readjustments in foreign policy. They have imposed their own foreign minister, Yacoub, on me, who insists we carry on as before,” etc. etc. She didn’t do that.
And I think by this time she had become a very different person politically from what she had been earlier and had decided that she didn’t want to be on the wrong side of history, so to speak. She more or less said that to me. And she realized or she thought that the only way to survive in this world was basically to do the bidding of the army at home and Washington abroad, two institutions which had led to the—which had basically bumped off her dad in 1979 and which were not going to do her any favors.
AMY GOODMAN: Tariq, explain that, how her father died and who was involved in his assassination, in his execution.
TARIQ ALI: Her father was probably the most popular politician in Pakistan, pledging massive social reforms. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who had been elected in the 1970 elections, had won a large majority in the country that we now know as Pakistan and had been elected on a very radical platform. He came to power.
He implemented some of his reforms, not all, became extremely autocratic, clashed with the United States on a number of issues, including Pakistan’s right to have nuclear weapons. Henry Kissinger warned him in private that if you do not desist on the nuclear issue, we will make a terrible example out of you. That’s what Bhutto wrote from his death cell. The United States organized a military coup d’etat. General Zia-ul-Haq took power in 1977, organized a trial against Bhutto, charging him with an absurd charge of murdering someone. The judges were pressured, and they found him guilty, and Bhutto was hanged in April 1979. It could not have happened without US support and approval, because Zia was a nobody, and Washington clearly green-lighted the murder.
And Bhutto, from his death cell, wrote a very moving document called “If I Am Assassinated,” in which he said there are two hegemonies—these are his words. He said, “There are two hegemonies that dominate our country. One is an internal hegemony, and the other is an external hegemony. And unless we challenge the external hegemony, we will never be able to deal with the internal one,” meaning Washington is the external hegemony and the army is the internal one. And this is a problem which still haunts Pakistan and which, I have to say, has now created this new crisis.
And unfortunately, his daughter decided to collaborate with both of these hegemonies. One has to say this. Her second period in office was a total disaster, because not only did she do nothing for the poor or her natural constituency, but basically it became an extremely corrupt government, and she and her husband accumulated $1.5 billion through corruption. This is well known to everyone.
Now, when the United States decided they wanted to put her back in there, they told her, we are going to whitewash you so clean no one will even know. And this is what the global media and networks have been doing. Look, I knew her well. I’m very upset that she’s dead. But the piety being displayed on the global media networks is beyond belief. You know, it’s as if there’s no past, no history in this country or its politicians.
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