Pakistan Archives

It's Come to This: Pakistan is More Civilized than Russia

Filed under: Europe ~ Pakistan ~ Russia ~ South Asia

Andrei Illarionov has been conclusively proven right: Pakistan is more civilized than Russia.

An election has just occurred in Pakistan and that county's military dictator Pervez Musharraf has allowed not one but two viable opposition parties, both dedicated to ousting him from power, not merely to contest the election but to win the overwhelming majority of seats in parliament. As the New York Times reports: "Benazir Bhutto's the Pakistan Peoples Party was on pace to win 110 seats in the 272-seat National Assembly, while a second rival party, the Pakistan Muslim League-N, the faction led by Nawaz Sharif, like Ms. Bhutto a former prime minister, was looking to take 100 seats. Musharraf's party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, was crushed, holding on to just 20 to 30 seats." They could kill Bhutto, but they could not stop her from winning a plurality of seats in the new legislature.

Meanwhile, Russia has already held parliamentary elections where not one real opposition party was permitted to take a single seat, and will hold presidential elections the first week in March in which all the real opposition candidates, including former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov and former first deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov, have been excluded.

Vladimir Putin: Less democratic than a military dictator. Is that because he has more to fear from the voters?

How is it possible that country that is less democratic than a military dictator is a member of the G-8, one of the most significant democracy organizations in the world?

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Kim Zigfeld · February 18, 2008 2:55 PM · Comments (1) · TrackBacks (0)

The Son Also Rises

Filed under: Pakistan

Slate has a great roundup of blogger viewpoints on the announcement that Benazir Bhutto's 19-year-old son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari (that's him above on the right, in happier times) will take a figurehead position at the top of his heroic mother's Pakistan Peoples Party. Zardari boldly declared to the nation:

"Democracy is the best revenge."

It's the remark of a statesman, though he has every legitimate reason in the world to seek revenge of a different kind. Who among us can say that we would forgo such vengeance if we stood in his shoes?

Some bloggers complain that the PPP is keeping things in the family. It's great that they should alert Pakistan to the problems of nepotism, but America wasn't ruined by John Quincy Adams, now was it? Hillary Clinton is being given serious consideration to follow her husband, isn't she? America's "democrats" seem to be fine with that. Many criticize George Bush on many grounds, but I've never heard anybody attribute any alleged policy failing of his to the fact that he is the son of a former president. As one blogger writes: "There is no democracy outside of the party, no reason for it to exist within." Is it really Bhutto's fault that her country continues down the path of authoritarianism? What more can we ask of her in seeking to prevent that than to lay down her life? How many of us can say we've even risked such a possibility on behalf of our countries?

Moreover, how can the PPP not make a firm statement to those who murdered its leader that they will not succeed in banishing Bhutto's spirit or pro-American ideals from their party? What so many of Benazir's critics always fail to answer is a simple question: If not her, then who? If not her son, who? Attack her if you like, she is a giant historical figure far beyond your slings and arrows, but where is your support for what you believe is a "better" option for Pakistan. Always, silence is the answer.

Some narrow-minded fools persist on accusing Bhutto of "corruption." She wasn't perfect, that's for sure. Neither were slave owners George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Nor was court-packing, term-grabbing, gulag-building Frankenstein Roosevelt (yet for some reason we still have his ghoulish image on our dime). And not one of them laid down their life for their country. Another blogger writes: "My advise to him - not that he asked - is that he should listen always to his heart and mind, well before he listens to anyone around him. Let him follow that which was best in Benazir Bhutto and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and avoid their follies."

She stood with America, with our values, at a time and in a place where they are most imperiled, within a stone's throw of one of our most mortal enemies -- who may well have been responsible for her murder. If we can't manage to support someone like that, while of course recognizing their faults and working for improvement, then we deserve atrocities like 9/11.

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Kim Zigfeld · January 1, 2008 7:50 AM · Comments (7) · TrackBacks (0)

Benazir Bhutto, Freedom Fighter, RIP

Filed under: Pakistan

A spokesperson for the al-Qaeda terrorist network has claimed responsibility for the death on Thursday of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto: "We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat [the] mujahadeen," Al-Qaeda's commander and main spokesperson Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid told Adnkronos International (AKI) in a phone call from an unknown location, speaking in faltering English. Al-Yazid is the main al-Qaeda commander in Afghanistan.

They got her! The world must bow its head in shame for not protecting her! Those who disparaged her during her life must crawl away into the dark shadows from which they came. She gave her life for her country. We here highly resolve that she shall not have died in vain! Just look how the malignant forces of dictatorship fear the power of democracy. Their only -- puny, pathetic -- response is violence and murder. They know they cannot win any other way. But their craven actions only redouble and intensify the fervor for freedom, and seal their fate to follow all the other failures from the annals of dictatorship into the dustbin of history.

Slate has a photo essay on her courageous life as well as a diary she wrote for them back a decade ago when she was struggling to find a new path for her country. Michelle Malkin has a rundown on all the news related to the killing, including the furious hatred of some in Pakistan for Bhutto and for democracy and for the United States. She writes: "They tried and failed when she returned to Pakistan in October. They tried and failed with a baby suicide bomber. Yesterday, they stopped a 15-year-old with a bomb packed full of nails trying to kill her. Today, they succeeded. Dammit, dammit, dammit."

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Kim Zigfeld · December 27, 2007 9:05 AM · Comments (7) · TrackBacks (0)

All Hell Breaks Loose in Pakistan

Filed under: Pakistan

First she's free. Then she's not. Then she is again. And then she's not. You'd think her last name was Gandhi.

Pakistani freedom fighter Benazir Bhutto was back under arrest in Lahore yesterday, her headquarters there besieged by nearly 1,000 soldiers to prevent her from carrying out a protest march to Islamabad. The U.S. responded by dispatching an emergency mission led by Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte to try to convince the clearly demented military dictator General Pervez Musharraf to release his grip on the nation's jugular. And Bhutto announced that her party may be forced to boycott the coming elections, creating a national crisis. When asked whether she might flee the country, she boldly declared: "I prefer to live in Pakistan in jail than to leave."

Go baby, go! We're coming over, and we won't come back til it's over over there!

Those who love democracy can't help but be stirred by this courage, nor can they do other than heap scorn on places like Russia where a cowardly mass population prefers their craven "safety" to safeguarding their liberty. After all, despite her direct confrontation of the regime of a military dictator, Bhutto is still alive, and capturing the imagination of the world, because of the rock-solid support she's getting from the people she's risking everything to liberate. Anna Politkovskaya can hardly say the same. Yesterday, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin clearly stated he is no different from Musharraf, declaring: "If the people vote for [my party] United Russia [in Russia's upcoming parliamentary elections], it means that a clear majority of the people put their trust in me, and in turn that means I will have the moral right to hold those in the Duma and the Cabinet responsible for the implementation of the tasks that have been set as of today. In what form I will do this, I cannot yet give a direct answer. But various possibilities exist." To be sure he will "win," Putin has barred access to Russia's polls by foreign observers and seized the campaign literature of rival parties while refusing to engage in public debate with them. Stalin, redux.

Where is Russia's Bhutto? Nowhere to be seen.

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Kim Zigfeld · November 13, 2007 7:17 AM · Comments (8) · TrackBacks (0)

Bhutto Yesterday, Martial Law Today

Filed under: Pakistan

No sooner did Benazir Bhutto arrive back in Pakistan than she faced an assassination attempt. No sooner did it fail than martial law was declared and mass arrests began. Rumors began to circulate that, after likening himself to Abraham Lincoln (that's right, he's Lincoln and Putin is FDR), President Pervez Musharraf had been deposed in a military coup (he's too liberal for them, if you can believe it). Now, writing for CNN, Bhutto stands up for democracy. Here's an excerpt:

On my return to Pakistan last month, throngs of people turned out to welcome me back home. The demand to ban grassroots political activity is a suspicious prelude to what could be an overt attempt to rig the upcoming elections. All people who believe in the process of democracy should reject this attempt to undermine public participation in the campaign and set the table for what I believe would simply be a fraudulent election. It has now been more than two weeks since the horrific assassination attempt against me and the police have still not filed my complaint. They filed their own report without taking statements from eyewitnesses on the truck targeted for the terrorist attack which resulted in the death of more than 158 of my supporters and security guards. Soon thereafter, I was asked by authorities not to travel in cars with tinted windows -- which protected me from identification by terrorists -- or travel with privately armed guards. I began to feel the net was being tightened around me when police security outside my home in Karachi was reduced, even as I was told that other assassination plots were in the offing.

Talk about a protest babe! You go, girl! Ms. Bhutto is an classic example of the fact that if one is willing to stand up and fight for democracy, massive changes can be achieved. All those who struggle for democracy around the world should be inspired by her amazing courage and devotion to her country.

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Kim Zigfeld · November 5, 2007 8:10 AM · Comments (5) · TrackBacks (0)