LENIN'S TOMB

Saturday, January 26, 2008

Benazir Bhutto, the Fairytale Princess. posted by Richard Seymour

Guest post by Ajit Hegde:

Who gets a profit out of it? Nobody but a parcel of usurping little monarchs and nobilities who despise you; would feel defiled if you touched them; would shut the door in your face if you proposed to call; whom you slave for, fight for, die for, and are not ashamed of it, but proud; whose existence is a perpetual insult to you and you are afraid to resent it; who are mendicants supported by your alms, yet assume toward you the airs of benefactor toward beggar; who address you in the language of master to slave, and are answered in the language of slave to master; who are worshiped by you with your mouth, while in your heart -- if you have one -- you despise yourselves for it.

-- Mark Twain in Mysterious Stranger

Benazir Bhutto's life can be regarded as a microcosm of Third World liberal aristocracy's betrayal of their Countries. The sordid record liberal aristocracy which she represented can be summed up as follows.

(1) Gain power promising people liberation from their sorry state of affairs and outright destitution.

(2) When in power , simply betray people who believed them and elected them, Indulge in obscene levels of corruption, behave as if the people who elected you simply doesn't exist.Build a cult of personality which may make even Stalin green with envy.

(3) Get kicked out of power, sometimes by rightwing political parties , sometimes the military.

(4) Start all over again.

The vicious cycle continues, Ad Nauseum.

This has been the story, more or less, of the South Asian nations like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh. If anyone is responsible for driving the people of these countries into the hands of diabolical religious fundamentalists of all sorts, then it should be the Liberal Aristocrats like Bhutto of these countries. In India, this role is played by Congress Party, the family heirloom of Nehru Gandhi Family. In Pakistan It is Pakistan People's Party(PPP), the family heirloom of Bhutto Family.

Third world Aristocrats are the kind who helped the Westerners of a bygone era to loot their countries and then simply took over when the Westerners shuffled home.

Benazir and her fellow Aristocrats of every country have only contempt for the masses. We are fooling ourselves if we think they really care for us. For them, the masses are simply raw materials for their boundless ambitions. They are egomaniacs with a sense of entitlement. I have seen quite a few aristocrats in my life. Whatever difference they may have there are some things which are surprisingly consistent. It is their contempt for the masses. Of course they wouldn't talk down to people like they do to their servants in public. It would be suicidal to do so. But now and again, there is some story about them which gives an insight into the mindset of these elites.

A couple of examples would suffice to show the nature of Benazir's relationship with the masses she claimed to represent.

(1) Fawzia Afzal Khan who teaches at Montclair State University was a student in Radcliffe College when Benazir came there to give a speech. After listening to a particularly unimpressive speech Fawzia and others stayed in the lecture hall to ask her some questions. When her turn came Fawzia asked a rather innocuous question "what was her election platform or manifesto by which one could gauge the sincerity and depth of her commitment to a truly democratic agenda?" Fawzia describes Benazir's reaction.

"I thought she was about to have an epileptic seizure by the way her eyes glazed over, then started to turn bloodshot, and the foam began forming at the corners of her bright red lips ... She virtually spat out her answer, anger and arrogance on display in every word she uttered. 'Do you know who I am?' incredulity at my naivete hissing through her words. 'Cassettes of my speeches sell like hotcakes in every market in Pakistan,' and when my expression must have betrayed some level of incomprehension, she lashed out, 'that means the people of Pakistan love me, they know how I have suffered for them when I was jailed following my father's execution, just because as his daughter and the one groomed to be a future leader of Pakistan, the army just could not take the chance of my being free to assume that mantle.' Her final comment to me-which led to a young man standing next to me pulling me away and advising me to leave before things got really ugly-was something to the effect that she would 'see me outside.' Was that a veiled threat, in the manner of a feudal lord to a servant who has spoken out of line, or an invitation to speak to her 'outside' after the evening was over?" (Fawzia Afzal Khan, Counterpunch, 29/20 December 2007)

(2) Owen Bennet Jones, a BBC Journalist, once visited Benazir's ancestral Home in Larkana, Sindh. After having the dinner with 40 people, Benazir moved into a large hall. Read what happened later in his own words, "On the outer fringes of the throng around Benazir Bhutto that night in Larkana eight years ago were the local villagers who had somehow blagged their way in. They were welcome enough - as long as they stayed in their place. But one had a camera and took a picture. The flash had not even faded away before - with a ferocious imperious expression - Benazir Bhutto pointed in his general direction. Her minders, who had obviously been mingling in the crowd for just such an eventuality, wrestled him to the ground, grabbed his camera, ripped out the film and hurled him out of the door into the courtyard. I looked at her surprised, shocked." (Owen Bennett Jones, 'Face to Face with Benazir Bhutto', 29 December 2007)

Thus the so called saviour of democracy treated her alleged equals. It is not much different from what a Feudal lord in Europe might have done in his heyday. She was simply a pathetic woman who had no concern for the millions of her countrymen and women who live a life of destitution. She proved it again and again. Life is too short. We wouldn't give a benefit of doubt to a used car salesman or a conman who has already deceived us once. Why not do the same in politics, a far more important arena than personal finance? Benazir got two chances. That was one too many in my books. She screwed up both times.

There is a lot of talk about Benazir's courage. Even some leftist commentators are saying she was a woman of great personal courage. For them I can only quote Gore Vidal who said "There is something strangely infantile in this obsession with dice-loaded physical courage when the only courage that matters in political or even 'real' life is moral." Benazir and courage. The word courage is disgraced and degraded by such uses. Actually they are misdiagnosing her. It was not courage but a gambler taking his or her chances. Politics, especially in a country like India and Pakistan, is a dangerous business. If you win you will rule like a Roman Emperor or Empress. If you lose there is a high probability of going bust.

Now the word comes Benazir has appointed her 19 year old son as her heir to Pakistan People's Party(PPP) in her will. Just like her father gave her the PPP. Kind Reader, when I see this I am reminded of Karl Marx's aphorism about History repeating itself, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. If Bill Clinton or George Bush did such things in their will I am sure there will be howls of derision across America.

The people of India, Pakistan or for that matter any other nation must wise up quickly. They should not degrade themselves by giving free rein to discredited autocrats who treat their parties as their personal property. At least Musharraf, that megalomaniac general, gave his country a whole new crop of leaders, albeit unintentionally. Musharraf sacked the Chief Justice of Pakistan in March 2007. But the Judge didn't simply walk away. He decided to fight his unjust dismissal. His rather extraordinary courage in resisting the dreaded Generals inspired an entire nation to wake up from it's slumber. The lawyers were at the forefront of the movement. There were pitched battles between Musharraf's goons aka Army and Police on one side and the Lawyers on the other.

It was possibly the most extraordinary movement of people in that country's history. The lawyers actually won the battle. Emboldened by the resistance of lawyers the supreme court judges threw out Musharraf's case against the Chief Justice. Never before in history the Supreme Court of Pakistan dared to disobey the Military Masters. The Lawyers movement threw up a number of potential leaders who offer a real alternative to the Bhutto clan. Aitzaz Ahsan (he was actually Benazir's lawyer), Ali Ahmad Kurd, Munir Malik all of them played major role in resisting the Generals. Nobody in Pakistan's history has addressed the military overlords in such belligerent tone on live TV as Ali Ahmad Kurd. Kurd is the man who literally held the audience spellbound with his oratorical skills.

"He is not a man who has no passion, and that passion is useless that does not challenge general Pervez Musharraf. Enough of this fooling around! Enough of this fooling around! Today a man on the basis of his arrogance! Today a man on the basis of his haughtiness has dared to challenge the Chief Justice of Pakistan. If you are men you'll stay in the battlefield and not turn your back."

“Today, Pervez Musharraf has again said that no reference (against Chief Justice of Pakistan) will be withdrawn. When did we ask you to withdraw the reference? We say it is a war! It is a war! If you (Pervez Musharraf) are in your uniform, then so are we (the lawyers). Come fight us! Come fight us! No power in this world can defend this reference." (Read more about this extraordinary man).

Any society should be proud of people like Kurd. It takes guts to challenge the Generals of Pakistan who have time and again proved they have no compunction in shedding the blood of their own countrymen.

It is true Musharraf quickly hit back within a couple of months. And sacked the reinstated Chief Justice , purged the Supreme Court and imprisoned his Lawyers. But it is more like the final desperate attempt by a cornered crook to hang on to power. The Lawyers and others will definitely fight back. And what did Benazir do for her country's most extraordinary movement against the Rulers? Well, She didn't even lift her pinkie to support the lawyers' movement. She actually was busy cutting deals with Musharraf at that time.

Labels: bhutto, colonialism, india, pakistan

Friday, January 04, 2008

Line of the day. posted by Richard Seymour

"Benazir Bhutto has never looked so good."

Labels: bhutto, pakistan, US imperialism

Monday, December 31, 2007

The next Washington Consensus posted by Richard Seymour

Pakistan is axiomatically central to Washington's expansionist 'war on terror'. Musharraf, the military despot in charge of Islamabad's portion of that expansion, has disappointed his handlers. While his security services were good enough to instruct the bulk of Taliban fighters to withdraw from Afghanistan, thus giving Washington an easy early victory, he has not since been able to crackdown sufficiently on the various Islamist groups that support the insurgency in Afghanistan. Further, his policies - both his support for the 'war on terror' and those that have increased the immiseration of the people of Pakistan - seem to have galvanised precisely the sort of unrest that Washington doesn't need. The old hands spotted an opportunity. Nawaz Sharif, the crooked Prime Minister overthrown by Musharraf, attempted a glorious return and was ingloriously deported (although he now looks to be re-staging his glorious return). Benazir Bhutto, chairwoman of the Pakistan People's Party, daughter of the murdered former President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, daughter of the West and flawed and feudal princess had more luck. She had worked out a deal in advance to save Musharraf's regime and allow her re-admittance to Pakistani politics after a long self-imposed exile. Some of her frozen funds were released and Musharraf issued a pardon on 5th October last year, removing the possibility of Bhutto being prosecuted on outstanding corruption charges. In return, her Pakistan People's Party agreed not to boycott the parliamentary election for president, which Musharraf went on to win. On 18th October, therefore, Benazir Bhutto returned in triumph. Though publicly critical of Musharraf's party, the PMLQ, she continued to negotiate with them behind the scenes for a power-sharing arrangement. Favoured by Washington because of her vocal support for the 'war on terror' and her right-wing policies, she enjoyed considerable leverage, but was an immediate target of right-wing Islamist groups opposed to Washington's policies - and probably elements of the Pakistani secret police. Today, Bhutto's supporters largely attribute her murder to the Pakistani government, and insist that she was shot in the neck and chest before the suicide attacker struck.

All US presidential candidates are making much hay in this heat. Hillary Clinton refers to Musharraf's failure to tackle 'Al Qaeda', while Mitt Romney wonders if the general is capable of keeping a lid on the unrest in his country. Rudi Giuliani, the favoured horse of the neocons, demands more military funding, while Mike Huckabee simply reminds voters that American democracy may be flawed, but it stands as a shining beacon to the rest of the world etc.

So, what's new? Well, they're moving up and moving on, taking it to the next level: it's time for Special Forces to drop in and say hello. Moving troops to Pakistan and Afghanistan is a strategy particularly favoured by the Democrats. Such a move would be extremely risky - unlike, say, bombing Pakistani targets from afar and killing dozens of civilians - and would contain an inherent "quagmire" dynamic, catalysing the famous law of entropy. But, then, perhaps the alternative of waiting for this spoilt brat to finish his studies at Oxford and take over the dynasty is not too appealling either.

The current US relationship to Pakistan is, obviously, the culmination of some murky history. The Pakistani state was, after all, practically an auxiliary to the US government since 1951 until the election of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party in the 1970 elections, following the wave of revolt against the Ayub regime. When Bhutto pursued a classical nationalist set of policies, opting for non-alignment, nationalising many industries and - most importantly - developing his own nuclear capacity, the US helped destroy his government. Henry Kissinger had warned Bhutto that "we can destabilise your government and make a horrible example out of you" - a typical Kissingerian threat, and one that was carried to fruition. General Zia ul-Haq's coup, one effected in alliance with right-wing religious groups such as the Jamaat e-Islaami in 1978, saw a decade of the most brutal rule, with the military increasingly dominating civilian life. Under his rule, the Pakistani secret police (ISI) nurtured the most fanatical reactionary zealots whom we now refer to as the Taliban as part of the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and as a counterweight against the appeal of socialism in Pakistan. Negotiating with Brzezinski, Zia insisted that all aid, finance, training and so on would be channelled through Pakistan, thus turning the country into a throughfare for all of the intelligence bandits, reactionary warriors and mercenaries that are now operating across Pakistan and Afghanistan. With the Soviet Union effectively defeated, Zia was killed in an airplane crash in 1988 that was probably a professional assassination. Successive Prime Ministers tried to ram home Pakistan's successful war on behalf of the US in Afghanistan, and Benazir Bhutto would oversee the successful march of the Taliban across Afghanistan - the bleatings of the avaricious, upper crust Bhutto dynasty about democracy and terrorism are so much fodder for gullible Western liberals. The Pakistan People's Party has long since become the private property of a bourgeois Anglocentric dynasty, and any leadership it produces will hop in and out of bed with the military and the mullahs depending on what the US requires.

Times change, priorities change, but interests don't. Russia has extricated itself from the West's deadly embrace and is pursuing its own local hegemonic project with some limited success (notably, the embarrassment of the US in Uzbekistan). China is a potentially enormous power whose current friendly disposition toward Washington doesn't preclude competing for a cut of the action in Iran, Sudan, Venezuela, or any number of other geopolitically sensitive points for Washington. The Central Asian energy republics, held for a long while under pro-US dictatorships, are increasingly exposed to instability, rival wooing, and potential rebellion. As Iraq goes under and the US foreign policy establishment splits over the prospect of expanding the war to Iran, controlling Afghanistan and Pakistan become increasingly important. The American empire's overreach now demands new, more flexible tactics. Do more to win over rivals, bring allies further into the fold, induce greater troop commitments with financial bribery and threats, reduce any seriously draining commitments and turn the war over to proxies (as in the 'Sunni Triangle'). And while the Taliban are no longer 'our' friends, they are no longer quite 'our' enemies. Unable to hold Afghanistan, the occupying powers are negotiating vigorously with the Taliban fighters, hoping to break of a section of them to co-govern with the warlord kleptocracy. Soon, a war that was initially sold as a war to hunt down Al Qaeda, and then became a humanitarian deliverance from the Taliban, will be an expanding regional war against something as nebulous as "extremism". And then, if local Islamist insurgents can be coopted, they will become part of a war against 'Al Qaeda'. When neither Bhutto junior or Nawaz Sharif can deliver, they'll be back to relying on General Musharraf as one of 'our' guys, moving in the right direction and so on. The empire can shift between narratives with such dexterity that no one in the press corps notices or cares when it happens. The next Washington Consensus is emerging from the flux even as you read.

Labels: 'war on terror', bhutto, pakistan, US imperialism

Friday, December 28, 2007

Bhutto's assassination posted by bat020

Here's Socialist Worker on Benazir Bhutto's assassination:

Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister of Pakistan, was murdered today in a brutal suicide bomb attack that also claimed the lives of at least 20 of her supporters.

Her death is certain to further destabilise a country that is already being torn apart by the forces unleashed by George Bush's "war on terror".

Bhutto had recently returned to Pakistan as part of a US-sponsored plan to shore up the rule of Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president and former army chief – and a key regional ally of Bush.

Bush was swift to condemn Bhutto's assassination, but many in Pakistan are already pointing the finger of blame at him.

"The military and their American masters have to take some of the blame for this," said Munib Anwar from the Pakistan Lawyers Action Committee. "They brought these terrorists into Pakistan."

Benazir Bhutto is not the first in her family to die a violent death. Her father, former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was hanged by a previous US-supported military dictatorship. Two of her brothers also died in mysterious circumstances.

But imperialism lies at the heart of the brutality of Pakistan's politics. The country has been bathed in blood ever since it was founded by the British partition of India in 1947.

And the tragic circumstances of Benazir Bhutto's death should not detract from the fact that she had made her peace with imperialism and was a loud supporter of Bush's murderous "war on terror".

Her radical days were long behind her and many ordinary people in Pakistan rightly saw her as corrupt and reliant on the support of Western powers.

As yet no organisation has claimed responsibility for Bhutto's murder. But suspicions are bound to fall on Islamist elements of Musharraf's administration who are sympathetic to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

These elements, clustered around Pakistan's military and security services, were once allies of the US but fell out with the White House during the prolonged occupation of Afghanistan after the US invasion in 2001.

The state of emergency declared at the beginning of November was a desperate attempt to head off opposition to Musharraf's rule. It was a move that embarrassed the US government – which had hoped for a compromise deal between Musharraf and Bhutto – without managing to pacify the elements sympathetic to the Taliban within the military's own ranks.

Whatever develops now, no political solution based on compromise with US imperialism and its regional allies can offer anything other than more bloodshed and misery.

The real opposition to Musharraf's dictatorship and Bush's war does not lie in these quarters. It is the civil rights movement that rose up across the country this year that offers the best political hope for the people of Pakistan.

That movement has been organised independently of all the corrupt and discredited political parties of Pakistan.