Can the heartless killing of Benazir Bhutto shock us and shame us in realising that by not protesting and opposing resolutely all forms of tyranny we have forfeited the right to live and think as a free nation. If it does, then she may have served a purpose much greater than her dreams. >>
The assassination of Ms Bhutto
12/31/2007
According to the doctor in charge whose team tried their best to revive her heart, Benazir died of some deep wound to her head, but the post-mortem was not carried out as he was told by the law-enforcing authorities her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, had instructed that it should not be done.
Nothing had changed to suggest that her security had improved significantly since the massive bomb blasts of Oct 18 on her convey that began its journey from Karachi Airport for the mausoleum of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah. On that occasion, some 150 people were killed and more than 500 injured. She was lucky to have escaped that terrorist outrage. This time luck let her down.
Indeed, the reference to luck is not meant non-seriously, because she was acutely aware of the fact that she had many enemies and some of them were plotting her death. Different theories and proofs about who the assassins were have been advanced. The government claims to have intercepted a telephone conversation between an Al Qaeda leader, XX, and some Maulvi Sahib in which both congratulate each other over her death and praise the men who took part in it.
The PPP's Farhatullah Babar has called for caution in accepting such evidence, as it may be a cover up to conceal the identity of the real killers. Another story circulating on the Internet is that some commandos of a rogue unit of the Special Services Group, an elite force within the Pakistan military structure, had carried out the shooting and bomb blasts.
The assassination of Ms Bhutto is a national tragedy, but there is supreme irony involved in it, originating from a famous observation she made in an interview recently. She said: "No good Muslim will attack and kill a woman, because Islam forbids it. Anyone who did so will burn in hell. I am not afraid because no real Muslim will attack a woman."
One can describe her remark as naivety or political rhetoric, or, perhaps she lived in a dream world of imaginary real and good Muslims. In the real Muslim world, fanatical groups kill anyone they perceive is a threat to their rigid version of Islam. They have done so in Afghanistan during the Taliban regime, in Iran under the Ayatollahs, in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and, indeed, in Pakistan.
In fact in ideological regimes such those of Iran Saudi Arabia a comprehensive procedure upheld in law exists to intimidate and terrorise women. It includes killing them, whipping them and stoning them for allegedly living lives or doing things incompatible with their version of true Islam. In Algeria the extremists have in particular targeted women working in state institutions because according to them the only place where women belong is in the four walls of the house.
On Feb 20, a woman minister in the Punjab government, Mrs Zille Huma Usman, was shot in the head and killed by a man who believed that she and all women who live a public life were whores. That man had killed three women already because he believed they lived a life of sin, but each time the courts had let him off. Obviously, the dehumanisation and victimisation of women takes place at different levels of society, but we focus only on the individual who committed the actual crime.
Benazir had not only violated the strict code of chaste behaviour by choosing to live an active public life. The fact that she kept her head covered with a chador and was modestly dressed did not help her, it seems. But more importantly, in her latest political posture she had said and done things which were ideological and political anathema to the fanatics and ultra-nationalists and jingoistic forces in Pakistan.
She committed herself to working closely with the United States in the war on terror and even to let the Americans interrogate Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, a national hero who is fondly referred to as the father of the Islamic or Pakistani atomic bomb. Moreover, this time she had taken a more strident posture in favour of democracy and human rights. Such posturing most certainly earned her the wrath of a whole range of fanatics.
An Al Qaeda statement describes her death as the end of "America's most precious asset in Pakistan". Her assassination must therefore be seen an exercise in deterrence. The deterrence theory of punishment is premised on the assumption that the culprit should not only be punished severely, but also serve as an example to others, so that nobody dares break the law or defy the will of the state.
One can extend the same reasoning to non-state actors such a terrorist organisations and fanatical ideological movements. They follow their own codes of chaste behaviour and good conduct and punish brutally when those rules are violated.
The assassination of a national-level leader who was also a well-known international figure will only add greater disapprobation to Pakistan's reputation as an authoritarian, military-dominated polity in which religious fanatics get away with impunity when they assault women and religious minorities, where the ruling classes are thoroughly corrupt and heartless, and the poor and needy are treated as dirt.
The question everyone is posing now is: what next? Some of us have been saying for a long time that the battle for democracy will not only be about winning the right to have fair and free elections, although that is an absolute pre-requisite for democracy. The battle for democracy is a battle for the mind. It is about ideas of human solidarity and dignity, about gender equality and equal rights of all human beings, irrespective of their caste, creed and colour. It will claim a lot of blood before it is won.
Can the heartless killing of Benazir Bhutto shock us and shame us in realising that by not protesting and opposing resolutely all forms of tyranny we have forfeited the right to live and think as a free nation. If it does, then she may have served a purpose much greater than her dreams.
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