[vinnomot] Benazir Bhutto's assassination

Benazir Bhutto's assassination in a gun and bomb attack, at a rally in Rawalpindi, is an enormous tragedy not just for Pakistan but also for all of South Asia. Indeed, perhaps the world. The world needs to be extremely anxious about the state of Pakistan following this heinous murder. This is not a routine assassination, because it snuffs out whatever faint hope there was of free and fair elections early next year.

Again, Pakistan proved to be a complete failed state. Pakistan is done. It's existence until now is a rare miracle. Pakistan created based on religious emotions failed to unite the people of this country and proved mixing politics and religion is compared to mixing gasoline in fire.

 

My condolence and deep sorrow on the death of Benajir Bhutto, probably the last hope for Pakistan existed until today. What a tragedy, Mr. Bhutto was hanged, his eldest son Murtaza Bhutto was killed on a crossfire by Pakistan police, his other son was poisoned to death by military rulers and now the last post of the family Benajir Bhutto has been gun down!

The terrorist attack on the convoy welcoming Benazir back from exile, which killed hundreds, followed soon after by this latest, successful attempt at assassinating her, shows that terrorism is now lodged in the heart of Pakistan. Its getting worse, not better. Its now time for the international community to brainstorm and do something about Pakistan, soon. And while everyone puts their heads together, the starting point must be to realise that tried and tested approaches have failed. The top priority has to be stabilising the nation.

That might seem, at first sight, to mean reinforcing the military and emergency powers for Musharraf. But its precisely on their watch that Pakistan has arrived at it's present parlous state. Musharraf's administration has focused it's energies on targeting lawyers, political activists, supreme court judges and mediapersons, sending thousands of peaceful activists to jail. While being unable to prevent terrorists from striking at will, not even in Rawalpindi, which is a garrison city as well as ISI's home base. The military has also been diverting aid meant for front-line troops fighting the Taliban and the Al-Qaida, for the sake of trophy arms buys if not outright corruption.

Even if it seems counter-intuitive at first instance, there has to be at least a medium-term plan to get the military out of the way and make Pakistan a democracy with strong institutions in place. Making Musharraf the main prop of the nation's stability has failed, decisively.

 

May His Holiness bestow upon political leaders, army rulers and civil societies the wisdom and courage to seek and find humane, just and lasting solutions in Pakistan and elsewhere in this planet.

 

Gopal Sengupta

Canada

gopalsengupta@aol.com

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