chachaji, Id say that the death of Benazir Bhutto has now altered the guessing game of Who spins what & why?. One things for sure…It was extremists who killed her…but what type of extremists remains uncertain. Though it`s said that she was Pro-American…she had few good things, if any, to say of the current U.S. & or Pakistani Administrations. The most tragic part of this event is that the truth of her intent will never have a chance to be proved or disproved.

IMHO… Whether the extremists/militants be in Pakistan or in the U.S…the extremists/militants are our leaders. The sad truth of our world situation is all people of the world are left to prey on eachother by its own leaders.

Omar, you argue your point extremely well.

Many possibilities about what happened and who was involved are still being weighed by the investigating agencies.

One of the really surprizing things I’ve noticed is that many people believe that state intelligence agencies could have organized the attack on Benazir, instead of, say, Islamic militants.

People are even speculating that it is too much of a coincidence that she happened to be in the interior of the heavily armored truck just when the attacks happened.

Others have pointed out that the attack, whoever organized it, has enhanced her standing among the electorate, because she is seen as having stood up to ‘them’, and if ‘they’ wanted her gone, she must have been planning to go after ‘them’.

Given such speculation about motivations and political gains, the different parties are trying to spin the event to their own advantage, including, of course, Benazir herself.

I agree that the overall political situation in Pakistan, and the existence of various ‘agencies’, the state within a state, etc, takes a lot of the blame. But nobody can be absolved beforehand, and nobody has a monopoly on callousness.

The issue of security is not one of “foolproof” cordons and other such excuses. People forget that in a functional state, the major deterrent to such actions is the fact that no violent organizations can exist, plan and attack without exciting the interest of law-enforcement; if they do attack, they are vigorously pursued and dealt with and finally, they are not being supported and manipulated by elements of the state itself. In Pakistan, such organizations were encouraged and abetted by the “forward thinking” army. For the last 6 years, they have been officially banned, but no doubt has been left about the fact that this “ban” is ambiguous and loaded with exceptions and loopholes. Doubts about the sincerity of senior members of the intelligence agencies are widespread. In this atmosphere, attacks are easily assumed to have the blessings of one or the other faction in the power structure. There is little or no trust and little chance that the whole story will ever be known.

A good start would be to compare the situation in India. The various terrorist groups frequently articulate real grievances and have real support among some people. The intelligence agencies and security services in India are more unwieldy and decrepit than their Pakistani counterparts and are probably equally corrupt in terms of individual corruption. But there is no doubt about the state’s DESIRE to stop terrorists from various jihadi and separatist groups. That simple “unity of purpose” leads to the fact that a significant proportion of outrages is actually investigated and many perpetrators are actually caught. The system is very rickety, almost pre-industrial and highly inefficient and certainly cannot stop all outrages but it still delivers better results than the Pakistani system. In spite of years of terrorism and poor policing, politicians in India can still hold rallies and people can still gather in large numbers without “foolproof security”……Compare that to Pakistan, where the sitting government (in the form of Sheikh Rashid) is saying it probably cannot afford a true election campaign because large crowds are easy targets? (being a pessimist, I have to add that if things fall apart further in Pakistan, they will no doubt get worse in India as well, so I wouldn’t count my chickens yet if I were Indian).

Benazir is not the issue. The destruction of state authority and legitimacy and its replacement by a shadow military state which is not under the control of even its own chief is the real issue.

Indeed – although you will also find a significant web presence for husain huqqani, which also refers to him.

I would also add – the annotated memoirs of Ayub Khan – edited by Craig Baxter, and his own autobiography – Friends, Not Masters – a memoir of the Zia era by General K.M. Arif, who was his right hand man till 1984, and of course, Musharraf’s own autobiography for a more personal look at three different periods of the Pakistan Army in politics through the eyes of the principal player in each period.

I read Cloughley a few years ago, along with Cohen (Pakistan Army) – but the other Cohen book and all the other books within the last year and half!

Sakshi, Huqqani’s book is called Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military’.

Oops! Sorry about that. OTOH, the author is called Haqqani.

I would laugh if it wasn’t so true – my parents live in PECHS and one of our neighbor’s definitely had a pet LION. Not in a cage but it just sat on the little lawn outside their boundary wall, attached to a flimsy leash. It also got loose 2-3 times. No one could make them get rid of it until it went after its keeper.

Well, yeah…because we Pakistanis support political parties like people support sports teams. It’s all very tribalisitic and has no basis in any kind of political track record. So the PPP’s popular support says nothing about the quality of the party, instead only underlining how the uneducated masses are manipulated by all the thieving megalomaniacs who “govern” Pakistan.

Yes, man eating tigers are roaming the streets of Gulshan-E-Iqbal and hobos have taken over Clifton.

So how’s life in Mumbai and Delhi?