Benazir Bhutto: was she doomed to die?
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Who will benefit from the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistan prime minister?
According to Kamran Rehmat in Pakistan
On the other hand, Professor Mark LeVine asserts,
According to Kamran Rehmat in Pakistan
The extremists were annoyed with Bhutto for her unqualified support to the US 'war on terror' and her willingness to play ball with the Bush administration.
This is a policy that Musharraf has found to his chagrin remains hugely unpopular in Pakistan but, which was seen by her party as a politically correct course in order to win back power.
Bhutto's apparent grandstanding in offering to give the International Atomic Energy Agency access to disgraced nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan to probe his role in nuclear proliferation, and allow American troops to enter the Pakistani hinterland to take out al-Qaeda, sparked outrage even in the intelligentsia.
On the other hand, Professor Mark LeVine asserts,
Bhutto's return was the public symbol of the government's new, get tough attitude. "I know who these people are, I know the forces behind them," Bhutto explained to the New York Times.Furthermore,
Left unsaid, and unquestioned, was why Bhutto is so familiar with "these people," most of whom are hiding out in the NWFP: The governments she led during the late 1980s and mid 1990s were, in conjunction with Pakistan's notorious intelligence services(ISI), among the most important sponsors of the Taliban.
Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto is being called upon to save the country from the Taliban, when her government did perhaps the most to build up the Taliban.
