Benazir Bhutto Was Pro-Taliban And A Memory
AMY Wilentz on Benazir Bhutto and Pakistan:
Somewhere in Benazir’s mind – in spite of ten years of daily bulletins from people back home, in spite of all the threats and menaces, in spite of what she saw on the ground upon her return, and even in spite of the blistering, bloody attack of that first day – somewhere in her mind, this Pakistan still existed.
This Pakistan where the old power elites still ruled, and where owning land meant running the country. Where you could still trust the old post-Partition power bases, and stand up and wave to the people royally from your car. This was still the turf on which she ran, with Bush alongside.
She refused to accept that this Pakistan, her imaginative homeland, was just a memory, as people will refuse to do when they are orphaned, or have lost their homes and families.
And Christopher Hitchens:
When she was prime minister, she pursued a very active pro-Taliban policy, designed to extend and entrench Pakistani control over Afghanistan and to give Pakistan strategic depth in its long confrontation with India over Kashmir.
The fact of the matter is that Benazir’s undoubted courage had a certain fanaticism to it.
She had the largest Electra complex of any female politician in modern history, entirely consecrated to the memory of her executed father, the charming and unscrupulous Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who had once boasted that the people of Pakistan would eat grass before they would give up the struggle to acquire a nuclear weapon.
Posted: 31st, December 2007 | In: Reviews Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
