Pakistan: Assassination of Benazir Bhutto - full text
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The assassination on Dec. 27, 2007, of Benazir Bhutto, former prime minister of Pakistan, resulted in escalating violence in Pakistan, especially in Karachi, the capital of Sindh, Bhutto's home province. The Guardian reported that as of Jan. 1, 58 people had been killed in rioting and 13 polling stations had experienced arson attacks.
Immediate Context
Benazir Bhutto, twice prime minister of Pakistan and the first woman elected to lead a Muslim state, was assassinated on Dec. 27, 2007. Bhutto had returned to Pakistan on Oct. 18, after the breakdown of negotiations for a power-sharing agreement between herself and President Gen. Pervaiz Musharraf. She had spent eight years in self-imposed exile in London and Dubai (United Arab Emirates--UAE). On the night of her return a suicide bomber targeted Bhutto's convoy. At least 139 people were killed in the attack, but Bhutto was uninjured. In a similar attack on Dec. 27, Bhutto died whilst attending a Pakistan People's Party (PPP) rally in the city of Rawalpindi, at which she was campaigning for re-election in Pakistan's upcoming general election. Witnesses present at the rally claimed that Bhutto was shot, whilst the Pakistani authorities maintained that Bhutto died from cranial injuries sustained from hitting sunroof of the vehicle she was travelling in, after the detonation of a bomb.
On Jan. 2, Pakistan's Election Commission announced that the upcoming general election would be by postponed by six weeks, with polling scheduled for Feb. 18, instead of Jan. 8. Kanwar Dilshad, a spokesman for the commission, confirmed that "Our offices in 10 districts of Sindh have been burned, the electoral rolls have been burned, the polling schemes, the nomination papers have been burned." However, the PPP and Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League (PML) had called for the polls to go ahead.
Reaction and Outlook
On Dec. 30, 2007, Bhutto's widower Asif Ali Zardari announced that he and his 19-year-old son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari had been appointed co-chairmen of the PPP, with the intention of Bilawal becoming the head of the PPP upon completing his studies in the UK at Christ Church College, Oxford University. At the conference, Bilawal commented that "My mother always said democracy is the best revenge." Reuters reported that in a joint statement issued on Jan. 1, Zardari and Sharif asserted that the "January 8th elections must proceed as scheduled ... this will not only be a tribute to the memory of Benazir Bhutto, but even more importantly, a reaffirmation of the cause of democracy for which she died"
The assassination of Bhutto resulted in an international reaction of condemnation, with US President George W. Bush referring to the assassination as a "cowardly act by murderous extremists who are trying to undermine Pakistan's democracy." Bhutto's death was also perceived as a threat to Pakistan's relations with the West. On Dec. 29, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives (the lower house of Congress, the bicameral federal legislature), urged the Bush administration to address "troubling questions" regarding the assassination "before any additional US aid is sent to the Musharraf Government", as US law makes assistance to Pakistan conditional on the Pakistani authorities co-operation in the "war on terror".
The perceived laxity of the Pakistani authorities in investigating Bhutto's death promtped the PPP to call for a UN inquiry into the assassination. The Pakistani authorities were criticised for deciding to hose down the crime scene after the attack, potentially destroying evidence. On Jan. 2, Musharraf bowed to international pressure and agreed to allow the UK's Metropolitan police to enter the country to investigate Bhutto's death. In a televised address, Musharraf confirmed that a team from Scotland Yard "will immediately be coming to Pakistan and helping us with our investigation".
Historical Context
Benazir Bhutto was born in Karachi, on June 21, 1953. After an early education in Pakistan, Bhutto went on to study at Harvard University in the USA, where she received a degree in comparative government in 1973. She subsequently studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics in the UK at the University of Oxford and in December 1976 she was elected president of the Oxford Union (the University of Oxford's debating society).
Bhutto's grandfather Sir Shah Nawaz Khan Bhutto was a prominent figure in the Pakistani independence movement. Her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was Pakistan's first elected prime minister and founder of the PPP. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto served as the President of Pakistan from 1971 to 1973 and as Prime Minister from 1973 to 1977.
Bhutto's father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was arrested in June 1978 at the order of Gen. Zia ul-Haq on conspiracy to murder charges; he was later sentenced to death. Bhutto, who had just returned to Pakistan after completing her education, and her mother Begum Bhutto were placed under house arrest. Begum Bhutto was elected life chairman of the PPP at a special party congress in Islamabad in May 1979, but the leadership eventually passed to Benazir Bhutto in November 1982.
In January 1984, Bhutto, who had again been under house arrest since March 1981, was allowed to leave for the UK. On arriving in London, Bhutto stated in an interview with The Times that she would continue the struggle as "a bigger thorn in the regime's side from here than I would have been back home in detention". The struggle eventually resulted in Bhutto winning the 1988 general election, becoming the first woman to hold the position of prime minister in Pakistan.
However, Bhutto was deposed 20 months later by President Ghulam Ishaq Khan, who dissolved the legislature and forced another election. Nawaz Sharif of the PML won the October 1990 general election, becoming the first ethnic Punjabi to hold the position of prime minister.
Bhutto was successfully re-elected in 1993 but was again dismissed in November 1996 by President Farooq Leghari, amid corruption allegations and an economic crisis. Leghari claimed in December 1996 that the agenda of Bhutto's ousted government had been "only personal aggrandisement ... when policies [were] not merely violative of law, but [were] designed to institutionalize corruption, nepotism and the abuse of power".
The years following the collapse of Bhutto's second cabinet were typified by Bhutto and her husband Asif Zardari attempting to defend themselves against corruption lawsuits. In January 1998, the Pakistani authorities filed 12 corruption cases with Pakistan's accountability commission against Bhutto, her husband Asif Ali Zardari, and her mother Nusrat Bhutto.
In October 1999, Musharraf seized power in a military coup d'état, overthrowing Nawaz Sharif who was serving a second term as prime minister.
In May 2006, Bhutto was joined by Sharif at a conference in London, at which they signed a "charter for democracy". The charter envisaged constitutional changes and other political measures to strengthen democracy in Pakistan. The two former premiers demanded that legislative elections due to be held in 2007 should be conducted under a caretaker government, claiming that otherwise they would be rigged by Musharraf. Bhutto and Sharif also proposed to reverse constitutional changes made under Musharraf which had increased presidential powers, and to remove the direct and indirect influence of the military on political life.
In July 2007 President Musharraf met Bhutto in Abu Dhabi (UAE), in what appeared to be an attempt to strike a power-sharing deal under which Bhutto could return to Pakistan in time for the legislative elections, without facing the corruption charges that she claimed were politically motivated, in exchange for the PPP's support for Musharraf's presidency. However, by September 2007, the negotiations were described by Bhutto as "stalled". Bhutto blamed the failed negotiations on the "people around Gen. Musharraf" whom she accused of trying to sabotage an understanding between them, whilst government sources blamed Bhutto for allegedly increasing her demands.
Bhutto announced in September that she would return to Pakistan on Oct. 18, regardless of whether any agreement with Musharraf had been reached. Bhutto's triumphant return to Pakistan suffered a major blow when at least one suicide bomber attacked her convoy at midnight in the streets of Karachi. Two explosions killed at least 139 people and injured over 200 others. Bhutto herself was not injured despite her vehicle being the target of the bombs, having just moved into the interior of her armoured but open-topped truck as it drove through a crowd of at least 200,000 people.
