Spotlights why calls for “democracy” in the Third World are a sham
Pakistani politician and dynast Benazir Bhutto was assassinated alongside at least twenty of her supporters at an election rally in Rawalpindi, leaving the South Asian nation in turmoil.
Bhutto is the third member of her aristocratic family to be executed: in 1979 her father, former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was hanged for his role in the murder of a rival, while her brother Mir Murtaza was ambushed and killed in 1996. Another brother was poisoned by his wife.
Benazir Bhutto, the first female Prime Minister of a Muslim state, was elected to the office twice. On December 27 she was killed in a gun and bomb attack on her procession at a political rally preparing for elections slated for January of 2008. Pakistan has been plunged into near chaos. Riots have broken out nationwide with the government of President Pervez Musharraf being blamed by Bhutto loyalists for at best failing to protect her, and at worst being complicit in the assassination. The situation is complictaed by past associations of the ISI secret police with the Taleban and other al Qaeda linked Islamist terror groups who may have carried out the murder. Pakistani intelligence fosters links with these groups to help them destabilize Indian occupied Kashmir.The murder of Benazir Bhutto is a massive blow to US government directed attempts to micromanage the course of political development in the Muslim world. One buzzword relied on by the US is “democracy,” on the assumption that the lack of “democracy” is at the root of what bedevils places like Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan. (Ironically, “democracy” is not a feature of America’s closest allies in the region, most notably the theocratic monarchy of Saudi Arabia, while the “democratic” credentials of http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2671 are under debate. Even Pakistan’s present leader, who is the main regional US ally, seized power by overthrowing the “democratically elected” kleptocracy of Pakistan in 1999). The US thinking seems to be, at least formally, that if only “democrats” like Bhutto were elected, endemic problems would magically end.
As the Bhutto murder, (which was almost certainly the work of Islamists) shows, jihadi Muslim extremism is a much greater problem for Pakistan than the lack of “democracy.” Additionally, Pakistan has severe ethnic problems. Bhutto represented the minority Sindhi ethnic group, long sidelined by ruling Punjabis, while Mohajirs, descendants of Indian Muslims who fled India after the Partition in 1947, tribal groups in the remote Northwest and others harbor long resentments. And on top of that, rival murderous Shia and Sunni paramilitary gangs financed by outside governments have long made the main cities of Pakistan death zones.
Observers expected something like the Bhutto assassination to happen sooner or later. Female leadership is anathema to orthodox Muslims, and Bhutto was nearly killed only hours after coming back to Pakistan from self imposed exile in October, when bombs killed over a hundred of her supporters. “Democracy” (at least in the Western sense) is untenable in the Muslim world, which has no democratic tradition. In fact, advocacy of Western norms is unjust, leading to destabilization, demagoguery and worse.
Pakistan, sitting as it does on the front line of the “war on terror” and in possession of nuclear weapons, is a flashpoint for regional war that, if it breaks out, would rapidly spread. A breakdown of Pakistan into ethnic civil war would draw India, its main rival, into the conflict, while Afghanistan would become even more ungovernable.