Security Forces Shooting To Kill In Pakistan

At least 32 people have been killed in violent protests and clashes across Pakistan after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the opposition politician and former prime minister, in Rawalpindi on Thursday. The army deployed 16,000 troops in areas of the southern province of Sindh, once a stronghold of Bhutto support. Paramilitary forces were also given permission to shoot on sight in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city whose streets were virtually deserted after a national strike was called by Bhutto supporters.

Also the death of Bhutto looks more suspicious, not shot or hit by shrapnel but a sunroof handle? (update: further ridiculed by PPP reps) Police withdrew minutes before the hit and repeatedly state security provided them with faulty electronic counter measures. Meanwhile an awful lot of people want to call it straight Al Qaeda because involvement by radicals in the ISI, government or Musharraf himself doesn’t look so war on terror friendly.

several associates of Bhutto have accused Musharraf himself of having a role. In an e-mail sent to a confidant in the US two months ago, Benazir Bhutto wrote that Musharraf should be held “responsible” if she was assassinated because his government did not do enough to provide for her security.

Whatever the whodunnit? the war of terror cold war-esque backing of tyrants as long as they served a geo-political purpose for the empire has once again been shown to be a profoundly stupid and failed policy. But then the greatest supporters of that are the same people in power now. Doomed to repeat etc.

The real opposition to Musharraf’s dictatorship and Bush’s war does not lie in these quarters. It is the civil rights movement that rose up across the country this year that offers the best political hope for the people of Pakistan.

But the empire has immediate needs and agendas not so conducive to democracy-

The U.S. military is now burning about 575,000 gallons of fuel per day in Afghanistan. And about 80 percent of that fuel is coming from refineries in Pakistan. Without the support of Musharraf and the Pakistani military, U.S. forces in Afghanistan would have only one fuel supply, and it would be coming via a precarious logistics line that extends more than 1,000 miles from northern Afghanistan all the way to refineries in Baku, Azerbaijan and Turkmenbashi, Turkmenistan.

And if Musharraf can’t do the job, they won’t be looking to the actual democratic and liberal civil movement, because they are not slavishly obedient to American interests-

When Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte visited Pakistan last weekend, he met once with President Pervez Musharraf, for two hours. But before he left town, he held three meetings with a lesser-known figure: General Ashfaq Kiyani, the deputy army chief.

The attention paid to Kiyani has affirmed speculation here that he will soon be chosen as Musharraf’s successor as head of the army, and, as such, will be a vital ally for the Bush administration during a time of crisis.

Kiyani has working-class roots, having been raised in farming communities in the Punjab, sometimes called the country’s “martial belt” because many teenage boys from the province enter the military, lacking other economic opportunities. He was educated at the US Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

Last word to Tariq Ali (via some great posts at The Fanonite)-

It is difficult to imagine any good coming out of this tragedy, but there is one possibility. Pakistan desperately needs a political party that can speak for the social needs of a bulk of the people. The People’s party founded by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was built by the activists of the only popular mass movement the country has known: students, peasants and workers who fought for three months in 1968-69 to topple the country’s first military dictator. They saw it as their party, and that feeling persists in some parts of the country to this day, despite everything.

Benazir’s horrific death should give her colleagues pause for reflection. To be dependent on a person or a family may be necessary at certain times, but it is a structural weakness, not a strength for a political organisation. The People’s party needs to be refounded as a modern and democratic organisation, open to honest debate and discussion, defending social and human rights, uniting the many disparate groups and individuals in Pakistan desperate for any halfway decent alternative, and coming forward with concrete proposals to stabilise occupied and war-torn Afghanistan. This can and should be done. The Bhutto family should not be asked for any more sacrifices.