TheStar.com/EU-Digest: Separating myth from the reality in Pakistan - Is this a Government Conspiracy? - by Haroon Siddiqui
Separating myth from the reality in Pakistan - by Haroon Siddiqui
In 1999, George W. Bush was asked in an interview: "Can you name the general who's in charge of Pakistan?" The Republican presidential candidate demurred: "Wait, wait. Is this 50 questions?" Pressed for an answer, he couldn't come up with the name but offered this gem: "The Pakistani general, he's just been elected, not elected, this guy took over office. It appears this guy is going to bring stability to the country and I think that's good news for the subcontinent." Bush now knows Pervez Musharraf well. But his assessment of "this guy" as the font of "stability" and "good news" hasn't changed all that much. Bush, however, is not the only one living in the kingdom of clichés.
EU-Digest: The Pakistan interior ministry said Bhutto had no gunshot or shrapnel wounds. He said the opposition leader died after smashing her head on her car's sunroof as she tried to duck. He also blamed Al-Qaeda, saying intelligence services had intercepted a call from Baitullah Mehsud, considered the extremist group's top leader for Pakistan, congratulating a militant for Bhutto's death. Senior members of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) dismissed the government's version of events as "lies". "There was a bullet wound I saw that went in from the back of her head and came out the other side," Bhutto's spokeswoman Sherry Rehman, who was involved in washing her body for burial, told AFP. "This is ridiculous, dangerous nonsense because it is a cover-up of what actually happened," said Rehman. Maulana Omar, a spokesman for alleged Al-Qaeda kingpin Mehsud, also denied involvement in the attack and expressed grief over Bhutto's death. "This is a conspiracy of the government, army and intelligence agencies," said the spokesman from Waziristan, a lawless tribal region where Al-Qaeda leaders, including possibly Osama bin Laden, are alleged to be hiding. In the US leading democratic candidate Hillary Clinton called for an independent, international probe into Bhutto's murder, saying Musharraf's government has no credibility. "I think it's critically important that we get answers and really those are due first and foremost to the people of Pakistan," Clinton said. In Europe there also is a call to break off diplomatic and economic relations with the Musharraf government until they return to the barracks and handover the leadership to a caretaker government which can prepare fair and honest elections.
Labels: Benazir Bhutto, conspiracy, EU, Musharraf, Pakistan, US
The on going state of scepticism about the real cause of Mrs Benazir Bhutto's death in Pakistan has arrested the mind of a man in the street to a man in the cabinet. The governmental version about Benazir's death which poses feelings of doubt and concoction in the mind of PPP's leadership-cum-workers, can only be rectified if government may hold an inquest based on a fair inquiry tribunal assisted by the internatioanl investigators. The core of the matter is that the present political and social atmosphere in the country highly appreciates the fact that only such an arrangement will cool down the current state of anguish and discomfiture that prevails in the political circles in Pakistan.
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peacemoderator |
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