Bhutto's inevitable doom

The death overnight of Benazir Bhutto seemed to be 'a horribly inevitability', as Mark Steyn described it in his article at the National Review.

In her time as Pakistan's Prime Minister she oversaw a hugely corrupt regime that ended with her being ousted by the military. It seems unlikely, given her past, that any government led by her would be much different. At this time, though, it seems charitable to give her the benefit of the doubt and suggest that her intentions in seeking a third term as PM were pure and driven by a resolve to see her country deal with its significant issues.

By murdering her at a time when she was so prominent on the world stage her enemies - our enemies, too - have almost guaranteed that opposition to them and their barbaric ways will be galvanised around the world.

In this way, Bhutto has finally united people from all political persuasions and religious faiths in a common cause to fight for decency against the violent, backward societies that Al Qaeda and the Taliban represent.

Benazir Bhutto's return to Pakistan had a mad recklessness about it which give today's events a horrible inevitability. As I always say when I'm asked about her, she was my next-door neighbor for a while - which affects a kind of intimacy, though in fact I knew her only for sidewalk pleasantries. She was beautiful and charming and sophisticated and smart and modern, and everything we in the west would like a Muslim leader to be - though in practice, as Pakistan's Prime Minister, she was just another grubby wardheeler from one of the world's most corrupt political classes.

Since her last spell in power, Pakistan has changed, profoundly. Its sovereignty is meaningless in increasingly significant chunks of its territory, and, within the portions Musharraf is just about holding together, to an ever more radicalized generation of young Muslim men Miss Bhutto was entirely unacceptable as the leader of their nation. "Everyone’s an expert on Pakistan, a faraway country of which we know everything," I wrote last month. "It seems to me a certain humility is appropriate." The State Department geniuses thought they had it all figured out. They'd arranged a shotgun marriage between the Bhutto and Sharif factions as a "united" "democratic" "movement" and were pushing Musharraf to reach a deal with them. That's what diplomats do: They find guys in suits and get 'em round a table. But none of those representatives represents the rapidly evolving reality of Pakistan. Miss Bhutto could never have been a viable leader of a post-Musharraf settlement, and the delusion that she could have been sent her to her death. Earlier this year, I had an argument with an old (infidel) boyfriend of Benazir's, who swatted my concerns aside with the sweeping claim that "the whole of the western world" was behind her. On the streets of Islamabad, that and a dime'll get you a cup of coffee.

As I said, she was everything we in the west would like a Muslim leader to be. We should be modest enough to acknowledge when reality conflicts with our illusions. Rest in peace, Benazir.

From the UK's Channel 4 comes the following report:



(Nothing Follows)