Bhutto’s Legacy

In the London Telegraph, Christopher Hitchens sums up the life of Benazir Bhutto, calling attention to her impressive courage. But Hitchens also notes that the courage had a touch of fanaticism that leaves a dangerous legacy. He recalls that during her terms as Prime Minister she pursued a pro-Taliban policy:

“It is grotesque, of course, that the murder should have occurred in Rawalpindi, the garrison town of the Pakistani military elite and the site of Flashman’s Hotel.

“It is as if she had been slain on a visit to West Point or the Marine Corps Base at Quantico, Virginia. But it’s hard to construct any cui bono analysis on which Pervez Musharraf, the current leader, is the beneficiary of her death . . . .

The likeliest culprit is the al-Qa’eda/Taliban axis, perhaps with some assistance from its many covert and not-so-covert sympathisers in the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence. These were the people at whom she had been pointing the finger since the huge bomb that devastated her welcome-home motorcade on October 18.

“She would have been in a good position to know about this connection, because when she was prime minister, she pursued a very active pro-Taliban policy, designed to extend and entrench Pakistani control over Afghanistan and to give Pakistan strategic depth in its long confrontation with India over Kashmir.”

Hitchens notes that Bhutto may well have changed her mind about the Taliban, but that doesn’t change the legacy. Bhutto’s other legacy was to ensure that Pakistan had a nuclear program, which she claimed was for purely peaceful purposes.

Hitchens concludes: “And now the two main legacies of Bhutto rule – the nukes and the empowered Islamists – have moved measurably closer together.

“This is what makes her murder such a disaster. There is at least some reason to think that she had truly changed her mind, at least on the Taliban and al-Qa’eda, and was willing to help lead a battle against them.”