Farrukh Khan Pitafi’s Official Website

“Dear Mr Pitafi, let me tender my reverential accolade on an exegesis and an obiter dictum that is so congruous with the weight of history and political realities. The article’s entelechy and orchestration bears signatures of an authentic eyewitness who cared about the sine qua non. Your narrative is a nisus par excellence. Keep it up!”

This is a comment that a reader posted on my website quite recently. Without showing disrespect to the commentator’s actual sentiment that is paying me a compliment, I quote this here to show there are uncountable ways to express yourself. Today I take up the issue of the proposed UN investigation into Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. I do so because some of my learned colleagues have raised questions on this matter. And as I have illustrated above, my attempt will be to put it as simply as possible for I am no great intellectual. But let me first quote two paragraphs from a book below.

“Despite the fact that the hospitals…were overflowing with eye-witnesses to the assassination attempt, the police were apparently not conducting an investigation. There were no forensic teams collecting evidence at the bombing site, and with every passing minute, potentially critical evidence was disappearing from the scene. Instead of the site being cordoned off to protect evidence, it was scrubbed clean within hours and the evidence was destroyed. No one from the police or the government was collecting testimony from the victims of the attack. A cover-up seemed to be underway from the very first moment of the attack. The provincial government announced that it had been a suicide attack.

“Clearly this was meant to appear to be an al Qaeda-style suicide attack, more Muslim-against-Muslim violence liked to the so-called struggle between theology and democracy. But in Pakistan things are never as they seem. There are always circles within circles, rarely straight lines. This was meant to look like the work of al Qaeda and the Taliban, and I do not doubt that they were involved. But the sophistication of the plan…suggested a larger conspiracy. Elements from within the Pakistani intelligence service had actually created the Taliban in the 1980s, and certain elements sympathised with the al Qaeda ideologically and theologically. Some had recruited for or worked with it.”

Now friends this is an extensive quote from page number 14 of Benazir Bhutto’s posthumous book Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West. While it may seem a comment on her own assassination, yet it is about the first assassination attempt after she arrived in Karachi. I have reproduced it here to highlight the victim’s own perspective. While it is no doubt convenient to blame her assassination on al Qaeda or Baitullah Mehsud, it is clear that until her very death she did not think so.

It is true that the assassination seems to repeat a pattern that can be associated with the Taliban and/or al Qaeda. But what our friends often forget is that there is another pattern too that is buried under the rubble of the recent terror attacks - that of the state’s penchant for killing its own brightest souls and leaders. If you still believe, for instance, that the murder of Zulfi Bhutto is in any case justifiable, you certainly have some serious judgment issues. When it has so effectually been managed by certain elements to get rid of the entire family of the Bhuttos, I believe that all conscientious persons at least should ensure that this pattern is not repeated again.

Pakistan today is a fairly loose state. If you are astonished at the new precedents being set in the assemblies, then you clearly are forgetting how close to extinction was the federation had the February 18 mandate not granted it a new lease of life. I am sure there are many still in the government and in our intelligentsia who do not want the truth to be revealed but still it is in the vital national interest to probe and seek every possible help available to know who killed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto.

Now there are objections on the fact that the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and its allies in the coalition are demanding that a UN commission be set up on the pattern of the Hariri Commission. They point out that the UN does not have any permanent mandate to do so and that the investigation that would follow would essentially be a breach of Pakistan’s sovereignty. With due respect in my humble view these objections are quite flimsy to say the least. If the UN is approached by the government of Pakistan, I am sure it will oblige by all means available to it. Indeed, Mr Ban Ki-moon has already said as much. As for the freedom accorded to such a commission to move and access all the places (and it is raised as if the members are going to land into one of Pakistan’s nuclear facilities), let me say it loud and clear. Even the government of Pakistan knows it that it no longer has any secrets from its key allies in the war on terror. In the words of the Strategic Planning Division’s head, everything is available on a software as common place as google earth. Why then would anyone hesitate to let the commission access any of the rather mundane sites that might be involved in the assassination?

What hurts me most is that when it comes to the growing influence of the US in Pakistan, the same folks justify it by claiming that in this changing world the concept of soft sovereignty is more relevant. They claim that since the world is growingly interdependent the old fashioned people should wake up to the realities of the soft sovereignty. However, when it comes to the issue of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, they immediately invoke the matter of state sovereignty that they have been so painstakingly working to undercut. It is correct that a lot of the forensic evidence has been destroyed and that even before the change in the intelligence agencies, the old leadership even tried its best to destroy the remaining record and perhaps implicating evidence but still a UN commission would bring with it a broader perspective and study things politically too and not merely forensically. I personally believe that this investigation is very critical to the future of Pakistan, democracy and its struggle against extremism. And whosoever opposes it should be considered part of the cover-up.

Posted on April 13th, 2008 under General •  Print This Post •  Email This Post • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback