Shock and Anger: Pakistanis Demand Answers
News vendors went from street to street yesterday in Islamabad, selling newspapers with the latest details on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and sleepless Pakistanis stayed glued to their TVs, watching news channels all night long to find out what would happen next.
As they mourn and try to recover from the shock of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, Pakistanis are trying to come to terms with the security failure that allowed such a carefully coordinated shooting-suicide bombing to take place, and asking themselves if it was, indeed, a failure –or a conspiracy.
Neither answer is a good one. Even if there was no government-approved conspiracy to eliminate her, the fact remains that Bhutto was presumably being protected by the tightest security possible. Pakistanis ask themselves if someone of her stature is so vulnerable, how can a common person be safe in their home?
The feeling of insecurity and uncertainty combines with the general atmosphere of sadness and mourning. Bhutto’s supporters and even those who would not have voted for her are expressing their sympathy for her and her family.
The sadness is quickly transforming into anger. The furious fringe elements of Bhutto supporters are expressing themselves by setting fire to property in various cities in Pakistan.
They are a tiny minority – the general population is remaining civil. But they want answers. Pakistanis are demanding an investigation and must be provided with real results fast. They want the government to identify and capture the assassination’s authors soon. Whether the attack was truly a “purely” terrorist attack or some form of an inside job, it happened on Musharraf’s watch and the responsibility falls on his shoulders.
The widespread feeling on the street is that Musharraf should resign, regardless of whether his government played any role in Bhutto’s death. It would stabilize the situation if he let the election take place under a neutral caretaker government. If Musharraf refuses and remains in power, citizens will continue to blame him for this incident.
The army’s reputation, already damaged by now, will degrade even further.
As the United States and the rest of the world debate how to “handle” Pakistan following this terrible event, Pakistanis are calling on the rest of the world to let Pakistanis resolve their crisis by themselves, and let them decide what they want for their country in as democratic a fashion as is possible under the circumstances.
That’s the only way the future of Pakistan can be decided once and for all.
Ghalia Aymen is Pakistan correspondent for Pajamas Media.
In inside job? That’s just idiotic.
Like they say, it’s extremely difficult to prevent suicide attacks — because they’re impossible to deter.
A rabble-rousing politician — God rest her soul — who wouldn’t follow the advice she was given to keep her head down in an extremely dangerous environment, and continued to put herself and those around her in danger.
..and it’s President Musharraf’s fault??!
(…and if the Pakistani authorities had exercised the draconian level of individual scrutiny necessary to keep the sadly deceased Ms Bhutto safe in every public place from whence she harangued the mob, she would no doubt have castigated them for their heavy-handedness.)
Are these Pakistanis insane?
How is burning their country down over the disgusting murder of a discredited politico going to bring her back? Make things better?
Now this discredited politico (did everyone forget 1996 already?) is going to be put up as some sort of saint and there will be yet another round of inane property damages and personal injuries, and killings…
I’m with Kip on this one. I’m also in agreement with Pakistanis – it’s their nation, they should handle it. No babysitting of Afghanistan by NATO or the US will guarantee Pakistani peace.
The thing they should be asking themselves is how they could let Islam become a religion of assassination and murder. Rather than look at the military and Musharraf, they should look at their mosques and Imams and do some house cleaning. This could well be a tipping point for their country between civilization and chaos – they should point the finger at those who pulled the trigger – Islamofacists.
What difference does it make if the murderers are caught? It will be viewed as a conspiracy by the opposition.
Islams answer is the same for everything or anything. Fury, rage . assassination , murder and inevitably chaos.
When reason and temperance are replaced with hate , hate always wins the early rounds.
“…it’s their nation, they should handle it.”
The United States cannot afford to be that nonchalant. Pakistan reportedly has ninety nuclear weapons! Its problems—invariably become ours! Isolationism is not a viable doctrine in the smaller world of the 21st Century.
Pakistanis are calling on the rest of the world to let Pakistanis resolve their crisis by themselves
This might be a more viable option if the Pakistanis had any history of crisis resolution. They seem to either be in crisis or causing a crisis every minute of every day. What’s in the water over there? LSD? Crack? The only people in the West who act like the “average” Pakistani appears to act are lunatics and drug addicts. And Muslims presume (I wish there were a stronger word to signify the combination of arrogance and delusion inherent in Islam’s attitude toward the West, and by extension, me) to pontificate about their great “civilization”!?
Yet another in a long string of uninformative “reports” at PJM where the words “Islam”, “Muslim”, “jihad”, etc., aren’t mentioned a single time in Ghalia Aymen’s coverage. Islam, the culprit behind everything that’s wrong and horrible and corrupt and backward and nightmarish in Pakistan is carefully talked around like an elephant in the room, or a festering sore on someone’s face.
How long has the West been insulted, disserved, and betrayed by the concerted efforts of Muslims to misdirect, and always obscure Islam’s centrality to all that’s happening? In a perverted way, incidents like Bhutto’s assassination have some positive outcome: these escalating atrocities make it utterly impossible for Muslims to continue their treacherous Islam-cleansing charades.