Benazir Bhutto

By popular demand, I will do a post about the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. In the West, this would seem to be a very dramatic development. But here in India, the response is quite mute. There are two main reasons for this.

First, the Indians were generally wary of Bhutto to begin with. While she did have good relations with former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi (also assassinated), Bhutto also presided over a major escalation of the Kasmir conflict. She also has good relations with the Pakistani ISI, which is the primary source of terrorism in India. So they viewed her as a very mixed bag, at best. They didn't see her potential election as doing anything positive for India- Pakistan relations. And they certainly won't miss her.

The second reason is that nobody in India actually thought Musharraf would cede any power anyway. Bhutto may have gotten elected, but she would have been little more than a figurehead, with Musharraf really running things. Not that the Indians actually thought she would be elected. Most Indians seem to think that Musharraf would have prevented her election even if she had lived until election day. And they didn't really think she would live that long anyway. There had already been one spectacular attempt on her life, and Musharraf did little to give her any more security. So, in short the Indians pretty much expected something like this to happen, so the reaction was muted. And many in India and Pakistan are actually glad to see her gone.

Of course, there is another issue. Was Musharraf involved in Bhutto's death? Given that the courts are stacked with Musharraf's cronies, we already know what the investigation will determine. The opinion I've been hearing is that he probably wasn't involved, but only because he didn't have to be. Bhutto had more than enough enemies already and all Musharraf had to do was to provide inadequate security and let the inevitable happen. But, obviously, the investigation will determine that Musharraf did all he could to protect Bhutto. Nobody will really believe it, but most people won't care.

Update: Barnett Rubin has some pretty intellegent comments in this post (originally from the WSJ):

http://icga.blogspot.com/2007/12/musharraf-problem-full-text-from-wsj.html