Coming to bury Benazir Bhutto, not to praise her
If Boris Yeltsin had been killed at the moment he bravely defied the August coup attempt of 1991, he’d be remembered as a hero and a martyr, rather than as an ultimately disappointing Russian president. I suppose it’s only natural that, as the accolades come for the courage in defense of democracy of the woman so prematurely cut down, so too come the remarks of her critics, anxious to tell us that she wasn’t the saint she may now seem. That she had been accused of corruption during her two previous stints as Prime Minister. That her niece Fatima had doubted her commitment to democracy (though the remark that “Along with the leaders of prominent Islamic parties, she has been spared the violent retributions of emergency law,” with its suggestion that Benazir Bhutto was buying safety by cozying up to the Islamists, doesn’t seem so fitting now).
At the more sensible end of the Bhutto critic spectrum, we have people like Matt Yglesias, who writes.
Clearly, political assassinations are a bad thing. Equally clearly, political assassinations in a place like Pakistan seem to herald instability, and instability in Pakistan is frightening. That said, I think it’s worth being clear about something — from the perspective of someone who’s never spoken to Benazir Bhutto or any members of her inner circle, it seems like she was a really bad person and a terrible political leader. The main thing she did when in office was steal. A lot. Of money. From her extremely poor country.
Now, Yglesias, by his own admission, doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Now, of course, the trouble is that I don’t know what I’m talking about. But the vast majority of people who do know what they’re talking about know what they’re talking about . . . based on talking to Bhutto and members of her political party.
But I have to admit that I don’t know what I’m talking about either – I’ve vaguely followed the Bhutto family since the time of Benazir Bhutto’s father, and knew enough about Pakistan to be able to name who was in charge of it back when candidate for president Bush couldn’t, but it’s not as if I’m an expert here, or can claim that my generally pro-Bhutto bias (on grounds of her defense of democracy, secularism, defense of women’s rights, opposition to the Taliban, etc.) is based on greater knowledge than his anti-Bhutto bias on grounds of her alleged corruption. So, it’s not Matt who pushes me to take exception.
It’s Stanley Kurtz.
The people of Pakistan are not with us. The notion that a genuinely liberal democracy was imminent in Pakistan, and that the Bhutto assassination somehow cut it short, is not credible. Illiberal democracy in a fundamentally illiberal nation is not the answer. Imperfect as it is–and it is very imperfect–Pakistan’s military is the only thing that stands between the current instability and total chaos. There is a serious problem here, and faux democracy is not the solution. (Genuinely liberal democracy isn’t even an option.) Nawaz Sharif, the most Islamist-friendly mainstream politician in the country is not the solution either.
And, having bravely come out in defense of military dictatorship in Pakistan, Kurtz directs us to the argument of Andy McCarthy.
There is the Pakistan of our fantasy. The burgeoning democracy in whose vanguard are judges and lawyers and human rights activists using the “rule of law” as a cudgel to bring down a military junta. In the fantasy, Bhutto, an attractive, American-educated socialist whose prominent family made common cause with Soviets and whose tenures were rife with corruption, was somehow the second coming of James Madison.
It seems to me that McCarthy, here, is fighting the last war. Bhutto was, in his eyes, rather pinker than she should be, and was rather friendlier than she should have been to the Soviets, so, though it is, yes, unfortunate that she was actually assassinated, we’re really better off with a military dictatorship in Afghanistan than we would have been with an elected Bhutto. The fact that elected socialism in some other country isn’t, at this point, our global enemy, the fact that it doesn’t in any way pick our pockets or break our legs, and the fact that Bhutto had spoken out at some risk against the Muslim extremists who are our enemies – for some reason this doesn’t particularly matter.
I’m reminded, here (as a Greek-American), of Andreas Papandreou, that larger than life (and also Harvard-educated) Greek political figure who once infuriated the US with his populist economic policies and his clashes with our Cold War policies. Papandreou, too, was driven from office by allegations of corruption, once which led to an “anyone but Papandreou” coalition between the conservative Nea Demokratia party and the Greek Communists (and if you know the history of the Greek Civil War, you know how improbable a coalition that was).
And, you know? If I had a choice, three ways, between living under: A) an elected Papandreou, B) a military dictatorship, and C) some wild-eyed fundie version of Islam which would put women under men’s feet, my choice wouldn’t be hard. Papandreou! Papandreou! Papandreou all the way! If those were my choices.
Not, mind you, that I’m saying Bhutto was the only possible alternative in Pakistan to military dictatorship or the Pakistani version of the Taliban. Just that I’m saying that if you lay out your argument as, we need a military dictator because Muslim fundamentalists are so darn bad, well, to my mind you’re making a secular-minded Muslim woman who’s standing in favor of both women’s rights and some measure of rule of law look better, not worse, as an option.
And, you know, those judges and lawyers and human rights activists are also a part of Pakistan. The fact that Bhutto was elected twice, while the Pakistani Islamist parties get only a small fraction of the vote, is also part of Pakistani reality. So, too, is the recent Pew Research poll in which Pakistani support for suicide bombings has plummeted.
Stanley Kurtz makes a more cautious version of his argument here.
Judging what the people of Pakistan “really want” is a tough job. Optimists generally point out that Islamist parties get only a small percentage of the vote. That’s true, but it’s also too simple.
True so far. It’s difficult to judge what the people of Pakistan “really want,” and, under the circumstances, there are risks to both a simplistic optimism and a simplistic pessimism. The risk of optimism is the hope that liberal democracy is just about to break out in Pakistan, if only the US anoints the right leader or kicks out the wrong one. We can see how well that hope worked out in Iraq. The risk of pessimism is that we conclude that, the people being against us or unreliable, we can stave off the deluge only if we throw our support behind the right dictator. And that one’s problematic as well. When dictators with US support fall, resentment can boil over into, well, the likes of Iran. Both a simple optimism and a simple “realism” often overestimate how much control the US actually has.
Nawaz Sharif is a mainstream politician with strong public support. He himself is “secular,” but was also a protege of the Islamist-leaning General Zia, and has long been willing to ally with Islamists.
In Turkey, the army tends to be on the side of secularism. Not that this particularly makes military coups in Turkey a wonderful thing either, and I’m glad for every successful ordinary democratic turnover of power in Turkey. But I mention it because it seems a contrast with Pakistan, where, whatever drives the alternation between military and civilian governments, a desire on the part of the army to preserve secularism doesn’t seem to be it. General Zia pushed out (and had executed) Bhutto’s father, who I gather was more secular-minded than Zia. Actually, as best I can tell from a distance and limited knowledge, secular/Islamist divides don’t obviously correlate with military/civilian ones.
Polling data may show support for Bhutto, but it’s not because of her strong anti-terror position, but in spite of it. Bhutto’s support comes partly from her regional allies, but also from those who remember the populist quasi-socialist policies of her father. The economic dreams of Pakistan’s poor are with Bhutto. Her supporters are poor people who haven’t benefitted from the growth of Pakistan’s economy under Musharraf. They’re attracted to Bhutto’s socialism, not to hopes for liberal democracy or military assaults against the Taliban.
I’m not particularly confident I know what was the depth and sources of Bhutto’s support, but, sure, does anyone seriously expect that Pakistanis are jumping on anyone’s bandwagon because they love the prospect of military assaults on the Taliban? I think it’s safe to say that Pakistanis, including liberal-minded democratic ones, are less friendly to the war on terror than Americans. No big surprise there.
And remember, Bhutto and Sharif alternated in power, and their respective parties and coalitions would surely alternate again. Disenchantment with a regime ruled by a Bhutto successor would lead to victory in the next election for an even more virulently anti-American Sharif-Islamist coalition. This is the future of “democracy” in Pakistan.
Somebody is going to alternate power with somebody in Pakistan, whether that somebody is military or civilian. It’s not at all clear to me that whoever Musharraf will eventually lose power to will be better on any yardstick than whoever Bhutto would eventually have lost power to. So, I’m still not seeing the case for “we’re better off anyway with an military dictatorship.”
Links to other stuff about the Bhutto assassination:
A Pakistani bloggers reflects on What Benazir’s Assassination Means.
La Chola has a round up.
Opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, after earlier saying that he would boycott next month’s elections in the wake of the assassination, is now demanding that they go ahead as scheduled on Jan. 8.
Bhutto’s nineteen-year-old son has accepted joint leadership of her party.
The Election Commission of Pakistan reports that electoral rolls have been torched in Sindh.