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Thread: 2007 murder of Benazir Bhutto (new title)

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    Council Member tequila's Avatar
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    Certainly Bhutto's time in office was always marked by high levels of official corruption, but to call her a widely hated woman in Pakistan would be probably quite overstating the case.

    The PPP is the closest thing to a mass political movement in Pakistan, the only really national party with a genuine mass following. Its base is among the rural poor in Sindh and southern Punjab, although it has many followers from most of the ethnic groups and several of its biggest funders are large landowners. Despite her own quite cosmopolitan upbringing, the PPP is least popular among the urban elites and the military officer class, who never forgave Zulfikar Ali Bhutto for his attempt to bring the Army to heel.

    To call her a "dictator" as well is quite beyond the reality of the situation - she won elections in both cases and, in marked comparison to her father, was quite deferential to the military and allowed them to set Pakistani foreign and security policy to their liking. Note that this deference was to the enormous detriment of Pakistan, as this era of military dominance of Pakistani foreign policy saw the rise of the Taliban, Lashkar e-Toiba, etc. Islamism in Pakistan has always gotten its biggest boosts when it received institutional backing from the military --- a key thing to remember when we consider just how realistic our realpolitik actually is.
    Last edited by tequila; 12-28-2007 at 02:51 PM.

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