[NYTr] Bhutto's death "Not Our Fault" Sez Mush

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[Also below: Bhutto's Mixed Legacy for Women]

AP via Yahoo - Jan 3, 2008
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080103/ap_on_re_as/pakistan

Musharraf: Bhutto death not our fault

By MATTHEW PENNINGTON

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - President Pervez Musharraf vehemently denied
Thursday that Pakistan's military and intelligence agencies were behind
Benazir Bhutto's killing, and implied she was partly at fault.

Despite threats by militants, Bhutto poked her head out of the sunroof
of her vehicle to greet supporters at an election rally, Musharraf said.

He conceded there were shortcomings in Pakistan's investigation into
the assassination but rejected accusations of a lapse in security for
the former prime minister.

"The same military and intelligence agencies are using the same people
who are attacking them? It's a joke," Musharraf said at a news
conference, answering accusations that people connected to his
government were involved in the suicide bomb and gun attack that killed
Bhutto a week ago.

The president acknowledged that his decision to seek help from Scotland
Yard to investigate the killing was partly to reassure people at home
and abroad that there was no government involvement. Bhutto had accused
elements in the ruling party of plotting to kill her.

"Here's a situation where maybe we need to go beyond ourselves to prove
to the world and our people here, who are emotionally charged, that we
don't mind going to any extent, as nobody is involved from the
government side or the agencies," Musharraf said.

Bhutto's killing plunged an already volatile Pakistan deeper into
crisis and stoked fears of a political meltdown.

It triggered an outbreak of rioting that has left nearly 60 dead and
caused more than a billion dollars in damage in the worst-hit province
of Sindh, authorities say. It also forced a six-week delay in
parliamentary elections, seen as key to restoring democracy after eight
years of military rule since Musharraf took power in a 1999 coup. The
vote is now set for Feb. 18.

The assassination also exposed the skepticism of Pakistan's 160 million
people over what their rulers tell them after local media began
broadcasting still frames and video that challenged the government
account. Bhutto's husband is demanding a U.N. probe.

Musharraf maintained Pakistan was capable of managing its own affairs
and conducting the investigation, saying it was no "banana republic."
But he admitted the government may have erred in giving a precise cause
of death for Bhutto just a day after the Dec. 27 killing although no
autopsy was conducted.

Musharraf said Bhutto had been told of the militant threats against
her. And he denied that a security lapse led to her death, as four
mobile units with 30 officers escorted her, and more than 1,000 police
were deployed at the Rawalpindi rally where she was slain.

He implied her decision to greet cheering supporters by poking her head
out of the sunroof of her vehicle contributed to her death, adding that
those who stayed inside were unharmed.

"Who is to be blamed for her coming out of her vehicle?" he asked.

The Interior Ministry claimed the force of the suicide blast caused
Bhutto's head to strike a metal lever on the sunroof of her SUV. Her
party says she died from gunshot fired from just a few yards away
before the blast — an account seemingly supported by video footage.

"One should not give a statement that's 100 percent final. That's the
flaw that we suffer from," Musharraf said, noting that more evidence
was emerging on the attack. "We needed more experience, maybe more
forensic and technical experience that our people don't have.
Therefore, I thought Scotland Yard may be more helpful."

He conceded other shortcomings in Pakistan's handling of the case,
including the hosing down of the bomb site — a cleanup widely seen as
undermining a detailed forensic examination. But he dismissed any
suggestion there was a plan to conceal evidence.

"I'm not fully satisfied. I will accept that. Cleaning the area, why
did they do that? If you are meaning they did that by design, I would
say no. It's just inefficiency, people thinking things have to be
cleared, traffic has to go through," he said.

A senior police investigator, who spoke on condition of anonymity
because of the sensitivity of the inquiry, said police had secured key
evidence from the scene, including the head of the suspected bomber,
body parts, two pistols, and mobile phones. He said Scotland Yard
investigators could help determine whether either pistol had been fired
in the attack.

Musharraf blamed Taliban militant leaders Baitullah Mehsud and Maulana
Fazlullah, also believed linked to al-Qaida, for a wave of suicide
attacks. The government already had accused Mehsud of orchestrating the
Bhutto attack — which a Mehsud spokesman has denied. The day after the
killing, the government published what it said was a communications
intercept in which Mehsud congratulated some of his men.

The president, a key ally of Washington in its war on terrorism, said
killing Mehsud — who in the intercept gave his location as the town of
Makin in the lawless tribal region of South Waziristan — was no easy
matter. It would require action by a division of troops and would cause
many civilian casualties, he said.

"He's in South Waziristan agency and let me tell you that getting him
in this place means battling thousands of his followers," Musharraf
said. "It will cause collateral damage."

Still, the president denied that al-Qaida was getting stronger in
Pakistan. He said they existed in "penny pockets" despite reports from
U.S. intelligence that the terror network's leadership has regrouped in
Waziristan.

Musharraf described al-Qaida as financiers of terrorism but saw the
main threat as coming from its "facilitators" — Taliban militants who
also operate in Afghanistan.

He said Pakistan needed political reconciliation to fight terrorism,
and he hoped the Feb. 18 elections would haul the country out of its
current crisis.

"This is the greatest threat Pakistan has and we have to have political
reconciliation to fight it together," he said.

But the opposition persisted Thursday with its calls for Musharraf to
resign.

"Free and fair polls are impossible under his leadership," said Javed
Hashmi, a senior member of the party of former Prime Minister Nawaz
Sharif who was ousted in Musharraf's 1999 coup.

International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, said that
unless Musharraf steps down from the presidency, "the international
community could face the nightmare of a nuclear-armed, Muslim country
descending into civil war."

In a new report, it called on the United States to recognize that
Musharraf was "a serious liability, seen as complicit" in Bhutto's
death.

                             ***

AP via Yahoo - Jan 3, 2008
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080103/ap_on_re_as/pakistan_women_s_icon

 Bhutto leaves mixed legacy for women

By MATTHEW ROSENBERG

LAHORE, Pakistan - To get a sense of what kind of legacy Benazir
Bhutto, the Muslim world's first female leader, left behind for the
women of Pakistan, look no further than those who were contending for
the top spot in the political party she led.

The four have one thing in common: They're all men. The job eventually
went to her 19-year-old son, Bilawal Zardari, with her husband acting
as a regent for the time being.

>From the day Bhutto came to power nearly two decades ago, many in the
West eagerly cast her as an icon for Muslim women, a role she never
shied away from playing. And now her slaying in a suicide attack last
week is being mourned as a blow to women's rights in Muslim societies.

"Young Muslim women around the world should not let this murder
dissuade them from speaking out and claiming their rightful place as
equals in society," declared the American Islamic Congress shortly
after her death.

While many Pakistani women laud that sentiment, they say it is based on
an overly simplistic view of Bhutto, the scion of a powerful political
dynasty, and the country she governed, which to this day remains far
from equal.

Bhutto's tenure as prime minister certainly helped open doors in
Pakistan's male-dominated society, they say. But it also was sullied by
the allegations of corruption, dirty politics and unfulfilled promises
that have dogged the rule of every Pakistani leader, male or female.

"Yes, of course there was some symbolism in having a woman as prime
minister," said Aysha Iqbal, a 23-year-old business student in Lahore.

But "she was prime minister because her father was prime minister,"
Iqbal continued.

To understand Bhutto's rise, it must be seen within the prism of South
Asia, a region that has had more female leaders than any other part of
the world.

There's been Indira Gandhi in India; Sirimavo Bandaranaike and her
daughter, Chandrika Kumaratanga, in Sri Lanka; Sheikh Hasina and
Khaleda Zia in Bangladesh, and, of course, Bhutto, who twice served as
Pakistan's prime minister, from 1988 to 1990 and 1993 to 1996.

Every one of them rose to prominence after the death of a male relative
— no coincidence in a corner of the world where family often dictates
one's occupation, be it as a street sweeper or a prime minister.

In Bhutto's case, she took the leadership of the populist Pakistan
People's Party founded by her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was
hanged in 1979 following a military coup. She then led the party to
election victory.

"She was our heroine at the time," said Zareen Ahmed, chief of the
British Muslim Forum, whose family comes from Pakistan. "We all crowded
around the television at our house here and we were all very proud of
her. For young women like me, she gave us hope."

Bhutto was young and glamorous, a graduate of Harvard and Oxford who
could campaign through Karachi slums as confidently as she had graced
the salons of London and New York.

And, early in her administration, there were advances for women in
Pakistan.

"On the radio, she had given instructions that many of the women's
programs should be aired; on television, there were documentaries on
women's rights," said Asma Jehangir, chairwoman of the nongovernment
Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

"She gave women more access to at least lobby with decision-makers,"
she said. "The only time I have been to the prime minister's house or
the presidency was when she was in power."

But Bhutto also picked up all the baggage that came with running
Pakistan, a largely impoverished land that was — and still is — in many
parts near-feudal.

She became the center of a vast patronage system, dealing in political
debts and working with a network of old-timers whose issues became her
issues. Overshadowing everything was Pakistan's powerful military and
intelligence establishment.

Women's rights took a back seat, and Pakistan remained as corrupt as it
had been under her predecessors, perhaps even more so. Her husband,
whom she wed in a traditional marriage arranged by her mother, quickly
got the nickname "Mr. 10 Percent" for the tens of millions he is
alleged to have taken in kickbacks.

"I think Western feminists want to view Bhutto and the other women
leaders as pioneers," said Muneeza Rashed, 38-year-old woman in Lahore.

"But they're not. They're more like throwbacks to the men who came
before them. They practice the same kind of old-boy politics. Helping
women is secondary for them," she said.

Under Bhutto, most Pakistani women still lived the impoverished,
home-bound lives they had lived before. Girls still went uneducated
while their brothers were sent off to school. And women who were raped
still found themselves contending with laws that discriminated against
the victims of sex crimes — laws that would only be changed years later
by President Pervez Musharraf, who came to power in a 1999 military
coup.

"In many ways women benefited very little under her," said Unaiza
Malik, 64, who was born in Pakistan and now works with the Muslim
Women's Society in London.

"It's only in death that she will become an icon — in some ways people
will look at her accomplishments through rose-tinted glasses rather
than remembering the corruption charges, her lack of achievements or
how much she was manipulated by other people."

[Associated Press Writer Paisley Dodds in London contributed to this
report.]