The assassination of two-time Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto ahead of national elections is a lamentable development in a country desperate for stability and propriety in government.
No amount of controversy over international and domestic corruption charges against Bhutto and her husband can obscure the fact that this killing has seriously compromised Pakistan's prospects of moving away from the violence, corruption and despotism that has saddled the nation since its inception.
It is not clear at this time who is responsible. But it may not really matter: There is a wide range of political, sectarian and terrorist interests that will be delighted at her death and would be proud to have caused it. Hunting down those who planned this attack, as Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has promised to do, is not in itself going to reduce the level of threat faced by democratic politicians, nor necessarily stem growing unease at the government's capacity to protect them.
Musharraf may not have had any personal role in this killing, but his role in upending constitutional processes and manipulating the machinery of state to feather his own political nest has come at the expense of national security, social stability and the credibility of the government. Bhutto's killing must be seen in the light of a state that in recent months has devoted more resources to suppressing legitimate dissent and free speech than closing down channels of terrorist activity.
Musharraf has promised much to the international community in his time as president, especially in regard to keeping a lid on remote, unruly areas that act as a safe haven for al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other militants. His achievements have been mixed, to put it politely, but his domestic agenda has not inspired confidence -- hardly a surprising record for a military strongman.
Nonetheless, Bhutto's insistence that she maintain very close proximity to her supporters during the election campaign has contributed not only to this terrible development but also to the death of scores of her supporters in a number of attacks.
A combination of ill-timed courage and risible levels of government security effectively invited her many enemies to wreak havoc.
Washington in particular will be dismayed by the stark fact that Bhutto's assassination was perfectly avoidable.
The bigger question that must be asked now is how this nuclear-armed country can forge some kind of consensus among its non-militant political and religious groups on restoring confidence in the government and the political system, the volatility of which, even under the most optimistic conditions, will unnerve the international community for years to come.
Bhutto's death is first and foremost a tragedy for Pakistan and its long-suffering majority of ordinary, moderate people.
But it is also a terrible blow to democratic and secular principles -- in Pakistan, in our own region and anywhere else in the world where democracy is under threat.
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs