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History repeats at a park where democrats weep

By Nadeem Sarwar
DPA, RAWALPINDI, PAKISTAN
Friday, Jan 11, 2008, Page 9

Liaquat Garden has long been a popular spot for young Pakistani couples to meet. Today, however, it has morphed into a shrine after the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.

Each day since her slaying in a gun-suicide bomb attack on Dec. 27 at this park in Rawalpindi, a garrison city near Islamabad, dozens of people have come to lay flowers and light candles near the main entrance under a large portrait of Bhutto.

Her death is the latest chapter in a long history of political assassinations, sectarian clashes, ethnic violence, terrorism and Islamic militancy in this country of 160 million people.

And Bhutto, 54, was not the first political leader to be cut down at Liaquat Garden.

"This used to be a small park named Company Garden, and then the country's first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, was shot twice in the chest during a public meeting here in October 1951, and he succumbed to his injuries at the hospital," recalled Saud Saher, 71, a prominent Pakistani journalist. "The place was named after him."

Amid public anger over the death of Khan, who played a vital role in Pakistan's independence movement in the 1940s, the government called in British investigators from Scotland Yard to assist the investigations.

But they had little to work on, because the only evidence was the shooter, who was killed by a policeman, Saher said. Scotland Yard left Pakistan before the investigation was completed. Their report was never made public.

History has repeated itself at Liaquat Garden. Bhutto, a former prime minister, was likely shot by her attacker before he detonated a bomb, killing himself and 22 people. The government has accused a Taliban commander linked to al-Qaeda of ordering the hit on Bhutto, while authorities in 1951 accused the Khaksar Movement, an anti-colonial Muslim organization, of assassinating Khan.

And as they did five decades ago, the Pakistani government of today, in this case President Pervez Musharraf, has again invited Scotland Yard to assist in the investigation into Bhutto's murder.

Once again, it will not be easy. The assassin died in the attack -- there is speculation there was an accomplice who detonated the bomb -- and local street workers hosed down and swept up the crime scene within a few hours, potentially destroying valuable forensic evidence.

The investigation into Bhutto's assassination has yet to have a breakthrough. The evidence that Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud is behind the hit is circumstantial at best.

The government has not helped its own case by making contradictory statements about how Bhutto died, including initially claiming that there was no gunman and then saying she was not shot but cracked her head on the sunroof of her security vehicle in the explosion.

Ironically, the doctor who attempted to resuscitate Bhutto when she was rushed to Rawalpindi General Hospital with bullet wounds is the son of the doctor who attempted to save Khan when he was shot.

A spokesman for Mehsud quickly denied responsibility, saying the attack may have been masterminded by rogue elements within the country's military, which also hanged Bhutto's father and former prime minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in 1979 following an army coup. His execution also took place in Rawalpindi, the headquarters of the army.

Prior to her death at Liaquat Garden, Bhutto said she had sent a letter to Musharraf in which she reportedly wrote that his close allies, including two former provincial ministers and the head of Pakistan's intelligence agency, should be held responsible if she were killed.

Bhutto's family has made similar accusations, pointing a finger at elements within Pakistan's so-called "establishment" -- a powerful but informal lobby of military officers, bureaucrats and hand-picked civilian politicians who run the country behind a facade of democracy.

The public and some historians have suggested over the years that this "establishment" also had Khan killed because he was a popular civilian leader.

The "establishment" has never accepted the existence of civilian government and a genuine democratic process because they both undermine their absolute authority to run the country, said Saher, who has covered Pakistani politics for five decades.

Crucial parliamentary elections, which were postponed until Feb. 18 following Bhutto's assassination, are supposed to usher in the return of civilian government following eight years of military rule by Musharraf, a recently retired army general.

But the polls will be bittersweet after the death of Bhutto, whose Pakistan People's Party was tipped to win and select her as prime minister for an unprecedented third term.

"The things that have happened at Liaquat Garden have destroyed the nation," Ihsanul Haq, a rickshaw driver, said after offering a prayer for Bhutto at her makeshift shrine.

"We should turn this place into something else, like a shrine for Bhutto or a business center," he added.
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