http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=7161744
I had the privilege of meeting Benazir Bhutto in April 0f 2002, when she spoke at Molloy College in Rockville Centre where I taught Public Communication.
Pakistan's politics are opaque and difficult to understand. What is progressive or liberal and what is conservative or reactionary is not always clear. Benazir Bhutto is a conservative Muslim woman who speaks about America being a "beacon of liberty for the world." Pervez Musharraf is a liberal Muslim educated in western schools, with deep ties to the US, who protected Osama bin Laden and the Taliban in the years leading up to September 11, 2001. Perhaps he still does.
Musharraf's reign as President of Pakistan has been marked by rises in extremism, militancy, confrontation (against India), and softness on terrorism, despite a public face of toughness. He has bent over backwards to perpetuate his rule, in the tradition of many US allies--Allende, Pahlazi, Hussein, the Saudi monarchy. Bhutto's reign was marked by charges of financial scandal and corruption. I have always had my doubts about those charges; they smacked of "pseudo-scandal" (think impeachment of Bill Clinton).
Pakistan is, right now, on a course of "political reconciliation." That is to say, Musharraf has encountered enough resistance at home to find it politically expedient to embrace Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif, and their respective political parties.
The arrest and release of Asif Ali Zardari takes place within (at least) this context. Pakistan is a country we should hear much more about. A major ally of the US in its "war on terror," as Pakistan goes, so indeed might the war on terror go.
Let's not stay IN THE DARK on this.
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