January 18, 2008

Assassination Alley

The entry into the dark alley of assassination carries its own unpredictable implications. Benazir’s tragic slaying is certain to dramatically alter the political landscape of Pakistan. 
It was an assassination in 1914 in Bosnia’s capital, Sarajevo, of Archduke Ferdinand, heir-apparent of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his wife which was intended to precipitate the breakaway of the Slav provinces from Austria-Hungary in order to form a Greater Serbia. Instead, it triggered World War I. In the aftermath of that war, Germany was humiliated. This, in turn, inflamed German revanchism, thereby laying the seeds of World War II through the rise of Hitler.
As 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln had signed in 1862 and 1863 documents comprising the Emancipation Declaration, which proclaimed the abolishment of slavery in America. Lincoln’s killing in 1865 thwarted and delayed, in effect, the emancipation of American blacks for another century – until after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Through the 12-year tenure of that liberal icon, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933-1945), lynching of blacks continued to occur in the American South. 
The assassinations of Malcolm X in 1965 and of Martin Luther King in 1968 virtually beheaded the American black community of leaders who could have infused stability, cohesion, and direction. Instead, US society is still reeling from decades of racial disharmony and distrust, despite the emergence of Barack Obama as a Presidential candidate. Rudderless, it has left a vast swath of the black community socially alienated and disconnected from mainstream society. 
Liaquat Ali’s assassination in October 1951 let loose a chain of civilian misrule, opening the doors to praetorian intervention seven years later, in October 1958. 
The assassination of Daud Khan, President of Afghanistan, in Kabul in April 1978 set in motion the process which led to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan a year and a half later which, in turn, led to the eventual break-up of the USSR. 
Iraq never got over the gory massacre of young King Faisal and his royal household in July 1958. The fate of despots like Col. Kassem, Col. Aref, and Saddam and the mayhem they inflicted on the people of Iraq is self-evident. 
In recent decades, the assassination of King Faisal on March 25, 1975 was perhaps the most significant. Faisal was the one who imposed the oil embargo on the West in the wake of the Ramadan War of 1973 and was the architect of the historic 1974 Islamic Summit at Lahore where, among other things, the PLO was recognized as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Faisal was Time Magazine’s Man of the Year in 1974. 
Faisal’s murder deprived the Muslim world of a legitimate pan-Islamic force that could stand up to the West and articulate core aspirations. Through his austere lifestyle, he exuded moral authority. 
Faisal’s death effectively marginalized the Muslim world. The subsequent limp leadership of the Arab Establishment, along with the toothless Islamic Conference, left a huge void which was to be filled by nihilism and zealotry. 
If the past is a precedent, the post-Benazir scenario may unfold in directions not anticipated. Already, it has foiled the US-arranged ‘marriage of moderates’. There is, as they say, always the unexpected.