Opinion

Who Benefits from the Karachi Carnage?
By Faisal Ghori
Karachi, Pakistan

The city of Karachi is no stranger to violence, so it was not entirely surprising that Benazir Bhutto’s convoy was attacked. With the number of dead topping 130 and injured above 550, the large number of casualties and injured, however, was surprising. The target was not. Bhutto had earlier announced that she had received credible death threats and a crowd of over three hundred thousand that gathered to receive her was the perfect target.
Bhutto had been in talks for quite sometime with the military junta of President General Pervez Musharraf about returning from her eight years of self-imposed exile in Dubai and London. Her return on October 18 was fairly extraordinary. First, Musharraf ushered in the National Reconciliation Order (NRO) which granted a general pardon to all pending cases that were in the courts filed by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), the government of Pakistan’s anti-corruption agency. This allowed Bhutto safe passage into Pakistan in spite of the fact that her years of rule as prime minister (1988-90, 1993-96) are widely recognized as being marked by rank corruption and her administration is thought to be the most corrupt in Pakistan’s history. NAB figures brought to light that Bhutto’s property assets alone were worth over $1.5bn. Her husband, Asif Zardari, widely known as Mr. Ten Percent, for the commission he was to receive for any government contract, outbid Gulf royalty in purchasing property in Paris, his horses had air conditioned stables and dined on the finest Pakistani dishes. The governments of France, Poland and Switzerland have all submitted numerous documents outlining various acts of corruption and money laundering to NAB. Second, the government of Musharraf allowed Bhutto safe passage into Karachi, while her contemporary former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (1990-93, 1997-99) was threatened with arrest on his arrival on September 10 and was quickly deported back to Saudi Arabia. It is worth noting that Bhutto was dismissed both times for corruption; and Sharif was dismissed the first time for the same reasons and the second by the bloodless coup of General Musharraf.
Why did the government of General Musharraf show one disgraced former prime minister such courtesy and the other the boot? A large part of the reason is that Musharraf’s government has lost a great deal of political legitimacy following the debacles with Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and the Lal Masjid, and it needs to open the political process to provide the cover of democracy. Musharraf has been promising democracy for the past eight years and has till today not given up his office as Chief of Army Staff; he maintains both the office of President and Chief of Army staff in blatant violation of the constitution. Following in the noble history of Pakistan where the rule of law is a minor inconvenience, the constitution was altered to allow Musharraf to maintain both offices. But what has become clear is that now Musharraf must let go of the army uniform that has lent him legitimacy for the past eight years. Bhutto knows this just as well as the General. And just as well as she knows this, she also knows that the army will continue to firmly rule the country as it has for all of its history. The country’s foreign policy, national security and economic issues will rest the army. While Bhutto is free to make declarations to the media about how her government will do this or that, the truth is an open secret on the streets and in the drawing rooms of Pakistan. The calculations in the halls of Islamabad must have concluded that they could more easily horse trade with Bhutto than with Sharif. And to a lesser extent, Musharraf’s heart must hold a special place for Sharif who unsuccessfully tried to remove Musharraf and attempted to block his plane from landing in Karachi in 1999; Musharraf repaid the favor.
As Karachi prepares to return to normal, following some of the worst violence it has seen in many years, the bombing themselves merit some exploration in the midst of the various conspiracy theories swirling around. As a starting point it need be noted that nothing in Karachi can happen without the knowledge and (tacit) permission of both the MQM and the Pakistan army. For a crowd as large as three hundred thousand adequate security ought to have been provided – it was not. As Benazir’s PPP has correctly pointed out, road lighting was conspicuously absent on the section of Shariah-e Faisal where the bomb went off; the street was lit in both direction, just not where the convoy was at that point. Bhutto’s entire return has been predicated on the backs of the Pakistani awam or common folk. If she felt threats on her life were credible – as she repeated multiple times prior – why would she expose three hundred thousand people to the threat? This question remains unasked and unanswered. In spite of the multiple press freedoms found in Pakistan, its press – both television and print – have done a fairly poor job of asking critical questions. They both seem to be in awe of Bhutto and appear to be hedging their bets to the potential emergence of Bhutto as prime minister. One such question that has been unasked is who benefits from such carnage? It has clearly turned Bhutto into a latter-day democracy activist as she has pinned her entire campaign on the poor masses of Pakistan – the irony of her regime’s corruption is clearly lost on her. The army is once again free to declare that in a Pakistan ruled by politicians there will be instability and insecurity.
So after eight years, we’re back to where we started. Musharraf will be here for another five years, Bhutto will most likely emerge as Pakistan’s prime minister – most like for a period of two years and then will be sacked on corruption charges, real or imagined – and Pakistan will maintain its course. As the French say: the more things change, the more they remain the same.
(Faisal Ghori is a Fulbright Fellow in Karachi, Pakistan. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of California, Berkeley)

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