Don't Cry for Me Pakistan !

"Don't Cry for Me Pakistan", is perhaps what Ms. Benazir Bhutto may have vehemently told her people if she had not lied buried along side her father. And even while Pakistan tries to limp back there seems to be no direction where it should go. Perhaps this was the one of the first nails stuck in the ailing nation of Pakistan.

Ms. Bhutto and her father, charismatic Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, were democratic, but inadequate political leaders; indifferent to human rights and, in her case, stained by serious charges of corruption. The father was deposed by a military coup and then hanged. The daughter was twice elected and twice deposed. But both had one irrefutable asset: electoral legitimacy — legitimacy that the generals and the Islamic extremists could only want to destroy.

Both India and Pakistan have suffered extremely in recent times because of terrorism and violence. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto is as cruel as the assassination of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, the former prime ministers of India.

Next month’s parliamentary elections will be another test of Mr. Musharraf’s intentions — and Washington’s influence. As usual, he holds most of the cards: the press is muzzled; the judiciary is crammed with his loyalists; and there are serious doubts about whether political opponents will be allowed to campaign freely. He has repeatedly broken promises to move to democracy, using his power vindictively and squandering popular support by forcing rivals into exile and intimidating anyone who tried to stand up to him.

The likely possible dangers are these: a complete collapse of Pakistani government rule that allows an extreme Islamist movement to fill the vacuum; a total loss of central control over outlying provinces, which fragment along ethnic and tribal lines; or a struggle within the Pakistani military in which the minority sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda try to establish Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism.

The Pakistan public has not supported the American invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq. Nor do Pakistanis support the government of President Pervez Musharraf, which has been propped up by Washington. And they certainly did not support the obvious American interference that Ms. Bhutto’s return indicated.

World Attention must now be directed at building a strong democracy in Pakistan that has the respect and the support of its own citizens and the will and the means to fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Pakistan is a nation of 165 million people. You can no more mortgage your interests to one or two individuals.

Pakistan’s intelligence services contain enough sympathizers and supporters of the Afghan Taliban, and enough nationalists bent on seizing the disputed province of Kashmir from India, that there are grounds for real worries. All possible military initiatives to avoid those possibilities are daunting. With 160 million people, Pakistan is more than five times the size of Iraq.

It’s now up to Pakistani 'Awam' (People) who need to turn out in strength on election day( if it happens ) to ensure that they and not just the former general — will have a say in Pakistan’s future. Because that's the one and the only way democracy will rise and resurrect from the darkest corners of the coffin to which it has been consigned to.