Source: Getty Images/NY Times
I got smacked out of my holiday haze this morning when I clicked the New York Times homepage and read that Benazir Bhutto, leader of the Pakistan People's Party and a vehement opponent of the country's terrorist groups, had been assassinated.
In the two months since her return to Pakistan following self-imposed exile in London, Bhutto's story had become a daily soap opera. From the beginning -- and when I say beginning I'm just referring to October -- the guillotine was hanging over Bhutto's head. The throngs of supporters, the house arrest, the bloody climax of all her political rallies -- and of course, the light she cast on Prime Minister Pervez Musharaf's somnambulant government -- all of these were elements in a riveting saga that could not have possibly ended in any other way.
And that's because the War on Terror, a term that for the time being has been replaced by new buzz words such as Iowa and mormon, is taking on new form. It's not contained to the Middle East -- there are disgruntled and mislead people all around the Muslim world, which is far bigger than most Americans really know. And many governments in this vast swath of countries, aren't the least bit concerned about the increasing influence of terrorist groups like Al Qaeda in their home turf.
Benazir Bhutto, scandalous-past-and-all, stood up for something different. In my eyes, she is very much the product of a privileged upbringing in the developing world. Well-educated, worldly but sensitive to the (backwards?) traditions of her homeland -- an arranged marriage, the headress -- and determined to impose progress where necessary. Progress, for the last years of her life, meant erradicating fundamentalist Islam from Pakistan, a country that teters between the line of friend and foe to the U.S.
Bhutto's death, just like her life's work, could tip the balance.
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