Dissident Veteran For Peace

In the wake of her recent assassination, Benazir Bhutto is being touted in the West as the first woman to lead a predominantly Muslim country and so on. Typical is the remark of Joe Pascal on the US N&WR web site: "the first woman leader in the Muslim world" or at feministing.com: "Bhutto was the first woman to lead a Muslim country." The only problem is that it's not true.

Long before Bhutto came on the scene there was Shagrat al-Durr, who became the Sultan of Egypt in 1250 AD and I'm sure that more knowledgable people could cite other early female leaders of predominantly Muslim countries. A'isha, the wife of the Prophet Mohammed, was an amazing leader of Muslim people although she never had formal authority like Shagrat al-Durr or Benazir Bhutto. To learn more about A'isha, I recommend The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women's Rights in Islam by Fatima Mernissi.

Bhutto was, of course, the first elected female national executive of a modern Muslim majority nation-state. And it is interesting to me that, arguably, Muslim countries have a rather better track record in this regard than Christian majority countries. See the table below. This is my original research and I welcome corrections.

Elected Female National Executives in the Five Most Populous Christian and Muslim Majority Nation-States
Nation-State	Population	Name of Female Executive	Year Elected
United States+	301,139,947	None	NA
Indonesia*	234,693,997	•Megawati Sukarnoputri	2001
Brazil+	190,010,647	None	NA
Pakistan*	164,741,924	•Benazir Bhutto	1988, 1993
Bangladesh*	150,448,339	•Khaleda Zia •Sheikh Hasina Wazed	1991, 2001 1996
Russia+	141,377,752	None	NA
Mexico+	108,700,891	None	NA
The Philippines+	91,077,287	•Corazon Aquino •Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo	1986 2001
Egypt*	80,335,036	None	NA
Turkey*	71,158,647	•Tansu Çiller	1993
Notes: 1. The plus symbol (+) indicates that the country has a Christian majority population while the asterisk (*) indicates a Muslim majority. 2. All population figures are from the CIA's World Factbook.

Labels: Benazir Bhutto, Christianity, gender, Islam

The recently assassinated Benazir Bhutto is being lauded in the West. No surprise there, she was, as fellow Pakistani Tariq Ali wrote in the London Review of Books almost a month ago, a "Daughter of the West." More crudely put, she was a lackey of the West. Charismatic and courageous, she was also corrupt and ruthless--a perfect possible replacement for a faltering pro-US dictator. Below is the opening section from Ali's article, followed by an excerpt from Robert Fisk's primer on who killed Bhutto and why.

Arranged marriages can be a messy business. Designed principally as a means of accumulating wealth, circumventing undesirable flirtations or transcending clandestine love affairs, they often don’t work. Where both parties are known to loathe each other, only a rash parent, desensitised by the thought of short-term gain, will continue with the process knowing full well that it will end in misery and possibly violence. That this is equally true in political life became clear in the recent attempt by Washington to tie Benazir Bhutto to Pervez Musharraf.

The single, strong parent in this case was a desperate State Department – with John Negroponte as the ghoulish go-between and Gordon Brown as the blushing bridesmaid – fearful that if it did not push this through both parties might soon be too old for recycling. The bride was certainly in a hurry, the groom less so. Brokers from both sides engaged in lengthy negotiations on the size of the dowry. Her broker was and remains Rehman Malik, a former boss of Pakistan’s FIA, who has been investigated for corruption by the National Accountability Bureau and who served nearly a year in prison after Benazir’s fall, then became one of her business partners and is currently under investigation (with her) by a Spanish court looking into a company called Petroline FZC, which made questionable payments to Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Documents, if genuine, show that she chaired the company. She may have been in a hurry but she did not wish to be seen taking the arm of a uniformed president. He was not prepared to forgive her past. The couple’s distaste for each other yielded to a mutual dependence on the United States. Neither party could say ‘no’, though Musharraf hoped the union could be effected inconspicuously. Fat chance.

Both parties made concessions. She agreed that he could take off his uniform after his ‘re-election’ by Parliament, but it had to be before the next general election. (He has now done this, leaving himself dependent on the goodwill of his successor as army chief of staff.) He pushed through a legal ruling – yet another sordid first in the country’s history – known as the National Reconciliation Ordinance, which withdrew all cases of corruption pending against politicians accused of looting the national treasury. The ruling was crucial for her since she hoped that the money-laundering and corruption cases pending in three European courts – in Valencia, Geneva and London – would now be dismissed. This doesn’t seem to have happened.

Many Pakistanis – not just the mutinous and mischievous types who have to be locked up at regular intervals – were repelled, and coverage of ‘the deal’ in the Pakistan media was universally hostile, except on state television. The ‘breakthrough’ was loudly trumpeted in the West, however, and a whitewashed Benazir Bhutto was presented on US networks and BBC TV news as the champion of Pakistani democracy – reporters loyally referred to her as ‘the former prime minister’ rather than the fugitive politician facing corruption charges in several countries.

She had returned the favour in advance by expressing sympathy for the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, lunching with the Israeli ambassador to the UN (a litmus test) and pledging to ‘wipe out terrorism’ in her own country. ...

In the Independent (UK) Robert Fisk closes his article today, "They don't blame al-Qa'ida. They blame Musharraf," as follows:

So let's run through this logic in the way that Inspector Ian Blair might have done in his policeman's notebook before he became the top cop in London.
Question: Who forced Benazir Bhutto to stay in London and tried to prevent her return to Pakistan? Answer: General Musharraf.
Question: Who ordered the arrest of thousands of Benazir's supporters this month? Answer: General Musharraf.
Question: Who placed Benazir under temporary house arrest this month? Answer: General Musharraf.
Question: Who declared martial law this month? Answer: General Musharraf.
Question: who killed Benazir Bhutto?
Er. Yes. Well quite.
You see the problem? Yesterday, our television warriors informed us the PPP [Pakistan Peoples Party] members shouting that Musharraf was a "murderer" were complaining he had not provided sufficient security for Benazir. Wrong. They were shouting this because they believe he killed her.

See also: "Olmert: Bhutto could have been bridge to Muslims" in the Jerusalem Post.

Addendum: Some interesting discussions on this topic are at feministing.com and at the Womens Writes blog.

Last revised: 01/01/2008

Labels: Benazir Bhutto, Empire, Pakistan, violence