Vijanden kun je niet kiezen, vrienden wel?

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Daarom was de echtgenoot van haar tante dus zo laat met het
her-installeren van die opperrechter?
Overigens zijn er ook legio mensen die hetzelfde (onduidelijk beheer van
staatspenningen) van haar tante en broer gezegd hebben. Dus haar studie is
waarschijnlijk niet betaald van de kinderbijslag ;)
Wel moedig dat ze dit schrijft, terwijl ze binnen Pakistan woont?

Groet / Cees

PS En die lui hebben dus al een atoombom, maar 'wij' maken ons drukker
over Iran!

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-05-05/americas-bad-guy-bailout/

Obama's Murderous Guest
by Fatima Bhutto
May 5, 2009 | 10:45pm

Something rotten has arrived in Washington.

Today, President Barack Obama will shake hands and stage Oval Office photo
ops for the first time with the man who many believe stole billions from
the Pakistani treasury, empowered Pakistan’s newly formed Taliban by
imposing Shariah law without a vote or referendum, and whom I have
publicly accused of orchestrating the murder of my father, Murtaza Bhutto,
an elected member of parliament until he was killed in 1996.

Pakistan has been at war with its own people for a long time now—perhaps
it’s only natural that we move on to terrorizing the world at large.

My father was a vocal critic of both Pakistan’s former prime minister,
Benazir Bhutto (his sister, my aunt), and her husband, current president
Asif Zardari. He called Zardari and his cronies “Asif Baba and the 40
thieves,” and spoke out against the targeted killings of opposition
members and activists by the state’s police and security forces. In the
end, my father was slain in an extrajudicial assassination. The fact that
he was seen, in a traditionally patriarchal society, as the heir to the
Bhutto legacy didn’t make him any safer as Benazir’s second government
began to lose power and international repute.

Now in Washington, the man who helped this happen will ask for money and
the chance to cling to his dwindling power. Obama, in turn, will ask for
results. That's going to be a problem. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
has called the situation in my country a threat to universal peace.
Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s special envoy for Pakistan, has said our
government is capable of fighting terror, but he also calls the region
“AfPak” so he's probably confused. President Obama hasn’t offered much of
an opinion yet. He has noted that the civilian government has failed to
provide its citizens with the most basic services. But he’s also suggested
that some hard cash might help the Zardari government through its
problems. No, it won’t.

Pakistan has been at war with its own people for a long time now—given the
daily politics of persecution that the state machinery inflicts on its own
citizens, perhaps it’s only natural that we move on to terrorizing the
world at large. The Taliban is waiting at the gates. They are making
inroads into the Punjab, the heart of the country, slowly but steadily.
Swat has fallen. Buner district is gone, airstrikes or no airstrikes. Now
this government has to go. It’s either them or Pakistan.

President Zardari is a man with a colorful history. He is known by many
endearing epithets here in Pakistan: Mr. 10 Percent (a reference to
kickbacks), Mr. 50 Percent, the First Spouse (twice), and President
Ghadari, or “traitor” in Urdu. I might not be the right person to tell his
story, given that I believe he was involved in my father’s murder. But,
then again, I just might be in the best position to warn President Obama
about him.

Last summer, as an odious bill called the National Reconciliation
Ordinance expunged from his prison record the four murder cases pending
against him—my father’s included—as well as various national and
international corruption cases, Zardari prepared himself for power. He did
so not only by wiping his criminal slate clean, but also by distancing
himself from medical records that showed him to be “a man with multiple
and severe physical and mental-health problems,” according to the
Financial Times.

When Obama meets Zardari in Washington, he should remember that he is
meeting not only with a dangerous man, but with an unelected official.
Zardari never stood for elections in Pakistan. He has no constituency, no
vote of support from the people, no democratic mandate. The “opposition,”
the Pakistan Muslim League, is run by Zardari’s frenemy, Nawaz Sharif,
also unelected—Pakistan, a nation of 180 million people, is at the mercy
of two unelected men. President Obama has to decide this week whether he
wants to foster democracy in Pakistan, or whether he wants to have a
pliable government in power—a government, it bears noting, that is so
inept it managed to grow a local Taliban.

Lest we forget, when Zardari took power last September, Pakistan didn’t
have an indigenous Taliban. Now, a year into his rule, the
Tehreek-e-Taliban not only exists in Pakistan, but controls the Northwest
Frontier Province, frighteningly close to the Afghan border. The reason
Pakistan’s government cannot fight the Taliban is not because Pakistan
doesn’t have the money to fight terror. We do, plenty of it. By my last
count, we’ve received some $12 billion in military aid over the last eight
years. (It may not have gone where it was supposed to go, however. It
might have ended up in someone’s Swiss bank account—no names, but we can
guess.) And it’s not because Pakistanis are rabid fundamentalists elated
by the arrival of an indigenous Taliban. That’s not it at all. Pakistan is
a religiously diverse country—we have a history of Buddhist, Sikh, and
Hindu heritage.

The reason is the leadership. It’s just not working. In the year that
Zardari has been president, Pakistan has become a third front in the war
on terror. We are not safer, our neighbors are not safer, and we have not
made any strides toward fighting fundamentalism.

As much as America finds President Zardari repellent, we in Pakisan do,
too. But you made him our president, and now you’re about to give him
billions of dollars in aid. We cannot foster any democratic alternatives
to Zardari while his government gets bucketloads of American money. Local
activists, secular parties, and nascent opposition groups can’t fight that
kind of money—it’s impossible to compete with a party that has access to
billions of dollars. Pakistan is at a crossroads. We are either going to
save our country from its descent into fundamentalism and lawlessness, or
we are going to have Zardari as president, bolstered by American aid and
support. The ball is in President Obama’s court today. Let’s hope he makes
the right decision.

Fatima Bhutto is a graduate of Columbia University and the School of
Oriental and African Studies. She is working on a book to be published by
Jonathan Cape in 2010. Fatima lives and works in Karachi, Pakistan.

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