How tragic that the glory of Benazir Bhutto's homecoming was so short-lived. Within a span barely twelve hours after her arrival to a tumultuous welcome her motorcade was attacked by what appears to have been a suicide bomber as it inched towards the Quaid's mausoleum where she was to speak to a rally of her supporters.
Her's was a miraculous escape, while more than 150 people, including about a score of security personnel, died and more than thrice that number suffered injuries in the twin-blast assault. Her journey from the airport to the point where her procession was ambushed on Shahrah-e-Faisal was absolutely incident-free, so much so that considering the repeated threats received by her and the administration's composure and confidence surrounding her homecoming at times appeared so unreal.
Her security managers had lowered the guard allowing her to abandon the bullet-proof rostrum and come to the front of the platform raised on the improvised armoured container-vehicle. The movement of the motorcade was slowed to a snail's pace on the jam-packed route and even after about 11 hours of landing at Terminal One of the Karachi airport she had not done even half of the journey to the mausoleum. That prolonged her presence in the danger zone.
Then, there was confusion as to who was in charge of Benazir Bhutto's security, the local administration or the PPP volunteers who had taken over the job of weaving a security cordon around the vehicle which carried the PPP chairperson and her entourage. That in this risk-loaded environment she survived a determined assassination attempt by a suicide bomber was nothing but a miracle ordained by God.
One can never understand the security managers' cavalier approach to the danger that was so real and imminent to Benazir Bhutto's life. Tribal militants' leader Baitullah Mahsud reportedly had it conveyed to her that suicide-bombers would "welcome" her on arrival in Pakistan. Then, President Musharraf himself had warned her of the threats to her life and requested her to delay her return to the country. The Sindh government too had warned of the presence of suicide-bombers.
And, she, herself was acutely aware of this danger, as she told media persons accompanying her, that she had written a letter to the President naming those who she feared would make an attempt on her life. In fact, soon after the bombing her spouse, Asif Ali Zardari, accused the intelligence agencies of masterminding the assassination attempt and the Sindh police chief warned of more such attempts. In the backdrop of such a plethora of information about the likelihood of assassination attempt, the PPP leaders should have resisted the temptation to enact a replay of her Lahore arrival in 1986, with ground realities being so widely different between now and then.
Presently Pakistan is caught in the vortex of violence and Benazir Bhutto, for a variety of reasons, is one of its prime targets. Some other political personages are no exception either. During the last five years or so, there have been assassination attempts on the life of President Musharraf, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao and former vice chief of army staff, General Ahsan Saleem Hayat, in addition to deadly attacks on security personnel and foreigners, including diplomats, at many places in the country. This violence is largely the fallout of Pakistan government's cooperation with the United States and its western allies in their fight against terrorism, and is growing with the passage of time, spilling over from the tribal areas to the rest of the country.
Indeed, the government's crackdown against militants in the tribal areas has acquired a new ferocity and urgency, but immediate let-up is not in sight as yet. That is the dilemma now when the country is moving towards general elections that will demand absolute peace and tranquillity as a sine qua non. Given such an ominous situation, preventive measures should be put in place so that political parties can do campaigning without running the risk of facing bomb-blasts and other acts of violence.
For instance, political leaders have to be persuaded to refrain from taking out big rallies, to escape the wrath of brainwashed zealots. It may be also useful to keep secret the leaders' travel plans and the routes they are expected to traverse. One may declare the Karachi carnage an intelligence failure but the fact is that a suicide-bomber on a mission to strike is like a letter in the mailbox.
No doubt, given the exposure of Benazir Bhutto's cavalcade on Thursday, it was the proverbial sitting duck for any suicide-bomber. The need to identify the people who recruit and indoctrinate naïve young men to become suicide bombers and then find out hideouts where such training is given, is more urgent today than ever before so that this threat is dealt with at its roots, or else, politicking in this country would be reduced to palace intrigues and armchair wheeler-dealing.
Comments
Comments are closed.