I won’t pretend I understand the political implications of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. In death she is being remembered mostly for her positive attributes, but I’ve read enough to know that her reign as Prime Minister of Pakistan was flawed with accusations of corruption, which is why she fled the country and lived in exile for several years. As much as as I read for and against her, however, I find as much for and against the current president she opposed; so it’s really difficult to get a clear picture of who the good guys are in Pakistan.
An Associated Press report about the Benazir Bhutto’s family legacy offers this historical recap: Her father, Pakistan's president and then prime minister, was hanged; one brother died mysteriously, the other in a shootout. She spent five years imprisoned by her father's tormentors, mostly in solitary confinement, before rising twice to the office of prime minister. She fled before her conviction on corruption charges, living abroad for eight years. She could have lived there comfortably forever, but chose not to do so. She returned in October to oppose President Pervez Musharraf, and a suicide attacker targeted her homecoming parade in Karachi and more than 140 people died; and has been under the threat of death every day since.
For whatever flaws she may have had, I believe that Benazir Bhutto is a courageous feminist hero; because she represented hope for women in a part of the world known for its often brutal repression of women. The first woman to lead a Muslim nation in modern times, Bhutto was the leader of “The Peoples Party, “ and to many Pakistani’s, especially women, she was a voice for their needs, their hopes and their dreams for a better life. She had the good fortune to have a father who must have been a bit of a feminist himself. He sent her to America to study politics and government at Harvard and then at Oxford. I’m sure the fact that she was educated in the West, and returned to her home country a beautiful, articulate young woman didn’t endear her to the Muslim clerics who have been condemning her since.
With the Taliban re-gaining power in Afghanistan and beyond, I hope that the legacy of Benazir Bhutto will be that of a brave woman who risked her life every day for what she believed; and that in death she will continue to further the cause of women’s rights in the Middle East.
It would be the ultimate vindication that her martyrdom became the beacon of hope and change for women...which is exactly the opposite of what her assasins had planned.
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