Security Barrier: Pakistan a More Dangerous Place Without Bhutto


Thursday, December 27, 2007

By Allison Barrie

Will it take a woman's touch to rip out those terrorist roots in Pakistan?

Sadly, the answer is that we probably did need a woman to save Pakistan, and we have just inexcusably lost that woman to assassination. Benazir Bhutto risked her life not just to fight for the security of her people, but to fight for the security of all of us who are targeted by rampaging Al Qaeda terrorism.

Bhutto was an incredibly courageous woman who returned to her country determined to uproot the tentacles of terrorism that were infecting her country, and to improve the plight of her fellow Pakistanis.

Bhutto was democratically elected as prime minister in 1988, when she was only 35, and then again in 1993, but both times she was dismissed from office by the president.

Forced to live abroad, this champion of democracy never gave up. She could have enjoyed the life of a charismatic, beautiful, young and powerful figure on the international scene, yet she knowingly put her life at great peril by returning home for her people.

Her father, democratically-elected Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was deposed and executed for fighting the same good fight 30 years ago; her husband’s life was put in jeopardy when a political party meeting was broken up by brute force two years ago; her sister-in-law was the victim of an assassination attempt, and still Benazir Bhutto fought on for democracy and a better life for Pakistan.

As we’ve seen time and again, including in the most recent terrorist attempt in London, if you follow an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist’s road, it often leads back to Islamabad. September 11, the attacks on Madrid, the shoe bomber, the London tube bombers and Glasgow all had connections with Pakistan. The recent Red Mosque siege and now Bhutto’s assassination are just glaring proof that the terrorism nurtured in Pakistan and launched abroad has now come home to roost.

I had the privilege of being invited to a private briefing with Bhutto in London before her triumphant return to Pakistan in October. Having just heard Pakistan’s former army chief Gen. Jahangir Karamat’s take on practical steps to tackle the strategic challenges posed by Pakistan’s extremist movement, I was as always fairly underwhelmed with the Pakistan miltary’s party line. So I was keen to hear Bhutto’s thoughts at a briefing down at IISS on the banks of the Thames to see if she had a better solution to offer.

I left impressed with the youngest and first woman prime minister to lead a Muslim nation in the modern age, and was convinced of the wisdom of her tactics in addressing extremism in Pakistan. She was definitely what we needed to "break the back," as she described it, of terrorism there.

More?

FOXNews.com - Security Barrier: Pakistan a More Dangerous Place Without Bhutto

All is not lost,far from it..Bhutto's voice for democracy will now become a ROAR..

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"Destiny must be shaped and not left to mere chance."..Spencer Collins ..