"Arranged marriages can be a messy business designed principally as a means of accumulating wealth, circumventingundesirable flirtationsor 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 short term gain, will continue with the process knowing full wellthat each will end in misery and possibly violence. That this is equally true in political lifebecameclear 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…." of US government, of course. This is what Tariq Ali, the well-known activist, columnist and historian seems to have written in one of his upcoming piecesbefore Benazir Bhutto's dastardly assassination.

The mystery behind Benazir's assassinationis growingthicker by the hour. Inspite of several witnessesvouching that she fell down to the bullets fired by suicide bombers, when she was departing after having delivered an election address, the Pakistan government does not agree. Subsequently, the Pakistani interior ministrycame outwith, perhaps, one of the mostoutrageously unacceptable explanations. According to them, Benazir was victim of an accidental crash of her head against the lever of the rooftop of her vehicle in trying to avoid the impact of the blast. That later they again rubbished their own versionand claimed thatshe was, actually, hit by a bullet is actuallycreating an impression thatthis attempt to find the assassinsisfast degenerating into a farce. Butthis was notall. The same interior ministry again changed its tack and reverted backto their original version. If any legitimacyremained of the Musharraf-led administration, this aspect alone would be the final nail in its coffin.

There have been quite a bit of writingon this great tragedy of momentous proportions. Generally,unlike its wont, the Indian media has been quite sober in its coverage of this tragedy. However, the broad thrust of the western media coverage hasalso left its imprint with emphasis on pinpointing the identity of the `executioner'.

But, it seems what is much moreimportant, and, of course relevant, is the process and the forces which has led to it. Because, most importantly for us there is a very important lesson to be derived from Benazir's assassination for our own foreign policy establishment. Without going much into the history of Pakistan, Indian discerning readerswould be aware that the biggest problem with processes in Pakistan lie not only in the conspicuous absence of democracy, but rather in the very absence of institutions which instrumentalise democracy. In the mid-fifties itself, the political process in Pakistan was hijacked by a military-bureaucracy nexus. The political parties failed to evolve and institutions failed to mature. Wheneverthis has been interrupted with a breath of freshness that had been most ruthlessly stifled by the army – more often than none backed to the hilt by the United States.

So long as the Cold War was on, the `evil' Soviet empire provided the justification. From Ayub Khan to Yahya Khanand the most despotic of them all - Zia-ul Haq - formed the long list ofmilitarydictators whoensuredthat democracy in Pakistan does not flourish. The US was not even wary of creating, aiding, abettingand arming the Taliban in Afghanistan throughthe most dreadfulinstrument of the Pakistani military dictatorship – the ISI.

But what she did not understand was these two battles were not mutually exclusive, but interconnected. The forces of dictatorship are bound to reinforceextremism and vice versa.

There was ample evidence that this was, indeed, the reality when sections of the army were in the rebellious mood to carry out orders by Musharraf to occupy the Lal Masjid in Islamabad which had been taken over by the fundamentalist and extremist elements.
This was also evident when, perhaps, for the first time, the popular forces of democracy fought on the streets of Pakistan with the lawyers and the students forming the major contingents. The battle cry of democracy became synonymous with the demand for reinstatement of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Iftikar Chaudhury.

That the forces of democratic reform could achieve this demand was something unique in the political history of Pakistan. But, emergency was clamped. The purported justification was fighting extremism and taming the judiciary. It became clear that the first was more for public consumption while the second was the necessary intention. The undermining of democracy, indeed, strengthens extremism.

There is a need to establish the identity of the `executioner'. But, more importantly, that undermining of democracy strengthens extremism has become tragically clearfrom the grotesque end that Benazir has come to face. And, that this, the US and other allies failed to understand, is clear from the irresponsibility they showed in brokering the `marriage'. The western media tries to gloss over thiscomplicity.

It is sad thata person of Benazir's physical courage would fail to comprehend the myopic political ambitions of Washington. Tragic, that she is no more. But, that should finally force our own foreign policy establishment in India that the US, in itsblind drive for global hegemony, is betraying its lack of capacity in intervention and far less influencing of events in distant lands.