A superficial reading of history would make us see a parallel between the assassinations of four former prime ministers — a mother and son killed in India and a father and daughter eliminated in Pakistan. But there is a crucial difference: Neither Indira Gandhi nor her son Rajiv was killed because of any power struggle in India. Also, the assassins had nothing to do with the Indian state.

Contrast this with how Zulfikar Ali Bhutto died in 1979 and how his daughter Benazir met her violent end 28 years later. ZAB’s death by hanging in a Rawalpindi jail was a case of judicial murder. Its aim was to nip in the bud the emergence of democratic rule in Pakistan. YouTube has a video (www.pakistaniat.com) that shows General Zia-ul-Haq, who seized power from Bhutto in 1977, promising free and fair polls “within 15 days” and transfer of power to a civilian government. The promise was never kept, and Zia went on to rule Pakistan for 11 long years. The beneficiary of Bhutto’s death was the Pakistani army.

Significantly, America had backed Zia’s power-grab since he agreed for Pakistan to serve as a “frontline” state in Washington’s proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. It tolerated not only his military dictatorship, but also his Islamisation drive, his nurturing of the Taliban in Afghanistan and his support to cross-border terrorism in India.

The world does not yet know who killed BB. But the answer probably lies in the question: who stands to benefit the most from her killing? Pakistan has been under military rule for the past eight years. There was tremendous people’s pressure on Pervez Musharraf to step down and transfer power to a democratically elected government. What did he do? He subverted the judiciary, jailed pro-democracy activists, placed under house arrest all those political leaders who were opposed to him, and got himself “re-elected” as president during a one-month emergency rule that was specially devised to enable him to rewrite an already mutilated constitution to empower him as the effective ruler. Once again, America backed a military ruler in Islamabad, first when he wore the army uniform and later when he took it off. The only concession it made to Pakistani people’s democratic aspiration was forcing Benazir into a sham power-sharing agreement with Musharraf and forcing Musharraf into calling for early elections.

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