Speech at
Lady Margaret Hall
by Ms Benazir Bhutto
May 27, 2004
It is a pleasure and an honour for me to return to Lady Margaret Hall. I thank the Principal, Mrs. Frances Lannon, for the invitation and the opportunity to meet with you this evening.
I was at Lady Margaret Hall in the seventies at the height of the Miners strike. I return to Lady Margaret Hall in different times. Now London prepares emergency evacuation plans in the event of a terrorist strike in this the twenty first century.
The changes in threat perception and preparation are enormous.
I visit Oxford at a time when Coalition forces are seemingly bogged down in a political and military quagmire that threatens the achievement of its goals in Iraq.
With respect to the war on terrorism-I see three primary victims of the Al Qaeda rampage of September 11th. Above all the victims are the people who were killed that day.
The era of peace for which we prayed, became a time of war.
Violence continues in Iraq and Afghanistan. Terrorist acts take place from Indonesia to Morocco. Even Madrid is not spared.
This violences takes place at a time when tension in the Middle East make the peace process a distant dream. Despite some overtures, India and Pakistan still have a distance to travel to reduce the risk of nuclear confrontation.
Ladies and gentlemen, The attack on the Twin Towers was an attack on a country that symbolises freedom.
As a former student from Oxford and Harvard, I first learned of freedom in these bastions of democracy.
It was at Oxford, with its flourishing political groups and debates at the Oxford Union that I learned of dissent, tolerance, and equal opportunity for all citizens.
My commitment to freedom was nurtured here. Britain is the world’s oldest democracy. Its elected, representative and empowered House of Commons as well as its Habeous Corpus Charter is a light of hope for all those denied human dignity across the world.
Wedded to the past, the terrorists attacked the symbols of a modern age.
Ladies and gentlemen,
It grieves me that included in the list of innocent victims of September 11th is the image of Islam across the world. For me, Islam is not what these people preach.
I see Islam as committed to tolerance and equality and committed, by Koranic definition, to the principles of democracy.
The Muslim people want freedom. I know the people of Pakistan want freedom.
They can not understand the support for a military dictator.
Islam is committed to universal education and literacy. The very first word of the Holy Book Koran is “Read.”
Yet, while militaries are armed, students are often not educated. Professors and teachers are paid very little salaries.
Islam is committed to the equality of women in society. The wife of the Holy Prophet of Islam was a working woman.
Yet, in many Muslim countries, women are discriminated against in every aspect of life. Most of these crimes go unpunished.
The investment in justice, law and order and prosecution is small.
Businessmen and women are not allowed to freely compete. Nepotism and cronyism prevail parliamentarians pressured or forced to defect.
Human rights activists are jailed.
Political parties are decimated.
Political leaders are political prisoners or forced into exile. Dissent is not tolerated. Television interviews are regulated by the military.
This is the street of decent Muslim people, terrorized by the authoritarian powers of the state.
It is the street of Pakistan’s future in the chains of tyranny where law and constitution are treated with contempt.
And it is a street that threatens to explode.
We must fight a war on terrorism, and on political manipulation of religion and against military dictatorship.
Terrorists and dictators are the cause of war, bloodshed, inhumanity, chaos and disintegration.
In the end, they will be defeated.
Ladies and gentlemen,
In the Muslim Holy Book, Abraham is our father, just as Moses and Jesus are our prophets.
There are similarities between Islam and the Judeo-Christian traditions.
Muslims believe that Jews, Christians and Muslims are one people who are Ahle e Kitaab that is who have religious books containing the message sent by God through his Prophets.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
If Islam and the Muslim world are viewed as threats, we will enter a relentless cycle of action and reaction spiralling out of control. To prevent this, it is important to distinguish between those committing crimes in the name of the Islamic religion and those Muslims who believe in peaceful religious co-existence.
It would be a tragedy if suspicion towards Muslims led to a backlash that provoked a clash of civilizations.
All Nineteen of the hijackers that hit the world trade center were Arabs. That Arab countries could have produced men who launched such an attack makes them the center of scrutiny in the twenty-first century. There is renewed focus on the Arabs as a whole. Nontheless, the war against terror has put the Middle East issue on the backburner. This should not be so. A Middle East settlement is one of the significant keys to the future Arab mind and the Arab youth just as it is key to the mind of the Israelis who today live under the shadow of the suicide bomber.
The Coalition forces in Baghdad, greeted with hope after the fall of the Saddam dictatorship, are now facing the anger of the Iraqi people. The lack of preparedness for the post Saddam era caused the backlash. There is a need to widen the base of international and internal participation in Iraq.
Iraq and the Middle East are brimming with violence. They are the flash points that Osama and his cohorts exploit to hide their aim of a religious war through feigned sympathy for nationalism. They exploit a growing siege mentality within the Muslim world.
Following September 11, many Muslims found themselves treated with suspicion. This created a siege mentality. That siege mentality was reinforced by the Iraq war, a war that started without cover of the United Nations.
Despite Saddam’s history of dictatorship and repression, many in the Islamic world interpret the invasion of Iraq presaging a wider attack against an array of Muslim countries including Iran, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and eventually Pakistan. The recent sanctions against Syria reinforce this view.
While most Muslim intellectuals strongly condemn the attacks on the World Trade Center, they believe that unaddressed political problems and neglected social injustice provided a dish allowing the germs of
terrorism and hatred to multiply.
The world is threatened but a military response is only part of the solution to the problem of terrorism and the growing divide between the Muslim and non-Muslim world.
The instability of the Iraqi occupation, the continuing instability in Afghanistan, the deteriorating situation in the Middle East between Israelis and Palestinians, and the unresolved tragedy of Kashmir impact upon the people in the Street. No one knows when the masses can become a mob and that mob strike out against anything Western.
Some scholars argue that with its overwhelming military might and allies, America must shed its imperial inhibitions and take on the responsibility of reshaping the world. For them, the post Yalta world is now redundant with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The world is to be reshaped to mirror the new realities. Driven by a sense of righteousness, the proponents of this theory find a moral purpose in unilateral action.
Such scholars overlook the lessons of twentieth century history. This history teaches us that the go it alone policy fails to build the political support that must follow a military victory.
It was for this reason that one of America’s great Presidents, Woodrow Wilson, promoted the concept of collective security and the principle of self-determination.
To prevent the acceleration of the clash of cultures, civilizations and religions, collective security is important to ensure world stability in the coming decades.
As Prime Minister of Pakistan, I stood up to the forces of dictatorship that breed extremism by weakening democratic forces.
During the Afghan-Soviet war in the seventies and eighties, Pakistan became the breeding ground for the political and religious manipulation of the religious extremists. Pakistan’s then military dictator insisted on handling the fighters in Afghanistan, known as the Jihadis, directly through his own intelligence services.
He recruited and supported the most extreme elements in his bid to undermine the moderate and democratic political forces of the country. He justified his dictatorship under the guise of implementing an Islamic system. He belonged to the Muslim brotherhood and he brought in their supporters from all over the world to Pakistan.
Exploiting the name of religion, he established thousands of doctrinaire schools. These schools produced brainwashed young men that could be sent off to fight the superpowers. First the Soviets-and then the West.
But one must never give in;
To the fanatics and the extremists democracy and rule by elected representatives.
To Islam at the crossroads, a modern, democratic Pakistan was one fork in the road, fanaticism and ignorance the other.
With the failure of their attempted military coup in 1995, the extremists worked with their supporters in the security establishment to destabilise the democratic government I led. My brother was murdered. The PPP President was blackmailed into dismissing the PPP government. The elections, according to the SAARC observers, was rigged and a pliant political protege of the military dictator Zia ul Haq was brought in.
A psychological war was launched against the PPP to demonise its leadership. Our government had been the obstacle to the triumph of Taliban over all Afghanistan, to the invitation to Al Qaeda in pursuit of the agenda of religious war and to the export of extremism through Afghanistan, into Central Asia then to Chechnya and onto the shores of Europe.
I am proud of my record as Prime Minister in containing international terrorism and reducing tensions with India.
During my first tenure in office, we facilitated the formation of an interim government of national consensus in Afghanistan where the moderates and hard liners agreed to co-exist. During my second tenure, my government confined the Taliban to Southern Afghanistan prevailing upon them to enter negotiations with the United Nations Special Envoy Mr. Brahmi.
With the eclipse of my government in late September 1996, the Taliban seized Kabul imposing their will across Afghanistan. After my overthrow on November 4, 1996, they openly invited in Osama Bin Laden. In 1997, they allowed Bin Laden to establish Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda set up camps without secrecy to recruit and train young men from the Muslim world. As Leader of the Opposition in the Pakistani Parliament, I called upon Islamabad to sever ties with the Taliban in 1998. That call went unheeded.
On the India front, we had extraordinary progress with the first nuclear confidence building treaty, the agreement not to attack each other’s respective nuclear facilities. We established a hot line between the Pakistani and Indian leadership modelled after the hot line between Washington and Moscow during the Cold War. We opened up our borders to travel and tourism, and adopted a South Asian preferential tariff agreement that established a free-trade zone between Pakistan, India and the other nations of the region.
The PPP government was making dramatic progress in relations with India and with containing terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But moderation and progress is not what the Army hard-liners and religious extremists could tolerate. I was their threat, and I was eliminated. I am afraid, ladies and gentlemen, that the consequences continue to ripple across Asia.
In the closing days of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, I cautioned that the policy to defeat the Soviets had empowered and emboldened the most fanatical, extremist elements of the Afghan Mujahadeen at the expense of the moderates, creating a “Frankenstein” that could come back to haunt us in the future.
I fear now that the policy to support the Musharaf military dictatorship to fight the war against terror is strengthening the religious parties and extremists in Pakistan at the expense of the moderates. They could turn into the new Frankenstein’s monster that haunts us in the future.
The fundamental mistake, which contributed to a long-term historical calamity, was that we were not consistently committed to the values of freedom, democracy and self-determination that ultimately undermine and belie the basic tenets of terrorism.
The international community must not repeat that mistake again.
Democracy and human rights must be the centrepiece of policy around the world.
The international community need not coddle dictators to promote its own interests. Its interest is democracy, not tyranny.
In Pakistan just as in Britain and around the world, those of us who are committed to human rights and democracy abhor terrorism in all of its murderous forms.
The goal of British policy must always be to simultaneously promote stability and to strengthen democratic values.
Pakistan’s military dictatorship has been ambiguous in its opposition to terrorism. It has given mixed signals at home and around the world.
Let me quote from a recent report by the International Crisis Group entitled:
“Unfulfilled Promises: Pakistan’s Failure to Tackle Extremism:”
“Musharraf’s failure owes less to the difficulty of implementing reforms than to the military government’s own unwillingness. Indeed, he is following the pattern of the country’s previous military rulers in co-opting religious extremists to support his government’s agenda and to neutralize his secular political opposition. Far from
combating extremism, the military government has promoted it through its electoral policies and its failure to implement effective reform. Whatever measures have so far been taken against extremism have been largely cosmetic, to ease international pressure.”
Lt. Gen. David Barno, a senior US General, has expressed concern over Islamabad’s commitment to fighting Al Qaeda and the remnants of Taliban in the tribal areas of Pakistan. Earlier the US Ambassador to Afghanistan echoed similar sentiments with regard to the Taliban.
In March, during a visit by the US Secretary of State to Pakistan, Islamabad launched a much publicized campaign against Arab-Afghan fighters in the tribal area of Wana. Islamabad’s military dictator hinted to CNN that Al Qaeda’s number two, described as a high value target, was surrounded and on the verge of capture. None of this was true. No Arab Afghan was found. The only people caught were Chechens and Uzbeks. The Pak army suffered high casualties and some officers were taken hostage. Soon after Colin Powell left, an amnesty was announced for those that fought and killed Pak army officials.
A similar amnesty was announced for a Pak nuclear scientist who confessed to selling nuclear products internationally. General Musharaf said that, “he could keep the money too”, a reference to the two hundred million dollars reportedly milked through the scandal. Those earlier arrested for corruption by Musharaf when he seized power were forgiven and taken into the Cabinet when they defected from their political parties. The sons of the Generals who fought the first Afghan Jihad and reportedly amassed vast riches by siphoning Jihad funds sit as proud members of General Musharaf’s handpicked cabinet.
Political opponents who proclaim their innocence and confront a systematic campaign of perversion of justice are shown no mercy by the military dictatorship.
As a leading scholar from the Carnegie Peace Institute put it, “Nobody around the world’s capitals is even asking why General Musharaf’s iron hand is reserved for his political critics and opponents while he deploys amnesty and negotiated settlements for alleged terrorists and militant tribesmen”.
The government and people of the United Kingdom and the rest of the world must remember that Pakistan has a brutal, extra-constitutional military government with no democratic legitimacy. More people in Pakistan than ever before are unemployed and live below the poverty line.
Through the long years of super-power rivalry and the emergence of Pakistan as a strategic partner in the fight against Communism, the international community relied on the Pakistani military. I would argue that in the war against terrorism, the international community must reply on the strength of the people and not on the strength of
militaries. The militaries are often the problem and not the solution.
In several Muslim countries around the world, direct or indirect dictatorships, relying on the backing of the military and of the international community are causing resentment and anger amongst the people. These dictators are seen as the proxies of the foreign powers and feed the frenzy of xenophobia and anti western sentiment that the
extremists and terrorist exploit. As the moderate forces are squeezed, opposition shifts to the Masjids and to the political sermons delivered by religious leaders following the prayer.
A democratic system allows peaceful and political change. It permits pluralism. There is always an alternative available to the people. Tragedy strikes when alternatives are missing. We saw it in Afghanistan where the Taliban dictatorship refused to permit political opposition and war became the only recourse. We saw it in Iraq when the Baathist Party was the sole monopoliser of power and short of war there was no alternative to peaceful, political change.
War brings its own dangers. Dangers that lurk in casualties and blood shed. And more dangers that lurk in the threat of a state disintegrating in the event of a withdrawal. The bloody break up of Yugoslavia is a recent example.
Autocrats do not become democrats by words; they become democrats by deeds. And so far, the deeds of Musharraf are the deeds of a military dictator. He has forced into exile the popular leadership of the country. He sacked half of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, including its chief justice. Members of the press that write independently are roughed up, imprisoned or forced into exile. One editor was forced into exile for running a story on possible links between the security establishment and the murderers of Wall St Journal reporter Danny Pearl.
The Musharaf dictatorship has build up the security establishment as a state-within-a-state. There are two laws in Pakistan–one for the civilians and another for the military. There are also two separate educational opportunities, health opportunities, pension opportunities, investment opportunities, economic benefits, agricultural allotments,
bank loans, permits for commercial plazas, plush low cost housing depending on whether one wears Mufti or Khaki. In fact the agrarian feudal lords and the industrial robber barons have been replaced by the Khaki class.
In Iraq members of the coalition forces die doing duty without being given commercial, residential and agricultural holdings as rewards. In Islamabad, the Generals get these rewards without dying doing duty.
Perhaps it is naiveté by the West, or short-term myopia that has led to disastrous courting of the Shah of Iran, Marcos of the Philippines and Zia of Pakistan.
Pakistan, as has been observed by Arnold de Borchgrave, the UPI Editor in Chief, is ‘ a nuclear power with two of its four provinces governed by six politico-religious parties whose leaders are friends of Taliban’s Mullah Omar and al-Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden.”
The so-called October 2002 elections in Pakistan were blatant frauds engineered by Musharraf’s electoral cells. This fraud was exposed by the European community and election monitors from all over the world. General Musharraf, for reasons known only to himself, allowed the religious parties to make significant gains by declaring that religious school diplomas would be treated at par with University degrees. He then decreed that only those with University degrees could contest elections. His strategy is to tell the international community that only he and the
Pakistani army stand in the way of a religious take over in Pakistan. A powerful argument but a total fraud.
I was banned by special decree from contesting the October elections. I have challenged that ban. Mullah Omar’s teacher was allowed to contest the elections and is now a member of Parliament.
My husband, hostage to my political career, sits in a Musharraf prison as we speak this evening.
This is the state of justice in Musharaff’s Pakistan.
I ask myself why a man who simultaneously enjoys the powers of Chief of Army Staff and President is afraid to let me lead my party?
General Musharraf has nuclear tipped missiles and thousands of tanks, but he does not have the people of Pakistan.
General Musharraf exploits the war on terrorism to protect his dictatorship. Like his military predecessor General Zia he uses Pakistan’s critical importance to the international community in Afghanistan as a smokescreen for his own dictatorship.
He undermines the popular Pakistan Peoples Party, using every trick in the book to force its members to defect to strengthen the religious parties.
The “fox” patrols the “hen house,” while the world seems to be asleep.
The best and only control for the excesses of extremism, is accountability to the people. It is for this we pray in Afghanistan. It is for this we pray in Pakistan. It is for this we pray all over the world.