Does the mere toleration of dictatorship result in the type of terrorism that gunned down Benazir Bhutto last week and countless other moderate leaders before her? According to this editorial from Lebanon’s L’Orient Le Jour, the practice of tolerating dictators like Pervez Musharraf most often results in a combination of two evil curses: Tyranny and Terror.
“At the right moment – as though after making a brief desert crossing – the curses of both evil foes combine. It is well known that Pervez Musharraf – though an American ally – never ceased nurturing solid lines of communication with the most radical Islamist groups.”
EDITORIAL By Issa GORAIEB
Translted By Kate Davis
January 1, 2008
Lebanon – L’Orient Le Jour – Home Page (French)
Beautiful. Luminous, elegant, with unimaginable class, even though the haughty silhouette had gotten a bit heavier in recent years. Intelligent, cultivated, charismatic as the most successful offspring of one of the great political dynasties. But of all the assets that made up the strength of Benazir Bhutto, however, it was her courage, a courage that led verged on recklessness – which will be remembered by history.
Was it an unshakeable faith in her lucky star, in a luckiness that was tragically absent Thursday in Rawalpindi? Or was it that superb unconsciousness that can bring the great to insolently defy their destiny? The fact is that by returning to her country after a long exile, by throwing herself into the crowds, the leader of the Pakistani opposition undoubtedly made an appointment with a death that was all but announced.
It was her turn to confront that terrible phenomenon that is hardly alien to the Lebanese. In our unfortunate country, politics has become, for years now, a very high-risk activity: risk that is very precise, well-known, understood and out in the open. That is something these men and women – who are courageous to the point of heroism or martyrdom – know quite well. But they continued anyway – and continue still – to defend their ideals of freedom, independence and sovereignty. In Lebanon, too, a former prime minister [Rafiq Hariri] worried aloud more than once – in many parts of the world – that a formidable accumulation of hate was concentrated on his person; he was brutally eliminated as the others that have followed him – and the parallels don’t stop there.
That said, the Bhutto affair offers a brutal renewed relevance to a debate that alas, remains far from settled: It is a debate that revolves – inside not just one but three vicious circles – around that troubled relationship between tyranny and terrorism. Within this monstrous stranglehold, it is invariably democracy that gets steam-rolled under the helpless gaze of the international community.
First vicious circle: in societies dominated by misery, injustice and corruption, dictatorship inevitably leads to terrorism: a terrorism that is so devastating, from one end of this immense arc of crisis to the other, extending across the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East, that it finds a sacrilegious justification in religious faith. In a cruelly ironic backlash, the rise of terrorism feeds a repression that, in most cases, hardly troubles itself with democratic scruples and other human rights – and therein lies the second vicious circle.
But it is the third of these circles, however, that takes the top award for vice. At the right moment – as though after making a brief desert journey – the curses of both evil foes combine. It is well known that Pervez Musharraf – though an ally of the United States – never ceased cultivating solid lines of communication with the most radical Islamist groups.
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