A Pakistan Primer

Benazir Bhutto was assassinated today, shot during a suicide bombing. (Only in the Middle East, I tell you.) This event that made me realize that I know next to nothing about her. All I really knew was that Bhutto was a significant female political figure in the Middle East. So I got to digging. Here is A Dummy’s Guide to the Assassination of Benazir Bhutto and What It Means:
-Pakistan has nuclear weapons.
-Ms. Bhutto, the daughter of a former Primer Minister became leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party and was elected Prime Minister twice.
-She was the first woman elected to lead a Muslim state.
-Both times she was removed from office due to corruption. The first time was 20 months after her election; the second time was 3 years after her election.
-Corrupt or not, she was at the helm during a very significant period of peace and is seen by many to be the only hope for future peace in Pakistan.
-Elections were to be held January 8 in Pakistan, which is currently run by dictator Pervez Musharraf. This is where things get a little tricky and the conspiracy theories bubble up.
-On one hand, Musharraf was key in having the corruption charges dropped and granting Bhutto amnesty, ushering in her return to Pakistan from exile. It is thought that they may have been in talks to develop a coalition government-each receiving support from different factions in Pakistan. His power has been unstable since the coup that brought it to him. She was under house arrest prior to her assassination, and this may have been his way of protecting her.
-This, however, seems unlikely. Most see her as his opposition, and she has been outspoken about his dictatorship. Musharraf was holding up the process of a fair election by earlier declaring a state of emergency. He also passed a law imposing a 2-term limit on Prime Ministers. Both Bhutto and candidate Nawaz Sharif had served 2 terms already. Also her house arrest came just hours before she was meant to appear at a rally against the state of emergency.
-Whether they were keying up to be allies or remained bitter enemies, the fact remains that PAKISTAN HAS NUCLEAR WEAPONS.
-This event could cause instability in the Middle East.
-Further, that is. Could cause FURTHER instability in the Middle East.
-The question of who is behind the assassination (could be Al-Qaeda. Quickly: When the U.S. cut and run in their war against Afghanistan to focus instead on Iraq, the Taliban was able to get into Pakistan, a country that helped create them. Bhutto even supported them initially. The fact, however, is that Bush seems to support Musharraf, so it is hard to say why they would want to eliminate his adversary. Musharraf, obviously, could also be behind it. It’s certainly one way to win an election) may be a moot point. The real issue is that this assassination could galvanize Bhutto’s supporters, a large and downtrodden group. This would be a reasonable excuse for Musharraf to implement martial law.
-And all of this instability, all of this FURTHER instability, could lead to a civil war in a country that HAS NUCLEAR WEAPONS. Apart from the sad loss of a powerful and important woman who may have been a key to unlikely peace, the truthful maybe of the previous sentence, a sentence featuring the words ‘instability,’ ‘nuclear’ and ‘war,’ is worth keeping in mind.
-Also, the paternity of Jamie-Lynn Spears' child is still unclear. For more information, you could log into Fox News for the first half of the day, while most other sources were covering the assassination.