Daughter of the West

Tariq Ali’s article about Benazir Bhutto’s return to Pakistan was published a couple of weeks before her assassination:

Arranged marriages can be a messy business. Designed principally as a means of accumulating wealth, circumventing undesirable flirtations or 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 thought of short-term gain, will continue with the process knowing full well that it will end in misery and possibly violence. That this is equally true in political life became clear in the recent attempt by Washington to tie Benazir Bhutto to Pervez Musharraf. […]

Ali’s article is interesting not so much because of the prediction that her story might come to a violent end - that seemed all too likely from the moment she allowed herself to be persuaded to return to Pakistan - but because it comprises a useful account of the various family rivalries and clashing agendas that have shaped the last 30 years or so of Pakistan’s history and will shape what happens next.

[Via Arkansawyer, posting to a comment thread at Making Light]