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Pakistanis Gather To Honor Bhutto

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Los Angeles Times

Published: December 28, 2008

KARACHI, Pakistan - With tears, prayers and candlelight vigils, Pakistanis on Saturday marked the first anniversary of Benazir Bhutto's assassination, a killing that stunned the world and came to symbolize the rising Islamic militancy gripping her homeland.

The charismatic former prime minister, Pakistan's best-known politician, was cut down in a gun-and-bomb attack on Dec. 27, 2007, as she left a campaign rally in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, outside the capital, Islamabad.

At gatherings across the country, Bhutto was eulogized as a courageous leader who braved assassination threats in returning from exile to lead her party in elections aimed at restoring democracy. That vote, held after her death, brought a new civilian leadership to power - an unsteady government led by her widower that is struggling to cope with a burgeoning Islamic insurgency, an economic collapse and fears of war with India.

Tens of thousands of mourners converged on Bhutto's ancestral village in southern Sindh province, some trekking for miles to reach the site.

Pakistan's entire political leadership gathered at the family home nearby, but security threats forced her widower, Asif Ali Zardari, to scrap plans to address the vast crowds at the mausoleum. Zardari took over Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party after her death and became the country's president in September after U.S.-backed former military leader Pervez Musharraf, facing impeachment, stepped aside.

Bhutto's killing remains unsolved, and at many of the gatherings, there was an undercurrent of anger over the fact that those who orchestrated the assassination have yet to be caught and punished.

The present government has been criticized for failing to carry out a meaningful investigation of Bhutto's death. On the eve of the anniversary, the country's leading English-language TV station, Dawn, carried an acerbic report titled "The Probe That Wasn't."
Zardari has called on the United Nations to oversee an investigation, something the world body has said it is willing to do. But much crucial evidence is unavailable; no autopsy was carried out, and the assassination scene was cleared and hosed down even before hospital authorities formally announced the death of the Muslim world's first female prime minister.

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