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Well, go figure. This was as predictable as tomorrow's sunrise. Just days ago, a suicide bomber killed 50+ at a mosque in Pakistan.

Benazir Bhutto brought death home the day she flew in from Dubai. When she arrived in Pakistan on October 18, from her second exile in London, 140 people died in a suicide blast. That was her second return from exile...firstly, in 1986, she came back to confront Zia-ul-Haq, the military dictator in charge at the time. She fled Pakistan in 1999, to avoid being sentenced to prison on corruption charges, while Nawaz Sharif was the Prime Minister. Musharraf quashed that sentence with an amnesty bill, October 5, allowing Bhutto to return October 18.

There's a history of violence in Pakistani politics. Benazir lost her father after he was ousted and executed in 1977 by General Zia-ul-Haq, who kept Benazir wrapped up until 1984...when he exiled her to England. Then, when Zia-ul-Haq died in a (mysterious, of course) plane crash in 1988, Benazir came home to Pakistan, was elected PM and served 20 months. Corruption charges forced her out of power, but she was re-elected in 1993.

Then, when her brother Murtaza Bhutto was killed in 1996, she blamed President Farooq Leghari. He dismissed her government, and in 1996 Nawaz Sharif was elected to Prime Minister. Those corruption charges, whether true or not, ran her out of town in 1999.

We see a pattern of instability, here. Democracy, failing. Bush's ally, just another Pahlavi? Is Pakistan the next Islamic Fundamentalist State?

Nuclear weapons? Yes, Pakistan has nukes.

Terrorism is alive and well in Pakistan. Musharraf either backed this deed, or is inherently weak for not being able to control terrorism in 'Junta-tan'. Maybe bin Laden (no friend of Musharraf's) pulled this off to create instability. Can't protect your women, Musharraf? Allow us to keep them under wraps! Yep, if bin Laden is in Pakistan, that's a bit too close to those nukes...

Here's a blast from the past, from a 1993 article by Ann Louise Bardach, "Islamic Fundamentalism's War Against Women"...

"The success of fundamentalism, [according to Pakistan's Prime Minister] Bhutto [interviewed before she was reelected], has two causes. First, it springs from an authentic "search for identity in an increasingly global village where all the messages come from the West... In the absence of the Cold War, when Muslims look out they see the Christian West. It is a reaction to preserve one's-culture when other cultures have dominance."

Second, she says, it is the monster child jointly created and funded by the West and the totalitarian regimes of the region to keep the Communists at bay. "Political parties were largely banned," she says. "To keep the clerics happy, the mosques were well funded. The mosque was allowed to become a place where people could gather. The clerics became very powerful, and they started a new doctrine, where the clerics knew what was best for everybody else. "Virtually every regime in the region which has played the religious card, she says, from Iran to Saudi Arabia, has seen it backfire, leaving the regime hostage to the religious right.

In 1977, when Bhutto's father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, needed to appease the religious right, he outlawed gambling and alcohol. "Some people say that it opened the door at that time," she admits, "because, after that, General Zia came in and started Sharia [in alliance with] the Muslim Brotherhood. "The biggest catastrophe for the region, and perhaps the world, began, she says, when the C.l.A. decided to fund - to the tune of $3 billion - the most extreme right-wing Islamic groups in Afghanistan (Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Party of God) to fight the Russians.

"The Muslim Brotherhood ran the training camps," she says, which were headquartered in Peshawar, Pakistan, and which soon became the stomping grounds for the international Fundamentalist set, including Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the Hezbollah, the Sudanese strongman Hassan al-Turabi, the outlawed Egyptian party Gamaa al-lslamiyya, and "the usual suspects" from Iran. "A lot of money was funneled through the Brotherhood and they siphoned off a lot of money. Now we have all these revolutionaries - bought and trained - and nowhere to go. Where could they go after Afghanistan?"

Well, we know what happened after that...Islamic Fundamentalism, held at bay by Musharraf, looks to be in Pakistan's future.

Because...do you really expect Musharraf to survive this?

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al Quada claims responsibility...

Karachi, 27 Dec. (AKI) - (by Syed Saleem Shahzad) - A spokesperson for the al-Qaeda terrorist network has claimed responsibility for the death on Thursday of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

“We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat [the] mujahadeen,” Al-Qaeda’s commander and main spokesperson Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid told Adnkronos International (AKI) in a phone call from an unknown location, speaking in faltering English. Al-Yazid is the main al-Qaeda commander in Afghanistan.

It is believed that the decision to kill Bhutto, who is the leader of the opposition Pakistan People's Party (PPP), was made by al-Qaeda No. 2, the Egyptian doctor, Ayman al-Zawahiri in October.

Still, Musharraf is proven weak, weak...will he retaliate with purges?

Maybe in the mountainous regions, where bin Laden is hiding?