The darker legacy of Benazir

  Pakistani leftwing activist and author Tariq Ali scorns the performance of Benazir’s two terms in office, 1988–90 and 1993–96. His assessment, published in the London Review of Books shortly before her assassination, is entitled ‘Daughter of the West’, taunting Benazir’s own ghosted autobiography, Daughter of the East.
   Ali starts off with the recently ‘arranged’ political marriage between Musharraf and Benazir, whom he describes as a ‘fugitive politician facing corruption charges in several countries’.
   Although he credits Benazir with courage for resisting an earlier military dictator and her father’s killer, General Zia Ul Haq, Ali pans Benazir for her lack of achievement. He accepts that in her first term she was hemmed in by the army on the one side and by the president, but concludes that by the time she was re-elected in 1993 she ‘had abandoned all idea of reform’. The beneficiaries of this benign neglect were her husband Asif Ali Zardari and party favourites who commented, ‘everybody does it all over the world.’ Tariq Ali concludes that Benazir and her husband alone accumulated some US$1.5 billion in office.
   About Benazir’s brother Murtaza Ali says that he ‘had his weaknesses, but he wasn’t corrupt and he argued in favour of the old party’s radical manifesto.’ Murtaza also detested his brother-in-law Asif Zardari and underlined his feelings by inviting him home, ostensibly for reconciliation talks, where he insulted him by shaving off half his moustache.
No surprise then that a few months later Murtaza was ambushed outside his home by 70 armed policemen, who shot him and let him bleed to death within earshot of his wife and daughter. A judicial inquiry subsequently accepted that Murtaza’s death was a case of extra-judicial killing by the police that could not have taken place without approval from the highest quarters. 
   A few years later Benazir and her husband were convicted in absentia of money laundering by a Geneva magistrate. This was followed by murky revelations of a diamond necklace purchased on Benazir’s behalf for £120,000 and the infamous Rockwood estate in the English county of Surrey that Zardari bought for millions of dollars from one of his offshore accounts.

Did a prankster cause Iran–US naval tensions?

   A maritime radio prankster may have broadcast the threat that resulted in a high-seas standoff between the US and Iran in the early days of the New Year.
   Iranian navy gunboats were on the horizon when three US battleships sailing through the Strait of Hormuz received a radio message threatening to blow them up. The message said, ‘I am coming to you. You will explode in minutes!’
   This followed after a US naval officer explained, ‘This is coalition warship. I am engaged in transit passage in accordance with international law. I maintain no harm. Over!’
   It is possible that the threat came from a nameless and faceless joker nicknamed ‘Filipino Monkey’, who has been pestering ships in the Strait for more than 20 years.
   Retired US Navy captain Rick Hoffman told Navy Times: ‘For 25 years, there’s been this mythical guy out there who, hour after hour, shouts obscenities and threats. He used to go all night long. The guy is crazy. Could it have been a spurious transmission? Absolutely.’ He added, ‘I don’t think it was the Iranians. It was not related. It was someone spoofing.’
   Navy Times was told by another source, ‘They come on and say Filipino Monkey in a strange voice. You’re standing watch on bridge and all of a sudden it comes over the radio. It’s been a joke out there for years.’ He bursts in on radio transmissions, makes odd, racist and sometimes aggressive remarks, then signs off with loud and hysteric laughter, saying: ‘Hee, hee, hee ... Filipino Monkey!’

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