Global News Journal
Beyond the World news headlines
from Pakistan: Now or Never?:
Dreams from my father: South Asia’s political dynasties
"Whatever the result, this meeting will be a turning point in Pakistan's history," Pakistan President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto told his daughter Benazir as he prepared for a summit meeting with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1972 in the Indian hill resort of Simla after his country's defeat by India in the 1971 war. "I want you to witness it first hand."
If there is a slightly surreal quality to President Asif Ali Zardari's controversial state visit to Britain - where he is expected to launch the political career of Oxford graduate Bilawal Bhutto at a rally for British Pakistanis in Birmingham on Saturday - it is perhaps no more surreal than taking your daughter, herself then a student at Harvard, to witness negotiations with India after a crushing military defeat.
Family dynasties are a tradition in South Asia. Indira Gandhi, the victor of the 1971 war which led to the creation of Bangladesh, then East Pakistan, had learned about international relations from her father, India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Now her grandson, Rahul Gandhi, is being groomed as a future prime minister while his mother Sonia Gandhi keeps a tight grip from behind-the-scenes on the Congress Party government led by her appointed prime minister Manmohan Singh.
In both countries, the argument has been that the family name is strong enough to win votes, particularly among the millions of rural poor, strong enough to offer a promise of stability, and strong enough to be worth fighting to preserve across generations even in the face of domestic criticism.
from Pakistan: Now or Never?:
One year on, same questions swirl around Bhutto’s murder
The anniversary of Benazir Bhutto's assassination has reminded everyone just how much we still don't know about her killing in a suicide gun and bomb attack in Rawalpindi on Dec. 27, 2007. 
The same questions that transfixed the shocked country in the days after her death, such as why was the crime scene hosed down so quickly, was she killed when the blast smashed her head into the lever on her vehicle's escape hatch or by a bullet, why was no autopsy performed, are again being raised.
Investigations by the previous government and the U.S. CIA accused an al Qaeda-linked militant, Baitullah Mehsud, of killing Bhutto, a staunch supporter of the U.S.-led campaign against Islamist militancy.
That would seem logical enough but, as we've seen with the Mumbai attacks, any militant attack on or linked to Pakistan seems to raise questions about possible links to old allies in the powerful intelligence services.
The News newspaper published a report citing unidentified people privy to the investigations as saying unravelling the mystery could led to "startling revelations ... with serious political implications".
Irfan Husain, writing in Dawn, said Bhutto was unacceptable to both the military establishment and the militants, though for different reasons.
"For the military establishment, she was simply unacceptable because she was a Bhutto and a Sindhi ... the jihadis and their sponsors did not want to face a popular leader who was against everything they stood for," Husain said.
"Benazir Bhutto understood that this was a war to the end, and no negotiated settlement was possible with a foe that wanted to impose its stone-age views on the rest of us."
Not surprisingly, the anniversary of Bhutto's murder has also raised a lot of "what if" and "what next" questions.
Veteran journalist Rahimullah Yusufzai believes Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) would not have won the general election without the sympathy vote her murder generated.
Instead, Yusufzai says in a column in the News the election would have brought a balance of power between the PPP and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif's party, which would have been a better arrangement for the country.
Of course, Bhutto's death also catapulted her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, into power and the presidency after former army chief Pervez Musharraf stepped down in August.
Journalist Shaheen Sehbai wrote a provocative piece in the News newspaper entitled "Asif Zardari given enough rope to hang imself" looking at how the PPP has fared and how long Zardari and his government would remain in power.
He says "the Zardari group" has taken over Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party "outmanoeuvring the others through opportunities created by circumstances followed up cleverly by a web of deceit, chicanery and in some specific cases simple lies and cheating".
He doesn't think the Zaradri-led set up will last long.
"How and on what issue the party cracks up is moot, but pressure from the opposition, a wink from the right quarters and one major blunder by Zardari is all it will take."
A former journalist and Zardari loyalist, Aniq Zafar, published a rebuttal in the same newspaper the next day denouncing what he said was an unwarranted attack on Zardari and adding: "The Zardari is nothing but the Benazir Bhutto group."
Bhutto's old friend, Mark Siegel, told the Daily Times he disregarded the "speculations" over Bhutto's death, which he said was obviously an attempt to create instability.
On her legacy, Siegel said: "She was the voice of modern Islam; she was a symbol of what a Muslim woman can accomplish; she was a modern force, she was committed to technologically moving the country to the 21st century; she was committed to human rights, student unions, labour unions, electrification of villages; these were the steps towards modern Pakistan. Her legacy would be a moderate tolerant Pakistan."
