MicroPakistan

She bought fruit in a dusty bazaar, impressed me with her insights: two weeks later, she was dead

Jason Burke
Sunday December 30, 2007
The Observer

Benazir Bhutto slipped off the white headscarf she always wore in public and sank back in the rear seat of her armoured police Land Cruiser. On one side of her sat Farhatullah Babar, her long-time aide. I sat on the other, notebook on my knee. After a rally near the dusty frontier city of Peshawar, the motorcade was heading for the capital, Islamabad.Bhutto did not stop talking during the three-hour journey - except once. As we drove through the crowded bazaar of a small town called Pabbi, she suddenly said she wanted to buy oranges and, stopping the vehicle, stepped down into the chaos of the market. Five minutes later, a crate of fruit sat beside her designer handbag on the seat, and crowds of bemused Pashtun tribesmen waved us on our way. Two weeks later, to the day, she was dead. Continue reading ‘My long journey with a vulnerable but brave charmer’

[Here’s a piece on Gen Kiani, the man who will replace Musharrf when he quits the army. He is already a very important man and many eyes have turned to him to see what is in store for Pakistan. The following article gives us a little insight into the man.]

By Laura King
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

November 15, 2007

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN — While Gen. Pervez Musharraf was preparing this month to issue a sweeping emergency decree, his No. 2 in the military was nowhere to be seen in the corridors of power.

Instead, Gen. Ashfaq Kiani was far afield, visiting Pakistani troops engaged in a difficult and demoralizing struggle with Islamic insurgents in the jagged hills along the Afghan border.

In Kiani, Musharraf’s heir apparent as head of the Pakistani military, Western military officials see a competent soldier who has little desire to involve himself in affairs of state — something of a refreshing antidote, in their view, to an army chief like Musharraf, who led a coup in 1999 and is now deeply entangled in the repercussions of his emergency decree.

Kiani, 55, was promoted last month to full general and vice chief of the army staff, positioning him to replace Musharraf if and when the president quits the army as he has promised.

Tall and taciturn, a chain smoker through his adult life, Kiani rose through the ranks from a humble background — unusual in an army whose senior officers are mostly the sons of the military aristocracy. Continue reading ‘General Kiani - Pakistan military’s No. 2 seen as poker-faced, apolitical figure By Laura King’