[DAWN] EVERYONE in Pakistain remembers the feverish, frantic moments when they heard the news of Benazir Bhutto... 11th Prime Minister of Pakistain in two non-consecutive terms from 1988 until 1990 and 1993 until 1996. She was the daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, founder of the Pakistain People's Party, who was murdered at the instigation of General Ayub Khan. She was murdered in her turn by person or persons unknown while campaigning in late 2007. Suspects include, to note just a few, Baitullah Mehsud, General Pervez Musharraf, the ISI, al-Qaeda in Pakistain, and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, who shows remarkably little curiosity about who done her in...
's liquidation seven years ago. The intersection of national tragedy with personal reality -- where one was, what one was doing -- was hence etched into the collective and individual memory, a marker of what happened before and a question of what would come after.
But while the parade of national catastrophe has continued since that December of 2007, presenting a surfeit of tragic landmarks with which to calibrate the country's history, very little truth has emerged regarding what actually happened on that particular day and to that particular woman. What did emerge were a number of conspiracy theories many of which have still not been put to rest.