Bhutto blames West for backing Army in Pak

Bhutto has said that West's support for military leader Pervez Musharraf has made the country a 'seedbed of terrorism'.

Squarely blaming the West for backing Army regimes in Pakistan, former Premier Benazir Bhutto has said that its support for military leader Pervez Musharraf has made the country a "seedbed of terrorism."

HT Image

"The West, by supporting the suppression of the democratic aspirations of Pakistanis, has enabled the dictatorship to permeate the message that might is right among a new generation of Muslim youth," Bhutto wrote in an article entitled 'The Price of Dictatorship' in The Guardian daily on Wednesday.

She said President Musharraf, also the Army chief, "has played the West like a fiddle," dispensing occasional support in the war on terror to keep America and Britain "off his back as he proceeded to arrest and exile opposition leaders, decimate political parties, pressure the press and set back human and women's rights by a generation."

"His regime, claiming sections of the frontier are ungovernable, has relinquished responsibility to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

During both of my tenures as prime minister, my government enforced the writ of the state there through the civil administration and paramilitary troops."

"The Musharraf dictatorship doles out ostensible support in the war on terror to keep it in the good graces of Washington, while it presides over a society that fuels and empowers militants at the expense of moderates," she said, adding the West's support for the military leader has made the country a "seedbed of terrorism".