Description
Quick: What is the most dangerous country in the world? No
small number of the world's citizens name the U.S. given their numbers of nuclear bombs, their interventions in foreign countries, the
status as the world's only superpower.
China? Large, a nuclear power, and able to bankrupt the U.S.
by calling in its loans to us.
North Korea? Nuclear,
isolated, paranoid, and unstable.
Iran: not a bad guess, if
that republic, led by an unbalanced president who takes orders from a
bearded ayatollah is allowed to get the bomb.
Still, a case could be made for Pakistan, which is America's
ally. So why should one of their allies be considered the
world’s most dangerous state? For one thing, if
you're reading the NY Times or other noted journal about the
latest in the WikiLeaks, that country has some nuclear material
relatively unguarded that could fall into the hands of
terrorists. Another is that tens of millions of that
state's 180 million citizens—50% of whom are under
the age of 18 and a majority of whom are illiterate—are
believed to be loyal to the Taliban or other anti-Western
forces. As evidence that all is not right, a shining force
for democracy in Pakistan was assassinated while campaigning for a
third term as prime minister, a most unusual person, the first woman in
the Muslim world to be elected to the highest office.
Duane Baghman and Johnny O'Hara's "Bhutto" is a documentary that centers on Benazir
Bhutto, favored by her statesman father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto over his
eldest son, to run for the top job thereby breaking the Islamic glass
ceiling. The documentary first looks into the
history of Pakistan from 1947 when it broke away from India, then split
into two countries—East Pakistan begetting
Bangladesh.
A number of people are being interviewed such as former
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, President Asif Ali Zardari,
who is Benazir Bhutto's widower, Pervez Musharraf, a former
president accused in advance by the title character of being behind her
assassination, and assorted western journalists and Pakistani family
members.
Benezir Bhutto is compared to the Kennedys in that she came from a
wealthy family that appears to have suffered from a curse.
Her father was hanged, her kid brother was poisoned in the south of
France where he died horribly, her older brother was shot dead, and she
was herself imprisoned by evil General Zia, who ruled after a coup, for
so long in the worst of the country's jails that she
temporarily lost the power of speech. This sounds more like a
Jacobean revenge play than a Shakespearean tragedy.
For the most part the interviewees do not speak against a drab
background but filmmakers Duane Baughman and Johnny O'Hara,
working with O'Hara's script, are supported by
cinematic footage that never fails to show that every street in
Karachi, a representative large city, looks like Grand Central Station
at 5:10 p.m. on Friday. Some women wear burqas like just
about all Afghan adult women even to this day. No woman
appears so westernized as to wear nothing on her head: Benazir Bhutto
herself covers her head while her eyes are shaded by oversized
glasses. Her English is fluent, while in just one instance,
she rouses the crowd to a fury in Urdu. Otherwise she is
soft-spoken, enjoying an enthusiastic, massive following of men and
women. Still, the military are not entirely comfortable with
taking orders from a woman suggesting that a male surrogate be
appointed, but Benazir's gender appears the least of her
problems. What made her hated in some circles was that in her
first term of office she lifted the veil metaphorically, even more
important than physically, by extending education to young women and
ushering in Western-style democracy which she considered the best
revenge against the unjust hanging of her father by Zia, her military
enemy.
Had Bhutto lived and won an expected third term it would have been
impossible for Sharia law to be imposed on this still-unstable U.S.
ally. The documentary through historical footage and
interviews with apparachiks and journalists both Western and Eastern,
captures the importance of a nation that sits in a strategic area
squeezed between India and Afghanistan and the brilliance and idealism
of the title character. Let's hope that the U.S. is
not going down the same erroneous path it trod when it armed the
mujahedeen against the Soviets in Afghanistan, or now, when the country
is funneling billions.
Tags
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, bangladesh, Pervez Musharraf, asif ali zardari, documentary, free, watch, online, download, hotdocs, hotdocs.ca, festival, winner, award, karachi, bhutto, Benazir Bhutto, watch politics documentaries online, watch politics, documentaries, terrorism, wikileaks, benazir bhutto, Duane Baughman, Johnny O'Hara, sundance, sundance film festival
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