While we're (sort of) on the subject of Pakistan, Scott Ritter has an excellent article up on TruthDig with a very big fact about the Bhuttos that somehow I totally didn't know, in spite of reading a whole lot of crappy articles in the Times, Guardian, and all over the blogs after Benazir was assassinated:

...But Pakistan is no homogeneous Islamic state.  Its roots are deeply seated in tribal, familial and ethnic realities that most non-Pakistani observers are ill-equipped to comprehend.  An illustration of this can be found in the fact that Benazir Bhutto, the martyred symbol of democratic reform, sat at the head of a political party, the PPP (Pakistan Peoples Party), which was born not from Pakistani society in general but rather from the ranks of the 700,000-strong Bhutto tribe.  The Bhuttos, an ethnic Sindhi group, possess an insularity that belies the image of democratic reform embraced by Benazir Bhutto herself.  An ongoing rift within the PPP over Bhutto's successor illustrates this:  Benazir's husband, Asif Ali Zardari, together with their son, Bilawal, has claimed the leadership of the party, citing a controversial and challenged will which emerged after Benazir Bhutto's assassination.  Neither Asif Ali Zardari nor Bilawal is considered to be part of the Bhutto tribe, because Zardari is of Baluchi heritage and the son is traditionally linked to the family tree of the father.  It is not the history of corruption that surrounds Zardari or the inexperience of Bilawal (a student in the UK) that the Bhutto tribe finds objectionable but simply the fact that a political party founded by and for the Bhuttos is now in the hands of someone outside the tribe.

It's all about the tribe of the Bhuttos!

Who knew?


Qui vit sans folie n'est pas si sage qu'il croit.