Word: martyrdoms
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Pakistan will continue on, limping and damaged. But the legacy of loss, from the first father to the last mother, has taken its emotional toll. The cult of martyrdom has taken over where voices fail to be heard. In Lyari, walls are plastered with posters of local boys who died protecting Bhutto when she made her triumphant return to Karachi on Oct. 18. The question for Pakistan is how it can find life without celebrating death...
...Punjab of the traditional ruling classes roiled Pakistan. In 1977, the military government stepped in, hanging Bhutto in 1979 over controversial charges of conspiracy to murder. The country's grief turned to rage in its adolescence. The Soviet invasion of neighboring Afghanistan in 1979 sparked a jihad. Death and martyrdom became an honorable answer to oppressive power, a legacy that Pakistan has been unable to shrug...
...some "troubling questions" about Pakistan's investigation so far. At yesterday's press conference, Bhutto's husband Zadari demanded a United Nations investigation, saying "We want a [assassinated Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik] Hariri commission-style investigation... we are writing to the United Nations for an international probe into her martyrdom." According to Dawn, a local newspaper Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said that he would "consider" outside help during a phone call with British PM Gordon Brown yesterday, which many are interpreting as a "thanks, but no thanks" dismissal...
...both religious extremists like al-Qaeda and corrupt branches of the Pakistani military and intelligence services. "When you have the criminal and corrupt in the same camp it makes for dangerous bedfellows," says Arsalan Iftikhar, contributing editor to Islamica magazine. "In a sense Benazir knew she was on a martyrdom mission. She was willing to give up her life for democracy...
...Eyad Sarraj, a mental-health expert in Gaza who is campaigning for an end to the siege: "The workers laid off from the factories are desperate. They have no money, no hope. So they go to the mosque and pray to God, and some will join Hamas seeking martyrdom as the only door to God." While awaiting a shortcut to paradise, the fighters' more earthy concerns are supplied by Hamas, which gives its militants food and money to feed their families. Yazegi says that dozens of his younger former employees joined Hamas. "And all they wanted was a normal life...