I knew at the time it was a mistake to take a break from writing this column last week, but I didn’t really have any choice. As always I found myself in a haze of doubt about the season. Is Christmas, white or otherwise, just a monstrous snow-job designed to convince us that we can simultaneously serve our conflicting deities, God and Mammon? Or truly a time to celebrate spiritual rebirth, generosity and goodwill? Whichever, the usual blizzard of salutations, shopping, gift-swapping, socializing and small-talk quickly turned my brain to mush.

And I must admit I still haven’t recovered my equanimity, due to the impact of subsequent events and the storm of emotions they’ve evoked.

First, my feelings of gratitude for the largesse and hospitality with which relatives and friends have showered me and my family, thereby shaming me for my Scrooge-like misgivings and putting me hopelessly in their debt.

And then came the blow that, like the tsunami that struck on Boxing Day 2004, swept away all petty personal concerns and cast a pall over the subsequent festive frivolities.

The murder of Benazir Bhutto on Dec 27 was as shocking as it was predictable. Inevitable even, in light of her refusal to retreat behind heavy security following the massive bomb blast that killed 136 people and narrowly missed her on Oct 18, a week after her return from exile.

In fact her bravery, as great and as admirable as it was, seemed to border on recklessness, almost as if she saw her triumphal return to Pakistan as a political suicide mission. Perhaps she perceived herself as fated to fulfil her star-crossed family destiny.

The father she adored and to whose memory she obsessively devoted herself, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was ousted from his prime ministership in a 1977 coup led by General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, and hanged by the Zia regime in 1979. Her brother Shahnawaz died in dubious circumstances in France in 1985. Her other brother, Mir Murtaza, was shot outside the Bhutto family home in Karachi in 1996.

But, as British journalist Christopher Hitchens wrote in a recent article, the father that Benazir so revered as a martyr was by no means an angel. Hitchens recalled that this was the “charming and unscrupulous” man who once boasted that the people of Pakistan would eat grass before they would give up the struggle to obtain a nuclear weapon. “He was rather prescient there,” Hitchens noted, commenting that “the country now does have nukes, and millions of its inhabitants can barely feed themselves.”

Mixed-blessing

And as tragic as her assassination is in personal terms, and may prove to be politically, the daughter who’s now been reunited in death with the father she so revered also proved a mixed-blessing for people at the grassroots in Pakistan.

Her two terms as prime minister of the country were, by most accounts I’ve seen, bitterly disappointing to those who hoped she’d bring peace, democracy and prosperity to her perennially-troubled nation.

Less than two years after her election in 1988, at only 35 years of age, as the first female prime minister of a Muslim country, her government was dismissed on grounds of corruption and failure to control ethnic violence.

Her second term, from 1993 to 1996, ended amid accusations of nepotism, damage to the judicial system, suppression of the media and massive corruption, especially on the part of her husband Asif Ali Zardari. And in the light of suspicions that the al-Qaeda-Taliban axis may have been responsible for her murder, it’s appropriate to recall that she also supported the Taliban as Pakistan’s allies in its struggle with India for the territory of Kashmir.

Despite this dubious if not dismal track-record, however, the Bush administration apparently saw her as its best prospect for achieving a balance between its dictatorial “anti-terror” puppet, General Pervez Musharraf, and his increasingly powerful Islamic extremist opponents.

Whether this typical US exercise in geo-political meddling would have produced a model result, a middling success or just another disastrous muddle would have been fascinating to follow, but of course now we’ll never know.

For the moment Pakistan and its allies and enemies appear as dazed by the untimely removal of Benazir Bhutto from the already impossibly hazy Pakistani political scene as I am.

Seething snakepit

George Bush, typically, went straight into Texan avenger mode, declaring that “Those who committed this crime must be brought to justice.” Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf followed suit with “..we will not sit idle unless the terrorists have been eliminated.”

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown contributed the platitudinous play on words that “Benazir Bhutto may have been killed by terrorists, but the terrorists must not be allowed to kill democracy in Pakistan.”

China, through Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang, came up with the diplomatic cliché that “China is shocked at the killing and strongly condemns the terrorist attack.”

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh lamented that “The subcontinent has lost an outstanding leader who worked for democracy and reconciliation in her country,” and both UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and Afghan President Hamid Karzai said much the same.

Perhaps feeling similar reservations to my own concerning Ms Bhutto’s democratic credentials and achievements, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd as far as I know made no comment on her as a leader, but urged “all parties in Pakistan to act with restraint.”

Restraint, however, is one of the last qualities to hope for in the seething snakepit of Pakistani politics, and now the whole world holds its breath in anticipation of all the riots, crackdowns and backlashes sure to ensue in the wake of this latest outrage.

But Pakistan’s not on its own in its plight. It’s just one of dozens of countries around the world, from Algeria to Zimbabwe, Burma to Burrundi, Cuba to the Congo, Malawi to Malaysia, whose people are denied enlightened self-rule by potentates or political parties employing every means from patronage to raw power to rob their people of their rights and plunder their nations’ riches.

And I can’t wait to get over my New Year’s daze to join my fellow critics in another 52 weeks of exposing and excoriating such evils.