By NB

Remember this yellowed-out, fossilized document?


Well, its back from the dead and was reprinted today in a huge ad at the bottom of page 16 of the Daily Jang. It also appeared in the Nation yesterday and the News today. The PML-Q is hoping that people have forgotten that everyone originally thought it was a forgery. If your wondering when it first appeared, well this is what the New York Times had to say about Benazir’s dead sea scroll, on the 18th of October in 1990, just over 17 years ago.


“This week, an adviser to Nawaz Sharif, president of the Islamic Democratic Alliance and the leading candidate for Prime Minister if Ms. Bhutto’s party is defeated, circulated a letter purporting to be written by Ms. Bhutto to Peter Galbraith. Mr. Galbraith, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff, is a friend of Ms. Bhutto’s from college days at Harvard.

The letter, however, is so patently a forgery that it has made the Islamic Democratic Alliance look foolish.

Apart from the inexplicably formal salutation, ”Dear Peter Galbraith,” the letter misspells as Solarzs the name of Representative Stephen J. Solarz, the chairman of the House subcommittee on Asian affairs, It asks Mr. Galbraith to ”please use your influence on V. P. Singh the Indian Prime Minister, to engage the Pakistan Army on the borders, so that they do not impede my way.”


As the NY Times points out, the salutation is bizarre when you consider that BB and Peter Galbraith are actually old friends. They first met in 1962 when Galbraith’s father was on a diplomatic visit to Lahore, and then at Harvard where they both studied (source).

I have identified some of the prevalent themes in the letter, some bits are perhaps more true than others:

1. I love you America and Peter Galbraith, because
A) I owe you (and not Pakistan) so much,
B) you have a personal interest in me and my family, as opposed to Pakistan and it’s people.

2. I am an evil biatch, and I want economic and military aid to Pakistan frozen and disrupted, so that “normal life in Pakistan comes to stand still”, and so that the Army is compelled to get up off me, and let a player play.

3. Don’t sell us F-16s, because I hate the Army, and I am a firm believer that Pakistan’s territorial integrity can go f*** itself.
4. Oh America, please persuade the Indians to invade Pakistan, so I can return to power. I hate Pakistan, I long only for the chatpatta deliciousness of power.

5. I love Rajiv Gandhi and other Indian Hindu male leaders.