Regional rivalry in Pakistan
The death of Bhutto, a native of Sindh province, has heightened hostility toward Punjab, the country's center of power.
HYDERABAD, PAKISTAN — On the day Benazir Bhutto died, Yousef Leghari watched his native Sindh province erupt.
For five days, people vented their rage by firing weapons, and setting fire to vehicles and buildings. Bhutto was Sindh's native daughter, and she had been assassinated. But not just anywhere.
The popular opposition leader had been killed in Punjab province, Pakistan's locus of government and military power, and a source of envy in Sindh and other minority provinces.
Along with the tragedy, Leghari now sees opportunity. He and other local politicians have long wanted Sindh to secede from Pakistan, but separatist talk had gained scant support among voters.
At Bhutto's funeral, thousands of angry mourners took to the streets.
"We hate Pakistan," they chanted. "We don't want to be part of Pakistan!"
Said Leghari, "People are waking up. It's time to act."
Bhutto's death has heightened bitter regional rivalries in this Muslim nation of 165 million. The fragile federation, founded in 1947, encompasses five major ethnic groups now facing growing social and economic divides.
Over the years, successive governments have spent billions of dollars on a strong military to hold the nuclear-armed nation together. Yet dysfunction prevails.
Pakistan's three minority provinces -- Sindh, Baluchistan and North-West Frontier Province -- have long contended that Punjab, the most populous province, dominates the federal bureaucracy and gets a disproportionate share of resources.
Pakistan, or "land of the pure," should be renamed Punjab, for all its bias, Leghari and others believe. They say trouble looms unless other provinces win more power in elections scheduled for Feb. 18.
Punjab, with about as many residents as the rest of Pakistan combined, historically has held a majority of seats in the National Assembly, the lower house of the parliament.
The acrimony is often violent. President Pervez Musharraf moved troops into Sindh to quell unrest after Bhutto's death. His military is already fighting a separatist rebellion in Baluchistan and has lost ground to tribal and religious militants operating in the rugged mountains of North-West Frontier Province and tribal areas near Afghanistan.
In Baluchistan, Pakistan's largest and poorest province, where battles have been waged sporadically for years, fighting erupted again in 2006 when government security forces killed Nawab Akbar Bugti, a 79-year-old nationalist leader who had led the area's struggle for political autonomy.
