When shortly after her return from exile Benazir Bhutto narrowly escaped death in a suicide bomb attack that killed nearly150 others, something in me told me it was only a temporary near-miss. I had badly hoped she would change her mind about participating in the country’s politics, which had turned extremely violent, with General Pervez Musharraf’s government hardly succeeding in curbing the violence. But she was Benazir Bhutto, the daughter of the late Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, whose government was ousted in 1977 by General Muhammad Zia-ul Haq, a military ruler who also put the prime minister to death in 1979 for allegedly masterminding the death of a political opponent while in power. At the age of 35 Mrs Bhutto was to become the first female prime minister of Pakistan, a largely Muslim country and the first woman to hold such position in any Muslim country. She was, in spite of being a reluctant convert, a vehement adherent to the game of politics regardless of the obvious risks. Although she was twice elected prime minister (in 1988 and 1993) and on both occasions her reign was marred by controversies leading to her sack, she remained confident and resolute in her bid to return to power in the interest of her supporters, Pakistan’s commoners, the down-trodden majority, whose support never wavered. Asked by a CNN reporter barely a week to her killing if she knew the risks she was taking, Mrs Bhutto replied that she was more concerned about Pakistani children than her own safety, whom she said were as dear to her as her own children.
I met Benazir Bhutto five years ago when she visited Nigeria. I was working with the Daily Trust newspaper and we had the singular honour of interviewing her. Tadaferua Ujorha, now a deputy editor with the newspaper, and I had a remarkable discussion with her that lasted nearly an hour. She, even though had been out of power nearly seven years then, was as obstinate as ever, insisting on continuing with the political march started by her father. She told of her experience as a young woman, in whose presence her own father was executed and how she coped with the trauma, which reached its climax with her tragic death yesterday. That trauma, worsened by her husband’s incarceration after her removal from office, was to toughen her and straighten her resolve not to be cowed even in the face of death. “Before we got married my husband was just an ordinary business man, who went about his business with a carefree attitude”, she said as she quickly added that Asif Zardari’s life changed completely after their marriage, particularly due to her political leaning. Time and again he was punished for her alleged crimes and was on several occasions offered a reprieve if he agreed to persuade her to give up politics. He, like she, remained defiant and chose, instead, to suffer it all with his beloved wife. Together, they lived in exile in far away Dubai with their three children. There they lived, although hundreds of miles away from their millions of supporters, in safety and shut away from the maddening fears of attack, including the kind that wrenched life out of her. But Mrs Bhutto risked it all and returned to serve her people.
Even as she defied her adversaries never once did she believe it was going to be so tragic an end. She once said she thought it was impossible for any true Muslim to want to kill her, a woman politician. “Islam forbids the killing of a fellow Muslim and Muslims know if they kill a woman they’ll burn in hell.” That was her belief and, in fact, an erroneous assumption as her killers thought nothing of this.
No one is sure who did it, but the slain politician had repeatedly warned of threats on her life from radical groups and forces aligned to Pakistan’s government, including the country’s intelligence organisations. Following the October attack on her convoy in Karachi she criticised the government’s handling of investigation on the matter without categorically accusing Genera Musharraf of any complicity. “The sham investigation of the October massacre,” she wrote in a commentary for CNN.com, “and the attempt by the ruling party to politically capitalise on this catastrophe are discomforting, but do not suggest any direct involvement by General Pervez Mushsarraf.” More than the government’s failure to properly probe the assassination attempt, she was outraged by its refusal to accept international help in tracking down the perpetrators.
General Musharraf was, himself, a target of attack by assassins in Rawalpindi, where Mrs Bhutto was shot dead. Her plan to take her Pakistan People’s Party campaign train to the troubled garrison city was forced to be postponed by General Musharraf, citing security reasons. As she stood before her teeming supporters yesterday, with death a few moments away from her, perhaps betraying premonition she warned that she knew all was not well. “I put my life in danger and came here because I feel this country is in danger. People are worried. We will bring the country out of this crisis,” she said with a sense of conviction. No one could discourage her, yet no one could stop the assassins, as shortly afterwards she was felled by their weapon.
Today not only Pakistanis mourn her death, but also all lovers of democracy and peace worldwide, and particularly all those who believe women are equally at liberty to aspire to and win any political position.
While it will be too hasty and even counterproductive to blame or even suggest the government of General Pervez Mussharraf was directly involved in her assassination, there’s no denying that relations between them had been anything but cordial since her return. She returned to the country only after they had agreed a deal, widely believed to have been brokered and or encouraged by the US and Britain, to form a power-sharing government in which the two would lead the country. General Musharraf was to become the president and she the prime minister. As a gesture the general, who had faced increased uprising and criticisms from various interests in his country, granted her amnesty on all the corruption allegations levelled against her, paving the way for her safe home coming, at least.
Soon she joined forces with other opposition stalwarts making life miserable for the belligerent military ruler who’s hell-bent on clinging on to power. She was in the vanguard of calls on him to quit, which he found not only uncomfortable but equally very disturbing and, maybe, treacherous. Barely three weeks after the attempt on her life in Karachi, his government’s bid to clip her wings assumed a new dimension when the police, acting on orders from above, threw barbed wire around her house to stop her from attending anti-government rallies. She had been extremely outspoken, condemning the emergency rule imposed by the general. Thousands of her supporters were rounded up by security forces to forestall violent reactions from them. This cat and mouse relationship continued as she was put under house arrest twice in one week. But she remained her real self and refused to be browbeaten. She even went the extra-mile to, at one time, consider boycotting the January polls and, at another time, seriously ponder forging an alliance with the opposition, including former Prime Minister Nawaz Sherif’s party. Either of these posed a real threat to General Musharraf.
Now that Benazir Bhutto is out of the way, does it mean any relief for the military general who, incidentally, seized power from Nawaz Sherif the same year she went on exile? Methinks not. Reasons are Mrs Bhutto’s exit will create a very big leadership vacuum in her party, considered the largest political party that identifies with the grassroots in Pakistan. More so, her supporters believe the government has a hand in her death. At the moment they have gone on rampage and the violence has already claimed dozens of lives. There’s a chance that death toll will massively increase as the crisis escalates and spreads to other parts. Peshawar, Karachi, Lahore and Multan etc are notably flashpoint areas. It is only hoped it won’t degenerate to a civil conflict in which there will be complete loss of control by General Musharraf’s government, which at the moment is merely struggling to contain the violence. If it does, analysts argue that it will tear the entire fabric of the nation apart. Pakistan, which remains the biggest loser in the midst of all this, could very well be on the brink of collapse. Clearly, there’s nothing more dangerous than having a nuclear-armed Pakistan all out at war against itself, especially in a region with a long history of precariousness.
One final thing that could serve as a fuel to the whole crisis is former Prime Minister Sherif’s decision to boycott the polls. If he makes good his promise then General Musharraf will be left all on his own, battling for credibility for a lame-duck government that can’t even serve as Washington’s proxy in fighting al-Qaeda in their stronghold.
Lastly, as Mrs Benazir Bhutto is laid to rest in her home village in Sindh, Rawalpindi’s Liaquat Bagh Park will go down in history as the place where two former prime ministers of the country were assassinated. It was at this same location, named after him, that Pakistan’s first Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan was slain in 1951. And 56 years later history repeated itself with the killing of the country’s first female prime minister.
She will sadly be missed. Adieu.
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