asianaffairs-Nov 2007

Editorial

Pakistan: In the lap of gods

  It takes a brave human being to take part in Pakistani politics. A country once dubbed the 'land of the pure' by its creators has now become a byword for extremist jihadi culture and a killing ground for foreigners and locals alike.
   This is also a state that was recently dubbed by Newsweek magazine as the most dangerous country in the world and a safe haven for terrorists. 'Unlike countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq, Pakistan has everything al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden could ask for: political instability, a trusted network of radical Islamists, an abundance of angry anti-Western recruits, secluded training areas and security services that don't always do what they're supposed to do,' the magazine explains in a recent issue.
   The suicide bomb attack in Karachi on Benazir Bhutto's welcome home procession underlines the Newsweek analysis. Bhutto was in the leading bus of a convoy on its way to the mausoleum of Pakistan's founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah.
   She herself was unhurt but some 150 innocent supporters were killed and scores of others wounded. A close Bhutto relative was heard to comment, 'Our family is cursed. All the Bhuttos who get involved end up dead  Benazir's father, both her brothers.'
   In her exclusive interview published in this month's Asian Affairs, Benazir does not  wisely perhaps  touch on the dangers to her personal security. In the public perception most of these dangers are connected to al-Qaeda style fanatics determined to challenge the liberal, pro-West to leaning woman who threatens their grand design for Pakistan.
   Yet there is a greater danger lurking in the background that no one, including Benazir, is prepared to discuss in public. It comes from the Pakistani military machine responsible for the execution of her father and the subsequent murder of her two brothers Shahnawaz and Murtaza.
Bhutto senior and his ideas of popular democracy threatened the military's decades-long stranglehold on Pakistani politics. As for the brothers, the shadowy generals in charge of the army decided they were too friendly to India. Shahnawaz, the younger brother, was poisoned in France, where he lived in exile; and Murtaza was shot dead in Karachi.
   So what motivated this daughter of an executed father and sister of two murdered brothers, to return home to the hell fires raging in Pakistan?
   Benazir is the eldest child and only daughter of former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his Iranian-born wife Nusrat. Twice elected prime minister of Pakistan in her own right, and the first woman to head a post-colonial Muslim state, she was born in Karachi in 1953 and schooled locally before graduating from Harvard and Oxford universities.
   After her father was overthrown in a military coup and subsequently hanged on the orders of the country's dictator, General Ziaul Haq, Benazir was placed under house arrest. Under pressure from the Americans, Zia agreed to release her, commenting in a widely quoted interview at the time, 'Democracy is a bitter pill we have to swallow.'
   Twice elected prime minister and twice deposed by successive presidents, Benazir chose self-imposed exile from her country after her democratic rival, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, was removed from office in the latest of Pakistan's interminable military coups.
Although her husband was a hostage back home in Pakistan, she herself was free to look after her ailing mother and bring up her children away from the pressures and dangers of Pakistan. From Dubai she also launched a fierce defence of the never-proven charges of corruption levelled against her.
   Many of her friends and admirers are puzzled by her decision to return to Pakistan. Personal pride undoubtedly played a part, but the US government also played a key role in engineering her comeback.
In Washington the consensus seems to be that only an elected politician of Bhutto's political standing can extend the support and legitimacy that President Musharraf needs to combat the Islamic terrorists mushrooming all over the country.
   Whether their hopes will bear fruit depends very much on if Benazir herself can outwit her enemies and physically survive. Benazir herself has spoken movingly to Asian Affairs about the need for a smooth transition to democracy 'through free and fair elections' and a government in place 'that has the mandate of the people'.
   How and if she succeeds remains to be seen. At least she has gone home and into battle with her eyes wide open and an appreciation of the risks in front of her. The rest, as they say, lies in the laps of the gods.

                          
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