Obituary

My friend Benazir

Benazir revealed how she exchanged Pakistan’s nuclear secrets for North Korea’s missile technology during a state visit to Pyongyang when she packed the pockets of her overcoat with CDs containing critical scientific data, recalls Shyam Bhatia

  The last time I saw Benazir Bhutto, she was rallying the troops in London before her return to Pakistan, where she was hoping to make political history. I was able to exchange a few personal words with her before an exclusive interview run in this magazine’s November issue.
   Benazir and I first met at university in Oxford in the 1970s. I found her captivating, charismatic and intriguing. However, our association as young idealistic students did not always run smooth. We each had strong views on India and Pakistan and did not always see eye-to-eye.
   One particular issue on which we disagreed was over her passionate desire to persuade Oxford to award her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto an honorary degree. I led the student opposition disgusted by what we saw as his ignoble role in persecuting Sheikh Mujib and his followers who wanted to break away from Pakistan and create an independent state of Bangladesh.
   After that exchange there was tangible hostility between us for more than six months, which ended when I received an invitation to a drinks party jointly hosted by Benazir and Peter Galbraith, another fellow student and the son of former US ambassador to India John Kenneth Galbraith, to launch her career in student politics.
‘  So you have stopped speaking to me?’ Benazir inquired as I arrived at the party. ‘Pinky’ (her pet name), I replied in Urdu, ‘Who am I to ignore a Shahzadi’ (princess)? I was not sure whether she noted my sarcasm or simply chose to ignore it. It did not matter because we remained on friendly terms from then onwards.
   In more recent years I met her once or twice a year, sometimes for a cup of tea in the afternoon and at other times for lunch. On these occasions she would always greet me with the same teasing remark, ‘Shyam, I am not going to be interviewed by you because I always tell you more than I should.’ And, as usual, she did.
   These get-togethers were usually occasions to chew the cud over the latest developments in Pakistan and Islamabad’s relations with the outside world. She was always keen to understand the bigger picture, which was probably why she liked to talk to me, an Indian, to discuss these things and see my take on them.
   The most indiscreet she permitted herself to be was at a family dinner in Dubai. I was on my way back from India to London and stopped over for the occasion. Her most extraordinary revelation was how Pakistan had exported its precious nuclear secret to North Korea in exchange for Pyongyang’s missile technology.
   Benazir told me how she had shopped for an overcoat with the deepest pockets possible in which she carried several Cds containing the scientific data to construct a nuclear warhead. It was as simple as that and the Americans and other Western countries nearly went mad in trying to find out how it happened.
   Another nugget picked up over dinner amid much laughter was her memory as a 19-year-old of attending the 1972 India-Pakistan Simla summit with her father and how unsettling she found her encounter with Indira Gandhi, whose eyes followed her around the room wherever she went.
   Benazir’s presence at the summit sent out a message that she had political ambitions of her own. No wonder that after executing her father Pakistan’s military dictator, General Zia ul Haq, placed her under house arrest before sending her off into exile.
I interviewed General Zia several times for the London Observer. At all interviews I routinely asked him when he was going to let Benazir return to Pakistan.
   At our last interview Zia said, ‘Mr Bhatia, your wish has finally been granted, Benazir is being allowed to return home.’ When I asked him why, he replied with a sigh, ‘Democracy is a bitter pill we must swallow.’
Someone must have repeated this conversation to Benazir as evidence of my loyalty to her. When she did fly back to Lahore in 1987, she arranged for me to ride with her in the lead lorry that took us to Minar-e-Pakistan, where she addressed a million-strong rally, asking the adoring crowd, ‘Zia avey avey, ya Zia javey, javey?’ (Should Zia come or should Zia go?) The crowd roared back, ‘Javey, javey.’
   Months later, Zia was killed in a plane crash and Benazir became prime minister. During that time we had no contact, although I did bump into her brother Murtaza in Damascus, who told me with some bitterness in an interview for The Observer that he as the male heir of his father should be prime minister and not Benazir.
   When this interview was published I received a writ from Benazir’s mother Nusrat accusing me of defaming her family. Fortunately, the interview had been recorded and so the writ was dropped. When some years later I asked Benazir why Nusrat had reacted so badly, she replied that it was because Murtaza was her mother’s favourite child.
   I remember as if it was yesterday Benazir telling me with such sorrow that she was convinced that General Zia had personally ordered the murder of her younger brother, Shahnawaz, and that elements of the Pakistan military were behind the death of her other brother, Murtaza.
   As for herself, Benazir said, her grassroots popularity had been a thorn in the side of Zia and his successors. ‘Therefore, for a series of people I must be eliminated. The first successor (Zia) tried to eliminate me, to impose a one-party rule in the country. Now the military again wants to eliminate me because they want the MMA — the alliance of religious parties — to be the only alternative in the country.’

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