Their hearts still bleed for her

It is indeed a pity that hundreds of thousands of people sacrificed their lives, families and properties in 1947 to create Pakistan, in the hope that this nation would be a role model for an Islamic state. This hope was unfortunately dashed at its birth when power went into the hands of the feudal elite and the army. The corruption and greed of the feudal despots and the army enabled its enemies to break up this country into two-Pakistan and Bangladesh- within 25 years. Today, these very same forces have brought the country to a stage where its very survival as a nation is at stake During the Cold War Pakistan aligned with the United States which even today make and unmake politicians and governments in Pakistan.

It is an irony that Benazir, herself a scion of the feudal elite, was killed in the very same garden, Liaquat Bagh in Rawalpindi, where the country’s first Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan was killed - a victim of feudal despotism. Both, her supporters and opponents alike were stunned at the cruel manner she was killed changing overnight Pakistan’s political scenario.

I first met her in April 1996 at the late Bahraini Ruler’s Gudaibiya Guest Palace for an extensive interview which covered numerous burning issues, but was warned not to raise the issue of corruption which caused her downfall. She was prime minister first, from 1988 to 1990 and then from 1993 to 1996, and both times sacked on corruption charges ,accused of amassing an ill gotten fortune while the bulk of the population lived below the poverty line. Once during the course of a conversation she almost stopped not only talking but even breathing and became motionless when I discreetly asked her, without using the word corruption, whether she had to face all these difficulties because she failed to live up to the expectation of the people who elected her twice as prime minister. It took a while for her to recover and since then I avoided such questions.

Once out of power her party was persecuted first by Nawaz Sharif and then by General Pervez Musharraf who overthrew Nawaz Sharif’s elected government in October 1999 in a military coup. Benazir ended up in exile in Dubai where I noticed her growing disillusion in my subsequent meetings. A warm and lively conversationalist , it was apparent that she was growing frustrated as her chances of returning home began to diminish, with the US and UK abandoning democracy and rolling the red carpet for the dictator Musharraf who was determined never to let Bhutto return home fearing a popular uprising. Initially, the United States condemned the military coup and introduced numerous measures such as cutting aid and loans while Britain even expelled Pakistan from the Commonwealth of Nations.

But, then came the 9/11 events in New York and the US President George Bush’s war on terrorism when General Musharraf threw his regime’s full weight behind this campaign which Muslims consider as a campaign against Islam and Muslims. In the emerging international Washington-Tel Aviv- New Delhi axis, secular General Musharraf proved an invaluable asset in implementing the US’s agenda while his egoistic “I AM PAKISTAN” style ruthlessness won the hatred of the people. By mid 2007 his unpopularity plummeted to the lowest ebb with countrywide unrest, especially after suspending chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. The people were adamant in demanding an end to his regime.

It is a well known fact of history that dictators who have tasted power, often come out with gimmicks to cling on to power. For example, in the spring of 1965, the then dictator Ayub Khan dispatched Pakistani troops into Kashmir and precipitated the 17-Day September war with India to avoid widespread street protests, after he rigged the elections to hold on to his presidency.

Four decades later General Musharraf engineered the Lal Masjid or Red Mosque crisis in Islamabad and dispatched troops to kill hundreds of unarmed religious students including women and children, remaining inside. The massacre which won the wrath of the people was seen as an opportunity to pep up his crumbling political position by pleasing the Bush administration and divert attention from the growing opposition to his effort to stage-manage his “re-election” as president.

Benazir supported the Lal Masjid onslaught. This was exactly what the US and UK wanted - A powerful President Musharraf backed by Benazir with a democratic face. The result was a deal – a mother of all deals - between Musharraf and Benazir worked out by the US and Britain. Here, history repeated itself. In the aftermath of the military defeat in East Pakistan in 1971, the then military dictator Gen Yahya Khan who was busy with Noor Jehan’s and black beauties while his soldiers sacrificed their lives fighting, dispatched a plane to New York to bring Zulficar Ali Bhutto whose role in the break up of Pakistan was conveniently forgotten by all. Now Musharraf dashed to Abu Dhabi to meet Benazir who, though with full US and UK backing, yet didn’t want to be seen as a leader who had sold the interests of the country for personal gains. General Musharraf was aware of a plan to get rid of him while Benazir was aware what was in store for her on her return. She got the dreadful message when her returning home procession was attacked. Yet she continued her election campaign despite inadequate security until she was assassinated! Musharraf and his government stand exposed with their contradictory statements on her killing and the swiftness of erasing all evidence. Anticipating her end, Benazir had written her Last will nominating her 19 year old son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari as the new chair of PPP proving that it was the family and their feudal system which takes pride of place and not the country or the suffering masses.

Under the circumstances, whoever wins the next parliamentary elections the feudal system and the army’s role will continue to dominate the Pakistani political scene though the burning need of the hour is to change the overall system to involve the masses in the nation building task. This is no easy task as the ruling elite, unaccountable to anybody and corrupt to the core, continue to equate their own interests as the interest of the country, where more than 80 percent of the people live in poverty with a literacy rate of only around 25 percent.

(The writer is a senior Sri Lankan journalist who worked in the UAE for several years)