[mukto-mona] Benazir was never destined for an easy or uneventful life

SAN-Feature Service

SOUTH ASIAN NEWS-FEATURE SERVICE

December 28,2007

 

Benazir was never destined for an easy or uneventful life

 

By Jason Burke

 

After the execution of her father, she was among the first women elected to lead a major Muslim nation

 

SAN-Feature Service : The Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, who has been killed, aged 54, in a bomb attack at a political rally in Rawalpindi - the northern town where she had once gone to school - died as she had lived, plunged deep in the chaotic political life of Pakistan, a victim, as well as in part a culprit, of its chronic instability. She was back in the country after spending more than eight years in exile to avoid corruption charges.

 

She was born in the southern port of Karachi, the daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, an ambitious minor landowner in the province of Sindh who founded one of Pakistan's two major political parties and went on to become the country's prime minister. His daughter was never destined for an easy or uneventful life. One of her abiding memories, described in her memoirs, Daughter of the East, was saying goodbye to her father in a prison cell hours before his execution in 1979 by the military dictator Zia ul-Haq. Subsequently, Ms Bhutto herself spent long periods under house arrest or in solitary confinement before her exile.

 

Yet much of her youth was happy. Educated at elite English-language Pakistani schools, several run by nuns, she lived the life of an indulged and adored wealthy child and teenager. Like many of her social class, she was sent overseas for her further education. From 1969 to 1973 she attended Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and then Harvard University, where she obtained a degree in comparative government before, from 1973 to 1977, studying philosophy, politics and economics at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where as a natural speaker, she was elected president of the Oxford Union. Those who spent time with her over the years became used to her lengthy, eloquent and sometimes well-informed monologues. Ms Bhutto was also known for driving around Oxford in an open-top sports car.

 

But the innocent days of youthful political activism did not last long. Her father was dismissed as prime minister in 1975, sentenced to death two years later and hanged by Zia despite international outrage on April 4 1979. A year later, Ms Bhutto's brother Shahnawaz died in suspicious circumstances in the south of France.

 

After a long period under house arrest in Pakistan, she managed to leave for Britain, basing herself in a flat at the Barbican in the City of London. In exile, she took on the leadership of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), the party her father had founded, and on December 18 1987 married, in an arranged match that surprised many, another young southern Pakistani aristocrat, Asif Ali Zardari, who had a reputation of being something of a playboy. They went on to have three children: Bilawal, Bakhtwar, and Aseefa.

 

When Zia was killed in a plane crash in 1988, the way was open for a return to democratic rule in Pakistan. Ms Bhutto, still only 35, returned to her homeland to lead the PPP to victory in elections. Around the world she was feted as young, charismatic, moderate and one of the first democratically-elected woman leaders of a major Muslim nation. Her perfectEnglish, her undoubted good looks and her charm helped too. People Magazine included her in its list of the 50 most beautiful people in the world.

 

But celebrations were short-lived. Political opponents and elements within Islamist parties and the military worked hard to destabilise her inexperienced administration, and within two years, her first government had been dismissed amid allegations of corruption and incompetence. She had had little time to enact any of her campaign promises of social, economic and political reform. Though the accusations did not necessarily involve Ms Bhutto personally, her husband earned the nickname Mr Ten Percent. Zardari denied all allegations against him.

 

Three years later, Ms Bhutto's PPP was returned to power again - with the same opposition, the same manipulation, and the same results.

 

In 1996, the then president once again dismissed her administration, again citing allegations of corruption and gross incompetence. Ms Bhutto's opponents spent millions investigating her business affairs, one mystery in particular - that of the exact ownership of a large manor house in southern England, purchased for millions of pounds to which crates of Ms Bhutto family heirlooms were shipped.

 

Controversy also focused on the exact role of the Ms Bhutto government in the formation and success of the Taliban movement in Afghanistan, which formed in 1994 and took Kabul in 1996, a few days after the dismissal of Ms Bhutto's second administration. She maintained that no military or logistic assistance was offered to the movement, though there was continual "political engagement". This, she said in one of her last interviews, was "logical and reasonable" as it was important to try and moderate the movement and use it to stabilise Afghanistan.

 

Out of power from 1996, Ms Bhutto was vulnerable to moves to convict her on the outstanding corruption charges. A conviction in 1999 for failing to appear in court was later overturned after audiotapes revealed heavy political pressure placed on the principal judge by top aides of then prime minister Nawaz Sharif. Increasingly isolated, she left Pakistan in 1999 to live in Dubai and London. The military coup that autumn made any immediatereturn difficult. General Pervez Musharraf, who took charge, made little secret of his contempt for the civilian politicians whom he believed had nearly ruined Pakistan. However, the PPP organisation remained intact with a strong power base in its heartland of the southern rural Sindh province along with more rural parts of the Punjab where the Ms Bhutto family name lost little of its prestige.

 

During her years outside Pakistan, Ms Bhutto lived with her three children in Dubai, where she was joined by her husband after he was freed in 2004. She gave frequent interviews, continued to organise the PPP and was a regular visitor to western capitals, delivering lectures at universities and meeting government officials. Relations with the press were carefully maintained, with large sums devoted to a major lobbying effort in Washington and the hire of a top-ranking public relations firm. Journalists who referred to the outstanding corruption allegations against her would receive polite emails reminding them that the charges had never been proven and that they were politically motivated.

 

The political climate began to change during 2007 as Musharraf made a series of major political errors, rapidly losing support after clumsy confrontations with the judiciary. A consummate political operator to the last, Ms Bhutto saw a chance to make a glorious return to Pakistan and win power once again. Negotiations with the president and head of the armedforces lasted through the summer, blessed by Washington and London. A deal was done that saw Ms Bhutto's members of the national assembly effectively acquiesce to Musharraf's re-election as president in return for an amnesty preserving her and much of her entourage from investigation for past misdeeds. However, her triumphal return was marred by the suicide bombing that narrowly missed her and killed scores of her supporters in Karachi onOctober 18.

 

Following the attack, Ms Bhutto, who was convinced that a shadowy cabal of retired army officers and Islamic militant sympathisers was behind the strike, told close associates that the deal with Musharraf was off. Winning power at the elections to be held next month was all the more vital. Campaigning with customary verve and energy, inveighing continually against the failure to provide her with sufficient security, she started touring the country two weeks ago. One aim was to reacquaint herself with the people of Pakistan after her long exile. But her performances, hectoring local workers not to allow the government to rig the poll, calling for an end to militancy, and invoking the legacy of her late father, were vintage Ms Bhutto. Her husband, son and two daughters survive her. –SAN-Feature Service Courtesy : The Guardian  

 

 

 

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