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DECEMBER 1999, pages 22, 23 Special Report An Evening With Benazir Bhutto
Former Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto, who is now in exile abroad, shared her thoughts with a small group that included this writer in a Virginia suburb of Washington, DC on Sept. 26. It was only two weeks before the Oct. 12 military takeover that removed her life-long political rival, Mian Nawaz Sharif, from his position as democratically elected prime minister of Pakistan. Her conversation ranged from intimate details about her family affairs, and the tragic deaths of her father and only two brothers, and Pakistan’s relations with the United States. Ironically, since she has twice been removed from office herself by the army, her animated talk kept returning to a search for ways to remove her arch rival, Sharif, from office. She vigorously expressed her opinion that “there should be a change of government in Pakistan by the end of the year,” a matter that was soon to be taken out of civilian hands by Pakistan’s military. The following are some of the topics she discussed with observers in the U.S. national capital.
Ms. Bhutto has a remarkable memory and possesses a talent for remembering scores of dates and hundreds of names of the notables and not-so-notables who have touched her life in one way or the other. In all of the tragedies, political and personal, visited upon herself and her family, she saw the hand of “the coterie of Ziaists,” followers of the late General Zia ul-Haq, who deposed her father, Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, in 1978, and ordered his subsequent execution. (After Zia’s death in the explosion of his airplane, Benazir Bhutto was elected to her first term as prime minister.) In her words: “My father, Mir Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, ‘Shaheed’ [martyr], was sent to the gallows for no crime of his but because he was a political giant who stood in the way of every dwarf like Zia... “These cowards have tried to do away with all the Bhutto progeny. My one brother was found dead in mysterious circumstances, poisoned, in Paris. My other brother was assassinated in broad daylight in Karachi. My mother, who received a severe blow on her head at the hands of the police, continues to suffer from excruciating pain and loss of memory. “Attempts have been made on my own life. My husband lingers in jail on trumped-up charges. Out of the 12 years of my married life, my husband has been jailed for five. My children have grown up deprived of the warmth, love and affection of their father.” Benazir Bhutto recalled in meticulous detail the manner in which her brother, Murtaza Bhutto, was shot dead outside the Bhutto residence in Karachi by his bodyguard, the police and agents of the Inter-services Intelligence (ISI), and she declared that the blame was placed on her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, with not a “shred of evidence to support the charge.” She added: “Murtaza’s wife, Ginwa, a foreigner, has been illegally given the citizenship of Pakistan, and asked to file a police report against Zardari...Now they have come after me and have obtained judgments from the courts on charges of corruption...They are out to obliterate the name of Bhutto from the annals of Pakistan. But that shall not be, insha’Allah, as long as the people of Pakistan are with me.”
Continuing, Ms. Bhutto said: “I have twice been inducted into office as the elected prime minister of Pakistan, and twice I have been prematurely removed from office through extra-legal means and illegal machinations of the Ziaist elements. Pseudo-technocrats with questionable credentials and no loyalties to Pakistan were brought in from abroad to replace a democratically elected government.” She charged that military officers like Maj. Gen. Shujaat, operating within the shadows of the ISI and the MI (military intelligence), audaciously asked her to resign, and approached members of the National Assembly to defeat her budget bill and cause her administration to fall. Even the commander-in-chief appeared to be helpless in the face of such maneuverings, she asserted. “These were not the only monkeys on my back,” Bhutto continued. “I had to deal with the monster that Zia had created through the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, which rested all authority with the president to dissolve the Assembly and/or dismiss the prime minister at will.” Dealing with these issues, she explained, took away valuable time which could have been spent on nation-building activities. “By my second administration, when I thought I had taken care of the constitutional impediments, my own nominee, President Farooq Leghari, went behind my back and courted the same old Ziaist forces that included Mian Nawaz Sharif to force me out of office long before my political term was over... “Shahid Javed Burki was brought in to set the economic house in order,” she continued. “The mess he left behind is too well known to everyone...I had raised the revenues by 60 percent and now it is back down to 30 percent.”
Benazir Bhutto calls for “soft borders” in the whole of South Asia, allowing for easy trade, commerce and travel, comparable to the relationship between the United States and Canada. She believes such interaction would lead to a better understanding between the peoples of the subcontinent, and a lessening of tensions. In answer to a question, she denied rumors that she had passed any names of suspected activists for Sikh independence from India to the government of India. Responding to another question implying inordinate U.S. governmental influence on Pakistan, she said that while she was prime minister, the U.S. government had approached her on Pakistan’s relations with India, the nuclear issue and the Taliban. “Nothing beyond that,” she insisted. Ironically, however, while she was visiting the U.S. national capital this fall, then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s brother, Shabaz Sharif, also was visiting Washington, presumably to alert the Clinton administration to the possibility of a military coup attempt in Pakistan. Other Pakistani visitors to the U.S. national capital during the same period included Imran Khan, leader of another Pakistani opposition party, former President Farooq Leghari, and, more interestingly, the ISI chief, Gen. Ziauddin. In the midst of this flurry of competing Pakistani visitors, the U.S. Department of State issued an unusual statement opposing any extra-constitutional attempts to change an elected government in Pakistan. Separately, the U.S. also cautioned Nawaz Sharif against use of coercive force to silence or curb democratic rights of people and political parties in the country.
When asked to comment on stories making the rounds in Washington diplomatic circles that something seemed to be in the offing on the Kashmir issue, Benazir Bhutto charged that then-Prime Minister Sharif had indicated to President Bill Clinton that Sharif was willing to settle on the Line of Control (LOC) through Kashmir as a permanent border, and that Clinton in turn had expressed the hope the destabilizing Kashmir dispute could be resolved by the time he finished his term of office 16 months later. In the ensuing discussion with Ms. Bhutto it was stated by other participants that India has been under pressure, since the Kargil episode, to consider the option of allowing an independent status for the Kashmir Valley in return for generous assistance from the U.S. This line of thinking seems to have arisen in light of the stand that the United States has taken on East Timor, and following the decisive U.S. involvement to end the crisis in Kosovo. Elections in India appear to have delayed further discussion on the subject, however. Participants in the discussion concluded that the coming months would show how much weight the Clinton administration is willing to throw into helping to resolve the Kashmir dispute. Feelers already have been sent out to both India and Pakistan to clear the air in the subcontinent so that President Clinton is able to undertake his promised visit to South Asia.
“If the people of Pakistan want me back in office, it will be my proud privilege and honor to serve my country again,” observed Benazir Bhutto. However, she admitted that work needed to be done to help bring about a “ground swell” again. In her opinion, the Grand Alliance of the opposition parties that had launched a national campaign to oust Sharif was a good instrument to affect change.
After more discussion of the question, now moot, of how to remove the Nawaz Sharif administration from office, Bhutto said her long-range objective is to work toward rebuilding support all over the country for her own People’s Party and to neutralize elements that were instrumental in toppling elected governments. She agreed that democratic institutions in the country had been destroyed and elections have become “a sham.” She also agreed that what is badly missing in Pakistan today is credibility in its leadership. “Accountability should be universal and not selective,” she declared.
She disclosed that she has moved her children from the United Arab Emirates, where they were enrolled in school, to the United Kingdom. Her reasoning was that her court case was scheduled for consideration in October in Pakistan, and she might have to issue statements in her defense. Since politicking is not favored in the UAE, she chose the U.K. over the U.S. because Pakistan and England do not have an extradition treaty, while such an extradition agreement does exist between Pakistan and the United States. Prof. M.M. Ali is a consultant and a fellow with the Center for Planning and Public Policy based in the Washington, DC area. |
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