The story of Benazir Bhutto is dramatic enough on paper but becomes almost
fantastic in person. Her pampered-princess start in life, raised at her
father’s knee in the ancestral estate on heady tales of the Bhutto family’s
political dynasty; her education at Harvard and Oxford, where she was
president of the Oxford Union; her heartbreaking return to Pakistan when she
was unable to save her beloved father – despite intense international
pressure – from being hanged in 1979 by General Zia’s military dictatorship,
whose coup had toppled Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s democratic government. Her
subsequent years of solitary confinement, as the new leader of the Pakistan
People’s Party (the mantle passed on to her by Bhutto Sr, who founded the
socialist party in 1967), in the squalid, inhumane conditions she had last
seen her father calmly endure; the isolation of house arrest with virtually
no visits or phone calls; her escape to Britain in 1984, campaigning in
exile against the injustices of the Zia regime, and triumphant return to
Pakistan two years later, where she was greeted by a staggering one million
supporters and elected prime minister at the age of 35, in 1988, the
youngest person and first woman to hold that position in any modern Muslim
nation.
Within two years, her government was controversially dismissed by the
military-backed president and an election called, in which the PPP (in a
democratic alliance) was defeated. In 1993, she was re-elected, only to be
dismissed once again three years later by another president on the grounds
of mismanagement and corruption. Since 1999, Bhutto has been in exile in
London and, latterly, Dubai, where she was reunited with her colourful
husband, Asif Ali Zardari, who was released from prison in Pakistan in
November 2004, having spent eight years awaiting trial on corruption and
murder charges.
Two years earlier, the present president, General Pervez Musharraf, who
continues to remain head of the military – seemingly impervious to
widespread public criticism of his dual role – introduced a new amendment to
Pakistan’s constitution, banning prime ministers from holding office for
more than two terms. This should disqualify Bhutto from ever resuming that
position and also her old rival, Nawaz Sharif. But in Pakistan, anything can
happen, and Bhutto is planning to return to her country – regardless of the
numerous corruption charges which she and her family still face (as well as
the couple’s separate, ongoing money-laundering case in Switzerland) – to
fight the allegedly free and democratic elections which have been promised
by the end of this year. As she says, her own life has mirrored the history
of Pakistan and that is why, at such a pivotal time in the West, it is both
fascinating and important to hear what Benazir Bhutto has to say.
The four hours spent in her home in Dubai are a rollercoaster of copious
laughter and floods of tears, noncommittal cautiousness and breathtaking
openness, plain-speaking to the point of impertinence and insinuating charm,
high-handed loftiness and affectionate intimacy. Bhutto is the most
extraordinary woman who says the most extraordinary things, veering wildly
between self-aggrandisement and a knowing, sometimes humorous, recognition
of how she can come across.
Although she declines to name names – saying that “it’s better not to give the
impression that you’re trying to fire political shots over somebody else’s
shoulder” – it is clear that there have been high-level discussions behind
the scenes in Washington, where Bhutto is frequently invited to give
speeches, and perhaps the UK. There continues to be widespread speculation
in the press about the possibility of a deal being struck between
Musharraf’s “people” and Bhutto’s party. Her response to these reports is
that although “there have been ‘back-channel’ contacts with Musharraf for
some time, they have not led to any understanding. And so all this talk of
an ‘understanding’ I find very confusing.” It is also confusing that while
Bhutto does not shirk from criticising Musharraf at every opportunity, she
also makes it clear in this interview that she would be prepared to work
alongside him as long as certain conditions were met.
In her riveting autobiography Daughter of the East, published in 1988 and
recently reissued with a new preface and conclusion, she tells us that her
father advised her never to lay all her cards on the table. Although there
may have been a time when she found it difficult to stick to his advice – “I
always lay my cards on the table” she maintained – I certainly find it
difficult to pin her down on her current political agenda. It requires an
exhausting degree of Paxmanesque persistence, repeatedly asking the same
question, to elicit this response on the possibility of a Musharraf-Bhutto
alliance: “You have asked me an important question and I want to give you my
answer, since my followers will read this and they haven’t heard me speak
like this before,” Bhutto finally allows. “Firstly, I plan to go back to
Pakistan by the end of this year whether Mr Musharraf would like it or
whether he would not like it. And I believe that the [corruption] cases must
all be dropped, which categorically has not happened. Not one single case
has been dropped and you will please note that between my mother, my
father-in-law and myself there are about 20 charges or more. And what I feel
and my party feels is that for more than a decade these charges have been
used to hobble the opposition… to undermine my leadership and the PPP, and
they should be dropped because none of them has been proven, and if they’re
not dropped then it creates an unbalance as we enter the elections of 2007.
And we feel outraged that government funds have been used on a politically
motivated investigation that has borne no fruit over ten years.
“But I also believe there are other important issues for the people of
Pakistan to consider, which is would Musharraf continue to keep his uniform?
And would there be a balance of power between the president and the prime
minister, because at the moment we have shadow-boxing, where the prime
minister is technically the head of the government but the substantive
decisions are taken by the presidency or the military.” The current state of
play, she goes on to say, is that General Musharraf’s ruling party has said
that “they can rig the election so there’s no need for free elections or a
future parliament headed by the PPP… Which is why it’s premature to talk
about working alongside General Musharraf at this stage, although in the
past we have worked jointly on certain issues such as the Women’s Bill.
“At the same time, I want you to know that we are also partners with Mr Nawaz
Sharif [in exile after he was deposed by Musharraf’s military coup] in
something called the charter for the restoration of democracy, so we are
talking about a new democratic process in which the people of Pakistan are
allowed to choose their leader and put together a coalition. And for that we
are calling for a robust international monitoring team to ensure that these
elections are fair and free because obviously if they’re not, the ruling
party will still be in the driver’s seat and the creeping Talebanisation of
Pakistan will continue.”
Bhutto does not rule out the possibility that she might become prime minister
again: “If the people vote for my party [she remains chairperson of the PPP,
which received the highest number of votes in the last parliamentary
election in 2002] and parliament elects me as prime minister, it would be an
honour for me to take up that role and General Musharraf would be there as
president, so I think that a good working relationship between him and me
would be a necessity for Pakistan.” What a pragmatist she must be. “Yes, I
would have the choice of either respecting the will of the people and making
it a success or being short-sighted and putting my personal feelings about
past events ahead of the national interest, and what I want more than
anything is for Pakistan to prosper as we make a transition to democracy,”
she says.
I put a number of questions to Senator Tariq Azim Khan, the Federal Minister
of State for Information and Broadcasting, to establish the Pakistan
Government’s position. He was affable and helpful on the telephone and sent
me his answers, as requested, in writing. Yes, he wrote, there are a number
of cases still pending in various courts in Pakistan against Ms Bhutto and
her husband, Mr Zadari – and these cases (almost all 10 to 11 years old)
have not been dropped. No, it is highly unlikely that she will be arrested
upon arrival in Pakistan. She will nevertheless have to apply for bail in
the cases where she has been convicted while abroad. And, lastly, for Ms
Bhutto to become the prime minister for the third time, the constitution
will have to be amended and this will require a two-thirds majority in
parliament.
Pakistan has been ruled by the military for so many years since it came into
being in 1947, that I wonder whether democracy will ever have a chance to
flourish. “Democracy can work in Pakistan if the West stops upholding
military dictatorships through their financial and political support,”
Bhutto says. “Our tragedy has been that the military has been able to
exploit the West’s strategic interest in Afghanistan for almost two
decades.” And you and your party would like that support? “Of course, we
need that economic assistance and diplomatic support and we didn’t have it.”
Do you think there is any likelihood of you ever getting it? “Pakistan is a
critical country,” she says.
Musharraf is undeniably under siege at the moment, which has grave
implications beyond his own country. There have been violent protests
against his dismissal of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry on the flimsiest of
grounds, provoking fears that the government is attempting to muzzle the
independence of the judiciary, and newspapers such as Dawn – set up by the
lawyer and founding father of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah – have been
alerting the international media community about unacceptable levels of
government control.
