Benazir Bhutto - SZABIST

Arkansas friend calls Bhutto a tireless ‘spirit’
Michelle Hillen
During his last conversation with former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto last Friday, Benton
resident Larry Wallace said he spoke with his old friend about the danger she faced as she campaigned
for parliamentary elections.
On Christmas Eve, she sent him a note wishing him a happy holiday. On Thursday morning, he heard
the news that Bhutto had been killed when his wife turned on the television.
“It’s just a tragic situation for the people of Pakistan,” he said.
Despite a previous assassination attempt in October and a constant fear that she would be murdered by
someone close to her, Wallace said, Bhutto could not be dissuaded from her zeal for bringing
democracy to Pakistan.
“She was burning with a passion for freedom,” he said. “She really wanted to [bring democracy to
Pakistan], even though it was risky, even though it was a huge burden on her and her family and her
kids. You couldn’t have stopped her.”
Wallace, a lawyer who said he has been friends with Bhutto for 10 years since being introduced by
mutual friends, flew into Pakistan with her Oct. 18, her first trip home after eight years in exile.
Hundreds of thousands of supporters came out in the streets to greet her, he said.
“Instantly, I realized that my friend was much bigger than a human being - she was a spirit over
there,” Wallace said.
Later that day two explosions went off near a truck carrying Bhutto, killing 126 people and wounding
248 others. Wallace said he holed up with Bhutto in her house for nine days.
“She was extremely calm and collected that whole night. We talked until 6 or 7 in the morning,” he
said. “She was undeterred the entire discussion, and had she lived through this assassination, within 30
minutes she would have been right back on her mission.”
Bhutto, who visited Arkansas for the first time in 1991 to speak at Harding University in Searcy,
returned several times while touring the U.S. to promote democracy in Pakistan. In addition to the
visits to Harding and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Bhutto also spoke at the University of
Arkansas at Fayetteville in October 2002, asking for U.S. intervention in elections in Pakistan.
Bill Vickery, a Little Rock political consultant who met Bhutto through Wallace, said he tried to help
her garner support in the U.S. for her efforts. Her death, Vickery said, is a “complete and total disaster
for both Pakistan and the United States.”
“The one key figure in the war on terror could have been Benazir Bhutto,” he said. “She would have
possessed the public approval and the confidence of the U.S. government to go after al-Qaida and the
Taliban, and she professed that she would do that. Ultimately, that may have cost her her life.”
Wallace said though Bhutto would want the elections to go on in Pakistan, he doesn’t know who will
be able to fill the voidshe has left there.