Benazir Bhutto - SZABIST

My BB, my boss
Shafqat Mahmood
Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was an iconic figure long before I met her for the first time in
November 1989. Those of us who despised the Zia dictatorship had cried at the memory of this young
woman's tearful last meetings with her father and the trauma she had endured on his judicial murder.
We also admired the fortitude and courage with which she had stood up to the dictator and bravely
faced imprisonment and solitary confinement. And, when she came back to the country, we had lived
through the joy of her triumphant return and the victory of her party in 1988.
I remember tears in my eyes when she took oath as Prime Minister because it seemed that evil had lost
and good had won and a new chapter was about to begin and that never again would dictators rule this
land and that this young and fragile looking women would take our nation forward and replace despair
with hope and bring light where darkness had ruled. I remember that as soon as the ceremony was
over, the TV played a recording of Faiz's 'bahar aaee to mit gaye hein azab saray' and amid more tears,
emotions of joy welled up in my heart and after a long time I felt proud to be a part of nation that had
produced a leader like Benazir Bhutto.
Imagine then my nervousness when I was ushered in, a mere grade 19 civil servant, to meet her in the
Prime Minister's office in the State Bank building in November of 1989. Sardar Maqsood Khan
Leghari had made this happen and I sat quietly while he spoke. Mohtarma was sitting looking at some
files while listening to him and I felt here was my chance to impress her and perhaps get a chance to
work for her, so with shaking knees, I started to give her my take on the situation in the country. I
don't think until then she had noticed me at all but when I started to speak, she probably thought that I
was making some sense because she put on her glasses and started to listen carefully. She immediately
ordered that I be posted in her secretariat and thus began an association that was to last seven years.
For someone untutored in the ways of high politics, it was both exciting and a surreal experience. Just
a few days after I had take charge, I wrote her a note on the politics of Punjab and she called me to the
Sindh House, which was then the Prime Minister's residence, to discuss it. As I started to brief her, she
turned on a small radio to a station playing 'pahari' music of the Potohar region. This surprised me and
she saw me giving it a strange look. She smiled and started pointing her finger towards the roof and
the walls. It took me a few seconds to realise that she was telling me the room was bugged. For a mid
level civil servant sitting with the Prime Minister of the country this was a sobering welcome to the
tortured world of power in Pakistan.
It soon became obvious to me that she was not only trying to solve some of the serious problems
facing the country but she was fighting an internal battle against the establishment and its intelligence
agencies who were trying to destabilize her. Those of us in her personal staff were immediately
sensitized to this danger and started to be very careful about what we said or wrote. This internal battle
was brought home to me when the Sindh government launched the pucca qilla operation in Hyderabad
in 1990.
This was a police action designed to unearth a large quantity of arms hidden in this redoubt in the city.
As the police reached near the main arsenal, the army intervened and stopped the operation. A day
later, I flew with her to Hyderabad and the local administration was very clear that this intervention
was only designed to thwart their finding a large quantity of arms and ammunition hidden there. I
remember asking her whether anyone in the army had sought her permission or that of the Sindh
government. The answer was in the negative. The Army commander General Aslam Beg had done
this, to stop the terrorists from being exposed.