Benazir Bhutto - SZABIST

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Let’s put our act together Let’s put our country together. Cry my countrymen — weep, howl or wail I have never heard a story more painful than this before; Full of pain, misery and grief Sorrow, regret and disbelief I have never told a story more painful than this before; Will I be able to think again? Will I be able to write again? Will I be able to love again? Bilawal, Bakhtawar and Asifa cry no more God loved Benazir more than we did God wanted her more than we did With angels our angel now sleeps. The writer is an Islamabad-based freelance columnist The News December 30, 2007 How a ‘wisp of a girl’ conquered Pakistan Mohammed Hanif With half her adult life spent either in exile or in prison, Benazir Bhutto might have lived like a medieval princess, but she died like an ordinary, modern Pakistani. When the assassin struck, Ms. Bhutto, the former prime minister, was doing what so many Pakistanis most love to do: electioneering. Two months earlier, when she had arrived in Karachi after eight years in exile, there were legitimate questions about her democratic credentials. Even her die-hard supporters were embarrassed by her blatant deal with Pakistan’s military ruler, President Pervez Musharraf, the very man who had publicly vowed that she would never return to the country. Yet when she arrived at the Karachi airport, her reception was spectacular - the biggest street party the city had seen in decades. My friend Moeen Qureshi, a lapsed Bhutto supporter, took his children to the rally “just out of curiosity, to relive my youth.” Fortunately, he left before two suicide bombers struck her convoy, killing more than 130. “This woman,” Mr. Qureshi told his children as they later watched Ms. Bhutto on TV being sped away from the devastation, “is bulletproof Bhutto.” After that attack, she did seem like the prime-minister-in-waiting. Her party was resurgent, the United States was backing her, and even President Musharraf had started telling journalists - in a purposefully coy tone - that they shouldn’t be so sure that she would return to office a third time. By this time, I, too, was back in Pakistan. As I travelled from the capital, Islamabad, to my hometown of Lahore to Karachi, everywhere I went she seemed to have kindled a new optimism. It was both endearing
and pathetic how, with every stop she made, the local politicians would practically stumble over each other to be seen with her, to receive her blessing. After the Karachi attack, Ms. Bhutto confided to another friend of mine, a former police officer who knew her well: “I am not sure if they are actually trying to kill me or just scare me. But if I get scared and confine myself to my house, that will be my political death.” Much has been made since her death of her apparent recklessness. But she had done her calculations and reached the conclusion that the only way she could rally her supporters was by going to them. “She wasn’t as reckless as people are making her out to be,” the former police officer told me over the phone. “The bulge that you saw under her shalwar kameez wasn’t extra pounds that she had put on during exile. She always wore a bulletproof vest in public.” I last saw her in a London flat, at a press conference shortly before she departed for Pakistan. There were more than 100 journalists crammed into the small living room of the home of her security adviser, Rehman Malik. She was asked questions concerning the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear programme, about the judicial crisis in the country and about her party’s election platform. As I listened to her feed sound bites to the Western news media, I remembered seeing her as a child campaigning on behalf of her father, then on death row - “a wisp of a girl that generals were scared of,” in the wonderful phrase of the poet Habib Jalib. (How hard it was for me to reconcile, years later as a journalist, the image of that child with the new one of the former prime minister who, according to her many detractors, would barter her country’s hopes for a diamond necklace.) In the London press conference, she was asked about her deal with Mr. Musharraf, which was going to allow her to return without facing charges for the rampant corruption that occurred under her watch. It was a question that had become the bane of her existence. Suddenly, her calculated, irritated voice mellowed and she spoke like the naïve, passionate activist I had seen as a child: “I lost my father. Both my brothers were killed violently. Scores of my party workers have died in the struggle for democracy, and now our citizens are being killed indiscriminately every day. We have to stop this. And in order to stop this I’ll talk to anyone that I have to.” Throughout her career there were attempts to portray her as a Westernized woman. Shortly after her death, I was talking with another friend, one who had never thought much of her. “Remember those leaflets we used to collect before her election?” he asked. He was referring to the 1988 election campaign, when her political rivals hired planes to throw leaflets with photographs that were doctored to show her wearing bikinis and miniskirts and dancing at college parties. It did not stop the people from voting her into power. For Pakistan’s military-mullah establishment, she always remained a bad girl. Not just any ordinary privileged heir to a political dynasty, but a girl half the nation swooned over; a sharp political operator, a speaker who even in her stilted Urdu could have a million people dance to the wave of her hand. And she was not a revolutionary by a long shot - but she could bring people to her rallies, and more important, polling stations by promising them jobs and reasonable electricity bills. On Thursday a heartbroken Bhutto-lover called and left a teary message on my voice mail. He just wanted to share his grief, but reminded me of something else: “She might have lost her political battle, but look at it this way. She raised three kids, took care of an ailing mother and still managed to stay in marriage.” Benazir Bhutto died only a couple of miles from the Army House in Rawalpindi, President Musharraf’s official residence, a place with such excellent security that he has refused to vacate it even since his
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Reflections on Benazir Bhutto Edito
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Dedicated to the martyrs of Pakista
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To Benazir, in the heavens 57 Ghaza
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Foreword We cannot let my mother's
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and a presidential sword of Damocle
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BritainUSA December 31, 2007 Benazi
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That is why they pit parties agains
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had to go. But they had not mastere
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She also continued to campaign for
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tell that we were all wrong and she
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the United States must review its p
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My life with Benazir Christina Lamb
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Was she in love? Announcing her eng
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without compromise. To the constern
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Pakistani military intelligence cou
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the American investigative reporter
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Arkansas friend calls Bhutto a tire
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She would have been in a good posit
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Within days of that attack she was
Page 39 and 40: But probably she miscalculated eith
Page 41 and 42: the peak of the Zia dictatorship, a
Page 43 and 44: My BB, my boss Shafqat Mahmood Prim
Page 45 and 46: she had any hand in her brother's d
Page 47 and 48: A tribute to Benazir Bhutto Nafisa
Page 49 and 50: called Benazir, which will continue
Page 51 and 52: How Benazir let her hair down Daphn
Page 53 and 54: I also remember her discussing Dian
Page 55 and 56: Later that day as we finalised our
Page 57 and 58: Pakistan loses a fighter for democr
Page 59 and 60: Who killed Bhutto? Interestingly, t
Page 61 and 62: Death of an icon Imtiaz Alam She ha
Page 63 and 64: The writer is editor current affair
Page 65 and 66: assassinate her. She then added, "H
Page 67 and 68: familiar?). Still, Benazir’s stor
Page 69 and 70: Bhutto's death will almost certainl
Page 71 and 72: It took her over 19 hours to travel
Page 73 and 74: We are all Bhuttos now Fasih Ahmed
Page 75 and 76: As she got up to leave, she stopped
Page 77 and 78: She represented the hope, the desir
Page 79 and 80: The ‘seniors’ assured her, inst
Page 81 and 82: Gulf News December 29, 2007 An icon
Page 83 and 84: Both the judiciary and media, two p
Page 85 and 86: changed circumstances, even a thoug
Page 87 and 88: The Nation December 29, 2007 The tr
Page 89: Hope now dead and buried; Faces dep
Page 93 and 94: Pakistan’s ruling establishment h
Page 95 and 96: She died at the hands of terror, no
Page 97 and 98: in Pakistan, it is also a loss to t
Page 99 and 100: Like all such tragedies, the assass
Page 101 and 102: two terms in power, she has come fu
Page 103 and 104: Cry my beloved land. Tanvir Ahmad K
Page 105 and 106: Today's subcontinent has all but fo
Page 107 and 108: was the first glimpse some of us ha
Page 109 and 110: Her death was an event of fearful m
Page 111 and 112: Bhutto's assassination could be a s
Page 113 and 114: Extremism looms as a threat, but it
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Benazir Bhutto - SZABIST

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