The
Life And Death Of Benazir Bhutto: A Pakistani Tragedy
By
M. Shahid Alam
03 January,
2008
Countercurrents.org
On
December 27, a little more than two months after her return to Pakistan
from years of exile, Benazir Bhutto was killed while leaving the grounds
of Liaquat Bagh after addressing a rally of party faithfuls. Daughter
of the charismatic Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, possessing some charisma of
her own, driven, talented, but lacking higher aspirations, the career
of Pakistan’s best-loved political leader had been cut short by
unknown assassins. She
was still young at 53.
Did
Benazir Bhutto’s life have to end this way?
Benazir Bhutto
had entered politics to ‘avenge’ her father’s hanging
in April 1979 by Zia-ul-Haq, Pakistan’s third military dictator.
Having twice avenged her father’s murder – by assuming the
office of Pakistan’s prime minister in April 1988 and October
1993 – she has now paid with her life trying to reach that office
a third time.
Sadly, the
truth is that her violent end could have been foretold with near certainty.
What are the circumstances that made her violent end very nearly a certainty?
She did not have the military security – and luck, one must add
– that has shielded General Parvez Musharraf from several assassination
attempts. With some expense and planning, Benazir Bhutto too could have
made better security arrangements, but, fatefully, she seemed to be
in too much of a haste to be slowed down even by 150 deaths during the
first attack on her life in Karachi.
Immediately
after her death, a spokesman for Al-Qa’ida operations in Afghanistan
claimed that this was their work. ”We terminated,” the spokesman
claimed ominously, “the most precious American asset which vowed
to defeat mujahideen.”1
That Benazir
Bhutto was a ‘precious American asset’ – perhaps,
even the ‘most precious’ – few anywhere would deny,
least of all the Americans. It is widely known that her return to Pakistan
was brokered by the United States. She could return to Pakistan’s
politics – and, most likely, to the prime minister’s office
– by dropping her opposition to another term of five years for
President Musharraf. Indeed, Benazir Bhutto instructed the\ members
of her party not to resign from their seats in the national
assembly but abstain from voting. This defeated the opposition’s
plan to deny the quorum necessary for the deeply flawed presidential
elections.
One of the
most remarkable developments in Pakistani politics since the events
of 9-11 is the transparency – shall we say, daring – with
which the United States now intervenes in Pakistan’s affairs.
Conversely, Pakistani leaders also work openly to advance American interests
in Pakistan. In an earlier era, the Americans generally took care to
conceal their meddling in Pakistani politics. As a result, only the
politically astute understood the depth of their influence over Pakistan.
Now, this knowledge has become commonplace.
Although
greatly weakened since the protests that erupted over his firing of
Pakistan’s Chief Justice in March 2007, the Americans believe
that General Parvez Musharraf is still the best person to lead their
war against the militants in Pakistan. However, they were now convinced
that the General’s badly battered reputation had to be salvaged:
and a partnership with the pro-American Benazir Bhutto would do just
that. In turn, the General, under duress, had accepted a partnership
with Bhutto as the price he must pay or lose US support.
A tripartite
deal was brokered involving the US, General Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto.
This deal freed Bhutto from the corruption cases pending against her
in Pakistani courts. She was also allowed to return to Pakistan to lead
her party to – she was convinced – a nearly certain electoral
victory: and a third term as Pakistan’s prime minister. The elections
would give the General the democratic veneer that he now so badly needed.
As the New
York Times reveals in a recent article, “How Bhutto won Washington,”
Benazir Bhutto’s deal-making with the Americans has a long history.2
She had decided quite early that she would return her party to power
by trolling the corridors of power in Washington.
In the words
of her friend from Oxford days, Peter Galbraith, who was on the staff
of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time, Benazir Bhutto
first began her campaign in Washington in the spring of 1984. She was
on a mission to persuade the Reagan administration that “she would
much better serve American interest in Afghanistan than Zia.”
Under the tutelage
of Galbraith and his friend, Mark Siegel – formerly executive
director of the Democratic National Convention – she cultivated
the friendship of important power brokers in Washington.
These Washington
contacts paid off handsomely. In the parliamentary elections of November
1988 Benazir Bhutto’s party gained only a plurality of seats.
Since Pakistan’s military establishment looked upon her with considerable
distrust, they could easily have pulled strings to deny her the right
to form the government. US pressure, however, persuaded Ghulam Ishaq
Khan, the President at the time, to invite Benazir Bhutto to form the
government.
Benazir Bhutto
never gave up on this winning strategy. As the NYT writes, “she
kept up her visits to Washington, usually several a year.” She
continued to cultivate friends amongst the Washington elite, including
the Congress and the media. In the first six months of 2007 alone, Benazir
Bhutto spent $250,000 in lobbying fees to gain access to Washington
insiders.
Once again,
to win American backing for her return to Pakistan in 2007, which could
only happen with US pressure on General Musharraf, Benazir Bhutto used
the same strategy that had worked before: she would promise to do better
than General Musharraf in advancing American interests in Pakistan.
Over the
past year, Benazir Bhutto has repeatedly pointed out that General Musharraf’s
war against terrorism in Pakistan was failing. Instead of curbing terrorism,
the militants had become more daring during the General’s tenure.
She promised to do better. She would wipe out the “religious extremists,”
shut down “extremist” madrasas, and even hand over Dr. Qadeer
Khan – the architect of Pakistan’s nuclear program –
to the US for questioning. Insistently, and loudly, Benazir Bhutto was
seeking to
assure the United States that she would do a lot better than their General.
This strategy
won her the support of the United States, but it was fatally flawed.
If Musharraf had not acted more vigorously against the militants that
was not because he had gone soft in his commitment to America's plan.
Instead, it was because he faces restraints on three fronts: the opposition
within the army, especially from its lower ranks; the very real fear
that stronger measures against the militants would provoke a domestic
outcry
and, worse, a more determined response from those militants; and, there
are concerns too that defeating the Taliban would entrench Indian influence
over Afghanistan. Would these constraints be any different for Benazir
Bhutto?
In presenting
herself as the only Pakistani politician to openly challenge the militants,
wasn’t Benazir Bhutto – in effect – also daring them
to target her? Since these Islamists were regularly targeting the Pakistan
military itself – even inside the security of their cantonments
– would they hold back from attacking a politician who threatened
to take even stronger actions against them than General Musharraf?
General Musharraf’s
decision to make Pakistan the leading partner in America's war against
terrorism had already revealed its deep flaws. Most ominously, it had
provoked the Islamists into targeting the Pakistani military. Already
there were defections from the army, and if the clashes continued, there
could be rebellion in the ranks of the army: or clashes between Pukhtoons
and the Punjabis within the army.
In pushing
Benazir Bhutto into this dangerous corner, a corner in which she could
not have survived, the US too has shown its gross ineptitude. By openly
anointing her as the American candidate, the US had effectively hastened
the violent end that she has now met. The US helped to bring about the
untimely death of the ‘Daughter of the East’ by transforming
her into the ‘Daughter of the West.’ In the process, Pakistan
too has lost a flawed but charismatic leader, who might have risen to
the occasion at a time of crisis.
Benazir Bhutto
crafted her political career by embracing her father’s populism,
but decisively rejected what was its natural complement: his independent
foreign policy. Could she have followed a different path? Was she free
to claim the legacy of her father’s independent foreign policy?
Benazir Bhutto’s
embrace of her father’s populism was indispensable: without it,
she could not lay claim to his charismatic following amongst Pakistan’s
largely illiterate masses. On the other hand, by rejecting an independent
foreign policy, she opened a path to the centers of American power without
losing any of her popularity. The mostly poor and illiterate
Pakistanis could not have cared much for the arcana of foreign politics.
Benazir Bhutto
saw her courting of the US as necessary to her ascent to power? The
Americans have long cultivated Pakistan’s military as the best
vehicle for subordinating Pakistan to its ends: first, Pakistan’s
military became a US partner in the Cold War, and since 9-11 it has
been drafted as a leading ally in the ‘global war against terror.’
The 1990s – the interim between the two wars – was a window
of opportunity for Pakistan’s politicians.
But Benazir
Bhutto first had to neutralize the Pakistani generals – whose
power had been challenged only once by her father, and, who, therefore,
were opposed to the return of his populist party to power. She had used
this strategy to neutralize Pakistan’s military establishment
before. Now, with the generals in trouble, she struck the same bargain.
Tragically,
this time, it was fatal mistake. Benazir Bhutto was binding herself
to a strategy – waging America's war against the militants –
that had already pushed Pakistan to the brink of a civil war and disintegration.
In her impetuous quest for power, she had acted in blind disregard of
realities.
But
did Benazir Bhutto have an alternative?
Perhaps she
did. Pakistan has a chance of averting a civil war, but only by distancing
itself from the United States. This distancing is now vital for Pakistan:
and one could argue, for the United States too. Only by distancing itself
from the United States does any Pakistani government now have a chance
of preventing the militants from overwhelming Pakistan itself. No government
that cleaves to the United States and Israel has a chance of winning
popular support in its efforts to contain the spread of the Islamist
insurgency. Sadly, Benazir Bhutto too – like Musharraf –
has cultivated the Israeli lobby in the United States.3
It is perhaps
unrealistic to expect that Benazir Bhutto, had she had wanted to, could
have done this on her own. However, if she had joined a pro-democracy
and nationalist partnership with Nawaz Sharif – and perhaps some
of the other parties in the opposition – together they had a fair
chance of sending the Pakistani generals back to the barracks. It would
not take Hazrat ‘Ali’s oratory to convince the Pakistanis
that this partnership – and an independent foreign policy –
were at this juncture indispensable for the integrity of Pakistan.
Sadly, this
was an option that Benazir Bhutto rebuffed. She did not want to remove
the generals: she sought to join their fight against the Islamist militants
as a civilian cheerleader. Perhaps, she could not think of another option,
given how much of her political capital she had invested in gaining
the support of the United States. Trapped in her myopia, she saw this
as the easier option, the only option. Sadly, she had chosen to enter
a blind alley. Worse: it was a death trap.
That is what
makes her death a Pakistani tragedy. It is a tragedy because she was
the only political figure in Pakistan who commanded the charisma to
try to galvanize Pakistanis into a vital coalition that could reverse
the damage done by the military generals. But, instead, she chose to
outdo the failed generals.
That was
Benazir Bhutto’s fatal flaw; but it was not only a personal flaw.
Behind this fatal flaw lay the a sad history of a country whose elites
time and again chose to prostitute the state, to compromise national
interests, and sacrifice the lives of Pakistanis for their personal
gains. That is what makes Benazir Bhutto’s murder a Pakistani
tragedy. In a single tragic event, it crystallizes the malfeasance of
Pakistan’s political classes and the failure of Pakistanis to
bring them to account for their treasonous crimes.
Footnotes
1. Syed Saleem
Shehzad, “Al-Qaeda claims Bhutto killing,” Asia Times (December
29, 2007). www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/IL29Df01.html
2. Elisabeth
Bumiller, “How Bhutto won Washington,” New York Times (December
27, 2007).
3. According
to Dan Gillerman, Israel's ambassador to the UN, Benazir Bhutto sent
him a copy of her new autobiography, Daughter of Destiny, including
“a warm dedication to Israel.” He added, “ She {Benazir
Bhutto] wrote me of how she admired Israel and of her desire to see
a normalization in the relations between Israel and Pakistan, including
the establishment
of diplomatic ties,…” Tali Rabinovsky, “Gillerman:
Bhutto told me she feared for her life,” (December 28, 2007).
www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3487651,00.html
M.
Shahid Alam is Professor of Economics at Northeastern University,
Boston. He is the author of Challenging the New Orientalism (North Haledon,
NJ: IPI, 2007). He may be reached at [email protected]
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