Daughter
Of The East Returns -
With West's Backing
By Beena Sarwar
18 October, 2007
Inter
Press Service
KARACHI, Oct 18 (IPS) - The
much bruited ‘deal’ between Pakistan’s twice-elected,
twice-deposed former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and President Gen.
Pervez Musharraf has cast a shadow over her triumphal homecoming on
Thursday, after nine long years of self-imposed exile.
The National Reconciliation
Ordinance (NRO), promulgated on Oct. 5 by Musharraf a day before presidential
elections, gives Bhutto immunity against corruption charges brought
against her after she was ousted from power in 1996. In exchange, her
Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) lent the presidential election legitimacy
by abstaining from the vote. The rest of the opposition boycotted the
proceedings in protest at Musharraf’s nomination as President
while still army chief.
The NRO cleared the way for
Bhutto’s return to Pakistan without being arrested under the various
corruption charges facing her since she was ousted from power in 1996
(she points out that none of these charges have been proved in court).
The NRO also absolves absconding bureaucrats and political workers accused
of corruption or criminal activities.
Public opinion is divided
between acceptance of the NRO as a pragmatic way forward in the democratisation
process, and disgust at what Supreme Court lawyer Zahid F. Ebrahim terms
an ''unseemly bribe'' and a ‘’white-washing’’
of corruption in order to usher in a nominal democracy that suits the
United States in its ‘war on terror’ and allowing Musharraf
to stay on as President.
A last-minute phone call
from Washington reportedly clinched the understanding, but speculations
about it have been rife particularly since the political crisis that
engulfed the country after Musharraf ‘suspended’ Chief Justice
Iftikhar Chowdhry in March. This triggered off lawyers’ demonstrations
demanding Chowdhry’s reinstatement and quickly built up momentum
that had Musharraf on the back foot.
The protests continued for
four months and government’s attempts to muzzle the media, through
police attacks and hastily introduced legislation backfired.
After the Supreme Court reinstated
him in July, Chowdhry began taking up the cases of the ‘disappeared’.
The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has filed 150 such
cases. As many as three thousand or more activists of various persuasions
are missing, many arrested in the name of the ‘war on terror’.
The return of the world’s
first Muslim woman head of government is also shadowed by the situation
in Pakistan’s north-west tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. Under
intense pressure by Washington, Islamabad continues its aggressive military
approach to deal with ‘talibanisation’. The army’s
recent bombardment of these border areas has resulted in an exodus of
villagers seeking safety --and in an increase in militancy.
"The ethics of revenge
in the tribal area means that for each civilian who is killed there,
there will be ten family members wanting to take revenge against the
Pakistan army," notes Imran Khan, the former cricket hero turned
politician who heads his Tehreek-e-Insaaf (Movement for Justice) political
party. "If there’s no military solution in Iraq, there’s
no military solution in Pakistan."
Khan is among those who disdain
Benazir Bhutto’s ‘political compromise’ with the army.
But there is jubilation among PPP workers at their leader’s impending
return, and bus- and truck-loads are heading to Karachi from all over
the country to receive her.
With its slogan of ‘Roti,
Kapra, Makan’ (Bread, Cloth, Housing), the PPP has always appealed
to the poor. "But the Benazir that her party workers are streaming
on foot, on bicycle, and on buses to greet, is not the same," observes
lawyer Ebrahim. Talking with IPS, he added, "She is still seen
as a symbol of the fight against tyranny, but how does that translate
when she is power? Will the state invest in health, in education? Will
she cut back on the ongoing privatisation and retrenchment of public
sector employees? She raises the slogans but has not touched on any
of these essential issues."
Even so, hundreds of billboards
and hoardings have cropped up, particularly in the area around Bhutto’s
fortified, palatial Karachi residence. Despite the city administration’s
attempts to get these sponsored banners removed --the police refused,
citing preoccupation with security arrangements -- the city remains
virtually plastered over with images of Bhutto’s smiling face,
head duly covered with a ‘dupatta’ -- the scarf that women
in this region traditionally don over ‘shalwar suits’ (long
tunics and baggy trousers) -- and a portrait of her late father Zulfiqar
Ali Bhutto.
Benazir never covered her
head before her return to Pakistan and electoral politics in 1986 during
Gen. Zia’s time. The gesture was seen as a nod to Pakistan’s
conservative religious forces that oppose a woman head of state. ''She
did the biggest disservice to the women of Pakistan, by donning the
dupatta,'' observes cardiologist and prominent citizen Dr M. Sharif.
A demurely covered head symbolises
the pure woman across South Asia. The Harvard (Radcliffe) and Oxford-educated
Bhutto admitted in a recent television interview that not having to
handle a dupatta is more "convenient".
She was flung into politics
in 1977 when the army dictator Gen. Zia-ul-Haq deposed her father. Two
years later, Zia hanged Bhutto on trumped up murder charges, crushing
political opposition with massive arrests, torture, floggings and executions.
In her autobiography ‘Daughter of the East’ (Hamish Hamilton,
1989), Benazir recounts the hardships she faced during this time under
house arrest and solitary confinement, until Zia allowed her to leave
the country in 1984.
Washington had by then enlisted
Pakistan as a front-line state in the war against the Soviets in next-door
Afghanistan and unconditionally supported the Pakistan army and its
new unofficial foot-soldiers, the Mujahideen --who have since morphed
into the Taliban.
Zia finally allowed Benazir
Bhutto to return in 1986 and participate in politics under his ‘controlled
democracy’. However, her return this time is very different from
the widespread euphoria she generated in 1986 when she challenged the
dictator Zia. This time she returns having entered into a deal with
the military chief who has held sway for almost a decade.
Zia died in a mysterious
mid-air explosion along with the U.S. ambassador Arnold Rafael in August
1988. Elections, three months later, ushered Bhutto into power with
a slim majority and forced to compromise on issues like finance, military
and foreign policy. Between 1988 and 1999, Bhutto’s PPP government
alternated in power with Zia’s protégé Nawaz Sharif
and his Pakistan Muslim League (PML). Both were elected and deposed
from power twice in this period.
In November 1999, Musharraf
took over power and slapped criminal charges carrying capital punishment
on Sharif. Shortly afterwards, in a deal brokered by the Saudi monarch
at the request of his father, Nawaz Sharif agreed to exchange his prison
cell for exile in Saudi Arabia and desist from politics for ten years.
Sharif was unceremoniously
bundled back to Saudi Arabia hours after landing in Islamabad on Sep.
10, in an attempt to reenter Pakistan politics. Opinion was then divided
between indignation at denying him a citizen’s inalienable right
to return and the view that he had brought this ignominy upon himself
by entering into this agreement in the first place.
Although the government is
ostensibly allowing Bhutto to return, Musharraf requested her to delay
her arrival -- she refused -- and warned her that she may be the target
of a suicide attack. Bhutto has scoffed off such warnings with, "I
do not believe that any true Muslim would attack me because I am a woman
and Islam forbids attacks against women. Secondly Islam forbids suicide."
She has nevertheless taken
the precaution of ordering armored vehicles for herself and her arrival
is expected to take place amidst tight security. Schools have been ordered
closed because of expected traffic chaos from her supporters streaming
into the city in the tens of thousands.
Her arrival may yet receive
a damper if the Supreme Court upholds the petitions it is currently
reviewing against the constitutionality of the NRO. Musharraf too may
receive a setback if the court upholds other petitions challenging his
nomination as president while still holding army office. However, this
may push the country into a worse political crisis, particularly since
Musharraf has promised to doff his army uniform ‘soon’.
"If Benazir lands in
Pakistan safely, it will be the most important political development
in Pakistan in the last eight years," Asad Sayeed, an economist
at the Karachi-based think tank Collective for Social Science Research,
told IPS. "It will open up political space for representative rule,
with civilians taking over at least some space from the military. It
may not be enough right now, but there will at least be some transition."
Copyright © 2007 IPS-Inter
Press Service.
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