Ananth Venkatesh

The heinous assassination of Benazir Bhutto represents a demoralising defeat for the advocates of democracy in Pakistan. The murder, whether regime-sponsored or otherwise, is:
• a pertinent yet sorrowful reminder of the brittle security situation in Pakistan,
• it’s pitiable inability and helplessness to ruthlessly tackle the forces of bigotry,
• and the repercussions of befriending terrorists to further one’s goals.

Rise to Power

Benazir, who was democratically elected as the PM of Pakistan in November 1988, was a pleasurably different personality that India had to contend with. After having lost her father in April 1979, Benazir was imprisoned by the military junta for nearly five years, which she spent in solitary confinement. Being released in 1984 on medical grounds, she left for London, where she rose to prominence, became the liberal identity and the head of the PPP. General Zia-Ul-Haq’s evaporation from the Pakistani political scene, in mysterious circumstances, due to his death in a plane crash in 1988, led to national elections, which saw Benazir’s party being voted to power by most of her country’s people.

Her appointment as PM, at an unimaginably young age of 35, was unsurprising, given the wealth of admiration and popularity that the Bhutto family is showered with. Her occupation of the seat of the PM served as a great uplift for all the women of Pakistan and she was soon engulfed by the innumerable aspirations of the people. She was an extremely educated female, whose debating skills had won her numerous laurels during her days at Oxford. Chauvinistic elements of the military found the prospect of dealing with a female PM unpalatable.

Disillusionment of the people

The source of the disillusionment with her, which seeped into the mindsets of many Pakistanis, a few months into her tenure, was her incapacity to deliver on many of her promises. Her assurance, on the hustings, to transform Pakistan into a symbol of modernity and egalitarianism, could not be implemented. However, on the vexed issue of J & K, Benazir was sagacious enough to ride along with the military’s standpoint. She acceded to the military’s ploy of wounding India incessantly through the implementation of the plan of intrusion of terrorists into J & K and subsequently wreaking it through bombings and lobbing of grenades.

Bhutto, Terrorism and leaving Pakistan

Bhutto would not have been able to absolutely abdicate herself from shouldering responsibility for granting her consent to such uncontrollably senseless mayhem. Whether she herself believed in the efficacy of nurturing jehadis to terrorise J & K or she was coerced into surrendering to the military’s wishes, one will not be able to ascertain positively. She needs to be bequeathed some plaudits for making efforts to eradicate Sikh terrorism in Punjab, which was receiving gleeful help from the ISI.

Irrespective of how committed she was to giving birth to a peaceful Indo-Pak relationship, she could not embrace audacious steps to prove her desire. Her famous and well-remembered meeting in 1988 with PM Rajiv Gandhi during the SAARC summit, in which Rajiv had promised to withdraw Indian troops from Siachen, only to renege on it later due to electoral compulsions, at least epitomized freshness and forward-thinking in the approaches of the two countries towards resolving their undying disputes. Her advocacy for the maintenance of diplomatic ties with Taliban-ruled Afghanistan despite the gruesomeness associated with their treatment of Afghani women, bewildered many. Pakistan was one of the three nations in the globe to continue to share diplomatic relations with Afghanistan, during the reign of the Taliban, when the rest of the world had boycotted Afghanistan and had segregated themselves from the Taliban. Anti-India terrorists were trained and determinedly indoctrinated in Taliban land by the Pakistani military along with the ISI’s workforce. Taliban’s Afghanistan was hugged by Benazir’s Pakistan to paralyse and victimise India.

The charges of allowing the dissemination of corruption and nepotism during her Prime Ministerial reign and of herself being a recipient, along with her husband, Asif Zardari, of kickbacks tarnished her integrity and moral fabric indubitably. Her husband had a pejorative nickname coined for him, ‘Mr. 10 %’, the reference being obvious. She displayed powerlessness when it came to enforcing her cherished objectives pertaining to the erasing of gender bias in Pakistan and the dismantlement of oppressive and throttling laws that curtailed equality for women in the nation. Hence, she was excoriated by her detractors.

Back to Pakistan

Benazir, after nearly eight and a half years in voluntary exile, had arrived victoriously in Pakistan in October 2007 to enact her role in the establishment of democracy in Pakistan, a process which was being backed by much of the world, including, most crucially, the United States. A majority of Pakistanis, who had been under the grip of their powerful military since the coup d’état in October 1999 that led to the then PM Nawaz Sharif being illegitimately deposed, had been yearning to witness the authentic birth of democracy again in their country. The elections organised in 2002 were considered rigged and, therefore, were severely discredited.

The United States, which had been enacting a significant role in the affairs of Pakistan ever since the tragedy of 9/11, had tried to assiduously broker a power-sharing agreement between Benazir’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Musharraf Government. But the deal for allotment of power fell by the wayside due to obstinate divisions between the two parties on key issues like the elimination of the prevention on two-time PMs from contesting for the third time and the balance of power between the President and the PM. Musharraf, as President, was zealously desirous of retaining the right to dissolve any Pakistani Parliament, which was vociferously opposed by Bhutto.

Benazir with her husband Asif Zardari and children

Accepting her mistakes and a new vision for India-Pakistan ties

The Benazir that the world got to witness was remarkably different. She, in interviews to the western and the Indian media, creditably railed against the monstrousness of fanaticism that had brought such disrepute and dishonour to her land. She vehemently supported the merciless uprooting of bigots from her soil who were indulging, in the name of Islam, in bloodletting. Benazir, to the surprise of some, backed Musharraf’s decision to bombard the Red Mosque to flush out the militants hiding there holding innocents as hostage.

She commendably and candidly confessed to the Indian media that she might have made blunders in the past vis-à-vis her giving the green signal to strategically befriending Afghanistan to combat India. Forthrightness was an innate constituent of her persona when quizzed about her views on the presence of anti-India terrorists on Pakistani territory i.e. Dawood Ibrahim, Maulana Azhar, etc. She was probably the lone Pakistani politician to confess about their existence on Pakistani soil since the Pakistani ruling establishment has always denied accusations of sheltering these criminals.

She also exhibited courageousness in promising to hand over those terrorists to India if elected as PM. It is an extremely rare sight to hear a Pakistani politician admit the clandestine assistance given to these extremists let alone assure their deliverance to India. On the subject of J & K, she expressed that the territorial squabble alone must not define the Indo-Pak association and must not be the lone focus of the peace process between the two countries. Her unsparing backing for the U.S.’s ‘War against Terrorism’ made her a loveable figure in the West, especially America. Her being a target of the fundamentalist outfits was inevitable. Even in her last election rally, while addressing the huge audience, Bhutto spoke of the need to counter the forces of bigotry, who were zestfully dedicated to destroying her country.

One needs to possess plentiful gumption to vociferously voice disapproval of ferociously intolerant elements in Pakistan and Benazir had that.

Benazir was a Sindhi Muslim woman, which was a justifiable reason, according to some Pakistanis, for her disqualification from Pakistani politics. Given the predominance of Punjabis in Pakistan in governmental departments and the fractious relationship between the Karachiites and the Lahoris, this attitude came as no surprise.

Benazir righteously denounced these opponents of civility, liberalism, fairness and tranquility. Due to her disappearance from the Pakistani political landscape as a consequence of this assassination, Pakistan has been deprived of witnessing an tolerant, democratic and moderate leader who stood for the aforementioned principles, which ideally should form the basis of any 21st century nation-state. She deserved another opportunity to govern her birthplace.