This has been a bhari (heavy) year for Pakistan. It started with the arrogance of power of General Pervaiz Musharraf when he dismissed Iftikhar Chaudry as the Supreme Court judge. He was already on a losing streak after the embarrassing death of the former chief minister of Baluchistan, Nawab Akbar Bugti. This 79 year old scion of the Bugti tribe was leading an insurgency against the Pakistan army and was martyred when the cave he was hiding in collapsed during an aerial bombardment. In hindsight, the good General should have retired after publishing his memoir, In the line of fire. He could have settled in California where is son goes to school at Stanford, joined the Hoover institute or be initiated into a Sufi Tariqa. But like Inzimam -- who led an ignominious exit out of the 2007 cricket world cup after the suspicious murder of the national coach Bob Woolmer – for Pakistanis the only graceful exit from power is martyrdom.
This Supreme Court judge (may God save him from martyrdom) first challenged the hold of the Pak military by blocking the sale of the strategic Pakistan Steel Mill to the cronies of the then Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. His second act was to listen to the cases of the missing persons of Pakistan filed by the Human rights commission of Pakistan. Since 2001, hundred of Pakistanis have been allegedly abducted by ISI and/or CIA. Chaudry Sahab directed the Ministry of interior to answer some of these allegations in court. The fact that Musharraf’s regime was kidnapping Pakistani nationals and selling them as Al Qaida operatives to CIA could have further tarnished the image of the former SSG (Special service group) commando as a lota (sycophant) to the Bush regime.
However, support for reinstating the Chief justice among the Pakistani intellectuals was strong resulting in nation wide protests. In May, the lawyers took their campaign for restoration of the “Rule of Law” to the port city of Karachi. The General had been kind to the city and it was controlled by his political allies, the MQM, a party made up of ethnic Indian migrates. In another hasty move, he gave MQM carte blanche to stop the peaceful protest rally. With permission from their drunken master in London, MQM activist indulged in a chaotic orgy that bought the commerce of the city to a grinding halt. Fortunately, the burgeoning media outlets captured this mayhem on 24x7 news channels and it ended up as another embarrassing episode. In November, undeterred by the three strikes against him, the general imposed an “Emergency”. Journalists were beaten, lawyers were harassed, political activists jailed, human right leaders abused and print and media outlets were banned from reporting. Any remaining fans of the general were dumb founded by this new ruling that made Pakistan appear as a 21st century banana republic. The General squarely blamed this farce on the rising militancy in the NWFP province and promised to take off his uniform before the end of the year.
To be fair, the war against Pakistan’s Taliban had intensified since the martyrdom of Nek Muhammad by a US Predator in 2004. The Pakistan’s army operation against its own population at the behest of their colonial master had created a monster that had now spread from Waziristan to the idyllic valley of Swat, once considered an extreme golf destination. Qazi Fazlullah's Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM - the Movement for the Implementation of Mohammad's Sharia Law) is actively engaged in fighting for imposing of sharia, defacing of Buddhist artifacts and beheading of police and army officials. The siege of Red Mosque in Islamabad, where chicks with sticks horrified the whiskey swelling crowd with their religious zeal, was an insight into the new urban female Taliban. Eventually, the mosque was stormed which resulted in the, guess what, martyrdom of its leader, Abdullah Rashid Ghazi. This trend continued in October with a bomb blast in Karachi that claimed the lives of 136 people during Benazir election campaign, and in December at Char Sadda near Peshawar, where a bomb blast during the auspicious Eid-ul-Azha prayers killed 30 people. In the last 40 days of 2007, the frontier province alone has had 28 suicide bomb attacks and it is becoming increasingly difficult to blame “agencies” for these suicide attacks when its own ministers and corps commanders are the main target.
The last bomb blast of 2007 resulted in the death of Benazir Bhutto. Pinki, BiBi, Madam, Martyr had controlled the emotions of my generation with her hairstyles and political gerrymandering. This oxford educated feudal princess from the landed gentry of Sindh was beloved by the nation as a sister and a savior. Her catchy songs, festive campaigning and washmallay dancers send an arrow through the heart of Pakistan. We received her at Karachi airport when she returned from exile in 1987, attended her wedding festivities in Lyari and campaigned for her as she became the first female leader of the Muslim world and the only Pakistani entry in the People magazine’s 50 most beautiful people. Benazir was then, the one leader who could modernize Pakistan as a secular state that was envisioned by its founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
Her unfortunate death twenty years later is being eulogized across the world as the biggest blow to Pakistan’s democracy. This is an overstated hype at best. In the last twenty years, out of power and in self exile, Benazir became a Machiavellian politician. Her regular press statements from her mansions in Surrey and Dubai alienated her from Pakistani middle class while making her as the darling of the western media. Calling her legacy complex is apologetic at best. Although during her tenure, private media channels were allowed and the telecommunication infrastructure was upgraded, she did precious little for the country in her two dishonorable terms. She betrayed the progressives on social justice agenda, her husband Zardari aka Mr. 10% amassed a fortune, she empowered General Nasurrullah Babar to fund the nascent Taliban movement and then embarked on a dirty turf war in her power base of Karachi that resulted in months of curfew and thousands of activist been killed in “fake police encounters”. Finally, she lost support of her own mother, Nusrat, and niece Fatima, who continued to blame her for the martyrdom of her own brother Mir Murtaza Bhutto, shot by her trigger happy police during the infamous operation cleanup in 1996.
The cause of her death is being blamed by her husband Zardari on the Pakistan’s covert agency Inter services intelligence (ISI) and lax security. Further fanning the flames of emotional chaos, the People’s Party activist have gone on a frenzy of violence that has not been seen in Pakistan for decades. Trains, hospitals, petrol stations, schools, buses and people have been burned. Hundreds have been killed. Thousands of burned vehicles line the roads in Karachi, the stock exchange has taken a plunge and the damage to infrastructure is in billions. Most Pakistanis are in shock, rumors run rampant through cell phone SMS messages and political leaders are afraid of being targeted. The crisis in Pakistan is exasperated by the fact that there is a power vacuum with Benazir dead, Nawaz scared for his own life, Musharraf without a uniform and Imran khan without a strategy. Nineteen year old Bilawal, who named has just been changed to include Bhutto is a kid, and no where as astute as his 24 year old cousin Fatima Bhutto who reminds many the Benazir of the seventies. Her husband Zardari, the self appointed co-chairman of the party is probably the most despised man in Pakistan.
For all her faults, Benazir remained to her death a remarkably brave woman and a role model to all Muslim women. The fact remains that she was openly threatened by extremists including the top suspect Waziristan warlord Baitullah Mehsud, who called her “an American agent” and boasted of having 50+ suicide bombers in the waiting. Her death on December 27, 2007 at Liaqat bagh in Rawalpindi was probably the result of one such vagrant. It was at this park where the first Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liaqat Ali Khan(Shaheed) was assassinated in 1951, and not far from the jail where her own father Zulfiqar Bhutto (Shaheed) was hanged in 1979 by another martyr of Islam, Zia-ul-Haq (Shaheed), blown to smithereens while flying with the sitting American ambassador to Pakistan, Arnold Raphael (unfortunately just collateral damage) in 1988. Apparently, BB was also fired upon twice before the assassin, blew himself up killing 20 people. Although history might judge her as a failed leader, she will remain in our heart as a martyr to the nation. The challenge to all Pakistanis (and Muslims) is to make sure that the waste of human flesh who blew himself up in this suicide attack is not treated as one.
