Of betrayals, legacy and defiance: Benazir Bhutto of Larkana

It was the most vividly colourful scene I had ever seen. As a child, I was chosen to present a welcome bouquet to the Shah of Iran and Queen Farah Deeba at Mohenjodaro airport during their visit to my hometown, Larkana. He was in a blue suit and red tie, she in bright silk and glittering emeralds, the carpet red on which I waited, the lights, the grandeur. 

Later, my mother asked me what it felt like. 

“Like being inside a rainbow,” I told her. 

But the next day, the photograph I got of the ceremony was black and white and lifeless. 

The contrast came back to my mind while driving through Sindh the day after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

Burnt trucks, smouldering cars, grey fumes surrounded the enraged followers of the Bhuttos. Streams of peasants beat their chests and heads. Everyone was headed to Garhi Khuda Bux, the Bhutto family graveyard where Benazir was buried along with her father and brothers, all of whom died tragic deaths. 

Though I had seen Z.A Bhutto many times in my childhood as he belonged to my hometown and canvassed for votes at my house, and handed out scholarships for my school, the first time I saw Benazir was after her father’s death, when as a young boy, I was performing in a street theatre against the military regime. She had come to that village to meet families of jailed party workers and stopped to watch the play.

Eventually, worried about my growing interest in politics and the intolerance of the military regime, my family sent me away to boarding school to concentrate on my studies. Benazir went into exile in London to continue her fight for democracy through politics, while her revolutionary bothers Murtaza and Shahnawaz believed in armed struggle against the military rule of General Zia-ul-Haq.

Led by Benazir, Pakistan Peoples’ Party swept elections in 1988 after Zia’s death in an air crash. Like dominoes, powerful feudal lords fell at the ballot. Benazir became the first woman prime minister in the Islamic world.

Owais Tohid 

Years passed by. I was in college when I heard the news of Shahnawaz Bhutto’s mysterious death in France. I went back to Larkana for the funeral. As Benazir brought back her brother’s body to the family graveyard, thousands of charged party workers joined in. Tears, anger, victory signs and slogans turned the funeral into a gesture of resistance against General Zia’s regime. 

Over the years in our private homes, we celebrated Eid, weddings, births, but in public, the streets of Larkana expressed only anger and fear, no festivity – not until 1986, when Benazir returned to fight the regime for the restoration of democracy. Thousands poured out into the streets, those underground came out of hiding, broken political activists found hope again. 

Led by Benazir, Pakistan Peoples’ Party swept elections in 1988 after Zia’s death in an air crash. Like dominoes, powerful feudal lords fell at the ballot. Benazir became the first woman prime minister in the Islamic world.

It didn’t take long for ideologically committed political activists to become disappointed by her ‘compromised leadership.’ Her government was dismissed within two years. Benazir’s estranged brother Murtaza Bhutto told me that he had advised Benazir not to return to Pakistan. 

“She visited me in Damascus during my exile before returning to Pakistan,” Murtaza once told me. “I told her don’t go, not during Zia’s rule who hanged our father, murdered thousands of our workers. I told her it’s a game of nerves, if you go now they won’t let you rule.”

Her second tenure from 1993-96 brought disrepute to her career. She faced allegations of corruption, while her husband Asif Ali Zardari was dubbed “Mr. Ten Percent.” 

As a journalist, I interviewed Benazir on numerous occasions mostly while she was in the opposition, I covered her political movements, election campaigns, and the dismissal of her government. Her brother Murtaza ended his exile and pitched his own political party against her rule. The House of Bhutto was divided. The mother, Nusrat, sided with the son.

Murtaza Bhutto was assassinated in Karachi during Benazir’s second term in power, in what was described as a ‘police shootout.’ 

His widow, Ghinwa, accused Zardari for the murder of her husband. 

Weeks after the incident, Benazir’s government was dismissed by her close confidante, the then president Farooq Ahmed Khan Leghari in November 1996, which she described as a ‘betrayal.’

Benazir was used to betrayals. When she, along with her mother Nusrat Bhutto, were spearheading the movement for the restoration of democracy, her father’s close aides whom she called ‘uncles’ - Mustafa Jatoi, Ghulam Mustafa Khar and Hafeez Pirzada, all sided with the military ruler.

Over the next few years, Benazir faced several corruption charges and her husband, Zardari, was put behind bars. She invited me to the Karachi prison where she was visiting Zardari for the first time after her government’s dismissal. She sat across the jail bars; the pictures were published across the world. Media savvy, Benazir knew her audience and used the power of media as an effective tool throughout her career.

After eight years in exile, Benazir returned during Gen. Musharraf’s rule to a tumultuous welcome in Karachi; tens of thousands of party workers and supporters thronged to the streets once again. 

She miraculously escaped twin suicide bombings in Karachi, which killed over 150 and injured hundreds. The next day, she was at the hospital and visiting homes of slain party workers. 

The last time I met her was at the head office of Geo TV in Karachi, where she visited in solidarity against the ban on television channels. 

“Be careful,” I told her, “You‘re a ticking time bomb.” 

“Yes, I know,” she said. “But when there is an ocean of people out on the streets for me, I cannot hide inside. They own me, and I owe them.”

Now, Bilawal waits to greet people as they pour into Garhi Khuda Baksh on Benazir’s death anniversary every year. 

Party followers seek Benazir’s traces in him and find his ‘heart in the right place’, meaning he raises his voice for the oppressed. 

But he seems to be caught between the radical narratives of grandfather Z.A.Bhutto and his mother’s legacy of resistance on the one hand, and the practical politics of compromise and accommodation of his father, Zardari, on the other.

Zardari’s image as a ‘villain’ and his alleged involvement in corruption is proving a hurdle in Bilawal’s way. 

“Bilawal’s power is Benazir Bhutto and her legacy, and his weakness is Zardari,” says Jami Chandio, renowned political commentator of Sindh. 

“Bilawal’s political career in reality will start after Zardari, once he becomes a sovereign party head. His real test will begin then,” he says.

So on every December 27th, party workers and supporters throng to the streets of Larkana and gather at the Bhuttos’ ancestral graveyard, vowing to sacrifice their lives for the party. 

But the party seems in search of its own lost soul.

– Owais Tohid is a leading Pakistani journalist/writer. His email address is [email protected]. He tweets @OwaisTohid.