Former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto ended eight years of self-exile on Thursday, making a comeback that could eventually lead to power sharing with President Pervez Musharraf.
Coming home to Karachi to lead her Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) into national elections meant to return her country to civilian rule, a joyful Bhutto set aside fears of assassination by al-Qaeda linked militants who have threatened her return.
”I am thankful to God, I am very happy that I’m back in my country and I was dreaming of this day,” a sobbing Bhutto told Reuters as she disembarked an Emirates flight from Dubai.
Dressed in a green shalwar kameez (loose tunic and trousers), her head covered by a white scarf, she passed under the Qu’ran, kissed the Muslim holy book, and stepped onto the tarmac where hundreds of armed airport security personnel stood guard. For years Bhutto vowed to return to Pakistan to end military dictatorship, yet she is coming back as a potential ally for General Musharraf, the army chief who took power in a 1999 coup.
Before saying goodbye to her two daughters and husband, Asif Ali Zardari in Dubai, Bhutto described Pakistan as being at a crossroads between democracy and dictatorship.
Musharraf is going through his weakest period, and there is strong speculation he will end up sharing power with Bhutto after national elections due in early January.
The United States is believed to have quietly encouraged their alliance in order to keep nuclear-armed Pakistan pro-Western and committed to fighting al-Qaeda and supporting Nato’s efforts to stabilise Afghanistan.
While the rest of Pakistan was transfixed by Bhutto’s homecoming, Musharraf spent the morning at his army offices in Rawalpindi, with no official engagements scheduled, an aide said.
Bhutto’s return has pleased investors. The Karachi Stock Exchange benchmark 100-share index struck a life high of 14 802,61 points, up over 1% on hopes that her return bodes well for stability and democracy.
More than 100 000 supporters lined the road to the airport and jammed the highway into the city. The crowd was expected to swell once Bhutto left the airport to address a rally.
About 20 000 security personnel have been deployed to provide protection against threatened suicide bomb attacks by militants.
Intelligence reports suggested at least three jihadi groups linked to al-Qaeda and the Taliban were plotting suicide attacks, according to a provincial official.
”She has an agreement with America. We will carry out attacks on Benazir Bhutto as we did on General Pervez Musharraf,” Haji Omar, a Taliban commander in the Waziristan tribal region on the Afghan border, told Reuters by satellite telephone.
Homecoming rally
Bhutto’s procession was expected to take several hours edging through crammed roads to a venue close to the tomb of Pakistan’s founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, for a rally.
Muhammad Ali, a 25 year-old office worker from Larkana, a town in Sindh province where the Bhutto feudal home is located, hitched a lift to Karachi to see a leader idolised by his family.
”I have never seen her in real life before. I love Bhutto and her family, and so do all my relatives,” Ali said.
Red, black and green flags of Bhutto’s PPP festooned streets and billboards displayed giant images of Bhutto’s face.
Musharraf has already granted an amnesty to protect Bhutto from corruption charges brought by the government of Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister he overthrew and later exiled.
But the Supreme Court is challenging Musharraf’s right to bestow an amnesty, it is also hearing challenges to the president’s right to have stood for re-election while still army chief in a ballot he won easily on October 6, even though he has promised to be sworn in as a civilian leader.
A moderate success?
Bhutto has woven a narrative that appeals to the West. The first, and the youngest, woman prime minister to lead a Muslim country in modern times, she has been visiting Western capitals, laying out her vision for Pakistan.
In doing so, she has presented herself as a moderate, willing to stand up to the Islamist militants in the madrassahs and to take on the pro-Taliban fighters in the lawless Afghan border areas instead of making truces.
She claims that during her two terms as prime minister, she was willing to confront the extremists and terrorists, and reform the militant clerics. Madrasas were reformed during her tenure, she says, and those that were too radical and violent were shut down.
There is some truth to this. As prime minister she showed more interest in human rights and the position of women in a traditional society, and she never attacked non-governmental organisations as did Nawaz Sharif — her rival then, and now.
On religious matters she had a more modern outlook, though like her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, she was also willing to pander to religious groups for short-term benefit.
Yet despite her modernising instincts, which are shared by the Musharraf, analysts point to a lack of reform when Bhutto was in charge. The same applies to Sharif.
”Neither pushed through any significant reforms,” says Owen Bennett Jones in his book Pakistan. ”In national policy terms, their most important shared characteristic was their ability to run up huge levels of foreign debt.”
And then there are the allegations of corruption that twice drove her from power and which still dog her. Last week, the supreme court ruled that Bhutto could still face prosecution on corruption charges. Most are related to alleged kickbacks in her second term as prime minister between 1993 and 1996. Bhutto says the charges against her and her husband, Asif Zardari, who is widely known as Mr 10%, are politically motivated.
Initially, Bhutto — educated at Oxford, where she was president of the Oxford Union debating society, and Harvard — wanted to become a diplomat. But events would force her into politics, following in her father’s footsteps. In 1977, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s first democratically elected leader after the civil war that led to the creation of Bangladesh, was deposed as prime minister in a military coup led by General Zia ul-Haq. Imprisoned and charged with murder, he was executed two years later.
Bhutto, his eldest daughter, was imprisoned just before her father’s death and spent most of her five-year sentence in solitary confinement. During stints out of prison for medical treatment, Bhutto set up the PPP office in London, and led a campaign against Zia. After the general died in an air crash, Bhutto won the election.
Not everyone associated with the still popular PPP is comfortable with her cosying up to Musharraf. Former party members and estranged family have accused her of betraying her father’s legacy, including Mumtaz Ali Bhutto, Benazir’s great-uncle and head of the Bhutto clan. He has gone so far as to say that she has disgraced the Bhutto name.
It is a somewhat harsh assessment, but whether that verdict stands depends on how much Bhutto can achieve while dealing with the twin challenges of economic development and the threat from militants. – Reuters, Guardian Unlimited Â