Benazir Bhutto: 'One Day' in a mother's life

The late Pakistani prime minister on balancing her public and private duties

By Benazir Bhutto
2:24 p.m. MT, Tues., Oct . 7, 2008

Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, once the chair of the center-left Pakistan People's Party (PPP), was the first woman elected to lead a Muslim state. She was assassinated after an election campaign rally on Dec. 27, 2007, two weeks before the 2008 general election, in which she was a leading opposition candidate. The charismatic politician and mother of five wrote this essay, "One Day" on June 17, 1997, which appears in the anthology "The Maternal is Political."

"One Day"

When I graduated from university in the ’70s, I was thrilled. My education was over. A life of exams, grades, waiting for results was part of the past.

I was wrong.

Life is one big exam.

And whether it is an election, a speech, a court decision, or a domestic matter, I am always wondering whether I am going to pass or fail, whether I am going to make the grade or not.

Some days are good. Some days are not. As Lady Thatcher once said to me, “In politics, always expect the unexpected.” I would only add, In life, always expect the unexpected.

As leader of the opposition in the National Assembly of Pakistan, I have to open the debate on the budget proposal tomorrow.

I get up today and head straight for the big bundle of budget documents, which the finance minister has placed on the floor of the National Assembly. I finish the first reading of the budget documents by lunchtime. I find that the Intelligence Bureau of Pakistan spent one-third over its allocation.

Was this huge expenditure to rig the general elections held this February, to fund my opponents, to bribe witnesses into giving false statements, or to bribe journalists into writing negative stories? These questions whirl in my mind. Last November, my government was dismissed by presidential decree on the eve of our signing an agreement with the International Monetary Fund.

A witchhunt was launched. It still continues. That night of November 4, 1996, my husband was kidnapped by security agents. He was produced 48 hours later after we raised a hue and cry. For eight months, he has languished in a prison cell in solitary confinement, with temperatures soaring to 48 degrees Celsius. He has not been indicted in a single case so far, despite the government’s tall claims that he was “The King of Corruption.”

Later in the afternoon, my cousin Fakhri comes to our house along with her three grandchildren. I send them, along with my own three kids, to have pizza and chocolate cake. They shout with delight. Children are so easy to please. What happens to us when we become adults?

Mummy, Fakhri, and I have lunch. The cook has made Karri. It is made with yogurt and gram flour. Mummy says it is delicious, so her cook must have made it.

Mummy has just returned from a religious pilgrimage. She says she prayed really hard for me and our party workers, and things are going to get better. Let us hope so.

After lunch, we sip green tea and chat until the sound of shouts and screams heralds the return of the children. The kids now demand to see a cartoon.

I do not like my children watching cartoons. But I am feeling guilty. I have to catch a flight to Islamabad, where the Parliament is based. So I cave in.

As I come down the stairs to leave for the airport, my seven-year-old daughter, Bakhtwar, looks up. Casually waving, she says, “Bye, it was nice seeing you. Come back soon.”

“What do you mean?” I say. “I am your mother. I am stuck to you like that arm of yours for life.”

“But Mama, my arm keeps going away,” she complains.

“But it always comes back,” I reply.

“Yes, it does, it does,” says my eight-year-old son, Bilawal, as he gives me a hug.

On the flight, I see my mother-in-law. We say hello. She says the regime is still bothering my father-in-law. He is in Lahore, meeting lawyers in connection with politically motivated allegations made against him.

I write my speech by hand during the two-hour plane journey from Karachi to Islamabad. I rush home and into my study to complete the speech. Once the draft is finished, I call my party leaders to vet the draft. While they are doing that, I binge on pizza and chocolate cake.

It is four in the morning by the time we finish. We leave the speech for typing, translation, and copying, and call it a day.

Imran Khan and Benazir Bhutto enjoyed a close sexual relationship in Oxford??

Author of a new biography of Imran Khan claims that the cricketer-turned-politician was romantically involved with late former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto when both of them studied together at Oxford University.

In his book, Christopher Sandford writes that Bhutto became infatuated with Khan, and the pair enjoyed a “close” and possibly “sexual” relationship.

The author has also alleged that Khan’s mother even tried to organise an arranged marriage between the pair, but to no avail.

It was believed that Khan and Bhutto had always been at loggerheads, both politically and personally.

In fact, Khan openly criticised the former Prime Minister just days before her death.

But Sandford, who interviewed both Khan and his ex-wife Jemima for the book, claimed that a source told him that Bhutto was 21, and in her second year of reading politics at Lady Margaret Hall, when she became close to Khan in 1975.

The source also revealed that she had been “visibly impressed” by Khan, and might even have been the first to call him the “Lion of Lahore”.

“In any event, it seems fairly clear that, for at least a month or two, the couple were close. There was a lot of giggling and blushing whenever they appeared together in public,” the Telegraoh quoted Sandford as having told the Daily Mail.

He added: “It also seems fair to say that the relationship was “sexual”, in the sense that it could only have existed between a man and a woman. The reason some supposed it went further was because, to quote one Oxford friend: ”Imran slept with everyone.”

However, the former Pakistan cricket captain has rebuffed these claims, saying that he never had a sexual relationship with Bhutto.

Although he agreed to having been interviewed for the book, but claimed to have not read it as yet.

“Yes, I was interviewed, but I know nothing about the rest of what has been written. So it is not official,” he told the Daily Mail.

“It is absolute nonsense about any sexual relationship or my mother and an arranged marriage. We were friends – that’s all,” he added. Hindustan Times

Zardari ‘pained’ by book linking Benazir, Imran

- London: Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari and other members of the Bhutto family have been “profoundly grieved” by a new book that claims Benazir Bhutto had a college affair with former international cricketer Imran Khan, Pakistan high commissioner to Britain said Thursday.

Wajid Shamsul Hasan, the envoy who is a close friend of the Bhutto family and was a confidant of the slain former Pakistani prime minister, said the book by Christopher Sandford – a biography of Imran Khan – does not give any evidence linking Benazir Bhutto and Khan during their Oxford University days. By Moin Ansari

Who killed Benazir Bhutto?

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto has raised two important questions. Who killed her and why? And what happens next to the Pakistan People’s Party and by corollary to Pakistani politics?



Most Pakistanis are by instinct inclined to believe that the “agencies” did it. This is the easy explanation for anything that happens in this country which is either inexplicable or unpalatable. All political assassinations in Pakistan remain inexplicable since the truth about them has never been investigated or investigated but not made public. But the truth of Ms Bhutto’s assassination may also be subliminally unacceptable to many Pakistanis because a religious or “Islamist” element may be at its unpleasant core.

This response is also partly due to the ubiquitous role of the “agencies” in ordering Pakistan’s political contours since the 1980s, including making and unmaking governments and elections. So we can hardly be blamed for suspecting the “agencies” or clutching at half-baked theories. Certainly, the political opposition to President Pervez Musharraf would like everyone to think so. It suits the politicians’ purpose because it discredits the Musharraf regime and seeks to exploit the widespread anger and outrage at the killing of a popular leader to try and overthrow him.

But if the “agencies” have done this at President Musharraf’s bidding, why is no one asking about their motives for doing so, or whether this suits him in any way, considering that it is likely to provoke a popular movement to undo his regime? Indeed, why is no one wondering whether there is some non-agency link between Ms Bhutto’s assassination and the assassination attempts on the lives of President Musharraf (two), the former corps commander of Karachi, Ahsan Saleem Hayat (one), the former prime minister Shaukat Aziz (one) and the former interior minister Aftab Sherpao (two)? Surely, the “agencies” did not target these gentlemen.

Of course, Ms Bhutto did not make any explanations easier following the assassination attempt on her on 18 October when she pointed to “remnants” of the Zia regime in the Musharraf administration, including some former “agency” people. Apparently, she had been given to understand as much, but by whom and why we will never know.

There may also have been an element of political opportunism in her accusations at the time. She was trying to distance herself from President Musharraf to regain her credibility because most Pakistanis were unhappy at the prospect of a “deal” between her and him. Indeed, she was seen as being let off the hook regarding the corruption cases against her in exchange for agreeing to work with him at a time when he was terribly unpopular both for his political blunders regarding the judiciary and also for his pro-US stance on the “war against terror”. Most Pakistanis saw this war an unjust American war and not a just Pakistani war.

Later, however, Ms Bhutto saw the writing on the wall and changed tack. She started to say that the biggest threat to Pakistan lay in religious extremism and terrorism, a clear allusion to the Al Qaeda network that was trying to lay down roots in Pakistan’s tribal areas as part of its global strategy after Iraq to reclaim Afghanistan and make Pakistan a base area for Islamic revolution.

Shortly before she returned to Pakistan, Daily Times reported a statement by Baitullah Mehsud, an Al Qaeda-Taliban warlord based in Waziristan, saying that he had trained “hundreds of suicide bombers” and was determined to kill Benazir Bhutto because she was an American agent. The story was based on an interview given to Daily Times by a sitting member of the Pakistan senate who has been a conduit for Masud’s statements and who had recently met him.

The story was not denied for two weeks and disregarded until the assassination attempt provoked widespread outrage in Pakistan and refocused attention on Al Qaeda. But sections of the media sympathetic to Al Qaeda’s anti-American aims and objectives now quickly pounced on Daily Times and accused it of wilfully carrying an erroneous report. The senator was dragged to a TV studio and made to recant his statement and much was made of the motives of Daily Times in airing such a story. Later, a statement from Baitullah Masud was floated denying involvement in the assassination attempt on October 18. Last month, however, Baitullah Masud gave up pretences and formally announced himself as the head of the Taliban Movement of Pakistan.

Why is it difficult to believe that the same Islamist network that tried to eliminate President Musharraf, Shaukat Aziz, Aftab Sherpao and Benazir Bhutto on October 18 may be responsible for her murder on December 27? The first three have overtly been involved in the “war against terror” while Ms Bhutto had pledged many times to wipe out the extremists and terrorists if she was returned to power. All were seen as “American agents” or “puppets”.

In the case of President Musharraf, it was later revealed that “rogue elements” in the “agencies” or “forces” may have been involved as Al Qaeda “supplementaries” or “accessories” in the assassination attempts on his life. Indeed, in many of the Al Qaeda attacks on the armed forces and paramilitary forces, especially those in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, low-level “insider” elements with contacts with the Lal Masjid, which was part of the Al Qaeda network, are known to have been involved. How else can one explain the Al Qaeda attacks on ISI busses in Islamabad in which civilian employees of the agency have been killed?

Clearly, Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan doesn’t just comprise Arabs and Uzbeks and Tajiks. It also comprises Pakistanis; and among such Pakistanis it comprises Pathans and Punjabis and possibly Urdu speakers who constitute the Pakistani Taliban. Certainly, it is known that a number of Pakistani sectarian and jihadi Sunni organisations have joined the Al Qaeda Network after the government launched efforts to disband them since the “peace process” started with India. So Al Qaeda is now as much a Pakistani phenomenon as it is an Arab or foreign element.

There is not much room for doubt on this score any more. Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the number two Al Qaeda man, has already gone public in his exhortations to Pakistanis to overthrow the Musharraf regime. Indeed, last September Bin Laden declared a jihad against the Musharraf regime. Now, following the assassination of Ms Bhutto on December 27, an Al Qaeda spokesman and Afghanistan commander Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid telephoned the Italian news agency AKI to make the claim that his organisation had killed Ms Benazir Bhutto “because she was a precious American asset”. This should have reminded Pakistanis that their country is in the midst of a global war against religious extremism. But the tragedy is that it hasn’t.

There is no inconsistency between what Ms Bhutto said on October 18 after the assassination attempt on her life about remnants of the Zia regime gunning for her and what she said in Rawalpindi on December 27 about terrorists and extremists targeting her minutes before one of them succeeded in eliminating her. Now Al Qaeda’s primary targets are President Musharraf and Maulana Fazlur Rehman and its sole objective is to destabilise Pakistan and sow the seeds of anarchy by scuttling its halting transition to a moderate democracy.

Benazir Bhutto and Asif Ali Zardari Marriage Profile

Benazir Bhutto's arranged marriage to Asif Zardari in 1987 surprised many people. Their marriage endured separation due to Asif's imprisonment and separation due to Benazir's politics. Their marriage ended when Benazir was assassinated on December 27, 2007.

Here is information about their arranged marriage, how they met, their wedding, children, and more.

Born:

Benazir Bhutto: June 21, 1953 in Karachi, Pakistan.

Asif Ali Zardari: July 21, 1953 in Pakistan.

Died:

Benazir Bhutto: December 27, 2007 in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto was 54 years old when she was assassinated in a combined shooting and bombing attack while she was attending a rally.

Bhutto / Zardari Arranged Marriage:

In Pakistan, there is more respect given to married women than to single women. Additionally, a single woman would not be allowed to be head of state. This reality helped Benazir make the decision to agree to an arranged marriage.

After their arranged marriage was announced on July 29, 1987, Asif sent Benazir roses every day and gave her a heartshaped ring of diamonds and sapphires. Benazir had met Asif five days before the public announcement of their planned winter wedding.

An Almost Traditional Wedding:

On December 18, 1987, at the Clifton Palace garden in Karachi, Pakistan, Benazir and Asif had an almost traditional Pakistani wedding.

Concerned about how some of the Pakistani wedding traditions were extravagant and difficult for poor families, Benazir broke with tradition by trying to keep their wedding simple. She eliminated the dowry, had only two shalwar kameez instead of the traditional nearly 51 dresses and wore only one layer of jewelry.

Benazir wore a white silk tunic with gold-embroidery. Asif wore a turban and a cream-colored tunic.

Asif and Benazir and their families had several days of celebration. The couple said "yes" three times, and at their wedding ceremony Benazir and Asif looked into a mirror together so they could see themselves as a married couple for the first time. Sugar was ground over their heads so their lives would be sweet.

Although their wedding ceremony was small and private, in the streets after their wedding there were 100,000 political supporters dancing, singing, firing guns in the air, and enjoying fireworks.

Children:

Asif and Benazir have a son and two daughters.

• Bilawal: He was born in September 1988. After the death of his mother, Benazir, Bilawal was appointed co-chairman with his father, Asif, of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP).
• Bakhtwar:
• Aseefa:
  

Occupations:

Benazir: Former Prime Minister of Pakistan.

Asif Ali Zardari: Businessman, building contractor, Member of National Assembly and Senator, member of The Zardari Four polo team.

Residences:

Bhutto and Zardari had a mansion with nine bedrooms on 355 acress in Rockwood, England. The home also had an indoor swimming pool, a helicopter landing pad, and 15 acres of gardens.

They also had a home in Dubai.

Quotes About Their Marriage:

Benazir's announcement of her arranged marriage: “Conscious of my religious obligations and duty to my family, I am pleased to proceed with the marriage proposal accepted by my mother.”
Source: Christina Lamb, "My 20-year friendship with Benazir Bhutto began at her wedding", TimesOnLine.co.uk, 10/21/2007.

Benazir about deciding to have an arranged marriage: "In a Moslem society, it's not done for women and men to meet each other, so it's very difficult to get to know each other, and, my being the leader of the largest opposition party in Pakistan, it would have been a lot of rumor to the grist and bad for the image if I had chosen another course."
Source: Howell Raines, "Benazir Bhutto to Marry, in a Pact by 2 Families", NYTimes.com, 07/31/1987.

Benazir about meeting Asif: "I did meet him, and because I felt he's nice and had a sense of humor and he seemed to be a tolerant person in that he could handle having a wife who had an independent career of her own, I thought it was wise to accept the proposal."
Source: Howell Raines, "Benazir Bhutto to Marry, in a Pact by 2 Families", NYTimes.com, 07/31/1987.

Benazir about not being free to marry for love: "For me the choice was not between a love marriage or an arranged marriage but between agreeing to this or not getting married at all ... An arranged marriage may seem traditional, but what is not traditional is the fact I'm not abandoning my identity or my career. If I had thought it might hurt my political career, I know I would never have taken this step. I would never have gotten married at any stage. I would have never sought personal happiness at the cost of my country. If people have given their lives for the cause of freedom and constitutional rule, then I surely could have sacrificed marriage and children."
Source: Tyler Marshall, "Political Maverick Bows to Muslim custom", Los Angeles Times, 08/07/1987.

Benazir on love and marriage: "I was always told by my elders that love comes after a marriage. In an arranged marriage, there is a mental commitment. You know that you are marrying somebody and he is going to be a part of your life forever. It's a very strange kind of mental journey, which I have not read about or heard about, but feel my own self experiencing."
Source: Steven R. Weisman, "The Bride Wore White -- 100,000 Sang Slogans", New York Times, 12/19/1987.

Benazir on keeping her own name: "Benazir Bhutto doesn't cease to exist the moment she marries; she's the same person. I am keeping my own name."
Source: "Joyous Pandemonium Erups Bhutto Weds Man Chosen for Her by Her Mother", Los Angeles Times, 12/18/1987.

Asif on not leaving her and then being imprisoned: "I cannot abandon my wife and children. I would rather die than abandon all of you."
Source: Claudia Dreifus, "Real-Live Dynasty; Benazir Bhutto", NYTimes.com, 05/15, 1994.

The arranged marriage of Benazir Bhutto and Asif Zardari was not expected. Here are some of their comments about their arranged marriage.

Benazir when asked "Why would someone as independent as you accept marriage to someone you hardly knew?": "I couldn't have a love match. I was under so much scrutiny. If my name had been linked with a man, it would have destroyed my political career. Actually, I had reconciled myself to a life without marriage or children for the sake of my career ... So keeping in mind that many people in Pakistan looked to me, I decided to make a personal sacrifice in what I thought would be, more or less, a loveless marriage, a marriage of convenience. The surprising part is that we are very close and that it's been a very good match ... I'd love to arrange my own children's marriages. I say that because I've been so happy."
Source: Claudia Dreifus, "Real-Live Dynasty; Benazir Bhutto", NYTimes.com, 05/15, 1994.

Nusrat Bhutto [Benazir's mother] on why photos during their engagement show Benazir and Asif never touching: "She won't let him near her. For all her modern ideas, my daughter is very old-fashioned."
Source: Karen DeYoung, "The Making of a Marriage -- For Pakistani Opposition Leader Benazir Bhutto, a Union of Politics and Tradition", The Washington Post, 08/11/1987.

Benazir about not having the traditional two-week exclusion: "I didn't have the time to take off."
Source: Jack Reed, "Opposition Chief in Pakistan Weds But Retains Vow to Oust President", Seattle Times, 12/18/1987.

Benazir about her careeer and her personal life: "When I was growing up I thought a woman could have it all and now I find that yes a woman can have it all but she has to be prepared to pay the price. And the price means a lot of guilt about not being there for your children when they need you, a lot of tension also with your husband on work schedules. So you find you can have a husband, you can have a family, you can have a career but at the end of the time you have very little time left for yourself. That's a choice I made and it brought me a lot of satisfaction but for those who want to start out, I would say there is a price that has to be paid."
Source: "Doing it all: paying the price", BBC.co.uk

Benazir on Asif's imprisonment: "So I think our bond grew much deeper as a consequence of his imprisonment, because he then shared what I had known and we became much closer emotionally."
Source: Claudia Dreifus, "Real-Live Dynasty; Benazir Bhutto", NYTimes.com, 05/15, 1994.

Benazir carried nuclear secrets in overcoat to North Korea

By Manish Chand
New Delhi, May 13 (IANS) Benazir Bhutto, the prime minister of Pakistan, carried critical nuclear data on CDs in her overcoat to Pyongyang in 1993 and brought back North Korea’s missile information on her return journey, says a new political biography of the late leader. The shocking revelation about Pakistan’s alleged role in North Korea’s illicit nuclear weapons programme is chronicled in detail in veteran journalist Shyam Bhatia’s “Goodbye Shahzadi”.

Bhatia, who says Bhutto acted as a “female James Bond”, has based his book on long personal conversations with the late prime minister.

“As she was due to visit North Korea at the end of 1993 she was asked and readily agreed to carry nuclear data on her person and hand it over on arrival in Pyongyang,” writes the London-based Bhatia while recalling a conversation with Bhutto in her villa in Dubai villa 2003.

“…before leaving Islamabad, she shopped for an overcoat with the ‘deepest possible pockets’ into which she transferred CDs containing the scientific data about uranium enrichment that the North Koreans wanted,” says Bhatia.

“She did not tell me how many CDs were given to her to carry, or who they were given to when she arrived in Pyongyang, but she implied with a glint in her eye that she acted as a two-way courier, bringing North Korea’s missile information on CDs back with her on the return journey,” Bhatia writes.

Bhutto’s interest in North Korean missile technology was triggered by India’s testing of the long-range Agni missile, capable of hitting all Pakistan’s population centres, in 1989, he says.

“When she came into power for the second time in 1993, there were agonized discussions underway about how Pakistan could augment and strengthen its existing missile capabilities.”

In 1993, says Bhatia, the central question was how the barter for enrichment of uranium (which Pakistan’s nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan had mastered) for missiles (North Korea) could be effected.

“Pakistan was under the spotlight as it had never been before, with India, Russia and the secret services of the West monitoring every nuance of the country’s military research.

“This was where Benazir came in useful,” the author states while trying to explain why Bhutto was chosen as a courier for this top-secret mission.

Bhatia’s candid biography of Bhutto, based on a 34-year-old friendship dating back to student days, evokes a multi-hued portrait of the Pakistani leader.

Bhutto was truly versatile, the author recalls: a sensitive human being who idolised her father and a fiery debater who became president of the Oxford Union Debating Society. He also delves into her friendship with Peter Galbraith, the son of former US ambassador to India John Kenneth Galbraith, and the charges of corruption that still shadows her husband Asif Ali Zardari, the leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) after Bhutto was brutally killed Dec 27 last year.

The author has more details on collusion between Pakistani and North Korean nuclear scientists, which seems to confirm what many in the West suspected: the Islamabad-Pyongyang axis in non-proliferation which was in turn allegedly aided by Beijing.

Faced with mounting international pressure to shut down their plutonium facilities, North Korean scientists looked to Pakistan for help to develop a parallel enrichment programme.

Says Bhatia, “Pakistan was ideally placed to help because of the enrichment secrets that A.Q. Khan, the Dutch-trained metallurgist, had stolen from European laboratories, and who so impressed Zulfikar (Ali Bhutto, the Pakistani prime minister and Benazir’s father who was hanged in 1979) with his boast that Pakistan could match and even surpass as South Asia’s leading nuclear weapons state.”

“Later, Khan and colleagues from the Pakistani scientific community would become regular visitors to North Korea. By 1998, there were nine military flights a month ferrying military officers and scientists between Islamabad and Pyongyang.”

Pakistan’s Nuclear Facilities

Pakistan's plutonium production reactor at Khushab

Benazir Bhutto and Zia: a Real Discontinuity?

In doing some research for a project, two important insights emerged concerning contemporary economic policies in Pakistan, and the transformation of feudalism. When it comes to Benazir Bhutto's economic policies, this much is clear: she was closer to being the daughter of the military dictator Zia than to her own father, who was hung by Zia. Zulfikar Bhutto undertook a plan to dramatically increase the role and size of the state in the economy in 1972: nationalizing firms in the steel sector, basic metals, heavy engineering, heavy electrical, assembly and manufacture of motor vehicles and tractors, heavy and basic chemicals, petrochemicals, cements, public utilities, power generation, transmission and distribution, gas and oil refineries (Ur-Rehman 1998). In 1974 he nationalized the banking and insurance industries, and by 1976, all flour mills, rice mills, vegetable ghee mills, and cotton ginning factories were nationalized (Husain 1999). The idea was to create a powerful public sector capable of governing the 'commanding heights' of the economy, and push the country's industrialization effort forward (Husain 1999). However, although the rhetoric is widely categorized as populist and remembered for its inflection of socialism, it was state capitalism that arose in a majority of instances.

It is also interesting to note that the land reforms passed under Z. Bhutto were very minor, and left intact agrarian structures and landholding patterns. Critics noted that Bhutto's plans mostly targeted financial and industrial capitalists, leaving intact the zamindars (feudal landlords) that formed his constituency and contributed to rural inequality and exploitation (see more below).
While privatization was touted and initiated by the military dictator Zia, it would actually pick up speed under Benazir Bhutto in 1988. It was her administration that consolidated the different privatization committees, and embarked on the trio of 'liberalization, privatization, and deregulation' with the aid of British consultants, (she also had the dubious distinction of signing the first Pakistani structural adjustment packages of the 80's with the IMF and the World Bank).

Her rival and successor, Nawaz Sharif, simply continued on the path laid by Bhutto, as did the most recent military head of state, Musharraf. During the last 29 years, Pakistan has followed a continuous path of privatization and liberalization of controls on exchange rates, trade tariffs, credit, and the banking sector. In terms of economic policy, it has not mattered if there was a military dictator or democratically elected prime minister, if there was a Bhutto or a Sharif in charge. The results are as to be expected: unemployment has risen (officially from 5% to 11%, but unofficial figures place it much higher), and poverty and inequality have worsened (Talat Anwar notes that that expenditures fell for the already-poor bottom 40% of the population, and rose for the top 20% from 1984 onwards). The World Bank itself noted about Pakistan in a SAP evaluation that “indeed, assistance packages appeared to do little but increase the country's debt burden” (World Bank, 2006). Increasing unemployment resulting from privatization efforts is also what alienated the labor voting constituency from Benazir Bhutto's administration, further isolating her from domestic allies. Another continuous trend is the share of government expenditures devoted to social services; while we would have expected Benazir Bhutto to stand out given her populist rhetoric, she neither raised spending on education, nor on development. All of the B. Bhutto, Sharif, and Musharraf administrations roughly split over sixty percent of government expenditures on debt servicing and military expenses.
One thing should be clear: that Benazir Bhutto's, Sharif's, and Zia's economic policies aligned quite nicely with the 'Washington Consensus,' whereas Zulfikar Bhutto's did not. There has been no substantive disagreement between all of the former on the whole-hog benefits of private capitalism, and the Adam Smith version of little government economic intervention. Z. Bhutto belonged more firmly to a Keynesian framework: a big state push that took control of finance and industrial development, riding on the back of a public sentiment in boil over the vast extent of poverty and inequality. The genius of Z. Bhutto lay in channeling this sentiment against some of the 22 most wealthy families of Pakistan, who collectively controlled two-thirds of industry, and over 90% of the banking and insurance industries. Bhutto called them “robber barons” on January 1st, 1974 as he explained why the banking and insurance industries had been nationalized (Ur-Rehman, 1998). But Bhutto's socialist politics stopped short; he was not anti-capitalist, and he most definitely was not opposed to exploitation, as evidenced by his continuing support of agrarian feudalism. Not a single one of Pakistan's recent heads of state, going as far back so as to include Zulfikar Bhutto, have moved to break the power of Zamindari (feudalism). Zamindari was barely nicked in the agrarian reforms of the 70's. In the 1972 land reform, in-family land transfers meant hardly any land actually changed hands. And in the second, land was purchased at over-inflated prices, resulting sometimes in an increase in asset value for the landlords. All in all, less than 10% of land was re-distributed in the combined land reforms of 1959, 1972, and 1977 (Husain 1999).
One may wonder what it would take to change Pakistan, and to transform feudalism. This can be approached from two angles. The first is to recognize that such changes have always been bloody and difficult, requiring and marshaling collective forces acting domestically and internationally. Feudalism is pernicious in various ways: it seeps into culture, ideology, music, poetry, the arts (zamindars have always been life-sustaining patrons of classical music and the arts in Pakistan). It regulates daily life in mundane and dramatic ways, and is naturalized with the adjective 'ancestral.'

Hence any transformation of feudalism will involve struggling not only in economic and political terms, but also cultural and religious terms as well. Such an approach is different in that it requires putting together an assemblage of strategies, rather than the magic key approach of micro-credit or education as panaceas. But there is hope for resistance and transformation given a widespread critique of zamindars that circulates in both urban and rural Pakistan. My second reaction is to immediately note that an anti-feudal stance should also carry with it an understanding of what class exploitation is, and that once that occurs- one must also recognize that capitalist 'entrepreneurship' would not be the solution, but merely the same problem dressed differently.

Benazir Bhutto Lived Life of Tragedy

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's assassination following a political rally Thursday ended a life that was filled with great privilege and steeped in family tragedy. VOA Correspondent Steve Herman in our South Asia bureau in New Delhi has a look back at her remarkable life.

Benazir Bhutto, twice prime minister of Pakistan, emerged as a public figure, in many ways because of tragedy, and, with her assassination, she will share a similar legacy with her father.

Ms. Bhutto was the daughter of the late Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Her mother was of Kurdish and Iranian origins. Her father was hanged after he was deposed in a 1977 military coup by General Zia al-Huq, which brought an end to one of Pakistan's few non-military governments.

Benazir Bhutto, born in Sindh province in 1953, enjoyed the advantages of being a daughter of one of Pakistan's wealthiest and most politically savvy dynasties. She was educated at Harvard's Radcliffe College in the United States and Oxford University in Britain.

At college in the United States, where she was known by her nickname of Pinkie, she participated in the movement against the Vietnam War. Classmates say she got a reputation as dynamic orator there, vociferously defending her father when he was criticized by professors.

Her friends say that, while the young Muslim woman took to wearing jeans, she did not have a boyfriend and would not smoke, drink or eat pork. Graduating from the elite American school, her thesis, on Muslim Separatism and the Origins of Pakistan, was reportedly submitted on pink paper.

After completing a Master's degree in the United States in 1977, she went home, taking the helm of her father's Pakistan Peoples' Party. After his ouster, she was initially jailed while her father awaited execution.

Speaking recently to VOA, Ms. Bhutto remembered the words of her father at that time, saying he believed contesting elections, despite the barriers to fair elections, was better than boycotts.

"When my father was in prison under an earlier military dictatorship, he had still told the party to go ahead and fight, so we could keep my party political machinery well-oiled, and we could have an opportunity to meet the public, meet the voters, and communicate our message to them," she said. "So, we thought it was better to have a political process than to leave the field open."

She would spend five years in solitary confinement before exiling herself to London upon her release in 1984.

She returned home again two years later, vowing to help drive her father's successor from office.

Donning the veil, agreeing to an arranged marriage and quoting the Koran, she took on a new public image.

The transformation gave her greater legitimacy, and helped to propel her twice to being elected prime minister, first in the late 1980s and then again in the mid 1990s.

That made her one of the few democratically elected female leaders in an Islamic country and one of the youngest heads of government, and, perhaps, the only one ever to give birth while in office. She would later have two other children.

She had remarked that she faced threats from the beginning of her political ascent, with some conservative Muslims calling for her to be killed because she had usurped a man's place.

She was forced from office both times she served as prime minister, amid corruption allegations tied to her controversial husband, Asif Zardari. Critics branded him a greedy businessman, who took advantage of his wife's position to allegedly drain Pakistan's treasury of millions of dollars. Although he would be acquitted of all such charges, he was jailed for years.

Ms. Bhutto spent much of her time in her second exile in Dubai and London, but remained a prominent figure, meeting government officials around the world.

Less than two and a half months before her assassination, she returned home when President Pervez Musharraf gave her amnesty from still-pending corruption charges. At that time, she chafed at the image of Pakistan as being a global source of terrorism.

"It hurts us when people say, the terrorists who come, whether they are bombing tubes [subways] in London, or whether plotting plots in Germany or doing things in other countries, and have their trail leading back [to Pakistan]," she said. "That is not the real image of Pakistan."

In Karachi, in October, her convoy was attacked by a suicide bomber, killing more than 130 people, but narrowly missing her. Blaming the attack on pro-al-Qaida militants, Ms. Bhutto criticized President Musharraf for not checking the spread of extremism.

"The political process is under attack, political leaders are being bombed, political activists are being bombed, our country is in danger," said Ms. Bhutto. "Our country is in danger from the extremism that has spread under dictatorship."

Bhutto had long known the dangers she faced personally by going home to make a third bid to become prime minister. She had concluded her autobiography with a promise to return to her country and in her words, "take the risk for all the children of Pakistan."

It is expected Ms. Bhutto will be laid to rest in her native Sindh province, where her father and her two brothers, who also both died tragically, are buried.