Benazir’s promise, murder and legacy

Three years ago, on December 27, 2007, Benazir was tragically assassinated when she was attempting to turn a new leaf in her life and in the politics of Pakistan. The bloody deed was done at Rawalpindi’s Liaquat Park, a park named after Pakistan’s first Prime Minister who was shot dead at the same venue in 1951 in circumstances that have so far remained unclear.

In the conditions prevailing in Pakistan, it will, perhaps, never be possible to find out who conceived, ordered and executed the killing of Benazir Bhutto. But an underlying fact is clear. She had become a victim of those very forces of religious fundamentalism with which she had ingratiated herself during her years of power — from 1988-1990 and then from 1993-1996. Instead of checking these forces, which had acquired a great hold on the state and society during the regime of President Zia-ul-Haq, she exploited them for her own ends of power and used them without any scruple to cause terror and subversion in Kashmir.
It was during Benazir’s rule that her Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) ordered, in 1989-90, the killing of innocent Kashmiri Pandits and such noble persons as Kashmir University vice-chancellor Mushir-ul Haq and his aide Adul Ghani. When she found that her agents in the Valley were scattering under the impact of firm measures taken by me, then J&K governor, she herself came to Muzaffarabad and incited the Kashmiris against me. Made during the course of a televised speech, her shocking chopping gesture — striking her right hand on the palm of her left hand and ranting Jag-Jag-Mo-Mo-Han-Han — showed the extent to which she could go.
In the years that followed, the extremist forces, coupled with other negative developments in religion and politics, acquired much greater strength and made further inroads in Pakistan’s power structure. Pakistan’s landscape got littered with a bewildering variety of terrorist organisations which still remain as strong. Their number is so large, and their objectives and motivations overlap to such extent, that it is extremely difficult to clearly categorise them. Nevertheless, four broad categories are discernable. One, there is a set of “non-state associations”, such as Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, which have the patronage of the ISI and are largely used by it to carry out terrorism-related activities in Kashmir and other parts of India. Second, there are quite a few outfits, such as Afghan Taliban, Mullah Omar’s Quetta Shura, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hizbe-Islami and Haqqani’s network, which operate mainly against US and Nato forces in Afghanistan from their havens in the tribal areas of Pakistan and enjoy covert ISI support. Third, there is a formidable religious movement, Tehrik-e-Taliban, whose objective is to “Talibanise” the state and society of Pakistan and enforce strictly the Sharia. Fourth, there are a number of Sunni extremist organisations whose primary aim is to undermine or eliminate other sects of Islam, such as Shias, Sufis, Brelvis, Ahmaddiyas, Ismailis etc and ensure dominance of what, according to them, is a pure form of Islam. All these four categories of terrorist organisations have unleashed a wave of blood and brutality and made Pakistan the world’s most unsafe country. They do not tolerate dissent and show no hesitation in killing their fellow-religionists even when they are at prayer.
It was in such a violence-ridden environment that Benazir returned to Pakistan, after about a decade of self-imposed exile in London/Dubai, under an agreement brokered between her and President Pervez Musharraf by American and British diplomats. By that time, Musharraf had become unpopular. He had come up against what were called “men in black” and “women in black” — the lawyers who agitated against him and the fanatical burqa-clad women of Lal Masjid in Islamabad.
Musharraf was forced to order commando action against the mosque when seven Chinese women were “arrested” by the female Taliban (“women in black”) on the allegation of prostitution. In the bloody venture to clear the mosque, 88 occupants and nine commandos were killed.
The year of Benazir’s return, 2007, saw the highest incidence of violence in Pakistan. On the very day of her arrival in Karachi, October 18, terrorists attacked her cavalcade, killing as many as 149 persons and injuring 402. About two months later, the conspirators succeeded in eliminating her.
President Musharraf’s administration did not appear to be very serious in providing effective security cover to Benazir. This fact was underlined by the inquiry commission appointed by the UN at the request of the Pakistan government to ascertain the facts and circumstances of her assassination. In its report, the commission said: “A range of government officials failed profoundly in their efforts first to protect Ms Bhutto, and second to investigate with vigour all those responsible for her murder, not only in the execution of the attack but also in its conception, planning and financing”.
Benazir had made a serious mistake in returning to Pakistan without first securing a firm guarantee on her security from Musharraf and his mentors in the US and Britain. Her ambition, perhaps, drove her to an extremely risky venture.
Despite her unenviable record in office, Benazir’s assassination at a time when she seemed determined to give a new direction to Pakistani polity was a grim tragedy. Though she had harangued against me, unjustifiably, I, and many other well-wishers of Pakistan, were saddened by her death. She was showing promising potential for freeing Pakistan from the stranglehold of religious extremism and terrorism. In her book, Reconciliation, published after her death, she has provided ample evidence of evolving a new agenda for Pakistan and for creating a pluralistic and modern Islamic society. But fate did not give her a chance to implement this.