by EQBAL AHMAD
Eqbal Ahmad’s Review Article on the Bhuttos in London Review of Books – June 1998
The Terrorist Prince: Life and Death of Murtaza Bhutto by Raja Anwar, translated by Khalid Hasan
Verso, 254 pp, £16.00, January 1997, ISBN 1 85984 886 9
Memoirs of a Bystander: A Life in Diplomacy by Iqbal Akhund
Oxford, 500 pp, £15.99, June 1998, ISBN 0 19 577736 0
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Pakistan by Rafi Raza
Oxford, 420 pp, £15.95, April 1998, ISBN 0 19 577697 6
In London last month Benazir Bhutto called on Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, to respond without delay to India’s nuclear tests. ‘It’s an opportunity for Pakistan to detonate nuclear weapons,’ she said, claiming that her own government had known of India’s intentions and had ‘prepared a contingency plan’ for Pakistan to react ‘immediately’. Returning to Pakistan on 20 May, she called for a government of national unity. Two days later she was leading marches demanding instant nuclear tests or Sharif’s resignation. The glass bracelets worn by South Asian women symbolise effeminacy and cowardice in this macho culture. Benazir took hers off and, tossing them into the crowd, thundered: ‘Go tell Nawaz Sharif to put these on.’ Now that his government has tested no fewer than six nuclear devices, he is being hailed as a national hero while she continues to face a hostile world of prosecutors and judges.
Benazir has a family claim on Pakistan’s nuclear programme. In 1974, when India tested its first nuclear device, her father, then prime minister, responded ‘immediately’. He held secret talks with China, made a deal of sorts with Libya, struck an agreement with France to purchase a plutonium-reprocessing plant and hired Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, a metallurgist then employed in Holland and now regarded, with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, as a parent of Pakistan’s ‘peaceful’ nuclear programme which competes with, but does not quite match, the still more ‘peaceful’ Indian one. There is a widespread belief among Bhutto supporters that their leader was overthrown and executed at the behest of the United States, as a punishment for having equipped his country with the nuclear option. Did not Shaheed (‘Martyr’) Bhutto promise the people that he would tell the truth about the American conspiracy against him? Had he not brandished the document that would have confirmed it? Had Kissinger not threatened to make a ‘horrible example’ of him for refusing to back down? Had he not then sacrificed himself for the sake of national security? For the Bhuttos, Pakistan’s nuclear capability has always been an instrument as much of political prestige as of national interest.
South Asian dynasts have not always been good to their countries and, in turn, their countrymen have not been kind to them. Jawaharlal Nehru’s daughter, Indira Gandhi, was murdered by her Sikh guards. Her son Rajiv was killed by a Tamil female-bomb. S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, who headed the first decolonised government of Sri Lanka, was assassinated by a Buddhist zealot. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his family were massacred by military putschists. His daughter, Bangladesh’s current prime minister, is the family’s sole survivor. Father Bhutto was executed by his protégé and usurper, General Mohammed Zia ul Haq. One son committed suicide; the other was killed in a shoot-out with the police. At the time, sister Benazir was Pakistan’s prime minister.
The Bhutto story is by far the most dramatic – as well as ironic. Z.A. Bhutto, the dynasty’s founder, was a feudal chief from Sindh, where serfs are still incarcerated in their lords’ private prisons. Yet millions of disinherited peasants and workers saw him as a defender of their rights. He was an authoritarian figure whose formative years in politics were spent in the service of a military dictator. Yet he rose to power as a champion of democracy. He moved the multitude with an extraordinary repertoire of patriotic gestures and populist rhetoric. Yet he contributed significantly to Pakistan’s defeat and dismemberment. He moulded the Army and bureaucracy to serve as instruments of his personal power, but fell victim to his creations. His failure to fulfil his promises turned large numbers against him. But from his incarceration, trial and execution by a hated military dictator rose the legend of a hero and martyr. When Benazir inherited his mantle, an unlikely dynasty was born.
London Review of Books for more
(Thanks to Harsh Kapoor of SACW)