Selected Articles and Features

Foreword

Benazir Bhutto remains one of those charismatic figures like John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Rajiv Gandhi, whose book of life was cut short. Assassinated in Rawalpindi on 27 December 2007 aged fifty-four while campaigning to become Prime Minister of Pakistan for the third time, we will never know how the remainder of her natural life would have been spent. Most probably she would have succeeded in becoming Prime Minister of Pakistan in the general elections scheduled for early 2008, but would she have been able - where others have failed - to institute peace with India thereby improving the lives for all in South Asia? Would she have been able to curtail Pakistan’s burgeoning terrorist networks which - in the near decade since she has been gone – have torn the country asunder? How would she have dealt with fractious neighbouring Afghanistan? Would she – as her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, also pledged – have managed to create a society where deserts bloom and people don’t die of hunger and humiliation?

And then, having served as Prime Minister for a third time, would she have continued to contest for political office or instead become a respected ‘elder stateswoman’, taking up an international role as, for example, Secretary-General of the United Nations or of the Commonwealth, both positions for which she would have been ideally suited? Perhaps she might even have withdrawn from public life and become Principal of a university or college as we sometimes talked about when we visited our alma mater, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.

Tragically, any crystal-ball gazing can now only ever be speculative. What we witnessed of Benazir Bhutto’s life is the sum total of her achievements. No more chapters can be written. Of all those who were privileged to have known her, most will describe Benazir Bhutto as an exceptional woman who made a lasting impression. When she entered a room, heads proverbially did turn. Both as a young woman fighting military dictatorship in the 1980s or as the seasoned politician she subsequently became, she appeared like a force of nature cutting a dazzling swathe across less vibrant humanity.

As I witnessed, her empathy with others was no contrived gesture but one that came naturally to her after a lifetime in the public eye, her first exposure being during her father’s own meteoric rise as a politician in the late 1960s, becoming President and then Prime Minister of Pakistan in his mid-forties before being deposed in a military coup in 1977. Then came his trial for conspiracy to murder a political opponent, when she began to emerge as a politician in her own right. Having lived with her during some of those dark days of her father’s incarceration, I observed her transformation from carefree student to fierce campaigner, honing her oratorical skills and endurance.

Where other political leaders might have tired of the unrelenting interaction, for Benazir it became her life blood. Having put behind her the traumatic experience of her father’s execution in April 1979, and her own periods of solitary confinement, in jail or under house arrest, she relished contact with people. The advent of the internet created an entirely new arena for communication. When emailing first became the continuous activity it now is, she enthused over its benefits, sending me my first email: ‘now we can always be in touch’.

Benazir’s ability to make everyone she met feel special was one of her rare gifts, inspiring great loyalty. Sometimes only a brief encounter was sufficient to make people steadfast friends, devoted political followers or committed associates. When you listen to the words of her last speech at Liaquat Bagh on that fateful day, 27 December 2007, although addressing thousands, it is as though she is speaking to each individual. ‘This is your country,’ she says, ‘ I need your help.’

After her death I was touched by how many people contacted me wanting to tell me the story of their friendship with Benazir, outlining the details of their various meetings, highlighting kindnesses she had shown them as well as the interest she had taken in their lives. Invariably their narratives were accompanied by an album of photographs, showing their beaming faces next to Benazir standing in a dignified posture by their sides.

Others, especially her party supporters and political workers who had admired and adored her as their ‘leader’ without ever having met her could only mourn her loss. ‘You are fortunate you knew our leader,’ one party worker said to me shortly after her death, ‘I only ever saw her from afar.’ I often found – and still do – that because I knew her so well – albeit as an ‘Angrezi’ foreigner - I too have received their respect, since I represented one encounter away from having met her themselves.

Anna Suvorova only met Benazir once in 1995 when she was inaugurating a conference of writers and intellectuals in Islamabad. ‘I was deeply impressed by her opening speech,’ she told me, ‘she was absolutely informal and refined.’ After the conference Suvorova spoke to her. ‘We talked about Lal Shahbaz Qalandar and Shah Abdul Latif as my presentation was on the legacy of the Sindhi Sufis and saints.’ Having met numerous other presidents and prime ministers, Suvorova confessed that ‘none of them was listening to an interlocutor the way she was.’ Such was the impact of that meeting that she too became drawn to gaining a greater understanding of this incomparable woman – whom she describes as a ‘heroine’.

Suvorova’s quest has culminated in this powerful narrative of Benazir’s life, published first in Russian and now in English. It is an insightful and moving account, highlighting both the highs and lows of Benazir’s political and personal career and putting her life in the context of her Sindhi background, her position in her family and also as a woman in a male-dominated Muslim society.

Emphasising both Benazir’s strengths and weaknesses, there remains the undeniable feeling of missing text in an unwritten sequel. As Suvorova remarks, even her political enemies showed remorse at her passing, realising perhaps that they had not valued her contribution to Pakistan’s political development while she was alive. ‘After her death, everyone suddenly realized that she was the most outstanding Pakistani politician of the preceding 30 years,’ Suvorova writes. And so she was, exhibiting courage and commitment beyond the normal demands of public service.