Bhuttos' history: Episodes of a bloody Shakespearean tragedy
By Gwynne Dyer
LONDON (JP): The only time I met Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan's martyred prime minister, he quoted Shakespeare to me. He was the first of the Bhuttos to die, hanged by the usurping dictator General Zia ul-Haq on trumped-up murder charges in 1979. Thus he was spared full knowledge of what a bloody Shakespearean tragedy his own family's history would become.
The latest and final episode of the tragedy began on Friday, Sept. 20, when the late prime minister's son, Murtaza Bhutto, was killed by eight police bullets outside his home in the wealthy Clifton Road district of Karachi at the age of 42.
Murtaza's sister Benazir Bhutto, who has followed in their father's footsteps to become prime minister of Pakistan, sat barefoot and disconsolate by her brother's body for two hours in a Karachi hospital. "What has happened?" she wept.
On the following day Benazir's ailing mother, Begum Nusrat Khan, flew in from London to bid a final farewell to her eldest son in the family's ancestral home town of Larkana. Murtaza was buried between his father and his brother Shah Nawaz, murdered a decade ago by General Zia's secret agents. And only hours after the funeral, his mother accused his sister Benazir of murdering him.
"If I could get justice," said Nusrat, "I will register a case of murder against Benazir Bhutto and her husband, Asif Ali Zadari. They were responsible for killing him." The crowd, supporters of a breakaway faction of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) founded by Murtaza Bhutto, began chanting "Benazir is a killer".
The Bhutto family is destroyed -- and the man who did it is Zia ul-Haq. He started by murdering Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1979. Then he drove Bhutto's wife and sons into exile, and held his daughter Benazir in prison for five years. In 1985, his agents allegedly poisoned Bhutto's younger son, Shah Nawaz, in France. And even from the grave, his malevolence continues.
Mohammed Zia ul-Haq is eight years dead now, blown out of the sky in 1988 in a never-explained aerial accident that left nothing to put in his coffin except his dentures. He is not greatly missed in Pakistan, where his burial mound is popularly known as 'Jabra Chowk', 'the circle of the dentures'. But for the Bhuttos, he has been Nemesis incarnate.
It all started so well. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was Pakistan's first democratically elected president, the scion of a landed family who was nevertheless a committed socialist. He turned the Pakistani establishment into mortal enemies with his talk of land reform and nationalization, but the common people loved him.
"I don't deny I take an occasional drink," Bhutto used to tell the adoring crowds. "But unlike the other politicians, I don't drink the blood of the people." He was arrogant, demagogic, and a lot longer on rhetoric than performance -- but he was genuine, if that counts for anything, and he scared the Pakistani establishment so much that they backed General Zia's coup against him in 1977.
They were less enthusiastic about the corrupt police state that Gen. Zia erected on the ruins of Pakistan's fledgling democracy after his 1977 coup, but it was too late. The Bhutto family fled into exile (except Benazir, who was thrown into prison), and the brothers Murtaza and Shah Nawaz created the al- Zulfikar Organization to wage a terrorist war against Zia's regime.
When Benazir was finally released and sent into exile, she took a quite different tack. She was brighter than the brothers, and far better educated too (Harvard and Oxford). She spent her time patiently rebuilding the old Pakistan People's Party (PPP) from abroad -- and when Zia ul-Haq was abruptly and permanently separated from his dentures in 1988, she was primed and ready.
Within months of returning to Pakistan, she was elected prime minister promising 'bread, clothing and shelter' to Pakistan's multitudinous poor. But after only 20 months she was removed from power by the president, while her husband, Asif Zadari, was hauled before the courts on corruption and influence-peddling charges. Since Benazir was re-elected in 1993, she has been more careful about offending the great land-owners, the bureaucracy and the army. She has learned the bitter political lesson that when the establishment is as strong and deeply entrenched as it is in Pakistan, reformers must fight only one battle at a time.
But that meant that when her brother Murtaza finally returned to Pakistan in late 1993, facing criminal charges over the 1981 hijacking of a Pakistani plane, Prime Minister Bhutto could not afford to intervene and prevent his arrest. He got out soon enough, but he and his mother were permanently embittered by the experience. Even her younger sister Sanam turned against Benazir.
For the past three years Murtaza and his mother have waged a relentless political war against Benazir. He was driven by sheer ego, his traditionalist mother by her conviction that Zulkfikar Ali Bhutto's political power must pass to his eldest son, not to a younger daughter. They created a breakaway faction of the PPP, and Murtaza was openly abusive about Benazir's husband, claiming: "I'll expose the corrupt activities of Asif Baba and the 40 thieves".
Benazir bore it bravely and silently, as she does most things. She is the only elected leader ever to give birth in office, and she only took two days off.
In July she even invited Murtaza to her official residence for talks. However, he emerged saying: "Before the meeting I thought there could be some convergence of views, but the gulf has become even wider." And on the fateful Friday, when police stopped Murtaza in front of his Karachi home, a gun battle erupted that left him and seven followers dead.
It was not Benazir's fault, and even her mother has now retracted her initial accusation of murder. But for all practical purposes there is no Bhutto family any more, and Benazir Bhutto must soldier on alone.