Benazir, the controversial daughter

“We’ll have atomic weapons even if we have to eat grass,” Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Benazir’s father, said in 1972. Sixteen years later, she became the first woman to rule a Muslim country that has become a very unstable nuclear power.

Politics and high expectations were part of the family tradition, as well as a journey into a road where success and failure alternates. Her father’s execution in 1979 marked her definitive entry into politics.

From that day on, Benazir Bhutto was a key character in Pakistani political events. Hers was a stormy voyage, in which she also lost two brothers.

The best portrait of her polemical role in Pakistan’s political scenario might be her arrival in Karachi last October.

The city was paralysed, under surveillance by 20 000 troops and crowded by half a million of Bhutto’s supporters. A bomb exploded in the way of her convoy, resulting in 130 people killed and more than 200 injured.

It was the worst terrorist attack in national history.

Benazir came out unharmed, but her enemies conveyed their message in a loud and bloody way.

“I know those who want me dead,” she said, pointing at radical groups, big shots from the current government and those from the former regime of general Zia-Ul-Haq, the man who ordered her father’s death.

“The attack was not against me but against what I represent, democracy, unity and integrity of Pakistan,” Benazir added pledging she would stay in the country.

The travelling bride

The “daughter of the East”, as people called her, was born in Karachi in 1953. There is no doubt she was brought up to become a leader. She studied in Harvard (1969-1973) and got a degree in Philosophy, Political Science and Economy from Oxford (1976).

Shortly after she returned to Pakistan, Mohamed Zia ul-Haq seized power by a coup and executed her father. Before turning 30, Benazir had to take over Pakistan´s Popular Party (PPP). Persecution, frequent imprisonment and house arrest forced her to exile in London in 1984.

Two years later, after the regime lifted the martial law, she lived her first triumphant return welcomed by one million followers.

She went back to prison in the tenth anniversary of her father’s death, in 1987. But the doors opened for Bhutto when dictator Zia ul-Haq died in an air crash the next year.

In December, Benazir’s PPP won the elections over the pro-governmental Democratic Islamic Alliance and she became Prime Minister.

At 35, she was the first woman to govern a Muslim country and one among the few women heading a nuclear state, a small club where she joined Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir and Indira Gandhi.

She was on the top and People Magazine included her in its list of The Fifty Most Beautiful People.

However, she could not complete her term (1988-1990), and accusations of abuse of power, corruption, nepotism, violation of Constitution, negligent management and decline in public security stained her second premiership (1993-1996).

In 1999, when Pervez Musharraf took power, Bhutto left Pakistan to avoid a possible inquiry for corruption. Dubai, Arab Emirates and UK were her scales during an eight-year exile period.

Last October she was back again and ready for the struggle. A pact aimed at sharing government with the politically weakened Musharraf gained her an amnesty over previous charges of corruption.

About the exile, Benazir said: “My husband was in prison in Pakistan, without being condemned, for eight years. I had to take care of three kids and my sick mother on my own. Besides that, I was not allowed to be with my people.”

Like the Phoenix?

At 54, she was back as a symbol of democracy. In spite of alleged corruption and her long exile, her PPP has maintained a wide popular base.

She was “the spoilt girl of the US” and the alternative to Musharraf’s regime, which had shocked the world by violating the Constitution, declaring the state of emergency, repressing the opposition and cutting freedoms.

However, she came back due to the American mediation and the aim was cohabitation, the general as President and she as Premier. Musharraf’s is still a key US ally in its crusade against terrorism, and Pakistan has turned into a hot battlefield in that crusade.

Islamic Fundamentalism is increasing in a country with an arsenal of near 60 nuclear heads. Like Musharraf, Bhutto was a target for extremists – Afghanistan rebels and Pakistani Taliban, Al Qaeda terrorists and political rivals.

In addition, she had a long history of conflicts with military circles, currently fighting the extremists in tribal zones in the border with Afghanistan.

After Musharraf’s new manoeuvres to hold power, Benazir ruled out any possibility of cohabitation and her supporters welcomed the decision.

She had some advantages, like being supported by US and being perceived as a chance to achieve democracy.

But she also had some handicaps, such as the non closed files for corruption and money laundering in Pakistan and other countries, the conflicts with the military and the promises she failed to fulfil while in power, among then a campaign on women rights.

In fact, standing up for women’s rights would be another conflictive point in her confrontation with extremist groups, as well as the American support to her agenda.

Another closed door

Her targets once in power would be, as she stated to the press, “unemployment, poverty, crime, energy and environment, the problems currently affecting people”.

She had promised that, if she won elections next January, she would take the army back to civil control, look for a balance between presidency and Parliament, reinforce democracy against terrorism and drive national reconciliation.

It seemed a difficult challenge but, at the end, she was a strong and experienced woman and politician. “I believe in miracles, and my return to home is a miracle,” she had said before flying back home last October.

Now the miracle is over. Once again, violence has prevailed over justice and common sense.

Benazir´s assassination casts new shadows over Pakistan´s future. Pakistan’s daughter is dead and, with her death, another door to reconciliation and democracy has been closed.