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Benazir’s heir and the future of Pakistan

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s first international outing last week as the head of the Pakistan People’s Party nearly descended into a shambles, thanks to the ill-advised choice of the venue — the basement of a small London hotel that was apparently his mum’s favourite haunt. Such a setting might have done for a 19-year-old Oxford undergraduate with a less famous name and dynastic ambitions, but — as The Times noted — it proved clearly “unfit for the purpose” at hand, which was to present “Pakistan’s young pretender” to the world press.

Clearly, Mr. Bhutto’s advisers underestimated the media interest in their young leader, resulting in chaotic scenes with scores of journalists crammed into a tiny room jostling for space and yelling for attention.

Except for a few sharp questions about his dynastic succession, Mr. Bhutto was given an easy ride by reporters, some of whom had known his mother. But it was a one-off. Soon, the sympathy factor will vanish, exposing him to closer scrutiny; and with the kid-gloves gone, he will not be allowed to get away with the sort of stuff he peddled that morning.

Yet, for his age and, given the circumstances, he handled it well, appearing to bristle only once when the BBC’s Jeremy Paxman, notorious for his robust interrogation technique, wanted to know if his coronation wasn’t a bit like treating the party as a “piece of family furniture.”

“No, it [the leadership] was not handed down as family furniture. In a moment of crisis, I was called and I stepped up and I did what I had to do,” Mr. Bhutto said, though admitting under pressure that continuing the Bhutto “bloodline” was important for the unity of the party.

For the most part, it was a confident and self-assured performance, and if the idea was to unveil the new PPP boss to the world before he lost his innocence, it worked. Particularly, it was his prognosis of Pakistan at this critical juncture that resonated with his mostly Western audience. He told them what they wanted to hear — namely that Pakistan was teetering on the brink, thus confirming the conventional wisdom among British political pundits.

“I fear for my country, I fear that if free and fair elections are not held it may disintegrate,” he said.

“Disintegration” has been a central theme of the debate on Pakistan’s future in the wake of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. Benazir is seen to have been Pakistan’s “last hope” and with her murder — the argument goes — it is, effectively, all over for that blighted country.

Seldom have terms such as “disintegration” and “on the brink of collapse” been used so widely and with such certitude as in relation to Pakistan in recent days. The post-Benazir turmoil has been portrayed as Pakistan’s worst crisis in its 60-year-old tempestuous history — a blow from which, it is argued, it can recover only if President Pervez Musharraf is sent packing, paving the way for full-blooded Western-style democracy.

The venerable Economist declared General (retd.) Musharraf’s Pakistan the “world’s most dangerous place,” and warned that it is in Pakistan that the “war” against Islamist extremism would be “won or lost.” In a chilling depiction of the current state of Pakistan, it had a cover dominated by a hand-grenade painted in the colour of Pakistan’s national flag, and ready to go off. The visual was matched by a relentlessly gloomy analysis arguing that Benazir’s murder had made Pakistan more vulnerable to being overrun by the Taliban brand of Islamic fundamentalism, which could turn it into a version of what Afghanistan was when the Taliban ruled that country.

On President Musharraf and his American patrons, its verdict was that for too long he had been allowed to pay “lip-service to democratic forms” while Washington looked the other way. “It is time to impress upon him and the Generals still propping him up that democracy … is Pakistan’s only hope,” it said.

It is striking how a man who, recently, was regarded as the best bet for Pakistan is now being portrayed as its biggest liability. And, in death, Benazir has become the saviour-who-was-not-to-be. Some of the very same arguments that were once used to justify Western backing for President Musharraf (in a land of “mullahs,” he was hailed as a beacon of secular and liberal values) are now being advanced to glorify Benazir, her added USP being that she was also a “democrat” and, with her Harvard and Oxford background, “one of us.”

It is acknowledged that Benazir’s two terms in office were a disaster — a record of incompetence and broken promises, compounded by allegations of corruption and cronyism. Her role in encouraging the sort of extremists who killed her is also widely recognised, as is the opportunistic nature of her deal with President Musharraf. But, for all that — it is argued — she was the only national leader. And, crucially, she was not General Musharraf — supposedly the most hated figure in Pakistan since his disastrous experiment with Emergency. There is almost a touching romanticism in the way visions of a Benazir-led Pakistan are being invoked. To quote the Economist again: “Pakistan may not have realised how much it would miss her, until now she is gone.”

Expatriate observers, with a better understanding of the dynamics of their country’s politics than instant Pakistan “experts” in the British commentariat, have fewer illusions. With memories of her two governments still fresh in their minds, they reject the notion that she was going to be a force for real change.

Writing in The New Statesman, Ziauddin Sardar, one of Britain’s most respected analysts of Pakistani affairs, argued that despite her avowedly secular, democratic and liberal outlook, Benazir “fostered the politics of elective feudalism” when in office and unleashed the very forces that ultimately claimed her life.

“Her terms in office were characterised not just by corruption and nepotism, but also by revenge and human rights abuses. She had the largest Cabinet in the history of Pakistan; she even made her unelected husband minister for investment, which was generally seen as an open invitation to corruption. A common joke during her second term was that the infant Bilawal had been awarded the portfolio of minister for children,” he wrote.

Writer Tariq Ali recalled how after coming to power on the back of a manifesto that promised social justice and land reforms, she cheerfully abandoned it. In a private conversation, she told him that the world had changed and she didn’t want to end up on the “wrong side of history” by clinging on to the old promises.

In well-informed Pakistani circles, the view is that a third Bhutto government was unlikely to have been significantly different from the previous two. Wiser by experience and in order to appear more democratic than General Musharraf, with whom she was going to share power, Benazir might have been less autocratic this time. But in terms of policy, it would have made little difference.

Historian Yasmin Khan says that the debate has been focussed too much on personalities and individuals whereas the real crisis facing Pakistan was “structural.” The question is whether Pakistan can rid itself of the structures that have brought it to such a pass. Nothing short of radical structural changes will do — and this means freeing the country from the deadly grip of feudal politicians, the Army and the mullahs.

Yet, doomsday scenarios are flawed. Pakistan is a country with a history of crises and Benazir’s assassination is just one more episode in that violent history. Pakistan, with its own unique sense of “normality,” will plod on.

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