A Tough Mission

The day Benazir Bhutto returned to Karachi after exile in 1986, Nazir Ahmad Baloch woke up early, pinned a button of Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) to his shirt and danced out the door chanting “Long Live Bhutto.” “He was crazy,” says his aunt, Anipa Banno. “The party never did anything for him, but he believed in their slogan, ‘Bread, Shelter and Clothes.’ He was a party diehard.” Bhutto had fled Pakistan when her father, former President and Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was toppled in a military coup and later executed. But she went back to pick up her father’s mantle as head of the PPP, and eventually led the party to election victory, becoming the world’s first woman to head a modern Muslim nation. Like many in the sprawling slum city of Lyari, Baloch, though only a child, fell in love with the PPP when the elder Bhutto made it the centerpiece of his campaign to empower Pakistan’s poor. “Bhutto came to my house and asked about my problems,” says Banno. “Nazir was there with me, waving his little flag.” Lyari has been a PPP stronghold ever since.

Last week, Baloch showed he was still devoted to the Bhuttos — even though Benazir had again fled Pakistan in 1999, to escape corruption charges (which she denies) and yet another military coup. Baloch danced out the door once more, leaving his pregnant wife at home, and chanting the same slogans. But this time Baloch did not come home. His nephew found his body in a Karachi morgue, victim of a devastating suicide attack on Bhutto’s homecoming procession that saw 141 dead and hundreds critically injured. More than a third of the dead and injured hailed from Lyari. The following day, Bhutto praised those in the PPP who had lost their lives, saying that their sacrifice proved that the people of Pakistan were behind her. But Banno, a veteran party member, felt differently: “The leaders are burnishing their politics over the bodies of these dead workers, but we have nothing but a fatherless child. Let’s see if Benazir Bhutto can make it worthwhile.”

Benazir Bhutto, twice Prime Minister, says she is Pakistan’s best hope. The country she has returned to, however, is not the one she once ruled. Pakistan is altogether more violent than ever. (Both al-Qaeda and local militants are suspected of being behind the attack on Bhutto, but she has accused rogue government and security officials of involvement.) Moreover, Bhutto can no longer count on unqualified support of party followers who first vaulted her to power in 1988, and again in 1993. And after eight years under President Pervez Musharraf, the general who seized power in that 1999 coup, Pakistan has become increasingly polarized: the civilian population wants democracy back, a fundamentalist religious fringe seeks the establishment of an Islamic state and the military is bent on holding on to power. How Bhutto, 54, negotiates this minefield will largely determine the fate of this nuclear-armed nation of 165 million.

She is off to a mixed start. Musharraf has allowed her to return to Pakistan without fear of prosecution for the corruption charges relating to her two terms in office. A deal, still being negotiated, may also include the lifting of a constitutional amendment limiting Prime Ministers to two terms. This would allow Bhutto to contest planned general elections in January. But Bhutto’s talks with Musharraf have divided the PPP — some members see it as a betrayal of their cause to end military rule. An increasingly independent Supreme Court will decide in coming days if Musharraf’s amnesty for Bhutto is constitutional. At the same time, the court is weighing the legitimacy of Musharraf’s own landslide victory in the presidential election in early October. The upshot is that Pakistan’s homecoming queen faces a host of challenges in coming months that will be difficult, perhaps impossible, to surmount.

Campaigning amid Violence
On Sunday Oct. 20, Bhutto, flanked by a small army of armed security guards, made an unannounced stop in Lyari to offer condolences to the families of the deceased. A crowd gathered to hear her speak from the running board of her idling SUV. “I am your sister and the people of Lyari are my own,” she told the crowd. “The way you stood behind me, I would stand beside you forever.” The crowd erupted in cheers, and an overenthusiastic supporter fired a traditional shot in the air to celebrate. Immediately the object of the crowd’s adoration was bundled back into the car, and the motorcade zoomed away.

Bhutto’s hit-and-run visit was a radical departure from the PPP’s traditional style of massive campaign rallies that are equal parts entertainment and politics. In Pakistan, political strength is often measured by crowd counts, and no other party has been able to match the PPP’s draw. “In our part of the world, politicians have to take their campaigns to the street,” says political analyst Nusrat Javed. “Bhutto’s base doesn’t watch TV. They need rallies, cavalcades. Unless you do it this way, you cannot survive as a populist party. Unfortunately, that is no longer possible.” Bhutto had planned to launch her election campaign with a procession to her hometown of Larkana, the source of her most fervent support. Now she has been forced to rethink her strategy. “We have to modify our campaign to some extent because of the suicide bombings,” Bhutto told reporters at her Karachi residence shortly after visiting Lyari. “But we are not going to stop our campaign to reach the public. We will not be deterred.” Some PPP workers are not as enthusiastic. “I won’t go to rallies anymore,” says Banno. “Anything can happen.”

A Duet with a Dictator
The broad terms of the alliance between Bhutto and Musharraf may see her become Prime Minister for the third time if the PPP wins a parliamentary majority in January. The general would retain the powerful post of President even as he steps down as army chief. But PPP stalwarts fear such a scheme will alienate many Pakistanis. “Party members are saying that their constituencies are telling them not to ask for votes because the educated voter sees the deal as absolving [accused] politicians,” says Ayesha Tammy Haq, a talk-show host.

Even if her party sweeps the elections, Bhutto faces an awkward power-sharing arrangement with a longtime political foe. Musharraf, as President, has the ability to dissolve Parliament. Removing that constitutional amendment, which Musharraf has already used once to oust Bhutto, will require a two-thirds majority in Parliament, a majority that many PPP members think is beyond them. Bhutto says Musharraf was not involved in last week’s attack, but she suspects fundamentalist Islamic groups historically affiliated with his military regime. “I am not blaming the government,” she says. “But I am saying there are elements within the administration and the security apparatus that sympathize with those groups.”

Bhutto has defended her negotiations with Musharraf, saying that the current situation calls for extreme measures. “This is a battle for democracy, and we wish it to be peaceful,” she says. “He’s been the victim of assassination attacks and [now] so have we. I think certainly it will unite all those who are against extremism.”

A Freer Press
One of the positive — and popular — changes under Musharraf is the rise of independent media. Scores of privately owned television and radio stations have helped create a media landscape new to Bhutto. “The media have become quite feisty,” says Haq. “Bhutto is going to have to learn how to deal with them. They will be gentle at first, but that won’t last long. She will have to learn how to answer difficult questions. Reciting rhetoric and party lines won’t be enough.”

January’s will be the first parliamentary election that will be televised; that disadvantages Bhutto, who is at her best when she is out in the streets pressing the flesh. Many party supporters, such as Amida Manzoor from Lyari, stayed home to watch the events unfold on TV instead. Manzoor stayed up all night watching the footage of Bhutto’s rescue from the terrorist attack, and says because of that, she no longer believes the party line about caring for the people. “The leaders all fled in their special cars after the bombs. They did not care about the workers who came to support her. They should have rushed them to the hospital in their nice cars; instead, everyone had to wait for ambulances and volunteers to be rescued.”

Great Expectations
On at least one local front, Bhutto has had a hard act to follow. Musharraf’s tenure has seen the economy grow by an average 7% a year. While some of that growth stems from the lifting in 2001 of U.S. sanctions put in place when Pakistan tested its first nuclear weapon nine years ago, Pakistan’s business classes will expect Bhutto to maintain the momentum. At the same time, the urban and rural poor that make up her base want work. “Bhutto has promised us jobs,” says Asif Ali, an unemployed Lyari resident. “She has said that she will give us clean drinking water. If she does not do this, she will see how the residents of Lyari can resist against her.”

The War on Terror
Even more difficult to manage will be Washington’s expectations that Bhutto take strong action against militants. Bhutto has suggested that Musharraf has not done enough to tackle extremism, but she has offered no concrete solutions of her own, other than promoting democracy as the panacea for Pakistan’s ills. “It has become clear that dictatorship doesn’t work, that it is actually making the situation more chaotic and anarchic,” she says. “And it is chaos and anarchy that actually suits the militants.”

More than two dozen militant attacks have taken place in the past two months alone, and every major international terror plot since the toppling of the twin World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001, has been traced, in some way, back to Pakistan. In July a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate report said that the tribal districts of North and South Waziristan, on the lawless border with Afghanistan, are a “safe haven” for al-Qaeda.

It’s the hope of the Bush Administration that a power-sharing agreement between Bhutto and Musharraf would lend the military leader the democratic credentials necessary to pursue his war on terror, but many analysts say it is already too late. “The situation in Waziristan is deteriorating rapidly,” says Zafar Iqbal Cheema, chair of the Defense and Strategic Studies Department at Islamabad’s Quaid-i-Azam University. “The military has become so demoralized that forces are surrendering. It’s a very grim situation.”

What started as the U.S.’s war on terror has become Pakistan’s own war, but it still carries an American connotation that sits uneasily on the Pakistani consciousness. Bhutto, as leader of the country, could do little to inspire an unpopular war against fellow Muslims that is largely seen to be at Washington’s behest. “Benazir’s problem is that she is talking against the wind,” says Moonis Ahmar, chair of the International Relations Department at Karachi University. “The wind here, right or wrong, is anti-West. Whatever the reasons — Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine or the war on terror, which is seen as war on Islam — the mood is anti-American. And in that environment, to go in and say, ‘I will take strong action against the people in the tribal areas’ will backfire. Even Musharraf, with his military, has not been able to do this. As long as she has this pro-American posture she will continue to be targeted.”

For Bhutto, balancing the demands of her country with those of other nations depending on her to solve the scourge of radicalism will be her greatest challenge yet. “We are prepared to risk our lives and we are prepared to risk our liberty, but we are not prepared to surrender our great nation to the militants,” says Bhutto. Extremists have already put her to the test once. No doubt they will do so again.