Interview: Fatima Bhutto, author By Catherine Deveney

Published Date: 17 August 2010

HER name, she thinks, enters a room before her. Such a weight of expectation. Her physical presence: the petite figure, the lively, almond-shaped eyes and translucent skin, the curtain of dark hair that hangs over one shoulder then the other, transferred constantly in conversation, give an impression of fragility and delicacy, like fine bone china.

But her words, though spoken lightly, are powerful, robust, more shatterproof than her appearance. That name of hers represents a political dynasty in Pakistan, generations of power, bloodshed and corruption: Bhutto.

Fatima Bhutto knows the price of Pakistani dynasty. It cost the lives of her grandfather, her father, her uncle and her aunt. Her grand- father, Ali Zulfikar Bhutto, was executed in 1979 by the military government of General Zia. His sons, Shanawaz and Murtaza, vowed to avenge his death but were both murdered. Shanawaz died of poisoning in mysterious circumstances in Paris in 1985. Murtaza, Bhutto's father, was assassinated in 1996.

Bhutto claims her aunt Benazir, who was Prime Minister at the time, was responsible for Murtaza's death and for clearing all evidence from the murder scene. Benazir herself would be assassinated in 2007 in similar circumstances, the crime scene being wiped of forensic evidence before any investigation could begin. It is Pakistan's way, says Bhutto: bloodshed followed by silence.

In her book Songs Of Blood And Sword, she breaks the silence surrounding both the Bhutto family and state-sanctioned violence in Pakistan and this month she appears at the Edinburgh Book Festival to discuss her work. "There is a culture of silence," she explains. "Not just in Pakistan but in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal — the whole region. It has this incredible history not just of violence but of state violence. It doesn't just kill dynasties or political figures but journalists and activists. We are expected to say nothing. The state, the establishment, the media … they ignore it."

Her book is a best seller in Pakistan but hugely controversial. When we meet, she has not been home for months. Benazir's husband, Asif Zardari, "Mr Ten Per Cent", one of the richest men in Pakistan who spent over a decade in jail on corruption charges, took over as Prime Minister when his wife was assassinated. Bhutto spared him and Benazir nothing in her account of what she considers their malign influence on her country. "It is probably safest for me to spend some time away," she admits.


Her hands are slender, expressive. It is hard to imagine her as a threat. She has a warmth, a humour, a kind of feisty intelligence.

But anyone who talks openly in Pakistan is subversive. What can she possibly achieve by speaking out? "There is a high premium on this but I think it is dangerous to keep quiet in a country like Pakistan because the violence keeps happening.The longer you are silent, the easier it is for the state to continue it's history."

But Bhutto's book is not just political. It's personal. Subtitled "A Daughter's Memoir", it was a promise to her father just hours before he died. Some critics have accused her of idolising Murtaza, of glossing over his foibles. Bhutto smiles. In Pakistan, she is accused of blasphemy. "You don't question your parents, especially if they are public figures. In Pakistan, people are attacking me for criticising. Over here, they say, ‘Oh, you were too soft.' I cannot fulfil other people's feelings about my family because this is a family that inspires very extreme emotions. You love them or hate them."


Her own emotions are more mixed: the pull of her blood ties against the pull of her intellectual judgments. People should never be idolised for their name, she argues. It is what a person says and does that is important, not what their name represents. Yet researching her family's words and actions disturbed her. "In a family like this one, where there was a lot of opportunity and privilege and power, but also a lot of tragedy, I suppose I just assumed that power was something that happened to my family, that they just found themselves part of something.

"But what I found very difficult is the way they didn't let go of it. It didn't happen to them, they sought it out. And when it wasn't near them, they went looking …"



20 SEPTEMBER 1996. Fatima Bhutto is 14. She is on the phone when the first shot rings out outside the Bhutto home in Karachi. Seconds later, a barrage of shots. She grabs her six-year-old brother Zulfi, carrying him into a small, windowless corridor. They huddle together while the shooting rages for several minutes. When things quieten, the road is filled with police who will not let anyone out of the house. Fatima sits with her brother and stepmother Ghinwa (who she considers her real mother) but her papa does not return.

She phones the Prime Minister, her Aunt Benazir, but gets Zardari. Where is Papa? Fatima cannot speak to Benazir, Zardari declares. She is too hysterical. As if on cue, loud wailing fills the line. "Your father has been shot," Zardari says. Murtaza, who has only recently returned from exile to Pakistan to fight the election, is dead.

Murtaza was the eldest son of Ali Zulfikar and just 24 when his own father was killed. Until then, he led a privileged life, studying abroad like his brother Shanawaz and sister Benazir. He was living in London when his father was executed and he and Shanawaz immediately gave up their westernised lives to oppose the Pakistani military dictatorship.

They went into exile, forming the left-wing political group Al-Zulfiqar, which was charged with various terrorist attacks including the 1981 hijacking of a Pakistani plane. They were later cleared of the crime and Murtaza always denied supporting terrorism.

Fatima Bhutto grew up in exile in Syria but Murtaza's intention was always to return to Pakistan. When Shanawaz died in Paris, suspicion for his death fell on his own wife, Rehana, who was arrested then released. The family believed the government was ultimately responsible but Murtaza was married to Rehana's sister and their relationship fell apart. The couple divorced and Murtaza married his second wife, Ghinwa, when Fatima was just four years old.

Fatima loved Ghinwa but she and Murtaza remained exceptionally close. "My father cut my hair until I was seven so I looked like Mowgli from The Jungle Book. He bathed me and took me to the doctor," she says. But Murtaza put avenging his father's death before his own family's security. Did she not feel angry or rejected? Bhutto considers the question carefully. "He and Shanawaz were only 24 and 20 when those choices were thrust upon them. I wish they hadn't seen that as their only course of action. But after that they moved, and they grew, as men and as people."

Growing up, Bhutto and her brother were never taught that violence was a solution. They never believed they must avenge Murtaza's death in the way he felt he must avenge his father's. "There had to have been a lot of transition, a lot of movement, in a person's mind and their life, for them to pass on a different message to their children."

When Benazir first came to power, Murtaza wanted to return home from Syria. "She said to him no, not now. It's difficult for me. Please don't come. He didn't." But he became a vocal opponent of corruption and human rights abuses under her regime, Bhutto says. Certainly, Benazir was charged with corruption, though the charges were later dropped in a deal to bring her back to office, but she was posthumously awarded a United Nations prize in the field of human rights. People interpret Benazir and Murtaza's lives so differently. Perhaps Benazir was right to see Murtaza as her rival. Did he not have a sense of political entitlement as the eldest Bhutto son? Absolutely not, insists his daughter. "I was the eldest daughter. I had a brother. My father never made me feel my brother was more important. Never.

"It must have been very difficult for her," she continues. "I understand how diminishing it is to be told your gender doesn't make you valued. Progressive as Benazir's father was, he clearly says in his letters to his sons, you, my sons, personify me and you are the people who will take my history forth. But Benazir had all the same things that were afforded to her brothers and was sent away to study."

As a child, Fatima, was close to Benazir, or "Wadi" as she called her.

But Benazir's behaviour in power was not the behaviour of the young woman she once knew. "I remember a period when I was a child, before she was in power. I remember her not just as brave, but she really suffered so much, she sacrificed her own well being, her health, her freedom, for things she believed in. But then she did things I don't understand. There is the Benazir in power, who I don't recognise, the person who caused very similar suffering to what she endured. Then there is the Benazir I knew before power and when I think of her, I feel sad, because I felt like I lost her a long time ago, a long time before she was killed."

A year after her brother Shanawaz was murdered, Benazir started to negotiate with the military government that the family held responsible. "The very establishment that killed her father and brother. She entered into power sharing. Her mother and my father thought it was the wrong move. She appointed a man whose signature was on her father's death warrant. She also agreed not to open a case into Shanawaz's murder. And she didn't."

But it is a leap from failing to investigate one brother's death to actively participating in another's. Zardari was accused of being involved in Murtaza's death though no charges were proved. Even if they had been, could she be certain Benazir was involved? "The very tribunal that she put forward to investigate had no legal authority. I think they intended it to be a time-stalling mechanism. It backfired because the judges on that panel concluded that the order to assassinate could only have come from the highest level of government. She was the highest level of government."

If Benazir didn't know, says Bhutto, her later behaviour was inexplicable. "Why did she stop us filing a police report? Why did she stop us taking criminal charges, going instead for a tribunal that would have no legal authority? Why did she arrest the witnesses and not the police? I questioned my aunt on a number of these issues and she never answered."

She also questioned Benazir closely about the murder scene. "I remember saying to her, how could they clean up the streets? And she said, this is not the movies, as if I had understood how things worked from Hollywood where they don't clean up forensic scenes but real life is different. But the same thing happened to her. Had she protected the victims instead of the state at that point, it wouldn't have happened to her too."

Benazir and Zardari were accused of accruing vast personal wealth from their time in power. But for Bhutto, the greatest corruption has nothing to do with paper trails or bank receipts. "It is about the fact that for 18 hours a day in summer we have no electricity. We are a nuclear country. We have oil, gas and coal. We are a rich country. If a country can make a nuclear bomb, I think it is fair to say it can light its streets. That's what corruption is in Pakistan.

Corruption is present every day, everywhere, on every street."

There is no system of sanitation. Rubbish piles up on the streets. In the monsoon rains of summer, people end up electrocuted. Benazir did nothing to address that and in the two years of her first government, not one single piece of legislation was passed. Neither was any repealed, not even the hated 1979 Hudood laws which many regarded as anti-women, holding women accountable even for their own rape.

So why did Benazir do nothing? "That was the question she should have been asked. She never was. I try very hard to judge her on her record. The fact is that in her first government, no legislation was passed and her government was overthrown on grounds of corruption and humans rights abuses. Her second was overthrown on the same two grounds." It was also under Benazir's second government that the Taliban was not just recognised but supported by Pakistan. "Only three governments in the world recognised the Taliban and Benazir's was one of the them."

The Bhutto family always claimed to support democracy. Why did they never achieve it? "I think the thing that changed all of them was power. It's the nature of the beast. To find someone who enters politics and isn't overwhelmed and transformed by it is very rare. That's the danger isn't it? I think there was a sense of entitlement. I think Benazir felt they owed her. They killed her father. They killed her brother. Fine — but she owed them too."

When she heard about Benazir's assassination, did she feel any sense of justice? "No, I never thought blood was justice. I didn't want her to die. I wanted her to be alive to answer questions," she says.

Writing about her father was like breathing life back into a murdered man. She met his American college friends. She met Della, his intense first love, who now calls herself Bhutto's Greek mother. People thought it scandalous to write about the blonde, non-Muslim older woman who was her father's lover. But it moved Bhutto to confront Murtaza's frailties. "Della said to me, ‘The way he treated me when we broke up … the letter was very cruel.' I kept trying to defend my father, saying I am sure he didn't mean to hurt you. Then when I looked at the dates, it was ten months before I was born and I thought ooh..." She laughs. "There was no wriggle room. Had he been alive, I would have had the chance to disagree with my father and have big arguments. But I lost out, didn't I?"

Yet she felt him close during the years of writing. What of her mother? She adored Ghinwa but in her book seems to have an almost fearful relationship with her biological mother. "A month after my father was killed she came to my school and said, ‘I'm here for my daughter.' She filed for custody when I was 15." Wouldn't she expect her mother to want custody of her? "But this is not someone who called me every weekend or sent letters. I called her actually.


I got letters once a year on my birthday."

Was that her father's fault? Did he block her from Fatima's life? No, Murtaza wasn't like that. "A child has an innate sense of love, but it was something I didn't get from her as a child. I called her up when my father was killed. There was nothing to stop her picking up the phone or saying, can we meet? But she didn't."

As part of the family, she might be expected to have political aspirations. But she disapproves of dynasty, of entitlement through inheritance, and it would be almost a betrayal to use her name in that way. But she has political aspirations for her country. She loved her father and she loved Pakistan; those two facts weave together like intertwining branches on a tree.

She was brought up in Syria, her stepmother is Lebanese and she goes regularly to these countries. They are places of safety. But they do not provoke the same sense of longing in her as Pakistan. "I can think about them and dream about them, but I was never prevented from being in those countries."

That sense of exile is crucial. But while the danger might delay her but it will not prevent her. "For me, Pakistan is a permanent condition. Maybe there will be times when I have to be outside it for a bit. But I will always return." n



Bhutto appears at Edinburgh International Book Festival, today, 3pm. Songs of Blood and Sword,Jonathan Cape, £20


Source: http://www.scotsman.com/features/Interview-Fatima-Bhutto-author.6475955.jp?articlepage=1

Event 289 at Parabola Arts centre

Saturday 16 October 2010 at 8:00 pm (60mins)
Event 289 at Parabola Arts centre
Price: £6 (reserved seating)
(member price: £4.80) more

Niece of the late Benazir, Fatima Bhutto is a member of one of the world’s best known political dynasties, and a family scarred by tragedy across several generations. She joins us to discuss her turbulent heritage, the subject of her extraordinary and passionate memoir, Songs of Blood and Sword.

See our visitor information pages for useful booking info, venue maps etc.



Source: http://cheltenhamfestivals.com/literature-2010/fatima-bhutto/

Thursday 16 September: ‘Crossing the Line: Expressing Pakistan’

Writers featured in Granta’s upcoming Pakistan issue will read from their work and discuss the dynamics of expression in and out of Pakistan. Writers featured in this issue include Kamila Shamsie, Nadeem Aslam, Fatima Bhutto, Aamer Hussein and Daniyal Mueenuddin. In association with FLOW - The Free Word Festival.

Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Road, London, EC1R 3GA, 6:30 p.m. Book tickets here.

source:
http://www.granta.com/Events

Fatima Bhutto at Asia Society in NY

Author Q & A

Time	24 September · 18:30 - 20:30
Location	The Asia Society 725 Park Avenue New York, NY
Created by:	Songs of Blood and Sword
More info	$10 Asia Society members; $12 students with ID and seniors; $15 nonmembers. http://asiasociety.org/events-calendar/fatima-bhutto-songs-blood-and-sword-daughter’s-memoir

Source: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=137787559594424&ref=mf

Fatima Bhutto talks about the floods with Democracy Now

Pakistan’s government is facing rising national anger as the devastating floods along the Indus River show little sign of abating. Some 1,600 people have died, and upwards of six million people are directly affected, according to the latest estimates from the United Nations, which has compared the scale of the crisis to the 2005 earthquake. As landslides and continuing rain complicated relief efforts, entire villages have been washed away and many towns submerged. Several areas of the country have been cut off, including the Swat Valley in the northwest and parts of Pakistan’s breadbasket of Punjab and Sindh some 600 miles downstream the Indus River. With 1.5 million acres of croplands ravaged, the prices of basic foods have also skyrocketed. [includes rush transcript)

AMY GOODMAN: Pakistan’s government is facing rising national anger as the devastating floods along the Indus River show little sign of abating. Some 1,600 people have died, upwards of six million people directly affected, according to the latest estimates from the United Nations, which has compared the scale of the crisis to the 2005 earthquake. As landslides and continuing rain complicated relief efforts, entire villages have been washed away and many towns submerged. Several areas of the country have been cut off, including the Swat Valley in the northwest and parts of Pakistan’s breadbasket of Punjab and Sindh some 600 miles downstream the Indus River. With one-and-a-half million acres of croplands ravaged, the prices of basic foods have skyrocketed.

This is Mohamad Amin, a resident of Mingora in the Swat Valley.
MOHAMAD AMIN: [translated] The people of Swat have been the worst-affected by the floods. Hundreds of people have been swept away by the floods. Thousands of houses have collapsed, and hundreds of thousands have been affected. The inaction of the government in this crisis is regrettable.


AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, the Pakistani president, Asif Ali Zardari, returned home today after a prolonged European tour that sparked fury at home over his absence at a time of national disaster. The government insists his overseas trip was crucial, but images of the president at his chateau in France while his country is battling the worst floods in nearly a century have deepened his unpopularity and strengthened the role of the army. Zardari even faced protests in Britain, with a Pakistani demonstrator in Birmingham hurling a shoe towards him Saturday.
Meanwhile in London, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the twenty-one-year-old son of Asif Ali Zardari and the assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, launched an appeal for Pakistan’s floods and defended his father’s absence.

BILAWAL BHUTTO ZARDARI: As we all know, Pakistan is facing the worst floods in living memory. The floodwaters have devastated the lives of a people who have already suffered the most at the hands of terrorists. I ask everyone to do what you can to help the people of Pakistan. This is not a time to play politics. We need to do whatever is necessary to help our brothers and sisters in Pakistan.


AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more on the situation in Pakistan, we’re joined now from Karachi by writer and poet Fatima Bhutto. She is the niece of Benazir Bhutto and a vocal critic of the current Pakistani president, Asif Ali Zardari. Her latest article in foreignpolicy.com calls the current crisis "Zardari’s Katrina." Her memoir, Songs of Blood and Sword, will be published in the United States this fall.

Fatima Bhutto, welcome to Democracy Now! First, describe the situation in your country, the extent of the floods and the response of the Pakistani people.

FATIMA BHUTTO: Well, it’s as you said, Amy. We’re now hearing that 14 million people are being affected by these floods. This season’s rice crop in the Sindh province, in the food belt of this country, has been destroyed. The River Indus is bursting at its banks. We know that more than two million people are in desperate need of food aid. Many hundreds of thousands more have been displaced and lost their homes. And we are hearing now that Mohenjo-daro, which is the birthplace of the Indus civilization, the world’s first planned city that has existed since 2400 BC, is under threat of being destroyed. The destruction in terms of the country’s infrastructure has been enormous. Electricity grids have been shot in the Punjab and Sindh province. The Swat Valley, as you said, is completely closed off. And we are only in the middle of monsoon season. You know, it is raining in Karachi today, as we speak now.

AMY GOODMAN: And talk about where the president is. We should say that Benazir Bhutto, the assassinated prime minister, was your aunt, so he is your uncle. President Zardari, where is he?
FATIMA BHUTTO: Yes, by marriage, I should point out. But, you know, Zardari embarked on a European-wide tour. He stopped in Dubai, where he and his children have lived for many years. As you said, he visited his chateau in France and took photo opportunities with President Sarkozy and with David Cameron.

That Zardari would leave the country at a time when it faces its worst national disaster ever is not surprising. This is also the month that has seen Pakistan’s worst aviation disaster in our history. This is the month where human right groups have estimated that some 300 people, some 300 politicians and political activists, have been murdered in targeted killings in the city of Karachi alone. And Karachi was the place—the scene of carnage just recently, where a member of Parliament was killed, and anywhere between thirty-five to seventy-five people were killed in retributive acts of murder. President Zardari has a history of leaving the country when the going gets tough. A local pundit anecdotally once estimated that Richard Holbrooke has spent more time in Pakistan than the president.

And he has defended his decision, robustly, to leave the country. He has claimed that he has no responsibility at the moment to the people, that the Senate and the Parliament can take care of the disaster. But, however, this is a man who is not only one of the most venal figures in the country, but this is a man who is facing corruption cases in the billions of dollars before he ascended to the office of the presidency.

AMY GOODMAN: How does he justify being outside of the country at this time of crisis, the worst flooding in a century?

FATIMA BHUTTO: Well, he said to the BBC that, as an extraordinarily munificent Democrat, he has no responsibility, because he has empowered the Senate and the Parliament to deal with the crisis. But, of course, that’s an incredibly hollow justification. The Pakistani—the entire upper echelon of the Pakistani state has traveled to Europe and to Dubai at the expense of the Pakistani people. Zardari has been staying at five-star hotels everywhere he goes. He has been ferried around in private limousines. The security for him and his entourage is privately hired. So there is absolutely no justification. There’s no justification for spending that money that Pakistan so desperately needs. And, of course, it’s ridiculous then to say that the president had to go abroad to lobby for funds for the flood victims, when in fact the flood victims could have benefited from the money that the Pakistani Treasury has just spent on this enormously pointless visit.

AMY GOODMAN: You say, Fatima Bhutto, if rumors in the Pakistani press are correct, the President Zardari’s European tour is more cynical than it seems; it’s a trip to kick off his son’s political career.

FATIMA BHUTTO: Well, this was what was being rumored not just in the Pakistani press, but also in the British press in The Daily Telegraph and The Times of London. And what we know is that this is a government that finds itself in power on the basis of a name. It finds itself in power on the basis of a name, in fact, that is not even theirs. You know, this is a false dynasty, though all dynasties are dangerous and false, certainly. But Asif Zardari remains in power on the blood of his wife. And we know, certainly, that, you know, he has taken his children abroad to meet with heads of states before, that they are part of his entourage, that his family members—his sister, namely—are part of, you know, the hundred-deep entourage that travels with the president. There is absolutely no justification, however, for a trip of this expense and of this amount of time, especially as Pakistan is submerged.

AMY GOODMAN: As experts grapple with the causes for the scale of the current devastation, some point to the poor construction of small dams or barrages along the surging Indus River. Democracy Now!'s Anjali Kamat spoke to Mushtaq Gaadi, a professor at Islamabad's Quaid-e-Azam University and a longtime water rights activist. He emphasized the breaches in one particular barrage on the Indus in the province of Punjab. It’s called Taunsa Barrage and was renovated under a World Bank-funded project that was completed just six months ago.

MUSHTAQ GAADI: There was no doubt that the size of the flood was very massive. But the destruction that was brought, it was brought due to the breaches in the dykes and the breaches in embankments. And certainly, there are many man-made causes involved in what’s been the situation. The main cause of the flood, worsening of the flood, was Taunsa Barrage. It was in the downstream of Taunsa Barrage. And the reason was that the Taunsa Barrage is the most tilted-up river, and its capacity, storage capacity, has been reduced. So it is not possible to hold up the water and then to—and embankments are in very bad shape.

When the World Bank started its rehabilitation project of Taunsa Barrage three years ago, it was meant to basically to rehabilitate and repair the whole barrage. And $140 million were allocated. We asked them to pay attention to ecological issues, and especially the issue of this tilt, the position, sedimentation of the barrage, and how the whole ecology of the barrage is going to change, because its channel has been raised up, and now all the low-lying areas are in—more in the danger of floods. So, all that have been ignored. So, after the rehabilitation project, just after six months, the barrage failed to hold up the water, and it was breached. So it was—in fact, it was the failure of Taunsa Barrage that caused such large destruction. It was a failure of the one structure of Taunsa Barrage. That was embankment. So, it is not only the—these are not only natural floods, but also the structures that were created were injurious and badly looked after by irrigation department, that have caused such destruction and worsened the situation.


AMY GOODMAN: Mushtaq Gaadi from Quaid-e-Azam University in Pakistan, talking about the breaches to one of the small dams, or barrages, on the Indus River.
One of the many areas badly affected by the floods is Balochistan. On Sunday, Democracy Now!'s Anjali Kamat reached Qalandar Memon with the Labor Party of Pakistan about relief eforts in this historically ignored region.

QALANDAR MEMON: Balochistan is historically neglected by the state. It hasn't [inaudible] the education network. Balochis are far more unemployed or underrepresented in all state institutions, in terms military, bureaucracy. And as you probably already know, there is an insurgency going on for separation and for other demands, autonomy. And in light of that, the flooding has not really—the government has done very little to support the people who have been flooded. And the government, in terms of what they did, is that turned up with very minor number of food and—and, you know, over 40,000 people in the first few days were affected, and then it’s increased. And they turned up with something like 5,000 food parcels. And, of course, that’s going to cause more trouble and rioting, because it was just dumped, and they left, leaving people to sort out how to distribute it themselves. I’ve also heard stories of mass corruption among the officials and that people with connections and people who are able to pay the government are able to get relief, and others are suffering.

So, the flooding swept villages. People did not expect it. And they were basically—they had to run for their lives to higher ground, and there they had to sleep in the open, without shelter, clean drinking water, and their food supplies, of course, finished, because they rely on stock, livestock, and that’s been swept away, in most cases. So they are without food, without clean drinking water, and they have very little shelter. Now, as time has gone by, more and more people are moving, if possible, because the roads are blocked, and it’s very difficult when people are still scared. But if possible, when they get a chance, they’re trying to move to bigger cities, such as Quetta. But a lot of people, I think—the last I heard, there are at least 50,000 people sleeping in the open still in Balochistan. Everyone here has been complaining the government actually does not have the capacity to respond, because when there isn’t a disaster, they do nothing in terms of capacity building. So, this is the critique that people articulated after the earthquake, and I don’t think that it’s gone much further than that.


AMY GOODMAN: Qalandar Memon from the Labor Party of Pakistan.

We’re still on the line with Fatima Bhutto, the Pakistani poet, the niece of the assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Fatima, I wanted to ask you about the growing strength of the Taliban. And, well, the Washington Post is reporting the US military has sent six helicopters, ninety-one troops, hundreds of thousands of meals from neighboring Afghanistan, to help with relief efforts in Swat. The presence of US troops on the ground in Pakistan has the potential to kick up controversy, given the deep mistrust of American motivation. And it goes on to say, Islamic charities, including ones that are known fronts for banned militant groups, have begun distributing assistance in some areas, as have Western governmental organizations, but for the most part, residents said they’re receiving no aid at all. So talk about what this means for the military and for the rise of the Taliban in Pakistan.

FATIMA BHUTTO: Well, certainly the last statement is correct, and we know this again to be true from the 2005 earthquake. The state is absolutely unwilling or incompetent when it comes to providing even the most basic of services to their people during peacetime, during times of no natural disasters.

Secondly, while there is aid coming from the American military, we also have to remember that American Predator drones fly over Pakistan on what feels like weekly missions—what are weekly missions—in attacks that have killed more than 200 unnamed Pakistanis this year alone. So, with one hand, America cannot expect to give aid and find people, you know, grateful recipients of that aid, and the other, bomb people overhead, people who have not been indicted, people who have been, you know, uncharged with anything.

And certainly, what we know to be true, again, from the 2005 earthquake is the fact that when there is a total absence of the state, a vacuum is created. We know, not just in the northern parts of Pakistan that were badly hit by the 2005 earthquake, but many other parts of the country are without access to justice. They’re without any law-and-order institutions set up. They have no access to hospitals or schools. And that vacuum is very ably filled by militant groups, who come in, who provide madrasah education, which may be a child’s only chance to learn how to read and write. They provide quick and speedy access to what they believe is justice. And indeed, their popularity grows as a result. And we’re seeing that now with the floods. We are still seeing that. We are seeing, in parts of the flood-affected areas, the BBC is reporting, that survivors have physically attacked government officials and members of the ruling party, who have been absolutely inept when it comes to caring for their constituents and to providing any form of aid.

AMY GOODMAN: Is global warming tied to the floods, Fatima?

FATIMA BHUTTO: Well, I would certainly—I would certainly think so. I think there is any number of issues that are tied to these floods. I mean the global warming, the poor construction of these very large ineffectual dams, and the fact that Pakistan, even though we have monsoon season every year—it comes at the same time every year—the state has not strengthened any institutions that could have and should have contained the rain.

AMY GOODMAN: Fatima Bhutto, I want to thank you for being with us, Pakistani poet, niece of the assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Her memoir, Songs of Blood and Sword, will be published in the United States this fall.


Source: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/9/fatima_bhutto_pakistans_devastating_floods_is

Fatima Bhutto's interview with with Masoud Golsorkhi

Fatima Bhutto is a 28-year-old writer from Pakistan. Her grandfather Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was executed in 1979; her aunt Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in 2007; and her father Murtaza Bhutto was killed in 1996, probably – or most assume – on the orders of Asif Ali Zardari, widower of Benazir and current president of Pakistan. Fatima’s new book is an autobiographical tribute to her murdered father, Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter’s Memoir. She discusses with Masoud Golsorkhi the genesis of the memoir, her everyday life in Karachi, and the rise of the suicide bomber.

Masoud Golsorkhi: What made you tackle your own life?

Fatima Bhutto: It was one of the last things I promised my father before he was killed, that I would tell his story. Just hours before he was killed we were all sitting together as a family and I said to him, “You have such a fascinating life, you should write a book.” And he said, “No, I can’t. It’s too dangerous for me to say the things I know. You do it. When I’m gone you can do it.” I was 14 at the time and wildly precocious, and I took out a pen and paper but he said, “No, no, not now, after I’m dead you can do the book.” And hours later he was killed, and it was the last thing I owed him I think. So six years ago when I was in London doing my Masters at SOAS [the School of Oriental and African Studies], I finally felt brave enough to start digging and to start searching for people, and then I started writing around two years ago.

MG: Why did you start writing then?

FB: Because two years ago these people many of whom I believed were guilty of murder were about to come back into office, and I thought if I don’t start now I’m going to lose access to people, to documents. I was right as it turned out because two months after I started writing, Asif Ali Zardari acquitted himself in all the murder cases he was involved in, one of which was my father’s, and then by September he was “elected” by his own parliament as president.

MG: The book lives in an interesting place between personal memoir and investigative journalism, yet it’s quite open about its limitations.

FB: To tackle a family this difficult and a country this complicated, the only way I could do it was just to be exceedingly honest. Even though this book was six years of research and flying back and forth for interviews, some points were still blank for me, like my uncle’s [Shahnawaz Bhutto] murder: the people who were there were either dead or they had moved on or they were untraceable. I sat down to write and I thought that’s what I have to say then, I can’t pretend that I know more than I do. And the things I like to read all have that sort of no-bullshit attitude in them. Malcolm X’s autobiography is one of my favourite books because at no point does he pretend; he is honest about what he knows and what he doesn’t. Malcolm X is very open about the fact that he was a hustler and a criminal, that he was self-hating, and what I like so much is not only the honesty but also the journey.

MG: Why was it so important for you to write about Pakistan?

FB: I felt very much that there had to be another space for discussion and another sort of story. It seems that so many people who write about Pakistan, so many people who want to tell our story, are foreigners. You know, they’re New York Times journalists or Washington Post correspondents or they write for the Guardian. Now we have a lot of Pakistani voices writing fiction, but not so much non-fiction, and historically a lot of our most famous poets wrote in exile, they couldn’t write in their own country because they were criticising regimes and institutions. But I think that silence is more dangerous, always, than speaking out. In a country like Pakistan where there’s a legacy of political violence, of state violence, its partner is silence. States assume that they can do this, whether it’s Pakistan or it’s Sri Lanka and its concentration camps, and that you will just shut up about it because the price is always too high. And these are countries where the price of everything is too high, water and electricity included, but silence is much more costly.

MG: What do you think about the way Pakistan is portrayed in the West?

FB: There are things that we know in Pakistan, that we watched happen, but the narrative that’s written for Pakistan by the West is totally different. Even when it comes to Benazir, for example, people abroad are always saying, “Oh my God, she did such wonderful things for women,” but in fact she was a woman who covered her hair when she didn’t have to, and most women didn’t at that time. And it was under her government that the Taliban was recognised by Pakistan, at a time when only three governments in the world recognised the Taliban: Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Benazir’s Pakistan.

MG: What is life in Pakistan like for your generation?

FB: I guess we came of age in the age of dictatorships, and we’ve had over 30 years now of either oppressive military regimes or oppressive civilian ones. It’s certainly a feeling that gets underneath your skin but you learn to adapt to that kind of fear and violence very quickly, you learn all the rules of how to survive it because you have to, because that’s what the environment is like. Take the Lawyers’ Movement [a protest movement started by Pakistani lawyers in 2007, after General Pervez Musharraf unconstitutionally sacked the Chief Justice Muhammad Chaudhry] – everybody in the West assumed that this was a movement about the sanctity of the law, but it wasn’t, it was a movement about one man’s unceremonial dismissal. And it wasn’t mentioned anywhere that this movement broke down the court system, that for two years people were languishing in jails because there was no one to represent them, and that the lawyers never spoke about the Hudood Laws [legislation enacted in 1979 that severely curtailed women’s rights], which say you can put a woman to death for having adultery. The Lawyers’ Movement was in a way a very tribal fight, but the impression that all this exposure gave was that it was some sort of watershed for democracy, and it really wasn’t. I suppose the other paradigm is a completely ridiculous one that says, “Oh well, look we had fashion week in Pakistan and therefore everything is fine, therefore the Taliban can’t win.” But again that’s a very difficult picture because that fashion week is enjoyed by not even a per cent of the population: it’s a per cent of a per cent of a per cent. It’s almost proving what the Islamists say about a certain segment of the population: that they don’t even care about their own country, that they only care about their own wealth and their own luxuries and their own opportunities, which is what a fashion week looks like in a country where we should really be having an electricity week, a sanitation week, a plumbing week!

MG: What was the country like when your grandfather was in charge?

FB: I wasn’t born then. But I knew that Pakistan through my father’s dreams and his longing for a country that no longer existed. I never saw the Pakistan that was pre-fundamentalism, pre-Afghan war, but it was described to me in this sort of utopian way, as a place that was really trying something new, a country that was in the middle of an experiment, and the imagination they had for themselves was grand and it was proud. It was the kind of place that visually seemed impossible to me because my father would tell me about riding bikes down to the beach to watch the cavalry come and wash their horses in the ocean. In the Karachi that I live in now you don’t bike anywhere because it’s unsafe, you know the streets are unsafe for a Pakistani.

MG: How do you cope with the levels of violence?

FB: The one thing I always felt comforted by was a memory of one time in Karachi before these bombings started. One day I was supposed to go with my mother to run errands before going back to college, and then this huge suicide attack happened and it closed down a main road, and in my mind I immediately cancelled my life for the day and just decided to stay put. The next thing I know, my mother has her coat on and she says, “Let’s go.” I remember thinking, but the attacks have just happened in the city, and she said, “You know it will be safe now because they don’t normally bomb twice in the same place.” I guess that’s the survivor’s way of understanding violence.

Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter’s Memoir is published by Jonathan Cape and out now.
randomhouse.co.uk/


Source:http://www.tankmagazine.com/magazine/interviews/fatima-bhutto-80

Zardari's Katrina

Why is Pakistan’s president junketing while his people drown?


This week, Pakistan's president, Asif Ali Zardari, boarded a private Gulfstream Jet along with his family and his hundreds-large entourage to visit the European countries included on the president's grand tour. Yesterday, Zardari -- who was married to my aunt, the late Benazir Bhutto, before her 2007 murder -- landed in London. As soon as the plane touched down, the president and his Very Important coterie were chauffeured in a dozen luxury vehicles to a five-star hotel where the president will be staying in a £7,000 ($11,160) per night Royal Suite.

His welcome, however, was less than royal. On the drive to the hotel, protesters held placards reading "Zardari King of Thieves," "Zardari 100% Pure Corruption," and "GO Zardari GO." While Zardari was schmoozing with his cronies in luxe London hotels, Pakistan was reeling from the deadliest floods to hit the country in 80 years. In short, it looks like Zardari's Katrina.

More than 3 million people in the northwestern region of Pakistan have now been affected by the floods. Parts of the north are facing terminal food shortages even as they are inaccessible to relief workers. The U.N. World Food Program says that 1.8 million will urgently need something to eat in coming weeks. The death toll has risen steadily in recent days to more than 1,400 people. About another million have lost their homes.

The news is also unlikely to get any better: Officials now say that the waters are expected to hit Punjab and Sindh provinces, Pakistan's food-producing regions. New flood warnings are still being issued, and the country is bracing for further monsoon downpours.

Zardari takes a lot of overseas trips -- so many that one local TV pundit estimated somewhat anecdotally last year that Richard Holbrooke, U.S. President Barack Obama's special envoy to the "AfPak" region, had spent more time in Pakistan than Zardari had recently. But the timing of this particular visit has angered not only his subjects but also his hosts. Two prominent Asian Britons refused to meet the visiting head of state. Khalid Mahmood, a member of parliament, vigorously condemned Zardari's decision to visit London. "A lot of people are dying," he told the press. "He should be [in Pakistan] to try to support the people, not swanning around in the UK and France." Lord Ahmed, a labor MP, continued that Zardari had a responsibility to be "looking after people, not [be] over here."

Yet the protests seem to have fallen on deaf ears -- which really shouldn't surprise anyone who has watched the Zardari government in action. The floods are just the latest, most tragic example of how inept the Pakistani state truly is. The inundation was predictable; Pakistan suffers monsoon rains every year at exactly the same time. But in a country -- and with a president -- so endemically corrupt, dealing with the entirely preventable, whether terrorism or natural disasters, has become impossible. There is simply no will, and more importantly no money, to spend on the Pakistani people. The country's coffers are constantly being diverted to more pressing programs -- or pockets, for that matter. Before he came to office, Zardari was facing corruption charges in Switzerland, Spain, and Britain. (As president, he withdrew Pakistan's cooperation with the latter two countries' courts; his presidential immunity prevented a Swiss case from re-opening.)

And thus the tragedy unfolds: There are no emergency evacuation plans for natural disasters, nor is there money for institutions that could help victims of such crises. What there is money for -- almost $600,000 -- are such programs as the Martyr Benazir Bhutto Income Support Scheme, a cult of personality initiative named after the president's late wife. Those who sign up receives meager cash handouts and find themselves on the president's ruling party's election rolls -- which themselves received more government funds than two whole federal departments of Pakistan put together.

Meanwhile, if rumors in the Pakistani press are right, Zardari's European tour is even more cynical than it already seems. The trip is meant to kickstart the president's young son's political career. That launch has to take place overseas to avoid the inevitably hostile reactions such a dynastic coronation would draw back in Pakistan. Speculation has it that Zardari's son Bilawal, a recent college graduate who is already co-chairman along with Zardari of their political party, will proclaim himself the future leader of Pakistan to a select audience in Birmingham on August 7.

Pakistan's The News newspaper summed up popular sentiment in a laundry list of questions posed to the country's High Commission in London. "Who is paying for the buses and coaches being booked to bring people to the Birmingham rally?" the paper asks. "Why will the president not cancel his visit?" And the most crucial question: Shouldn't the money for the trip be better spent on the flood victims? In response, the Pakistani High Commission issued a one-line blanket response: "This is an official visit and procedures for official visits are being followed."

Pakistan can ill afford a president who prioritizes his personal political future over the lives of millions of his citizens. We have always known in Pakistan that the rest of the world's attention comes at a tremendously high cost. Yet we seem to keep paying.

Source: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/08/04/zardaris_katrina?page=0,0&sms_ss=facebook

Edinburgh festival- Fatima Bhutto 15th August

Fatima Bhutto

The tragic story of Pakistan’s great political dynasty

The Times Event

Sunday 15 August

3:00pm - 4:00pm

RBS Main Theatre

£10.00, £8.00

Book Tickets

When Fatima Bhutto’s father was murdered by Pakistani police in 1996, Benazir Bhutto – her aunt – was Prime Minister. Fatima became a passionate critic, claiming that Benazir had ordered her father’s murder. A decade later, Benazir herself was assassinated. Now, in Songs of Blood and Sword, Fatima Bhutto reveals the tragic history of a political dynasty whose fate mirrors the tumultuous events of Pakistan itself since its independence in 1947.

Part of our New World Order series of events.

Source:

http://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/whats-on/fatima-bhutto

Fatima Bhutto at the DSC South Asian Literature Festival

Prize-winning authors confirmed for the Festival

The DSC South Asian Literature Festival will be showcasing a cast of well-known personalities from the worlds of literature, journalism and performing arts.

We can now begin to reveal that the Festival, which will follow the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, has confirmed Channel 4′s longstanding broadcast journalist Jon Snow, prized writer Romesh Gunesekera, author and musician Amit Chaudhuri and from Pakistan’s troubled political dynasty, Fatima Bhutto, among others to feature in the two-week programme.

The Festival will imaginatively combine South Asian literature with various other disciplines and artforms, including journalism, dance, visual art and music to explore the social, political and cultural issues that are shaping today’s world.

Political dynasties on stage for the first time
In a never-before-seen, on-stage encounter between descendants of India and Pakistan’s political dynasties, the Nehru and Bhutto families, Nayantara Sahgal and Fatima Bhutto will share their experiences of growing up in such powerful and turbulent circumstances. The discussion will be moderated by well-known and respected journalist Maya Jaggi. Young and gutsy, Fatima Bhutto is the author of a recent controversial book of memoirs, Songs of Blood and Sword.

Festival Dates :
London : 15-24 October 2010
Rest of UK : 28-31 October 2010

Look out for her events in the local papers.

Source :
http://southasianlitfest.com/2010/07/and-the-authors-are/

Campaign For Justice for Mir Murtaza Bhutto- July

Obviously freedom of the people on the right side of things is a throne in the side of those in power for so obvious reasons. So to be safe they are kept behind bars so that the machinery of power is not affected. But who is actually afraid of this confinement, those put away wrongly or those claiming freedom?

The ultimate freedom belongs to justice after all. Because even while being free the wrong doers are confined & tortured by their deep inside conscious & they spend their freedom trying to clam these feelings down. In the end justice will always take its course & the truth will surface in front of everybody. As the saying goes, “You can fool some of the people all of the time & all of the people some of the time but you can’t fool all of the people, all of the time.

In Solidarity
Fatima Bhutto Fan club






Disclaimer: None of the views expressed here are of Fatima Bhutto or any of her family members. These are views of the team...

Copyright: Fatima Bhutto Fan club.
Please do not reproduce this anywhere without permission.

Fatima Bhutto Event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival -15th August 2010

Edinburgh International Book Festival is held from 14^th to 30^th August 2010 in Charlotte Square Gardens, Edinburgh from 9.30am to late. Admission is free. To book phone 0845 373 5888.

The Edinburgh International Book Festival is not just for those with a love of reading but is also inspiring for writers no matter how inexperienced or how young. Learn from the masters. What better city to rub shoulders with legendary authors like Fergal Keane, Carol Ann Duffy and Fay Weldon.

Listen to readings by the authors, take a masterclass in illustrating, writing workshops, book reading and activities for children and much more.

Sunday 15^th August

15:00 THE TIMES EVENT FATIMA BHUTTO THE TRAGIC STORY OF PAKISTAN’S GREAT POLITICAL DYNASTY RBS MAIN THEATRE, £10 [£8]
When Fatima Bhutto’s father was murdered by Pakistani police in 1996, Benazir Bhutto – her aunt – was Prime Minister. Fatima became a passionate critic, claiming that Benazir had ordered her father’s murder. A decade later, Benazir herself was assassinated. Now, in Songs of Blood and Sword, Fatima Bhutto reveals the tragic history of a political dynasty whose fate mirrors the tumultuous events of Pakistan itself since its independence in 1947.

Source :

http://www.spiderwize.com/blog/bid/39541/Edinburgh-International-Book-Festival-August-2010

Books: Fatima Bhutto Q & A

Iman Qureshi, Thu 15 Jul 2010

28-year old Fatima Bhutto, progeny of the Pakistan’s famous political dynasty, is an author and journalist in her own right. As well as contributing to numerous publications including The Daily Beast and the New Statesman, she has published three books. The latest, Songs of Blood and Sword, documents the saga of the ill-fated Bhutto family, and has elicited both praise and controversy across the world.

What were your motivations and intentions behind writing Songs of Blood and Sword?

To break the silence that surrounds the culture of political violence in Pakistan and to preserve the memory and the history of that violence in an amnesiac nation.

Why the title?

It's from a poem by the Iranian poet Khusro Golsorkhi that I love. Golsorkhi, who was a great critic of the monarchy's corruption, feudalism and violence, was executed by the Shah's regime and I came across the poem again while I was writing and it resonated.

What was the process you went through writing this book – both research-wise, and on an emotional level?

It was a six-year-long journey. I travelled all over Pakistan, across Europe and America, cold-called strangers, sat in foreign libraries and trolled through archival material. That process of research was very important to me. It was a comfort too, because it gave me some space from what I was writing about in some instances. Emotionally, it was gruelling but intensely liberating.

What would you say to people who accuse you of being unashamedly partisan in Songs of Blood and Sword?

I can't divorce myself from my family. I am writing about people I knew, lived with and loved. That said, I was critical of my grandfather, Zulfikar, where I felt he deserved it—as in the case of the state's interference in Balochistan, among other issues for example—and the same for my father and aunt. I'm nobody's keeper. To understand why my family met such violent ends I had to take a critical look at them. Where I felt they thrived, I spoke clearly in their defense. But nothing is ever black and white.

How do you feel you fit in to the Bhutto dynasty?

I was born a Bhutto. It's a last name. That's how I see it. Others clearly disagree.

In what ways would you consider yourself political?

In every way, but one – I have no interest in participating in government.

I had a little giggle over your tweet: “It's Afghanistan. And Pakistan. They're not the same, Richard." I take it you’re critical of US involvement in Pakistan?

Afpak is such a moronic term, so wildly simplistic and so indicative of how American foreign policy works. I'm not a fan of Richard Holbrooke and his meddling in my country, no.

In past interviews with and articles about you, people seem fixated on the Bhutto family, and really seem to speak of little else. Do you get sick of speaking about the family?

I think all discussion is constructive so long as we're talking on political grounds, not personal ones. That said, I talk about a lot of things—women's rights in Pakistan, election laws, the freedom of the press, the war on terror—but I understand that people are curious about the family.

You seem very interested in British politics — you’ve been tweeting about Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre, you write regularly for the New Statesman, and wrote a very funny letter to David Miliband. What are your thoughts on UK-Pakistan relations?

I think the British government has played a negative subsidiary role in Pakistan's politics, with David Miliband supplementing Secretary Clinton or Holbrooke's strong-arming. However, because of our colonial history British interference in Pakistani politics has a more sinister feeling. And the longer 10 Downing supports corrupt and criminal leadership in Pakistan, from the dictator General Musharaff to Zardari, that political resentment will remain. However, I love that the anti-war movement in Britain means something and that there is a true multitude of voices and opinions being heard in the realm of British politics.

How do you feel about the intermingling of politics and religion?

I think they should be separate.

You’ve moved around a lot – where is home for you?

Pakistan, always. But I have family from my mother's side in Lebanon, so I feel very at home there too, and Syria was where I grew up so I have always felt a belonging there too.

What do you miss about Pakistan when you’re away?

Oh, everything. I miss the sound of the motorcycles with their obnoxiously loud exhausts, the smell of the sea, fresh coconut water, the people... I could go on. I'm perpetually homesick.

What do you enjoy reading?

I just finished reading Herta Muller's The Land of Green Plums, which I found very moving and terrifying, and it has left me in a panicked search for more of her work in English. Before that I was reading The Memory of Love, Aminatta Forna's latest. She's a huge inspiration, I'm a huge fan. Janine di Giovanni's The Quick and the Dead on the fall of Sarajevo was another recent read. I'd been looking for it for some time and finally found a copy in a small bookstore in London. As for papers, I always look out for Henry Porter and Simon Jenkins. And I love A A Gill.

Source:

http://fest.theskinny.co.uk/article/99730-books-fatima-bhutto-q-a

Out of Station- Candid Photographs

Fatima Bhutto, Author

‘Cuba was memorable since two friends came with me’

This photograph is from a trip to Cuba in 2008. I was there to write about health-care and life after the Revolution but it was a memorable vacation because I spent time with two great friends who went with me. The photograph was taken in Santa Clara where Che Guevara secured victory, ending the dictator Fulgencio Batista’s regime.

How many times do you travel in a year: This year I've been to New York, Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai, London — all for work. Most expensive holiday: The Ubud Literary Festival in Bali was luxurious. Cheapest holiday: Driving with friends across Sindh in 2007. We stopped at Thatta, Hyderabad and Hala along the way. It was a ridiculous amount of fun. The holiday you hated: I’m not going back to Istanbul any time soon.

Source :

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main45.asp?filename=Ne290510my_favourite.asp

Ilkley Literature Festival

Yorkshire’s very own chat show king Sir Michael Parkinson is heading the line up at this year’s Ilkley Literature Festival. Sir Michael is among a host of writers across fiction, journalism, poetry and non-fiction to appear at the 37th event. Ilkley Literature Festival was launched by poet WH Auden in 1973 in one of his last public appearances and each year more than 160 events take place in a variety of venues across the town.

There are projects and residencies involving local schools and community organisations. The first female poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, Booker prize winner Roddy Doyle and The Guardian’s Polly Toynbee are set to appear on the bill. Time Traveller’s Wife author Audrey Niffenegger will make her debut at the festival and broadcaster Peter Snow will be exploring his new history To War with Wellington: From the Peninsula to Waterloo. Fatima Bhutto, Benazir Bhutto’s niece brings her family memoir, Songs of Blood and Sword to Ilkley and Nelson Mandela will be the subject of renowned anti-apartheid campaigner and Labour MP Peter Hain’s biography.

This year’s festival, which will run from October 1 to 17, will also have a programme of performances with the children’s festival weekend running from October 9 to 10. Festival director Rachel Feldberg said: “We’re delighted to have such a great line up already and this is just the start.

The complete Ilkley Literature Festival programme will be announced in July.

Tickets will be available to Friends of the Festival from August 18 and will go on general release on August 31.

Source http://www.ilkley-directory.co.uk/2010/07/ilkley-literature-festival/

The heir to the Bhutto family complaint

Fatima in a book reveals the intricacies of the most influential political dynasty in Pakistan

"With a family like this [Bhutto] does not need enemies," whispers Fatima Bhutto, 28, petite, frail and with a sense of humor. Subida a unos zapatos detacón de aguja, habla con fuerza y convicción de su familia, la dinastía más influyente en la historia de Pakistán, y lo que la rodea: asesinatos, corrupción y política. Subida a needle detacón shoes, speaks with force and conviction of his family, the most influential dynasty in the history of Pakistan and its surroundings: murder, corruption and politics. Y mantiene la esperanza de que en un par de generaciones su país será distinto con respecto a la política y la violencia. And holding out hope that in a couple of generations their country will be different with regard to politics and violence.

Fatima is the granddaughter of Zulfikar, the Pakistani president executed in 1979 under the dictatorship of General Zia ul Haq. También es hija del que podía haber sido su sucesor, Murtaza, si no hubiese sido asesinado en 1996, según Fatima, con el visto bueno de su hermana Benazir, entonces primera ministra y rival electoral, y su marido Asif Zardari, actual presidente paquistaní. It is also the daughter of which could have been his successor, Murtaza, had it not been assassinated in 1996, according to Fatima, with the approval of his sister Benazir, then prime minister and electoral rival, and her husband Asif Zardari, Pakistan's current president.

Raised halfway between Kabul, Tripoli, Paris and Damascus, was 14 when his father was gunned down near his home in Karachi, southern Pakistan. Con su muerte desapareció la única referencia fija en su vida, dado que su madre biológica se había alejado, tras divorciarse, cuando ella tenía sólo tres años. With his death the only fixed reference disappeared in her life since her birth mother had moved away, following his divorce, when she was only three years. El presunto complot familiar fue uno de los motivos del distanciamiento entre tía y sobrina, hasta la muerte de Benazir , víctima de un sangriento atentado preelectoral en diciembre de 2007. The family alleged plot was one of the reasons for the estrangement between aunt and niece, until the death of Benazir, victim of a bloody pre-election attack in December 2007.

With this family background as saddlebags, Fatima began six years ago a journey that has resulted in the book Songs of Blood and Sword (Lyrics blood and sword), a title taken from Khosrow Golsurkhi Iranian poet, executed in 1972 under the regime of Shah .

The text denounces the repression of the governments of his grandfather and aunt. "Ser crítica con mi abuelo no implica ser desleal. Él hizo cosas extraordinarias, pero también cometió errores, como el trato que tuvo con las minorías", explica Fatima, quien recorre la historia de su familia de forma paralela a la de Pakistán, desde la división de India (1947), el conflicto de Cachemira, la Guerra Fría, la invasión soviética de Afganistán (ella nació en Kabul) y el Pakistán posterior al 11-S. "To be critical of my grandfather did not mean to be unfair. He did wonderful things, but also made mistakes, such as the treatment he had with minorities," said Fatima, who runs his family's history parallel to that of Pakistan, from the partition of India (1947), the Kashmir conflict, the Cold War, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (she was born in Kabul) and Pakistan after 11-S.

"Today, Pakistan has 180 million people, lack of infrastructure, schools, drinking water and electricity. On the other hand, is a nuclear power and we know from the cricket," he says of pulling in Asia House in London. En su documentado libro acusa a Benazir ya Zardari de estar implicados en la muerte de su padre, e insinúa, con el abogado francés JacquesVergés , que Benazir también tuvo algo que ver con el envenenamiento de su hermano menor, Shahnawaz. In his excellent books Benazir and Zardari accused of involvement in the death of his father, and implies, with the French lawyer JacquesVergés that Benazir also had something to do with the poisoning of his younger brother Shahnawaz.

At the end of the story, reading what you are doing the current president's legacy of Bhutto and the PPP (Pakistan People's Party), the reader comes to believe that Zardari was behind the murder of his wife. Pero eso Fatima no lo afirma. But why not Fatima says. "La vida de mi padre estaba marcada por la muerte de su padre y de su hermano. Las palabras dictador, asesino, ley marcial, cárcel eran parte de nuestro vocabulario cotidiano. Mi padre era muy crítico con el Gobierno de su hermana ", cuenta, preocupada por su propia seguridad y por la de su hermano Zulfikar, de 20 años, el único varón Bhutto aún con vida, a pesar de que Zardari haya cambiado a Bhutto el apellido de su hijo y sus dos hijas. "My father's life was marked by the death of his father and brother. The words dictator, murderer, martial law, jail were part of our everyday vocabulary. My father was very critical of the government of his sister," says Concerned for his own safety and that of his brother Zulfikar, 20, the only man still alive Bhutto, despite Bhutto Zardari has changed the name of his son and two daughters.

Fatima also fears for the safety of the persons identified in the book and opposing the current government. "Recibo muchos mensajes de Pakistán diciéndome que no regrese, de momento". "I get many messages telling me not to return Pakistan at the moment." El autoexilio, como la cárcel, es también habitual en la familia Bhutto. The self-exile, as the prison is also common in the Bhutto family.

Sceptical about diplomacy
Su padre y su tío aspiraban a heredar el liderazgo del PPP y formaron el Comité por la Libertad de Zulfikar Bhutto en 1976 cuando fue encarcelado. His father and uncle aspired to inherit the leadership of the PPP and formed the Committee for Freedom of Zulfikar Bhutto in 1976 when he was jailed. El comité se entrevistó con el senador TedKennedy, con Yasir Arafat, con Giscard d'Estaing y con Margaret Thatcher. The committee met with Senator TedKennedy, with Yasir Arafat, with Giscard d'Estaing and Margaret Thatcher.

Pero la diplomacia no salvó al presidente Bhutto, y los hermanos optaron por la lucha armada desde Afganistán. But diplomacy did not save President Bhutto, and the brothers opted for armed struggle from Afghanistan. "No estoy de acuerdo con aquella decisión, aunque entiendo que estaban desesperados por vengar la muerte de su padre", explica Fatima, escéptica con la eficacia de la diplomacia. "Mi padre quería ser Che Guevara" , añade. "I disagree with that decision, although I understand that they were desperate to avenge the death of his father," explains Fatima, skeptical to the effectiveness of diplomacy. "My father wanted to be Che Guevara," he adds. Ella no quiere meterse en política, asegura. She does not want to meddle in politics, he said. Prefiere "ser una voz desde fuera del sistema". He prefers to "be a voice from outside the system."


This is a Translation from Spanish to English

Source: http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.publico.es%2Finternacional%2F326677%2Fheredera%2Fbhutto%2Fdenuncia%2Ffamiliares%2Ffatima%2Fpakistan&sl=auto&tl=en

Zardari a criminal, claims Benazir Bhutto's niece Fatima

Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari is corrupt and plotted his brother-in-law's death, claimed Fatima Bhutto, the niece of Zardari's late wife, Benazir Bhutto, in an interview on a visit to Paris Saturday.

Fatima Bhutto doesn’t mince words when it comes to Asif Ali Zardari, widower of her aunt Benazir Bhutto and the current president of Pakistan.

“It’s not the first time that criminals have come to lead nations but it is distressing to watch the White House, 10 Downing Street [the UK], the European Union support a man who before he became the president was fighting corruption cases in Switzerland and Spain and England and four charges of murder in Pakistan,” she says.

Well, at least she’s not satirising the president, an offence which, she has just told the audience at Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Co’s literary festival, now carries a sentence of six to 13 years in jail.


Bhutto holds Zardari responsible for the 1996 murder of her father, Murtaza, the subject of her book Songs of Blood and Sword, from which she has just read to the festival audience.


The future president served time from 1997 to 2004 on corruption and murder charges relating to that case and others. He was freed by a judge who declared the charges false and Zardari and his supporters claim that the charges were politically motivated.


The current Pakistani president has served two other terms in jail, having won the nickname “Mr Ten Per Cent” for his alleged propensity for corruption when serving as a minister in his wife’s first government from 1987-1990. As Fatima Bhutto points out, both Benazir and Zardari have faced corruption cases outside Pakistan. The Swiss case was dropped in 2008, on the request of the Pakistani government, but corruption officials have now asked for it to be reopened.


Fatima Bhutto tends to believe all the accusations against her uncle by marriage, who became president after the fall of General-President Pervez Musharraf and the assassination of Benazir on her return from exile in 2007.


She doesn’t seem to believe that he has changed his ways once in office, either, even if she can cite no evidence at the moment.


“Unfortunately, the information comes after they tend to leave power but, you know, certainly the corruption seems to be carrying on unhindered,” she says.


“It’s a country that’s facing 20-hour electricity cuts in the winter and 23-hour cuts in the summer. There’s intense censorship in the country … So I think, unfortunately, we don’t have any evidence to the contrary.”


Zardari inherited his political legitimacy – and thus the presidency – from his wife. She was prime minister twice and led of the People’s Party (PPP), a position she in turn inherited from her father and Fatima’s grandfather, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. His premiership in the 1970s was brought to an end by a military coup and his own execution, allegedly on the orders of military dictator Muhammad Zia ul-Haq.


Two of Fatima’s uncles have also been killed, so it is a dangerous business being a Bhutto. But it also means that you are part of one of the five families which have a stranglehold on Pakistan’s politics.


The PPP clearly intends the dynasty to continue. Before her death, Benazir made it clear that her son, Bilawal, should succeed her. Despite the fact that he is currently studying at Britain’s Oxford University and has limited political experience, the party dutifully appointed him joint chairman along with his father after his mother’s death.


Fatima Bhutto did not go into politics. She chose writing, inspired, she says, by books like Malcolm X’s autobiography, British journalist Robert Fisk’s book on Lebanon Pity the Nation and the novels The Great Gatsby and To Kill a Mockingbird.


And, although her mother heads a breakaway faction of the PPP, she lambasts the control of the country’s economy by 27 families and its politics by five.


“I think absolutely it’s time for all the dynasties to butt out and it’s time for the field to be opened up beyond five families or six families.”


So who would take over?


“Well, the people, you know. In a county of 180 million people there have to be more choices than just the usual suspects."


She points to gang-rape victim Mukhtar Mai, who has become a women’s rights campaigner, and the missing persons campaign, started by relatives of people kidnapped by the police and intelligence agencies, as evidence of potential leaders from outside the English-speaking elite.


“Pakistani women, they’ve got guts,” she told the book fanciers’ gathering.


A recent report by former Oxfam official Matt Waldman and released by the London School of Economics accused Pakistan’s spies, the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI), of deep involvement with the Taliban.


It even claimed that Zardari visited Taliban leaders in jail and promised them support in operations, once they were released. That charge has been hotly denied by the government and greeted with scepticism by many commentators.


But no-one seriously doubts that the ISI were involved with the Taliban and other Islamist armed groups from the beginning, in the aftermath of their US-backed involvement with the mujahedin who fought the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.


“To assume that that’s ended miraculously I think is a bit naïve,” comments Fatima Bhutto, who appeals to world powers to pull out of her country.


“The world has to divest from Pakistan,” she says. “To keep giving the Pakistani state, a state that is totally unaccountable and totally untransparent 12 billion dollars in the Bush era and just about 10 billion dollars in the Obama era is not going to make anything easier – it’s going to make it harder.”


But, with Islamabad “the third front” in what she calls “this odious war on terror”, her wish may not be granted any day soon.


Source:: http://www.english.rfi.fr/asia-pacific/20100621-zardari-criminal-claims-benazir-bhuttos-niece-fatima

Fatima Bhutto on 5 x 15

I despise the corrupt: Fatima Bhutto

Writer Fatima Bhutto wishes she was immune to high fever, loathes dictators and identifies with Micheal Corleone (in Part I, not Part II).

What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Justice.

What is your greatest fear?
That power and violence conspire so that injustice prevails.

What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
Silence.

On what occasion do you lie?
There’s never a good reason, though I know (did I say know? I meant, am related to) a few congenital liars who would disagree with me…

What do you most dislike about your appearance?
As a teenager I felt I had been robbed of great height. I’m fine now though.

Which living person do you most despise?

I despise the corrupt, who believe that power is an excuse for violence and injustice, those who follow the dictates of fear over principles, David Miliband, proponents of censorship, Ariel Sharon and bigots of all persuasions.

What is the quality you most like in a man?

Warm heart, clean hands, cool mind. Obviously that includes a sense of humour and some serious IQ points.

What is the quality you most like in a woman?
Bravery, independence and ethics. The ability to be a trailblazer. Same as above really.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
Depends on who I’m talking to. Basically, mind your own beeswax.

Which talent would you most like to have?
High hay fever immunity, I’ve decided that’s a talent worth having.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
My embarrassing turn in regards to Twitter. I love it, but I sincerely hope it’s just a phase.

Where would you most like to live?

Karachi, always. It’s my city by the sea.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Corruption, moral, political and financial. It is the absence of dignity and justice.

If you didn’t do your current job, what would you choose to do?
I would do what I do, writing, thank you very much.

What is your most marked characteristic?
You’d have to ask those closest to me, but I think I have moxie.

Who is your hero of fiction?
Atticus Finch.

Which historical figure do you most identify with?
At a talk on Songs of Blood and Sword in London recently, the moderator was Michael Radford, a great director. He told me he had worked with Al Pacino and that I reminded him of Michael Corleone (the early days, Part I not Part II – that’s an important distinction that mafia movie fans will appreciate). I’m not sure he meant it as a compliment, but I took it as one.

Who are your heroes in real life?
Dennis Dalton, my mother Ghinwa, my brothers Zulfi and Mir Ali, Malcolm X, Seymour Hersh, Fred Hampton, the Pakistanis who brought the world’s attention to the citizens disappeared by the state as part of the war on terror, all those who fight against the violence of their states, Henry Porter, Dr Mubashir Hasan.

What’s your favourite quote?
“The struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting” Milan Kundera.

How many hours of loadshedding did you experience yesterday?
As I’m on my book tour I’ve managed to escape KESC’s criminal loadshedding, which is no longer a summer feature but a year round delight. That said, while in Bangalore I had about a minute’s worth of loadshedding (it was impressively short), and last week while in a London cinema the bijli went and the film reel burned. I felt blissfully at home.


Source: http://tribune.com.pk/story/22018/%e2%80%9ci-despise-the-corrupt-who-believe-that-power-is-an-excuse-for-violence-and-injustice%e2%80%9d-fatima-bhutto/?sms_ss=twitter

SOAS-Alumni Conversations: Fatima Bhutto

Writer, Journalist and the granddaughter of former Pakistan Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the niece of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and daughter of Murtaza Bhutto, Fatima was born in a political family in Pakistan. She currently writes columns for The Daily Beast, the New Statesman and other publications. In this interview, Fatima speaks to Marcus Duran about her early years, the time she spent as a student at SOAS in London, and her new book, Songs of Blood and Sword.


http://www.openair.fm/soasalumni/471-alumni-conversations-fatima-bhutto

Campaign For Justice for Mir Murtaza Bhutto- June

They say neither evolution nor revolution take place in one day, both of them require long stretches of time. With this law the concept of patience comes for free. Those aiming for a revolution should make patience part for their nature. This is not just needed for attaining the goal of revolution but for the attaining it in the right manner.

A hasty revolutionary path leads to the wrong results, the wrong kind of compromises & once this cycle starts there is no turning back. Without patience the struggle goes down the drain, the sacrifices wasted, the blood traded. And most of all to bear all the pain which comes to those who have chosen this path, they need to hold on to patience.

However, patience does not mean silence in the face of injustice, corruption & everything that the people have been fighting for. When the limits are crossed it is a call for action. People blamed them for all the wrong that happened & that will happen but they did what was needed to be done.

Looking back they have nothing to be ashamed of.

~Fatima Arif

In Solidarity
Fatima Bhutto Fan club

Disclaimer: None of the views expressed here are of Fatima Bhutto or any of her family members. These are views of the team...

Copyright: Fatima Bhutto Fan club.
Please do not reproduce this anywhere without permission.

STARDUST- Fatima Bhutto

FATIMA BHUTTO

-- k k rai

She’s beautiful, articulate and intelligent. In her book Songs of Blood and Sword,
Fatima Bhutto does not hold back the punches


When the Sania Mirza-Shoaib Malik ‘yes-I’m-married-no-I’m-not’ controversy was raging, someone posted this on Twitter, ‘Now that Sania Mirza is going to Pakistan, can we have Fatima Bhutto in exchange?’

Humour aside, it’s easy to see why Fatima Bhutto is everyone’s darling—she comes from a powerful bloodline of a neighbouring country with whom our relationship has always been complicated, barring a fleeting envy for their cricketers and their culinary traditions. But our reaction to Fatima Bhutto has been different. She has a personal story that’s tormented by tragedy… the exile and subsequent bloody deaths of her family members, most of them untimely and gruesome and now, there is a brief flash of vindication, when she tries to resurrect her slain father, Mir Murtaza Bhutto’s image in her tell-all book Songs of Blood and Sword (SOBAS, Penguin).

In it she accuses her aunt the late Benazir Bhutto, former Prime Minister of Pakistan and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari of murdering her father. That the alleged murderer of her father is now Pakistan’s President, makes Fatima’s unequivocal stand on her father’s killers a bold admission, one that fills her readers with both a grudging pride for this young 28-year-old and a little frisson of fear for her outspoken stance. Says Fatima, “At the launch of the book in Karachi, we had 700 people attending. We fought hard despite a lot of resistance to have it at the Clifton (the area where the Bhutto house is located and Murtaza was killed). That should say something for the citizens who came out in solidarity since the book accuses their President of murder.”

Fatima is not sure how her book is being received in Pakistan or if copies have mysteriously disappeared off the shelf. “I haven’t had time to check on that. I came to India as soon as the book was launched in Pakistan on March 30. It may not attract censorship yet since the book is in English and not so many people would read it in English. I’m trying to get it translated into Urdu, Baluchi and other local languages,” says she like a woman on a mission.

It’s a tough life for a young woman like Fatima in a country like Pakistan. She seems to be the lone spokesperson from the Bhutto clan to speak out fearlessly. “Who else is there? There’s just Sassi (Shahnawaz’s daughter), Zulfikar (Fatima’s younger brother) and me.” She hasn’t met Benazir’s children for many years now. “That door closed a long time ago,” she says. But then her life has been anything but ordinary. Her earliest memories are of living with her father Murtaza, who was in exile in Damascus. She was three then. “By the time I was three years old, I was aware of words like martial law, dictatorship and gallows. I thought they were part of every child’s vocabulary,” she says.

Like the heirs of many political families in South East Asia, Fatima has had to live with the ghosts of her family members, slain in Pakistan’s violent political history. A heavy price to pay for being powerbrokers in the then newly created state of Pakistan! She’s lost a family member every decade for the last four decades. The last two deaths of her father and her aunt will always haunt her. Her aunt’s death she can’t shake off, try as she might. She will always be Benazir Bhutto’s niece.

She speaks at length of her aunt, her father’s alleged nemesis, as if she’s studied her every action, recorded it for posterity and done a near-forensic examination. Fatima says in her book that Benazir reminded her of herself. It’s a resemblance that others have noticed too. Fatima was seven when she returned to Pakistan and the first thing that fascinated her was the “nuclear green fizzy drink” that she found there.

But even as a self-confessed precocious child, Fatima says she was scared of the crowds. “When I went back, I saw Benazir surrounded by crowds. In a way, they made her inaccessible to me and yet I was scared for her. She was my wadi, who read out stories to me when I was a child. But she made a lot of compromises with regard to our foreign policy and succumbing to IMF dictates. It was a very different trajectory that she took from that of my grandfather Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, my father and uncle Shahnawaz Bhutto. They were anti-American interference and Benazir undid a lot of my grandfather’s legacy.’’

Fatima dresses unlike her wadi. During the day, as she is giving interviews, she’s in a pair of blue jeans, a black t-shirt and a long sheer printed Afghani coat. For her book launch, she comes dressed in a dull-gold sari and a halter-neck blouse, scarlet lipstick and nail paint. “My grandmother, Nusrat Bhutto, always wore saris and short sleeved blouses for official events. We were brought up in a very liberal way at home. Politics is the practice of expediency. When Benazir was free from power, she was a brave woman, who travelled to remote places and made them forget she was a woman. When she came to power she wore a scarf over her head, the first woman in the family to do so, only to keep certain people happy. For the women in Pakistan, it was a big step back.”

SOBAS is crafted like a journalist’s report. Noting an instance when Benazir returned from exile and stepped out of the plane with a dove whose wings had been clipped, Fatima says, “There’s a lot of strange use of imagery in South East Asian politics. What Benazir did to that bird was what she did to democracy.” Fatima admits that she’s always wanted to be a journalist and her heroes have always been journalists. Fatima, who studied at the Columbia University and the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, writes columns for the New Statesman and The Daily Beast among other publications.

If only she’s given a penny for every time she has been asked, ‘why not politics?’ “Legacy is a dirty word. The idea that only one line can possess history is so wrong. When Benazir was killed, we (Pakistan) started acting like 14th century France, believing that unless there was someone close to the family in power, the country would perish. They were not asking for platforms, issues, healthcare, food, water or load-shedding. They just wanted to co-opt someone from the family.” At that time, it was her 17-year-old brother Zulfikar.

Fatima avers that she is politically active and campaigns for her father’s party, Pakistan People’s Party—Shaheed Bhutto, that is now headed by Ghinwa Bhutto, Mir Murtaza’s second wife, whom Fatima calls ‘Mummy’. Fatima’s relationship with her estranged biological mother, Fowzia had been tenuous since the beginning and she now lives with Ghinwa and her half brother Zulfikar. Fatima who campaigned door to door to get women to come out and vote says, “I’ve always felt that there must be something wrong with people who campaign. It’s a tough job. But I do it since I like to travel and meet people.”

Fatima’s fight to bring her father’s killers to book through her writings has been dismissed by some of her critics as a naïve effort. When asked about this, she says, “Not at all. We see corruption everywhere. And where we see injustice, we have the freedom to fight it. It is our civic duty to raise our voice. I don’t think it is naïve at all. One should always hope for justice. Giving up hope for justice, is allowing justice to be denied to us. The road to justice is long. Mummy (Ghinwa) and I are very clear that we’re not going to use violence or revenge. We seek justice and truth. Mummy is Lebanese and she understands violence more than I do. We don’t believe in death penalty. We’re protesting the extra judicial killings of not just my father but many other people and hope that justice will be done.’’

Mir Murtaza was vehemently against American interference in Pakistan’s politics but present day Pakistan is a far cry from what he wanted. Says Fatima, “It is the new colonial power. But we have history on our side. SE Asia has a history of overthrowing colonial powers. And now with the Internet, You tube and other sources of information, more people are aware of political assassinations as game changers.”

Her tweets indicate that her reception in India has been overwhelming. “Governments have failed. People never do. We need more people to people contact. When authors come and build bridges, you realise that Pakistanis don’t have horns. I can’t remember my family portraying India or Indians as very different from us. All I remember was that there was lots of Bollywood at home, lots of Amitabh and Rekha movies, and achaar with every meal. We must see that what has happened will not happen again,” she ends hopefully.<<>

Courtesy: Society

Source:

http://www.magnamags.com/index.php/201005106179/society/society-says-so/fatima-bhutto.html