Enough with the ‘guns, beards and poverty’: Fatima Bhutto

Fatima Bhutto, in India for the release of her memoir “Songs of Blood and Sword” about Pakistan’s foremost political family, took a side swipe at journalists as she spoke about Pakistan, her assassinated aunt Benazir Bhutto, and her search to uncover the murky facts surrounding the killing of her adored father. Mir Murtaza Bhutto was slain by police outside her Karachi home in 1996, when she was just 14.

Pakistani author Fatima Bhutto with writer William Dalrymple during the launch of her book “Songs of Blood and Sword” in New Delhi on Saturday. (AFP/Getty Images)

Benazir was empowered greatly by the Western press because she was “‘One of us,’ as it were,” said Bhutto, 27 years old, in conversation with the bard of Mughal India, William Dalrymple in Delhi on Saturday. “Oxford, Harvard, beautiful, speaks English, and follows orders. When the IMF says, ‘Sign this,’ she signs. When America said, ‘Do that,’ she did.”

It is no secret that there is little love lost between the young Bhutto and her aunt and uncle, Asif Ali Zardari, now the president of Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto was prime minister at the time her father was killed and the young author holds both Benazir and Zardari ultimately responsible for the death.

“The day Zardari was acquitted of my father’s murder, I was halfway around the world,” writes Bhutto in her book. “Zardari had bypassed the courts’ standard procedures to have himself absolved of my father’s murder. There was no point in appealing, he was going to be President legally or illegally.”

Farhatullah Babar, a spokesman for Mr. Zardari, said the president had been exonerated of the murder by a judicial inquiry.

“The credibility of the book really is suspect in my view,” Mr. Babar said.

The spokesman noted that in one passage Ms. Bhutto writes that Mr. Zardari took his oath as president on Sept. 20 – the anniversary of her father’s death. Mr. Babar said Mr. Zardari in fact became president on Sept. 9, as reported by newspapers at the time. (However Mr. Zardari did make his first address to parliament on the day of her father’s death anniversary, and mentioned him by name in that speech, as Ms. Bhutto recounts in the book. The occasion was also marked by the bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad.)

Ms. Bhutto said she was astonished to see Western papers talk about the possible return of democracy to Pakistan when Benazir came back from exile in 2007 to contest elections after discussions with General Pervez Musharraf, who was in power at the time.

“The Western press, again, has a lot of problems and one of the great problems is how they write about countries like ours,” said Bhutto, to murmurs of appreciation from the audience. “They know it better than us – yeah, right. They lived here for 200 years 700 years ago so therefore they understand everything we do before we do it and it’s all beards, guns and poverty.”

Of course, Fatima is no stranger to the West herself and has a resume not dissimilar to, well, her aunt’s. If Benazir was Harvard, Fatima is Columbia. Benazir: Oxford. Fatima: The School of Oriental and African Studies, or SOAS. Nor does Fatima lack for positive press coverage although, so far, the book reviews have been mixed.

One reviewer described the book “as a monument to the father she idolized,” while another said it was decidedly partisan. That shouldn’t stop it from making waves overseas though, and if that happens Ms. Bhutto says that she might be at greater risk in Pakistan than she feels she is already.

”You can probably say anything you like in Pakistan and no one powerful is going to worry because they know you can’t do anything about it,” said Ms. Bhutto in an interview ahead of the book’s release in Delhi. “But if you embarrass them in front of their benefactors in the U.K. and the U.S. that certainly creates a different situation.”

Source :

http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2010/04/05/enough-with-the-guns-beards-and-poverty-fatima-bhutto/?mod=wsj_india_main