Fatima Bhutto and her dislike of "dodgy questions"

Andrew Buncombe
Fatima Bhutto, the smart, stylish and charming niece of the late Benazir Bhutto has been getting some pretty good press of late for her new memoir Songs of Blood and Sword. Much of the book is taken up with the by now well-known saga of the feud within the Bhutto clan and of the chilling murder of her father, Murtaza, the blame for which she directs at Pakistan's current president, Asif Ali Zardari, and his wife - Fatima's aunt -Benazir.

From all accounts it is a roaring, fast-paced tale told with energy and emotion and it has certainly been getting the young writer plenty of attention. In India, dressed in a green Sari with a red tikka painted on her forehead, she wowed the literatti of Delhi and Mumbai, as she sipped white wine and answered questions about her family and the evil uncle who now runs the country.

It has been pretty much the same in the UK, with lots of the British media also being won over by the writer and her tale. Janine Di Giovani travelled to Karachi and spent several days chatting and doing yoga with Ms Bhutto and wrote a very flattering profile of the young woman for the Daily Telegraph. For those seeking more balanced and less hagiographic accounts, I'd recommend a review in The Independent's book pages or else this detailed account by my colleague Omar Waraich. Both suggest that Ms Bhutto's presentation of events is rather one-sided and skips certain inconvenient facts. I wondered about this when it emerged that while Ms Bhutto was heavily promoting her book in India and elsewhere overseas, she had declined requests to speak to journalists in Pakistan.

Now, I hear word that someone in Ms Bhutto's team has been trying to blacklist a certain Pakistan expert from interacting with the young writer while in London. Farzana Shaikh, an associate fellow at Chatham House, had been due to interview Ms Bhutto for an "In Conversation" event organised by the alumni association of the School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS). Although the event had long been fixed, the association contacted Ms Shaikh to inform her that Ms Bhutto's team was instead to be interviewed by a current staff members of SOAS.[Declaration of interest: Ms Shaikh has written some analysis pieces for The Independent on Sunday and last year I gave her latest book a pretty positive review in the pages of that same paper.]

You can see an original listing of the event that mentions Ms Shaikh here, while an updated advertisement for the "In Conversation", to be held on May 20, notes that screenwriter Michael Redford will now be in the chair.Anyway, it has emerged that Ms Bhutto's team also objected to Ms Shaikh interviewing the writer for a similar "In Conversation" that had been organised by Chatham House itself. The decision to try and replace Ms Shaikh followed an earlier interview she had done with Ms Bhutto for an article published in Chatham House's magazine, The World Today. Readers can have a lot at the piece and decide for themselves whether they think it is fair.

Unlike the organisers of the SOAS event, however, who agreed to the demand of Ms Bhutto's team, the folk at Chatham House thought that they would decide who would do the interview and not Ms Bhutto. As a result, the event was cancelled. Ms Shaikh has declined to comment on these events and emails to Ms Bhutto's publicity team at Random House, her UK publishers, as well as to the SOAS alumni organisation have not been answered. However, Keith Burnet, a spokesman for Chatham House told me by email: "We were working on two things with Fatima Bhutto. The first is an interview with our monthly magazine, The World Today, and the second an event for our members. The interview will be published in the May issue of the magazine but the event has been cancelled." As to the reasons for the cancellation, he added: "There was a disagreement over the choice of person chairing the meeting."

I've never met or spoken with Ms Bhutto, but I do follow her on Twitter, where she has 4,700 followers, and I've been reading with interest the updates of her promotional tour for Songs of Blood and Sword, or SOBAS in Twitter-speak. She appears genuinely moved by the largely positive response she has received. However, not everything has pleased the young writer and activist. In one post she comments: "Am constantly amused by the colourful lot of folks attacking SOBAS in Pakistan. What do they have in common, I wonder..."

More recently she has commented about a talk she gave at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. In particular she drew attention to a question asked by the veteran South Asia watcher, Victoria Schofield, a long-time acquaintance of Benazir Bhutto and who was on the late prime minister's convoy when it was attacked in Karachi in October 2007. Ms Bhutto clearly did not appreciate the interaction with her late aunt's friend, saying of the Q&A session she gave: "Dodgiest question came from Victoria Schofield, who announced that we met at my father's funeral and then badgered...me about my cousins. Clearly the most important issue facing nuclear Pakistan today."

I subsequently contacted Ms Schofield, who told me:"The fact that Fatima might think my question was 'dodgy' shows that there is a whole agenda she does not want to confront which is essentially 'how to heal the wounds of the past'."

I wonder what is eating Ms Bhutto and why. Any thoughts?

Source:
http://andrewbuncombe.independentminds.livejournal.com/18595.html