B & N Review's Songs of Blood & Sword

In September 1996, a 14-year-old Fatima Bhutto hid in a windowless dressing room, shielding her baby brother while shots rang out in the streets outside the family home in Karachi. This was the evening that her father Murtaza was murdered, along with six of his associates. In December 2007, Benazir Bhutto, Fatima's aunt, and the woman she had publicly accused of ordering her father's murder, was assassinated in Rawalpindi. It was the latest in a long line of tragedies for one of the world's best-known political dynasties.

Songs of Blood and Sword tells the story of a family of rich feudal landlords—the proud descendants of a warrior caste—who became power brokers in the newly created state of Pakistan. It is an epic tale full of the romance and legend of feudal life, the glamour and license of the international political elite and ultimately, the tragedy of four generations of a family defined by a political idealism that would destroy them.

The history of this extraordinary family mirrors the tumultuous events of Pakistan itself, and the quest to find the truth behind her father's murder has led Fatima to the heart of her country's volatile political establishment. It is the history of a nation from Partition through the struggle with India over Kashmir, the Cold War, through the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan up to the post 9/11 'War on Terror.' It is also a book about a daughter's love for her father and her search to uncover, and to understand, the truth of his life and death. A work of international significance,Songs of Blood and Sword establishes journalist and poet Fatima Bhutto as a brave and passionate campaigner.

WHAT READERS ARE SAYING:

"Brilliant, beautiful, and outspoken, Fatima Bhutto adds fuel to the feud within Pakistan’s warring dynasty...The book [Songs of Blood and Sword] is at once a heartbreaking love story between father and daughter; a pilgrimage across the globe to fill in the missing pieces about her father and the Bhutto family’s history; an autopsy of Pakistan’s corrupt ruling elite; and Fatima’s take on the ills at the heart of Pakistan’s relationship to the West. It’s also a riveting political tale filled with cliff-hangers and pathos."
—Vogue


"Fatima Bhutto has dug deep, bravely confronted those in power and searched far and wide for answers and understanding."

—New York Journal of Books

"…a lucid and engaging account of a nation and a family."

—Publisher's Weekly

"A bleak, disturbing picture of a country of strategic importance to American foreign policy."

—Kirkus

"Moving, witty...a uniquely fascinating, wonderfully well-constructed memoir from the heart of the most violent and Borgia-like of the South Asian dynasties."

—William Dalrymple, The Financial Times

"A story with dazzling twists and turns told by a true-blue member of the Bhutto fold."
—The Independent

"In clear and unpretentious prose [Songs of Blood and Sword] gives a vivid impression of the brutal and corrupt world of Pakistani power politics, which has resulted in the violent deaths of four members of the Bhutto dynasty in the past 31 years."
—Roderick Matthews, Guardian

"Fatima Bhutto writes a compelling account that is both political and personal. Her life is proof that in Pakistan, torn apart by American diktat and local avarice, the political is the personal. Her passion and integrity ring out on every page. If you don't understand what is happening to Pakistan and Afghanistan, you soon will."
—Charles Glass, former ABC News Chief Middle East Correspondent, author of Tribes with Flags and Americans in Paris: Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation

Source: http://www.nationbooks.org/book/210/Songs%20of%20Blood%20and%20Sword

A daughter’s song

Reviewed By Huma Yusuf
Sunday, 16 May, 2010



Halfway through her recently released memoir, Songs of Blood and Sword, Fatima Bhutto asks, ‘Why was everything in this family so complicated? Why was it so ugly, so violent?’ The same questions can be asked of the reaction to her book, which in Pakistan has comprised condemnations and refutations of the facts she presents.

Indeed, rarely has a book received more attention in the news and op-ed sections of papers than on the literary pages.

Songs is a first-person narrative that aims to memorialise Murtaza Bhutto’s life. To that end, it traces three generations of the Bhutto family and in broad brushstrokes recounts the political history of Pakistan from the late 1960s to the present.

Primarily a daughter’s attempt to piece together her late father’s tumultuous life, the book has earned criticism for stirring controversy on several counts: the claim that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto asked his sons to avenge his death; the assertion that Murtaza played the role of mediator, not instigator, during the 1981 hijacking of a PIA plane by the Al-Zulfikar Organisation (AZO); and the implication that Benazir Bhutto may have been complicit in her younger brother Shahnawaz’s death.

Speaking at the Asia House Festival of Asian Literature in London, Bhutto stood by her claims, insisting that all the details and anecdotes in the book have been cross-checked and double-checked over the six years it took her to complete the effort.

Rather than engage her critics, she pointed them to the 15 pages of sources listed at the end of Songs and told her audience that those speaking out against the work were ‘cronies’ who had benefited immensely from the governments of Benazir Bhutto and Asif Zardari. ‘The reaction to the book has been violent and angry,’ said Bhutto, ‘and it has changed my life in terms of my security and access to my country.’

What is not being said, however, is that Songs is a historical account of the Bhuttos, and that history is a necessarily interpretive act. Historical tomes posing as objective retellings of ‘the Truth’ have always been saddled with biases, presumptions, and preconceived notions.

In the case of Songs, those biases are laid bare. The book is subtitiled ‘A Daughter’s Memoir,’ and through most of the narrative Murtaza is referred to as ‘Papa.’ It should come as no surprise, then, that Bhutto’s narrative is sympathetic to her father’s experience and critical of her aunt Benazir and Zardari, who she has long held responsible for her father’s death.

Armed with this knowledge, any astute reader can enjoy Songs for the unique peek into the lives, loves, letters, notebooks, and photographs of the Bhuttos that it offers. Speaking at the Asia House, Bhutto said that she finds it difficult to refer to 70 Clifton as ‘home’, ‘because it is bigger than a home. It’s a monument in which generations [of Bhuttos] have lived, worked, and suffered. There are remnants of the confusing and difficult history of the family all around.’

In essence, Songs throws open the Bhutto family archives stored at 70 Clifton, and emerges eminently readable because it treats the Bhuttos as people rather than political figures. Readers get a sense of Zulfikar the patriarch, hell-bent on educating and grooming his children; of Benazir’s girlishness as a teenager who read Mills and Boon and coveted Versailles; of Benazir and Murtaza’s time at Harvard; of Murtaza’s unflagging sense of humour, whether organising resistance in Kabul or imprisoned in Karachi; of the Bhutto brothers’ romantic nature as they courted different women (the love story between Murtaza and his Greek girlfriend Della is, in turns, charming and tormented); of the tedium of exile for AZO members, forced indoors after curfew was imposed in Kabul with no one to talk to except the telephone operators; and, of course, of Murtaza’s unflagging paternalism.

Bhutto also captures the dark side and emotional toll of being a Bhutto: There are descriptions of how the family communicated through smuggled notes and whispered messages in the late 1970s, and how political machinations came to replace familial bonding by the 1990s. We learn that Murtaza slept on the floor for weeks after his father was hanged, and hear morbid accounts of how the brothers kept vials of poison with them, which they were to take if apprehended by Ziaul Haq’s agents.

The retellings of the deaths of Zulfikar, Shahnawaz, Murtaza, and Benazir are all shocking and moving, with a focus on the human aspect which has long been buried beneath the fear, cynicism, suspicion and politicking that defined the events. Bhutto recreates Nusrat Bhutto’s distraught reaction to news of her youngest son’s death, and recalls how her mother, Ghinwa, wept at her husband’s blood-soaked deathbed.

That said, some sections of the book are too self-indulgent, painstakingly providing descriptions of things that only a grieving daughter would find interesting. For example, Bhutto not only recounts Murtaza’s habit of collecting newspaper clippings about his father, but also describes the Hamdam Book Binding Works notebook in which he pasted them. She also wastes pages recounting interviews that add nothing to her narrative about her father’s life — Samuel Huntington, for instance, is quoted saying he remembers little of Murtaza at college.

On the controversial point of the PIA plane hijacking, too, Bhutto falls short. Her account relies solely on interviews with two people: Suhail Sethi, Murtaza’s closest friend, and Dr Ghulam Husain, a former secretary-general of the PPP who was one of the political prisoners released as a result of the hijacking. The fastidious footnotes and citations from newspaper articles and other histories are missing in this case.

Explaining why she wrote the book, Bhutto told the Asia House gathering that she doesn’t believe in the ‘Bhutto curse.’ ‘I don’t believe that we’re fated for violent deaths, we need to examine why [each of the Bhuttos] died, and learn from it… The nature of politics is transformative, and it doesn’t leave anyone immune.’ Her point was that the actions and choices of all the Bhuttos — including Zulfikar and her father — should be analysed and debated to better understand Pakistan’s political history.

For all its flaws and controversies, Songs — despite the tenor of its title — could help debate triumph over death, and demonstrate that the pen could emerge as a mightier force than the sword in Pakistan’s brutal and bloody political history.



Source: http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/culture/03-a-daughters-song-ss-11

Sanam Bhutto should clarify her position

I HAVE read Fatima Bhutto’s book Songs of Blood and Swords. It was very well-written and gives an insight into the Bhuttos, especially the intellectual ones like Fatima herself.

Sanam Bhutto wrote in Dawn on April 30, stating that her brothers were wrong the whole time and the way they acted after their father’s hanging were not in accordance with his wishes.

She wrote that Benazir stood up and avenged her father’s hanging by taking the PPP to the polls. That’s the only criticism she has against Fatima’s book.

But Sanam failed to address Murtaza Bhutto’s death during her sister’s government and till now the killers have not been brought to justice.

Fatima’s book clearly shows how the killing took place and how her aunt Benazir failed to find the killers or was unwilling to do so.

Murtaza and Shahnawaz both had no choice but to flee abroad after their father’s arrest and tried to get support from foreign states, especially Muslim countries which had good ties with Pakistan thanks to Z.A. Bhutto. But all this failed as he was hanged and as a result two ‘terrorists’ were created.

Were they really ‘terrorists’, Ms Sanam Bhutto? They were avenging your father’s hanging against Zia’s regime. To some they were freedom-fighters, and to some terrorists.

Fatima Bhutto has claimed in her book that while in exile Murtaza Bhutto would plan attacks on Zia’s regime only and not on civilians as claimed by Zia and Sanam.

Murtaza was willing to face court to fight all the cases levelled/led by Zia and his sister’s government.

So I hope Sanam would come out in the open and is willing to listen to the facts that her own niece has compiled. She should clarify her position rather than coming out and claiming that her brothers were terrorists and didn’t represent the ideology of the PPP. I would ask her to read the book again with an open mind.

ZAEEM SIDDIQUI
Lahore


Source: http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/letters-to-the-editor/sanam-should-clarify-her-position-750

The Bhuttos and their books by Saba Imtiaz

Over the past four decades, the name Bhutto has come to symbolize -- depending on which version of history you believe -- Pakistan. It has become our lot in life to obsess over the Bhuttos, discuss their macabre deaths -- Zulfikar was hanged, Shah Nawaz poisoned, Murtaza and Benazir shot -- and wonder how many more Bhuttos will come to rule over Pakistan.

The latest author to chronicle the Bhuttos is Fatima Bhutto, Murtaza's daughter and the much-fawned over columnist and poet whose book, Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter's Memoir, was recently released in Pakistan, India, and the United Kingdom. Songs of Blood and Sword is Fatima's attempt at writing a memoir of her father, Mir Murtaza Bhutto, who died in 1996 when the Karachi police fired on his convoy while his sister, Benazir Bhutto, was prime minister.

On first read, this memoir often feels like a rehash of Daughter of the East, Benazir Bhutto's 1988 autobiography that documented her life in prison under General Zia ul-Haq's regime and the events that preceded it, including her father being hanged by Haq's administration, simply because Fatima is as defensive of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's domestic and foreign policies as Benazir was.

But Fatima Bhutto's grief is palpable on every page -- anyone who has lost a parent can empathize with her pain, and anyone who hasn't will still commiserate. But in her attempt to document her father's life from his birth to his years in exile in Syria from the early 1980s and eventual return to Pakistan in 1993, Fatima tries to wipe the slate clean and goes down the same route that Benazir did in Daughter of the East: selectively using quotes from those who agree with her worldview.

Fatima traces Murtaza's history and finds witty gems and beautiful ex-girlfriends as she travels to Boston and Athens to discover her father's life. She finds professors reminiscing about their talented young student, and old friends sharing anecdotes and letters written by Zulfikar to Murtaza.

She writes at length about their shared memories, their bond as father and daughter, strengthened further by the fact that he brought her up almost single-handedly, since her parents divorced shortly after Shah Nawaz Bhutto's death. Fatima's account of their life in Damascus is poignant, peppered with their shared interests, anecdotes of Murtaza's boisterous sense of humor and conversations about life and love. These parts are engaging, make for a compelling read and deserve to be documented. He writes a poem to her in a letter while he was in jail, excerpted here:

Here is a small one on Wadi [Benazir] and Slippery Joe [presumably Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir's husband]
Inky, Pinky, Ponky
Her husband is a donkey
Both loot the country
Her husband is a monkey
Inky, Pinky, Ponky.

Fatima also paints a chilling narrative of the night Murtaza was shot dead along with several of his supporters, an account that explains why this book is laden with not-so-quiet rage. In the epilogue, she writes of an occasion when President Asif Ali Zardari and his entourage were being received at the British consulate, close to Fatima's residence, as she stood at the same spot her father had been shot. "Here I was, standing where my father was murdered, and the man who I believe was in part responsible for the execution was across the road from me, being received diplomatically. I felt my knees buckle. I sat down on the curb."

She transports the reader back to the streets of Karachi and the frenzied scenes in the hospital where doctors tried to save Murtaza's life. It is the story of yet another Bhutto trying to come to terms with yet another strange and unexpected death, the fourth in as many decades. These are the losses that have shaped Pakistan's history to a great extent and will be an influential factor for the foreseeable future.

But given that this is a grieving daughter's memoir of her father who was killed at the young age of 42, it is clear that she does not intend to criticize his actions in any way. Fatima Bhutto glosses over the time he spent in Libya as a guest of Colonel Gaddafi or in Kabul, as the alleged head of the Al-Zulfikar Organization (AZO) that was set up to avenge the death of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Unsurprisingly, Murtaza is absolved of all responsibility for AZO. The famed 1981 hijacking of a Pakistan International Airlines plane in Kabul that AZO took credit for is explained differently. Fatima quotes a friend of Murtaza's extensively, who claims that the hijacker, Salamullah Tipu, was not a member of the AZO and that Murtaza was actually negotiating with the hijackers to release the women and children on board. It is an account that is widely disputed by former members of the AZO (Raja Anwar, The Terrorist Prince, 1997).

But in this new episode in the saga of the Bhutto dynasty that Fatima has chronicled, the blame -- as well as the acerbic barbs and the retorts -- are all directed at her aunt Benazir Bhutto. Fatima criticizes Benazir from her choice of room décor at the Bhuttos' Karachi residence to Benazir's decision to wear a head scarf and her wit -- anecdotes all dissected to form a portrayal of a self-centered, power-hungry woman who Fatima squarely holds responsible for everything that has gone wrong in the Bhutto dynasty.

In her quest to absolve Murtaza of lingering criticism surrounding his name and paint Benazir as the "bad guy," Fatima blames her aunt for everything from Murtaza's incarceration after he returned from exile, to alienating Nusrat Bhutto, Benazir's mother and Fatima's grandmother, from the PPP and being hungry for power. She does share anecdotes of her memories with her aunt, but writes that "since we returned to Pakisan I had seen a different, ugly side of my aunt," citing an incident where Fatima asked her to visit Murtaza in jail with her and Benazir refused, saying "I couldn't get permission from the jail to come." Fatima couldn't fathom this, given that Benazir was prime minister at the time, and writes, "I couldn't shift the blame from her any more. She was involved. She was running the show." The final blow came after Murtaza's death, when Benazir reportedly called his widow, Ghinwa, a ‘bellydancer' from the ‘backwoods of Lebanon.' Fatima writes, "After Papa was killed, I never saw that old Wadi again. She was gone."

In her quest though, Fatima even attempts to hold Benazir responsible for the death of Shah Nawaz, Benazir and Murtaza's brother, who died under rather strange circumstances in France in 1985. (While the Bhutto family was on holiday in Cannes, where Shah Nawaz lived with his wife and daughter, they was alerted by his wife one morning that Shah Nawaz had "taken something" (p.250, Daughter of the East). They discovered he was dead, allegedly having taken poison, but the Bhutto family believes he was murdered while his wife was charged (and then cleared) of not assisting Shah Nawaz in time.) Her source? The observations of the lawyer Murtaza and Benazir engaged to fight the case in French courts, Jacques Verges. The insinuation that Benazir may have ordered Shah Nawaz's killing and the remarks she chooses to include by Benazir (such as indulgent postcards she sent to Murtaza at university) sour the book. It no longer feels like a memoir, but yet another blame game in the history of the Bhutto family that is still at odds with each other. Their conflict shows no signs of dissipating or staying within the family. Last week, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's nephew Tariq Islam sent a letter to the Dawn newspaper disputing at least one account in Songs of Blood and Sword by quoting conversations he had with Zulfikar before Zulfikar was executed in 1979.

Fatima Bhutto's rage at Benazir, who she believes was either involved in or complicit in covering up the killing of her father, Murtaza -- the woman she once thought of as her favorite aunt -- is understandable. But it is a niece's anger, not a historian's or a memoirist's.

Songs of Blood and Sword is not, and should not be treated as, a chapter in the Bhuttos' history. It is a self-serving charade discounting other versions or characters because they do not fit with Fatima's take on events that occurred in Murtaza's life.

The book has reportedly sold well in Pakistan (Express Tribune), but the reviews in the Pakistani press have been rather scathing (The News, Dawn, Express Tribune). It is hard to gauge Pakistani public approval or disapproval of the book, given that Fatima Bhutto flew out of Pakistan for a book tour after it launched and has reportedly refused to sit down for face-to-face interviews with Pakistani journalists. Conventional readings and Q&A sessions would have given insights, but this is no conventional book. It will continue to sell well -- anything with the Bhutto name does -- but whether it can spark any negative public reaction to Fatima or Zardari remains to be seen.

Ultimately, Songs of Blood and Sword is yet another in the series of books written by the Bhuttos about their versions of history as they see it. Mark your calendars: 22 years from now, another Bhutto will be penning a memoir. As Tariq Islam says Zulfikar Ali Bhutto told him in jail, "I will go down in history. Songs will be written about me." He probably didn't expect the songs would be written by members of his own family.

Source: http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/04/26/the_bhuttos_and_their_books

The recurring nightmare

By Ardeshir Cowasjee
Sunday, 25 Apr, 2010

According to Khushwant the story of the House of Bhutto, written by Fatima in “impeccably beautiful prose would have been a joy to read if it had not been a gruesome tale of intrigue, treachery, treason, violence and cold-blooded murder.

The irrepressible, inimitable, 90-plus, Khushwant Singh, who has few peers in the subcontinental journalist community, is much taken with young Fatima Bhutto — mind you, he always has had and is renowned for his roving eye. He also has much to say about Fatima’s book Songs of Blood and Sword which he has reviewed twice.

Firstly, in the Hindustan Times on April 17 and then in the April 20 issue of Outlook, the latter under the somewhat gory title of ‘The burnt inside of Pakistan’s house of Atreus’. The House of Atreus is famed for the curse put upon it for murder, betrayal and sheer horror, one of the most enduring of Greek legends.

Atreus of Argos was the father of Agamemnon and Menelaus who respectively married Clytaemnestra and Helen of Troy, and heaven knows there is abundant tragedy and gore in their stories. But the most repellent part of it all concerns the quarrel between Atreus and his brother Thyestes over the affair the latter had with Atreus’s wife which resulted in his banishment from Argos.

Thyestes wished for reconciliation and after some time was allowed to return. Atreus prepared a huge banquet in celebration at which he served up to Thyestes the cooked flesh of his two slaughtered sons. The unknowing father ate and was then informed by his brother of what he had just done — the origin of the term ‘Thyestian Banquet’. Thyestes, horror-stricken, put a curse upon the family of Atreus and fled. The curse, as legend records, worked to perfection.

According to Khushwant the story of the House of Bhutto, written by Fatima in “impeccably beautiful prose would have been a joy to read if it had not been a gruesome tale of intrigue, treachery, treason, violence and cold-blooded murder. It is one long nightmare ….”. Strong stuff, and with justification as we who have followed the Bhutto saga down the years well know, and the betrayal continues with the man we now have in the presidential palace in Islamabad, accompanied by his resident soothsayer.

Fatima is “beautiful, highly gifted and gutsy”. When she called on Khushwant, after launching her book in Delhi earlier this month, he wrote “I could not take my eyes off her. I kept gazing at the pinhead of a diamond sparkling on the left side of her nose and her long jet-black curly hair falling on her shoulders. I hope I see her at least once more before my time is up.”

He is not so enamoured with other member of the family and has harsh words for Zulfikar for “indirectly helping East Pakistan become an independent Bangladesh” because he found it unacceptable that if unity was maintained the East Pakistanis would far outnumber the western lot. So much for democracy! Khushwant also slams him for pandering to the archaic laws of the clergy merely to hang on to power.

He is scathing of Bhutto’s betrayal of Manzur Qadir, Ayub Khan’s foreign minister. As a fellow cabinet minister, Bhutto denounced Qadir as being a free-thinker and not a good Muslim. He was consequently dropped from the cabinet and ultimately Zulfikar moved into his slot. Khushwant also touches upon the J.A. Rahim incident, and his beating up by PPP goons merely because Rahim left a dinner after waiting for two hours for Bhutto to turn up.

As for Zulfikar’s son-in-law, he shares Fatima’s “low opinion” of him, refers to his indulgence in shady deals and terms him “uncouth and foul-mouthed”. He blames Benazir for doing little in her two terms to improve the lot of the common people. His closing lines in the Hindustan Times: “Incidentally, I also added a new word to my vocabulary which fits both Pakistan and India. It is ‘saprophytic’, which means feeding on decaying organic matter. Both nations rely on all that is rotten in their past.”

The book was also reviewed in London’s Sunday Times on April 4, by Max Hastings, who likens it to a Jacobean drama rather than a Greek tragedy, cataloguing the list of hanging, poisoning, terrorism, murder and assassination — “hate and blood” he terms it.

The content to him is “emotional, partial, naïve and wholly unreliable about who really did what to whom. But it possesses readability from those with a taste for family horror stories”. He is totally unsympathetic to all the characters, and spells out his factual reasons citing acts of omission and commission perpetrated by Fatima’s grandfather, her father, her uncle and her aunt, all of whom in ways most discernible were flawed characters.

Hastings is unforgiving to Fatima for her “blind rejection of any pretension to insight or judgment”. This may be unkind, for it would take an extraordinarily strong character to be objective about a hanged grandfather, a murdered father and uncle, and an assassinated aunt. She must be given leeway for having had a childhood and youth so tainted by tragedy and violence as to make the admittance of hard historical fact difficult indeed.

As admits Hastings, the “book’s virtues derive from the author’s passion and some vivid pen portraits”. Hastings’s own vivid pen portrait of Asif Zardari, Benazir’s husband, is that he is “considered by some to be the most notoriously corrupt figure in the subcontinent” and that he “climbed over her corpse to become Pakistan’s president….”

As strong a stuff as that of Khushwant! And his ending must make us all, including those who sit atop us, pause and think: “But she conveys a terrifying sense of the ungovernability of Pakistan and its 180m people, exposed to the competing violence of rulers and rebels. Another army coup must be due some day soon.”

arfc@cyber.net.pk

Source :
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/columnists/ardeshir-cowasjee-the-recurring-nightmare-540

ZAB’s nephew challenges Fatima’s version

I REFER to Fatima Bhuttos’s book Songs of Blood and Sword. I feel it is incumbent upon me to set the record straight on at least one story.

Fatima tells us how Z.A. Bhutto wrote to his son Murtaza to go to Afghanistan to set up a militant base for waging a war on the military dictator, Zia.

I challenge anyone to produce that letter. Because there is none!

The fact of the matter is that at Mir Murtaza’s request I flew from London (where I was a student at the time) to Islamabad on March 24, 1979, to meet my uncle ZAB and convey Murtaza’s urgent messages.

The messages were to seek permission for Murtaza to base himself in Afghanistan to wage a guerrilla war on the invitation of the then Afghan government headed by Hafizullah Amin.

The other message was from PLO leader Yasir Arafat who viewed Bhutto as the soldier of Islam and was ready to use his resources to spring him from Rawalpindi’s central jail.

I first met my uncle in his death cell on March 27. I was allowed only 30 minutes and we had to whisper across the cell bars (I was not permitted inside the tiny cell) as it was heavily bugged and police and military officers stood all around us, straining to hear.

ZAB flatly refused both options. On the case of Murtaza’s relocation to Kabul, ZAB flew into a rage. His words, which I recall clearly till this day, were “Did I send Mir to Harvard and to Oxford to learn about all this stuff? Already they are calling me a murderer and a smuggler (on account of the book If I am assassinated, which was claimed to have been smuggled out of prison to be published abroad).

“Next, they will be calling me a terrorist. Tell him that I forbid him to go to Kabul. No matter what happens to me, he should concentrate on his studies and complete his course at Oxford”.

I had to get the message across to Mir but in those days, far from the mobile phones we have today, there was no direct dialling either. Amina Piracha (PPP MNA in BB’s first government) took me to her family office, Ferozesons in Pindi , from where we booked a call to London. In coded language, I gave Mir his father’s message.

Mir was extremely distraught and disappointed and pleaded with me to seek another appointment with ZAB. “You have to convince my father. You must do it for my sake. I don’t care how you do it, but please don’t come back empty-handed,” he urged.

I managed, with great difficulty, to see ZAB again on March 30 (Apart from BB and Begum Nusrat Bhutto, I was the last to see him in his death cell before the execution). I conveyed Mir’s desperate message again. The reaction was the same, but I persisted. Time was running out. In sheer frustration, ZAB remarked with great prescience: “I think Mir has boxed himself into a corner. He has made some commitments to the Afghans and is finding it difficult to back out now. Tell him to go if he wishes but I am not at all happy. The Afghans are too shrewd; they have fooled two superpowers for so many years. They are master diplomats and schemers and they will manipulate Mir for their own reasons ..., and sell him down the river when it suits them. He must be very careful in what he does and says. I leave him in God’s hands. But ask him to complete his studies at Oxford”.

The much quoted man in the book, Suhail Sethi (who also has been my very good friend for nearly 40 years), was in Pindi at the time. We went out to eat dinner together that evening, and I told him about the meeting.

He can set the record straight even at this late stage. I flew to London on March 31. I conveyed all the messages to Mir. Bashir Riaz (Mir’s aide and press spokesman and subsequently one of BB’s closest aides) and the former Punjab Governor, Mr Ghulam Mustafa Khar, were witnesses.

On April 4 Mr Bhutto was executed.

It is not only a distortion of history but also a great travesty to accuse a statesman and visionary of ZAB’s stature of condoning a bloody and militant route and placing the lives of his own son in danger when he did not even call upon his party men to go out into the streets to fight the dictator.

As he said to me in jail: “I am too big a man to ask others to place themselves in jeopardy so that my life may be saved. I will go down in history. Songs will be written about me.”

TARIQ ISLAM


Source: http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/letters-to-the-editor/zabs-nephew-challenges-fatimas-version-240

When Fatima held everyone’s gaze

Khushwant Singh, Hindustan Times

April 17, 2010

"I have been to dozens of book launches, but I have yet to see one on as grand a scale as this one,” said my daughter Mala Dayal as she came home from the launch of Fatima Bhutto’s Songs of Blood and Sword (Penguin Viking). She continued “There must have been nearly 1,000 guests; it was a packed house. On the stage sat William Dalrymple in white kurta-pyjama and the Bhutto girl. She is a stunner. She was very craftily dressed to please her Indian audience and also maintain her Pakistani identity. She was draped in a sari instead of salwar-kameez and wore a red bindi on her forehead. That warmed the hearts of her Indian audience. Her sari was green — the colour of Pakistan. She spoke in flawless English about her country.”

My daughter had not read her book. No one in the audience had till after the launch. But some of her history is known. She introduces herself on book jacket in a few lines printed in red:

Grand-daughter to Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto — executed 1979

Niece to Shah Nawaz Bhutto — murdered 1985

Daughter of Mir Murtaza Bhutto — assassinated 1996

Niece to Benazir Bhutto — assassinated 2007

On these four skeletons Fatima Bhutto fleshes out the saga of the Bhuttos.

Their forefather Sir Shahnawaz Bhutto, Diwan of Junagarh, migrated back to his ancestral town, Garhi Khuda Baksh in district Larkana. His son Zulfiqar Ali rose to power in Pakistan before being hanged. Zulfiqar’s daughter Benazir out-manoeuvred her brother to grab her father’s political legacy and acquired vast amounts of real estate in Europe and America, to which her husband Asif Ali Zardari added a lot more. He came to be known as ‘Mr 10 per cent’ because he is said to have charged this as commission for brokering deals between the government and investors.

The assassins of Benazir Bhutto remain unidentified. But Fatima has named Asif Ali Zardari for four murders and having himself acquitted by a subservient judiciary. She has invited trouble, as if she harbours a death wish. She is as gutsy as she is beautiful.

She did me the honour of calling on me before she took her flight to Karachi. I could not take my eyes off her. I kept gazing at the pin-head of a diamond sparkling on the left side of her nose and her long jet-black curly hair falling on her shoulders. I hope I see her at least once more before my time is up.

Fatima ends her book in memorable prose: “Amidst all this madness, all these ghosts and memories of times past, it feels like the world around me is crumbling slowly, flaking away. Sometimes when it is late at night, I feel my chest swell with a familiar anxiety. I think at these times, that I have no more place in my heart for Pakistan. I cannot love it any more. I have to get away from it for anything to make sense, nothing here ever does. But when the hours pass, and as I ready myself for sleep as the light filters through my windows, I hear the sound of those mynah birds. And I know I could never leave.”

Incidentally, I also added a new word to my vocabulary which fits both Pakistan and India. It is ‘saprophytic’, which means feeding on decaying organic matter.

Both nations rely on all that is rotten in their past.

Source:
http://www.hindustantimes.com/When-Fatima-held-everyone-s-gaze/H1-Article1-532658.aspx

Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter’s Memoir by Fatima Bhutto

A touching love letter to Fatima Bhutto’s murdered father

Brenda Maddox

Fatima Bhutto with her father Murtaza

A bloody tale, awkwardly told. Fatima Bhutto is most easily, if unfairly, identified as the niece of Benazir Bhutto, the Pakistani Prime Minister killed in 2007. She is also, at 27, a poet, a journalist and a beauty.

But it would take more than all these gifts to make a coherent narrative of the much-assassinated Bhutto family. Indeed, one searches the pages long and hard to find a mention of a natural death.

The author was born in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, in May 1982 while her father, Murtaza Bhutto, was in exile during the military regime of General Zia-ul-Haq. Her parents divorced when she was young and she formed an immediate bond with her stepmother, whom she called and still calls “Mummy”. With her father and stepmother she moved to Damascus, where she spent much of her youth. In 1988 the family returned to Karachi, safe again for Murtaza after the assassination of Zia.

The killing opened the way also for Benazir, then 35, to become Prime Minister for the first time. As Prime Minister, Benazir (her niece observes somewhat cattily) made the decision to wear a white head shawl (dupatta) — the first woman in their family to cover her hair.

In Karachi Fatima completed her secondary education, then went to New York to take a bachelor’s degree (in Middle Eastern studies) at Columbia University, then came to the University of London for a master’s degree at the School of Oriental and African Studies. Today, acclaimed for her writing (and for a much-publicised friendship with the actor George Clooney), she says that she has no interest in politics. She remains in Karachi, with her stepmother and half-brother, in the family home in Clifton, the poshest suburb.

The purpose of this painful biography is admirable and touching. It is a daughter’s loving recollection of her murdered father, Murtaza Bhutto, political leader of a radical party, shot dead by police in Karachi in 1996. Who ordered the killing? One explanation of this book’s obscurity is the author’s reluctance to point the finger at her aunt, then Prime Minister for the second time, for ordering the assassination of her own brother. All Benazir would say later was that it was Murtaza’s own fault that he was killed. She then brought a case against Fatima’s beloved stepmother for refusing to go into seclusion under an Islamic prescription for widows.

The author does not forget that Aunt Benazir (known in affectionate moments as “Wadi” and “Pinky”) was herself assassinated (in Rawalpindi in December 2007). Benazir’s husband, Asif Ali Zardari, was later tried for the murder of the author's father, and acquitted. Zardari is now President of Pakistan.

Against such a background of horror, the more gripping parts of the story are the human details. Aunt Benazir and her niece were good friends when they were young. They spent birthdays together — even when that meant Benzair coming to Damascus — and loved mint chocolate-chip ice cream and sugared chestnuts. “Wadi” introduced her niece to Beatrix Potter and Jemima Puddleduck, and would hug her when she left (“her hair smelling powdery soft”), promising to come back soon.

Fascinating also are the author’s expressions of love for the father “who was the soul of my world. I was eager to do anything and everything for my father. I polished his boots and took the time to make sure they gleamed just like he wanted them.” He repaid this adoration with imaginative ways of frightening his daughter and son. He would ring the doorbell, pretending to be a mad dentist come to pull out all their teeth. One day, as Fatima was walking in the garden wearing her best dress, he picked her up and hurled her into the swimming pool. She also recalls him telling her, when she was 6 and going to sleep, that he’d kill himself if anything happened to her.

Death was, and perhaps remains, a bedtime story for the famed political dynasty of a troubled country born in 1947 and divided in 1971. For those who know its history, this book will be essential reading. Newcomers to the subject of Pakistan will find themselves wishing for what may be impossible: apparatus such as a clear family tree and a timetable of events to lead them through the bloody maze.

Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter’s Memoir by Fatima Bhutto (Jonathan Cape, £20; Buy this book; 470pp)

Source:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_reviews/article7091823.ece

Scenes of chaos

The memoir is another attempt by a Bhutto to rewrite history
By Huma Imtiaz

Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter's Memoir
By Fatima Bhutto
Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd.
Pages: 470
Price: Rs 1395

The Bhutto family's tale is one that would prove to be a blockbuster film and be a bestseller… if told well. Fatima Bhutto's Songs of Blood and Sword is the third attempt by a Bhutto to detail their family history and their achievements, the most memorable being Benazir's Daughter of the East. In all the books, the Bhuttos are the saviours, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto a model leader and hero -- and focuses on their struggle to rise beyond politics, repression and violence.

To be honest, one doesn't understand what this book is meant to be. Touted as a daughter's memoir, the book, for the first four and a half chapters, talks about the history of the Bhutto family and traces their rise as an influential feudal family during the British Raj. It quickly moves on to Murtaza's life as a student in Karachi and at Harvard, trying to campaign in Europe for his father's life to be spared, to Afghanistan where he founds Al-Zulfikar, Syria where he meets his second wife Ghinwa, and finally Pakistan, where Murtaza met a death so brutal that one is left in horror at the memory of that fateful night.

But while chapters have been devoted to the rise and fall of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the author has glossed over certain aspects of Bhutto's political career. The description of the fall of East Pakistan quickly assigns all blame to the Pakistan Army, cleverly leaving out mention of Bhutto's role in the political crisis.

The author's selective amnesia continues throughout the book. While a memoir is based on one's personal knowledge and analysis of events, one is disappointed by the lack of details and facts that this book so sorely required. For example, the author takes pains to exclude Benazir from certain parts of history; the omission of Benazir at the side of ZAB in the Simla Delegation in the book being one such example.

Songs of Blood and Sword is not just about the amnesia, but also about conspiracy theories. Fatima Bhutto insinuates, based on a single interview, that Benazir was somehow involved in Shahnawaz's murder. And as we read on, the author seems to adopt a far more forgiving tone when describing Shahnawaz's daughter's Sassi's denial that her mother and Shahnawaz's wife Rehana was involved in the event. And that is what the reader is left with: no investigation, just insinuation.

The most appalling chapter in Songs of Blood and Sword is Bhutto's account of the Al-Zulfikar Organisation, a movement founded by Murtaza and Shahnawaz in the 1980s. Her dismissal of the 1981 hijacking of a PIA flight as propaganda created by the Zia regime and her denial of Al-Zulfikar's involvement in certain acts of violence and terror are a travesty, to say the least. For someone who calls herself a journalist, this book and perhaps Bhutto's credibility would have been well served had she chosen to investigate the matter more closely, and spoken to more than just a few people Murtaza surrounded himself by at the latter stage of his life.

The redeeming part of this book is the chapter detailing the assassination and the aftermath of Murtaza Bhutto's death in 1996. Even though the Mideast Hospital in Karachi has since been torn down to make way for a glittery new building, one can successfully imagine the scenes of chaos that must have pervaded there once. The news spread that Murtaza Bhutto had been brought there.

It is Sabeen Jatoi's account of being unable to find her father's body that strikes a chord, the sense of horror and loss and helplessness is something one can never forget and the author must be credited for bringing, as painful as that memory must be, to life.

Nevertheless, throughout the book, it seems that Bhutto chose to interview the people that would fit her interpretation of history. While one must always take events in Pakistani politics with a pinch of salt, Bhutto's attempt to rewrite history and portray Murtaza as the true heir of the PPP, a noble politician and a confused angry young man who never hijacked a plane are based on a very shaky foundation indeed -- and her arguments fails to strike a chord with the reader.

There is a sense that Bhutto has over-dramatised certain incidents in the book, which may serve her western audience well, but are not unique in Pakistan. The tone itself is hardly engaging, and at times, the author's unnecessary descriptions distract one from the subject at hand. It was not important to know that the author was eating a cookie when she met her father's college roommate, nor does it add to the quality of the writing. What one really enjoyed were the brief insights into Murtaza's jovial character and his wit, and the anecdote of Asif Ali Zardari making a snide remark against Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

At the end of the day, it has become tiresome to read members of the Bhutto family harp on about their achievements, presenting their loved one as the saviour and calling themselves a true heir of the legacy of the Bhutto family. One wished that perhaps there would be a Bhutto who would not try this tried and tested pattern, but perhaps that is too much to hope for.

Huma Imtiaz is a journalist based in Karachi and can be reached at huma.imtiaz@gmail.com

Source:
http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/apr2010-weekly/nos-18-04-2010/lit.htm#2

the bhutto boondoggle

Nadir Hussain

Karachi: Featured review of the week

As a work of journalism, which is what the book purports to be, Songs of Blood and Sword is about as useful as Mein Kampf. Fatima Bhutto prefers lyricism over facts, yes-men over dissenting opinions and vendettas over reconciliation.

Bhutto’s hagiographic treatment of her grandfather, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, is particularly jarring as it creates contradictions at nearly every turn. Thus, Ayub Khan’s rule is condemned as the country’s first dark dictatorial era but ZAB as foreign minister – under that very despot – was the catalyst of a “shining period” in Pakistan’s history. And on it goes. General Tikka Khan is rightfully condemned as the “Butcher of Balochistan and East Pakistan” but, because it would be inconvenient to Fatima’s narrative, no mention is made of the fact that he served as chief of army staff under ZAB and even became an important PPP leader after his retirement from the army.

When it comes to ZAB, the young author, raised on family tales of his greatness, succumbs to her blind spot. So, ZAB is praised for resigning from Ayub’s government after the military ruler signed the supposedly humiliating Tashkent Declaration. Never mind that Bhutto himself was a part of the negotiations, and when Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri died just before the agreement became public, ZAB publicly boasted that Shastri was so humiliated at being outwitted by the Pakistanis, he suffered an instant heart attack.

She also takes great liberties not just to minimise ZAB’s role in the secession of East Pakistan, but to deny any involvement in it at all. She simply says, “Any constitutional settlement hinged on the two parties [PPP and Awami League] reaching an agreement to share power” and leaves it at that. She doesn’t mention that the Awami League had enough seats to form a week government and that ZAB, in connivance with Yahya Khan, refused to allow parliament to meet. She also sees no need to take note of ZAB’s infamous “Idhar hum, udhar tum” remark.

Bhutto’s hero-worship of her grandfather is matched only by the venom she directs at her aunt, Benazir Bhutto. She reproduces the standard litany of complaints – corruption, highhandedness and the alienation of PPP stalwarts – and comes up with some new theories. By now everyone is wearily familiar with Fatima Bhutto’s accusation that Benazir was responsible for her father Murtaza’s murder. But she adds a new charge to Benazir’s rap sheet: the curious death of Shahnawaz Bhutto. All she offers by way of evidence is an interview she had with a lawyer, Jacques Verges, who looked into the case.

She approvingly quotes him: ““She didn’t want to fight the CIA and the Pakistani Intelligence service, who your father was always convinced were behind his brother’s death.” Why not? I asked, genuinely curious. Verges laughed again and made a face at me that I understood. Because she worked with them. Because her power was always based on their approval.” When reading this, keep in mind that Shahnawaz died in 1985, when Ziaul Haq was still in power and the intelligence agencies were hounding Benazir. Recall, too, that Benazir’s first term was plagued, and eventually terminated, by a military establishment that never trusted her.

Bhutto is at her best when writing about her father. Sure, she exonerates him of all responsibility for the hijacking of a PIA plane by his rebel group, al-Zulfikar, but that can be forgiven as a daughter’s love. Her fond childhood memories show Murtaza as a kind, doting father which is a welcome change from his public persona: that of a gruff politician who never let niceties interfere with his politicking. The stories that emerge from behind the boundaries of 70 Clifton are fascinating enough to make one wish Fatima had chosen a career as a memoirist rather than a journalist.

Source:
http://tribune.com.pk/story/7535/the-bhutto-boondoggle/

The Burnt Inside Of Pakistan’s House Of Atreus

Fatima Bhutto’s impeccable prose looks her family’s tragedies steadily in the eye, but turns a blind one towards the excesses of her beloved grandfather

Khushwant Singh

Songs Of Blood And Sword: A Daughter’s Memoir
By Fatima Bhutto
Penguin/Viking | 480 pages | Rs 699

This family history of the Bhuttos is written in impeccably beautiful prose which would have been a joy to read if it had not been a gruesome tale of intrigue, treachery, treason, violence and cold-blooded murders. It is one long nightmare which will disturb the reader’s sleep for a long time and, like the characters of the story, make him an insomniac. It is the political lives of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his progeny of two daughters and two sons. The author, Fatima Bhutto, is his granddaughter from his elder son, Mir Murtaza Bhutto.

The Bhuttos, Sindh’s biggest and most prosperous landowners, were based in their ancestral home in Garhi Khuda Baksh in district Larkana. They were Vaderos—big people. They lived in palatial houses with hordes of servants and armed guards. They had second homes in Karachi’s posh residential area Clifton overlooking the Arabian Sea. They sent their children to the most renowned schools and colleges in America and England: Radcliffe, Harvard and Oxford. They thought nothing of flying across continents to join the family to celebrate a birthday. And all of them were deeply involved in the politics of Pakistan.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was the son of Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto, Dewan of Junagadh. Zulfikar went to school and college in Bombay. In 1947, when the Nawab of Junagadh, as advised by his Dewan, tried to opt for Pakistan but failed, the family went back to Sindh. Zulfikar developed a distrust of all Indians, especially Hindus. He proceeded to Harvard for further studies, read Das Kapital and turned Marxist. His Marxism grew deeper while he was in Oxford. He was determined to turn Pakistan from a feudal to a socialist state.

Back home, he fought an election and won. He was inducted into the state cabinet and became the youngest minister in General Ayub Khan’s government. The dictator-general had made Pakistan subservient to the American policy of drawing a cordon sanitaire round Communist China and the Soviet Union. As foreign minister, Bhutto turned that around under the very nose of his boss. He opened negotiations with China. The Chinese responded by giving more generous aid than the Americans and became Pakistan’s principal ally in its confrontations with India. Bhutto then proceeded to fix ceilings on landholdings, nationalised banks and many vital industries. The only thing he did not touch was the Muslim clergy as he wanted them to support him. He pandered to their archaic laws, even banning consumption of liquor and declaring Ahmedias to be non-Muslims.

When a Pakistani journalist was mentioned vis-a-vis a PPP youth wing, Bhutto said, “He doesn’t like me; he knows I f...d his mother”.

When out of power Bhutto founded the Pakistan People’s Party. The first meeting took place in the home of Mubasher Husain (a Shia and uncle of Syeda Hameed, member of our Planning Commission). Other items on his credit side are initiating the process of making Pakistan a nuclear power and indirectly helping East Pakistan become an independent Bangladesh. He realised that in any democratic form of government Bengalis would outnumber West Pakistanis, which he found unacceptable. He saved Sheikh Mujibur Rehman from the gallows and let him return to Dhaka to form his own government. His greatest shortcoming was his arrogance. He got Gen Zia-ul-Haq to supercede several generals senior to him and made him chief of army staff. Then he proceeded to humiliate him in public. General Zia never forgave him for making fun of him in public. When Zulfikar Bhutto was convicted and sentenced to death (there was one dissenting judge, a Parsi), he ignored worldwide appeals for clemency. “Two bodies, one coffin,” he said, meaning it was either Bhutto or him. So Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged in 1979.

Fatima Bhutto has a worshipful attitude towards her grandfather and father Mir Murtaza Bhutto. Neither of them could possibly do anything wrong. There was another side to her grandfather she totally ignores. I had the opportunity of meeting him a few times and read what his critics said about him. I first met him in Manzur Qadir’s house in Lahore, which had been my home till Partition. Manzur was Ayub Khan’s foreign minister. He was receiving visitors; I happened to be alone in his study when a handsome, dapperly-dressed young man walked in. I assumed he was a college student. Manzur came in and said: “I see you have introduced yourselves.” When I said we had not, Manzur told me that Zulfikar was the youngest minister in the cabinet. I left the room for them to talk in private. It was Bhutto who betrayed Manzur’s friendship by denouncing him as a free thinker and not a good Muslim. Manzur was dropped from the cabinet. He resumed legal practice and retired as chief justice of the Punjab High Court. A more honest and upright man I have yet to meet.

Bhutto invited me to Pakistan. Our first meeting was in Karachi. We had drinks on his lawn. Two days later, I spent another evening with him in Islamabad and had a second round of drinks. He gave me a message to convey to Indira Gandhi to the effect that he was anxious to be on friendly terms with India. The next morning I was invited to watch the proceedings of the Parliament. Questions were raised about the slow pace of development. Bhutto walked across to the opposition carrying a bottle of fluid and presented it with a flourish to the leader of the opposition. It was petrol—Pakistan had struck oil. It was a flamboyant display of confidence.

I returned to Delhi and sought an appointment with Mrs Gandhi. I conveyed Bhutto’s message of goodwill to her. She gave her answer in one sentence: “He is a damned liar.”

At one time Bhutto wanted to create an active youth wing of his Pakistan People’s Party. The name of a young Pakistani journalist based in London was mentioned. Bhutto countered it by saying: “I don’t think he likes me very much. He knows I f...d his mother.”

At another time he asked his cabinet ministers to dine with him. They arrived punctually and were served fruit juice while Bhutto sahib was in another room enjoying his Scotch with his cronies. The cabinet waited for him for two hours. The oldest among them could take it no more and went home. When Bhutto finally joined them and heard that the oldest fellow had gone home, he was furious. He sent his men to the fellow’s home and had him roughed up. The next day the poor fellow fled Pakistan.

All this has been written about and is common knowledge. It finds no mention in Fatima Bhutto’s hagiography.

Fatima Bhutto writes of the nation-wide protest against the execution of her grandfather. I happened to be in Islamabad for an interview with Gen Zia-ul-Haq. I was staying in a posh hotel largely occupied by foreign journalists. They had bribed the prison staff and got news of the steps being taken to execute Bhutto the very next day. My appointment with the president was a ruse to mislead the foreign media: he would not grant an interview to an Indian after hanging Bhutto, would he? They were not fooled. Next morning I looked out of my window and saw the hotel surrounded by tanks and armoured cars. I rang up our ambassador Shankar Bajpai and told him. “I’ll get back to you in a few minutes,” he said. He rang back and said, “They have done the deed.” I went down to the restaurant to have breakfast. The waiters clustered round me and asked in Punjabi, “Sardar saheb, eh khabar sach hai? (Is this news correct?)” I replied: “Ji, sach hai.” The response was: “Bahut zulm hoya (It is grave injustice).”

A little later I went to Rawalpindi, which is adjacent to Islamabad, to see how the common people were reacting. All shops were closed and groups of people huddled here and there, talking in whispers. In the afternoon a procession led by burqa-clad women went through the Meena Bazar. The police let them march on. There were prayers performed for the missing dead.

Fatima has a low opinion of her aunt Benazir, who wasted two terms of office, acquiring instead vast real estate around the world.

My appointment with Gen Zia was postponed by a week. I flew to Karachi to see if there were any demonstrations. I stayed with our consul, Mani Shankar Aiyar. In the afternoon we drove through the city. There were long queues outside cinema houses, boys were playing cricket on maidans. It appeared as if nothing untoward had happened.

A week later, I was back in Islamabad to interview Gen Zia. His house had only a few sentries at the gate. He received me with great courtesy and introduced me to his portly begum and mentally retarded daughter. My first question was, “General sahib, was it necessary to hang Bhutto? Could you not have pardoned him?” He replied: “He was convicted of murder, for which the punishment is death. Forgiveness is not in man’s hands, it can only be given by Allah.”

I share Fatima Bhutto’s low opinion of her aunt Benazir and her husband, now President, Asif Zardari. Benazir had two terms of office as head of state without introducing any legislation to improve the living conditions of common people. Instead, she acquired vast amounts of real estate in England, France, the US and Switzerland. This was brought out in detail by the New York Times. Her husband went further and got a suspended jail term in Switzerland for indulging in shady deals. He is still known as ‘Mister Ten Per Cent’ for taking brokerage for deals with the government. He is also uncouth and foul-mouthed.

I did not have the privilege of knowing Fatima Bhutto’s father Mir Murtaza, for whom she has unbounded admiration. Apparently he was as good a man as he was handsome. He was shot dead along with his five bodyguards near the entrance gate of their home in Clifton.

Fatima Bhutto’s life has been a long series of tragedies. She refuses to keep quiet about them. In the last pages of her book, she bluntly accuses Zardari of having committed four murders and “getting” a subservient judiciary of absolving him of all crimes. She is beautiful, highly gifted and gutsy. And she continues to live in Karachi. I pray for her long life.

Source:
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?265085

Blood relations

T.C.A. Srinivasa-Raghavan

The Bhutto family, at least in the spell it casts on Pakistan, is not unlike the Gandhi family in India. Both are intensely political; both families have produced two prime ministers each; and in both families, members have been assassinated.

For that reason alone this book, by the granddaughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, former Pakistani Prime Minister who was hanged by his successor, Zia ul-Haq, will sell in India. The story she tells — of intrigue, deceit, and all those lovely things that make politics what it is — is an added attraction.

Fatima Bhutto is the daughter of Murtaza Bhutto, eldest son of Zulfikar. Murtaza, says Fatima, was the inheritor of the Bhutto mantle, except that he was shot dead one day by persons unidentified but who were probably policemen or soldiers. His sister Benazir was the Prime Minister of Pakistan at the time. Fatima suggests that it was Benazir's husband, Asif Ali Zardari, currently the President of Pakistan, who was behind Murtaza's killing.

To quote: “…President Farouq Leghari who sacked Benazir's second government in the winter of 1996, came on national television and spoke of my father's murder. In the interview, aired on Duniya TV, a popular private channel, Leghari claimed that Zardari came to him in the later hours one night during his wife's term and insisted that Murtaza Bhutto be eliminated. ‘It's either him or me', Zardari is alleged to have told the President.” (p 423). It takes her the whole book to get to this point.

There is a certain amount of dramatisation whenever she is describing her father. That is understandable, as is her portraying him in a larger-than-life manner. But there are too many gaps in the story which leave the serious reader dissatisfied.

There are some interesting stories, such as the tale of the PIA aircraft that was hijacked in 1981 and taken to Kabul. Murtaza was there at the time, says Fatima, and he received a call on a private number at Palace No 2.

The caller said he wanted to speak to Murtaza, who identified himself thinking it was a call from some Government office in Kabul. “Salamullah Tipu wants to speak to you,” said the caller.

“Who is Salamullah Tipu?” asked Murtaza — and was told he was the man who had hijacked the plane. “That was how Murtaza came to know that a plane had been hijacked in his name,” writes Fatima Bhutto.

She adds in the next paragraph that this was not the first time Murtaza had heard of Tipu. He had visited the family at 70, Clifton in Karachi, and was known to be a hot-headed student. He had also been in the army briefly — and on one occasion he had suggested to Murtaza that it would be a good idea to hijack a plane to get party workers released. Murtaza had turned down the suggestion.

Next Dr Najibullah, who was then the head of Afghan intelligence and later became President, came over to fetch Murtaza and a colleague. They all went along to the airport in the early hours of the morning. Murtaza then negotiated with the hijackers for about 15 minutes and soon the women and children were released.

The Pakistan Government sent a negotiating team and, according to Fatima, one of Murtaza's associates believes that the Government was quite happy to let the drama drag on because everyone thought it was Murtaza and his brother, Shah Nawaz, who had organised the hijacking.

But then the hijackers shot one Brigadier Rahim who had been Zulfikar's ADC, and people began to wonder why the brothers would allow the killing of their father's ADC. After a week the plane took off for Syria, where it sat for a few more days until the passengers were released.

The bottom line of the story, according to Fatima, is that in the end the Zia ul-Haq regime didn't quite succeed in pinning the blame for the hijacking on the Bhutto brothers.

And so on and so forth.

The story of the Bhutto family and its political adventures and misadventures is told very jerkily, and hence the writer often loses the reader. Her writing style is not very well-developed… the biggest problem with the book, which ends up sounding like a litany of complaints.

It could surely have been written better. As it stands, it is unlikely to become a classic.


Source: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/life/2010/04/16/stories/2010041650150400.htm

Ghost wars

“Pakistan was an ever-present ghost in our house. As was Zia. And Zulfikar. And Shah Nawaz. My father and I carried invisible baggage with us, both loved and feared,” Fatima Bhutto writes in Songs of Blood and Sword. General Zia ul Haq was the dictator who put to death Pakistan’s first elected prime minister – and Fatima’s grandfather – Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1979. His son Shah Nawaz was found dead in Paris in 1986. Their ghosts have since been joined by those of Fatima’s father, Mir Murtaza Bhutto, killed on the street in front of his home in 1996, and his sister Benazir, assassinated in 2007.

As a young woman, Fatima witnesses the violent and unnatural deaths of her dear uncle and her father. She hears whispers that her own aunt was involved – directly or indirectly – in those deaths. She grows up with the sadness of a family cleaved into factions. She writes to remember, she writes to accuse, she writes to explain. At the heart of this memoir lies the pain of a deep loss. She notes her father’s perfume, his laugh, his humour and joy at living, his previous loves, his undergraduate thesis, his college friends, the music he loved, the revolutionaries he admired, the places he lived and people he met. It is an exhaustive remembrance told reverentially, lovingly and at times clumsily – and all the more touching as a result. She writes that she hoped, through this book, to make “my peace with my father... finally honouring my last promise to him – to tell his story – and then, to finally say goodbye.”

Her project is a recuperative one: she wants to rescue the memory of her father Murtaza and to claim for him the status of a nation’s saviour. She wants to tear away the skein of hagiography that now covers the memory of Benazir Bhutto, to expose her corruption, her culpability, her blind ambition. Above all, she wants to unburden herself of the sorrow of losing her father at the age of 14.

None should deny Fatima Bhutto the right to remember her loss – but that is not all this memoir aspires to. In her preface, she casts a familiar picture of Pakistan aflame, devastated from outside by drones and missiles, plundered from within by cronies and corruptions: “How have we come to this state of affairs?” she asks.

This book is her answer. But it is a simplistic, uncritical and benighted one.

The Bhuttos, landed elite from Sindh, can claim a long and checkered history of entanglements with power – first the British colonial administration, then the new post-colonial state. Among “Sindh’s largest landowners,” they exerted great influence, controlling and directing hundreds of thousands of rural families. Fatima does not linger long on this early history – except to point out how “debonair”, “dashing”, “handsome”, and “beautiful” every one was. Her grandfather, Zulfikar Ali, is soon off to Berkeley, California where someone mistakes him for a Mexican – this awakens in him the spirit of egalitarianism and equity. Or so it is remembered.

Zulfikar Ali’s meteoric rise from Sindhi feudal to President of Pakistan is portrayed here either hagiographically or casually: at his better moments Zulfikar Ali is remembered as being destined for greatness; during his weaker moments he is the victim of poor advice. The most egregious omissions concern his political response to Bengali demands for equivalence in East Pakistan (which broke away to become Bangladesh after a civil war in 1971); it was the accord between the military regime of General Yahya and Zulfikar Ali’s newly founded political party – the Pakistan People’s Party – to disenfranchise the winning Awami League after the 1970 elections that sparked the conflict that led to Pakistan’s re-partition. Similarly, Fatima puts a naive and benign spin on Zulfikar Ali’s pan-Islamic policies – ignoring the 1973 constitution that he promulgated, which deliberately set the country on the path toward Sharia law, dealt a deadly blow to minority rights, and enabled General Zia ul Haq’s subsequent Sunnification of Pakistan. Zulfikar Ali’s brutal crackdown on Balochistan in 1974 is also excused: then he was merely a pawn of the feudals and the army. The voices of his detractors are not entirely absent, but there is no attempt to engage critically with her grandfather’s legacy; true culpability always lies elsewhere.

Zulfikar Ali was deposed by General Zia in 1977; in his 1979 prison tract, If I Am Assassinated, he wrote: “My sons will not be my sons if they do not drink the blood of those who dare to shed my blood.” After his murder in 1979, his sons Mir Murtaza and Shah Nawaz took up his call, launching a self-avowedly violent resistance against General Zia’s regime – while sunning themselves in Russian-occupied Kabul. They called it al Zulfikar (the Sword) and Mir Murtaza rallied the support of Muammer Qadafi and Hafiz al Assad.

In March 1981, a Pakistan International Airlines flight, PK-326, was hijacked en route to Peshawar from Karachi. It was diverted to Kabul where Mir Murtaza negotiated with the hijackers to release the women and children. The plane was next taken to Damascus where it lingered for another week before the hijackers gave up. A New York Times story dated April 19, 1981 quotes Mir Murtaza saying that members of his organisation were the hijackers and that it was committed to reacting “brutally” against Zia ul Haq’s regime. The hijackers murdered a diplomat, Tariq Rahim.

“I feel secretly proud of my father for abandoning the offer of a bland but comfortable exile in London to fight what he believed was an unjust system”, Fatima writes. Her pride colours her treatment of this “phase” in her father’s life; contrary to his own admission, she describes the hijackers as not having been members of al Zulfikar, and says that he never admitted as much. Mir Murtaza, in her depiction, preferred the pen to the Kalashnikov – it was the younger Shah Nawaz who took on the trappings of the proto-Mujahideen.

Where Mir Murtaza does no wrong, Benazir does no right. She hovers around the edges of the text, only surfacing to have another bit of blame pinned on her silenced shoulders. She is held responsible for everything from keeping Fatima away from her father’s college friends, to separating her from her cousins, to at least covering up, if not ordering, the murder of Shah Nawaz, to murdering or looking away from the murder of Mir Murtaza. There is little doubt that Benazir’s governments were corrupt – and Fatima’s summation of the innumerable charges against Benazir and Asif Ali Zardari is masterful. There is also ample evidence that Mir Murtaza’s murder was carried out with her approval, or sanctioned on her behalf. But these are matters better adjudicated by persons other than the daughter of the deceased: here the familial, the personal, the conspiratorial and the legal are hopelessly indistinguishable.

The three ghosts examined, Zulfikar, Mir Murtaza and Benazir, we must turn to Pakistan. The book is, after all, geared to an audience looking to understand Pakistan, or have it explained to them, by this telegenic representative of a troubled dynasty.

Songs of Blood and Sword can rightly be seen as the latest in a line of memoirs like Benazir’s Daughter of the East and Pervez Musharraf’s In the Line of Fire – each of them devoted to uncritical presentations of their authors or their families, made to stand in for the history of an entire nation. The tale of the Bhutto dynasty, from its feudal base to its populist claims and now to the stranger-than-fiction stewardship under Zardari (where else in this world can one bequeath a political party in a will?) still deserves to be told, and told properly.

This is not that book, and it should neither be sold nor judged as such: it is merely another primary document for that unwritten history, alongside the papers of her father, grandfather and aunt – which remain in the family home in Karachi.

In the meantime, however, the book will sell and sell: the author’s criticism of Zardari’s regime and of his role in her father’s murder, her triumphalist Pakistani nationalism and complaints against American imperialism, and her last name are all catnip to the British, American and South Asian media, which have already lavished considerable coverage on the book prior to its release. Fatima has stayed aloof from politics – and for that she should be commended – but this is only one branch of the family business; the perpetuation of a dynasty requires myth-making as much as election victories, and her book, whatever its aims, succeeds only in draping another skein of hagiography around the Bhuttos.

Manan Ahmed is a historian of Pakistan at Freie Universitat Berlin. He blogs at Chapati Mystery.

Source: http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100416/REVIEW/704159986/1008

Book review: Completing the portrait of a murdered man —by Afrah Jamal

Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter’s Memoir By Fatima Bhutto
Jonathan Cape Ltd; Pp 480

Google Fatima Bhutto and
George Clooney’s name comes up — the Daily Telegraph thinks they are an item; peruse her new book and the journey through the wonderland with its glitz and glamour takes an unexpectedly macabre twist. Her family history is to blame for blighting the sunny landscape. Bhuttos are the ruling elite. Every so often they run for office. This quest leaves a bloody trail and each attempt almost always ends badly. But their political aspirations override self-preservation. The Bhutto family name is as much a liability as an asset, and each generation manages to find itself contributing to a gruesome storyline.

If there is anyone born to write this story, it is Fatima, proclaims William Dalrymple on the cover of her new book Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter’s Memoir. When it comes to invoking pathos, romanticising her father’s life, glorifying his (questionable) legacy or retelling grandpa’s political history, the daughter of Murtaza Bhutto is, no doubt, the perfect candidate. Her unconventional family history of murder, mayhem and political misdemeanours makes for an incendiary tale. Murtaza was gunned down in a ‘police encounter’ during Benazir Bhutto’s regime. He is not the first Bhutto to have met a violent end. The circumstances of these deaths are a matter of record; scandalous details of their lives are public property. And if their continual bid for a stake in power, notwithstanding a host of pending court cases and/or sedition charges, elicits howls of disapproval, they are no longer audible. Little can be heard above the din of the raging insurgency these days.

Fatima Bhutto’s book is a cautionary tale designed to give the more controversial members of the first family a makeover and an aura of respectability. The writer unveils an intimate family portrait by piecing together fragments of her father’s life scattered across continents. She has unearthed a time capsule of valuable memories and ample tender family moments are effectively used to burnish Murtaza Bhutto’s reputation.

This was probably necessitated by the fact that Zulfikar Bhutto’s death prompted his sons to form a resistance movement. Pakistanis know Murtaza as the founder of Al-Zulfikar (AZ), a militant organisation based in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, whose subversive activities against the state included hijacking, heists and dispatching hit men to target key figures in Pakistan. Failed attempts to seize the Pakistani embassy in Athens also made the list. The book admits AZ’s most daring attempt at confronting the regime by trying to blow General Zia’s plane, Pak One, out of the sky, and yet tries to shield the masterminds from taking the rap for the hijacking of a Pakistani airliner that resulted in the death of a young officer (page 237). It refers to nefarious activities against the Pakistani establishment as romantic but misguided efforts (page 243), but other than the hijacking (which Murtaza does not own any more) and attempted murder of General Zia (which he gleefully accepts), it avoids going into details. Accusing the Pakistan Army of doing unspeakable acts of violence in East Pakistan in 1971 and challenging their human rights record in the ongoing Swat operation, however, is given special attention.

It depicts Murtaza as a paragon of virtue who balked at his brother-in-law’s (Benazir’s husband’s) attempt to lure him as an accomplice in bribery yet whose organisation, according to Tariq M Ashraf’s article ‘Terrorism in Pakistan: Emerging Trends’, is said to have ushered in political terrorism in Pakistan. Strewn along the way are constant reminders showcasing Murtaza — the loving father, family man and principled politician. Yet, all the light-hearted moments — and there are plenty — or the brilliance of story telling cannot salvage his reputation.

While people who disagreed with her grandfather’s politics do find a voice within these pages, thereby lending a semblance of objectivity to her work, but nothing, not even Murtaza’s dangerous alliances, distracts her from the original intent of honouring her father’s memory. Her pen indicts her deceased aunt (ex-prime minister) and uncle (current president) for criminal behaviour and minces no words while criticising her aunt’s brief sojourns in government. She compiles a list of names responsible for her father’s murder, holds Benazir morally responsible for one brother’s death, at the same time assuming her guilt in the uncle’s ‘suicide’.

Pakistan seen through Fatima’s eyes is a lawless frontier used to settle old scores and exact vengeance where her feuding family provides most of the action. The portrait born of love stops just short of conferring sainthood on a man who may well have deserved ‘father of the year’ award and who, given his rap sheet, should have been convicted but in a proper courtroom and not dealt with on the streets of Karachi. Fatima admits that her father’s “...choices remarkable and dangerous, honourable and foolish are not mine but I lived them”, and goes on to lament that she has lived with an incomplete picture of a murdered man (page 437). That picture has now been completed with a little help from Harvard Class of 1976 alumni, party loyalists, letters and an old flame. This spruced up image bears little resemblance to the shadowy figure of lore. This time it is Murtaza the magna cum laude from Harvard, heir apparent to the throne who is supposed to capture the public’s imagination, not Murtaza — the fearsome don. One can be forgiven for being a little dazed by this abrupt transformation.

Source:

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010\04\10\story_10-4-2010_pg3_6

Family matters

William Dalrymple / April 10, 2010, 0:01 IST

The life and times of the Bhuttos is seen afresh in a passionately partisan but well-constructed memoir. William Dalrymple reviews it in context.


The Bhuttos’ acrimonious family squabbles have long resembled one of the bloody succession disputes that habitually plagued South Asia during the time of the Great Mughals. In the case of the Bhuttos, they date back to the moment when Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was arrested on July 5, 1977.

Unsure how to defend their father and his legacy, his children had reacted in different ways. Benazir believed the struggle should be peaceful and political. Her brothers initially tried the same approach, forming al-Nusrat, the Save Bhutto committee; but after two futile years they decided in 1979 to turn to the armed struggle.

Murtaza was 23 and had just left Harvard where he got a top first, and where he was taught by, among others, Samuel Huntington. Forbidden by his father from returning to Zia’s Pakistan, he flew from the US first to London, then on to Beirut, where he and his younger brother Shahnawaz were adopted by Yasser Arafat. Under his guidance they received the arms and training necessary to form the Pakistan Liberation Army, later renamed Al-Zulfiquar or The Sword.

Just before his daughter Fatima was born, Murtaza and his brother had found shelter in Kabul as guests of the pro-Soviet government. There the boys had married a pair of Afghan sisters, Fauzia and Rehana Fasihudin, the beautiful daughters of a senior Afghan official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Fatima’s mother was Fauzia.

For all its PLO training in camps in Syria, Afghanistan and Libya, Al-Zulfiquar achieved little except for two failed assassination attempts on Zia and the hijacking of a Pakistan International Airways flight in 1981. This was diverted from Karachi to Kabul and secured the release of some 55 political prisoners; but it also resulted in the death of an innocent passenger, a young army officer. Zia used the hijacking as a means of cracking down on the Pakistan Peoples Party, and got the two boys placed on the Federal Investigation Agency’s most-wanted list. Benazir was forced to distance herself from her two brothers even though they subsequently denied sanctioning the hijack, and claimed only to have acted as negotiators once the plane landed in Kabul. While much about the details of the hijacking remains mysterious, Murtaza was posthumously acquitted of hijacking in 2003.

I first encountered the family in 1994 when, as a young foreign correspondent on assignment for the Sunday Times, I was sent to Pakistan to write a long magazine piece on the Bhutto dynasty. I met Benazir in the giddy pseudo-Mexican Prime Minister’s House that she had built in the middle of Islamabad.

It was the beginning of Benazir’s second term as Prime Minister, and she was at her most imperial. She both walked and talked in a deliberately measured and regal manner, and frequently used the royal “we”. During my interview, she took a full three minutes to float down the hundred yards of lawns separating the Prime Minister’s House from the chairs where I had been told to wait for her. There followed an interlude when Benazir found the sun was not shining in quite the way she wanted it to: “The sun is in the wrong direction,” she announced. Her hair was arranged in a sort of baroque beehive topped by white gauze dupatta like one of those Roman princesses in Caligula or Rome.

A couple of days later in Karachi, I met Benazir’s brother Murtaza in very different circumstances. Murtaza was on trial in Karachi for his alleged terrorist offences. A one hundred rupee bribe got me through the police cordon, and I soon found Murtaza with his mother — Begum Bhutto — in an annexe beside the courtroom. Murtaza looked strikingly like his father, Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto. He was handsome, very tall — well over six feet — with a deep voice and, like his father, exuded an air of self-confidence, bonhomie and charisma. He invited me to sit down: “Benazir doesn’t care what the local press says about her,” he said, “but she’s very sensitive to what her friends in London and New York get to read about her.”

“Has your sister got in touch with you since you returned to Pakistan?” I asked.

“No. Nothing. Not one note.”

“Did you expect her to intervene and get you off the hook?” I asked. “What kind of reception did you hope she would lay on for you when you returned from Damascus?”

“I didn’t want any favours,” replied Murtaza. “I just wanted her to let justice take its course, and for her not to interfere in the legal process. As it is, she has instructed the prosecution to use delaying tactics to keep me in confinement as long as possible. This trial has been going on for three months now and they still haven’t finished examining the first witness. She’s become paranoid and is convinced I’m trying to topple her.”

Murtaza went on to describe an incident the previous week when the police had opened fire on Begum Bhutto as she left her house to visit her husband’s grave. When the Begum ordered the gates of the compound to be opened and made ready to set off, the police opened fire. One person was killed immediately and two others succumbed to their injuries after the police refused to let the ambulances through. That night as three family retainers lay bleeding to death, 15 kilometres away in her new farmhouse, Benazir celebrated her father’s birthday with singing and dancing:

“After three deaths, she and her husband danced!” said the Begum now near to tears. “They must have known the police were firing at Al-Murtaza. Would all this have happened if she didn’t order it? But the worst crime was that they refused to let the ambulances through. If only they had let the ambulances through those two boys would be alive now: those two boys who used to love Benazir, who used to run in front of her car.”

The Begum was weeping now. “I kept ringing Benazir saying ‘for God sake stop the siege’, but her people just repeated: ‘Madam is not available’. She wouldn’t even take my call. One call from her walkie-talkie would have got the wounded through. Even General Zia...” The sentence trailed away. “What’s that saying in England?” asked the Begum: “Power corrupts, more power corrupts even more. Is that it?”

Two years later, to no one’s great surprise, Murtaza was himself shot dead in similar and equally suspicious circumstances.

Murtaza had been campaigning with his bodyguards in a remote suburb of Karachi. As his convoy neared his home at 70 Clifton, the street lights were abruptly turned off.

It was September 20, 1996, and Murtaza’s decision to take on Benazir had put him into direct conflict not only with his sister, but also with her husband Asif Ali Zardari. Murtaza had an animus against Zardari, who he believed was not just a nakedly and riotously corrupt polo-playing playboy, but had pushed Benazir to abandon the PPP’s once-radical agenda — fighting for social justice. Few believed the rivalry was likely to end peacefully. Both men had reputations for being trigger-happy. Murtaza’s bodyguards were notoriously rough, and Murtaza was alleged to have sentenced to death several former associates, including his future biographer, Raja Anwar, author of an unflattering portrait, The Terrorist Prince. Zardari’s reputation was worse still.

So insistent had the rumours become that Zardari had ordered the killing of Murtaza at 3 pm that afternoon, that Murtaza had given a press conference saying he had learnt that an assassination attempt on him was being planned, and he named some of the police officers he claimed were involved in the plot. Several of the officers were among those now waiting, guns cocked, outside his house. According to witnesses, when the leading car drew up at the roadblock, there was a single shot from the police, followed by two more shots, one of which hit the foremost of Murtaza’s armed bodyguards. Murtaza immediately got out of his car and urged his men to hold their fire. As he stood there with his hands raised above his head, urging calm, the police opened fire on the whole party with automatic weapons. The firing went on for nearly 10 minutes.

Two hundred yards down the road, inside the compound of 70 Clifton, the house where Benazir Bhutto had spent her childhood, was Murtaza’s wife Ghinwa, his daughter, the 12-year-old Fatima, and the couple’s young son Zulfikar, then aged six. When the first shot rang out, Fatima was in Zulfikar’s bedroom, helping put him to bed. She immediately ran with him into his windowless dressing room, and threw him onto the floor, protecting him by covering his body with her own.

After 45 minutes, Fatima called the Prime Minister’s House and asked to speak to her aunt. Zardari took her call:
Fatima: “I wish to speak to my aunt, please.”
Zardari: “It’s not possible.”
Fatima: “Why?” [At this point, Fatima says, she heard loud, stagy-sounding wailing.]
Zardari: “She’s hysterical, can’t you hear?”
Fatima: “Why?”
Zardari: “Don’t you know? Your father’s been shot.”

Fatima and Ghinwa immediately left the house and demanded to be taken to see Murtaza. By now there were no bodies in the street. It had all been swept and cleaned up: there was no blood, no glass, or indeed any sign of any violence at all. Each of the seven wounded had been taken to a different location, though none was taken to emergency units of any the different Karachi hospitals. The street was completely empty.

“They had taken my father to the Mideast, a dispensary,” says Fatima. “It wasn’t an emergency facility and had no facilities for treating a wounded man. We climbed the stairs, and there was my father lying hooked up to a drip. He was covered in blood and unconscious. You could see he had been shot several times. One of those shots had blown away part of his face. I kissed him and moved aside. He never recovered consciousness. We lost him just after midnight.”

The two bereaved women went straight to a police station to register a report, but the police refused to take it down. Benazir Bhutto was then the Prime Minister, and one might have expected the assassins would have faced the most extreme measures of the state for killing the Prime Minister’s brother. Instead, it was the witnesses and survivors who were arrested. They were kept incommunicado and intimidated. Two died soon afterwards in police custody.

“There were never any criminal proceedings,” says Fatima. “Benazir claimed in the West to be the queen of democracy, but at that time there were so many like us who had lost family to premeditated police killings. We were just one among thousands.”

Benazir always protested her innocence in the death of Murtaza, and claimed that the killing was an attempt to frame her by the army’s intelligence services: “Kill a Bhutto to get a Bhutto,” as she used to put it. But Murtaza was, after all, clearly a direct threat to Benazir’s future, and she gained the most from the murder. For this reason her complicity was widely suspected well beyond the immediate family: when Benazir and Zardari attempted to attend Murtaza’s funeral, their car was stoned by villagers who believed them responsible.

The judiciary took the same view, and the tribunal set up to investigate the killing concluded that Benazir’s administration was “probably complicit” in the assassination. Six weeks later, when Benazir fell from power, partly as a result of public outrage at the killings, Zardari was charged with Murtaza’s murder.

Fourteen years on, however, the situation is rather different. Benazir is dead, assassinated, maybe by the military, but equally possibly by some splinter group of the Taliban. Fatima is now a strikingly beautiful 28-year-old, fresh from a university education in New York and London. She has a razor-sharp mind and a forceful, determined personality. Meanwhile, the man Fatima Bhutto holds responsible for her father’s death is not only out of prison, but President of the country. The bravery of writing a memoir taking on such a man is self-evident, but Fatima seems remarkably calm about the dangers she has taken on.

As for the book itself, Songs of Blood and Sword is moving, witty and well-written. It is also passionately partisan: this is not, and does not pretend to be, an objective account of Murtaza Bhutto so much as a love letter from a grieving daughter and an act of literary vengeance and account-settling by a niece who believed her aunt had her father murdered.

Future historians will decide whether Murtaza really does deserve to be vindicated for the hijacking in Kabul and will weigh up whether or not Murtaza, who even Fatima describes as “impulsive” and “honourable and foolish”, would have made a better leader than his deeply flawed sister; or indeed whether the equally inconsistent Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto deserves the adulation heaped on him by his granddaughter. But where the book is unquestionably important is the reminder it gives the world as to Benazir’s flaws. Since her death, Benazir has come to be regarded, especially in the US, as something of a martyr for democracy. Yet the brutality of Benazir’s untimely end should not blind anyone to her as astonishingly weak record as a politician. Benazir was no Aung San Suu Kyi, and it is misleading as well as simplistic to depict her as having died for freedom; in reality, Benazir’s instincts were not so much democratic as highly autocratic.

Within her own party, she declared herself the lifetime president of the PPP, and refused to let her brother Murtaza challenge her for its leadership; his death was an extreme version of the fate of many who opposed her. Benazir also colluded in wider human rights abuses and extra-judicial killings, and during her tenure government death squads murdered hundreds of her opponents. Amnesty International accused her government of having one of the world's worst records of custodial deaths, abductions, killings and torture.

Far from reforming herself in exile, Benazir kept a studied distance from the pioneering lawyers’ movement which led the civil protests against President Musharraf’s unconstitutional attempts to manipulate the Supreme Court. She also sidelined those in her party who did support the lawyers. Later she said nothing to stop President Musharraf ordering the US-brokered “rendition” of her rival Nawaz Sharif to Saudi Arabia, so removing from the election her most formidable democratic opponent. Many of her supporters regarded her deal with Musharraf as a betrayal of all that her party stood for. Her final act in her will was to hand the inappropriately named Pakistan People’s Party over to her teenage son as if it were her personal family fiefdom.

Worse still, Benazir was a notably inept administrator. During her first 20-month-long premiership, she failed to pass a single piece of major legislation, and during her two periods in power she did almost nothing to help the liberal causes she espoused so enthusiastically to the Western media.

Instead, it was under her watch that Pakistan’s secret service, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), helped install the Taliban in Pakistan, and she did nothing to rein in the agency’s disastrous policy of training up Islamist jihadis from the country’s madrasas to do the ISI’s dirty work in Kashmir and Afghanistan. As a young correspondent covering the conflict in Kashmir in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I saw how during her premiership, Pakistan sidelined the Kashmiris’ own secular resistance movement, the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, and instead gave aid and training to the brutal Islamist outfits it created and controlled, such as Lashkar-e-Toiba and Harkat ul-Mujahedin. Benazir’s administration, in other words, helped train the very assassins who are most likely to have shot her.

Benazir was, above all, a feudal landowner, whose family owned great tracts of Sindh, and with the sense of entitlement this produced. Democracy has never thrived in Pakistan in part because landowning remains the base from which politicians emerge. In this sense, Pakistani democracy in Pakistan is really a form of “elective feudalism”: the Bhuttos’ feudal friends and allies were nominated for seats by Benazir, and these landowners made sure their peasants voted them in.

Behind Pakistan’s swings between military government and democracy lies a surprising continuity of elitist interests: to some extent, Pakistan’s industrial, military and landowning classes are all interrelated, and they look after each other. They do not, however, do much to look after the poor. The government education system barely functions in Pakistan, and for the poor, justice is almost impossible to come by. According to the political scientist Ayesha Siddiqa, “Both the military and the political parties have all failed to create an environment where the poor can get what they need from the state. So the poor have begun to look for alternatives. In the long term, these flaws in the system will create more room for the fundamentalists.”

Many right-wing commentators on the Islamic world tend to see political Islam as an anti-liberal and irrational form of “Islamo-fascism”. Yet much of the success of the Islamists in countries such as Pakistan comes from the Islamists’ ability to portray themselves as champions of social justice, fighting people like Benazir Bhutto from the corrupt Westernised elite that rules most of the Muslim world from Karachi to Riyadh, Ramallah and Algiers.

Benazir’s reputation for massive corruption was gold dust to these Islamic revolutionaries, just as the excesses of the Shah were to their counterparts in Iran 30 years earlier: during her government, Pakistan was declared one of the three most corrupt countries in the world, and Bhutto and her husband, Asif Zardari — widely known as “Mr 10%” — faced allegations of plundering the country; charges were filed in Pakistan, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States to investigate their various bank accounts, and they stood accused of jointly looting no less than $1.4 billion from the state.

When I interviewed Abdul Rashid Ghazi in the Islamabad Red Mosque shortly before his death in Musharraf’s July attack on the complex, he returned time and again to these issues: “We want our rulers to be honest people,” he repeated. “But now the rulers are living a life of luxury while thousands of innocent children have empty stomachs and can’t even get basic necessities.”

This is the principal reason for the rise of the Islamists in Pakistan, and why so many people support them: they are the only force capable of taking on the country’s landowners and their military cousins. Benazir Bhutto may have been a brave, gutsy, secular and liberal woman. But sadness at the demise of this courageous fighter should not mask the fact that as a corrupt feudal who did nothing for the poor, she was a central part of Pakistan’s problems, rather than any solution to them. Songs of Blood and Sword is a timely and forceful reminder of this.

Certainly, readers of Fatima’s book have ahead of them a wonderfully close-focussed and well-constructed memoir from the heart of the most violent and Borgia-like of the South Asian dynasties to savour. They also, most likely, have further instalments to come. During a recent interview, I asked Fatima whether she would consider entering politics herself: “I am political,” she replied, “but there are many ways to be political. I don’t think that becoming an MP is necessarily the best way to influence people. For the time being, I want to be a writer. But who knows? If in the future there was a way I could serve my country, one that did not involve becoming yet another part of dynastic birthright politics, maybe I could envisage putting my name forward.” Watch this space.

William Dalrymple's most recent book is Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India

Source:
http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/family-matters/391382/