Aboard the Democracy Train (30 page)

Six months later, the chief justice of the Supreme Court managed to get Sarki produced before a Zhob magistrate in Balochistan. He was found sick and emaciated after being tortured. In May 2008, Sarki returned to the US to talk about his ordeal. He said that after his release, he had looked with trepidation at his image in the mirror: “The person who looked back at me made me break down in tears.”

In November 2007, Benazir arrived in Balochistan with a message of reconciliation for the Baloch. In Karachi, she visited tribal chief, Sardar Khair Baksh Marri, to condole him for the death of his son, Balach Marri, who was killed during Musharraf’s army operation in Kohlu. She also demanded the release of Baloch chiefs like Sardar Akhtar Mengal and Sardar Talal Bugti, who had been imprisoned in this period.

With the upcoming election in mind, Benazir worked to smooth anger against the federation and mobilize for a provincial PPP government in Balochistan. Much needed to be done to allay perceptions that she might follow in the footsteps of her late father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto – whose dismissal of the National Awami Party government in Balochistan had, in 1973, triggered the Baloch insurgency.

The wizened PPP secretary general in Balochistan, Bismillah Khan Kakar – who sits in an unassuming party office in the crowded Quetta bazaar – shuddered at the way Benazir ignored security in favor of populism. As the trusted party official in charge of her security, in December 2007, Kakar vainly tried to dissuade Benazir from visiting the home of PPP worker, Azizullah Memon, who had recently passed away.

“We told her the security situation was not good but then she insisted that she would go on foot,” said Bismillah Khan, the despair penetrating his sing-song Pushto accent.

Benazir went to address a rally in Afghanistan’s border town of Quetta with the words people had come to hear: “Every dictator has to date been supported by the US. All we have got under Musharraf are dead bodies in Karachi and warlords in Afghanistan.”

The US – which had negotiated the Benazir-Musharraf deal to allow their strong man to rule with a democratic face – was, by then, growing embarrassed by her public denunciations. The Bush administration’s ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson privately communicated to Benazir that she should tone down her rhetoric.

But Benazir had set a populist tone, which Asif Zardari too was obliged to follow. In the post-Benazir period, President Zardari apologized to the people of Balochistan for the military action under Musharraf. His government set up a commission entitled Aghaz-i-Huqooq-i-Balochistan (Initiation of the Rights of Balochistan), headed by PPP Senator Raza Rabbani, which promised repayment of billions in arrears owed for sui gas from the province, as well as royalties for its rich natural resources.

But although the tone of the PPP government had changed, the content remained the same. There was little follow up to ensure that the province received its due share. Instead, Balochistan remains economically depressed to this day: major power outages have undercut water provided by tube wells and damaged agriculture. Unemployment remains high – in 2010, nearly 40,000 graduates turned out to apply for 5,000 teaching jobs.

After Zardari took over as President, the chief of the UNHCR and American national, John Solecki was kidnapped in Quetta and the secessionist Baloch Liberation United Front claimed responsibility. Around that time, three Baloch nationalist leaders – Ghulam Muhammad, Sher Muhammad and Lala Munir – were abducted from a lawyer’s office in Turbat, Makran. While Solecki was released, the bullet-riddled bodies of the Baloch nationalists were found in the desert.

In a small town like Quetta – where intelligence officials lurk in plain view outside the court where the nationalists were to be tried – people appeared to know their killers. When a shutter down strike ensued in the impoverished Balochistan province, it was not only a protest against the “hidden hands” but a referendum on the helplessness of the Zardari government.

Late Tahir Mohammed Khan – who had served as Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s federal minister and confidante – had watched Benazir try to dress Baloch wounds while she moved through his hometown in Quetta. Speaking with the considered wisdom that matched his experience he said, “Even if Benazir were alive today, she would have remained subservient, because the establishment and the bureaucracy remain very strong.”

On November 3, 2007, as President Gen. Musharraf lost his grip over power and imposed emergency, the frenetic pace of events only intensified Benazir’s sense of mission. Convinced that the chief justice would not revalidate his second term as president, Musharraf put him under house arrest, removed 60 judges and curtailed civil rights, including media freedom.

As if sensing that everything would unravel, Benazir flew from Dubai to Pakistan the same day that Gen. Musharraf imposed emergency. Given that her deal with Musharraf was public knowledge, she took extra pains to distance herself from the general. It was, in every sense, like walking a tight rope. Benazir’s association with Musharraf threatened to damage her vote bank as well.

Shortly after the emergency, I too flew to Karachi to a succession of unfolding events that would usher in the current political landscape. Thousands of lawyers, journalists and NGO leaders were under house arrest or jailed for their opposition to President Musharraf’s Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO), which mandated loyalty to him rather than the constitution. In Sindh, 12 out of 17 high court judges had adopted the chief justice’s directives and refused to take oath under the PCO – a pattern replicated by judges in the country’s four provinces.

Among those who refused to take oath was the deposed chief justice of the Sindh High Court, the late Sabihuddin Ahmed. After the emergency, police had blocked the road to his home to stop him from officiating as chief justice. With his curling moustache and a habit of drawing puffs of tobacco smoke between short and often sardonic remarks, Justice Sabihuddin greeted me warmly at the door.

Inside, Justice Sabihuddin leafed through the constitution to show me the paragraph that read that it was illegal for the chief of army staff to declare an emergency when there was no external threat to the country.

Shortly after becoming a judge, Justice Sabihuddin had flagged me down from his official chauffer driven car. I had pulled over to the side of the road, wondering if I had violated traffic laws.
On my rolling down the window, he had walked up to my car – puffing away, with his big agreeable smile – to say, “Do drop by and see me sometimes. You folks have stopped seeing me since I became a judge.”

But in November 2007, the legal community was in turmoil. A retired judge of the Sindh High Court, Justice Majida Rizvi was upset at Musharraf’s novel methods to induct new judges. In Sindh, she said, lawyers received phone calls from the intelligence agencies saying that the government would revive cases pending against them in the National Accountability Bureau if they did not agree to become judges.

Only a month earlier, Musharraf had used NAB to take back corruption cases against Benazir, Asif and others in order to get the PPP to support his bid for president.

In the aftermath of the emergency, the electronic media was blacked out, their advertisements suspended and news anchors black listed. The Karachi Press Club became the center for the movement against Musharraf, where civil rights groups lobbied every day against the emergency. Military vehicles parked outside the KPC kept a watchful eye on lawyers, political groups, NGOs, labor groups and media organizations – even as their numbers grew too fast to be counted.

Musharraf’s emergency also raised a red flag with the US. Despite the nomination of Gen. Ashfaque Pervaiz Kiyani on July 2007 as his successor, Musharraf refused to relinquish his position as general. His isolation was complete after his benefactor, US President George Bush, made a television appearance in which he called for Musharraf to take off his uniform.

Meanwhile, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif met in Pakistan in December 2007 and reaffirmed their commitment to the Charter of Democracy. Benazir involved two prominent human rights activists, Asma Jehangir and Afrasiab Khattak – both former chairpersons of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan – to work on a constitutional reforms package. It was designed to get rid of the constitutional amendments passed by former military rulers – Gen. Zia ul Haq and Gen. Pervaiz Musharraf – and strengthen the parliamentary system.

Islamabad, in which Benazir Bhutto twice took oath as prime minister, had during her exile moved firmly into the US orbit of influence. It looked nothing like the provincial capital I had visited in 1991 or even 2001. Instead, toward the end of the decade it had become a cosmopolitan city where big money and an entrenched mafia had transformed it into a US outpost for Afghanistan.

Today, the Islamabad highway – which connects to the airport – has signs to Srinagar, Muzzafarabad, Lahore and Murree. The nouveau riche display their boorish mentality in high-speed, dark-tinted Mercedes cars, flashing lights to move drivers off the roads. Middle Eastern and foreign capital has poured in and influenced the architecture of banks, gas stations and mosques. Five Star hotels, amongst them the Marriot Hotel, are barricaded like massive fortresses.

Islamabad is the epicenter for CIA-ISI partnerships and betrayals in a growing battle for control over Afghanistan. As in the days of the Cold War, the US and NATO presence in Afghanistan has once again strengthened the Pakistan military. Like the Margalla hills, the war in Afghanistan casts its shadow over the National Assembly and Senate – which today sit amid a formidable ring of security check posts.

What has not changed is the presence of poor people, which Islamabad attempts to brush under the carpet. Behind the veneer of modernity, it is impossible not to notice common people at bus and wagon stops and impoverished wayside restaurants, bearded men in loose-fitting
shalwar kameez
or the few numbers of women in public. The feudal culture is evident in the peasants who trek from their villages to Islamabad, where they end up as domestic servants.

Islamabad – with its filthy rich and powerful – along with its poorer twin garrison city of Rawalpindi, was the perfect setting for the mafia to finally get Benazir Bhutto, who had cheated death from the day she landed in Pakistan. By publicly denouncing Musharraf, Benazir had simultaneously challenged the intelligence
agencies and the Islamic militants secretly coddled by them for strategic purposes in the region. The prospects of a Bhutto rousing the masses riled the military, even as the militants were strongly opposed to being ruled by a woman.

That fateful day – December 27, 2007 – Benazir drove to Liaquat Bagh, Rawalpindi in a white Land Cruiser packed with eight people. They included the driver, Javed ur Rehman and a retired Major SSP, Imtiaz Hussain. Benazir sat behind them, between Sindh’s leading feudal Makhdoom Amin Fahim and close companion Naheed Khan. The third tier consisted of Naheed’s husband, Safdar Abbasi and security guard, Khalid Shahanshah. Benazir’s personal attendant, Razak Mirani, occupied the last seat.

Eyewitnesses said that security was “very tight” that day at Liaquat Bagh, Rawalpindi. The rally participants were scanned at the rally entrance, even while armed police stood on rooftops. The crowd was small and, oddly enough, seated on chairs located a considerable distance from the stage.

Party loyalists and photographers swarmed the stage where Benazir – attired in blue with a white
dupatta
– talked energetically of how the militants had taken down the Pakistani flag in Swat, but “we will keep it flying.”

While Benazir spoke, news filtered in that Nawaz Sharif’s procession had been attacked in Islamabad. It created a commotion in the media stand and some of the journalists began to leave the rally. However, Benazir went on speaking.

Although PPP guards were deputed to guard Benazir, subsequent videos indicate that her internal security was compromised.
YouTube
videos show that Benazir’s party member, Khalid Shahanshah gesticulated to “would be” assassins from the stage – a finger sliding across his throat and eyes rolling toward Benazir. Shahanshah was later killed by unidentified assailants in Karachi and the PPP failed to investigate his murder.

After her speech, Benazir walked on the staircase behind the stage and got into her Land Cruiser – parked within municipal precincts. Eyewitnesses said that police had, by then, secured the rally and did not let anyone leave.

Senator Safdar Abbasi, who was with Benazir till her last moment, recalls that she was “very pleased” with the reception she had received. There was a sense of abandon in her as she stepped into her white Land Cruiser and hugged Abbasi’s wife, Naheed Khan – Benazir’s life long protector and companion.

Their bombproof land cruiser made a right turn on Liaquat road and then on College road where some two hundred or so PPP supporters raced along, raising slogans. Subsequent video footage shows that among them was the killer – a sophisticated looking young man in dark glasses, white shirt and coat, with a gun and explosives. The video shows another man wearing a white hood stood behind him, believed to be his cover suicide bomber.

At that stage, the black Mercedes which carried Benazir’s chief security officer, Rehman Malik – who had served Benazir and Asif well while they lived in exile – was nowhere to be seen. It was a departure from the normal drill, where Benazir’s vehicle normally followed Malik’s vehicle. Traveling with Malik was a former Musharraf loyalist, the retired Lt. Gen. Tauqir Zia – who had joined the PPP only days before – and party men, Babar Awan and Farhatullah Babar.

Blissfully unaware of the dangers lurking around and anxious to invigorate crowd support ahead of her forthcoming election, Benazir decided to respond to the PPP youth who ran alongside her white land cruiser while they cried “
Wazir-i-Azam – Benazir
” (Prime Minister – Benazir).