By Kamran Rehmat/Islamabad
Nusrat Bhutto, the long Alzheimer’s suffering former Pakistani first lady, walked into the sunset last month in Dubai.
Family album: (From left to right) Shahnawaz, Benazir, Murtaza, Sanam (the only surviving member), Nusrat and Zulfikar Bhutto
Following the bone-chilling killing of her son Murtaza Bhutto in a police shootout in 1996, her teary daughter Benazir Bhutto, the Muslim world’s first woman prime minister, recounted in simple yet profound words the most affecting part of the Greek tragedy that has enveloped the Bhutto family.
She spoke of how, one male member of the family after the other was killed: father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto at 51 and brothers, Murtaza, 42, and Shahnawaz, 27.
At the mention of the youngest scion, Benazir lost composure, saying, “We three women (mother Nusrat, Benazir herself, and sister Sanam) look and wonder at the graves of the three men - each one taken away from us young.”
One does not have to be a party supporter to feel the pain of a family that came to symbolise the people’s will, however fragile, in country where a Bhutto has always paid a price before democracy could get a sniff.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s first popularly elected prime minister, was hanged on disputed charges of an opponent’s murder following a trial that was so sham that chances are even the devil probably saw it as a Machiavellian plot.
General Ziaul Haq had toppled Bhutto’s elected government in the summer of 1977 and saw it as a perfect ruse to physically eliminate the popular leader, who ironically, had elevated him as the army chief!
The haunting begins inside Garhi Khuda Baksh, the family mausoleum, where the feeling that a defining part of Pakistan’s history - and cursed spirit - lies locked is inescapable.
Nusrat, the last of the elder Bhuttos, reunited with the family, leaving a very lonely Sanam, the youngest and only surviving member of the nuclear Bhutto family, behind. The foreboding that the youngest member of the clan would bear the heaviest cross has come true, devastatingly.
Although there are parallels connecting the fate of Pakistan’s Bhuttos, India’s Gandhis, Sri Lanka’s Bandaranaikes and Bangladesh’s warring begums, the scars of the Bhuttos are particularly, poignant.
The Iranian-born Nusrat could not have bargained for such a morbid script when she fell starry-eyed for the handsome Zulfikar and married in 1951.
In the wake of the military coup that ousted Bhutto, she watched in horror as her husband was sent to the gallows, which was followed by the poisoning of her youngest son in France a few years later before the eldest lost his life wantonly, in a hail of bullets, in Karachi — during her own daughter’s government, no less.
Thanks to an advanced stage of Alzheimer’s, Nusrat never got to know that the same daughter, too, paid with her life in cold blood.
Benazir was assassinated minutes after her last public meeting in Rawalpindi in 2007.
This may seem like a Bhutto rhapsody but it is not. Agreed there is so much self-denial involved but it must be remembered the same is willingly risked for the sake of power and pelf.
To their credit, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his daughter Benazir showed they were also driven to etch a mark on history and that they did — even if the fairytale was cut short each time.
However, the family also contributed to the self-destruction with the choices they made, personally or politically.
Understandable as their rage was at the cruel blow dealt by that cunning despot Zia, both Bhutto scions, Murtaza and Shahnawaz, took the wrong flight in letting revenge get the better of them.
What is sad is that both had time on their side but lacked patience, swiftly forming Al-Zulfikar, a militant organization, that aimed at toppling General Zia to avenge their father’s execution at his hand-picked army chief’s behest.
Neither could shake off the legacy when they were killed – 11 years apart - with Murtaza making a furtive attempt to steal Benazir’s thunder instead of becoming her rock.
While Murtaza showed scant respect for the relentless struggled waged by Benazir, which included several terms of house arrest and solitary confinement during Zia’s oppressive rule, Benazir was unnerved by her mother’s overt support for the son to take over Bhutto’s mantle.
By way of explanation, Murtaza publicly alleged that his illustrious sister had deviated from the socialist moorings of their father for the sake of power. He also made a plank of accusing her of allowing her husband Asif Zardari, the current president, to loot and plunder national wealth.
Nusrat meanwhile, played the stereotypical East-ender in siding with the male heir. In fact, Benazir appeared to have prophetically read her mother’s mind which is why she forcibly replaced her mother as the party’s chairperson years earlier!
Even as Nusrat vacated her traditional seat from Larkana to make sure Murtaza would become an MP and which, she desperately hoped would pave the way for his eventual elevation as the party head, this led to much heartburning at Benazir’s end, who also stood by her husband.
The resultant clash effectively, proved to be the last straw on the camel’s back. Murtaza’s murder also led to the end of Benazir’s second stint in power barely a fortnight after the tragedy — at the hands of her own handpicked president!
Benazir has been referred to as the Antigone of Pakistan, a character in Greek mythology, who avenges the family honour, but in an irony of ironies, she was able to do that one last time only thanks to a tidal sympathy wave generated by her assassination.
In the end, this bequeathed power to Asif Zardari - who Nusrat chose to be Benazir’s husband - but subsequently, they all became estranged, save for the couple.
What caps this incredibly paradoxical tale is that Benazir herself studiously cast her husband aside politically, to avoid any hitch in her third bid for power in 2007.
It is also no small irony that the same man, who is singularly despised in the Bhutto clan and held responsible for its breakup, has not only snared and held the party together but is widely tipped to take it to a second successive term and bigger spoils.
** The writer is a freelance journalist based in Islamabad and can be reached at [email protected]