IN THE week following the October 18 suicide bombings in Pakistan that killed nearly 140 people, Benazir Bhutto – who returned to Pakistan after eight years of self-imposed exile and was ostensibly the target of the attacks – has riled against the forces that oppose the restoration of democracy in Pakistan, blaming them for the attacks.
   Initially, Bhutto suggested that former President Ziaul Haque’s cadre within ‘certain government agencies’ could be behind the bombings, an accusation she has subsequently fallen silent on, preferring to point the finger at radical Islamist groups within Pakistan and in neighbouring Afghanistan. ‘I did not come this far in life to be intimidated by suicide bombers,’ Bhutto wrote of the attacks in an article published in the UK’s Financial Times newspaper on October 25. ‘I returned to Pakistan this week to lead the fight for democracy. The attack on me was more than an attack on an individual. It was meant as an attack on all the political forces in Pakistan that want democracy.’
   There is little doubt that the radical and obscurantist Islamist factions, who may have carried out the attacks, are indeed waging a war on democratic and liberal values in modern-day Pakistan. Ever since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and the role that General Pervez Musharraf and his forces have played in fighting the US’s ‘proxy-war on terror,’ these disparate groups have become far more radicalised and more organised across the Pak-Afghan border where Islamabad’s reach and influence is modest. The question that the circumstances of Benazir’s return to Pakistan raises, however, is whether she is as emblematic of Pakistan’s democratic future as she and the mainstream media in the West are portraying her to be.
   Washington’s script for Pakistan may as well have come out of Hollywood. For it is in only in the movies that heroes are never villainous, villains never heroic, and historic events have little propensity to ad-lib. For one, it is increasingly clear that Benazir has returned with blessings and a brief from Washington, which wants to see a watered down ersatz democracy in Pakistan, fearing that a genuine pro-democracy movement is rapidly gaining momentum there and General Pervez Musharraf is an increasingly beleaguered president. That Musharraf had to restore Iftekhar Chowdhury to his position as chief justice, that in August US and NATO forces discovered that Pakistani troops had surrendered to Taliban guerrillas in Waziristan without firing a single shot, that Musharraf is increasingly failing in his attempts to convince ordinary Pakistanis that being the US’s partner in the ‘war on terror’ is also in their interest, are all telling signs of Washington’s corroding influence.
   It is against this backdrop that Benazir has struck a deal with a beleaguered dictator, who has allowed her to return at the behest of Washington even though he barred former Pakistani premier Nawaz Sharif from entering the country last month. Despite the crowds that Benazir pulled upon her return to Pakistan, the reality remains that ordinary Pakistanis see her loveless marriage with Musharraf as one arranged by the US, and they believe she has returned not to restore democracy but to delay or stave off a political movement that could overthrow Musharraf’s absolute rule. The most damning evidence of Benazir’s ulterior motive can be found in her statement to members of the US Congress on September 26 where she said she would be a more effective US ally against al-Qaeda than Musharraf has been. Given the US interventions in Pakistan since 2001, being identified as a guardian of US interests in that country is political suicide, and that Benazir has sworn allegiance to Washington is inimical for the restoration of democracy to Pakistan. As many Pakistan-watchers have pointed out in the past week, the Bush game plan will be to allow elections in Pakistan in January, see Benazir elected, while Musharraf still remains president, ‘so that the General can combat the terrorists, and the lady play democracy.’
   This allows the US and its allies to win on two counts. While it can continue to coerce and cajole Pakistan’s military establishment into remaining a partner in the ‘war on terror,’ Benazir’s measured democratic struggle would prevent Pakistani moderates from becoming radicalised, keeping the country’s nuclear firepower from the hands of mullahs who could otherwise come to power through democratic means. Unfortunately, that script will have to be rewritten again and again in the coming months, in light of the Karachi blasts and the popularity crisis that Benazir will face. It has also not escaped notice that Benazir and her Pakistan People’s Party opted for political opportunism in striking a deal with Musharraf, weeks after she ruled out the possibility of a rapprochement with Nawaz Sharif which would surely have rung the death knell for Musharraf. From that perspective, Benazir, though surprised by the hero’s welcome she received, will also know well that the attack on her life could very well be part of Pakistan’s popular struggle to assert its sovereignty and self-determination, though it may be the mullahs that are behind it.
   One of the biggest challenges facing the US in Pakistan today is that events such as the storming of the Lal Masjid earlier this year, during which the Pakistani military fired on its own civilians at the behest of Washington, has meant that the general populace are radicalised to a point where the Taliban are now beginning to represent popular aspirations through its anti-American rhetoric. To make matters worse, President Musharraf later justified the massacre of women and children during the storming of the Lal Masjid as ‘collateral damage,’ straight out of the Bush-Cheney lexicon. But the growing power and influence of radical Islamist factions in Pakistan is not as much of a threat to the US as it is to peace, stability and democracy in Pakistan itself.
   By pitting the Pakistani army against pro-Taliban people in feudally administered areas such as north and south Waziristan, the US is increasingly making it impossible not to equate Islamabad and the army with US geopolitical interests. Even on Thursday, yet another 15 Pakistani soldiers were killed by Islamist rebels in the northern region of Swat. The attack comes a day after the military deployed 2,500 additional troops to tackle militancy in the area. Ever since Musharraf seized power in a coup in 1999, he has promised the educated middle- and upper-class elite of Pakistan that he would subjugate the radical Islamists and bring peace and stability to Pakistan. Not only has his presidency resulted in a deepening of the radical Islamists’ sway over popular opinion in Pakistan, his regime has been accused of nepotism and abuse of power for economic gain, stripping from him the moral high ground he had claimed during his assumption of power. With the deal struck with Benazir, Musharraf has undoubtedly been granted a new lease of life. Unfortunately, this game of smoke and mirrors, will go a long way in undermining Pakistan’s democracy struggle, further radicalising a general populace who will see through the charade of Benazir’s brand of democracy.
   mahtabhaider@gmail.com

BENAZIR Bhutto has one common trait with her father Zulfiqar. They both had a penchant for living dangerously. But the daughter has never quite measured up to the intellectual calibre of the father, an inadequacy she has made good by qualities of persistence and mastering the art of political theatre.
   How else can one explain the rousing reception she received on the streets of Karachi on her triumphant return home until joy turned to mourning as one of the most savage carnages in the history of modern suicide bombings plunged the country in grief? Indeed, looking at the joyous crowds, it did not seem she was the person who had compromised with the ruling general in a tawdry deal to buy her return ticket home after seven years of self-imposed exile.
   Benazir knew that the only way she could come home was to lend a helping hand to General Pervez Musharraf to maintain the fiction of having won a new term to retain the presidency. Time was running out for her even as the king’s party, cobbled by the general with defectors, and elements in the powerful intelligence agencies and the army, were plainly opposed to her return.
   Benazir also knew that the three A’s that have proverbially governed the country – army, America and Allah – required her to secure Washington’s approval for her homeward journey. For a Bush administration desperate in seeking to shore up the ebbing powers of President Musharraf with the leader of the largest political party, the PPP, Benazir was what the doctor ordered. Benazir, of course, had made it amply clear that she was very accommodative of American concerns in the ‘war on terror.’
   For Benazir, it was a dangerous journey because apart from the specific threats made, any number of militants and elements in the security services, if not the army, had scores to settle with her. The risks and the political compromises made were, therefore, worth taking. She was betting that after eight years of army rule, General Musharraf had overstayed his welcome and the hunger for civilian rule was so great among large sections of the people that her supping with the devil would be forgiven and forgotten. And the sea of adoring faces that initially greeted her cavalcade from the airport seemed to suggest that she was betting right.
   The carnage on the airport road has muddied the waters and has added new imponderables to an already uncertain future. Assuming that General Musharraf overcomes the legal hurdles to retaining the presidency, what kind of campaigning can Benazir conduct for the parliamentary elections? Sub-continental elections, when they are free and fair, are won or lost on the strength of personal campaigning by the party leader crisscrossing constituencies and regions to spread the aura of his or her mystique. So it is in India with the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, so it will be in the case of the claimant to the Bhutto legacy, demonstrated by the giant depictions of the father and the daughter on the armoured container truck that bore the brunt of the suicide bombings.
   Second, politically, it would be difficult to deny the other former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, his homecoming the second time around, quite apart from the legal redress sought. It is all very well for Benazir to assert that he had compromised with the general in order to remain at liberty abroad while she had refused to do so. Indeed, the roles seem reversed in the present instance because he has refused to have any dealing with the dictator, as he describes President Musharraf, while she has chosen the way of compromise. A unique trait of Pakistani political leaders has been their preference to live abroad, voluntarily or otherwise, when the situation gets too hot at home. A third leader, still content to live in London in safety, is the MQM leader Altaf Hussain whose party supports the general.
   Third, assuming the president wins his legal battle to stay in office, how can he enthuse a disheartened king’s party – consisting in the main of defectors, who can defect again – to do well in a fair election? If the elections were rigged, the army-security services establishment would have to pay a very heavy price.
   Fourth, what happens to the American obsession with the ‘war on terror’ which is responsible for funnelling billions of dollars and rock solid political support to President Musharraf? The president’s attempts at making peace with and waging war against the Pashtun-dominated lawless tribes on the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier have proved unsuccessful and costly in terms of soldiers lost and taken hostage. Besides, the general’s selective approach to combating militants while elements in his own establishment are still nurturing them has come to haunt him and the country.
   It is not unusual for the hand that feeds the snake to be bitten by it, but when militants trained and funded by the state as an instrument of policy in relation to Afghanistan and India take on a momentum of their own and become impervious to official command, the dangers are obvious. These policies in recent times have been compounded by political expediency in giving militants a long rope, as the Lal Masjid episode in Islamabad so dramatically demonstrated.
   Against this backdrop, where does Pakistan go from here? In all probability, President Musharraf would want to retain his power to dismiss an elected government, but he should first of all invite Nawaz Sharif to return home to give some semblance of respectability to parliamentary elections. The American choreographed scheme of the Musharraf-Benazir duo lending strength to each other and bringing the trappings of democracy to the country might meet the Nawaz roadblock, but it is a risk worth taking. The only way in which Pakistan can beat back the threat of extremists at home and in the neighbourhood is to get as many people and parties believing in sanity and the modern state to fight militants and militancy.
   The situation is not as hopeless as it might appear to be. The truly remarkable struggle by civil society led by lawyers to contest President Musharraf’s design in removing the chief justice of Pakistan revealed the strength of civil society. Taken together with the brave media, there are many things going for Pakistan. But the ‘war on terror’ is only one aspect, of paramount importance as it is, of the future struggle.
   A longer battle will involve the dismantling of the feudal structure of Pakistani society and politics. As the outpouring of sympathy in India for Pakistan in its hour of tragedy revealed, there is goodwill for the neighbour – if only in self-interest – despite the tangled history of the Partition and the tub-thumping by demagogues on both sides of the border.