Songs Of Blood And Sword: A Daughter'S Memoir (52 page)

One of the accused policemen, Wajid Durrani, saluting Benazir as she arrives at Mideast on the night of 20 September, 1996

Gulf News
front page, Sunday 22 September, 1996, showing the helicopter carrying Murtaza’s body as it was being held down by mourners

Ghinwa leaving Mideast after Murtaza’s murder

The last Bhuttos: me, Sassi and Zulfi in Garhi Khuda Bux in 2008 as Sassi visits her father Shahnawaz’s grave for the first time. Mir Ali, our brother, is to the left of us.

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M
y father spent the rest of 1994 touring Pakistan. He travelled to the mountains of Balochistan, to Waziristan and Swat, across the Punjab and through the heartland of Sindh. In Lahore in August he spoke against the government’s attempts to subvert the judiciary by sacking judges who had ruled against the state and the shifting of qualified judges to lower courts to create vacancies for PPP loyalists and political appointees. Murtaza spoke about the government’s curtailing of press freedoms; printing presses belonging to newspapers, especially to the more widely read vernacular papers, were shut down if their articles came out too harshly against the government. In Lahore Murtaza spoke of the case of Amir Mateen, a journalist from a local paper, who had been attacked by ‘unknown assailants’ and beaten in response to his reporting.

In Karachi Murtaza addressed the Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry and spoke sternly about the government’s corruption. ‘Economic crimes have to be checked effectively and tackled with an iron hand . . . loot and plunder is the order of the day and yet no one is brought to book.’
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Again in the Punjab several months later, having travelled to attend a court hearing in one of the ongoing cases the government was pursuing against him, Murtaza lambasted the foreign deals the government was engaging in as fraudulent schemes based around huge kickbacks. The
Frontier Post
newspaper recorded Murtaza as frustratedly explaining that in spite of a 4-billion-dollar investment from the US and 7 billion dollars coming from Hong Kong to the Pakistani energy sector, the cost per unit to Pakistani consumers would be ‘6 to 6.5 cents, whereas the
international rate was 3 to 3.5 cents per unit. Electricity would be sold to consumers around double the international rates.’
²

By December the gluttonous corruption of the state gave way to another crisis; Sindh was being engulfed in ethnic violence. The ethnic Muhajir population, Urdu-speaking as opposed to the rest of the province’s Sindhi speakers, were the target of political violence. The Muhajir Quami Movement (MQM), a quasi ethno-fascist party at the time, began to riot and incite violence as a reaction to the government’s treatment of the Urdu-speaking population, who were a majority in Karachi. It was an ugly conflict that had its roots in Benazir’s first government.

In the Sindh Assembly, Murtaza, a Sindhi, raised the issue of Karachi’s increasing ethnic strife. ‘In one breath, the Prime Minister says that the disturbances are in only 11 of our 80 police stations and in the next she comes out with “there is a mini-insurgency and guerrilla warfare in Karachi”. The government is confused and unaware of the situation. The husband of the Prime Minister referred to the killing of persons as if they were not human beings when he said “during one month only 150 persons have been killed”.’ Murtaza went on to say that providing protection to the life and property of citizens was the basic responsibility of the government.

How can law and order be restored when postgraduate youths are begging for even menial jobs. Without eliminating the curse of unemployment how can there be peace? When there is an abnormal increase in the prices of rice, flour,
ghee
, sugar and other commodities up to 150 per cent, how can you expect restoration of normality . . . the salaries of the President and the Prime Minister have been increased at the cost of facilities for the labourers who have been left groaning under the unprecedented price hike.
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Papa gave his monthly MPA salary to the Edhi Foundation every month. We didn’t know this until after his assassination.

After Murtaza began to speak against the government’s attacks on
the ethnic Muhajirs and the escalating law and order problem in Karachi, the government saw another chance to portray Murtaza as a ‘terrorist’. It did its best to spread paranoia, claiming that Murtaza was planning a partnership with Altaf Hussain, the leader of the MQM who had fled Karachi when his infamous gang-style brutality looked likely to land him in jail for the rest of his life. Hussain lives in England now, as a UK citizen, and plays a very active role in Pakistani politics.

Murtaza had no affinity for the MQM. He deplored their use of sectarian scare tactics and abhorred their violent behaviour. He had raised his voice not because he was enamoured of the MQM, but to speak out for the Urdu-speaking Muhajir community, which was an ethnic and linguistic grouping and distinct from the MQM, a political party.

After the government released a barrage of stories in the press attempting to discredit Murtaza by calling him a terrorist sympathizer, he responded with characteristic satire. He wrote to the Lahore-based weekly, the
Friday Times
:

Sir, It is not my habit to comment on news reports through ‘letters to the editor’, nor is it my responsibility to speak on behalf of the MQM. However, I am compelled to make an exception with regards to Adnan Adil’s article ‘Altaf’s Cobras strike in Liaqatabad’. I have met Adnan Adil once and I mistook him for a normal, reasonable human being. But I have developed serious doubts on this score after reading his ‘Cobra’ story (‘story’ being a polite word). I quote from the article: ‘It is said that they (Altaf’s MQM) also possess a small tank – it is learnt that the MQM has obtained the support of Murtaza Bhutto’s Al Zulfikar Organization which is providing it with weapons. Official sources say that wagons loaded with weapons have recently reached 70 Clifton.’

It is normal practice for Chief Minister Abdullah Shah’s dogs to kidnap visitors coming to, or going from, 70 Clifton and subject them to vicious torture in undisclosed locations (eight
days ago my private secretary was kidnapped, along with my driver and car, from outside my house. Only yesterday we were able to trace them to the CIA
⁴
centre in Saddar. Both the driver and secretary were barely alive).

How wagons loaded with weapons can get past the combined dragnet of a dozen federal and provincial agencies that have laid permanent siege to 70 Clifton is best left to Mr Adil’s galloping imagination. But let me here, for the sake of posterity, set the record straight. Actually, one summer’s evening Altaf Hussain and I met at the edge of a forest and sat down under the shade of a large banyan tree. We, both Mir and Pir [a religious mystic in Urdu and used here as a sign of the MQM’s devotion to their leader], were in a melancholy mood. The following conversation transpired:

Altaf: You speak of the rights of Sindh and I of the rights of Muhajirs. Why don’t we cooperate?

Murtaza: No problem. I can see your logic.

A: You know, things are getting hot in District Central. RPGs just won’t do any more. We need tanks.

M: You are talking to the right man. I have several of them in my basement at 70 Clifton. They are the latest in high-tech and are left-hand drive. When can I gift-wrap them for you so that you can escalate your chauvinist Muhajir agenda effectively?

A: No, no. I don’t want those kinds of tanks. You Sindhi feudals live in large houses that have big basements. I am from the middle class and have a modest house. I want a small tank.

M: Think small, want small. Look, I am sorry I can’t help you there. I don’t deal in Suzuki-class tanks. I only have Main Battle Tanks.

A: All right, forget the small tank. You got any fighter aircraft? M: You pressed the right button again, Altaf (no wonder they call you Pir). I have a dozen F-16s parked in my garage. They are yours for the asking.

A: I don’t know why they call you a terrorist. You don’t seem to have a clue as to what this business is all about. F-16s are

ineffective in urban areas. What I need are B52s capable of saturation bombing.

M: Er, actually yes I do have one B52 parked on 70 Clifton’s roof. But it’s the only one I have so I cannot give it to you for good. However, I can lend it to you for a couple of months provided you promise not to wipe out Larkana with it.

A: Promise. Scout’s honour.

M: Another thing, for God’s sake don’t go telling Adnan Adil about all this.

A: You bet. But on one condition: you promise to let me test-drive your nuclear-powered submarine parked in front of your Hawksbay beach hut and I won’t tell a soul anything. Cross my heart.

Yours,

Mir Murtaza Bhutto

Karachi

As the year came to a close, however, the government’s violence against the Muhajirs would become increasingly aggressive and Karachi would become the centre of the state’s bloody war against their political opponents, the MQM. The violence that Benazir’s government would unleash on Karachi during her second term had its roots in her first stint in power. The MQM was first pushed into existence in the 1980s by General Zia’s dictatorship in an attempt to break the PPP’s strength in Sindh. The party’s dubious origins aside, it grew into a political reality strengthened by the strong support of Karachi’s middle class, who rallied around the MQM’s secular, ethnic, anti-feudal (but very pro-industrialist and oligarchy friendly) leanings.

In 1988 Benazir entered into a coalition with her former enemies and formed her first government with the help of the MQM. Her ’88 alliance with the MQM was an uneasy one and was continually rocked by Muhajir–Sindhi violence in Karachi. Benazir’s inability to quell the violence and her refusal to admit any responsibility resulted in the MQM quitting the coalition.

Benazir was dismissed shortly after the MQM walked out of the
alliance. The MQM, she believed, had sold her out. She may have been right. The 1990 elections that brought Benazir’s then nemesis Sharif to power saw the MQM appearing on the side of the new victors and ready to perform their role as willing allies once more.