Pakistan’s dynasty-bashing heir apparent discusses how Obama and corruption legitimize the Taliban, her work to include women in Pakistani politics, and why she will never run for office (it’s not why you think). From Guernica:
Fatima Bhutto
The story of Pakistani politics for the last four decades can be told through one family: the Bhuttos. Two Bhuttos have been heads of state, but four have been slain in the violence that riddles modern Pakistan. Fatima, the twenty-seven year old poet, stands in the wake of this carnage and is its heir. Her grandfather, Pakistan’s first democratically elected head of state and founder of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was executed three years before Fatima was born by General Zia-ul-Haq (who overthrew him in a military coup). Fatima’s Aunt Benazir was shot in her car on December 27, 2007, while campaigning. Her uncle was poisoned in exile. And when Fatima was just fourteen, outside her home in Karachi, her father was shot by dozens of police in one of Pakistan’s famous “encounters.” From that same home, Fatima insists that this violence points back to the family; she believes not only that her aunt was morally responsible, but that she played a direct role.
Fatima’s father, Murtaza Bhutto, had been campaigning one night in September 1996. Fatima, her brother (then six), and stepmother had been waiting for him. They thought he might come home only to be arrested; he’d been criticizing Benazir over her government’s corruption and challenging her to return the PPP to their father’s original manifesto. He’d also been critical of her Operation Cleanup against the Mohajir ethnic group, which allegedly claimed three thousand Mohajir in two years of extrajudicial killings. On this night, police and armored vehicles surrounded the house. But instead of the arrest the family was told to prepare for, Murtaza and several of his men were shot from the street and from treetops in an Operation Cleanup-style barrage of gunfire. Murtaza himself was shot point-blank in the jaw and dumped bleeding to death in a clinic known not to treat gunshot wounds. Young Fatima watched her father die, insisting today that given better treatment, he could have lived. For his death, she unequivocally blames her Aunt Benazir; she certainly has her reasons, which she discusses below. More:
When Pakisan’s president visits the White House next week, he’s sure to ask for another handout. But Fatima Bhutto, niece of the late Benazir Bhutto, says the billions of dollars the U.S. gives are merely propping up a government that’s capitulating to terror [in The Daily Beast]
In Pakistan things move at a leisurely South Asian pace. We missed our goals to eradicate polio recently because we, a nuclear nation, could not sustain electricity across the country long enough to refrigerate the vaccines. Garbage disposal is a nonexistent concept, and plush neighborhoods in Karachi boast towers of rubbish piled on street corners and alleyways. Prisons and police cells are full of prisoners awaiting trials, and our justice system, despite the reinstatement of the Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudry, leaves little to be desired in terms of meting out free and fair access to justice.
One thing moving ridiculously fast, however, is the Taliban’s stranglehold on the country. After two years of fighting off Taliban insurgents camped out in the lush Swat Valley, Pakistan’s president, Asif Zardari, threw in the towel last week and gave the militants what they wanted—Shariah law.
more
Fatima Bhutto in The New Statesman:
“Droned” is a verb we use now in Pakistan. It turns out, interestingly enough, that those US predator drones that have been killing Pakistani citizens almost weekly have been taking off from and landing within our own country. Secret airbases in Balochistan – what did we ever do before Google Earth?
The PPP-led government, hailed as being “democratic”, capitulated to the Pakistan Taliban’s demands for sharia law in the Swat Valley in February. There was no vote, no referendum, nothing. The government, tired of fighting those pesky militants who’ve been burning down Sufi shrines and local girls’ schools, just declared that a part of the country would be ruled no longer by federal law, but by a myopically interpreted and Taliban-approved “Islamic” code. And verily it shall be.
More:
With her good looks and glossy aura, Fatima Bhutto, the bright new star of a revered political dynasty is causing quite a stir in both Hollywood and her own troubled country. William Langley in The Telegraph:
Beauteous she may be, but Ms Bhutto lacks little by way of seriousness. Her family name goes hand-in-hand with the turbulent politics and violent, 60-year fashioning of Pakistan, and with the country writhing in a state of crisis – riven by religious fundamentalism, awash with factionalism and corruption and beset by economic collapse – the clamour for her to stand for office is growing. While she has resisted the pressure so far – saying that she doesn’t believe in “birthright politics” – nobody pretends that any Bhutto of sufficient brains and class can stay out for ever, and it is widely expected that she will contest Benazir’s old seat, in the family fiefdom of Larkana, north of Karachi, in the next general election. While such a move is guaranteed to unleash the colourful and uproarious celebrations that traditionally accompany the entry of a new family member into the fray, it will do little to answer the questions of what actually Fatima stands for, and whether, given Pakistan’s fabulous record of failure, it will make any difference.
Until now she has made her name largely as a newspaper columnist for forthright, if stodgy, opinion and as the author of two books of poetry. Educated in New York and London, equally at home in the cultures of the East and West, her celebrity has grown to the point where she causes a stir wherever she surfaces. Attracted by her good looks and glossy aura, a film producer recently offered her a part in a big-budget Bollywood musical, but she backed-off. The Bhutto brand, she sensibly reasoned, will only stretch so far.
More:
Asks Fatima Bhutto in The Daily Beast, reporting on a campaign on intimidation as the government is trying to force rape victim Mukhtaran Mai to drop her case
In 2002, an illiterate woman named Mukhtaran Mai was punished for something her brother did. He committed the unforgivable crime of falling in love with a young woman outside his tribe. So, in accordance with tribal tradition, a local council of elders decided that instead of punishing him directly, his sister Mai would be gang raped and paraded across her small village of Meerwala half naked.
Five days after this rape occurred, Mai did the unthinkable: She pressed charges.
Her defiance of custom—reporting the rape instead of silently accepting it—made headlines worldwide. Nicholas Kristof and Time magazine championed her case. Glamour magazine declared Mai “Woman of the Year.” But now, the Pakistan government has shown that it holds her in considerably lower esteem.
more
From The Independent:
George Clooney and Fatima Bhutto
He is Hollywood’s most eligible bachelor. She is an outspoken poet and journalist born into Pakistan’s greatest political dynasty. What, then, could spark a bigger media circus than a “secret romance” between George Clooney and Benazir Bhutto’s 26-year-old niece, Fatima?
Newspapers across the subcontinent were thrown into frenzied excitement yesterday when America’s most influential supermarket tabloid claimed that Clooney had embarked on a long-distance relationship with Ms Bhutto after meeting her at an international conference last year.
The National Enquirer alleged that the 47-year-old actor and political activist was privately smitten by the “brainy foreign beauty,” who lives with her brother and step-mother in a prosperous suburb of Karachi.
Click here for more and here for Fatima Bhutto’s website:
Why is the University of Texas naming a chair of Pakistan Studies after the notorious U.S. congressman who helped destabilize that country? Fatima Bhutto – niece of the late Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto – demands an answer. In The Daily Beast [via 3quarksdaily]:
Pakistan’s new government, the only in the world headed by two former convicts-who have their fingers on the button of a nuclear-armed state, no less-is nothing if not a keen purveyor of irony.
There’s currently an effort underway by the Pakistani diplomatic mission in Texas to raise funds for a chair of Pakistan Studies at the University of Texas in Austin. The chair, a dream of the Pakistani diplomatic community, is to be named after Charlie Wilson. For those who missed the movie, it’s worth noting that of all the people to name a chair of Pakistani Studies after, Charlie Wilson is possibly the stupidest.
More:
Triumphalism over a Musharraf impeachment won’t hide the failings of Pakistan’s ruling coalition. Fatima Bhutto in The Guardian:
Fatima Bhutto
The murky abyss of Pakistani politics has been especially murky over recent months, and true to form it just keeps getting murkier. The one thing that is absolute when dealing with the dregs that run my country is this: nothing is ever as it seems. Nowhere is that more true than in the current scenario involving President Musharraf’s likely impeachment by the ruling coalition.
“It has become imperative to move for impeachment,” barked Benazir Bhutto’s widower, Asif Zardari, at a press conference in Islamabad last week. Sitting beside the new head of the Pakistan People’s party was Nawaz Sharif, twice formerly prime minister of Pakistan. Zardari snarled every time Musharraf’s name came up, seething with political rage and righteousness, while Sharif did his best to keep up with the pace of things. He nodded sombrely and harrumphed every once in a while. The two men are acting for democracy, you see. And impeaching dictators is a good thing for democracies, you know.
More:
Musharraf will be gone in days
The Pakistani president is likely to quit soon. But don’t expect democracy to rush in: the military’s habits die hard. Tariq Ali in The Guardian:
Tariq Ali
There is never a dull moment in Pakistan. As the country moved from a moth-eaten dictatorship to a moth-eaten democracy the celebrations were muted. Many citizens wondered whether the change represented a forward movement.
Five months later, the moral climate has deteriorated still further. All the ideals embraced by the hopeful youth and the poor of the country – political morality, legality, civic virtue, food subsidies, freedom and equality of opportunity – once again lie at their feet, broken and scattered. The widower Bhutto and his men are extremely unpopular. The worm-eaten tongues of chameleon politicians and resurrected civil servants are on daily display. Removing Musharraf, who is even more unpopular, might win the politicians badly-needed popular support, but not for long.
More:
In Tehelka, William Dalrymple writes that Fatima Bhutto’s journey to unmask her father Murtaza Bhutto’s killers has her standing between PM-in-waiting Asif Ali Zardari and his ‘clean’ record
AS THE CONVOY neared home, the street lights were abruptly turned off. The police snipers were ready in position; some had climbed up the trees lining the avenue to get clear shots. Their guns were loaded, the roadblocks had been erected, the surrounding lanes sealed off. The guards outside the different embassies nearby had been told to retreat within their compounds in expectation of trouble. By nine o’clock, all 80 police were in position, commanded by four senior officers. There was complete silence, but for the occasional buzz of static on the police radios.
It was September 20, 1996, and Murtaza Bhutto, Benazir’s younger brother, was returning late from campaigning in a distant part of Karachi. He had come home to Pakistan the previous year after a long period in exile to challenge his more famous sister for a role in the leadership of the family party, the Pakistan People’s Party, or PPP. Benazir was then the prime minister, and Murtaza’s decision to take her on had put him into direct conflict not only with his sister, but also with her ambitious and powerful husband, Asif Ali Zardari.
more
NewsPostIndia caught up with the charismatic Fatima Bhutto at the ongoing Jaipur Literature Festival
The lines between the world of books and politics blurred once again Thursday when Fatima Bhutto, the 25-year-old niece of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, said she wanted to make her mark – but without the Bhutto tag.
The young author, who inherits the Bhutto legacy of politics from her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, her aunt Benazir and her father Murtaza all of whom died unnatural, brutal deaths, was the cynosure of attention at the ongoing Jaipur Literary Festival here.
more
An update on the Jaipur Lit Fest by Namita Bhandare
One day before the Jaipur Literature Festival kicks off at Diggi Palace, comes a press release that America’s most eminent man of letters, Gore Vidal will not be attending after all.
Vidal was slated for top billing and was scheduled for two interactions: one with NDTV’s Barkha Dutt on Saturday where he along with author and festival organiser William Dalrymple was to have spoken on The World Post 9/11. Vidal was also scheduled to have interacted with journalist Shoma Choudhury on Sunday on Life and Letters.
Continue reading ‘Vidal drops out of Jaipur Lit Fest. Political nieces, Fatima Bhutto and Nayantara Sahgal will attend’
Namita Bhandare on the Jaipur Literature Festival. An Asian Window exclusive.
The big buzz at the Jaipur Literature Festival is the confirmed participation of Fatima Bhutto, Benazir Bhutto’s niece who is scheduled to fly in on January 24 and will stay on until January 26.
The daughter of Benazir’s murdered brother, Murtaza, 25-year-old Fatima is a columnist who was bitterly opposed to her aunt. Her farewell to her aunt published in The News, however, looked back without anger.
I will most likely be in Jaipur for the third installment of the Lit Fest. I was there last year when the event rocked with Salman Rushdie (pre-divorce), Kiran Desai, William Dalrymple and a bunch of other literary stars. Check out the official website for details here
Continue reading ‘Fatima Bhutto for the Jaipur lit fest’
