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Who Was the Real Benazir Bhutto?

Who Was the Real Benazir Bhutto?

There are a number of different takes people have when it comes to the what the real Benazir Bhutto. With all the different versions, Sashanka S Banerjee will always believe that Benazir Bhutto was the woman who first offended him and eventually befriended him, sharing dark secrets.

Ironically, my first experience of meeting Benazir Bhutto was quite unpleasant, to say the least. To my surprise, minutes after I was introduced to her by Justice Abu Sayeed Choudhury, who had earlier served as the President of Bangladesh, at his then family home in Hendon, London, I was denied even breathing space as she started an unprovoked and an unrelenting verbal attack on India. She described India as a “hegemonic power harbouring territorial ambitions on neighbouring countries”, an “oppressive tyranny masquerading as a democracy”, a “violator of  human rights in Kashmir”, a “Muslim baiter” and much more. Her voice was shrill, her face flushed with goose pimples indicating that she was nervous while talking to me — an unknown Indian from the enemy country. I suspect she was under the illusion that I was a member of some sort of a repressive, Gestapo-like organisation of India.

I was disappointed to have discovered that a mature and sophisticated lady who had studied in Oxford and Harvard and belonged to a highly-regarded political family in Pakistan, would be so naive in her approach. It was her first interaction with a former senior bureaucrat — even if from the enemy country. And before this, the bureaucrat actually had regard for her as she had introduced democracy in Pakistan. But, she went on with her anti-India rant. And I wondered what her underlying motive could be. Whatever her intention was, my curiosity only increased over time. One thing I was sure about was that her worldview was not dissimilar to the official position of Islamabad that Pakistan would never bow down to India and be a poodle to New Delhi.

Initiated as a policy option by Benazir, Pakistan had devised its own ways of keeping India — a soft power in her view — firmly on the leash. Forging of ties with Taliban after she had become the Prime Minister of Pakistan meant using the terror group’s violent methods against India as an instrument of state policy.  Pakistan Army had long aspired to secure “strategic depth” in Afghanistan. Benazir had played a key role in that. And this was her idea of power play with New Delhi.

Thus, Pakistan started an innovative “two-front war” — on the East with India and on the West with Afghanistan. There was no dearth of funding for this dangerous game, richly sourced from three of its key allies. At the same time, for Islamabad it was strategically important to maintain the pretense that it was a “friend to India”. Within the parameters of this manufactured ambivalence, Justice Abu Sayeed Choudhury’s introduction of Benazir Bhutto, heralded the beginning of a stormy and complicated equation.

Our next meeting was scheduled a few days later at her home in a luxury apartment at the Lauderdale Towers in The Barbican, London. Most of my remaining meetings in the subsequent period of my association with her were held at her home.

Benazir being much younger to me, I chose to address her by her first name. She didn’t mind it. I said, “Benazir, the other day, you thundered like the cataract of Niagara but, just think, did your fire and fury serve any real purpose? Neither was I intimidated nor was Justice Choudhury persuaded by what you said.” I added, “How can anybody call India  a hegemonic power when within three months of the liberation of Bangladesh, at the end of a successful military campaign, India withdrew its armed forces from the soil of what was now sovereign independent Bangladesh? It was a gesture of goodwill. Some 93,000 Pakistani POWs taken at the end of the Bangladesh War of 1971 were also released. But Benazir didn’t return the compliment.  

Gradually, our discussions began taking shape. I took the initiative and asserted that if she was looking for India’s support in promoting liberal democracy in Pakistan, I thought that India would gladly come forward and help her and the Pakistan Peoples’ Party. But this was all subject to New Delhi agreeing. I gave her the example of India’s support extended to the secular, democratic, and pluralistic Bangladesh Liberation Struggle led by Shaikh Mujibur Rahman.

I could see she was not amused. I felt like she had other things weighing on her mind. After several interactions, I got a shrewd impression that she was hiding something from me. Soon, I had no doubt in my mind that she was still in a state of deep shock and mourning. I would often find her getting emotionally choked while talking about Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, her father. Her eyes would moisten at the very mention of his name.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged till death on August 4, 1979, and buried at Larkana, the family’s graveyard. I often heard her saying that General Zia-ul-Haq was an incarnation of evil.

She would speak about her father as “Shahid Zulfikar Ali Bhutto” and described his hanging as “judicial murder”. I could detect the undercurrent of an overpowering dark force working within her, craving for revenge against the Pakistani dictator. She had mentioned the word “revenge” to me a number of times. I was pretty certain that she had also spoken about it among some untrustworthy friends. I knew only too well that Benazir had no security cover appropriate to her status provided by the state. She was an easy target, very vulnerable.  

It couldn’t be that the ISI didn’t get a wind of Benazir’s overzealous pronouncements on avenging the dead. I was not prepared to believe that the ISI would not deploy a posse of surveillance detail on her, like static and mobile watch and telephone tapping for delving into her inner thoughts on her father’s hanging by General Zia-ul-Haq. It was all too well known that the grip of the ISI on Pakistan was so firm that not even a crow could fly over Pakistan without the ISI knowing about it.

Benazir had an inherent capacity to spring surprises. I was not quite ready for it, but one day she came up with a proposal that was beyond the bounds of my wildest imagination. She said, “You have been putting pressure on me to open up about my “secret agenda”. I will tell you, but it will be in bits and pieces”. Then, she told me that she would like to send a group of six young men to India on an “extended” educational tour for training in leadership skills in democratic principles and practice drawn from the Indian experience. The training would include lectures on international relations with special focus on India-Pakistan relations. As our discussions expanded, I was getting a sneaky feeling that Benazir was keeping what she “really” wanted close to her chest. She was shrouding her real thoughts in ambiguity. Her half-baked thoughts in the backdrop of what she was saying all this time, were in all probability linked to her zeal for revenge against General Zia-ul-Haq.

I asked her if she was thinking of an extreme kind of capital punishment with the help of an enemy country. And added that she must know the consequences of embarking upon such a dangerously mad mission. Moreover, why would India get involved in such a misadventure?

“What would happen if there was a leak? Are you not afraid of dying,” I asked. “No, for my father’s sake I am prepared to die. But my mission must succeed,” she said. It was becoming devastatingly clear to me that the “judicial murder” of her beloved father had acted as a catalyst in splitting her personality into two parts.

She asserted that a question kept nagging at her, “Why should I not take revenge with a concrete plan of action against that murderer? He has ruined my family. My mother has been widowed and my brothers and I have been orphaned when we are still at the prime of our lives.” A second shock awaited me. I asked her how much she trusted “the boys”. “Hundred percent” was her answer. What were their political affiliations? She paused for a moment and then admitted coyly, “Yes, you are right. They were cadre members of Jiye Sindh Mahaz (JSM) led by GM Syed.” Do you know him? She didn’t hesitate to say “Both of us are Sindhis, Yes, I know him”. I told her that GM Syed was serving a life sentence in a Pakistani prison for treason. I did not have to remind her that JSM was a pro-independence militant organisation fighting for the liberation of Sindh. Nobody knew if he was still alive. I reflected what was Mujibur Rahman to Bangladesh Liberation Struggle, GM Syed was to Sindh Freedom Movement. I told her that the ISI regarded JSM as “a separatist terrorist outfit” and they would go to any extent to crush them with heavy handed brutality.

It was a revelation to me that Benazir had close connections with GM Syed’s pro-independence movement in Sindh. I wondered, “Did she have an open mind for switching her loyalties to the Sindhi Freedom Movement, if her aspirations at Pakistan’s national level were to fail?” At this point, I thought I had enough knowledge of her inner thinking and must not pursue this matter any further. In fact, it seemed to me that there was perhaps already a dark deal struck up between JSM and herself.

India partly agreed to Benazir’s request but it was nowhere near to what she really wanted. India agreed to receive the “boys” in Delhi. As a huge gesture of goodwill to Miss Bhutto, they would be issued tourist visas for three months. The boys would be extended normal consular courtesies. They would be taken around the Golden Triangle — Delhi, Jaipur, and Agra. While in Delhi, they would be taken around on day trips to the Houses of Parliament, the Supreme Court, CP, and Raisina Hill. They could be taken on a short day trip to a Military Academy and so on. They would be treated as honoured guests. As per Benazir’s personal wish, total secrecy would be maintained about the trip. What was deeply disappointing for Benazir was that there was not a word about military training for the boys that she had asked for. Her core interest was ignored in totality.

In the blood-soaked, revenge-filled, unforgiving political environment of Pakistani politics, a brief comparative study of three high-level political assassinations that happened in quick succession between 1979 and 2007 may be in order. I will touch on them in chronological order. For starters, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged to die on some “flimsy grounds” under orders of General Zia-ul-Haq, Pakistan’s military dictator, on April 4, 1979. There were reports that General Zia-ul-Haq did not trust the highly ambitious Bhutto and suspected that any day Bhutto he may usurp power from Zia. The hanging solved the military dictator’s fears but threw the country into turmoil and Benazir in a determinedly revengeful outrage.

Nine years later, General Zia-ul-Haq was killed, in an “air mishap” after his flight on a PAF heavy duty C-130 transport carrier took off from Bahawalpur Cantonment’s airfield on August 17, 1988. This game-changing event, described as “political murder” has also come to be known as “a case of exploding mangoes”.

Security had cleared “some casual employees” working in the Cantonment. There was a fruit and vegetable shop that loaded two basketful of the finest Dasheri mangoes, one for the military dictator and another for the US Ambassador Arnold Raphel, who was accompanying the General. They were on a visit to Bahawalpur Cantonment to oversee the performance of America’s best known main battle tanks (MBTs) Abram M1. After their field inspection, they were going back to GHQ Rawalpindi, satisfied that the tanks were to the liking of the military dictator. The order was to be in the region of 300 Abrams M1 MBTs. The loaders — there is no scope for any doubt — had placed two high explosive time bombs hidden in the mango baskets. Nobody checked the baskets because the security environment in the Cantonment was thought to be water-tight. After the explosion that killed everybody on board the aircraft, the ISI went into an overdrive to find out who had done it but the matter was so delicate that the report of the investigation was kept “top secret”. Any punitive action would have to wait for an appropriate date. Apparently, the assassination looked like part of a bigger conspiracy where there was involvement of biggies who had  political and military interests.

Nineteen years later, it was Benazir Bhutto’s turn to face the wrath of her enemies, quite probably, the military top brass, perhaps avenging the killing of Gen Zia-ul-Haq. A brief recount of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination — as her cavalcade started moving out after her successful election rally held at Liaquat Bagh, Rawalpindi, where Pakistan’s first Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan was assassinated in 1951, a small group of Punjabi-looking young men who also had Punjabi accent surrounded her moving car, started shouting slogans of “Jiye Benazir” a Sindhi language version of “Benazir zindabad” or “long live Benazir” in English. She was lured to stand up looking through an opening in the roof of the SUV to thank them. In a flash, she was fired upon from a precision weapon allegedly of military origin. Of the four bullets fired, one went through her head, killing her almost instantly. This was quickly followed by a bomb attack which completed the job of killing the leader.

For the record, Benazir Bhutto’s assassination took place after her fateful election rally on December 27, 2007. Thus, Benazir with a tasbih — a string of prayer beads — in her hand, chanting “Jiye shahid Bhutto”, died. A thing to note about these three political murders was that they were all linked to each other by a thread of starkly competing interests in an intense power struggle among viciously ambitious power-hungry military men and politicians at high places. In the bargain, all three lost their lives after short spells of glory. What’s worth is the lack of any long term impact — it was business as usual after a few short weeks.   

A few days after General Zia-ul-Haq died, Benazir summoned me to a pub located in a hidden corner on the ground floor of the Barbican Towers for a chat. I saw her beautiful face, pretty much glowing like one who had won a war and established an empire. She felt quite strongly that the exit of an “evil genius” like Gen Zia-ul-Haq was reason for celebration. “The punishment was willed by Allah,” she asserted with a raised glass of Coca-Cola in her hand and a broad smile on her face.

What was no less important for Benazir was that the death of Gen Zia-ul-Haq potentially opened the door for her to climb the political ladder and win her position as the next Prime Minister of Pakistan. Her passion for the creation of a sovereign, independent Sindh emulated from the example of Liberation of Bangladesh, seemed to have died with her.

Before I left for home, I said, “Benazir forgive me for asking you something that may upset you — who put the “exploding mangoes” in the baskets of the C 130 that killed General Zia-ul-Haq and US Ambassador Arnold Raphel?” For the first time,  she addressed me endearingly and said, “My dear friend, I should not answer your query. However, since I have already shared so many secrets with you, I will not disappoint you. Yes, I happen to know them.” For her comfort, I did not ask their names.

For me, it was now time to say goodbye to Benazir. I had a warm hand shake, said an emotional goodbye, and stepped back. And as it turned out, I was never to meet her again. Benazir’s assassination will be remembered by future generations as the darkest day for democracy in Pakistan’s turbulent history.

Banerjee is the author of A Long Journey Together

— India, Pakistan and Bangladesh published in 2008

Writer: Sashanka S Banerjee

Courtesy: The Pioneer

Who Was the Real Benazir Bhutto?

Who Was the Real Benazir Bhutto?

There are a number of different takes people have when it comes to the what the real Benazir Bhutto. With all the different versions, Sashanka S Banerjee will always believe that Benazir Bhutto was the woman who first offended him and eventually befriended him, sharing dark secrets.

Ironically, my first experience of meeting Benazir Bhutto was quite unpleasant, to say the least. To my surprise, minutes after I was introduced to her by Justice Abu Sayeed Choudhury, who had earlier served as the President of Bangladesh, at his then family home in Hendon, London, I was denied even breathing space as she started an unprovoked and an unrelenting verbal attack on India. She described India as a “hegemonic power harbouring territorial ambitions on neighbouring countries”, an “oppressive tyranny masquerading as a democracy”, a “violator of  human rights in Kashmir”, a “Muslim baiter” and much more. Her voice was shrill, her face flushed with goose pimples indicating that she was nervous while talking to me — an unknown Indian from the enemy country. I suspect she was under the illusion that I was a member of some sort of a repressive, Gestapo-like organisation of India.

I was disappointed to have discovered that a mature and sophisticated lady who had studied in Oxford and Harvard and belonged to a highly-regarded political family in Pakistan, would be so naive in her approach. It was her first interaction with a former senior bureaucrat — even if from the enemy country. And before this, the bureaucrat actually had regard for her as she had introduced democracy in Pakistan. But, she went on with her anti-India rant. And I wondered what her underlying motive could be. Whatever her intention was, my curiosity only increased over time. One thing I was sure about was that her worldview was not dissimilar to the official position of Islamabad that Pakistan would never bow down to India and be a poodle to New Delhi.

Initiated as a policy option by Benazir, Pakistan had devised its own ways of keeping India — a soft power in her view — firmly on the leash. Forging of ties with Taliban after she had become the Prime Minister of Pakistan meant using the terror group’s violent methods against India as an instrument of state policy.  Pakistan Army had long aspired to secure “strategic depth” in Afghanistan. Benazir had played a key role in that. And this was her idea of power play with New Delhi.

Thus, Pakistan started an innovative “two-front war” — on the East with India and on the West with Afghanistan. There was no dearth of funding for this dangerous game, richly sourced from three of its key allies. At the same time, for Islamabad it was strategically important to maintain the pretense that it was a “friend to India”. Within the parameters of this manufactured ambivalence, Justice Abu Sayeed Choudhury’s introduction of Benazir Bhutto, heralded the beginning of a stormy and complicated equation.

Our next meeting was scheduled a few days later at her home in a luxury apartment at the Lauderdale Towers in The Barbican, London. Most of my remaining meetings in the subsequent period of my association with her were held at her home.

Benazir being much younger to me, I chose to address her by her first name. She didn’t mind it. I said, “Benazir, the other day, you thundered like the cataract of Niagara but, just think, did your fire and fury serve any real purpose? Neither was I intimidated nor was Justice Choudhury persuaded by what you said.” I added, “How can anybody call India  a hegemonic power when within three months of the liberation of Bangladesh, at the end of a successful military campaign, India withdrew its armed forces from the soil of what was now sovereign independent Bangladesh? It was a gesture of goodwill. Some 93,000 Pakistani POWs taken at the end of the Bangladesh War of 1971 were also released. But Benazir didn’t return the compliment.  

Gradually, our discussions began taking shape. I took the initiative and asserted that if she was looking for India’s support in promoting liberal democracy in Pakistan, I thought that India would gladly come forward and help her and the Pakistan Peoples’ Party. But this was all subject to New Delhi agreeing. I gave her the example of India’s support extended to the secular, democratic, and pluralistic Bangladesh Liberation Struggle led by Shaikh Mujibur Rahman.

I could see she was not amused. I felt like she had other things weighing on her mind. After several interactions, I got a shrewd impression that she was hiding something from me. Soon, I had no doubt in my mind that she was still in a state of deep shock and mourning. I would often find her getting emotionally choked while talking about Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, her father. Her eyes would moisten at the very mention of his name.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged till death on August 4, 1979, and buried at Larkana, the family’s graveyard. I often heard her saying that General Zia-ul-Haq was an incarnation of evil.

She would speak about her father as “Shahid Zulfikar Ali Bhutto” and described his hanging as “judicial murder”. I could detect the undercurrent of an overpowering dark force working within her, craving for revenge against the Pakistani dictator. She had mentioned the word “revenge” to me a number of times. I was pretty certain that she had also spoken about it among some untrustworthy friends. I knew only too well that Benazir had no security cover appropriate to her status provided by the state. She was an easy target, very vulnerable.  

It couldn’t be that the ISI didn’t get a wind of Benazir’s overzealous pronouncements on avenging the dead. I was not prepared to believe that the ISI would not deploy a posse of surveillance detail on her, like static and mobile watch and telephone tapping for delving into her inner thoughts on her father’s hanging by General Zia-ul-Haq. It was all too well known that the grip of the ISI on Pakistan was so firm that not even a crow could fly over Pakistan without the ISI knowing about it.

Benazir had an inherent capacity to spring surprises. I was not quite ready for it, but one day she came up with a proposal that was beyond the bounds of my wildest imagination. She said, “You have been putting pressure on me to open up about my “secret agenda”. I will tell you, but it will be in bits and pieces”. Then, she told me that she would like to send a group of six young men to India on an “extended” educational tour for training in leadership skills in democratic principles and practice drawn from the Indian experience. The training would include lectures on international relations with special focus on India-Pakistan relations. As our discussions expanded, I was getting a sneaky feeling that Benazir was keeping what she “really” wanted close to her chest. She was shrouding her real thoughts in ambiguity. Her half-baked thoughts in the backdrop of what she was saying all this time, were in all probability linked to her zeal for revenge against General Zia-ul-Haq.

I asked her if she was thinking of an extreme kind of capital punishment with the help of an enemy country. And added that she must know the consequences of embarking upon such a dangerously mad mission. Moreover, why would India get involved in such a misadventure?

“What would happen if there was a leak? Are you not afraid of dying,” I asked. “No, for my father’s sake I am prepared to die. But my mission must succeed,” she said. It was becoming devastatingly clear to me that the “judicial murder” of her beloved father had acted as a catalyst in splitting her personality into two parts.

She asserted that a question kept nagging at her, “Why should I not take revenge with a concrete plan of action against that murderer? He has ruined my family. My mother has been widowed and my brothers and I have been orphaned when we are still at the prime of our lives.” A second shock awaited me. I asked her how much she trusted “the boys”. “Hundred percent” was her answer. What were their political affiliations? She paused for a moment and then admitted coyly, “Yes, you are right. They were cadre members of Jiye Sindh Mahaz (JSM) led by GM Syed.” Do you know him? She didn’t hesitate to say “Both of us are Sindhis, Yes, I know him”. I told her that GM Syed was serving a life sentence in a Pakistani prison for treason. I did not have to remind her that JSM was a pro-independence militant organisation fighting for the liberation of Sindh. Nobody knew if he was still alive. I reflected what was Mujibur Rahman to Bangladesh Liberation Struggle, GM Syed was to Sindh Freedom Movement. I told her that the ISI regarded JSM as “a separatist terrorist outfit” and they would go to any extent to crush them with heavy handed brutality.

It was a revelation to me that Benazir had close connections with GM Syed’s pro-independence movement in Sindh. I wondered, “Did she have an open mind for switching her loyalties to the Sindhi Freedom Movement, if her aspirations at Pakistan’s national level were to fail?” At this point, I thought I had enough knowledge of her inner thinking and must not pursue this matter any further. In fact, it seemed to me that there was perhaps already a dark deal struck up between JSM and herself.

India partly agreed to Benazir’s request but it was nowhere near to what she really wanted. India agreed to receive the “boys” in Delhi. As a huge gesture of goodwill to Miss Bhutto, they would be issued tourist visas for three months. The boys would be extended normal consular courtesies. They would be taken around the Golden Triangle — Delhi, Jaipur, and Agra. While in Delhi, they would be taken around on day trips to the Houses of Parliament, the Supreme Court, CP, and Raisina Hill. They could be taken on a short day trip to a Military Academy and so on. They would be treated as honoured guests. As per Benazir’s personal wish, total secrecy would be maintained about the trip. What was deeply disappointing for Benazir was that there was not a word about military training for the boys that she had asked for. Her core interest was ignored in totality.

In the blood-soaked, revenge-filled, unforgiving political environment of Pakistani politics, a brief comparative study of three high-level political assassinations that happened in quick succession between 1979 and 2007 may be in order. I will touch on them in chronological order. For starters, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged to die on some “flimsy grounds” under orders of General Zia-ul-Haq, Pakistan’s military dictator, on April 4, 1979. There were reports that General Zia-ul-Haq did not trust the highly ambitious Bhutto and suspected that any day Bhutto he may usurp power from Zia. The hanging solved the military dictator’s fears but threw the country into turmoil and Benazir in a determinedly revengeful outrage.

Nine years later, General Zia-ul-Haq was killed, in an “air mishap” after his flight on a PAF heavy duty C-130 transport carrier took off from Bahawalpur Cantonment’s airfield on August 17, 1988. This game-changing event, described as “political murder” has also come to be known as “a case of exploding mangoes”.

Security had cleared “some casual employees” working in the Cantonment. There was a fruit and vegetable shop that loaded two basketful of the finest Dasheri mangoes, one for the military dictator and another for the US Ambassador Arnold Raphel, who was accompanying the General. They were on a visit to Bahawalpur Cantonment to oversee the performance of America’s best known main battle tanks (MBTs) Abram M1. After their field inspection, they were going back to GHQ Rawalpindi, satisfied that the tanks were to the liking of the military dictator. The order was to be in the region of 300 Abrams M1 MBTs. The loaders — there is no scope for any doubt — had placed two high explosive time bombs hidden in the mango baskets. Nobody checked the baskets because the security environment in the Cantonment was thought to be water-tight. After the explosion that killed everybody on board the aircraft, the ISI went into an overdrive to find out who had done it but the matter was so delicate that the report of the investigation was kept “top secret”. Any punitive action would have to wait for an appropriate date. Apparently, the assassination looked like part of a bigger conspiracy where there was involvement of biggies who had  political and military interests.

Nineteen years later, it was Benazir Bhutto’s turn to face the wrath of her enemies, quite probably, the military top brass, perhaps avenging the killing of Gen Zia-ul-Haq. A brief recount of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination — as her cavalcade started moving out after her successful election rally held at Liaquat Bagh, Rawalpindi, where Pakistan’s first Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan was assassinated in 1951, a small group of Punjabi-looking young men who also had Punjabi accent surrounded her moving car, started shouting slogans of “Jiye Benazir” a Sindhi language version of “Benazir zindabad” or “long live Benazir” in English. She was lured to stand up looking through an opening in the roof of the SUV to thank them. In a flash, she was fired upon from a precision weapon allegedly of military origin. Of the four bullets fired, one went through her head, killing her almost instantly. This was quickly followed by a bomb attack which completed the job of killing the leader.

For the record, Benazir Bhutto’s assassination took place after her fateful election rally on December 27, 2007. Thus, Benazir with a tasbih — a string of prayer beads — in her hand, chanting “Jiye shahid Bhutto”, died. A thing to note about these three political murders was that they were all linked to each other by a thread of starkly competing interests in an intense power struggle among viciously ambitious power-hungry military men and politicians at high places. In the bargain, all three lost their lives after short spells of glory. What’s worth is the lack of any long term impact — it was business as usual after a few short weeks.   

A few days after General Zia-ul-Haq died, Benazir summoned me to a pub located in a hidden corner on the ground floor of the Barbican Towers for a chat. I saw her beautiful face, pretty much glowing like one who had won a war and established an empire. She felt quite strongly that the exit of an “evil genius” like Gen Zia-ul-Haq was reason for celebration. “The punishment was willed by Allah,” she asserted with a raised glass of Coca-Cola in her hand and a broad smile on her face.

What was no less important for Benazir was that the death of Gen Zia-ul-Haq potentially opened the door for her to climb the political ladder and win her position as the next Prime Minister of Pakistan. Her passion for the creation of a sovereign, independent Sindh emulated from the example of Liberation of Bangladesh, seemed to have died with her.

Before I left for home, I said, “Benazir forgive me for asking you something that may upset you — who put the “exploding mangoes” in the baskets of the C 130 that killed General Zia-ul-Haq and US Ambassador Arnold Raphel?” For the first time,  she addressed me endearingly and said, “My dear friend, I should not answer your query. However, since I have already shared so many secrets with you, I will not disappoint you. Yes, I happen to know them.” For her comfort, I did not ask their names.

For me, it was now time to say goodbye to Benazir. I had a warm hand shake, said an emotional goodbye, and stepped back. And as it turned out, I was never to meet her again. Benazir’s assassination will be remembered by future generations as the darkest day for democracy in Pakistan’s turbulent history.

Banerjee is the author of A Long Journey Together

— India, Pakistan and Bangladesh published in 2008

Writer: Sashanka S Banerjee

Courtesy: The Pioneer

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