After news filtered out from Pakistan that Benazir Bhutto had survived a suicide attack on the day of her triumphant return last October, I knew deep down that if she were to continue her campaign to become prime minister, her chances of surviving until election day were minimal. Pakistan had changed since the last time she campaigned and now the world, and particularly her home country, was far more dangerous than when she began her political career almost 20 years ago. On December 27, 2007, a little over two months after the first attack, she was killed doing what she was good at, getting close to the people.
In the summer of 1988, while a young Benazir was preparing to accomplish what no Muslim woman had done in modern history, I was covering the last days of a brutal eight-year war that began with no warning and was about to end the same way. The day the Iran-Iraq War ended, the few journalists still covering the war, including myself, were caught completely off guard. After a year and a half of being totally immersed in the Gulf conflict, we found ourselves with nothing to do. The agency that I worked for was also at a loss and, after looking around for other news events in the region, decided to send me to Pakistan to cover the elections.
It was hard not to get swept up in the Benazir Bhutto craze. She was young, only 35, beautiful, warm and inviting. And the foreign media could not get enough of her. When she toured the country we camped out in the same places that she was staying and followed her relentlessly throughout her campaign. Her tactics were the same up until the day she died: get as close to the people as possible. Day in and day out we raced around the countryside in 4×4 Pajeros covering her every move. When she reached a village she would stop, open the sun roof and with a megaphone address the crowd gathered around her vehicle. And then she would close the sun roof and race on to the next village. Everywhere we went throngs of supporters would line the way. If someone wanted to kill her back then, there would have been ample opportunity.
Occasionally, I would follow the campaign of her arch rival, Nawaz Sharif, but that was nowhere near as exciting and it seemed that nobody abroad was really interested in him. However, my own lack of interest in him changed after an unusual incident that brought us closer together. While he was taking a walking tour through a part of Lahore and I was back-peddling in front of him, I suddenly fell through an open manhole on the street. He quickly reached down with some of his aides and pulled me out. Noticing that I was covered in blood he stopped his campaigning, summoned his medical team to attend to me and waited in a nearby residence until I was bandaged and fit to continue before he carried on. After that incident, I made it a point to cover his campaign as well.
When it was announced that Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) had swept the majority of seats in the National Assembly I was in Rawalpindi, just south of the capital Islamabad. The city erupted in celebrations and fireworks and it took me hours to get back and file my images at the office in Islamabad.
Shortly after Benazir Bhutto’s election victory I was sent back to Pakistan to cover the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit. This event was to be bigger than normal because the meeting not only brought together all the countries of the sub-continent, but more importantly it was the first time in 16 years that the leaders of Pakistan and India would meet one on one again. The sight of Benazir Bhutto walking alongside Rajiv Gandhi represented a chance for change and reconciliation. The last time such a high level meeting occurred was in 1972, at the signing of the Simla Agreement when Benazir’s father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Rajiv’s mother, Indira Gandhi, had met and agreed to settle all their differences peacefully.
Sixteen years later, a new generation of leaders, part of the same dynasty, was meeting yet again. As before, they agreed never to attack each other’s nuclear facilities, to promote cultural exchanges between the two countries and to eliminate double taxation on international civil aviation transactions. In the same spirit as their parents, Bhutto and Gandhi signed the same vows their parents had done years before.
After only 20 months Benazir Bhutto was removed from office by Pakistan’s then President Ghulam Ishaq Khan over an alleged corruption scandal. She would, however, come back and hold the office a second time between 1993 and 1996.
In a weird twist of fate Benazir Bhutto’s death signals an end to a relationship between India and Pakistan that began in 1972 and was strengthened again in 1988. Benazir’s father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was executed in 1979 after a controversial trial where he was accused of being behind the murder of one of his opponents. Indira Gandhi was assassinated in 1984, and her son was killed in 1991. Sixteen years later Benazir Bhutto would suffer the same fate.
Norbert Schiller’s latest book Arak and Mezze: The Taste of Lebanon was published last month.
