35 years after his assassination, we are open to various versions of how Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was killed
Benazir Bhutto at her last rally before she was assassinated | Photo AFP
Lahore: In his racy debut novel, The Prisoner, Omer Shahid Hamid provides an insider, fictionalised, account of the workings of the Karachi police. A few of the most engaging passages in the book relate to Murtaza Bhutto’s last days. Hamid draws upon info and rumours long doing the rounds, but he leaves the audience huffing in a cloud of confusion when the scene of the actual killing is re-enacted. Even in fiction, the incident is blurred beyond easy comprehension.
May be that was how it happened, may be not.
In another killing, another debut novel, a few years ago, Mohammed Hanif gave the more vengeful among us cause for some contentment. He had to be at his imaginative best to create the illusion of a young air force man succeeding in poisoning the general just before the explosion over Bahawalpur in August 1988.
Hanif’s (reassuring) scenario about the abilities of the common Pakistani to down an aggressor was an exception to the general rule in the country. Mysteries abound in this land, and once they are here, they are here to stay. They take permanent root, they grow thick and they branch out with time.
More than 60 years ago, an investigator of the calibre of Saadat Hasan Manto could do little more than raise “pertinent” questions about the assassination of Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan. And three-and-a-half decades after his assassination, we are open to various versions of how Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was killed. There is as yet no single, authoritative account that would be “generally” acceptable to the people of Pakistan.
Bhutto’s daughter, Benazir, was murdered in the full glare of cameras. That was altogether a different age compared to the one lived by the father. There had to be clues but all that is available are many theories leading to many possible assassins.
The most painful part of it relates to how Benazir Bhutto was actually killed: was it a bullet or a bomb or was it the impact of the explosion that caused her death? It was a repulsive sight when, on December 28, 2007, a military man sat relating his facts about how Benazir’s head had hit hard against her vehicle’s roof under the impact of the bomb.
It was if the spokesman thought that those responsible were only responsible for creating the circumstances for Benazir Bhutto’s death. If anyone had thought that stronger democracy and sharper media focus and freer flow of information would ensure clearer answers in future, he was badly mistaken.
On March 6, 2014, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan announced that “Additional Session(s) Judge Rafaqat Awan, who was killed in the attack on the district courts in Islamabad on Monday (March 3), was shot by his own guard”.
Chaudhry Nisar “revealed that judge Awan had suffered three bullet wounds when his guard impulsively fired his weapon as explosions occurred near by”. And “(h)e cautioned members of the Assembly against ‘rushing to conclusions’ as it interferes with ongoing investigations, and assured them that perpetrators will be found and brought to justice”.
There is no need anybody should be overreacting here. Pakistanis are all so used to the investigators taking their time and seldom, if ever, coming up with a good enough explanation, of course, other than the one which absolves attackers of killing and blames them for merely contributing to a fatal accident.
But let’s not rush. It could well have happened exactly the way Chaudhry Nisar says it did. He could not even be suggesting a lesser charge on the attackers than they actually deserve.
The point is that as inhabitants of a permanent locale of fatal occurrences bizarre, we are all so bereft of the energy and the resolve to find out. We are probably too scared to find out.
When we are not scared, we are too grateful to ask. We are too shy to talk about the fairy who tiptoes in and places a small gift of $1.5 billion under our pillow. That was divine, almost, as finance minister Ishaq Dar tells us we should only be concerned with the fruit and leave the counting of the benevolent tree to state functionaries such as his good self.
Even when the source is finally disclosed, mystery must prevail; Pakistanis are not to be too worried about the seed this cash gift is going to sow in our fertile land. Every important man in the government is out to shout down the ungrateful souls amongst us who have the cheek and a wayward mind to view the Saudi package with suspicion. Sartaj Aziz says we can keep a balance between Saudi Arabia and Iran and this should be answer enough for us.
It is in Pakistan’s national interest to keep the cash gift, its purposes et al, under wraps. But mystery must also permeate whatever else is undertaken by the state and the governments in this beloved land of ours. Thus, there is no clear word by the government when the Taliban ask for the release of women and children as a goodwill gesture to boost talks between the militants and the state.
Is that, again, another matter the truth about which would be too heavy a burden for our weak disposition?
Cropping up next would be the death of children in Thar, or the suicide by an alleged rape victim in Kot Addu or the beating of nurses in Lahore — all wrapped in traditional Pakistani ambiguity. We will never know who is responsible for what.
( Source : dc )
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