Benazir Bhutto - some personal reminiscences

Even before my arrival in Pakistan I had determined that I wanted to meet Benazir Bhutto. This was based on my belief that it was likely that she would be the first female head of an Islamic state and that she appeared to be an attractive and engaging character.

I was posted to Pakistan as deputy head of the Australian Embassy in July 1986. Benazir had returned from exile in the UK three months earlier.

A week after my arrival I learnt that Benazir was visiting Islamabad and staying close to where I lived. I asked a locally engaged staff member to make an appointment and called on her the next day.

I was ushered into a comfortable lounge room. Benazir, who had been sitting, rose to meet me. She was even more striking than her photographs. Dressed in golden cream she had a white dupatta over her glistening black hair. There were three other equally well groomed young women in the room. Benazir extended her hand smiled and motioned me to sit opposite her.

She eased back in her chair crossed her legs and said coquettishly, “Did they tell you what a naughty girl I was at Oxford.” This was a question and statement entirely out of left field. Was she testing me? In light of my subsequent understanding of her I would say, yes, she was.

A provocative statement leading to a vigorous exchange was a Bhutto learning technique. In any event I said no. She asked if I knew her friend Alan Jones from Australia who had been at Oxford with her. I said I knew of him as he was a well known rugby coach and radio broadcaster.

Jones later told me that he used to chauffer her around in her little yellow MG. Late one night he was summoned to come and pick her up at her college. Once in the car she said she wanted a hamburger, so Jones drove her toward a popular Oxford hamburger establishment, realising where he was going she said, “No Alan, I meant the one we go to in London.” So off to London they went bought a hamburger and drove back to Oxford.

Benazir was charming, articulate, strong willed, stubborn, courageous, charismatic and a born politician.

We chatted for over an hour on a range of issues of concern. I took my leave having obtained enough information to provide an extensive record of conversation for Canberra. We both agreed that there was a lot more to discuss so I invited her to drop in at my home when next she was in Islamabad. She took me at my word and over the next two years, sometimes with a day’s notice and at other times with an hour’s notice she would drop in, often with a cavalcade of anything up to ten vehicles, police and minders, the watchers and the watched.

Benazir was always accompanied by at least two female companions, even at dinner or lunch and many male minders who secreted themselves around the house awaiting the signal. When the signal came a rush of activity would follow. Men would appear around corners to open house and car doors, engines would start, gates open, goodbyes waved through open windows and the caravanserai would depart in a fanfare of tooting horns and sirens. The signal was a raised arm and click of beautifully manicured fingers.

When Benazir was jailed at the end of 1986, on advice from the embassy, Canberra issued a strong protest.

I was the first diplomat to meet with Benazir following her return to Pakistan. When she was released from prison I suggested she meet with more diplomats in order that she give herself a greater measure of protection should she be imprisoned again. This was a measure I had employed in South Africa with respect to black activists. I proposed a lunch at which she would be the guest speaker. I invited about 30 deputy heads of mission and a number of foreign correspondents. The spectre of Zia was enough to deter about 10 of the invitees.

The lunch and address was to be conducted under Chatham House rules. Sometime after this, Benazir asked if secret meetings could be arranged with the American, British, Indian and Russian Ambassador’s. This was done.

The subject of her safety was ever present. Even at that time guns were plentiful in Pakistan and in the open, without any protection, she was addressing large crowds. I once asked her did she have a fear of being shot and she replied that she had a fear of being shot and left incapacitated and in pain for the rest of her life. She said if she was shot she hoped her death would be swift, which in the event is what occurred.

My wife and I were invited to her wedding in Karachi. What to give the couple who had everything? Knowing she had a private apartment in her house where she liked to retreat from servants we settled on a popup toaster for early morning tea and toast. She found it quite amusing.

After Zia was blown up by a bomb, placed in a gift box of mangoes on his aircraft in mid 1988, Benazir, who was pregnant, had a clear run to the Prime Ministership.

Within days of being elected, Benazir rang and said she wanted to buy Australian wheat to the value of $180 million. Her advisers had recommended that she buy US wheat but she said she told them she wanted to buy Australian wheat because the Australian embassy had been good to her.

Later Australian Ambassadors maintained contact with Benazir through the course of her second term as Prime Minister until she went once again into exile in 1999 plagued by allegations of corruption.

During her two terms as Prime Minister the Senate and the military were against her and the corruption of her husband, Asif, known as Mr 10%, dragged her down. But for one so feisty it was always a surprise to me that she did not take on the mullahs in the Senate over the rights of women in Pakistan.

With her assassination Pakistan is faced with a major crisis. The burgeoning tension between the fundamentalist religious right and the old guard western leaning moderates has been exposed for all to see. The religious right is comprised of a multitude of groups increasingly finding common cause. Religious political activity has moved east and India will be looking on with increasing concern. Pakistan is a nuclear state. The army is no longer moderate and western leaning. It now reflects the divide affecting the rest of the country.

I am shocked and saddened at her murder and extend my sympathy to her children, husband and family. She offered some hope to the people of Pakistan who have for too long suffered at the hands of military dictators. She represented the last throw of the dice for US foreign policy which is as a bankrupt in Afghanistan and Pakistan as it is in Iraq.