Benazir Bhutto - some personal reminiscences

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.