No Change in Agenda of Benazir: She Remains Committed to Indian Agenda

Benazir made a deal with the military in order to return to Pakistan in 1988. She went on win the elections and became the PM. But she reneged on the deal and was ousted by IJI led by Nawaz Sharif who said she was a "˜security risk'. She has since been trying to prove she really is a security risk because that is now an essential "˜qualification' to lead the country.  Musharraf is following the very same agenda that has since been renamed "˜enlightened moderation'. BB and Babu may be friends now but it is good to know what she said when they were sworn enemies. Neither of them is an alternative to present dispensation.  Would the military have to put together an alliance of patriots once again?  It would better if it was natural and unassisted. + Usman Khalid+

Well before 12 October '99 when General Musharraf took over the reins of government into his hands, Benazir Bhutto was in the US campaigning against Nawaz Sharif in a bid to replace him in office for an unprecedented third time. She had not yet visited India and endorsed the Indian agenda of Akhand Bharat. India sells its agenda under different labels at different times i.e. common currency, confederation, regional block of South Asia etc. Benazir supported all these during her visit to India. But her purpose in the USA was to underline her being deserving of American support because she is most effective voice to decry Islam in Pakistan and to discredit it universally as a polity. She follows no rule and flouts with blatant impunity the convention that leaders of opposition do not make adverse comments about their country or its system from foreign soil. She decries her country, its polity and its system mostly from foreign soil in foreign media.

She made a speech to Woodrow Wilson International Center (WWIC) for Scholars on May 25, 1999 that can only be characterised as outpouring of venom. People show unusual courtesy and understanding to her because her husband has been in prison awaiting formal indictment for the murder of her brother "“ Murtaza Bhutto. She did not tell her audience what her husband is in prison for but directed her fury at Nawaz Sharif. Comparing his rule with that of General Zia, she said, "Now, like then, we see religious fanatics, extremists and fundamentalists dictating national policies." She knows that religious parties would consider it slander that they are accused of supporting Nawaz Sharif. As if that was not a blatant enough lie, she even presents General Musharraf as "˜bending to extremists'. Compared to her, everybody in Pakistan is a religious extremist. She is sure she has convinced those who matter in the US that no one has better credentials as a secularist in Pakistan.

After being sacked as the Prime Minister for the second time for corruption and misconduct she sees that if she was to return to power again, she would have to earn the goodwill and support of the two closest allies of the US "“ India and Israel. She believes that no Pakistani politician could outbid her. She has decided to play the "India card". In her recent speeches to small audiences that often go unreported, she has been thundering that if she were not made the Prime Minister again, there would be another Bangladesh. While she endorsed (in WWIC speech) the Advani vision "for the creation of an Asian Free Trade Zone based on a regional alliance rather than on nation state"; she threatens becoming the apostle of secession and Sindhu Desh. She cleverly uses the very same argument that was used for propaganda against her father who was accused by the Rightist parties of splitting Pakistan by refusing to yield to secessionist agenda of Sheikh Mujib. She seeks India's favour by supporting Akhand Bharat while she blackmails Pakistan by threatening Sindhu Desh.

President Musharraf also sells himself as a liberal and a secularist. She says he is phoney; she alone is the true liberal and secularist. What is more sinister is that she endorses the propaganda line the Indo-Israeli lobbies pursue to demonise Islam and the Muslim World. While the Muslims all over the world worry that the American War on Terror is becoming a war on Islam and is being waged as a war against liberation movements in Palestine, Kashmir and Chechnya, she supports the line of Jewish lobbies that the war is between democracy and dictatorship. That line helps them portray Pakistan and Saudi Arabia as undemocratic and evil. Benazir uses it to present her crusade against Islam as a crusade for democracy. As America endorsed "˜true democracies' she blatantly courts India and Israel, the enemies of Pakistan, as her friends. She regularly slates Islam and decries the Islamic Republics as fundamentalist and undemocratic, deserving of what they get from her democratic fiends. President Musharraf has helped her gain credibility; he might even help her regain popularity.

Speech by Benazir Bhutto, former Prime Minister of Pakistan

Director Hamilton, Distinguished Friends

I come before you at a time of both political and personal crisis. It is as if we had slipped fifteen years into the past, when I came to Washington after my release as a political prisoner in 1984 to plead the case of Pakistani democracy in the halls of Congress, to the administration, the press and the academy.

Now, like then, we see a dictatorial concentration of power.

Now, like then, we see the destruction of independent political institutions.

Now, like then, we see shameless victimization of political opponents.

Now, like then, we see blatant press censorship.

Now, like then, we see the arrest and brutalization of journalists who dare to print the truth.

Now, like then, we see the harassment and torture of the Opposition.

Now, like then, we see human rights abused and trampled.

Now, like then, we see Pakistan isolated in the international community.

Now, like then, we see the international business community frightened away from investing in a lawless and bankrupt regime.

Now, like then, we see religious fanatics, extremists and fundamentalists dictating national policies "“ writing the laws, manipulating the Parliament, and assaulting the independent judiciary.

Now, like then, we see an unholy alliance of those who would exploit Islam to promote their own personal political agendas.

Now, like then, we see fear and raw force ruling Pakistan like an iron fist.

Then it was General Zia ul-Haq.

Now, it is Nawaz Sharif.

But fascism is fascism.

For the cause of democracy and human rights in Pakistan, there is little qualitative or quantitative difference in their styles, their goals, their allies and their targets. As it is written in the Bible, "there is nothing new under the sun."

Ladies and gentlemen, I come before you today shaken by the unrelenting assaults against my Party, my family and myself, and most recently by the murder attempt against my husband. It is a saga so painful, so dreadful, so draconian and methodological that it almost defies belief. But it is true. The nightmare, which has become my life, seems to have no respite, no relief. A regime of my worst political enemies, a regime headed by a man who was Zia ul Haq's Chief Minister of Punjab and chief ally, has orchestrated a campaign to totally discredit my Party and my family.

Finally and completely, the forces of regression sense they have the Bhuttos at long last where they have wanted my family for twenty years, and they are going in for the kill -- quite literally. All the resources of the regime - the police, the courts, the state-controlled press, and special extra-constitutional courts - have been given one single, clear assignment. Destroy my reputation, destroy my party, destroy my political base, and destroy my family. Above all, destroy with me once and for all the faces of liberalism, pluralism, and moderation.

Only last week, my husband was kidnapped from his hospital bed and dragged off to the offices of the Pakistani CIA, where for three days he was deprived of sleep, of food, of water. He was repeatedly and incessantly interrogated under strobe lights about absurd and Machiavellian conspiracies of murder and deceit. And when he refused to confess and implicate me in these fantasies, his throat was cut, his tongue was cut, and he was left for hours to bleed near death.

Ladies and gentlemen, only the expression of concern from Washington caused the Pakistani regime to allow him to be taken to an emergency hospital for treatment. And then the Gestapo-like authorities had the audacity to charge him with a felony for allegedly attempting suicide!

Alice in Wonderland meets Franz Kafka. Unbelievable? No, not really. It is no longer unbelievable in Nawaz's Pakistan. Sadly, it is not only believable, but it is now predictable. There is no limit to what Nawaz Sharif will do to reshuffle the chemistry of politics in Pakistan, to destroy any last vestiges of a political opposition, a free press, an independent judiciary, even an independent military. He is a man of no constraints, no limits, no laws.

Ladies and gentlemen, there has never in the history of Pakistan been so much raw and unchallenged power concentrated in the hands of one person. Not even under General Zia ul Haq were institutions, laws and human dignity so openly, shamelessly and repeatedly violated with impunity. Under Zia, at least, there was no pretense of justice, and there was hope for change. Under Zia, there was international pressure, legitimacy was denied. Now under Nawaz, there is hopelessness in Pakistan, and the world, distracted by other international crises, seems indifferent to Pakistan's regression to its ugly, authoritarian past. And each day, the noose around the neck of democracy grows tighter and tighter. The assault Nawaz Sharif launched on the institutions of democracy in Pakistan over the last two and half years is a calculated, methodological manipulation of every office, of every force, of every value of pluralism in Pakistan.

Look at the record -- the hard, cold objective record of the tyranny of this regime. Nawaz Sharif brought down an elected President and substituted a puppet of his own choosing. A man whose nomination the Chief Election Commissioner had rejected for committing contempt of court. The judge who sentenced me overruled the Chief Election Commissioner. Nawaz Sharif then went on to sack the Chief Election Commissioner. Nawaz Sharif ordered mobs to attack the Supreme Court, politically besieged the Court, removed the Chief Justice in an attempt to undermine the judiciary. Nawaz Sharif attempted to manipulate the professionalism of the military by sacking the military chief.

Nawaz Sharif led an assault on the Pakistan Peoples Party and other opposition parties in Pakistan "“ arresting party leaders, ransacking and destroying party offices, ordering brick and batten attacks by the police against parliamentarians -- including myself. Nawaz Sharif created under a special law an Ehtesab Bureau of so-called political accountability as a mechanism of victimization against the opposition. Its mandate is not to investigate corruption under the Zia dictatorship or the two Nawaz regimes, but only to harass Nawaz' opponents.

In total indifference to any international standards of justice and due process, the Prime Minister's secretariat engages in the most blatant illegal acts, including: torturing of witnesses; theft of official documents; obstruction of justice; forgery; illegal use of taxpayer funds for payments to foreign agents; illegal wire tapping; providing fabricated evidence to foreign governments; harassment and intimidation of defense counsels; misuse of public funds; and libel.

Nawaz Sharif is a man of no constraints, no limits, no laws. Nawaz Sharif has brought charge after charge against me, based on these blatant violations of due process and the simplest elements of justice. Murder, conspiracy, corruption, kickbacks -- my husband and I have been accused of everything under the sun -- from patronage to pollution to pilfering. And when one of these concocted cases -- based on overtly forged documents and testimony elicited under torture -- was brought forward, it was sent to a Justice who is the son of the man who hanged my father. There is no subtly in this regime. I was hauled before this so-called Justice and was not allowed to bring a single defense witness. During the course of the so-called trial, my defense lawyers were threatened, arrested and had their bank accounts frozen. I was not allowed to defend myself against these manufactured charges. It was a Kafkaesque trial, a judicial nightmare headed by a judge who served as deputy attorney general to the military dictator who kept me behind bars for nearly six years. This kangaroo court has tried me, convicted me, and ordered the confiscation of all the property I had before I became Prime Minister, and now is attempting to disqualify me from serving in Parliament. This is the state of democracy in Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan. In the weeks and months ahead there will be other charges, other kangaroo courts, other puppet judges.

Nawaz Sharif will show no limits, will exercise no constraints, is bound by no laws in pursuit of what he and his dictator mentor have worked so hard for so long -- the destruction of the Bhuttos, the Pakistan Peoples Party and the democratic movement of Pakistan in pursuit of imposing a theocratic state run by fanatics. It is an insatiable thirst, an irrational and reckless obsession -- threatening the very foundations of a Pakistan built on the principles of constitution, rule of law and freedom. No limits. No constraints. No laws.

Ladies and gentlemen, I do not fear justice, I welcome it. I may have made mistakes during my tenures as Prime Minister, and there are things I would chose to do differently. Unlike the Sharif family, which while in government turned a small business into a cartel worth billions, I had neither the need nor desire to defraud my people. For better or worse my family has been one of the leading landed families of Sindh for generations, and my father left me well provided. My husband comes from a business family, which has dealt in banking, insurance, real estate and the hotel business long before my marriage. The charges against me are concocted. I would like the judgement passed against me to be scrutinized by any independent judicial body, legal opinion, human rights organizations, so that I can prove that what is occurring to me in Pakistan is not a case of corruption, but rather the regime threatening democracy.

The West cannot afford to be indifferent to the re-emergence of fascism and fanaticism in South Asia. Pakistan is now a country with a tested nuclear stockpile with short and middle range missiles deployed to deliver them. Is the United States comfortable with a man with no political accountability to the people in charge of this system? The people of Pakistan are not.

Can the West be comfortable with a dictator running nuclear Pakistan? Fascism is a tough word. But again, let's look at Nawaz Sharif's record. The new fascist regime has banned popular music on television in Pakistan, calling it decadent. It has refused to condemn murderers of women committed in the name of honour. It has refused, despite a constitutional majority, to restore women's seats to Parliament. The new fascist regime has suspended the elected Assembly in our country's second largest province and established military courts for summary trials. The new fascist regime has hanged people after summary trials, has engaged in terrorism as a daily occurrence, has assaulted the position of minorities in society, and has all but decimated the free press.

The new fascist regime has forced girls in schools to wear the veil, and has set the cause of women in Pakistan back a full generation. No constraints. No limits. No laws.

Newspaper editors have been kidnapped, tortured and detained. Najam Sethi, the distinguished editor of the independent Friday Times, was arrested by the police, literally dragged from his bed in the middle of the night, physically tortured, mentally abused, not permitted to see his family or lawyers. This brutality went on for over two weeks, causing the United States government and the international community to denounce Nawaz's brutality. Sethi still rots in a Class C cell. And what was his crime? Making a speech critical of the human rights record of the Nawaz regime - this is an offense in fascist Pakistan, this is what triggers arrest and torture. But that is not all. It is just part of the methodological pattern. Independent journalists have disappeared, kidnapped in the middle of the night and taken away to torture cells recreating the atmosphere of Argentina under the generals' junta. Columnists who have been critical of the regime have been beaten and had their bones broken and families threatened, like the former Pakistani Ambassador to Sri Lanka, Hussain Haqqani. The military has been dispatched to collect water bills and check electricity meters, sending a clear signal to the people about the breakdown of a civil society.

Nawaz Sharif is seeking to undermine Pakistan's Constitution through the passage of a bill cloaked in Religion with the purpose of imposing a theocratic state. Under this draconian constitutional amendment, the Prime Minister would be given the statutory authority to (and I quote) "proscribe what is right and what is wrong," in the name of religion, similar to Sudan and Afghanistan. Like Zia before him, Nawaz is attempting to manipulate Islam for his own power. He already has a two-thirds cronies, he will have every card in the deck. He will not only control every institution of power and politics, every element of the media and the military, but will have the ability to amend the Constitution at will. And then his dictatorship will be complete.

Ladies and gentlemen, I cannot tell you that the assault upon me since 1996 has not taken its toll. My three young children have been deprived of their father completely, and in large measure of their mother as well. My children live in fear and turmoil. Because of threats to their safety, I had to send them out of my country. I could only see them occasionally, when I was not being hauled before so-called Accountability Tribunals or visiting their father in prison. My oldest child is ten, my youngest is five. Do you understand what Nawaz Sharif has done to my children? Can you imagine this happening to your own family? My husband has been in jail for every day that I have been out of office. He has been held hostage to my political career, offered freedom and riches to perjure himself against his own wife. His defiance has almost cost him his life. I have shuttled from one courthouse to another, trying to defend myself against one charge more ludicrous, more outrageous than the next knowing that this is not only a personal assault on me but on the values symbolized by my leadership. I have watched the daily assaults on my character degrade and tarnish my international reputation. I have watched myself humiliated on state controlled television and vilified by the government in the international press.

Ladies and gentlemen, in your country I believe you talk about "the politics of personal destruction." Nawaz Sharif has taken his politics of personal destruction to another level, a literal level. The politics of personal destruction as practiced by Nawaz Sharif has bludgeoned me far worse than any of Zia's cells and torture. But I am not broken. If the goal of those in power, those who were the agents of martial law in the past, and are now the mechanism of contemporary fanaticism and fascism, was to keep my party out of politics, to keep us from speaking out on issues that we care strongly about, to silence me about human rights and the state of democracy in Pakistan, then Nawaz and his henchmen have failed miserably. Each indignity has made me more resolute. Each outrageous charge has made me more defiant. Each kangaroo court pronouncement has made me even more committed to the restoration of democracy in my homeland.

Nawaz Sharif may think he has all the power. He underestimates the force of justice. Victor Hugo once said, "a stand can be made against invasion of an army, but no stand can be made by an invasion of an idea." The power of democracy, the force of free political parties, the vitality of a strong press, the contribution of functioning NGOs, the integrity of an independent Judiciary, the inevitability of the rights of women in modem society -- all of these forces are more powerful than Nawaz Sharif s Gestapo, his intelligence apparatus, his CIA, his interrogation centers, and his hand picked police. These are the forces of history, and they cannot be denied, and they cannot be defeated.

I have come to America; I have come to the Woodrow Wilson Institute, to talk about the ideas and the issues to which I have committed my life. Nawaz Sharif and his junta will not stifle or silence the forces of liberalism that look to my leadership. They can drain me of my blood, but they cannot drain me of my spirit.

I hope that during this afternoon, during the question and answer period, we can talk about all that I would have liked to accomplish in my tenure as Prime Minister and the forces that blocked the implementation of my legislative and social agenda.

I want to talk to you about methods to increase the power and representation of women and minorities in the political, economic and social life of Pakistan as we cross into the new millennium.

I want to talk to you about my ideas for the creation of an Asian Free Trade Zone which can mobilize the huge economic force and markets of South Asia to compete effectively in the emerging global marketplace, a marketplace based more on regional alliances than on nation-states.

I want to talk to you about my ideas to resolve, once and for all, the explosive tinderbox of Kashmir and other ideas to normalize relations between Pakistan and India.

I want to talk to you about my ideas to limit the spread of nuclear weapons in South Asia, and create a nuclear and missile free zone on the sub-continent.

I want to talk to you about the politicization of the judicial system. I want to talk to you about building equity into the electoral system by substituting a system of party-list proportional representation for the money-dominated constituency elections in the current system.

I want to talk to you about the dynamics between military spending and social programs, about the effects of appeasing international lending institutions on the developing economies of the transitional world.

I want to talk to you about the difficulties and incongruities, the pressures and unique demands, the special responsibilities and the curious double standards of a woman serving as a head of state, especially in the developing world, even more particularly in an Islamic society.

I want to talk to you about the dual paths of political and economic development and liberalization, and the danger from those who would play off one against the other.

These are the issues of the twenty-first century that must be confronted. These are the issues of a modem Pakistan. These are the issues of the third millennium that is but 221 days away. Thinking ahead to that night is difficult. I do not know what state Pakistani society will be in. But if I do live to that night, on December 31, 1999, as I look up into the black winter sky and see the stars of hope shining above the world, I am determined to be thinking of the words of the father of one of my Harvard classmates, who is now the Lieutenant Governor of the State of Maryland.

As the millennium turns, I want to be praying and remembering the words that Robert Kennedy spoke in 1966 in South Africa, in the worst days of the nightmare of apartheid. "Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or act to improve the lots of others, or strikes against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

These words appear on Bobby Kennedy's grave. They remind us that some dreams cannot die, that some forces of history are too powerful to be contained. These words sustain me. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.