Bhutto was democratically elected as prime minister in 1988, when
she was only 35, and then again in 1993, but both times she was dismissed from office by the president.
Forced to live abroad, this champion of democracy never gave up. She
could have enjoyed the life of a charismatic, beautiful, young and
powerful figure on the international scene, yet she knowingly put her
life at great peril by returning home for her people.
Her father, democratically-elected Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali
Bhutto, was deposed and executed for fighting the same good fight 30
years ago; her husband’s life was put in jeopardy when a political
party meeting was broken up by brute force two years ago; her
sister-in-law was the victim of an assassination attempt, and still
Benazir Bhutto fought on for democracy and a better life for Pakistan.
As we’ve seen time and again, including in the most recent terrorist
attempt in London, if you follow an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist’s road,
it often leads back to Islamabad. September 11, the attacks on Madrid,
the shoe bomber, the London tube bombers and Glasgow all had
connections with Pakistan. The recent Red Mosque siege and now Bhutto’s
assassination are just glaring proof that the terrorism nurtured in
Pakistan and launched abroad has now come home to roost.
I had the privilege of being invited to a private briefing with
Bhutto in London before her triumphant return to Pakistan in October.
Having just heard Pakistan’s former army chief Gen. Jahangir Karamat’s
take on practical steps to tackle the strategic challenges posed by
Pakistan’s extremist movement, I was as always fairly underwhelmed with
the Pakistan miltary’s party line. So I was keen to hear Bhutto’s
thoughts at a briefing down at IISS on the banks of the Thames to see
if she had a better solution to offer.
I left impressed with the youngest and first woman prime minister to
lead a Muslim nation in the modern age, and was convinced of the wisdom
of her tactics in addressing extremism in Pakistan. She was definitely
what we needed to "break the back," as she described it, of terrorism
there.
If you haven’t read Bhutto’s autobiographies, you owe it to yourself
to pick them up. In the U.S. our history is one underpinned by the
belief that one person can make a difference. A modern-day David to the
Goliath of terrorism, Bhutto proved that one young woman can make a
difference.
Since Bhutto left power, Pakistan has seen the rise of religious
parties, the growth of militant madrassas, the development of militant
groups, the fueling of extremism … not to mention an increasing role in
international terrorism.
Until the Red Mosque and a surge in homicide bombings, international
attention focused on Pakistan's tribal areas as hotbeds of extremism
and neglected to scrutinize the extremism problem flourishing in the
nooks and crannies of Islamabad, the country's capital city.
Bhutto astutely emphasized the danger in the president’s backyard,
warning that extremism had grown to such an alarming degree that it
threatened not only Pakistan, but the region and the rest of the world.
Islamabad has lately become an active recruitment, training, and
staging site for Al Qaeda, which now controls areas once controlled by
the military.
Bhutto's briefing gave me the distinct impression that madrassas are
the predominant choice of cover for training militants and for
promoting terror in Islamabad. Under the current regime, militants have
expanded control to the extent that madrassas are being used as
headquarters to house political troops and weapons. Many are equipped
with rocket launchers and Kalashnikovs.
Contrary to the status quo, Bhutto took the view that any mosque
used to breaking the law, housing weapons, sheltering irregular troops
or teaching hate must be shut down.
Bhutto believed that "Madrassas are schools where children study
with pens and books, not militant headquarters where guns and hate
flourish." But the current madrassa culture has best been symbolized by
the Red Mosque siege — a place of prayer and peace being converted into
a military garrison.
President Pervez Musharraf’s regime was talking a good talk about
reforming mosques, but he clearly failed miserably to walk the walk. In
fact, a militant cleric was chosen to oversee madrassa demilitarization
reform; does anyone see a conflict of interest there?
Even better, he was caught smuggling weapons after his appointment.
Did he get in trouble? No. Lucky for him, a minister who has twice
publicly condoned homicide bombers was on hand to get him out of his
scrape scot-free.
For Bhutto, extremism was not just a military problem. Instead, she
pointed directly to development and democracy as the means to address
the roots of the extremism being cultivated in the madrassas.
She said that in her view, 20,000 madrassas were breeding a
successor generation of international terrorism, hatching conspiracies
against planes, buses, trains and — above all — innocent people.
The government after Bhutto diverted money to the military and security services, and as a consequence, families are struggling.
The outrage that Bhutto felt for these suffering families filled the
room as she explained how children can be found living among garbage,
flies, mosquitoes, and sewage outside the madrassas. "Families
desperate to feed and clothe children hand them over to political
madrassas" where they provide food, shelter and education, she told us.
In addition, the children often receive regular pay from the militants.
It is not difficult to see that, unless conditions are improved for the
population, the militants will continue to have the home-court
advantage.
When Bhutto became prime minister, there were 80,000 villages
without electricity. During her brief time in office, she brought
electricity to 50,000 of them. She set up a women’s police force and
appointed women judges for the first time, explaning that she believed
"in our interpretation of Islam that men and women are created equal
and must equally share the responsibilities of citizenship."
"Pakistan, under my leadership, became a model to a half-billion
Muslim women that do not have to accept 'no' for an answer, that every
baby girl has the same rights to a future as every baby boy," she said.
Bhutto believed that without a social welfare system and improved
social conditions, the political madrassas would continue to take
advantage of the situation and that extremism would continue to spread.
Bhutto was not shy of force when necessary. She very successfully
employed force against extremism when in power, but her nuanced
approach stood the best chance of success in the long-term.
While the media has widely covered the threat posed by Al Qaeda and
the Taliban for some time, it has been slow to wake up to the strategic
challenges we face linked with Pakistan’s internal threat.
Bhutto felt that there was a very real possiblity that Al Qaeda
could take over that country. It goes without saying that the shift
from hiding in madrassas and the tribal regions to setting up a state
stronghold would not bode well for the safety of Western civilians.
I left the briefing persuaded that if the election failed to put
Bhutto’s democratic team in place, then Al Qaeda and the Taliban would
have five more years to spread their tentacles throughout the country.
In losing Benazir Bhutto, we have now lost a modern-day hero who took the fight for us all to terrorism on the front line.
Allison Barrie, a security and terrorism consultant with the
Commission for National Security in the 21st Century, has an M.A. from
the King’s College War Studies department and has just completed her
Ph. D thesis with King’s. She attended law school in England and
practiced law for four years at two leading global law firms. Allison
has contributed to various projects with Britain’s Ministry of Defense,
including Iraq Operation Telic 5 and other operations dealing with
imprisoned soldiers, combat experience and management of combat. She
has traveled to over 45 countries and performed as a ballet dancer in
productions of the Royal Opera House and English National Opera.
