Benazir Bhutto

Last year, I was privileged to hear Benazir Bhutto speak at UTA, and announce her return after years of exile to Pakistan, the country where her family's political destiny has ended eerily in untimely deaths for first her father, followed by her two brothers, and today, by her assasination outside of a rally. In her 1 hour long speech at UTA last Spring, she accused president Musharaff of harboring Al Qaida terrorists, like Osama bin Laden, pointing out astutely and bravely that if he really wasn't protected by Musharaff, he would have been caught. She detailed her personal experiences traveling in the treacherous region where he is supposedly hiding. She bravely addressed accusations of corruptions (which have since been somewhat substantiated, including the murder of her brother, a political rival who lead a terrorist organization in Pakistan) levelled at her by political adversaries, which she vehemently denied. Then, she outlined by it was in the US's best interest to support her return (which they did, President Bush had widely backed her opposition candidacy).

Perhaps saddest in all of this is that her immediate family, her children, are hardly addressed in online articles at the NY Times or CNN at all. In case you are wondering if such a powerful and influential world leader, and also the first female head of an Islamic Nation could have had time for family, she did. She had a son and two daughters: Bilawal,Bakhtawar and Asif. Bhutto was also the most beloved of her siblings by her father. He took her at a young age to political meetings with Henry Kissinger as well as negotiations with other leaders of the countries neighboring Pakistan. According to an article I read in Biography journal, it was her father who freed her from wearing a birka (head to toe coverings required under a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam) her whole life, it was her father who insisted she study politics and government at Radcliffe, and it was her father who she worked so hard to free before his hanging in 1979. Her father's execution was not the only hardship she was forced to endure.
After his murder, she was kept in a metal cage in which she suffered heat as high as 120 degrees, as well as roaches and rats crawling on her body. When she quit eating and almost died, the government that overthrew her father's government relented and let her go to London to live in exile. Later, she returned to Pakistan and was twice elected to the office of Prime Minister, and she was the FIRST EVER female head of an Islamic state. In one of the elections, she was even opposed by her own mother and brother (who later ended up murdered).
From everything I have read and understood about her, she was complex and multifaceted, at one time craving democracy, and at another, ruling with an iron fist to gain control of the unstable country. She and her family are alleged to have taken as much as 1.5 billion dollars from the country they wanted to help, yet at the same time she fought for rights for women and children in the oppressive country. She also stood up against jihadists, and she had as many as 40 fatwahs issued that authorized her murder. AT one time, she praised Al Qaida, at another, she condemned it. (Not unlike the USA, just think of Donald Rumsfeld's photo with Osama).
Perhaps most interesting is her relationship with her husband, with whom she shared an arranged marriage. They actually fell in love, and had three children together, although it is also her husband who is accused of stealing most of the money from the country while he was Minister of Finance or something like that.
To be sure, she was very brave to return to Pakistan, and by most accounts (including an op ed. in the Christian Science Monitor), she had returned to Pakistan because she loved the country, and because she wanted to bring democracy to the region. She was either loved or hated, most people who knew her were not ambivalent about her. Even in her speech at UTA, she acknowledged the extreme danger and risk her decision to return to Pakistan held. She said, though, that she would consider it an honor to die in pursuit of a better Pakistan. Not even a year later, her eerie acknowledgement has come true.
Most important about her now, I believe, she was one of a handful of world leaders who are women. (I believe that the world needs more women leaders for many reasons: not because women are innately better than men, but because I believe that women are equally as capable as men to lead regimes, countries and businesses.) Just by being a political leader who was a female, her life stood as a sharp argument against women who in some Islamic traditions are relagated to a shadowy life behind a think veil. She bravely fought for what she believed in, even if sometimes she was flat out wrong in her choices or even possibly dishonest and murderous. I do not know if her return to Pakistan was because she craved the power of leading a country with nuclear capabilities (It was in her tenure that the country gained these capabilities), or because she saw the poor and oppressed in Pakistan and longed to free them. I suspect, like most of us, her intentions were somewhere in between noble and selfish. She was extremely courageous, I know, and doggedly committed to Pakistan: if she wasn't, she would have been happy to live in Switzerland off the family fortune while she talked politics with expats on the ski slopes. I am so happy that I saw her speak, though, because I believe that however he does it, God uses political leaders for his own causes, if they know it or not, whether or not they acknowledge him. In the political arena, it is especially poignant now to note that there is not one candidate, much the same as Bhutto, who is all good or all evil. I will keep her husband and children in my prayers tonight: I know they have suffered a great loss. And, I will pray for Pakistan, too, an area that seems to be tumultuous and angry now, more than ever. I believe that Bhutto would have brought good to the country.

* A lot of this information was obtained at EBSCO, at UTA, from this citation: Title:
From beloved to besieged. By: Harmon, Melissa Burdick, Biography, 10927891, Nov98, Vol. 2, Issue 11
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