Daughter of the east by benazir bhutto

The court-room was closed to the press, but one British correspondent evidently managed to gain admittance. No one knew he was there until suddenly a man entered and whispered into the Colonel’s ear.

Where?’ the Colonel asked. The man inclined his head toward

the back of the room.

’I believe you are a journalist,’ the Colonel’s voice boomed. ’Journalists are not permitted. You are to leave immediately.’

I caught a quick glimpse of a man dressed in shalwar khameez whom everyone had taken for a fair-skinned Pathan being escorted out of the court-room. But at least he had got a piece of the story. ’Miss Bhutto appeared composed and in good health and proceeded to demonstrate that she has lost none of her eloquence or wit,’ the correspondent for the Guardian wrote subsequently.

My health, however, was not as good as it appeared. My generally depleted condition was aggravated by the disloyalty of some PPP leaders in April, 1983. Once more Zia was on the move, trying to establish the political base which had eluded him since the coup. Planning to announce the latest step to ’Islamise’ the country in August, Zia was seizing the occasion to tour Sindh for the first time since he overthrew my father and buried the Constitution of 1973. Not surprisingly, the people reacted to his visit with fury and anger.

Under my father’s government, Sindhis had made great strides, winning
by the rivalry between
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government jobs in Customs, the Police, in PIA. Quotas were set aside for them in universities, they were given plots of land and earned high wages in newly constructed hospitals, sugar mills and cement factories. Under Zia, all this had been reversed. Once more Sindh was being dis-criminated against. The state held some of the best land in Sindh. Under Zia, it was parcelled out to army officers instead of to landless farmers. The Sindhis who had risen to management positions in industry were being replaced with retired army officers. Despite the fact that 65 per cent of the country’s revenue came from the Sindhi port of Karachi, little of the revenue found its way back into the province. The economic woes of Sindh fuelled the fires of indignation which had begun burning with the assassination of my father. Many in the province felt that if he had not been a Sindhi, he would not have been hanged.

After the local bodies elections of 1979, the elected PPP Councillors of Badin and Hyderabad passed resolutions condemning the execution of my father and paying tribute to him. In retaliation, Zia had begun dis-qualification proceedings against PPP Councillors all over Sindh. Now Zia was seeking acceptance from the few remaining PPP Councillors, asking them to receive him on his tour of the province. To my horror, the newspapers seemed to imply that they were considering acquiescing to his wishes.

How could I get a message out? The servants were searched

coming and going from 70 Clifton and were followed by Intelligence agents on motorcycles as they went about their errands. Finally I asked one of the servants to act ill in front of the guards and pretend to go on leave to his home in Larkana.

’I hope your son is not going to receive Zia,’ was my verbal message to the Sindh PPP chief whose son was one of the Councillors. ’As you know, it’s against party policy. Please pass the word along.’

I sent a message as well to the PPP Councillor in Larkana. ’You and the others can put yourselves in hospital or you can leave Larkana and not be traceable,’ I told him. ’But don’t go and meet Zia.’

I was helpless with fury when I turned on the television and saw that some of them had met Zia anyway. They had evidently decided in a meeting that the party couldn’t take action against all of them. I was deeply disappointed. Once more, politicians were serving their individual ambitions at the expense of the unity of the party. Perhaps I was being too idealistic, but I expected more. I had no choice but to make a forbidden political phone call to a PPP President. ’I want you to expel the PPP Councillors who had a meeting with Zia. They have violated party disci-pline,’ I said rapidly, knowing that with the phone being monitored I couldn’t afford to waste any time. The phone immediately went dead. It was never reconnected.
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I received no more calls from my relatives. The few visitors I had been allowed were stopped. The searchers at the gate cracked down on the household staff. As they passed in and out of the compound, they were made to take off their shoes and socks. Even their hair was searched. The packets of meat and vegetables the cook brought from the market were cut open. Even the rubbish was searched.

In total isolation again, I felt increasingly ill. The pain intensified in my ear. When I rubbed my left cheek, I felt little sensation. And the noises were getting worse again.

I was walking through the reception area at 70 Clifton one evening in April when the floor seemed to rise towards the ceiling. I gripped the arm of the sofa to steady myself, waiting for the attack of dizziness to pass. Instead a wall of darkness advanced towards me. I pitched forward onto the sofa, in a faint.

Luckily, one of the staff saw me collapse. ’Quick. Quick. Ms Sahiba needs a doctor,’ he ran to tell the jailers. And, once again, it seemed as if God was protecting me. Instead of the usual bureaucratic routine of having to write to the Home Department for medical attention, then waiting for several days, sometimes two weeks for clearance, the police

brought a doctor from the emergency room at MidEast hospital within hours. And, once again, the infection in my ear had burst outwards rather than in-wards.

’Your condition is very dangerous,’ the doctor said, after examining my ear. ’You must see an ear specialist.’

’If you don’t specify that I need a specialist, then the regime will con-tinue to claim I don’t have an ear problem,’ I told him.

The young doctor had the courage to write my need for an ear specialist on his records for the regime in very specific language. The regime sent the ear, nose and throat specialist who had operated on my sinuses three years before to see me. Preferring privacy, he does not want his name to be mentioned in this book. But he was to stabilise my health and perhaps even to save my life.

’There is a perforation in your ear,’ this doctor told me, confirming my suspicions about the regime’s doctor during my detention at Al-Murtaza four years before. ’The perforation has led to a middle-ear and mastoid-bone infection.’ My current infection would have to be drained regularly to relieve some of the pressure on the facial nerve which was causing the numbness. When the infection was arrested, I’d need an operation. ’You’ll have to go abroad for microscopic surgery,’ he said. ’We don’t have the technology here. We’d have to saw open your skull. This is a dangerous procedure. For your own safety, you’d be far, far better off to go abroad.’

I looked at him numbly. Was he implying something beyond the normal risks of this type of surgery in Pakistan? I knew that one of my doctors

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had been approached by the regime in 1980 to say that I had an inner-ear rather than a middle-ear problem and was in need of psychiatric treatment. ’We will form ten medical boards to back up your diagnosis,’ he had been told. What a nice solution it would have been for the regime to dismiss me as a psychiatric case. But the doctor had refused. Now this doctor was adamant that I leave Pakistan. ’I can do the operation here, but I’m fright-ened they’ll put pressure on me to do something under the anaesthetic,’ he said. ’Even if I refuse, they’ll get somebody else to do it. On all counts, it’s much better for you to go abroad.’

I applied to the regime for permission to leave the country on medical grounds. At first, there was no response. But I needed the time anyway. ’You won’t be strong enough to cope with a general anaesthetic for several months,’ the doctor told me. ’You’ll have to build up your system.’ Like my mother, I was put on a high-protein diet of milk, steak, chicken and eggs.

But my ear did not improve. I began to

lose feeling on the left side of my face. My head pounded steadily, the clicking in my ear making it almost impossible to hear anything else. The doctor obtained permission from the authorities to make weekly visits to try and drain the infection at 70 Clifton. And he was made to suffer for his medical concern for a Bhutto.

’You drive often to Hyderabad, don’t you?’ his neighbour, a Police Superintendent asked him shortly after he began his weekly visits. ’Have you seen ”Death Wish”?’ The next day a video of the film was delivered anonymously to his house. Threatening telephone calls followed, as well as a notice from the income tax authorities that he was being audited for tax evasion. His professional integrity was even called into question by the regime who served him a show-cause notice as to why he should not be dismissed from the hospital. Still, the doctor found the courage to go on treating me which I deeply appreciated. He was about the only human being from the outside world I had to talk to, though the regime, I later found out from Peter Galbraith, was claiming otherwise.
Peter Galbraith:
The Pakistani government finally responded at the end of June to the letter Senator Pell and the other Senators had submitted to Zia in December about the specific political prisoners being held in Pakistan. Echoing Zia’s comments at the time, the letter said of Benazii s confinement:

’She is presently under detention at her residence in Karachi to prevent

her from indulging in political activities which are banned. However, she is

given all the comforts possible and doctors of her choice examine and

treat her when required. She is allowed interviews with friends and rela-

tives. Eight close relatives are allowed to stay with her in groups of three

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at a time. She is allowed to use twenty-four personal servants of her choice and has a telephone for her use.’

Soon afterwards I received a call from a cousin of Benazii s. I asked her about the facts in the letter.

’Not true,’ she exploded. ’No friends have been able to visit her. Her sister Sanam has been able to see her only once in the previous three months. Her cousin Fakhri has also had a hard time seeing Benazir. She cannot even go out into the garden. She is lonely and ill. I am worried about her.’

I sent Senator Pell a memo. The timing was fortuitous. Yaqub Khan, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister and former Ambassador to Washington, was in town. Yaqub had made many friends in Washington and had a reputation as a straight-shooter. I did not think Yaqub would be party to any duplicity on Benazii s treatment. When Senator Pell asked the

Foreign Minister about the apparent discrepancy between the official account of Benazir’s treatment and these new facts, Yaqub stiffened. He seemed genuinely shocked and promised to look into the matter when he returned to Pakistan.
June 21, 1983. The longest day of the year and my 30th birthday. Ever the optimist, I had written to the Home Secretary explaining that I had had no visitors for months and would like permission to see my school friends on my birthday. Much to my surprise and delight, the regime agreed.

In the evening, Samiya, her sister and Paree trooped in bearing a choco-late cake which Paree had spent hours baking. Under the watchful eye of the policewoman, we hugged and kissed each other. ’Thank God the cake is safe,’ Samiya said. ’They searched everything else so thoroughly we were scared they’d cut into the cake before you could.’

Victoria Schofield and others of my friends in England had not forgotten me either. As my birthday approached, I found out later, Victoria had written to the current President of the Oxford Union, pointing out that this was my third birthday in detention. On June 21, the Oxford Union adjourned for a minute’s silence, an honour normally afforded an ex-Presi-dent only when he or she dies. Another old friend and former President of the Cambridge Union, David Johnson, was in the debating chamber of the Oxford Union at the time. He subsequently arranged for a prayer to be said for me the following Sunday at all the public services at West-minster Abbey and at St Paul’s Cathedral in London. Both were lovely expressions of concern and friendship.

The expression of concern which arrived about the time of my birthday from a member of the regime was more suspect. ’Please be ready at 7.00 this evening,’ one of the jail officials told me. ’We are taking you to a government rest house.’

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’Why?’ I asked him.

’Because the Martial Law Administrator wishes to see you,’ he said almost triumphantly.

The Martial Law Administrator? ’I will not go to meet the General,’ I said.

The jail official was shocked. ’But you have to go. You are a prisoner,’ he said.

’I don’t care,’ I told him. ’I will not meet him. You’ll have to drag me there, and even then I will shout and scream and make a scene. I will not go to my captors.’

The jail official scurried away, mumbling that I wasn’t being sensible, that my refusal to meet General Abbasi would not be good for me. But I didn’t care. To those of us opposing Zia, any contact with the hated military rulers was regarded as a sell-out. To go to them would be tanta-mount to accepting their authority and tacitly

recognising them.

That night I began packing a suitcase, convinced that retaliation would come from the regime in the form of sending me back to jail. I collected what had become a familiar list of prison supplies - pens, diaries, insect repellent, lavatory paper - but no one came to take me to prison. Instead, to my absolute surprise, the Martial Law Administrator came to visit me at 70 Clifton.

It was unheard of for the arrogant military rulers so used to summoning and commanding to actually come and visit a leader of the opposition. I stared in disbelief at the white haired General sitting at 70 Clifton in his khaki uniform during the first of several visits. His message was always the same.

’I know you are ill,’ he kept telling me. ’The fact that I’m in the army doesn’t mean that I’m not concerned. Remember, our families have known each other for generations. I would like nothing better than to see you receiving medical treatment abroad. But we can’t afford any political embar-rassments.’

Remain polite, I willed myself. There is no point in showing your hand. I guessed that General Abbasi had come to gauge my morale and probe as to what I would do if allowed to go abroad. I gave him the impression that I was anxious to have my treatment and return home immediately. In a way this was true, because at the time I had no intention of staying in exile. I had every intention, however, of taking every opportunity I could to lambast the regime.

I didn’t realise at the time what a bind the regime was in. The doctor had put on record that I needed medical treatment abroad and that if anything happened to me in detention the onus would be on the regime. There was the added pressure from Senator Pell and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and possibly from Yaqub Khan. As the summer of

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1983 dragged on, my detention had become not only an embarrassment to the regime but counter-productive. In my isolation at 70 Clifton, how-ever, I knew none of this. Instead I was jeopardising my possible release by once more getting involved in politics.
The disturbances in Sindh during Zia’s tour had not diminished. As August 14, Pakistan Independence Day and the date Zia had chosen to announce yet another bogus election schedule, drew nearer, the MRD launched its second mass movement to restore democracy. I followed the MRD call for agitation closely from 70 Clifton, reading the newspapers carefully and listening intently to the BBC. At great risk, I communicated by mes-sage with the PPP leaders who had organised a secret cell at the nearby MidEast Hospital and with my home district of Larkana,

sending political instructions and helping to arrange funds.

This MRD movement developed differently from earlier movements. In the past, the mere mention of the words ’protest movement’ would bring the regime sweeping down on political activists, arresting them in the thousands to pre-empt any action and to leave the people leaderless. Now the MRD leaders were being left free to court arrest - which they did. The police did not even prevent the crowds from gathering to cheer the MRD leaders on. The landlord class in Sindh threw themselves into the movement, providing tractors and trucks to transport party supporters and supplying better communication through their managers.

Some PPP leaders, however, showed initial hesitation in joining the movement. It was believed that the PPP leader Jatoi had had meetings with American officials and army officers and had received their backing to overthrow Zia; Jatoi would continue in power while the PPP would be out. I persuaded the PPP leadership to join the movement regardless, stressing that it was more important to unite at the time of an anti-Zia movement and to wont’ about the splintering off later, if necessary.

As the movement slowly grew, I smuggled out several letters to party officials, briefing them on what to tell foreign diplomats and what to tell the press, urging them to sustain the momentum and not give the regime the time to mop us up. If the messages were discovered, I knew that instead of being sent abroad I’d be sent back to prison. But the political emancipation of the people of Pakistan overrode anything else for me. To deflect the suspicions of the jail officials during their visits, I feigned more weakness than I felt. Normally, anger and defiance gave me temporary strength, however ill I was feeling, during these weekly visits. But during the Sindh Uprising of 1983, I consciously kept my eyes on the carpet so they couldn’t see my spirit and would leave convinced that I was too ill to be thinking of anything else.
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Meanwhile, Jatoi was putting pressure on me to get a message for the people from my mother. With great difficulty, somebody contacted her by phone. ’Tell Benazir to issue the statement in my name,’ she relayed back. I sat before the electric typewriter and, in between bouts of power failures, typed like a demon, the words rushing through my fingers and filling the pages rapidly.
My patriotic and heroic Countrymen, my honourable Brothers and Sisters, my brave Sons and Daughters [I began my mother’s call to the nation, which was translated into Urdu and Sindhi and distributed sur-reptitiously throughout

the province] .... The aim of our movement is civil disobedience. For six long years we have been facing persecution and oppression. Our calls for resumption of democracy have been ignored, our workers have been imprisoned and sentenced to death. Enough is enough. We appeal to all the bus owners to take their buses off the roads, to all the railwaymen to stop plying the trains. To the policemen we say: follow the example of your brothers in Dadu and do not shoot innocent people who are your brothers. Do not be frightened of this movement. It is for our people, for our poor, for our children so that they do not live in poverty, hunger and disease. Struggle for your Parliament, for your Government, for your Constitution so that the decisions are taken for the poor people and not for the junta and its stooges ....

The movement exploded into an intense and very widespread ex-pression of discontent against Zia ul-Haq. Railway stations were ran-sacked. Trucks and buses stopped running. Police stations were burned. Hundreds of people lost their lives. Zia himself was almost killed by a supposedly friendly crowd. The helicopter he was believed to be in was stormed shortly after it landed in Dadu and its occupants attacked. Actu-ally, Zia was in a second helicopter which veered away to land somewhere else. When he was discovered in a rest house, he narrowly escaped being lynched.

The uprising in Sindh soon spilled over into the other provinces. The Bar Associations in Quetta, Baluchistan and Peshawar in the Frontier pro-vince defied the ban against political statements and called for elections. In Lahore, riot police sealed all the gates of the High Court to prevent the lawyers from taking out a protest procession, then pelted them with stones. A procession of lawyers went out anyway, led by one of my father’s former lawyers, Talaat Yaqub. ’You who want to stay at home, take these bangles,’ Talaat Yaqub shouted at the predominantly male Lahore Bar Association, throwing off her glass bangles and waving the Pakistani flag. ’I am calling for freedom.’ Hundreds of lawyers joined her, chanting for democracy and marching defiantly into the clutches of the police.

THE YEARS OF DETENTION
The nationwide rebellion was not crushed by the guns and tanks of the Army until the second week in October, leaving particular bitterness in the hearts of the Sindhis. 800 people were reportedly killed. Whole villages were razed and crops burned. Women reportedly were molested by the Army, bringing back dark memories of the Army’s rampage in Bangladesh twelve years before. In the ashes of fury, Sindhi nationalism was born. The move towards secession escalated in the

other minority provinces as well. The fragile federation of Pakistan was strained to breaking point under the ruthlessness of Zia and six years of Martial Law.

The Reagan administration, however, stood by its man. ’Newsweek re-ported that Washington considers Zia its trump card in its global strategy,’ I noted in my journals on October 22. ’One Western intelligence source is quoted as saying that the CIA has ”substantially” expanded its operation in Pakistan. Last week Newsweek said the CIA was involved in holding up Zia’s tottering regime. They want to make sure Zia does not become another Shah of Iran. Over the past year and a half, large numbers of American spooks operating in Egypt have moved from Cairo to Islamabad. The report concluded: ”It has become clear that Zia will cede power only when he is forced to do so.”’ And I remained locked up at 70 Clifton, now in my fifth year of detention.
Darkness. Roaring in my head. Wave after wave of darkness. I woke up in my bedroom soon after the Sindh uprising to find the doctor’s hand on my pulse and a great look of relief on his face. I had had a bad reaction to the local anaesthetic he’d used to drain my ear, he told me, but there was no way to summon emergency help. The phone lines at 70 Clifton were dead. A month later, I suffered a severe attack of vertigo, totally losing all sense of balance and becoming violently nauseous. Again, there was no way for the doctor to summon medical help.

For days after the treatments for my ear, I was feverish, coughing and sweating. After giving me an audiogram, the doctor determined that I had suffered a hearing loss of almost 40 decibels. ’I cannot take re-sponsibility for the health of the patient if I continue to treat her in detention,’ the doctor informed the Home Secretary in November, ap-plying for permission to perform further treatments in the hospital. With the onset of winter months, even slight nose or throat infections will cause more damage to her hearing. Unless surgical measures are taken soon, possibility of complications like paralysis of the nerves of the face and loss of balance mechanism exist.’ The permission for hospital treatment was finally approved and further treatments went more smoothly. But I still had to prepare myself physically and psychologically for the possi-bility of going abroad for surgery.

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I held my head high when I was let out of Karachi Central

Prison in September of 1981 to attend my sister Sanam’s