Daily Times

On April 4th, 1979, 41 years ago, ZAB was hanged.

Like all controversial figures in history who generate intense emotions, for and against, Bhutto’s reality and legacy is also distorted by the lens through which we view him. To many he is still Pakistan’s greatest leader to others, an evil destructive megalomaniac!

In my opinion, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was both, part Devil, part Saint.

On one side he was undoubtedly brilliant, touching genuis, with an incredible intellect, but on the other he was also brutal, consumed with inordinate ambition and a massive ego, finally falling victim to the betrayal of his own political values and the consequential brutal end which even his brilliant mind couldn’t save him from.

As a person, he was cruel, sadistic, vindictive, unforgiving, petty and mean. He never forgot a slight. And this last attribute finally got him to the gallows!

It is ironic that his end came not for that crime of murder, which was a tragic travesty of justice, but the accumulated injustice and unspeakable horrors he committed against his own. People like his own party’s Secretary General and Founding member, J.A Rahim and his son, his cabinet minister Mairaj Mohammed Khan, his political opponents like Mian Tufail of Jamaat e Islami, suffered unspeakable torture, indignities and horrors that cannot be repeated here! But such is Nature’s nemesis.

On 1st January, 1972, Chief Martial Law Administrator Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, our first and hopefully last Martial Law administrator, civil or military, with one stroke of the pen, destroyed everything that we had achieved since independence. He destroyed Pakistan’s economic engine, its industries, its financial sector, it’s educational and health care systems by nationalizing them all and setting us back decades. Perhaps he did want a levelling of the social disparity and elite capture, but the attempt failed, miserably.

The Mohajir community, perhaps suffered the most under him, as he closed the chapter on evacuee trust property and his nationalization hitting them hard, given that upto his time, they had been the main drivers behind Pakistan’s industrial and educational sectors. Sadly, and concurrently he also let loose the monster of ethnic Sindhi nationalism, actions which collectively and eventually gave rise to the MQM fascist monster which emerged years later. This was a horrible fallout, especially for Karachi, as this beleaguered community left without an ethnic identity in a nation of Punjabis, Pathans, Sindhis, Balochis, Kashmiris etc, embraced the “Mohajir” label to identify themselves and fight for their rights, under a demented monster, who like Hitler, captured their angry mood and deprivation and for decades, let loose his terror on Karachi!

Bhutto, despite his democratic pretensions, was a dictator at heart. He wanted complete and unbridled power over all organs of the state. Civil and military.

In this he targeted big business, the bureaucracy and the military. Big Business he nationalized.

For the Civil Services of Pakistan it was simple. He removed their constitutional protection of service and tenure and allowed direct lateral entry. This lead to the appointment of pliant political favourites by the hordes directly into government positions, giving rise to a culture of political control and patronage of government machinery through his loyalists.

But in fairness to ZAB, this culture of corruption of State machinery had been earlier set in motion by President Ayub.

This culture was later extensively developed by Benazir and Zardari and the PPP, to loot and plunder and finally transformed into an art form by the Sharifs and PMLN, leading to the mass scale devastation of Pakistan’s Public Sector.

His second major target was to curb the power and influence of the Army by creating the Federal Security Force, a new para military force, paid, uniformed, armed and manned very similarly to military units.

This force was unlike others. It had weapons like machine guns, mortars, jeep mounted recoilless rifles. Bhutto’s aim was to use them in aid of civil power and not having to call in the army, and have this force owe him completely loyalty and be directly under his command. Perhaps at a future date use them to pre empt a future military coup

In February, 1972, our late father, Col. S.G. Mehdi M.C, was offered the post to create and head the FSF by Bhutto’s then National Security Advisor, General Akber. He politely refused, saying that it would become ZAB’s private militia, much like Mussolini’s and Hitler’s Blackshirts and Brownshrts! This they eventually did under his handpicked man, Mahmood Masood who ironically turned state witness against Bhutto in his murder trial.

Ironically it was this very force which eventually led to his death being convicted for Nawab Kasuri’s murder which was committed by his own FSF goons. The actual target was his own party’s maverick MNA Ahmed Raza Kasuri, Nawab Kasuri’s son, who publicly disagreed with his leader on his politics of not allowing the parliament to convene or for anyone to visit then East Pakistan. Such was Bhutto’s arrogance, that when advised that he was being nominated as the prime accused by Ahmed Raza Kasuri, in the FIR, he disdainfully replied. Hara….my ko kurnay do ( let the ba….td do it).

Years later, it was this same ill fated FIR, brought to the notice of Gen. Zia by a Maj. Gen (RTS) Ehsan up Haque, then his inspection commission chief, which set that fateful ball rolling, leading to his hanging.

By 1977, Bhutto’s luck had run out. Economic distress, erratic policies, angry business people who had been ruined, fuelled the street agitation against him.

His belated attempts at appeasing the religious right by declaring Ahmadis as non-Muslims and banning gambling and horse racing didn’t help. The former, a ticking time bomb that can go off anytime against other minority Muslim sects.

His large-scale attempt by him to rig the 1977 elections, another first, didn’t help, and his use of the Army to browbeat his political opponents eventually caused his downfall. Theories of international hands cannot also be discounted in the context of our nuclear program.

With his brilliance, his amazing grasp of history, his charisma, and the adulation by the masses, the nation at his feet, broken and shattered after its breakup, Bhutto could have turned and moulded this nation into a great power

But sufficeth to say, that he created the perfect storm against himself!

He left behind a devastated economy, a highly politicised bureaucracy and a divided nation! And into the hands of the Army and a decade of infamy and darkness under Gen. Zia!

Finally, this same personally chosen Army Chief, Gen. Zia, who once, reportedly, followed him meekly a few steps behind, carrying his glass of scotch at a military function, turned against him and hanged him!

Bhutto was deviously mislead by Zia’s obsequiousness, falling victim to his flattery, very similar to his own flattery of then President Iskander Mirza, calling him a leader greater than the Quaid and calling President Ayub, “Daddy”.

It was Pakistan’s tragedy that he fell victim to his own megalomania and schizophrenia. With his brilliance, his amazing grasp of history, his charisma, and the adulation by the masses, the nation at his feet, broken and shattered after its breakup, Bhutto could have turned and moulded this nation into a great power.

But tragically for him and Pakistan, he couldn’t rise above his own terrible inconsistencies and his personal ambitions and failed us!

His politics were schizophrenic. His pendulum swinging from the man of the masses to a ruthless fascist dictator. A flawed Angel and Devil incarnate, he was also directly responsible for the final act in the breakup of Pakistan.

To his credit, he gave hope and dignity to the poor and the exploited. He gave us a dream of transforming Pakistan into a fair and equitable society.

But then, he tragically betrayed us.

His legacy is a party synonymous with corruption, feudalism, exploitation, a far cry from his Roti, Kapra and Makan and a dynastic monarchist governance structure, headed by his grandson and fawned over by a coterie of leechlike Rasputins.

Brilliant he was, no doubt. But not in the mould of great leaders which he could easily have become, but of a tortured soul fighting the devils within him, leading to his own destruction and the devastation of Pakistan!

Haider Mehdi is a Geo political commentator / blogger on National and International affairs. Formerly a media anchor, corporate leader, management consultant, start up entrepreneur and military officer, he tweets @HaiderKonsult and blogs on shrmehdi.com