Bhutto had prophesied that he, alive or dead, would rule this country for decades
- Bhutto was physically eliminated but Bhuttoism – his adulatory bond with the multitude – survived, and defeated Ziaism
- Since his execution, the Pakistani politics remained divided into two opposing camps – pro-Bhutto and anti-Bhutto
By Ambassador M. Alam Brohi
The separation of former East Pakistan was a devastating blow to this hapless nation. The People were shell shocked and gripped by a fear of the collapse of this part of Pakistan; the young army officers were seething with anger and up in arms against their senior leadership. The situation had spiraled out of the control of the ruling junta. Some sound minds in the GHQ took control of the fast aggravating situation and contacted Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to take over.
Thus, the broken and half-sunk country was handed over to Late Bhutto to rebuild it. This was the greatest political challenge to Bhutto. The political acumen of a leader comes to play wonders in a crisis of this magnitude. He passed this litmus test with remarkable achievements. He virtually picked up the pieces of the broken ship to rebuild it; he raised the sinking morale of a despairing people and restored the confidence of a disillusioned nation. He addressed the post-war issues with India and recalibrated the country’s relations with the neighbors, superpowers and the Muslim world. He rebuilt the army as a fighting force, restored the economy of the country and achieved a marked political consensus for the new Constitution and the political dispensation. He accomplished this gigantic task within a span of three years.
To recapitulate, where Bhutto lost this battle was the challenging time to provide good governance. He failed to come up with high marks in this challenge. He was the product of the chequered political history of the country. He had his political grooming under Iskander Mirza and General Ayub Khan, though he had always displayed an independent bent of political thinking. His evaluation of the global power politics remained at odds with that of his mentors. His aversion to strategic alliances or placing the country’s eggs in one basket was evident. He believed in exploring avenues of independent bilateral relationships. He considered Pakistan a vital part of the Muslim world and the Afro-Asian bloc of nations. This fully crystallized in his foreign policy when he was at the helm.
It were the economic and political domains where he erred phenomenally. He went the whole hog for nationalization. The nationalization of banks, insurance companies, and big industries to prevent the exploitation of the labor was understandable but the takeover of small industries like foundries, rice husking, cotton ginning and Ice factories, private schools and colleges was unfathomable. This inflicted a heavy blow to the private investment in the country. Though riding on a high crest of popularity, he fell back on the traditional strong arm tactics in the politics showing intolerance for the opposition and the media. He jailed many opponents on frivolous grounds. He also dealt sternly with the vocal left wingers in his party. In the last years of his rule, he drifted from his original constituency – the poor masses – wooing traditional political dynasties. He paid heavily for this political waywardness.
The political turmoil ignited by the controversial general elections of 1977 lingered too long and revived the praetorian ambitions of the Generals lurking in the background and playing on both sides of the wicket to sabotage the dialogue between Z.A. Bhutto and the opposition. Bhutto failed to gauge the ambitions of his General. Overconfident about the loyalty of his handpicked Army Chief, Bhutto displayed complacency. An agreement covering all the main demands of the opposition had already been ironed out. Bhutto wanted to sign it after his suddenly-arranged visit to a couple of Muslim countries. On his return, the 5th July was appointed for the signing of the agreement. A senior civil servant in the bureaucracy sounded the General to strike or be ready for crucifixion. In the early morning of the 5th July when the clock struck 2.0, the military surrounded the vital buildings in Islamabad including the Prime Minister’s House near the GHQ. The Prime Minister and the main PPP and opposition leaders were rounded up and whisked away.
Behold the coincidences that the rules were relaxed and the same ominous hour of 2.0 was chosen for the execution of Z.A. Bhutto on 4th April and the same aircraft of C-130 which had fetched him from Rome to rebuild the country was used to carry his mortal remains to Larkana. Bhutto was physically eliminated and the PNA leaders did not even get a crumb of power. They had to bite the bullet to work as adjuncts to the PPP for the restoration of democracy in 1984. In the meantime, the country had been set on the path of religious bigotry and militancy and sectarian polarization and plunged into the Afghan war with all its concomitant consequences. We have not yet been able to rid the country of this extremism. Even then, neither our politicians nor our military leadership have learnt any lesson from the retrogressive cycles of our short history.
There are certain speculations or myths surrounding the person of Z. A. Bhutto. The first and the foremost is that there was an international conspiracy for the overthrow of Bhutto, hatched by the Secretary of State of USA, Henry. A. Kissinger. The proponents of this conspiracy theory refer to the visit of Kissinger to Pakistan in August 1976 and his talks with Prime Minister Bhutto. They claim Dr. Kissinger had advised Bhutto to abandon his nuclear project and cancel the purchase of the nuclear plant from France. Bhutto refused to budge. Finally, the American Secretary of State had threatened Bhutto that if he didn’t stop his nuclear project, an example would be made out of him.
Professor Stanley Wolpert in his biography of Bhutto “Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan” has extensively referred to the talks held between Bhutto and Henry Kissinger. But he was not convinced that there were hot exchanges of such nature between Kissinger and Bhutto. He concedes that as part of the US policy, inducements were offered to Bhutto to avoid developing nuclear weapon. In his view there was no evidence of such brazen threat to Mr. Bhutto. At the end of the talks, Bhutto, in a light vein, asked Kissinger to convey his regards to Shah of Iran, which he was visiting the next day. Shah of Iran was displeased with Bhutto on his purported remarks to the US leaders that the Shah was an unstable person. The Shah, after coming to know of Bhutto’s remarks, had stayed away from the OIC Summit held in Lahore which was attended by 27 Heads of States/Governments. On this, Dr. Kissinger, had in light vein, remarked that clever Bhutto wanted to send his reconciliation gesture to the Shah of Iran through him.
Professor Stanley Wolpert was of the view that Bhutto and Dr. Kissinger remained on good terms after his visit to Pakistan. He also produces a letter addressed to Henry Kissinger by Bhutto when the former lost his job as the Secretary of State after the defeat of President Carter in the Presidential elections in the USA. Bhutto had eloquently sympathized with Kissinger over the loss of his position and hoped that they would continue to be friends in the future. Professor Wolpert produces this letter as an evidence that Bhutto had no ill will against Dr. Kissinger. This shows two things: either the speculation regarding the above brazen threat of Dr. Henry Kissinger to Bhutto was concocted or Bhutto was so large hearted that he forgot the threat of the former US Secretary of State and forgiven him as soon as he heard of the loss of his position.
There is no doubt that the US has been involved in regime change all over the world. One cannot rule out any US attempt for the removal of Bhutto from power to inflict a blow to the budding nuclear project of Pakistan. If it was so, this pressure should have continued to be exerted on the military rulers of Pakistan. The nuclear program of Pakistan, though clandestinely, continued during the rule of General Zia. There was no obvious pressure on the Generals to stop the nuclear program. The US Sanctions were imposed on Pakistan’s nuclear project after the withdrawal of the Soviet Forces from Afghanistan in 1989.
Pakistan became the formal ally and the frontline state in the Western world’s war against the Soviet Forces in 1981-82. Since July 1977 to 1981 General Zia remained a pariah in the international comity of nations but continued the country’s nuclear program. Apparently, there was no unsettling pressure on him. Had the Americans lost their interest in the nuclear program of Pakistan after the overthrow and the execution of Bhutto? There seems no logic in this view. The subject needs thorough research to separate the chaff from the wheat.
Another myth surrounding the person of Bhutto is that he had misguided and lured President General Muhammad Ayub Khan to start the “Operation Gibraltar” in 1965. This allegation emanates from the military circles or the establishment and its pet intellectuals. They say, Bhutto had assured President Ayub Khan that India would not attack the international borders if the Operation Gibraltar was launched in the Indian held Jammu and Kashmir. The Operation envisaged infiltration of militants in the Indian held Jammu and Kashmir and attack on the Line of Control by the regular army to cut the access to the valley available to the Indian forces. There would be upsurge of protests within the valley aided and abetted by the militants.
Once the access to Indian forces was cut, the valley would fall in the hands of Pakistan. This, to put it mildly, was a naïve and ill planned scheme. As soon as the Pakistan troops under the leadership of General Malik attacked the ceasefire line, the Indians retaliated with full force attacking the international border opening multiple fronts. Even then, our troops were advancing well to their target. The blunder we committed was that we changed the command of the troops in the thick of the war, removing General Malik and appointing General Agha Yahya Khan as the new commander. He took a couple of days to assume his command, and, in the meantime, we lost the initiative. There was a stalemate with mounting pressure from the superpowers for ceasefire.
Though Pakistan and India agreed to a ceasefire under pressure from the US and USSR, the American leaders declined to mediate between the warring countries for a negotiated resolution of the dispute or work out the terms for the future relationship between the two countries. The responsibility devolved on the Soviet Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin. The talks were held in Tashkent, the capital of the erstwhile Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan. India was represented by its diminutive Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, and General Ayub Khan headed the Pakistani delegation which, among others, also included Foreign Minister Z.A. Bhutto and Iqbal Akhund, Additional Secretary, South Asian Division. Prime Minister Shastri, though half of the height of General Ayub Khan, proved a hard nut to crack. He stubbornly declined to accept any reference to the Jammu and Kashmir in the agreement in the face of the Pakistani attempt to refer to the core dispute.
Bhutto is said to be adamant to have such a reference. However, Ayub Khan didn’t withstand the mounting pressure of the mediator who was ruthlessly leading the negotiations to a conclusion with clear leanings towards India. As put it by Iqbal Akhund in his “Memoirs of a Bystander”, in the final stages, Ayub Khan rarely consulted Bhutto knowing his hardline position. Bhutto was very unhappy with the situation. Ayub Khan agreed to the terms of the agreement dictated by the Soviet Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin and the treaty was signed in January 1966. That night early in the morning, Lal Bahadur Shastri died of a heart attack. Iqbal Akhund says that he contacted Bhutto on the intercom to break the news to him telling him that, “Sir, the devil has died. Ours or theirs” was the instant and angry reaction of Bhutto. This reflected his anger and anguish with President Ayub Khan.
Though Bhutto had estranged relations with General Ayub Khan, he didn’t resign from the cabinet. He defended the Tashkent Treaty until the day he was dismissed from the Cabinet. Later, Bhutto told his biographer, Professor Stanley Wolpert that General Ayub Khan dropped him from the cabinet at the behest of the US President Lyndon Baines Johnson because of his leftist leanings.
Ambassador Iqbal Akhund says in his memoirs that as the Additional Secretary, South Asia Division, he thoroughly checked the record and the Archive Division to dig out the summary blamed to have been sent to the President by Bhutto assuring him that India would not attack international borders if the Operation Gibraltar as planned was launched. He didn’t find any such summary or communication. He believed that Bhutto had never sent such summary to the President. The purported summary was the imaginative production of a fertile mind to scapegoat Bhutto for the failure of the ill-conceived military plan as no military leader was prepared to share the responsibility for the debacle. This was a logical conclusion.
Although General Ayub Khan trusted his Foreign Minister Z.A. Bhutto, he didn’t only have the Foreign Office to depend on before launching such an important military operation. He had his Corps Commanders, the Inter-Services Intelligence, the Military Intelligence, and the Intelligence Bureau etc. to consult. All these state Institutions must have been involved in one way or the other before the launch of the Operation Gibraltar. General Ayub Khan was an experienced commander and must have given serious thought to all the aspects of the operation.
Bhutto is also blamed for the fall of Dhaka too. We recall, in the last days of the war in East Pakistan, Bhutto was appointed as Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister to lead Pakistan delegation to the UN Security Council which was in session and seized with the East Pakistan crisis. His detractors say that Bhutto took his time to reach New York though the situation warranted his immediate arrival. Second, he made a hard hitting speech in the stormy and crucial UN Security Council and tore into pieces the draft resolution proposed by Poland seeking ceasefire. This paved the way for the defeat of Pakistan. Had he not done so, the resolution would have been carried out by the UNSC saving Dhaka from the ignominious fall. This matter has also been discussed threadbare by Iqbal Akhund who was a member of the Pakistani delegation in his “Memoirs of a Bystander” and later by Shuja Nawaz in his seminal book “Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army and the Wars Within”. Shuja Nawaz Janjua is a highly respected journalist and writer.
According to Iqbal Akhund, the situation in the UNSC was very tense and disturbing. The Soviet Ambassador, with provocative gesture, was vetoing every resolution to prolong the war. He was adamant to veto the draft Poland Resolution too. Bhutto tried his eloquence, charm and diplomatic skills to redeem the situation. But there was no hope. Bhutto made his speech and tore the notes he had taken before exiting from the UNSC. It was not the draft resolution of Poland.
Shuja Nawaz gives a graphic description of the situation. He says while Bhutto was in New York discussing the draft Poland Resolution, the situation in East Pakistan was heading to an ugly end. President General Yahya and his coterie was not forthcoming to answer the desperate calls from the local commanders. The commanding officer, General Niazi and Rao Farman Ali, Advisor of President Yahya on Security had agreed to surrender with the tacit approval of Islamabad. Both visited the US Consul General, Herbert Spivack in Dhaka on 14 December 1971. The Consul General informed his Ambassador McFarland in Islamabad who got the proposal confirmed by General Yahya Khan before conveying it to New York. The US Ambassador to the UN asked Mr. Bhutto to convey the proposal to the Indian delegation. He refused to do so saying this was against his honor and dignity. He could not endure such a humiliation. This prompted Bhutto to boycott the UNSC calling it an “Ugly Fashion House”.
Bhutto was still in New York when he was desperately asked by the Generals to return home immediately. With the fall of Dhaka, the situation in Pakistan was getting explosive. There was a public uproar, and the people were after the blood of General Yahya Khan. The young military officers in Rawalpindi and other cantonments were up in arms in mutiny. The Army Chief General Abdul Hameed Khan had barely escaped the wrath of the young officers whom he was addressing blaming politicians for the debacle. The military leaders found no other option than calling Bhutto to return and take over power.
Bhutto called on US President Nixon before returning to Pakistan. When he reached Rome, a C-130 of Pakistan Air Force was already there waiting at the airport to take him to Pakistan. Bhutto is reported to have talked with his confidants to make sure he was not being trapped. On arrival, he took charge of the country immediately. Sultan Muhammad Khan gives a very interesting recount of the situation prevalent that evening. He says Pakistan had suffered enormous humiliation losing its bigger part; there was mutiny in the army; the public fury was unprecedented, but there were no signs remorse or regrets on the face of General Yahya Khan. Unperturbed by the catastrophe that had beset the country, he was in his usual mood of joking and laughing. He says as the General saw him among the bureaucrats gathered there to witness the transfer of power, he addressed him laughingly that from this evening onwards he would be a free man, and at least he would no longer suffer enduring the Foreign Office’s unpleasant counsels.
Read- Analysis: Nationalism, PPP Rule and Case of Sindh
Admitted, Bhutto made a political blunder to oppose the maiden session of the National Assembly for constitution making and transfer of power to Awami League. Here he had a predicament. The overwhelming parliamentary strength of his Pakistan People’s Party came from Punjab. The West Pakistan establishment including the military dominated by bureaucrats and Generals from Punjab were against the constitution making on the basis of the Awami League’s six points and the transfer of power to Bengalis. Bhutto believed in power politics. This prompted him to oppose the session of the National Assembly. His second mistake was to give a supportive statement for the military operation in East Pakistan. Rather he is seen to be complicit in the military operation by his act of hosting General Yahya and his coterie in Larkana during the East Pakistan crisis. For that matter, no politician of any worth in West Pakistan publicly protested against the military operation in East Pakistan. There was a deafening silence in this part of the country. The Jamaat Islami was actively helping the army to subdue Bengalis. The Jamaat’s Al-Badar and Al-Shamas were very much involved in the killing of Bengalis.
What is described insistently as Bhutto’s support to the military operation is his statement which he gave at the Karachi leaving East Pakistan after the launch of the Operation Search Light on the night of 25-26 March saying “Thanks God, Pakistan has been saved”. He uttered these words in answer to a question by a journalist. These were picked up and headlined by an Urdu tabloid “Imroz”. Later on his detractors picked up this news to malign him particularly in the election campaign of 1977. No doubt, Bhutto didn’t condemn the military operation like other political leaders in West Pakistan. It was totally unfair to portray him as the proponent of the military operation merely because of this statement.
Read: Dictate of History
The multitude has its own psyche. The people forget the mistakes of a leader and remember his last act in times of distress. Bhutto remained defiant to the usurpers of power to his last moments. He faced his mock trial and incarceration in the death cell bravely. He never wavered or beseeched before his tormentors. He addressed the Lord Justices with grace and dignity reminding them of rule of law and justice. He was all alone in this epic fight battling against the unholy alliance of Generals, petty politicians and Justices. His comrades, overawed by the tyranny of the military rule, slipped away one by one into political seclusion and inaction leaving the party rudderless particularly when the two Bhutto ladies were securely incarcerated. Their dubious role was never forgotten by the multitude. They had enjoyed power and perks during the Bhutto rule, and this was the time to pay back. The people of Pakistan punished them in all the subsequent elections. Bhutto’s single-handed fight made him a legend.
The death of Bhutto was mourned far and wide, and wept over with heroic eyes. Bhutto had prophesied that he, alive or dead, would rule this country for decades. Bhutto was physically eliminated but Bhuttoism – his adulatory bond with the multitude – survived, and defeated Ziaism. Since his execution, the Pakistani politics remained divided into two opposing camps – pro-Bhutto and anti-Bhutto. This trend continued unabated for over three decades and relented only after the conscious efforts made by his equally legendary daughter Benazir Bhutto to promote political reconciliation for the sake of this nation and the country. (Concludes)
Click here to read Part-1, Part-2
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The author is a former member of the Foreign Service of Pakistan and has served as Ambassador for seven years.
