Aboard the Democracy Train (7 page)

Swamped with day-to-day problems, Benazir’s government seemed clueless about encouraging investment and creating new jobs. Instead the prime minister struggled to cope in a culture where jobs were sold rather than earned. It was evident that the young woman led the nation without thinking through the enormous challenges.

In the midst of ethnic tension in Karachi – when ethnic violence and curfews had made life miserable and the MQM’s demand for Benazir’s removal had reached a crescendo – the young woman was yanked out of power.

The President of Pakistan, Ghulam Ishaq Khan went on television to justify Benazir’s ousting for reasons of “corruption” and “failure to maintain law and order.”

But Benazir’s abrupt dismissal in August 1990 was a slap in the face for the people of Sindh who had, for 11½ years, suffered Gen. Zia ul Haq’s military rule before finally getting a chance to vote.

Even though the PPP had failed to deliver food, clothing and shelter to the people, the masses still maintained that Benazir and her PPP were the only ones who could lift them from their state of deprivation.

“Benazir the fighter” refused to give in and prepared her party for a counter-attack. Meanwhile, seeking support from the press, she urged to journalists to cry foul. It began a new round of politicking. As soon as the army dissolved the PPP government, it announced the schedule for elections in October 1990. Once again, Benazir mobilized her party to enter the fray.

Up until now, I had seen Pakistan’s politics from the PPP’s perspective. Now, as Benazir went into opposition, I took the opportunity to view events from the stand-point of the establishment.

At that time my newspaper received an invitation from the wealthiest landowner of Sindh, the late Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, to visit his hometown of Nawabshah and observe the government’s preparations for the elections. The military had selected Jatoi as interim prime minister while it transitioned between Benazir’s chaotic rule to the next civilian set up.

In those days, the Karachi Press Club bustled with journalists who covered Pakistan’s rocky road to democracy. Among them was the American academic Henry F. Carey, who came to Karachi to do a comparative survey of emerging democracies. Chip, as he was called, asked dozens of questions about politics from me and my journalist colleague Waris Bilal, jotting our answers in his tense, angular handwriting on reams of papers.

In October 1990, Chip, Bilal and I teamed up and drove to Nawabshah, Sindh to witness the makings of the alternate political set-up that the military proposed to counter Benazir’s short-lived “democracy.”

I was pleasantly surprised by Nawabshah, which appeared relatively well developed, with good roads and functioning traffic lights. Our hosts told us that Nawabshah’s development began in the 1970s, when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was prime minister and Jatoi was chief minister of Sindh.

Still, little had changed in the surrounding villages where the Jatoi family owns an estimated 50,000 acres of fertile land. Here, the peasantry grows cotton, sugarcane and wheat but live in tiny mud-houses without access to electricity, proper food or any health care.

As one of Jatoi’s mansions loomed into sight, I noticed the surprise on Chip’s face. In the dusty, brown desert where hot winds blow even in October, the serene palace looked like a mirage. We gladly escaped the heat and dust of the rural areas and entered large, well-furnished, air-conditioned rooms with blue-tiled bathrooms.

Chip peeked inside a bathroom and commented with distinct pleasure: “They look good enough to sleep in.”

It dawned on us that we were the only three people in Jatoi’s mansion, being waited on by a band of servants. The atmosphere grew more surreal by the minute, as servants kept bringing in trays full of spicy lamb and chicken to our dinner table.

Later that evening, we were summoned by the heavy set, silver-haired feudal lord, interim Prime Minister Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi. He looked larger than life compared with his pictures, splashed on the front pages of the nation’s newspapers. This was the man nominated by the military to head the alliance they had cobbled – Islamic Democratic Alliance (IDA) or Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI) – specifically set up to counter Benazir Bhutto and her PPP.

Jatoi stayed unflappable as Chip probed him about the role of the army’s top external secret service agency – Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) – in building the IJI opposition to Benazir.

Instead, Jatoi – who was educated in Pakistan’s premier British institutions and in London – spoke eloquently about the charges of corruption lodged by the government against Benazir’s husband – Asif Zardari. As he spoke, it was clear that the military had picked
the wealthy Sindhi feudal lord as interim prime minister to become a key spokesman against Benazir and Asif. Indeed, Asif would remain the main punching bag for the establishment.

Even back then, Jatoi knew that for the Sindhi masses Benazir was the grieving daughter of their beloved prime minister – Zulfikar Ali Bhutto – who had been “martyred” in the service of the people. Attacking her directly was almost impossible.

During our next few days in Nawabshah, we saw how the interim prime minister used government vehicles to stage a comeback. The next day, as we toured Nawabshah, we saw public vehicles clearly marked for civic services that took people to Jatoi’s political rallies.

But, by evening, the establishment had mustered a pitiful crowd of only 3,000 people in the densely populated town. From our vantage point on stage, I saw that the chairs at the back were empty.

Jatoi stayed unmoved, as speaker after speaker in his rally condemned the PPP rule and singled out Asif Zardari as corrupt. There was a singular lack of enthusiasm in the audience. Chip told me that he thought the anti-PPP slogans raised by Jatoi’s supporters fell flat.

Still, this staged drama was being performed to lead the media into believing that Jatoi was a spokesman for the people. That night, state-controlled Pakistan Television showed the rally on the Urdu nightly news –
Khabarnama
– taken from various angles, giving the impression that Jatoi was hugely popular among the masses.

Jatoi’s campaign manager Fazal Ellahi Fazli – energetic and well organized – pressed us to accompany him to witness his boss’s election campaign in Narowal, a town in the Punjab.

I was on a free-floating mission from my newspaper, satisfying my own interests in seeing what was really happening at the grass roots instead of filing a report every day. Bilal, on the other hand, had to get back to his daily grind as news editor of an Urdu newspaper. Chip and I left with Fazli for Narowal.

We were driven to a guesthouse where the vegetation was greener and the weather was distinctly cooler than in Sindh. Chip
and I received red carpet treatment. Breakfast was served colonial style, with waiters at long tables. We enjoyed the hospitality, even while we wondered how much we’d be allowed to see for ourselves.

Fazli took us to a rally where Chip observed that the Jamaat-i-Islami – a coalition partner of the IJI, cobbled together by the military’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) – had criticized my presence as the only woman at the event.

Growing wary of official tours, I excused the two of us from our energetic host. We headed to the fields where the peasants tilled the land. They were Punjabi peasants, who are on the whole better fed and clothed than their poor Sindhi counterparts. I had no idea what they would say. Still, I wanted their independent opinion on the mid-term election.

The peasants turned out to be hardcore supporters of the PPP. They were indignant that local Punjabi supporters of the IJI had used vulgar language against the former woman prime minister. They told me rather spiritedly they had turned down Jatoi’s offer to ride the tractor trolleys and swell the ranks of his election site. Instead, they shared with us their rather creative slogan: “Eat from Jatoi…vote for Benazir.”

Given the outpouring of support that I had witnessed for the PPP in Sindh and the Punjab, I assumed that Benazir would return with a thumping majority. I was naïve to think so.

In 1990, when results were announced on state-controlled television, the Jatoi-led opposition coalition had won over 50 per cent of the seats in the National Assembly. The PPP bagged a mere 21 per cent.

The 1990 elections began a new chapter in Pakistan’s decade of democracy. The Sindhi feudal lord, Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi was dropped by the army in favor of a Lahore businessman, Nawaz Sharif. Benazir became the leader of the opposition.

That began a decade of musical chairs for the nation’s twice-elected prime ministers, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. The two politicians alternated as sitting heads of government in the decade between 1988 and 1999, while the army played the martial tune.

As a guest of the interim Prime Minister Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, I had witnessed how state funds and propaganda were used to defeat Benazir. But I was still an onlooker, without inside knowledge of what had transpired in the inner circles. Then still an inexperienced reporter, I couldn’t guess at how the establishment had defeated the PPP, which, right or wrong, had the support of the masses.

In 1996, some clues emerged. Retired Air Marshal Asghar Khan filed a case in the Supreme Court, alleging that the powerful secret service wing of the army – the ISI – had rigged the 1990 election. Based on Asghar Khan’s petition, former ISI chief, Lt. Gen. Asad Durrani took the stand in the Supreme Court and provided an affidavit that the army had indeed distributed PKR 140 million (USD 1.6 million) to anti-PPP candidates, only a few months before the October 1990 election.

The anti-PPP candidates banded in the IJI comprised feudal, Islamic and ethnic parties that resolutely opposed Benazir’s populist rule. Subsequently, we learnt that the caretaker, President Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi – who had stayed silent while Chip probed him – had actually taken PKR 5 million (USD 59,000) from the ISI. Meanwhile, Nawaz Sharif – who was ushered in by the military to succeed Benazir as prime minister – was revealed to have received PKR 3.5 million (USD 41,000) from the spy agencies.

Apparently, the army was so scared that Benazir would be elected back into power that their IJI coalition distributed state funds among various interest groups to prevent her return.

As I covered national politics, Asghar Khan talked to me in earnest, as though I was a player rather than a reporter. Then in coalition with the PPP, he told me that Benazir and Nawaz ought to unite to repeal Article 58-2(b). This was the constitutional clause introduced by Gen. Zia ul Haq that allowed presidents like Ghulam Ishaq Khan to dissolve the assembly.

Although I shared Asghar Khan’s desire for principled politics, it surprised me that he seemed clueless about Benazir’s approach of doing whatever it took to return to power.

In 1991, the new prime minister, Nawaz Sharif received a mandate from the army to contain Benazir, who, despite being ousted, continued to be a clear favorite. That year, the Sindh government – headed by its Machiavellian chief minister, Jam Sadiq Ali – mixed crime with politics by giving a free hand to dacoits to intimidate landowners: the group that formed the bulk of Benazir’s supporters.

For a while, I had read in the Sindhi press about the dacoits who hid in the jungles along the major highways in Sindh and emerged with sudden ferocity to ambush vehicles and kidnap passengers. Their influence had begun to seep into Karachi, the industrial hub of the country. Come evening, a silence spread throughout Sindh, where the fear of dacoits forced buses to travel in convoys.

At our weekly meeting at
Dawn
, we talked about the threat of dacoits. The prospect of investigating the bandits got my adrenalin going. I persuaded my editor that we needed to cover the story because of the emerging competition from the newly launched newspaper –
The News
. Our flashy, youth-oriented rival had just launched itself under the daring slogan: “Each
Dawn
will break with the
News.
”

That was an open challenge to our credibility as the oldest and most established English-language newspaper in the country. My editor seemed to think so too. Once he had learnt that our competitors planned to cover the dacoit story, he decided to send me too.

My curiosity about the infamous dacoit, Mohib Shidi took me first to his hometown in Matiari – 200 km north of Karachi. This tiny town of baked mud lies in a patch of green along the Indus Highway. It has an eye-catching turquoise shrine in the middle. Drawing closer to the walled town, one saw high brick walls, open sewers and women in black veils that flitted like banshees inside the mud corridors. I felt as though I had been transported back to the medieval ages.

Matiari’s landowners were anxious to give me the inside story on dacoits. A short while ago, they had received notes from the
infamous dacoit, Mohib Shidi to hand over their income at a specified location. They informed the Rangers – an offshoot of the army – about his presence. There was a shoot-out between the Rangers and the Shidi-led dacoits in Matiari; terrified residents hid indoors, listening to the sound of gunfire.

However, the cultivators – and, by now, the whole town – talked of how the bandit had walked away unruffled. Mohib Shidi had arrived in style at the local mosque on the Muslim festival of Eid and said his prayers with the leaders of the congregation. Afterwards, astonished residents saw him watch the cattle show, attended by big feudals and other dignitaries. There, he mingled with the people and graciously distributed cash and chicken
biryani
(a special rice dish) among them.

What had made the dacoits so powerful? Why was Shidi still free even though everyone recognized him as a dangerous dacoit? Why were the buses, which traveled from Karachi to the localities in interior Sindh, frequently ambushed while the administration appeared helpless?

The trip became an eye-opener into the nexus between crime and politics in Pakistan. As I spoke to locals, they told me of deep connections between powerful landlords and the new Sindh government. In October 1991, Sharif’s victory over Benazir had redrawn the political landscape so that Matiari’s biggest feudals – the Jamotes – had joined the Pakistan Muslim League (F – “functional”) government in coalition with Nawaz Sharif.