Songs of Blood and Sword

by Fatima Bhutto

  The initial wave of political resistance, however, came uniquely from members of Bhutto’s own PPP. It is estimated that immediately after Zulfikar’s murder, some 3,000 party workers and activists were jailed in order to quell an uprising against Zia’s decision to execute the country’s first democratically elected Prime Minister. Former prisoners that I have spoken to described extreme measures being used against them in jail as a matter of principle. Male prisoners were often moved nightly to different cells, or in extreme cases to different jails, to disorient them; although political prisoners, they were made to share small cells with hardened criminals (who were luckily politically liberal and mostly anti-Zia); their food was searched in front of them before they were allowed to eat. And two prisoners I spoke to had their fingernails removed when they dared to shout pro-Bhutto slogans. Activists and individuals loyal to Zulfikar, in the Sindh province especially, continued to stage daring acts of resistance, setting themselves on fire and chanting slogans such as ‘Zia hatao’ – ‘remove Zia’ – in public squares. In one extreme case, party workers threw rocks at Zia’s army helicopter as it attempted to land in Dadu, in the interior of Sindh.48

  Zulfikar’s widow, Nusrat, was famously attacked in Lahore as she attended a cricket game at Gaddafi stadium. She knew her presence would excite the large crowd gathered; furthermore, PPP activists had planned to unfurl a banner calling for Zia’s removal during the game and Nusrat offered herself as protection. Instead, when the police noticed that Nusrat Bhutto, the dictatorship’s public enemy number one, was in the audience and that her strong and stoic appearance was creating palapable ripples in the stadium, they came and demanded she leave. No, Nusrat replied, I’m here to watch the game. At that, the police clubbed Nusrat on the head with their batons. She suffered gashes on her forehead and head that required stitches and was photographed being carried out of the stadium, semi-conscious, her hair matted and her face stained with blood.

  Not all PPP members, it is worth noting, sacrificed themselves in the fight against the junta. The party’s current Prime Minister, Yousef Raza Gilani – who bears more than a passing resemblance to Saddam Hussain – spent his time not in jail but serving on the dictator’s majlis e shoora or religious parliamentary council, rubbing shoulders with General Zia’s protégé Nawaz Sharif. Gilani’s junta background did not prohibit his entry into Benazir’s PPP; instead it earned him the secondhighest post in the land under the Zardari-led party.

  As a response to Zia’s absolutist politics, the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy or MRD was formed in 1981 and included a hodgepodge of alliances. Spearheaded by the PPP, and eventually taken over by Benazir, the movement was comprised of the National Democratic Party, the Pakistan Democratic Party, the Islamic Jamaat ul Islami, the peasantbased Mazdoor Kisan Party, the Pashtoon National Alliance Party and several other organizations.49

  The MRD’s programme, which called for the end of martial law through the holding of free and fair elections and the restoration of a democratic government through said elections, simultaneously inspired popular support and the concern of the military junta. Ultimately though, the MRD proved to be ineffectual, partly for reasons of its own creation and partly owing to government interference and infiltration.

  At its inception, the MRD announced plans for country-wide agitation in February 1981. Fifteen thousand people were immediately arrested for breaking the junta’s ban on public rallies and political gatherings as they came out to support the movement’s first call to action.50 The regime acted quickly to suppress the nascent power of the MRD, and the hijacking of a PIA aeroplane the following month gave a perfect pretext. The junta’s jails had become too full. Human rights organizations the world over were calling attention to the overcrowding of Pakistan’s prisons and something needed to be done to rectify the situation. Through the hijacking, the junta found a way to do both – many of Pakistan’s most prominent political prisoners were released and the MRD was contained as its political leaders were placed under arrest and its supporters jailed, ending the 1981 protest before it had even begun.

  { 10 }

  T hroughout the tumultuous years that took Murtaza abroad, his studies at Oxford remained on his mind. The faculty and administration at Christ Church were sympathetic, having already educated a fair number of his family. After Murtaza moved from Oxford to London to work on the Save Bhutto Committee full-time, he received a letter from Professor Ian Stephens: ‘I write to offer you sympathy, and support if needed. You must be having a horrible time.’ Stephens remarks that a colleague saw Murtaza ‘on the telly trying to persuade some absurd man that he was quite wrong in his amiable assertions about the vile conditions your father is at present jailed in’.1

  It had been a struggle for Murtaza to be away from his tutors and classes, but he didn’t shirk his studies. His supervisor was Hedley Bull, whose own work coincided with Murtaza’s sphere of interest. Bull worked in international relations and had published his first work, The Control of the Arms Race, on the very topic Murtaza was researching. Bull’s first supervisor’s report, written in the Michaelmas term of 1977, noted that the student – who was still living at Oxford at the time – ‘must have been under great strain, although as far as I can judge he is working satisfactorily’.2 Bull went on to note that Murtaza’s thesis, an expanded version of his Harvard dissertation on nuclear deterrence, needed more work on its case studies.

  In the autumn of 1978, having submitted a draft of his thesis, Murtaza, who was in the midst of travelling and lobbying on his father’s behalf, was told that Oxford had lost the draft. Murtaza hadn’t made copies; nor, given all the movement and tumult surrounding the Save Bhutto Committee, had he organized his notes and index cards. He wrote to his supervisor, who in turn wrote to the college’s steward, who sent out an internal SOS: ‘I think you will have heard the sad story of Mir Bhutto’s thesis . . . The loss is serious to him because he most improvidentially failed to keep a copy . . . I think it may ease Bhutto’s mind if we could tell him another probe was afoot.’3

  Another letter followed, still addressed to Murtaza in London, assuring him that ‘no stone has been left unturned’4 in the search for the missing thesis draft. Bull’s supervisor’s report for 1978 crisply noted that without the draft magically turning up Murtaza would have to start all over again. ‘I have not heard from Mr Bhutto since the beginning of term. His father’s affairs have of course reached a crisis. Mr Bhutto is involved in a crisis of his own furthermore since the copy of his thesis draft which I sent him back in July never reached him.’5

  Murtaza changed flats at least three times during his stay in London, partially for security reasons and partially because the continuous coming and going of people caused a degree of panic in the central London neighbourhoods he lived in. Somewhere along the way, the draft, caught up in the confusion and chaos, got lost.

  By the time the missing draft was found, Murtaza’s life had been uprooted. Bull’s supervisor’s report for the following year noted, in the same scratchy handwriting, that ‘Mr Bhutto has not been in Oxford this term but rang me up from Afghanistan for an extension of his thesis, which has now been found.’6 An extension of three additional terms was given. The drama of the thesis continued, now played out over the smoky city of Kabul.

  At the start of 1980 Bull wrote an unscheduled report, this time typed in harsh black ink, recording the fact that he hadn’t heard from his pupil since shortly before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. There was no way for student and supervisor to work together normally given that the Russians were cutting the phone lines and the Afghan postal service was totally unreliable. But somehow, in spite of the maelstrom of activity and resettlement, not to mention the liberation movement he was setting up, in the summer of 1980 Murtaza sent in a complete draft. Bull received the effort well. ‘It is clear that despite his distractions and political involvements, Mr Bhutto is still seriously pursuing his work.’7

  But it wasn’t enough. The th
esis, though completed, was not in a good state. Professor Bull wrote that ‘while Mr Bhutto worked hard under difficult conditions’, for his thesis to be successful he would have no choice but to ‘return here to his studies on a full-time basis’.8 That was not going to happen. Murtaza never replied to Bull; the case of the Oxford thesis was over.

  At the start of 1981, Della, who remained in Athens, was hopeful of better times to come. She and Murtaza had weathered many storms together – the campaigns for their loved ones in jail, Zulfikar’s execution and the move to Kabul. She opened her purple Asprey’s diary and wrote at the top of the page some thoughts for the times ahead. ‘Don’t give any information out. Improve economics. Have own house by end of the year. Learn Urdu and Spanish.’9 She had been thinking of leaving her husband, General Roufogalis, who had now been in prison for eight years. He had been arrested only three months into their marriage and Della had spent enough years waiting for him to be released to know that it wasn’t a possibility worth holding on to. Plus, she had fallen in love with Murtaza.

  Murtaza had often asked Della to marry him, but she couldn’t desert Roufogalis while he was in prison. But Murtaza persisted, telling her of the mountainous areas in Pakistan that Alexander the Great had passed through with his troops, of the snow leopards in the Himalayas, of the land in Sindh where he had grown up, promising that together they could build a new life. Murtaza told Della that they would have children together, he told her they would make angels. ‘Fix and clear my tubes,’ she wrote in the list, ending her thoughts with ‘Always love Mir’.

  When Della received a letter from Murtaza on 26 January, she tore it open excitedly. He had written it twelve days earlier.

  Ever since I have been here we have seen less of each other. And then, naturally, we have travelled less together. I get confused each time I think of all the promises I made: if nothing else one promise I will fulfil at all costs is your trip to Sindh and to the snow leopards.

  Della read on happily, the snow leopards reminding her of their future, a little code they shared together.

  My job is a far more difficult job than I thought it was. It is far more complicated than an outsider can imagine. It keeps me busier than I have ever been before in my life, but I am sure of success. Because the people are with us; the dynamics of history are with us. But in spite of all this I always think of you and I will always continue to think of you.

  If Della had not sensed the tone of the letter till then, it now hit her like a slap in the face.

  But you, young and beautiful as you are, will have to seriously think about your own future. Don’t worry about me, my destiny will be decided through the barrel of a gun . . . I have got involved in a job and a lifestyle that is not of my own making. You must not destroy your life for my sake.

  Murtaza tells Della that he will always say, till his dying day, that she was the true and only love of his life. Think of yourself, of your future. I’m lost in my work for the next two or three years. He asks this much of her, for his sake. There is so much more he wants to write but cannot. It was the last thing Murtaza wrote before ending their relationship.

  ‘We were the only organization at the time in which there was no free entry,’ Suhail tells me about Al Zulfikar, the new name of the organization founded by the Bhutto brothers, a play on their father’s name and the famous sword of Imam Ali. ‘We contacted people, never accepting those who came to us because we were wary of infiltration.’ He shakes his head and looks down. ‘But it still happened, even though we were careful.’10

  At the start of 1981 the organization was finally taking shape. Party workers who had been active from 1977 to 1979, the time of Zulfikar’s trial and imprisonment, were the ideal candidates to join the liberation movement and they came to Kabul from all across Pakistan’s four provinces. ‘Because of the persecution in Pakistan,’ Suhail explains, ‘many loyal party workers and activists were compelled to migrate. It was too dangerous for them to stay on in Pakistan, they were being beaten, tortured and arrested. We were under a strict dictatorship. Party workers, those who had the most sincere records, were largely poor, had neither the resources nor the means to migrate to Europe or the West. They would come to us. Our base in Kabul was basically a refuge for them where they could be safe and carry on the struggle against the junta.’11

  Suhail is a trim man, tallish. His hair has thinned on top and has greyed over the passage of time, turning even the light hairs on his moustache a cloudy white. He smokes cigarettes, like my father did, slowly and as if they require his consideration and attention. When we speak about the old days, the Kabul days, he wavers between laughing and joking about the memories of these three young men – all from privileged families – sitting in Afghanistan and plotting to overthrow a dictatorship and complete seriousness when we talk about the actual work they had sacrificed their lives to undertake.

  ‘A few women did come from Punjab to join the movement,’ he says, recalling every detail as if it was yesterday. ‘We were certainly open to it, we didn’t want to close any doors to those who had a sincere belief in our cause, but keeping in mind the terrain – having to cross through our Tribal Belt to reach Afghanistan – it didn’t work out.’ They did try though. It makes me happy, this small thought – that my father was progressive enough to recognize that men alone do not make revolutions, even at his young age of twenty-seven. As I linger on the thought, Suhail continues, describing the day-to-day life they led in Kabul – a period I’ve often heard him refer to as ‘the best times’.

  ‘There were about a hundred people who joined us at the end. We had a separate compound where we worked and housed everyone and had divided the movement into three parts – there was a political wing, a military wing and a security wing. Mir was the Secretary-General of Al Zulfikar and Shah initially headed the security wing and then later the military wing.’

  Al Zulfikar, which we call AZO, adding the O for organization, was never completely real to me. I was very young when it was disbanded. I only heard about it in passing, saw its logo on stationery kept in a dusty unused drawer. I saw its members, like Suhail, as family friends, as uncles who would take us out to eat ice-cream and whose children I grew up playing with. The notion that it existed in a different context is a strange one, like someone telling me about a foreign film that I’d watched but never read the subtitles of. But now I can finally understand the danger that followed my father and Uncle Shah for most of my childhood; it suddenly all makes sense and while his are not the choices I would make now, I feel secretly proud of my father for abandoning the offer of a bland but comfortable exile in London to fight what he believed was an unjust system.

  ‘The daily routine started in the early morning with physical exercises, which Shah would lead,’ Suhail says, toying with his packet of local cigarettes. ‘Then we’d have a political lecture – different people who worked in the political wing would come and talk on a number of issues, the floor was always open. We’d hear lectures on the history of the military in Pakistan, the growth of the People’s Party, histories of democratic struggles in other nations – it was always varied.

  ‘Then there would be a period of physical training, shortly before lunch. When the time to eat came, Shah would eat with everyone – he’d made a lot of friends among the recruits by that point and was very jovial and jolly during his break time with the men. And then we would have political discussions, group talks about our aims, what we were fighting for and general debates. Shah was very popular with the people who joined us; he was young and fun and had a real sense of the physical dynamics of fighting an armed struggle. Murtaza would visit the compound every day, but he was more concerned with the diplomatic and political side of things. He would meet with political groups that sent delegations or members from Pakistan, he would spend hours collecting news about the situation in the country, scouring the press and speaking to journalists, preparing political statements and so on – it was Murtaza’s job as the Secretary-Gene
ral.’ Their separate roles – Shah as the more militant commander of the organization and Murtaza as the political leader – would become more defined as time went on and would mark their lives in very different ways.

  Meanwhile, in Athens, Della was furious. She hadn’t bargained for an easy life when she began to see Murtaza and she wasn’t going to let him slip away into the ether of his political life.

  She wrote an angry letter back to Kabul, her tears smudging the blue ink of her writing. ‘You crazy fool,’ Della began. ‘Who asked your opinion about my future? My future belongs to me and I will do what I want with it . . . I too have a destiny, a duty that I am trying to fulfil and a big, deep love for you. When I read your letter I thought that the skies had opened up, that all the snow of the Afghan mountains was falling on my head.’12 She made a copy of the letter, the one she gives me twenty-seven years later. She sent the original, crossed out ‘Always love Mir’ in her purple Asprey’s diary, and waited.

  A week later a postcard from Mutaza arrived, sent from Libya and postmarked 29 January. Della took the postcard to the Libyan embassy in Athens, showed it to the man seated behind a desk and demanded answers. She told him she was looking for the sender of the postcard.The embassy official looked at the card carefully, wondering if the tall blonde woman was playing at something and told her to come back in a few days. When Della returned she was told that no such person was living in Libya and that she must have been deluded to think that the embassy could help her on such a wild goose chase. Storming out, Della grabbed an armful of tourist brochures on Tripoli. As soon as she got home Della called all the hotels explaining that she was looking for a certain man. But she couldn’t find Murtaza. He had already left.