Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan His Life and Time STANLEY WOLPERT Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan Copyright © www.bhutto.org 2 CONTENTS Chapter 1 Sindhi Roots (pre-1928) 7 Chapter 2 From Larkana to Bombay (1928-1947) 27 Chapter 3 Brief California Interlude (1947-1950) 37 Chapter 4 From Oxford to Karachi (1950-1957) 50 Chapter 5 Apprenticeship to Power (1958-1963) 75 Chapter 6 Foreign Minister to the Field Marshal (1963-1965) 96 Chapter 7 Winters of His Discontent (1965-1969) 130 Chapter 8 Free Elections and the Birth of Bangladesh (1970-1971) 172 Chapter 9 President Bhutto “Picks Up the Pieces” (December 1971-July 1972) 210 Chapter 10 Provincial Problems Proliferate (mid-1972-early 1973) 253 Chapter 11 Foreign Triumphs, Domestic Tragedies (April 1973-1974) 274 Chapter 12 Prime Minister Bhutto at the Peak of His Power (1974) 294 Chapter 13 From “Leader of Pakistan’s People to “Leader of the Third World”? (1975) 314 Chapter 14 Prelude to New National Elections (1976) 332 Chapter 15 New Elections and Their Tragic Aftermath (early 1977) 353 Chapter 16 Zulfi’s Fall—From Martial Coup to Martyrdom (5 July 1977-4 April 1979) 384 Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan Copyright © www.bhutto.org 3 Preface Since 1980, when I visited Pakistan to do research on my Jinnah of Pakistan, I have been fascinated by the mercurial and seemingly self-conflicting life of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Most Pakistanis I met either loved or hated Zulfi Bhutto, the People’s Party prime minister, who was arrested by his own commander-in-chief General Zia ul-Haq, and hanged after two years in prison. Millions of Pakistanis still hail Zulfi Bhutto as their Quaid-i-Awam (“Leader of the People”), even as they do Mohammad Ali Jinnah as Pakistan’s Quaid-i-Azam (“Great Leader”). For most of its brief history since its birth in mid-August 1947, Pakistan was ruled by unpopular generals who seized and held power using martial force. Bhutto seemed different, the almost uniquely popular founder-leader of Pakistan’s People’s Party, who had just swept the polls throughout Punjab and Sindh only months before his arrest. How then could he be hanged without inciting mass riots throughout Pakistan, if not a revolution, I wondered? This book is the product of a decade-and-a-half of my reflection on that question, the last five years of which have been devoted to research into the life of Zulfi Bhutto as a microcosmic mirror of Pakistani society and its troubled history in his times. I am indebted to many people for kind assistance in completing this book. First of all, it was thanks to Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and her mother, Begum Sahiba Nusrat Bhutto, that I was given full and free access to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s Library at his 70, Clifton home in Karachi. Prime Minister Benazir, now Leader of the Opposition in Pakistan’s National Assembly, graciously granted me free access to all of her father’s books and papers preserved in that Bhutto Family Library and Archive, providing that her mother, who uses 70, Clifton as her Karachi residence, had no objection. Begum Sahiba Nusrat kindly welcomed me to carry out my research in that Library whenever I came to Karachi over the next three years. Prime Minister Benazir and Begum Sahiba also took time from their busy schedules to permit me to interview them at length. I interviewed more than 100 of Zulfi Bhutto’s colleagues and family, and am grateful to all of them for their patient cooperation and frankness in answering my questions. Most helpful were Zulfi’s closest collateral relative, Mr. Mumtaz Ali Bhutto, and his only living sibling, Begum Manna (Bhutto) Islam, both of who shared their intimate recollections with me. Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan Copyright © www.bhutto.org 4 Foreign Minister Sahabzada Yaqub Khan was most encouraging when I informed him of my intention to embark upon this study, and Ambassador Jamsheed K. Marker was singularly instrumental in launching my research. I am deeply grateful to both of those gentlemen-diplomats for their more than “diplomatic” kindness and consideration. Special thanks to Mrs. Marker for her gracious hospitality and help. I thank Ambassador Abida Hussain and Minister Fakhar Imam for their illuminating insights. Thanks to Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith, Ambassador Henry Byroad, Ambassador Robert Oakley, and Ambassador William Clark, for sharing so many recollections and so much South Asian wisdom with me. I am also most indebted to Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Teresita Schaffer and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Nancy Ely-Raphel for their frank responses to my many questions. Thanks to Fellowship support from our excellent American Institute of Pakistan Studies (AIPS), I was able to start my research in Pakistan early in 1989.I am grateful to all members of the AIPS Board for their scholarly confidence, but must specially thank my good friends, Professor Hafeez Malik and Professor Ralph Braibanti, without whom AIPS would never have been born. Hafeez helped convince Prime Minister Bhutto of the importance of starting this premier Institute for U.S.-Pakistan scholarly exchange in 1973, and Ralph presided over the first Board meeting in Washington that year. Thanks to Dr. Peter Dodd and Dr. William Lenderking for their warm hospitality in Pakistan, and to Mr. Ali Imran Afaqi for his kind and efficient help, and to Consuls Kent Obee and Helena Finn, and Consul-General Joe Melrose. UCLA’s Gustave E. Von Grunebaum Center for Near Eastern Studies also supported my research, and I thank my good colleagues, Director/Professor Georges Sabagh and Professor Richard Hovannisian, for their kind assistance. I also thank Dean John N. Hawkins, who heads our Institute for International Studies and Overseas Programs at UCLA, for his unfailing help and encouragement, and my old friend and colleague, Vice-Chancellor Richard Sisson, for his warm support. Piloo Mody first “introduced” me to Zulfi Bhutto with his memoir, Zulfi, My Friend (1973). Piloo hoped someday to “complete” that inchoate biography of Zulfi, but he too died young. I remain, however, singularly indebted to Piloo for his insightful work, and to his wife Vina, who generously granted me full access to her and Piloo’s fine collection of Bhutto photographs. Thanks to dear Joyce Hundal for introducing me to Piloo and Vina. I also thank Mr. J. J. Mugaseth, Zulfi’s oldest school-buddy, for so kindly assisting me, and also sharing his early photos of Zulfi. Thanks to Omar Qureshi and Al Cechvala for their time and hospitality and to Husna Sheikh for kindly agreeing to allow me to interview her and to Begum Mehru Rahim Khan for her gracious Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan Copyright © www.bhutto.org 5 assistance. Special thanks to General Gul Hasan and to Minister Roedad Khan for their interviews. Many friends in Pakistan opened their homes as well as their hearts and minds to me, too many to list all of them, but I must particularly thank Brigadier Noor Hussain and his good Begum Hushmat; Rizvan Kehar and his good wife; Suhail and Yasmeen Lari; Dr. Haye Saeed and his daughter Salima; Yahya Bakhtiar and his daughter Zeba; Begum Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah; Khalid Shamsul Hasan and his family; and Ardeshir and Nancy Cowasjee. Khalid-Sahib knows I can never adequately thank him, and Ardeshir, like Khalid, is a true gentleman-scholar and a friend, with whom I join in mourning the death of his wife and father. My warmest thanks to my splendid editor Nancy Lane, who had now been midwife for many of my books. I thank Jane Bitar for typing the final manuscript. To my darling wife, Dorothy, I can but inadequately express my growing admiration and devotion that has had only 40 brief years in which to blossom, with much love. Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan Copyright © www.bhutto.org 6 1 Sindhi Roots (pre-1928) No individual in the history of Pakistan achieved greater popular power or suffered so ignominious a death as Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1928-79). Zulfi Bhutto’s political rise and fall were, indeed, so meteoric as to make his name a legend in the land over which he presided for little more than half a decade prior to his hanging. A full decade after his death, Bhutto remained popular enough to ensure the election of his daughter, Benazir, to the premier position he once held. Wherever she campaigned in Sindh and much of Punjab, the popular roar that greeted her was “Jiye Bhutto!”—”Bhutto Lives!” by which millions of Pakistanis meant and still mean, Zulfi Bhutto. Zulfi Bhutto roused such diametrically opposed passions and has left such divergent images among his disciples and adversaries that it remains virtually impossible to reconcile them as reflections of any single personality. Much like the nation he led, and in many ways came to epitomize, born irreconcilably divided, partitioned into East and West, torn from the subcontinental fabric of Mother India by the Islamic faith of his fathers, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, microcosmic reflection of Pakistan, was never a simple personality. His unique charisma and the deep-rooted failings that brought him to an early and violent death emanated from his schizoid personality, the strengths of one part of which were matched by weaknesses of the other, the depths of its dreadful darkness mirroring the brilliant heights of its most powerful peaks. Torn apart by his inner conflicts, never able to reconcile his romantic dreams of glory with the mundane realities and misery so prevalent all around him, Zulfi hoped to the bitter end of his brief but flamboyant sojourn at the top of Pakistan’s slippery pole to save himself and his land from a destiny of diminution, death, and fragmentation, vaingloriously viewing himself as an Islamic Napoleon, the “Shah-in-Shah” of Pakistan.