Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali

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BHUTTO, ZULFIKAR ALI

BHUTTO, ZULFIKAR ALI (1928–1979), president (1971–1977) and prime minister (1973–1977) of Pakistan. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was Pakistan's most popular political leader and its only prime minister to be hanged. Born in Sind's Larkhana, Zulfi was the youngest son of wealthy Sindi "landowner" (wadero) and princely state premier Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto and his second wife, young Hindu Lakhi Bai, who converted to Islam, changing her name to Khurshid. Zulfi's formal education started in Bombay's Cathedral High. In September 1947, a few weeks after partition tore India apart with the birth of Pakistan, he flew from Bombay to New York and Los Angeles, enrolling at the University of Southern California (USC).

Impact of Study Abroad

Zulfi was less interested in USC course work than in fraternity pranks and parties. After two years at USC, he transferred to Berkeley, majoring in political science, fascinated by Napoleon Bonaparte, his role model. Though he had been married as a boy to one of his Larkhana child cousins, Zulfi met his true wife, Nusrat Ispahani, at his sister's wedding on his first trip to Pakistan from Berkeley. Two years later they married in Karachi, flew to London and then to Oxford, where Zulfi enrolled at Christ Church College. A year later, their first of four children, Benazir, was born. Zulfi taught his daughter everything he loved about realpolitik; eventually, Benazir would follow in his footsteps to the pinnacle of Pakistani power.

Lincoln's Inn Barrister Bhutto returned to Pakistan in 1953, briefly practicing law in Karachi before abandoning it for politics. Soon after General Ayub Khan's coup in 1958, Bhutto became his foreign minister, urging his older martial "president" in 1965 to ignore the "cease-fire line" in Kashmir and quickly "liberate" that state's Muslim majority from India's army "of occupation." Bhutto assured Ayub that Kashmir's people would "rise up" as soon as Pakistan's tanks moved east. No popular welcome awaited them, however, only Indian bombs, floodwaters unleashed by India's engineers, trapping Pakistan's heavy armor in deep mud. India's tanks then rolled west to the outskirts of Lahore, and Ayub was forced to accept a cease-fire, flying with Bhutto to Tashkent for a peace conference with Indian prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, hosted by Russian premier Aleksey Kosygin. The frail Shastri died the day after the armistice agreement was signed in January 1966, succeeded by Indira Gandhi. Ayub, depressed by the war he had lost, soon succumbed to heart failure, turning over his martial rule to General Yahya Khan.

Bhutto alone emerged after Tashkent stronger than ever. He started a new Pakistan People's Party (PPP), winning popular acclaim wherever he spoke in West Pakistan. But East Pakistanis showed little interest in anything Bhutto said. Most Bengalis understood none of his Urdu or English rhetoric. Bengal's Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, head of his Awami (People's) League, was the only politician supported by most Bengalis. They voted overwhelmingly for him in Pakistan's first nationwide election of 1970. Bhutto's PPP won a majority in West Pakistan, but East Pakistan had 10 million more people, so Mujib's Awami League won a majority of National Assembly seats. Mujib should have become Pakistan's first democratically elected prime minister, but Bhutto refused to accept him and persuaded Pakistan's weak-minded martial "president" Yahya Khan to launch a bloody war against "Bangla-Desh" (Land of Bengalis) in March 1971 instead. Pakistan's army suffered a humiliating defeat as Indian troops, supported by heavy Russian artillery and tanks, rolled across Bangladesh in early December. Bhutto blustered to the United Nations Security Council that Pakistan would "never surrender." But two days later it did.

Bhutto flew home in the aftermath of that debacle to take Yayha's job as "martial law president," vowing to "pick up the pieces" of battered Pakistan. He soon nationalized Pakistan's banks, took control of Pakistan's shipping, and began funding the development of a secret nuclear arms program. In midsummer of 1972, Bhutto flew with his daughter to Simla for a summit with Indira Gandhi. They agreed to turn Jammu and Kashmir's cease-fire line into a redrawn "line of control" and formally ended the Bangladesh War. Pakistan soon recognized the totally independent "nation of Bengal," losing more than half its population and most of its foreign-currency earnings from jute. India promised to return its more than 90,000 Pakistani prisoners. Bhutto flew home to cheering crowds and a hero's welcome in Lahore, Karachi, and Larkhana, where he kept his huge arsenal of guns and ammunition for festive annual shooting parties.

Pinnacle of Power

In 1973 Bhutto persuaded his National Assembly to adopt a new Constitution for the "Islamic Republic of Pakistan," over which he would preside as its first prime minister. He then flew to Washington, welcomed warmly by his patrons, President Richard M. Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, as Pakistan's "savior." February 1974 marked the peak of Bhutto's power. He regally hosted an Islamic summit of thirty-eight Muslim heads of state in Lahore, including Bangladesh's prime minister, and every "king, royal highness and excellency" of the Islamic world.

But that May 1974, Indira Gandhi triggered India's first underground nuclear explosions in Rajasthan, close enough to Pakistan's Sind to be felt by Bhutto himself. Zulfi inveighed against such "nuclear blackmail," vowing that his people would sooner "eat grass" than allow India to use its bombs against a less powerfully armed Pakistan. South Asia's most lethal arms race thus moved into high gear. The Peace of Tashkent and the harmony of the 1972 summit at Simla were buried under nuclear bomb blasts and angry rhetoric.

Decline and Fall

Before year's end, the father of one of Bhutto's outspoken critics and political opponents, Ahmad Raza Kasuri, was gunned down inside a car driven by his son. The son accused Bhutto of murdering his father by "mistake," aiming to kill him instead. Bhutto denied it, but on the night of 4 July 1977, Bhutto's handpicked choice for Pakistan's chief of army staff job, General Zia ul-Haq, ordered Prime Minister Bhutto arrested. Zia's midnight coup was followed a few months later by Bhutto's trial for the "murder" with which he had previously been charged. In March 1978 Bhutto was found guilty as charged, sentenced to death, and after a series of appeals, all of which failed, was hanged before dawn on 4 April 1979.

Bhutto was hailed by millions of Pakistanis as Shaheed (martyr)—"Zulfi Bhutto lives on!" they cried. His daughter, Benazir, began her first term as Pakistan's prime minister a decade later, shortly after Zia ul-Haq and most of his loyal staff went down in flames in 1988 in a mysterious crash of their C-130 plane almost immediately after it took off.

Stanley Wolpert

See alsoPakistan