Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was what might be described as a populist politician, although that American term would be hard to justify for any Pakistani politician. His life was one of success and tragedy.
Bhutto was born in the Sindh province of British India in 1928 to an aristocratic Rajput family that had converted to the Shi'ia version of Islam. His family was influential in the politics of the time. Ali Bhutto received his highschool education in Bombay (Mumbai) but traveled the United States for his university education at the University of California at Berkeley. This university was effectively the Harvard of the Pacific Rim and Bhutto completed his bachelor's degree there in 1950. Bhutto was thus away from India during the troubled time of the partition and the formation of Pakistan.
Bhutto went on to graduate education at the University of Oxford where he studied law. After the completion of his degree he practiced law and lectured a short time before returning home in 1953 to the new nation of Pakistan. He settled in Karachi and practiced law there. He developed some political ties and was appointed to Pakistan's delegation to the United Nations.
His wife, Nurat, was also of a Shi'ia Islamic faith and but with an Iranian Kurdish heritage.
Politics in Pakistan took a new turn in 1958 when the military leader Mohammad Ayub Khan carried out a coup d'etat. The Bhutto family was of feudalbackground and Zulfiqar Bhutto was well enough connected that he was appointed to head the Ministry of Commerce. Appointments to other cabinet post followed. Finally he was made foreign minister in 1963. He then began to develop his own policy program. He felt he should try to promote ties with China as a counter-balance to the militant relation which had developed between independent India and Pakistan.
In 1965 a war with India broke out over the issue of Kashmir and Jammu. Pakistan was overwhelmed militarily by India and had to sue for peace. Bhutto objected to the peace treaty with India that ended the war and in protest he resigned from his position as foreign minister.
After leaving the administration of Ayub Khan, Bhutto began organizing his own political party. It was founded at the end of 1967 and he called it the Pakistan People's Party (PPP). Out of office and head of his own political party, Bhutto began to denounce the Ayub Khan regime as a dictator and, as a result, the regime put him into prison for the years 1968 and 1969.
The Ayub Khan regime was terminated by Khan's resignation and control of the government was assumed by another general, Mohammad Yahya Khan, and national elections were permitted in 1970. At that time Pakistan consisted of two wings. The West Wing consisted of the Indus River Valley and so forth plus Balochistan, the province on the coast south of Afghanistan. The East Wing was what once had been East Bengal. The East Wing had a greater population and more important export industries than the West Wing. However, the capital and political control was in the hands of the West Pakistanis. The East Wing was providing more taxes but was getting the smaller share of federal government funds.
Bhutto went on a speaking tour of the West Wing espousing noble ideals of democracy and reform. Campaigning among the people was something Pakistan had not seen before. Bhutto was an impassioned orator and his rhetoric inspiring. He was charismatic.
Bhutto's PPP received overwhelming electoral support in the West Wing but the Awani League, a political party of the East Wing had the greater number of representatives. Since the vote was divided between the Awani League and Bhutto's PPP the legislative government might have had to involve both the Awani League and Bhutto's PPP, but Bhutto refused to enter into a coalition with the Awani League which would allow the Awami League's leader to become the prime minister. This created a political crisis which spun out of control. When the Pakistan army under the control of West Wing commanders tried to put down the rebellion there was great bloodshed and atrocity. Many residents of the East Wing fled across the border into India creating a severe problem. The army of India came to the aid of the rebels and defeated the West Wing's attempt to suppress the rebellion. The East Wing of Pakistan declared it independence as the new nation of Bangladesh.
The military regime of Yahya Khan failed miserably and political control was turned over to Ali Bhutto at the end of 1971. Bhutto was able to rule largely by decree.
Bhutto began immediately to consolidate his power and move toward a socialist economy. He nationalized key industries and began to tax the land property of the richer families. Bhutto in 1973 used his political power to install a new constitution which further enhanced his power. He created a Federal Security Force which functioned as a palace guard outside of the control of the military.
In power the rhetoric of Bhutto's rise to power was ignored. He ruled as an autocrat. His regime reminds one of the American politician Huey Long of Louisana during the period 1928 to 1936. Long was immensely popular and claimed to champion the interests of the poor. In practice Long ruled as a dictator, a populist dictator but still a dictator.
Zulfiqar Bhutto used his popularity to rule as an autocrat if not an outright dictator. After ruling as an autocrat for about five years, Bhutto decided to hold a new election in 1977. His party apparently won the election but there was enough suspicion of voting fraud that riots broke out. Bhutto prohibited assemblies for political purpose hoping to throttle the protest movement. Bhutto had shifted the political focus of his regime from the urban poor and middle class to the rural poor. He lost the support of the politically active urbanites because of the ineffectiveness of his regime to achieve the goals he promised. Anwar Hussain Syed in his book The Discourse and Politics of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto quotes a note Bhutto sent to his ministers:
Bhutto was born in the Sindh province of British India in 1928 to an aristocratic Rajput family that had converted to the Shi'ia version of Islam. His family was influential in the politics of the time. Ali Bhutto received his highschool education in Bombay (Mumbai) but traveled the United States for his university education at the University of California at Berkeley. This university was effectively the Harvard of the Pacific Rim and Bhutto completed his bachelor's degree there in 1950. Bhutto was thus away from India during the troubled time of the partition and the formation of Pakistan.
Bhutto went on to graduate education at the University of Oxford where he studied law. After the completion of his degree he practiced law and lectured a short time before returning home in 1953 to the new nation of Pakistan. He settled in Karachi and practiced law there. He developed some political ties and was appointed to Pakistan's delegation to the United Nations.
His wife, Nurat, was also of a Shi'ia Islamic faith and but with an Iranian Kurdish heritage.
Politics in Pakistan took a new turn in 1958 when the military leader Mohammad Ayub Khan carried out a coup d'etat. The Bhutto family was of feudalbackground and Zulfiqar Bhutto was well enough connected that he was appointed to head the Ministry of Commerce. Appointments to other cabinet post followed. Finally he was made foreign minister in 1963. He then began to develop his own policy program. He felt he should try to promote ties with China as a counter-balance to the militant relation which had developed between independent India and Pakistan.
In 1965 a war with India broke out over the issue of Kashmir and Jammu. Pakistan was overwhelmed militarily by India and had to sue for peace. Bhutto objected to the peace treaty with India that ended the war and in protest he resigned from his position as foreign minister.
After leaving the administration of Ayub Khan, Bhutto began organizing his own political party. It was founded at the end of 1967 and he called it the Pakistan People's Party (PPP). Out of office and head of his own political party, Bhutto began to denounce the Ayub Khan regime as a dictator and, as a result, the regime put him into prison for the years 1968 and 1969.
The Ayub Khan regime was terminated by Khan's resignation and control of the government was assumed by another general, Mohammad Yahya Khan, and national elections were permitted in 1970. At that time Pakistan consisted of two wings. The West Wing consisted of the Indus River Valley and so forth plus Balochistan, the province on the coast south of Afghanistan. The East Wing was what once had been East Bengal. The East Wing had a greater population and more important export industries than the West Wing. However, the capital and political control was in the hands of the West Pakistanis. The East Wing was providing more taxes but was getting the smaller share of federal government funds.
Bhutto went on a speaking tour of the West Wing espousing noble ideals of democracy and reform. Campaigning among the people was something Pakistan had not seen before. Bhutto was an impassioned orator and his rhetoric inspiring. He was charismatic.
Bhutto's PPP received overwhelming electoral support in the West Wing but the Awani League, a political party of the East Wing had the greater number of representatives. Since the vote was divided between the Awani League and Bhutto's PPP the legislative government might have had to involve both the Awani League and Bhutto's PPP, but Bhutto refused to enter into a coalition with the Awani League which would allow the Awami League's leader to become the prime minister. This created a political crisis which spun out of control. When the Pakistan army under the control of West Wing commanders tried to put down the rebellion there was great bloodshed and atrocity. Many residents of the East Wing fled across the border into India creating a severe problem. The army of India came to the aid of the rebels and defeated the West Wing's attempt to suppress the rebellion. The East Wing of Pakistan declared it independence as the new nation of Bangladesh.
The military regime of Yahya Khan failed miserably and political control was turned over to Ali Bhutto at the end of 1971. Bhutto was able to rule largely by decree.
Bhutto began immediately to consolidate his power and move toward a socialist economy. He nationalized key industries and began to tax the land property of the richer families. Bhutto in 1973 used his political power to install a new constitution which further enhanced his power. He created a Federal Security Force which functioned as a palace guard outside of the control of the military.
In power the rhetoric of Bhutto's rise to power was ignored. He ruled as an autocrat. His regime reminds one of the American politician Huey Long of Louisana during the period 1928 to 1936. Long was immensely popular and claimed to champion the interests of the poor. In practice Long ruled as a dictator, a populist dictator but still a dictator.
Zulfiqar Bhutto used his popularity to rule as an autocrat if not an outright dictator. After ruling as an autocrat for about five years, Bhutto decided to hold a new election in 1977. His party apparently won the election but there was enough suspicion of voting fraud that riots broke out. Bhutto prohibited assemblies for political purpose hoping to throttle the protest movement. Bhutto had shifted the political focus of his regime from the urban poor and middle class to the rural poor. He lost the support of the politically active urbanites because of the ineffectiveness of his regime to achieve the goals he promised. Anwar Hussain Syed in his book The Discourse and Politics of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto quotes a note Bhutto sent to his ministers:
There are shortages everywhere… The Agricultural Development Bank has not come out with any new scheme to assist the common man, the poor man … The rural works program and the rural integrated program remain disintegrated. I have not seen the face of a single Agroville of which we talked a great deal. The low cost housing schemes are coming up on paper only. The drainage schemes have not seen the light of day. Crime is rising without fear … In other words, where is our revolution? There is no change. We are supposed to be the harbingers of a new order, but where is the new order? … The truth hurts and it hurts me the most.
The military under the leadership of General Zia ul-Haq took control of the government and imprisoned Bhutto. Bhutto was uncooperative with the military regime and Zia ul-Haq, tiring of Bhutto's intransigence, had Bhutto charged with arranging the assassination of a political opponent in 1974. Bhutto had used force to suppress many of his political opponents and there was a good deal of gangsterism in the PPP so the charges had a certain plausibility. Anwar Hussain Syed in his book The Discourse and Politics of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto says:
In his discourse, and in his covenant with the people, Bhutto undertook to maintain civil rights and democratic freedoms. In his actual practices as a ruler, he did the opposite. His regime insulted, humiliated, harassed, assaulted, imprisoned and, in some cases, tortured critics and opponents. He had vowed to cultivate respect for the law, but his agents used lawless force against his adversaries. Even old comrades, who had become critics, were not spared. Meraj Mohammad Khan languished in jail, and Mukhtar Rana almost died under torture. Men from the Federal Security Force broke into J.A. Rahim's house and beat him so severely that he had to be hospitalized.
Bhutto was tried in Lahore in the highest court of Punjab which meant that there could be one appeal of the verdict to a higher court, the Supreme Court of Pakistan. He was found guilty in a trial in 1978 and sentenced to death. The court's decision was a split 4 to 3. An appeal was filed for Bhutto in the Supreme Court but that court chose not to review his case. Within a period of about ten days Bhutto was executed by hanging.
Zia ul-Haq was a relentless enemy. Bhutto was informed that he would actually be executed only seven hours ahead of time instead of the seven days required by law. Pakistan was left with the legacy of its most popular leader having been martyred, the victim of political-judicial murder by a military junta. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was a flawed individual and he did not serve Pakistan well but his death was tragic on many levels.
Here is Pervez Musharraf's assessment of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto:
Zia ul-Haq was a relentless enemy. Bhutto was informed that he would actually be executed only seven hours ahead of time instead of the seven days required by law. Pakistan was left with the legacy of its most popular leader having been martyred, the victim of political-judicial murder by a military junta. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was a flawed individual and he did not serve Pakistan well but his death was tragic on many levels.
Here is Pervez Musharraf's assessment of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto:
With East Pakistan gone, to become Bangladesh, Bhutto's largest number of seats in what was left of Pakistan gave him a dubious legitimacy. He became president of Pakistan, but he also used the absence of a basic law as a pretext to become chief martial law administrator. There was nothing to stop Bhutto from reverting to the constitution of 1956, with amendments to the clauses that pertained to East Pakistan, but he chose raw power instead.
At first I admired Bhutto. He was young, educated, articulate, and dynamic. He had eight years' experience in government under President Ayub Khan. But as time passed, my opinion of Bhutto started to change. My brother Javed, who was principal secretary to the chief minister of the North-West Frontier province, told me that Bhutto was no good and would ruin the country. My brother was right. I saw how the country, and particularly the economy, was ravaged by mindless nationalization. Its institutions were destroyed under his brand of so-called Islamic socialism. Bhutto took control of virtually all the nation's industries--steel, chemicals, cement, shipping, banking, insurance, engineering, gas and power distribution, and even small industries like flour milling, cotton ginning, and rice husking, as well as private schools and colleges -- the start of the destruction of our educational system. Mercifully, he did not touch textiles, our largest industry. Bhutto ruled not like a democrat but like a despotic dictator. He threw many of his opponents, including editors, journalists, and even cartoonists, into prison. He was really a fascist -- using the most progressive rhetoric to promote regressive ends, the first of which was to stay in power forever. It was a tragedy, because a man of his undoubted capability could have done a lot of good for his country. By the time his regime ended, I had come to the conclusion that Bhutto was the worst thing that had yet happened to Pakistan. I still maintain that he did more damage to the country than anyone else, damage from which we have still not fully recovered. Among other things, he was the first to try to appease the religious right. He banned liquor and gambling and declared Friday a holiday instead of Sunday. This was hypocrisy at its peak, because everyone knew that he did not believe in any one of these actions.
Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire, pp. 57-58.
At first I admired Bhutto. He was young, educated, articulate, and dynamic. He had eight years' experience in government under President Ayub Khan. But as time passed, my opinion of Bhutto started to change. My brother Javed, who was principal secretary to the chief minister of the North-West Frontier province, told me that Bhutto was no good and would ruin the country. My brother was right. I saw how the country, and particularly the economy, was ravaged by mindless nationalization. Its institutions were destroyed under his brand of so-called Islamic socialism. Bhutto took control of virtually all the nation's industries--steel, chemicals, cement, shipping, banking, insurance, engineering, gas and power distribution, and even small industries like flour milling, cotton ginning, and rice husking, as well as private schools and colleges -- the start of the destruction of our educational system. Mercifully, he did not touch textiles, our largest industry. Bhutto ruled not like a democrat but like a despotic dictator. He threw many of his opponents, including editors, journalists, and even cartoonists, into prison. He was really a fascist -- using the most progressive rhetoric to promote regressive ends, the first of which was to stay in power forever. It was a tragedy, because a man of his undoubted capability could have done a lot of good for his country. By the time his regime ended, I had come to the conclusion that Bhutto was the worst thing that had yet happened to Pakistan. I still maintain that he did more damage to the country than anyone else, damage from which we have still not fully recovered. Among other things, he was the first to try to appease the religious right. He banned liquor and gambling and declared Friday a holiday instead of Sunday. This was hypocrisy at its peak, because everyone knew that he did not believe in any one of these actions.
Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire, pp. 57-58.
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was a complex person and has a complex role in Pakistan political and cultural history. Pakistanis seem to be divided into those who love him for his political rhetoric and those who hate him for his political action. For more on this man see Bhutto.
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