Benazir Bhutto’s critical decisions as PM were when she said NO to establishment proposals

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Benazir Bhutto’ critical decisions as Prime Minister were when she said firm NO to establishment’s proposals that seemed to her dangerous in the long term for the state and society.

In 1990 she said NO in to an offer from assorted mujahiden conveyed through their patrons in the establishment to take the jehad to Kashmir. She not only said NO but even asked the army and ISI to ensure that the Afghan mujahidden were not allowed to cross LoC.

She said NO to a proposal to expand the scope of intelligence so as to make all promotions of senior state officials subject to clearance and screening by the ISI which she saw as legitimizing the creation of a state within state role to the agencies. She also said NO to the suggestion that Pakistani troops be allowed to support the Afghan Interim Government (AIG) in its fight for Kabul. This was stated by Senator Farhatullah Babar, Benazir Bhutto’s spokesperson and speech writer while speaking at the national conference jointly organized by the Benazir Chair of the Karachi University and the Institute of Business Administration in Karachi today.

He said when Benazir Bhutto was born Pakistan was her identity but by the time she was assassinated in 2007 she had already been transformed into a leading symbol of the nation’s identity itself.

About the three major challenges she faced Senator Farhatullah Babar said that these included a hateful campaign of gender bias dramatized by the fatwas of leading national and international clerics, the No Confidence against her orchestrated by the establishment and militant groups which failed by 12 votes on November 1, 1989 and a coup attempt in September 1995 that was unearthed accidentally when some senior army officers were caught smuggling weapons to Islamabad ostensibly for the jehadis but actually for first taking over the GHQ and then eliminating her as well.

Recounting her major achievements he said these were: changing irreversibly the landscape for women and a legacy of framework for peace in the region highlighted by the first nuclear confidence building measure in South Asia, the opening up of the restricted trade and visa free travel for judges and parliamentarians in SAARC. She was the first among the leaders to warn against the unfolding existential threat to Pakistan posed by militants and religious extremists and declaring war against them laying down her life as well.

Benazir Bhutto believed that terrorism was an evil that was bound to anger decent and honest people throughout the world to rise and renew themselves to the cause of eliminating it, he said adding that she called it a fundamental truth that raised our hopes to win the battle.

Her moment of personal glory came when she took oath of office from Ghulam Ishaq Khan and the auditorium thundered with Jeay Bhutto slogans, he said. On her way back she leaned and whispered to Shaikh Rafiq that today she had avenged the assassination of her father, he reminisced.