‘If assassination is the price I pay ...’

‘If assassination is the price I must pay ...’

24 October 2007

An eyewitness report of the bombing of Benazir Bhutto’s bus

In the restaurant, I jumped when the waiter dropped a metal tray, sending it clanging to the floor. I wished the drinks list offered something stronger than fresh lime-soda. For I had been one of perhaps 15 old friends and party leaders on top of Bhutto’s bus, narrowly escaping with our lives and emerging covered with blood and bits of flesh from the three guards blown to pieces on that open roof.

It had all started so well, or at least with such high spirits. The flight from London was packed with rowdy Bhutto supporters, including one from the Canadian branch of the PPP who downed an entire bottle of Bacardi and ended up rolling in the aisles. Bhutto joined us at Dubai, saying farewell to her two daughters and husband and declaring ‘miracles do happen’. By the time the plane landed in Karachi, excitement levels were so high that the pilot had to refuse to taxi off the runway until everyone sat down.

I have known Bhutto for 20 years, covering her last return from exile when she left her flat in London’s Barbican to take on General Zia-ul Haq, the dictator who had ousted and then hanged her father Zulfilkar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s first elected Prime Minister. This time was very different. Bhutto may not look 54, but she is no longer the untainted, awkward young girl who evoked nationwide sympathy. Today she is a controversial and often imperious figure, twice dismissed as Prime Minister on charges of mismanagement and corruption that are widely believed even if they have never been proved. And she was coming back, not to take on the dictator, but as part of a US-backed deal with him under which the cases against her were dropped. In return General Musharraf would stay on as President and she would provide a democratic face as Prime Minister.

But her party still commands around a third of the electorate in polls and for millions of poor Pakistanis, Bhutto is still the only hope. So they turned out in their hundreds of thousands, lining the route from the airport, honking horns, throwing rose-petals and waving pictures of Bhutto and her late father.

When one of the organisers had offered me a place on Bhutto’s bus I had originally declined, knowing that it had to be a target. A Taleban leader in Pakistan’s tribal areas had issued death threats and Bhutto herself had spoken many times of risking assassination. Then when I saw the bus head off into the euphoric crowds, I changed my mind and was pulled on board and up the steps by one of her party leaders.