‘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

As the mother of three teenage children, who says the worst moment of her life was when she lost her own father at 25, this is no easy choice. For all her faults, Bhutto is nothing if not brave. Politics have not been kind to her family. Not only was her father killed but also her two brothers, while her husband spent eight years in jail. Although she admits last week’s attack ‘was a very close shave’ and she has since received more death threats, she insists she is determined to fight on.

‘I was so happy on the bus,’ she said sadly. ‘I thought this was Pakistan’s moderate middle all coming together. It was wonderful to see such happiness, festivity, singing, sheer celebration that people thought my return might herald. And then the militants struck to destroy it all, but we’re not going to let them.’

Yet not everyone agrees she is the person to do this. ‘She shouldn’t have come back,’ said Adl Sami, a student from Karachi university, walking with his friends on Clifton beach. They have just come from Jinnah hospital, where one of his cousins is critically ill — he was one of Benazir’s martyrs. ‘All these politicians want is position and we are the ones to suffer.’

Christina Lamb is a foreign correspondent for the Sunday Times.