Guernica: The U.S. obviously plays a role here. And our new President Barack Obama rode into office on a platform for change. He did say he’d move troops from Iraq into Afghanistan, and now we’re seeing a military buildup, with drones and enormous amounts of aid, in Pakistan.
A graduate of Barnard College and the London School of Economics, Bhutto is the author of a book of poems, Whispers of the Desert, published when she was just fifteen, and an oral history of the earthquake that rocked the north of Pakistan, titled 8:50 a.m. October 8, 2005.
Fatima Bhutto: I haven’t met President Obama. And I have to say that when he was running, like almost everyone in the universe, I was incredibly excited by the prospect of him and found him incredibly inspiring. But as you said, unfortunately, not only has President Obama continued Bush’s policies in the region, he’s stepped them up a bit. What’s so frustrating is that he’s a man who understands nuance. I mean, for that man to call the entire region “Af/Pak” is mortifying to us because we’re two distinct countries. And to be lumped together in this Af/Pak sort of bundle is so Bush-like it breaks my, it breaks my heart.
I think the problem that Obama has made in Pakistan is an enormous one. Empowering Pakistan’s military and empowering this incredibly criminal and corrupt government with drone access and all the rest of it, and with billions and billions of dollars of aid, he’s just repeating the cycle. We’re seeing on a much larger scale a repeat of the earthquake. Pakistan took in, I think, $6.7 billion to deal with the earthquake. Four years later, we still have people in camps; that money has gone to some very high-up officials’ bank accounts and nowhere else. Except in this case, the Pakistan Army has entered into a guerrilla war and what Obama has proved to people in the region is that American democracy is always going to come down against the people. I mean, American democracy means we’ll drone your village, it means we’ll bomb your schools, and it means you live in refugee camps. The idea then of reaching out to the Muslim world, reaching out to places like Pakistan to explain to them that we share a common battle in fighting extremism, has been entirely lost. If I were going to meet President Obama, I would have so many things to say to him…
Guernica: I can hear that.
Fatima Bhutto: But [laughs] I think I would want to make clear to him that he’s opened a third front in my country. By allying America with this government, he has furthered the cause of the Pakistani Taliban so immensely, so immensely. Because when you’ve got these guys fighting the seventh largest army in the world and the first largest army in the world, and they’re fighting and they’re losing their homes, people forget that they flog women. People forget that they are in favor of an incredibly repressive Sharia system. Because what they see is that [the Taliban] are fighting a corrupt system, a corrupt government, a violent army.
Guernica: In addition to this militarism that the U.S. enables, there is the aid question.
Fatima Bhutto: Absolutely. All the Lugar Pak [the Kerry-Lugar Pakistan aid bill] money is not going to schools. One of the most extraordinary things that should be known about Pakistan is that we missed our Millennium Goals to eradicate polio because we cannot refrigerate the vaccines long enough to administer them because of the lack of electricity. This is a nuclear country that cannot run a refrigerator. When you’re giving Pakistan billions and trillions and scrillions of dollars, you’ve got to be aware of where that money is going. Obama is lucky because he’s dealing with someone with a record, he’s dealing with a government that has a history of corruption. Before Zardari became president, he was fighting corruption cases in Switzerland, Spain, and England.
Guernica: You’ve implicated Zardari in at least the cover-up of your father’s murder.
Fatima Bhutto: Not just mine. Before he became president, Zardari was standing trial in four murder cases; it’s eleven people, I believe, killed in these four cases. The man can barely string a sentence together in Urdu; forget about English. This is a man whose entire mandate rests on the fact that his dead wife named him heir apparent in a letter. He was elected by Parliament in the same way that General Pervez Musharraf was elected by Parliament. So it’s very difficult to say Musharraf was not democratically elected but Zardari was. Both of them were elected by their own parliaments. I think this is part of the great doublespeak you get when you talk about Pakistan. Zardari has not entered into a popular vote, and he’s got no mandate of the people. In my book, that’s not democratic. And I think that Obama has given the man a lifeline that he very desperately needed to stay in power.
Guernica: Other American politicians, you’ve pointed out, have given the sheen of legitimacy to corrupt Pakistani elections.
Fatima Bhutto: In 2007, John Kerry came. As per our election law, a woman wearing a burqa does not have to show her face in her ID photograph. And she does not have to show it when she votes. And you have people like John Kerry coming in and going to one station in Islamabad and saying, “Oh, yes, everything’s perfect; there are no problems here.”
Guernica: Tell me about the National Reconciliation Ordinance. The U.S. also helped push this through, you’ve complained, noting that it essentially wrote impunity into law.
Fatima Bhutto: This is the deal that Benazir orchestrated with General Musharraf before her death. Essentially, it clears some twenty years’ worth of corruption cases against politicians, bureaucrats, and bankers. It also contains a clause that will make it virtually impossible to file charges against a sitting member of government in the future. What is so phenomenally dangerous about the National Reconciliation Ordinance is it places people in power above the law. It essentially says there is one law for Pakistanis and another law for politicians.
Guernica: And the U.S. was very much in favor of this?
Fatima Bhutto: [Shouting] Yes, yes! [Calmer] The U.S., and—not just to be nasty to the U.S. —but also England. I gave a briefing at a political magazine in London a couple months ago and had a baroness explain to me how, actually, the National Reconciliation Ordinance was a great leap in political trust; it was going to make Pakistan a more stable place. The National Reconciliation Ordinance was initially put into place to excuse corruption and graft. But it’s been widened to excuse just about anything. When Zardari was cleared of his four murder cases, in the middle—mind you—of his ongoing trial, the National Reconciliation Ordinance was used. The PPP, putting this forward, said, “This is modeled on South Africa’s own Truth and Reconciliation Trials.” The joke is that, yes, it is. Except they forgot the “truth.” It’s a very, very dangerous precedent for our country.
Guernica: And you’ve butted up against some of the blowback from this?
Fatima Bhutto: I did a bit of campaigning in 2007, mainly door-to-door work particularly to get women to vote. I went into a lot of people’s homes. Sindh is really quite ethnically and religiously diverse, not at all known for any kind of extremism or anything like that. I noticed a lot of very strange Islamic political poster art hanging in people’s homes, posters of Khomeini and other scary things. In one house, I said, “Look, you’ve got a very big picture of Khomeini up there. Why is that?” The man of the house said, “He’s my ideal political figure.” I said, “Why is that?” He said, “If we had a government like Khomeini, that was Islamic and honorable, we would never have the corruption we have today.” Obviously, that’s not the case in Iran. Certainly there is corruption. Religious government doesn’t remove that at all. But this is what people think.
Guernica: In addition to campaigning in 2007, you do work for women in other spheres.
Fatima Bhutto: I did door-to-door work to get women to vote, and did some work with women prisoners. We’ve got a lot of women in jail in Sindh and across the country under the Hadood Laws, and you also have a lot of children in jail with their mothers, as well, and very little interest from legal groups in providing pro bono help to women in jail. So I’ve worked on that, as well.
Guernica: And now the inevitable question every interviewer asks you: will you run for office, too?
Fatima Bhutto: My favorite. I really won’t. There are so many reasons not to enter politics that I can think of.
Guernica: When I read, watch, or hear you say in interviews that you don’t believe in dynastic politics, I always think, “Maybe that, paradoxically, is exactly who Pakistan needs.”
Fatima Bhutto: I don’t think so. Because at the end of the day, that would be saying, okay, dynasty is bad. But she’s quite clever and so she’s going to be the exception to the rule. That’s what they all say.
Guernica: Not just that you’re quite clever…
Fatima Bhutto: Well, but you know what I mean, quite brave or quite intelligent or has a good handle on economics or whatever it is. We’re already hearing from dynastic quarters in Pakistan: Yes, yes, I know it’s a dynasty. But actually, I’ve got great experience from my parents or… Yes, yes, I know dynasty is bad, but my uncle takes me along to all of his meetings and therefore I get to… Whatever. I think there are many other ways to push for change or be political, and I think that at the moment doing what I do, writing and speaking, I’m unfettered, I’m not obliged to anyone or anything, and I’m free to speak my mind. That’s not the case when you’re in politics.
Guernica: Another question you get a lot: As a Bhutto, your grandfather, uncle, father, and aunt have all been killed. Doesn’t that already put you in a risky and precarious situation? To add to that danger by staying in Pakistan and then announcing yourself as one of the most eloquent, clever, and persistent critics of the government, when does it get too dangerous for you?
At the time, we lived in a city that was on fire. You know, weeks would go by when I couldn’t go to school because of riots.
Fatima Bhutto: I think the situation there is unsafe as it is. Technically…
Guernica: I don’t mean to cut you off. It’s just that I’ve heard this answer from you before. But isn’t that a dodge? I don’t mean the safety of Pakistan, which we’ve discussed. I think it’s admirable that you conflate the two. I mean, your own safety.
Fatima Bhutto: Obviously, I think, you know, my safety… You’re right, I was dodging. It’s not the same as saying everyone else is safe. But I do think at times either you give them an open field and allow [politicians] to do what they do without questioning or pointing out the obvious failings (and in that case you aid corrupt and criminal government), or you don’t. Actually, [one of my Columbia professors, Hamid Dabashi] would say you don’t need tanks rolling down the streets anymore because they’re already rolling in our mind. If I’m going to self-censor, then I’m going to be doing Zardari’s job for him. I’m not inclined to help him out in that way.
Guernica: People wonder why you stay in Pakistan. I would never speak for you, but in one conversation, I said, “that’s her home.” Yet making these critiques against corruption, these charges that the current government was involved in covering up, and was morally responsible for your father’s murder, wouldn’t you be safer outside Pakistan?
Fatima Bhutto: I don’t think so. Because any protection you have comes from being in your home country with other people who think like you do. I think your answer for me is exactly right, actually. When I speak about these things in Pakistan, and I wouldn’t ever claim to speak for anyone either, or claim that my views are indicative of anyone else’s, I do feel I’m amongst others like me, sitting with other people without electricity for ten hours a day, listening to the gunfire outside our roads and I think—and maybe this is a figment of my imagination—it makes me feel safer.
Guernica: This magazine recently cosponsored an event honoring Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was killed for his activism in Nigeria. His son was asked whether the loss of his father was too great a sacrifice, and he said, “All of us have a choice, to make our children safe in the world or to make the world safe for our children.” I guess I can understand that kind of safety, safety among one’s own people and making the world safe for them…
Fatima Bhutto: To be with people who understand. I’m always shocked when people don’t agree with this. But when I say stop giving us money, stop giving Pakistan money, it’s not going to the places it should go, these billions of American taxpayers’ dollars are only perpetuating the problem, people always say it would be madness to pull out. And I always think to [tell] them, my god, if you would just come there, if you would just see where your money is going, you know… Whenever I say this abroad, I’m always met with this, “Don’t be crazy, we can’t pull out.” But when I say it in Pakistan, people agree because they don’t see any of that money. When I’m talking about things, it means a lot to be in Pakistan and to be able say, “Look, this is what happened yesterday down the road, this is what this person said, and if you want to come and see them and hear them, they’re here.” Maybe that’s just in my head, and it makes me incredibly naïve, but it makes me feel safer—at least, I think.
Guernica: But not physically safer.
Fatima Bhutto: Yeah, probably not. But it’s home. And if I said okay, you’re right, I am unsafe, I’ll just leave now, [then] I leave behind my mother and my brothers. And then you get into the argument that, if it’s not safe for me, then it’s not safe for anyone I care about and love in the country. And maybe we should just all move out for a while and take 180 million of us and we can all come and live in… I don’t know… Miami has nice weather, doesn’t it?
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