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  Aboard the Democracy Train

  Aboard the

  Democracy Train

  A Journey through Pakistan’s

  Last Decade of Democracy

  NAFISA HOODBHOY

  CONTENTS

  List of Figures

  Preface

  Introduction: The Effects of Partition

  British Influences

  Roots in Pakistan

  Western Education vs. Culture

  Karachi Loses its Religious Diversity

  India’s Migrants Flood Karachi

  Political Challenges of the 1970s

  Knowing the “Real Pakistan”

  The End of Populist Rule

  The Only Woman Reporter at Dawn Newspaper

  PART I: POLITICS AND JOURNALISM IN PAKISTAN

  Chapter 1: Aboard the Democracy Train

  Getting to Know Benazir Bhutto

  The Democracy Train Takes Off

  Rural Sindh is a World Apart

  The Masses Vote for the PPP

  The Face of Sindhi Feudals

  Democracy or Anarchy?

  “Eat from Jatoi, Vote for Benazir”

  Elections Were the Tip of the Iceberg

  Unleashing the Dacoits

  Benazir Fights Back

  The Road to Islamabad

  Chapter 2: Ethnic Violence in Sindh:

  The MQM Saga

  Two Days that Sinned

  The First Spark

  Pashtuns Take Revenge

  Pashtuns and Punjabis Ally

  An Early Karachi Discord

  September 30 Accused Go on Trial

  Operation Clean-up Splits the MQM

  Benazir Issues Shoot to Kill Orders

  Karachi’s Killing Fields

  The MQM Saga Lives On

  Chapter 3: News is What the Rulers Want to Hide

  “What are you Writing? You’re Writing too Much”

  “It was the Best of Times, it was the Worst of Times”

  1991: A Year of Living Dangerously

  The Press Fights Back

  Knives Were Used to Send a Message

  An Historic Protest

  What Price for a Free Press?

  Exchanging Places With Daniel Pearl

  Pearl Becomes a Player in Media Politics

  A Brave New Media

  PART II: HUMAN RIGHTS

  Chapter 4: Where Have All the Women Gone?

  “Cry Rape to Get a Visa to Canada”

  The Nurses Rape Case

  A Young Man Flees the Moral Jury

  Breaking Out of the Veil and Four Walls

  Poorest Women are the Victims

  What Hope for Women?

  A Powerless Woman Prime Minister

  Brides of the Quran

  Women are Broken to Break Benazir

  The Beijing Conference on Women

  Whither Women?

  Chapter 5: Uncovering a Murder

  A Young Woman Disappears

  Missing Girl was Murdered

  Fauzia’s Murder Makes Waves

  Accused Member of Parliament Runs Away

  Murder’s Impact on Society

  We Hunt Together for the Killer

  Women Surprise Government Legislators

  History is Made

  A Woman is Offered in Exchange

  “Follow Your Heart” – A Friend’s Advice

  Tying the Knot

  “Caught Taking Bribe, Released Giving Bribe”

  Hope Arrives in the Form of a Muslim Cleric

  The Past is Never Forgotten

  PART III: TERRORISM IN PAKISTAN

  Chapter 6: Pakistan in the Shadow of 9/11

  “Why do They Hate US?”

  The Chickens Were Primed to Come

  Home to Roost

  The Mujahideen in Pakistan

  The View From Soviet-Dominated Kabul

  Fleeing Militants Massacre my Christian

  Friends

  9/11 Gives License for Disappearances

  Running With the Hare and Hunting With the Hound

  The Taliban Sets up Shop in Pakistan

  Drones Attack Last Refuge for Jihadists

  Pakistan in 2007 AD

  A General Loses Face

  Chapter 7: The Democracy Train Revs for Motion

  A Prime Minister in Waiting

  “Democracy is the Best Revenge”

  Squaring Off with a Potential Adversary

  The Chief Justice Notices the Disappeared

  Dressing the Wounds of Balochistan

  Musharraf’s Emergency Breaks

  The Rawalpindi Conspiracy

  A Mourning Federation Catapults the PPP to Power

  The Swat Operation

  The Army Takes On the Pakistani Taliban

  No Stops on the Democracy Train

  Epilogue

  Pakistan’s Epic Monsoon Floods

  Select Bibliography

  Index

  LIST OF FIGURES

  Front Cover

  Benazir Bhutto addresses supporters at Kotri railway station in Sindh on May 30, 1979 – Photo by Zahid Hussein.

  Map 1

  Map of Pakistan.

  Figure 1

  Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto addresses public meeting in Pishin, Baluchistan on March 1, 1977.

  Figure 2

  Benazir Bhutto in her ancestral home town of Larkana, Sindh

  Figure 3

  MQM chief Altaf Hussain addresses election rally in Karachi.

  Figure 4

  JSTPP chief Qadir Magsi addresses a rally in Larkana, June 12, 2009.

  Figure 5

  Newspaper article of author after attack on September 23, 1991.

  Figure 6

  Karachi journalists protest attack against press on September 30, 1991.

  Figure 7

  Women protest against religious fundamentalism on February 12, 2009 in Lahore.

  Figure 8

  PPP parliamentary leader Nisar Ahmed Khuhro addresses Sindh Assembly.

  Figure 9

  JUI (F) Chief Maulana Fazulur-Rehman addresses rally in Sukkur, Sindh on September 26, 2004.

  Figure 10

  Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan Chief Baitullah Mehsud in Sararogha, South Waziristan on February 7, 2005, shortly before he signed the peace deal with the Musharraf administration.

  Map 2

  Map of FATA.

  Figure 11

  PPP Chairperson Benazir Bhutto is welcomed on her return at Karachi Airport on October 18, 2007.

  Figure 12

  Protest rally against enforced disappearances of nationalist leaders of Sindh and Balochistan, taken in Hyderabad, Sindh on July 1, 2007.

  Figure 13

  Excerpt of Benazir Bhutto’s will.

  Figure 14

  Paramilitary personnel patrol a road in Bajaur tribal agency on February 28, 2009.

  PREFACE

  This is a book about politics and journalism in Pakistan, told through first-hand experiences. It is one I have long wanted to write because of my access to people, places and events that are normally hidden from public view. By relating my personal experiences, I hope to give an original insight to Pakistan and reveal who really rules the country, as well as expose the enormous effects that being in the US’s orbit of influence has had.

  In 1984, I began my career at Dawn newspaper as its only female reporter, just as Benazir Bhutto made her bid to become Pakistan’s first woman prime minister. That year, I had come back from the US, armed with a master’s degree in history and a dream, not only to work for the nation’s most established newspaper, but to also effect change while working within the bounds of its staid but reliable coverage. As an energetic, young, Wester
n-educated woman, my editor bypassed senior male reporters and deputed me to cover Benazir and her Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP).

  That decade of tumultuous democracy, which marked the onset of civilian rule and the end of 11½ years of military dictatorship, would reveal to me why Pakistan has stubbornly resisted change. As an insider, my experience informs the reader on how the establishment – acting in collusion with feudal lords, tribal chiefs, ethnic and mafia groups – has worked against untidy civilian rule.

  As a journalist in Pakistan, I constantly walked a tightrope, informing readers about the machinations of corrupt and dishonest military and government leaders, all the while working for a newspaper that often depended on the goodwill of the establishment. In attempting to get the “inside story,” I often found myself skating on thin ice and this book relates some of the narrow escapes I had from violently enforced censorship.

  My status as a female journalist in a Muslim society inadvertently defined my career. In a society already laden with archaic customs, I covered Islamic legislation that aimed to tie women to medieval ways. The laws were supposedly meant to protect women, yet all around me women were raped and murdered, without recourse to justice. This only motivated me further to use my influence as an insider journalist.

  The book focuses primarily on the decade of democratic rule (1988–99) when as a political reporter I had a front seat on history. Again, as a US-based academic and journalist from 2000 to the present, I have shared my unique perspective on Pakistan’s politics since it partnered with the US. Whilst the post-9/11 alliance opened the door for Benazir’s PPP to return to power, it culminated in her murder and exposed the conspiracies and intrigue that are woven into the nation’s political fabric.

  This book carries the reader through the issues that face a complex society like Pakistan, in which the population spins out of control, violence breeds because of the total collapse of judicial institutions and the situation for women is one of the most difficult in the world. Indeed, the region is a ticking time bomb – and one that teems with conspiracies that threaten it, not only internally, but also on a global scale.

  I was only in my late twenties when I began an exciting career as a journalist in Pakistan. As a young, idealistic woman I began with a clean slate and without any preconceived notions of the complex interplay between politics and society. Back then, I worked according to the news industry’s modus operandi to cover breaking news. Given that journalism is often described as “literature in a hurry,” and I was too busy gathering facts to form a proper narrative at the time, this book is an attempt to unpack the message.

  In essence, I hope to give a human face to a region associated with stereotypical images of Muslim women and terrorists. In offering a nuanced picture of Pakistan, I want readers to appreciate the fascinating kaleidoscope of its recent history. It is a nation riddled with contradictions, where the past and present live side-by-side and where the more things change, the more they remain the same.

  It is with the intent of sharing a nuanced perspective that I invite the reader to better understand Pakistan, by sharing in the exciting and dramatic times that I have spent with the nation’s politicians and people.

  Map 1 Map of Pakistan.

  Source: University of Texas.

  INTRODUCTION

  The Effects of Partition

  British Influences

  I was born in the young Muslim state of Pakistan, which was carved by the British from India in 1947. My infant memory of the deep quiet that once pervaded Garden East – our residential neighborhood in Karachi in the 1960s – still remains.

  Karachi was still a cosmopolitan city. Located along the Arabian Sea in the southern province of Sindh, the port city has always attracted immigrants. At the time, I was too small to know that we were on the threshold of a massive transformation, ushered in by wave upon wave of Muslim migrants arriving from India.

  I grew up in a colonial-style two-storied bungalow with a towering fortress and a red bridge connecting two separate living units. Although the Garden zoo was about a mile away, the roar of the lions often shattered the night’s silence and made me bolt up startled in my crib. My mother would assure me that the lion was actually quite far away before I could fall back to sleep.

  Defying the ravages of the continuously growing port city of Karachi, spurned on by the influx of India’s migrants (Mohajirs) and arrivals from across Pakistan and the region, our family bungalow remains the oldest on the block. Although it has been partitioned, it still towers above the newer constructed apartments.

  Although the giant banyan tree, which once embraced our bungalow with its muscular branches, was felled long ago, the gentle swoosh of its small diamond-shaped green leaves brushing the top floors – where my uncle’s family once lived – is etched in my memory.

  Even after a decade of Pakistan’s existence, we lived in a mosaic of cultures. Our neighbors in Garden East were not only Ismailis – the tiny Muslim sect to which we belong – but also Christians, Hindus and Zoroastrians. I considered our Christian neighbors, who lived along Pedro D’souza Road, as part of our extended family. It never struck me as odd that they were called the Pintos, Pereiras and D’souzas or even that further down the block lived the tall, imposing, red-faced Englishman, Daddy Patterson – a senior officer in the Karachi police.

  The British exited India just as Pakistan was carved out of it in 1947. As a child in the 1960s, I grew up in the bubble they left behind. Being a well-off new Pakistani, my father was among the select few to become a member of the Karachi Gymkhana. The gymkhana was part of a chain of exclusive clubs left by the British. It had red Spanish roof tiles, lush green lawns and had, up until partition, displayed the sign:

  “Indians and Dogs not allowed.”

  We were seeped in Western culture, wearing shorts and frocks to the clubs, which were frequented by European families. It was at the Karachi Gymkhana that I saw blond and blue-eyed kids for the first time. I was fascinated: they looked just like the golden-haired dolls my mother brought back from Europe. And yet times were changing, as we locals with darker hair and eye color began to inherit their privileges.

  In those days, Karachi was dotted with bookstores and lending libraries. The exposure to English literature would open up new and exciting worlds. As a teenager, I came across D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, with its vivid descriptions of sexuality. The expression of shame on my relative’s face as he took the book from me made me aware of the high premium society placed on female chastity. Indeed, in a rapidly Islamizing society in which women joined the ranks of the veiled and unseen, it was difficult to believe that men did not obsess about female sexuality in the recesses of their minds.

  My earliest memories of Karachi are of a city developed in 1843 by the British from a sleepy fishing village to a seaport and a well-planned city center with theaters, clubs, hotels, coffee shops and bookstores. By the 1960s, the Mohajirs had completed their major migrations from India to the newly created Pakistan. Still, it was a relatively calm period in which the refugees arrived with smaller families and fanned out to rural Sindh in search of job opportunities.

  The creation of Pakistan had been a symbol of immense hope for India’s Muslim refugees. They arrived from all parts of India: young and old, rich and poor, by train and by bus. Those who crossed the border by foot hoped to achieve the prosperity that they never dreamed of attaining in the predominantly Hindu India. In a short time, they would give up hopes of finding job opportunities in the rural areas of Sindh and begin to converge on Karachi.

  Twenty years later, I saw how the convergence of ethnic groups, fighting over a shrinking economic pie, would stoke the fires of intolerance and political instability. Until such a time, Karachi was a clean and quiet city. We took leisurely walks at night around the city’s showpiece, Frere Hall, enjoying the cool summer breeze from the Arabian Sea.

  We could not have predicted that the well-planned British-built city of Karach
i would grow into a sprawling, unplanned metropolis and a hotbed for ethnic and sectarian violence. Nor could we foresee that the US consulate located across Frere Hall would become a repeated target of bomb attacks, with its fortified presence becoming symbolic of anti-American sentiment.

  Back then, as my father’s antique Austin car inched its way through the city, I sat up and watched for new titles of English movies screened at Rex, Palace, Odeon and Lyric cinema houses. Perched on top of the Bambino cinema house, owned by Hakim Ali Zardari – father of President Asif Ali Zardari – was the object that made me sit up with special interest: a flashing blue neon sign with the image of a woman dancer gyrating her hips.

  Inside, wide-eyed audiences watched classic movies like Toby Tyler and Gone with the Wind. It did not matter that the crowds did not understand English. Through the movies came the images of Western culture – where women mixed freely with men – and one saw the trappings of great material wealth and progress.

  Roots in Pakistan

  My late father came from a large Sindhi Ismaili business family of 14 brothers and sisters. For decades, he conducted the family business: traveling through the barren hills of Balochistan and Sindh to buy wool and goat hair, which he exported as raw material for the carpet industry in Europe and the Middle East. His business brought him into contact with the Western world and his narratives fired my interest in foreign lands.

  My father was 41 years old when I was born, the youngest of five children. I grew close to him when he had already seen much of the world. At the same time, age never got in the way of his tremendous zest for life. Being highly sociable, outgoing and a humanist, he confided to me that he should never have become a businessman. Instead, as he later saw me enjoy my profession, where I traveled, met people and got published every day, he told me that he wished that he too had been a journalist.

  As a young man, my father used his business opportunities to travel abroad, at times taking my mother with him. Back home, we saw pictures of him aboard the Queen Elizabeth ocean liner, smiling in a felt hat and tie as he shared a meal with Europeans. His deep admiration for the West was reflected in the black and white movies of New York and Europe in the 1950s that he brought back from his travels, of which he held special viewings for the family.