Benazir Bhutto. Photo / Reuters
A proud father sits among his family. They look quite ordinary, until you know their surname is Bhutto. That changes everything. It is the photograph of a doomed political dynasty.
Seated centre in white shirt is Zulfikar, the patriarch, the Berkeley- and Oxford-educated barrister who founded
the Pakistan People's Party and who would become the country's leader in 1973. A strong, socialistic, sometimes popular but divisive figure, he was deposed by a military coup in July 1977. General Zia took over, Bhutto was arrested for allegedly authorising the murder of a political opponent and, after a flawed trial in March 1978, condemned to death. His appeal failed and on 4 April 1979 he was hanged.
On his left sits Benazir - soon, after Oxford, to become her father's political heir. In September 1977 she addressed her first public meeting and made clear her opposition to the Zia regime. She was put under house arrest, and held three more times before her father's execution - the first of many such detentions until she herself became PM.
Also beside his father is the youngest child, Shahnawaz, the only other one looking straight at the camera. He would be at Oxford when his father was hanged, and is widely believed to have been plotting to overthrow Zia. In 1985 he was found dead in his apartment in Nice, the victim, say the Bhuttos, of poisoning, or, say others, a drugs overdose.
At their father's feet are Sanam, the only surviving child, who lives in London, and Murtaza. He, much the most revolutionary of the dynasty, became a guerrilla fighter (or terrorist, as some insist) and political opponent of his sister Benazir. In September 1996, when she was in power, Murtaza and six supporters exchanged fire with police in Karachi. They were all killed. No officer was ever charged, and two witnesses "died" in police custody.
Finally, their mother, Nusrat. Acting head of her husband's party during his detention and trial, she was repeatedly arrested and harried before being allowed to leave for London. In the 1980s, she returned and served as an MP. Now, at 78, she lives in Dubai, the victim of a stroke and Alzheimer's.
So much ambition, so much hope; so much blood.
- THE INDEPENDENT
