Bad apples, good bombs?

Benazir Bhutto is gearing herself up for a battle with the country’s most powerful institutions, and it is not going to be easy. She knows too well the ISI cobweb of military democracy in what is called a ‘Failed State’

Sonya Fatah Karachi

The fight for democracy will be waged at any cost, though her life is at stake, a defiant Benazir Bhutto told reporters at her heavily fortified Karachi residence a day after alleged suicide bombers killed at least 140 people in an attack on her motorcade. Since then, Bhutto has relentlessly targeted the country's intelligence agencies and government officials, saying that terror attacks will continue as long as the system is not purged of its bad apples.

Bhutto's aggressive stance comes after the October 18 bombings and a series of continued threats preventing her free movement within Pakistan. Standing at virtual crossroads in Pakistan, she will have to do more than 'speechify' on the merits of a civilian democracy. She is gearing herself up for a battle with the country's most powerful institutions, and it is not going to be easy.

The next elected government of Pakistan will have to address the issue: whether it wants a civilian democracy or will it continue to remain under the military's thumb. A blame game is underway with a host of political figures and former intelligence officials rubbishing Bhutto's claims. Pakistan's military and intelligence agencies are part of a complex dynamic in a country struggling to assert its version of democracy. But the rising spectre of terrorist attacks calls for reform in virtually every sector of the government.

It is premature to judge whether Bhutto, a twice-before prime minister whose two governments were dismissed, is up for the unenviable job. She managed to draw more than one million people on the streets of Karachi for a welcome-back-home rally but will have to translate that support into a movement to transcend the institutional caste system prevailing in Pakistan.

For now, it seems, Bhutto is taking on Pakistan's power structures.

While it its impossible to assess the veracity of the charges as a mud-slinging campaign is underway, Bhutto has long accused parts of the government, namely Pakistan's premier military intelligence agency, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), of working against her and her party because they oppose her liberal, secular agenda. She said the military thugs of the 1970s, who terrorised her family, and today's Islamic militants, share the same thirst "to kill and maim innocent people and deny them the right to a representative government”.

Bhutto also announced that in a letter addressed to Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf (October 16, 2007) she had revealed the names of three individuals who she suggested had reason to want her dead. In an indirect message to Musharraf, she suggested that these people "should be investigated".

Former intelligence officers, who have served at the highest levels within the intelligence agencies, are quick to quash her hypotheses. “Individuals (within intelligence organisations) can have their own sympathies…but there is only one policy,” says (Retd) Lt Gen Asad Durrani, who retired from the ISI in 1992. “If one were to assume that someone acted differently, it would either not be effective or he would be taken care of.”