DAWN - Cowasjee Corner; 23 August, 1998
The myth-makers - II
Ardeshir Cowasjee
"WHAT else are you besides an industrialist and shipping magnet (sic.)? To me you shall always be Tipu Sultan, the great conqueror! Hope this card reaches you. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto." Written on a postcard posted in Paris on August 6, 1966, addressed to "Ardeshir Cowasjee, Industrialist and Shipping Magnet, Bath Island, Karachi." This was but one of the faces of ZAB, shown at his out-of-power best.
We first met in 1951, introduced by our family lawyer Dingomal Narayansingh Ramchandani. 'Meet our latest entrant,' said Dingo, 'Shahnawaz's son.' My father and I shook hands with a young affable man. We talked of generalities; my father wrote him off; I was impressed. When I next met him (Dingo having put him on one of our cases) he seriously declared his ambition to be foreign minister of Pakistan.
He was helped by Iranian Nusrat Sabunchi, his second wife, to further his single-minded purpose via her countrywoman, Naheed Mirza, wife of Iskander Mirza, defence secretary, then interior minister, then, in 1955, governor-general of the Dominion of Pakistan, and in March 1956 the first president of the Republic of Pakistan. Zulfikar had the knack of climbing and worked himself into Mirza's good books. He was given his first official assignment in March 1958, as leader of the Pakistan delegation to the Law of the Sea Conference at Geneva.
>From Geneva, he wrote to his patron a letter worthy of the most proficient of professional courtiers.
Only a few lines to let you know that I am discharging my responsibilities here to the best of my ability ... and I am sure you will be satisfied with the manner in which I have done my humble best to serve the interests of my country and my President.
"I would like to take this opportunity to reassure you of my imperishable and devoted loyalty to you. Exactly four months before the death of my late father, he had advised me to remain steadfastly loyal to you; as you were 'not an individual but an institution.' For the greater good of my own country, I feel that your services to Pakistan are indispensable. When the history of our country is written by objective historians, your name will be placed even before that of Mr. Jinnah...".
That summer, Iskander swore Zulfikar in as a minister of his cabinet. Bhutto assessed correctly where the real power lay and made overtures to the minister of defence, commander-in-chief of the army, General Mohammed Ayub Khan. In October, ambitious Ayub got rid of Iskander Mirza and took over the country. The 'imperishable and devoted loyalty' perished in six months. Mirza was dead to Zulfikar from the day he was exiled.
He was made a minister in Ayub's cabinet. Skillfully shifting his 'imperishable and devoted loyalty', Zulfikar flattered and charmed, so much so that Ayub was wont to refer to him as his fifth son. Ayub fulfilled his ambition and made him his foreign minister.
Many years after biting the second hand that had fed him, after bringing Ayub down, after being president of the country, and whilst the self-declared democratic prime minister of Pakistan, out of the blue in 1976, apropos of nothing, he sent a note to the chief of army staff, perhaps as a subtle encouragement or an even more subtle warning:
"I will tell you how Ayub Khan became a Field Marshal ... I told him that since it was essential for him to be head and shoulders above the others, it would be better if he elevated his own rank from that of a General to that of a Field Marshal. He thought it to be a brilliant idea. He was simply overjoyed, but as all his reflexes were influenced by monetary considerations, much to my surprise he said 'The idea is brilliant, it will create stability but we will have to persuade Mr. Shoaib, the Finance Minister, to agree to the financial aspects of the proposal. Of course Mr. Shoaib agreed ... I am therefore the hero of Ayub Khan's valorous battles. Of course, the object of this note is not to dismantle the man ... I am only setting the record straight."
There are many firsts to Zulfikar's credit. He was the first man in history to throw away half of a country so as to be top-dog of the remaining half rather than leader of the opposition of the whole. He was the world's first civilian martial law administrator. He was the first Prime Minister in history to change the constitution of his own making within four hours of its promulgation. He was the first Prime Minister of this country who managed to jail many of his political opponents (and some of his friends so as to prove his power). He was the first Prime Minister of this country to have dissenters bodily thrown out of his Assembly. He was the first Prime Minister of Pakistan to nationalize industries, banks etc, knowing fully well that his government would simply rob and mismanage. His sole aim was to destroy the centres of influence, money being one vital centre, for he knew that the money, which had supported his rise to power, would vote against him in the next elections!
!
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He was intolerant to the nth degree of any dissent, his intolerance growing by the day. His ministers feared him to the extent that they laughed with him when he made fun of them or insulted their wives. (He was also capable of publicly humiliating his own wife.) Those that did not fear him suffered physically, like Jalaluddin Abdur Rahim, the most senior minister of his cabinet, the man who helped him form his party and put it on the road. Merely because he had referred to Zulfikar, in his absence, as the Maharaja of Larkana, he was mercilessly beaten up to the point of hospitalization. (To curry favour, one of the slimy frightened ones had tattled.)
Zulfikar always privately confessed that the sole opposition he feared was the largest, the most powerful, the most disciplined, the most united party - the Pakistan army. So, he adopted the maxim that the only way to defeat a general of one's own is to take him to war and ensure that he loses. He put his maxim into practice in 1965, took Ayub Khan to war, saw him humbled, and bided his while for him to step down.
Ayub's successor, General Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan, in his turn was egged on to fight the insurgents in East Pakistan, then to take on India. He lost also. When Zulfikar stepped into the shoes made ready for him, to protect himself, he put Yahya under house arrest.
Then came the turns of Lt-General Gul Hasan and Air Marshal Rahim Khan, the two officers Zulfikar employed to dislodge Yahya and bring him to power on December 20 1971. Keeping Gul to size, he was made chief of the army staff retaining his rank of Lt-General, while Zulfikar made himself the CMLA. In March 1972, he invited both men to the President's House, laughingly relieved them of their commands, had them ushered into a car with his 'Loin of Punjab,' Mustafa Khar, at the wheel, who drove them off at breakneck speed to Lahore where they were incarcerated and kept incommunicado in the governor's mansion. In May, both were exiled as ambassadors. (Zulfi's 'Loin of the Frontier', Hayat Sherpao, was later blown up by a bomb, a murder that remains unsolved to this day.)
Bearing in mind his fear of the army, he appointed the meek, mild, obsequious, self-effacing, unimpressive Corps Commander, Lt-General Zia-ul-Haq, sixth down the line, as his army chief, promoting him to general. With poetic justice, his Uriah Heep became his hangman.
Though he lived freely off the country until the day he died, two things went in Bhutto's favour. He himself did not dip his fingers into the national till, blatantly and with impunity. He did not rob the country dry. What money he made, he made discreetly. And, Zulfikar being the country's only 'sacred cow', his coterie could only make money without his knowledge.
Bhutto left more than enough wealth for his wife, daughters and sons to live abroad in grand style for ten long years, in London, Paris and on the French Riviera. He left enough for his two sons to run an international terrorist organization, to kill and to maim. He left enough for his heir and successor to stage a comeback. Generations of family wealth? Documented in which tax or revenue return? Myth?