PRIME Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani vowed to accomplish Bhutto’s mission on his 29th death anniversary. What was the ‘mission’ of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and what were the powers confronting Bhutto when he embarked upon it?

Thirty years ago, there was another general in the President’s House and he also felt threatened and wanted a compromise. In Bhutto’s address to the Larkana Bar Association on March 13, 1968, he stated, “On many occasions close associates and relatives of the president have come to me for a compromise; I have not taken a single step to have any compromise… The president has been talking about the stability of the country. Where are the institutions which provide for genuine stability? This is not the way stability is given to the people… Interference in the judiciary has increased… Please search your hearts and tell me: are members of the legal profession satisfied with the prevailing conditions?”

Bhutto informed the nation about his differences with Ayub: “The people have no place in the government. The military rules here… Yet, it is argued that the country has made tremendous progress, and that there is stability. What stability? The stability of the graveyard?” (Peshawar, Nov 5, 1968)

“Zulfi had roused most of West Pakistan, bringing its young men from a state of apathy or despair to the brink of righteous revolt against the military dictator and his major pillars of support,” writes Stanley Wolpert in Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan.

Bhutto evicted one general from the President’s House, but the next general who occupied it would hang him at 2 am on April 4, 1979. Stanley Wolpert records the event thus, “Fearing possible riots, Zia had rushed to have it ‘over’ and ‘done’ with before dawn. Contrary to the Pakistani prison ‘code’ for hangings, he had ordered Zulfi Bhutto’s murder in the dead of night. Then Zia felt for the first time in 21 months that he could breathe easy. And soon he would announce gleefully to his henchmen, ‘the b…..d’s dead’.”

From his stinking death cell, Bhutto addressed his tormentor: “You take so much pride in being a ‘soldier of Islam’ (an expression which you stole from my speech at the Islamic Summit Conference). Are you true to anyone and what have you learnt from the sacred principles of Islam? Does Islam teach you to break your oath, does Islam tell you to fabricate false cases and hound your mohsin (mentor)…? Islam teaches us justice… what justice can I expect from you? The conspirator who dislodged his own prime minister by force of arms…”

Bhutto was tried for the murder of Mohammad Ahmad Khan Kasuri, father of Ahmad Raza Kasuri, the supposed target. The Supreme Court on the basis of the razor-split four-three judgment sent Bhutto to the gallows. This was unprecedented. It was also unprecedented to rest a conviction solely on the tainted confession of Masood Mahmood (director-general, Federal Security Force) a self-confessed murderer. With regard to Masood Mahmood, who also hailed from Kasur, the Supreme Court (minority of three) stated that he was motivated by “Rivalry and jealousy at the local level which could as well have spawned a motive in the mind of Mr Masood Mahmood to do away with Mr Kasuri who was evidently his strong rival in the field of power politics of Kasur” (PLD 1979 Supreme Court 53, page 708).

Ahmad Raza Kasuri was an MNA who “did not sign or vote in favour of the Constitution of Pakistan of 1973” (PLD 1978 Lahore 518 at 540). He is also a staunch Musharraf supporter. The nexus of the presidency with other anti-Bhutto forces does not end here. The father of Attorney-General Malik Muhammad Qayyum, Muhammad Akram, was one of the hanging judges. There is also the perennial Sharifuddin Pirzada, Zia’s attorney-general, who secured a favourable verdict for the dictator. He diabolically contended in the Begum Nusrat Bhutto case that Bhutto was “the usurper who had illegally assumed power as a result of massive rigging”. Musharraf’s first act, after his coup, was to seek Pirzada’s assistance. He was handsomely rewarded from the peoples’ taxes.

Those who have harmed Bhutto and their progeny have done exceedingly well under the auspices of General Musharraf. Generals Ayub and Zia’s sons and grandson were inducted into his federal cabinet, whilst Bhutto’s daughter assassinated virtually at the threshold of the President’s House.

“Politics is not the illegal seizure of the state machinery,” Bhutto wrote to Zia from his death cell. Bhutto spurred the nation to dream again. “Politics is not the conversion of a flowering society into a wasteland. Politics is the soul of life. It is my eternal romance with the people. Only the people can break this eternal bond. To me, politics and the people are synonymous…. My blood is the blood of Pakistan. I am a part of its dust, a part of its aroma. The tears of the people are my tears. A smile on their beautiful face is a part of my smile….”

What was Bhutto’s mission? When Bhutto was arrested, Begum Nusrat Bhutto challenged his incarceration. Bhutto submitted a Rejoinder (PLD 1977 Supreme Court 657) that reveals what he stood for. “The Respondent (Zia) alone has destroyed … the judiciary by his illegal actions of July 5, 1977. The only way to restore legitimacy and save Pakistan is to roundly reject his action of July 5.… Any attempt to justify that action will … take us back to … Doom.” “An independent judiciary is the antithesis of martial law. An independent judiciary can only function under the umbrella of the Constitution and not under the shadow of the gun of a brown Duke of Wellington. An independent judiciary exists side by side with an executive chosen by the people and a legislature elected by them.” Zia’s “attempts to subvert the Constitution... made him guilty of the offence of high treason”.

“I was the author of the Constitution of 1973,” wrote Bhutto. The Constitution was his mission. An independent judiciary was his mission. To undo the actions of July 5 was his mission. Not to compromise with generals was his mission. Bhutto’s neck snapped but his determination did not. Will Bhutto’s political heirs honour his memory? Will they move to undo the actions of Nov 3? Will they restore the judiciary (without tampering with Bhutto’s Constitution)?

WHILE Pakistan’s hesitant political transformation falters further, one has to note that developments over the last decade or so have given rise to numerous substantive changes, which have altered social relations and societal structures.

Always undergoing a process of change, many of these developments are affecting our social, economic and political relationships.

Perhaps the most important factor that, sadly, many Pakistani social scientists still do not comprehend is that Pakistan is neither a so-called feudal, agricultural, rural or even a traditional society or economy. Only those social scientists who write their papers on anecdotal evidence still talk of Pakistan as being feudal. Even a cursory examination of any kind of economic data suggests that this is not so. With the share of agriculture as part of the GDP falling drastically from 26 per cent in 2000 to 20 per cent in 2007, agriculture has lost its predominance in the economy.

The share of agricultural labour has also fallen, from more than half the total in 1990 to 43 per cent today. Land tenure relations and landholdings have also changed markedly. In terms of social ‘values’ and behaviour, while many analysts still call them ‘feudal’, perhaps ‘authoritarian, discriminatory and undemocratic’, may better describe the nature of social relations between people, values and behaviour. These are found in many highly developed countries as well. In order to understand social change and transformation, it is critical that we move beyond clichés which limit our ability to observe and understand.

This is particularly so with regard to clichés such as ‘Pakistan is an agrarian economy’, and the view, that ‘Pakistan is largely rural’. Raza Ali’s extraordinary research on the 1998 census, some of it published in these pages, showed clearly that Pakistan was an urban country with perhaps 50 to 55 per cent of the population living in settlements which by no stretch of the imagination could be called rural. A decade later, in the forthcoming census, most certainly the characteristics which help us define the sensibility and social and economic relations of exchange and production will reveal an even greater share of the urban.

Moreover, with the increase in communications of all sorts, and with so-called urban amenities, such as phones, electricity, roads and other social services easily accessible, if not available, to so-called rural dwellers, the arbitrary binaries between the urban and rural begin to fade. While a host of data can be shown to emphasise this point, the simple fact is that of the one million mobile phones added to the 81 million in service in Pakistan every month, the large majority are ‘rural’, or outside the spaces which are administratively defined as urban.

These structural shifts in economic and consumption patterns have given rise, finally, to the recognition of the emergence, substantial growth and consolidation of a Pakistani middle-class. The consumer boom that has taken place in Pakistan over the last decade or so would not have been possible without the existence of a large entity called the middle-class. Just how large such a class is, is difficult to capture or measure, and one hopes that some estimates of its size will emerge through research.

On account of easy credit, one can present data which support the claim that a consumerist middle-class defines the workings of the economy. For instance, the number of cars and of motorcycles doubled in Pakistan between the period 2001-07; mobile phones, which had a density of just five per cent of the population in 2004, within four years have reached the equivalent of 51 per cent of the Pakistani population. Moreover, despite growing regional and income disparities, per capita income has almost doubled since 2000.

While an economic middle-class exists, one can perhaps surmise that along with the huge growth in the media providing constant news and information, this class has also become more aware of its rights and perhaps even responsibilities. Perhaps it was these new, emergent and assertive groups that participated in and gave direction to the political and civil society movements of 2007.

However, one must add a word of caution here. If the economic transformations from the agrarian, rural and ‘feudal’ structures have given rise to these new groups or middle classes, it is important to state, that the political role of such classes need not be ‘progressive’, as is often incorrectly assumed and romanticised. The category of the middle-class has no particular moral or ideological mooring. This group or class can be as democratic and revolutionary as it can be fascistic.

Another factor that is affecting society and its relationships is the increasing visibility of women in public spaces, and not merely in parliament. While the largest number of women have been elected from the general seats in the Feb 18 elections, evidence from most urban centres suggests that women are more visible at higher tiers of education, in the media and the growing services sector. It is not just that girls predominate at liberal arts and humanity colleges, rough estimates suggest that, in the case of Karachi University and Government College University for example, girls dominate the campuses by a huge margin.

While many observers point out that on university and college campuses more girls are certainly visible, they immediately add that most wear some version of the hijab, suggesting a form of growing conservatism. These visual descriptions perhaps confirm the view of some that Pakistani society has become far more socially conservative; yet they obscure the liberating element in the lives of many of these girls who escape from their oppressive, traditional, patriarchal and familial bonds, if even for a few hours a day.

Clearly, just the fact that girls are being educated in growing numbers and that women are coming out to work is a revolutionary transformation which has multiple and diverse social, demographic and economic repercussions. Many would consider these as highly progressive.

These are just a mere thimbleful of the many changes that are transforming Pakistani society, its economy, its politics, and its social relations of exchange and production. There are many reasons for these changes, from excess capital liquidity, to globalisation, to the media boom, to women’s education and similar trends. What is required by those who claim to be scholars and social scientists, however, is to spend more time in assessing these changes and examining trends and data in order to inform public opinion in a much better way. A far more aware and informed readership is tired of clichés.

World Risk Society — The Play. Act one: Chernobyl. Act two: The threat of climate change. Act Three: 9/11. Now the curtain is rising on act four: Global financial crises.

For a backdrop, see yesterday’s headlines: IMF slashes world growth forecast; Credit crisis could cost $1 trillion. Dramatis personae are the Hardcore Neoliberals, who in the face of danger have overnight converted from the market faith to the state faith. Now they’re praying, begging, pleading for the mercy of the state interventions and multibillion-pound handouts of taxpayers’ money — the sort of thing they condemned for as long as the profits were pouring in. What a priceless convert’s comedy is being performed on the world stage. If only it weren’t tinged with the bitter taste of reality.

Here’s John Lipsky, a senior official and economist of the International Monetary Fund and longstanding market fundamentalist, who in a dramatic appeal is suddenly urging the governments of the fund’s member states to sign up to the antithesis of everything he has previously preached: prevent a world economic crash with massive rescue spending. When even John Lipsky is urging politicians to “think the unthinkable”, the gravity of the crisis is plain.

The spectre of the “unthinkable”, which is now being raised everywhere, is of course supposed to awaken memories of the world economic crises of the last century — and save the banks from disaster. Next Joseph Ackermann of Deutsche Bank appears, and admits that he, too, no longer believes in the self-healing powers of the markets. Before you know it, there he is retracting his retraction and insisting that he has no doubts about the stability of the financial system. That sounds reassuring. Or does it? If the respected banker were being frank then he would have to concede two things. First, that the history of the present crisis is a history of market failure, and, second, that perplexity, or indeed sheer ignorance, dominates on all sides.

The market has failed, because the incalculable risks of mortgages and other loans were deliberately concealed in the expectation that the distribution and concealment of the risks would minimise them. Now, however, it is evident that this minimisation strategy has turned into its opposite: a maximisation and dissemination strategy of incalculable risks. Suddenly the risk virus is everywhere, at least in anticipation. It’s clear that things can’t go on without the state’s guiding hand. At the same time, it is unclear whether things will be any better with the injection of billions of taxpayers’ money.

Of course, economic risks and crises are as old as the markets themselves. And as the crash of 1929 testifies, financial collapse can bring down political systems — for instance, the Weimar Republic in Germany. It is all the more surprising, then, that since the 1970s the financial institutions of the Bretton-Woods system, established after the second world war — which were intended as global-political responses to global economic risks — have been systematically dismantled and replaced by a succession of ad hoc solutions.

Thus we face a kind of paradox: while markets have never been more liberalised and global, the global institutions that monitor their activities have been forced to accept drastic reductions in power. This new, unlimited nature of markets means we cannot exclude the possibility of a world financial crisis on the scale of 1929.

Unlike environmental and technological risks, whose physical consequences initially become socially relevant “from outside”, financial risks also directly affect a social structure. Hence financial risks can be more easily “individualised” and “nationalised”, giving rise to major differences in perceptions of risks. In other words, even when there are catastrophic breakdowns, it is individuals, usually the weakest, who suffer, in their millions. Accordingly global financial risks — not least when it comes to the perception of causes — are attributed as national risks to individual countries or regions.

As the “Asian crisis”, the “Russian crisis”, the “Argentinian crisis” — and now the first signs of the “American crisis” — demonstrate, it is the middle classes who are worst hit. Waves of bankruptcies and job losses shake the respective regions. Yet almost invariably, western investors and commentators view the crises exclusively from the perspective of the threat posed to financial markets. Global financial risks, like global ecological crises, cannot be confined to the economic subsystem. They mutate into social upheavals, triggering political threats and breakdowns. In the case of the Asian crisis, such a chain reaction destabilised states and simultaneously led to outbreaks of violence against minorities, who were cast as scapegoats.

What would have seemed inconceivable only a few years ago is now emerging as a real possibility; even advocates of a global free market now detect that, after the collapse of communism, only one opponent of the free market remains, namely the unbridled free market itself. The market has shrugged off any responsibility for democracy and society in the exclusive pursuit of short-term profit maximisation.

There are surprising parallels between the Chernobyl reactor disaster, the Asian financial crisis, and the threat of the collapse of the international financial system today. The traditional methods of management and control are proving unreliable and ineffective in the face of global risks. The millions of unemployed and poor cannot be financially compensated; it makes no sense to insure against the consequences of global recession. At the same time the social and political explosive force of global market risks is becoming palpable. Governments are overthrown, civil wars become a threat. As the public begins to recognise the risks, the question of responsibility is increasingly raised. This dynamic leads to a reversal of neoliberal policy — not the economisation of politics, but the politicisation of the economy. Not even the most liberal national economy functions without macroeconomic coordinates. It’s with a certain degree of bewilderment that one asks oneself: how could anyone in his right mind assume that the world economy is any different?

—The Guardian, London

The writer is professor of sociology at Munich’s Ludwig-Maximilians University and the London School of Economics.

VIOLENCE begets violence. As Karachi burned on April 9, it was less than two months after the February elections when spring and hope blossomed albeit briefly.

For once, the ‘R’ word du jour was reconciliation instead of revenge as the new government took the oath. Revenge was exacted through democracy (a brilliant catchphrase even if it is idealistic), through the mediated will of the people rather than the power politics of the ruling elite.

The images of reconciliation were powerful: Asif Ali Zardari and Nawaz Sharif laughing it up in the VIP gallery of the parliament as MNAs were sworn in; Zardari being warmly received in the bosom of the MQM at its headquarters Nine Zero. Certainly there were misgivings. When bitter enemies turn brothers, the national impulse is one of cynicism, but it was at least tempered with a ‘maybe’.

Maybe, this time, things would be different from the tumble-dry democracy of the nineties when cycles of BB and Sharif were sprinkled with the detergents of ehtesab and jail. Only Pakistan is not ready for clean — but just more — blood.

The country needed reconciliation and healing, after a year when it had been scraped raw with unrelenting death and destruction — both human and constitutional. It has been more than a year after March 2007 when the lawyers first took to the streets but the blood has still not been staunched. Karachi is burning again: after May 12 and Dec 27, another date to remember is April 9, 2008. While peace was not going to come easily, this date rankles all the more because it followed that brief bloom of hope.

The blame game is on, of course. It’s the lawyers. No, it’s the caretaker government. It’s the MQM, the PML-Q, the PPP, the PML-N. In Pakistan, blame is dispensed more freely than justice or answers, which means we will never know for sure what happened and who was responsible. “The perpetrators will be brought to justice,” thunders the government. “Are they ever?” Pakistan asks wearily and warily.

These ‘perpetrators’ tend to run amok in Karachi. The city is a tinderbox of grievances and frustrations and the slightest spark is all it needs. It’s a vast, unruly city with tectonic plates of ethnicity, politics and crime. Power cuts will spiral into rioting and a lawyers’ quarrel leaps into flames. But let us not forget that violence begets violence.

When Karachi burned on May 12, the PML-Q leadership and President Musharraf were busy in a self-congratulatory exercise, safely ensconced behind bullet-proof glass. Not one word of condolence, grief or acknowledgment was uttered during that sham affair. When Karachi again burned in Dec and Jan, the PML-Q stoked ethnic passions with talk of Punjabis being targeted by Sindhis.

So while former Chief Minister Arbab Rahim and former federal minister Sher Afgan being thrashed is uncivilised, shameful and condemnable, the acts are not out of the blue. Let’s not forget that hundreds of lawyers and PML-N workers have been jailed and beaten up in 2007. Public sentiment has been inflamed and it’s a fire that cannot be so easily doused by a splash of democracy. So while what happened is deplorable, it is also understandable. Violence begets violence. Does it make it right? No. Does it make it inevitable when polarisation has gotten more acute in the country in the last few years? Yes.

Thrashing public figures is symptomatic of this polarisation. Former federal state minister Tariq Azeem, PTI chief Imran Khan, deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry and one of President Musharraf’s legal whizzes Ahmed Reza Kasuri have all suffered beatings and humiliation. Indeed, the lawyers’ pet chant of ‘Go Musharraf Go’ reflects the same mentality: when individuals are castigated for the crimes of a collective lot.

Musharraf’s speedy exit may not guarantee an independent judiciary and foreign policy, a de-politicised army, cuts in defence spending, a lower inflation rate and fewer suicide bombings. Yet he needs to resign because he has become such a polarising figure, not because he is the fount of all evil.

It’s safe to say that the lawyers have suffered their first public relations disaster: from black-coated super heroes championing the supremacy of the law, Constitution and justice at great cost to their livelihood, they are suddenly hooligans who think they are above the law — just like the president that they so ardently decry.

It doesn’t seem to make sense when their primary demand — the restoration of the deposed judges — is so nearly being met. But then, it has been a year and the lawyers’ victory was tossed out of the window in Nov.

Despite the Bhurban Declaration, there have been such conflicting reports on the intentions of Asif Ali Zardari and the PPP towards the deposed judges that the lawyers have gotten edgy. But just as a handful of militant religious extremists do not represent the vast majority of Muslims, so too a few lawyers-turned-ruffians should not be allowed to undermine a just cause. Meanwhile, Karachi burned. The country is on edge again. The political squabbling continues.