Farhatullah Babar is known to us as a veteran politician, a legislator and a human rights defender. He is currently heading the human rights cell of a political party and also serving on the governing council of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, which includes people from all walks of life and different shades of opinions — the converging point being the protection of fundamental freedoms and basic rights enshrined in the Constitution of Pakistan.

Babar’s earlier contributions to the country’s parliament, particularly through the upper house, the Senate of Pakistan, are widely recognised. While maintaining his unflinching support to his political party, he is not among those who have compromised on his independent views, even if they are not popular within his own party. Nor has he ever compromised on the fundamental political and social values he subscribes to — that is to see a federal, democratic, egalitarian and plural Pakistan emerge and to clear the rot we have collectively created. There are only a few others from his political party who fall in the same category, including the late Taj Haider and Raza Rabbani.

During his professional career, Babar has worked with some key organisations and institutions in the country and the Middle East, including the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. He has been regularly writing op-ed pieces for newspapers on issues of critical importance. The debates he has led or been a part of on the floor of the house in the parliament — the standing and functional committees — never failed to have a pro-people dimension. His last major political assignment was to be an aide to the president of Pakistan as his spokesperson between 2008 and 2013. Before that, he worked closely with other leaders, most significant of them being the late Benazir Bhutto.

Babar has always been recognised as a straightforward and sharp analyst who expresses himself confidently and without fear. However, in the last year or so, he has come out with three books that establish him as an author who is a close witness to our political history.

All three books are personal accounts. In the first book, he has compiled his candid memoirs of the time he spent in the presidency with President Asif Ali Zardari during his first term. In the second, he has recorded his remembrances of the time he spent with the late Munir Ahmed Khan, the soft-spoken and under-appreciated architect of Pakistan’s nuclear programme. Finally, the third book is about Benazir Bhutto. It is titled Benazir Bhutto: She Walked into the Fire. All three have been published by Lightstone Publishers, Karachi.

I believe Babar’s book is the most important narration on Bhutto’s life in her final years, which should be read by anyone interested in understanding how the country functions and how it eliminates, intellectually or physically or both, those who are the best among us.

The book by Babar is a lucid account — up, close and personal — of how Benazir Bhutto navigated the chess game where she must have been the king, or the queen, but was treated like a pawn, not only by those making moves from the West but also by those in her own country. She faced harsh prison terms when young but the time Babar focuses on is the time of her second long exile, her return and her assassination. If one doesn’t cry out loud after reading the details of how she was betrayed and manipulated, one will certainly be teary-eyed after finishing the book.

The documentary evidence and the description of events Babar provides, followed by analysis, is indicative of the fact that we continue to be run as a colonial state, with masters sitting abroad and within the country. In the face of that, someone like Bhutto stands out as a woman who wanted democracy in its true spirit, freedoms protected, rights realised and the ordinary people supported in their efforts for a decent life.

Nevertheless, Bhutto also had to compromise, negotiate, reconcile and retract in order to continue her struggle. I believe Babar’s book is the most important narration on Bhutto’s life in her final years, which should be read by anyone interested in understanding how the country functions and how it eliminates, intellectually or physically or both, those who are the best among us.

In Pakistan, either we are not sensitised enough and inadvertently overlook or we do not want to acknowledge that it is two women who stand out among all other prominent politicians who were men. All key male leaders are a product of one or the other martial rulers, even if they stood against them later. Even Zulfikar Ali Bhutto served Gen Ayub’s cabinet for long and pled Pakistan’s case at the UN when Gen Yahya was in power. From Nawaz Sharif to Imran Khan to Altaf Hussain, their earlier politics were overseen and supported by dictators, if not shaped by them.

It is only Fatima Jinnah, the sister of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who took upon herself to run against the first martial ruler, Gen Ayub Khan, in the presidential elections. Of course, she lost because the elections were massively rigged. The beginning of her independent politics after the Quaid was for democracy and people’s rights.

The only other major, mainstream politician who began her politics by challenging a dictatorship was Benazir Bhutto. As said earlier, she had to navigate her way and made compromises, but she was not a product of assimilation and collaboration. Like Fatima Jinnah, the roots of her politics were in resistance to oppression. Babar is honest enough to critically examine Bhutto’s tactics while dealing with Gen Musharraf’s regime but her commitment to democracy remains unquestioned.

The writer is a poet and essayist. His latest collections of verse are Hairaa’n Sar-i-Bazaar and No Fortunes to Tell

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, March 1st, 2026