LONDON, Oct 21: Jemima Khan, former wife of Imran Khan has done a hatchet job on Benazir Bhutto in a devastating piece in Sunday Telegraph which is likely to have exactly the opposite effect on the PPP chairperson’s supporters than what the writer had perhaps intended to.

At the very outset, Ms Khan admits: “I am biased, I don’t like Benazir Bhutto. She called me names during her election campaign in 1996 and left a bitter taste. Petty personal grievances aside, I still find jubilant reports of her return to Pakistan depressing. Let’s be clear about this before she’s turned into a martyr.”

“This is no Aung San Suu Kyi, despite her repeated insistence that she’s fighting for democracy”, or even more incredibly, “fighting for Pakistan’s poor”.

“This is the woman who was twice dismissed on corruption charges. She went into self-imposed exile while investigations continued into millions she had allegedly stashed away into Swiss bank accounts ($1.5 billion by the reckoning of Musharraf’s own ‘National Accountability Bureau’).

“She has only been able to return because Musharraf, that megalomaniac, knows that his future depends on the grassroots diehard supporters inherited from her father’s party, the PPP.

“The Americans and the British are acutely aware that their strategy in the region is failing and that Musharraf’s hold on power is ever more tenuous. They have pressed hard for Benazir and the general to cut a deal that would allow them to share power for the next five years in a ‘liberal forces government’.

“In a country that tops the international corruption league, she was its most self-enriching leader.

“Benazir has always cynically used her gender to manipulate: I loved her answer to David Frost when he asked her how many millions she had in her Swiss bank accounts. ‘David, I think that’s a very sexist question’.

“A non sequitur (does loot have a gender?) but one that brought the uncomfortable line of questioning to a swift end.

“The problem is that the West never seems to learn; playing favourites in a complicated nation’s politics always backfires. Imposing Benazir on Pakistan is the opposite of democratic and doubtless will cause more chaos in an already unstable country.

“Make no mistake, Benazir may look the part, but she’s as ruthless and conniving as they come — a kleptocrat in a Hermes headscarf.”