Mourners leave flowers and pictures near where Bhutto was killed. (Ghani/TYG)

The road—hosed down by Pakistani government officials the night before—was already getting dirty from donkey carts, rickshaws, bicycles, and Suzuki Margallas passing by. The only signs of the previous evening’s massive explosion were a few silent groups of pedestrians milling aimlessly by the gate, the plainclothes intelligence personnel sprinkled among them, and three deep, ugly craters marring the road.

Meanwhile, a thousand miles south in Bhutto’s home province of Sindh, Karachi was being set on fire. Mobs had taken to the streets, chanting slogans and throwing stones. Cars, banks, police stations, factories, petrol pumps, and even homes were being attacked, looted, and destroyed.

The media, both Pakistani and international, overflowed with laudatory memorials of Bhutto. Everyone, it seemed, had an op-ed piece to share, and very few were critical. The violent demonstrations were reported, but only as a nation’s collective outpouring of grief for a fallen hero.

Few questioned the mobs’ motivations. Fewer still took note that, as Karachi burned, Rawalpindi and neighboring Islamabad, the capital, stood strikingly silent. Shops stayed shuttered and people remained indoors. While polemics blared from every news source, the opinions of Pakistan’s diverse, poor, and largely uneducated electorate were missing. What did the people of Pakistan think of the assassination, and what lay behind their disparate reactions of violent anger and silent fear? Was this a response to Bhutto, or to something much larger?

Predicting Instability

Islamabad’s residents were, in fact, expecting violence.

On the evening of the assassination, the road linking Rawalpindi and Islamabad was jam-packed. On the roadside, a 15-foot Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) banner hung from two trees, urging Pakistanis toward the Liaquat Park rally a few miles away to show their support for Bhutto at “this historic moment in Pakistani history.”

At 6:00 p.m., the radio host reported a bomb blast. Sixteen minutes later, Bhutto was announced dead.

The heavy traffic seemed to pause as the news sank in. Then, cars began turning around, surging back to Islamabad, away from Rawalpindi. In 20 minutes, the roads were empty. The implications were clear to everyone: get home before the whole country erupts.

A week later, when it was obvious the anticipated instability was not coming, Islamabadis easily supplied explanations. “The PPP heartland lies in Sindh,” offered one street vendor.

“Islamabad is affluent. Most of the poor and uneducated do not live in the city, but come from surrounding villages,” said a local banker.

“There’s a heavy security presence because it’s the capital, and military headquarters are in Pindi,” commented a policeman.

Geography, economics, defense. But these factors were not changed by Bhutto’s assassination. If Islamabad’s unchanging characteristics predicted stability, why had everyone sat at home for a week fearing bomb blasts and riots anyway?

Power Games

They did so because security in Pakistan depends on an additional variable: the political machinery that lies beyond the reach of popular influence. The web of political intrigue is thick, intricate, and woven far into the past. “All of the recent instability was manufactured by the military-intelligence industry,” a low-level security official from Pakistan’s Intelligence Bureau (IB) confided. “Everything, from the recent suicide bombings targeting the police and army, to the supposedly counter-militant operation in Lal Masjid, to Bhutto’s death—it’s all for a calculated purpose.” This information, he felt, was enough of an accepted reality to disclose casually.

Whether the IB employee’s assessment was actually correct, most working class Pakistanis accept the political drama and violence as beyond their own control. Pakistan’s politics have long been confined to power games played within a corrupt network of nepotistic leaders, feudal lords, the intelligence community, and military and paramilitary organizations. Each new terrorist attack is simply another piece moved. “We all vote, but the big sahibs will always do what they want,” said a resigned town councilman from Southern Punjab. Islamabad could house only Quakers, and the local market might still explode.

The big sahibs certainly put on a spectacle in the days following Bhutto’s death. Sensationalistic accusations and emotional speeches, punctuated by bomb blasts, fully occupied the Pakistani media. Flattering memorials of Bhutto became ubiquitous after one television news channel received death threats for using the verb “killed” rather than “martyred.” Feeding on the tensions from the upcoming parliamentary elections, a full-fledged blame game was launched as a chain of politicians pointed fingers at each other. Urdu newspapers ran absurd conspiracy theories, only to be outdone by the Pakistani government’s spokesman, who claimed Bhutto died from a head injury from her vehicle’s sunroof.

It is no wonder that the ordinary Pakistani makes no pretense of knowing any answers. Outside the papers, on the streets, there is little desire for speculation over who killed Bhutto. “Look, all of the country’s leaders are corrupt,” said Haider, a shopkeeper from Lahore. “It could have been any one of them.”