So Sad About Benazir Bhutto
I really admired this woman. I can't believe she's gone now. They tried to get her with a car bomb about a month or so ago but it didn't work.
Bhutto
Tens of thousands attend Bhutto's burial, vow revenge
By Kim Barker
Tribune foreign correspondent
2:35 PM CST, December 28, 2007
GARHI KHUDA BAKSH, Pakistan — On Benazir Bhutto's last trip home, tens of thousands of supporters came to see her, however they could, on tractors, by foot, hanging off the backs of buses. To them, the former prime minister was both a queen and a loved one. Now that she had been killed, they said they felt like orphans.
Men held up posters of Bhutto and notes she had written to them. Women sobbed, clutching at strangers. And young men said they wanted to get even.
Bhutto's funeral Friday was nothing like that for a former head of state. There was no pomp, no circumstance, no police, no one from the government. There was not even a Pakistani flag, only hundreds of flags from her political party.
The funeral had no security, no metal detectors, only young men with guns or long bamboo sticks. Thousands of people pushed into the shrine, shoving and jostling for position, to see Bhutto buried next to her father.
"We want to take revenge, we only want revenge," said Zulfikar Ali Abbasi, 27, one of many here named after Bhutto's dead father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who founded the Pakistan People's Party. "She was our leader."
Across Pakistan, many people felt the same way on Friday, the day after opposition leader Bhutto was killed in the army garrison town of Rawalpindi. They rioted, set fire to tires, trains and homes, and ransacked banks. Gunbattles raged throughout Rawalpindi, and paramilitary soldiers in southern Pakistan were given orders to shoot rioters on sight.
The people's anger was overwhelmingly targeted at the government, particularly President Pervez Musharraf, blamed by most people for being directly or indirectly responsible for Bhutto's death. Many questioned why security precautions had not been stepped up after a previous suicide attempt on Bhutto, which killed 140 people the day she returned from exile 10 weeks ago.
Bhutto's supporters say it is unlikely any of them will believe the government, whatever officials say in the coming days to try to stem the violence.
Witnesses say Bhutto died while waving from a sunroof at supporters after a political rally in Rawalpindi and was shot at least twice just before a suicide blast killed at least 20 people, less than two weeks before upcoming parliamentary elections.
But Friday night, Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said Bhutto died not from gunshots, but because she ducked when shots were fired, and the force of the blast knocked her head into the lever of the sunroof, crushing her skull. The government also blamed the suicide blast on the militant leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, who lives in the remote and lawless tribal areas near the Afghan border.
Party officials dismissed the government's new theory about Bhutto's cause of death and said a proper investigation was needed.
"I personally saw the body," said Babar Awan, a leading member of the party who was at the rally. "That is a false claim. It was a targeted, planned killing."
Government officials said Friday there were no plans to postpone the Jan. 8 election, although many question how it could be held in such chaos. Another top opposition leader has also announced plans to boycott.
"Right now the elections stand where they were," Prime Minister Mohammedmian Soomro told a news conference in Islamabad. "We will consult all the political parties to take any decision about it."
The death of Bhutto has far-reaching implications. Some say it means the end of her political party, the most popular in Pakistan, because there is no clear successor. Others ventured to say it could mean the end of Pakistan, if the violence continues. In Bhutto's ancestral home, where she was buried, people shouted not only slogans against Musharraf but against the nation. "We don't want Pakistan," they yelled.
Across the country, people attacked anything to do with Musharraf's ruling party. A roadside bomb Friday killed a leader from the ruling party and six others as they drove through Swat, a town in northwestern Pakistan where the army has been fighting militants.
In Bhutto's southern home province of Sindh, her supporters set fire to the house of a former provincial chief minister from Musharraf's party. In the city of Hyderabad, racked by looting and fires, they even set fire to the home of the cousin of the current provincial chief minister. Soldiers patrolled the streets of Hyderabad and Karachi in an effort to quell unrest. At least 23 people were killed.
Analysts and Bhutto party members said they had never seen such violence, not even when her father was hanged in 1979 after being deposed in a military coup.
"Whoever is connected to the government directly or indirectly, people are after them," said Zulfiqar Ali Mirza, 53, who was also named after Bhutto's father and has known her since childhood.
Black plumes of smoke could be seen above Karachi and Sukkur on a special flight that was carrying family members, several Pakistani journalists and two Western journalists to Bhutto's funeral. Fires could be seen from the road, and the air smelled like burnt tires. On the one-hour drive from Sukkur to Naudero, where Bhutto had a large compound, banners still hung that said "Welcome, Benazir." Men lined the roads, walking toward the shrine where Bhutto would be buried.
At Bhutto's home in Naudero, her coffin, draped in the green, red and black flag of the Pakistan People's Party, was carried into the back of an ambulance. People clutched at the coffin and ran after it, wailing.
Family members and friends piled into cars and followed the ambulance. The convoy threaded and pushed through crowds to make it to the shrine, which Bhutto had built for her father but never saw until she returned from exile this fall. Men beat their chests and heads and cried. Seas of people stretched across the dusty plains near the tomb.
Inside the white-marble shrine, which resembles a smaller, less-grand Taj Mahal, a hole had been cut into the marble floor next to the grave of Bhutto's father. A prayer was held outside. The ambulance backed inside the shrine, and supporters threw rose petals at it, and Bhutto's coffin was placed into the hole.
Her husband and son threw handfuls of sandy soil on top, helped by supporters, and slowly, the coffin disappeared from view.
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Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune
