Greedy Generals, Hungry Beazir

Benazir Bhutto is behaving as if tomorrow has been ripped off of her calender and the only day she is left with is today's. She is in race against time. She does not care if Pakistan and its people go to hell and stay there for as long as she can get and stay in the seat of the prime minister.

She just can't wait to make a deal with the generals regardless of how little a piece of the pie she is allowed to get. She could care less if they were the ones who hanged her father and murdered her baby brother; and she lost power twice at their hands. When, in 1990, she was prime minister and was pregnent with her second child the general forced through a legislation prohibiting a prime minister from taking maternity leave, she elected to have the baby early by Caesarean section so she could remain in power.

She still wants to make a deal.

But why is she dying for power? The way things are going she is not going to get a lot. She just wants to start from where she had left off: robbing the people blind. She just wants her share in the spoils with the generals.

The looser Musharraf's grip gets on power the more impatient she becomes. Andrian Levy and Cathy Scott of the Guardian report that since September 11 2001, due to the US obsession with the "war on terror" General Pervez Musharraf has been at the center of power in Pakistan. The "long war" as the Americans love to call it the "war on terror" not going to go away in near future. They want it to go, at least, as long as they could drag out the Cold War.

Musharraf is getting all the attention and getting filthy rich at the same time. His generals are already into millions (of Pounds). She also wants to get in this lucrative game. The only way to do so is make a deal with the generals.

If the west has been willing to overlook Musharraf's military record as a close ally of the Taliban it can also ignore her contribution as Prime Minister in Taliban's rise. The west has turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the fact that early in his career, Musharraf acted as military mentor to Pakistan's home-grown jihadi groups; rose to power in a coup d'état; deposed and exiled an elected prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, and has refused to restore democracy and doff his 'second skin'. Rather Bush has increased his "best friend's" aid by 45,000% (yes, forty five thousand per cent), which now totals more than $4bn.

That is a lot of money to go around. Why not some of it Benazir and Zar-Dari?

According to the Guardian "all that has changed"... "While Washington and London continue publicly to characterise Musharraf as the west's best hope of stopping Pakistan's descent into Islamic extremism, in reality they have concluded that it is the general who is easing the path of the jihadis. And he must be stopped.

The paper says: "Behind the back-slaps and bonhomie, a plot is afoot to remove the current military leaders and revive an old Pakistani dynasty". It will be a different kind of regime change. Without any shock and awe and without the loss of thousands of lives. The aim is "to restore democracy to Pakistan and reinstall Benazir Bhutto".

It all started back on June 20 2004, in a town called Blackburn in Lancashire, England. This little town was made famous by singer John Lennon of The Beatles when he featured Blackburn in his song "A Day in the Life". An article in the Daily Mail about a plan to fill potholes in the town caught his eye as he was writing the song, giving birth to the lyric: "I read the news today. Oh, boy. 4,000 holes in Blackburn Lancashire".

Other than 4,000 pot holes Lancashire had a Councillor named Salas Kiani, a British Pakistani, who had until recently served as the town's mayor helped by a 7,000-strong Pakistani population. He had invited Benazir Bhutto and some political friends to a dinner. Benazir's hopes of returning to power looker slimmer than ever as Musharraf's Pakistan had recently been readmitted to the Commonwealth after being suspended when Musharraf seized control; and, just four days earlier, President Bush had named the country as a major non-NATO ally.

She could only watch from the sidelines. Shortly after deposing Nawaz Sharif Musharraf had vowed never to let Bhutto return. After 9/11, the west forgot about Bhutto.

But then at the Blackburn dinner, Bhutto's host, Councillor Salas Kiani, "had a surprise for her. He passed Bhutto a mobile phone. "It's Jack for you," he said mischievously". It was Jack Straw, then foreign secretary. He was the Member of Parliament for Blackburn and knew Kiani well. Jack Straw invited her to come to the Foreign Office. It was the first official communication the PPP had had with a British government minister in more than a decade. Relations with the British had cooled after she was overthrown and her husband jailed. She and Zar-Dari had been accused by the Pakistan government of amassing an ill-gotten fortune, including a £2million Surrey country estate complete with stud farm and helipad - in stark contrast to life in Pakistan, where 37 million people lived below the UN poverty line. Jack Straw, then home secretary, refused to meet her. Now, in 2004, Straw was on the phone.

A month later, "Bhutto was brought to a side entrance of the Foreign Office, her trademark white dupatta pulled over her face". The meeting lasted more than an hour. She told Straw that Musharraf's "primary allegiance had been with the jihadi groups that the Pakistan media described as Musharraf's 'ethnic storm-troopers'."

Musharraf had been director general of military operations during Bhutto's second term as prime minister, and had requested permission to "unleash the forces of fundamentalism" - Sunni irregulars sponsored by the army and intelligence community - to infiltrate the Indian-controlled sector of the divided state of Kashmir. In 1996, when the Taliban had grown as a force in Afghanistan, it was Musharraf who ensured the movement was armed and fed.

Straw squirmed as this was recounted and reassured her that his government favoured democracy in Pakistan, but stressed that Musharraf, too, was important. She never told him though that in 1996, when she was the prime minister, Murtaza, her eldest brother was shot dead in an encounter with police in Karachi, for which her husband was indicted. She never let the case come to court.

Within weeks, Mark Lyall Grant, the British high commissioner in Islamabad, flew to Dubai to convey a message to Bhutto from Musharraf. The general was willing to make a gesture: her husband was to be released from jail. Perhaps she should now consider working with him?

Bhutto remained suspicious.

Zar-Dari was released from prison in December 2004.

In early 2005, Bhutto was invited back to the Foreign Office to talk about " a post-Musharraf world" but, the Guardian quotes a Foreign Office spokeswoman saying, "What London feared was chaos. What everyone wanted was a smooth transition, from Musharraf to something sustainable, preferably democratic. Bhutto had a chance of winning an election if that day came."

But the US was not in her corner yet, although Straw advised her that it was beginning to think about change. Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, was at that very moment in Islamabad pressing Musharraf to allow free elections.

A series of bombings on London's transport network four months later, in July 2005, killing 52 people and injuring hundreds more, brought a new urgency to the Straw-Bhutto talks. Three of the four British suicide bombers had links to a radical madrasa in Muridke, 20 miles outside Lahore. Straw noted that, in 2001, Musharraf had pledged to outlaw jihadi groups. The Muridke school was now one of 13,000 madrasas, none of which had been regulated as the president had undertaken to do.

Bhutto warned Straw that the PPP would have little chance, unless the Bush administration, too, was willing to look beyond Musharraf and back the call for elections. Straw insisted he had talked to Rice and Washington was reconsidering its position.

The aftermath of an earthquake that left 75,000 dead and more than three million homeless in the Pakistan-administered sector of Kashmir gave additional cause for concern in October 2005. Under the cover of providing aid to the victims, 17 Sunni extremist groups previously banned by Musharraf (under pressure from the US state department) re-emerged with new names. Distributing food, tents and blankets, they opened tent villages, one beneath a banner proclaiming: "Custodian of the blood of 10,000 mujahideen." The outlawed Lashkar-e-Taiba was there, running a field hospital in Muzaffarabad. "Why should we not allow our own people, to go there and assist... whether they are jiihadis or anybody," Musharraf said at the time.

Yet only a few months later, in early 2006, he was sending a new message to Bhutto, asking that she list her demands. She wrote: free elections; political prisoners released; an independent election commission formed; Pakistan's constitution [of 1973] restored. The reply came back almost immediately: Musharraf was not ready for this kind of deal.

Meanwhile, Bhutto had competition in London. On January 30 2006, Nawaz Sharif and his family arrived. Ensconced in their mansion-block apartment in Mayfair, he held court on a leopard-print sofa. "We were mobilising," Sharif tells us. "There could be no deals with Musharraf. No deals. Full stop. It was central to our charter for democracy. We hope Bhutto was acting sincerely when she signed it."

By now the Americans were on track and Musharraf at last agreed to hold a poll. It was to be staged after November 2007, when the National Assembly's term ran out. But he insisted that Bhutto and Sharif should not to be allowed to return until after the election. Prospective PPP parliamentary candidates began finding envelopes containing bullets left in their cars or on their desks - similar intimidatory tactics had been used in the previous election.

As direct contact was established between the US and Bhutto, the newly appointed US assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, Richard Boucher, urged her not to encourage PPP supporters to take to the streets in protest, as they had done on previous occasions. The PPP agreed. Over a series of meetings, Boucher made clear that the US would not be dealing with Sharif, whom they blamed for putting Pakistan at risk of nuclear war with India in a conflagration over Kashmir that flared up just a few months after both countries tested nuclear weapons.

"But by 2006, we didn't need the US," Sharif says. "It was time they realised that, in backing Musharraf in Pakistan, they were going to get their fingers burned, just like they did in Iran. Then, they had kept saying the Shah was safe until one day he was overthrown and the Ayatollahs took over the country. That could be Pakistan's future, too - Musharraf overthrown and the fundamentalists taking over. We are a better option, believe me. Regardless, I intend to go back. Like Bhutto, I have to go back and fight the election or be damned by our supporters." Sharif and his younger brother, Shahbaz, were working to rebuild their shattered party, the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), in Pakistan. But Nawaz Sharif was reluctant to talk dates and timings for his return - it sounded more like an aspiration than a plan.

On the other hand, Bhutto and Musharraf continued to sound each other out through emissaries. It seemed that a major sticking point was Musharraf's pride. He had never forgiven Bhutto for embarrassing him during a discussion they had about starting a war with India over Kashmir in 1993, when Musharraf had wanted the Pakistan army to launch a full-scale invasion on its own initiative. "This country is run by a civilian government," Bhutto recalls snapping. "I am still the prime minister."

In early 2007, President Bush made his first public criticism of Musharraf, warning that he had to be more aggressive in hunting down terrorists. Under pressure, Musharraf leaned toward a deal with Bhutto - if he could stay on as president. The talks stalled again, this time because Bhutto's supporters resented her being in cahoots with the general. Then Musharraf's emissaries came up with an even stranger proposal: if Bhutto stayed away from Pakistan during the election, Musharraf would "adjust the vote". A Bhutto aide said, "We could not believe it. He was offering to rig the election."

In Pakistan, unrest was building up, especially after Musharraf suspended Pakistan's chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. In the ensuing mass demonstrations, more than 40 people, many of them PPP supporters, were killed and 300 more were rounded up.

Bhutto stepped up her demands. "We wanted a free vote and I told them I was going back home to campaign for one." Then she made a remarkable concession: if she fought and won the election and became Pakistan's prime minister, Musharraf could stay on as a civilian president for the next five years. In another seismic shift, Bhutto proposed that the military retain responsibility for foreign affairs and national security over this five-year period, while her government would concentrate on the domestic agenda.

Publicly, all sides denied the talks. Nevertheless, a US state department spokesman, briefing the media on June 11, was positively bullish. "There are going to be some important elections coming up in the fall," he said, adding that Musharraf had pledged that, if he "continues in political life", he will "put aside the uniform".

Bhutto is committed to returning to Pakistan in September, and informal polls have shown that, despite the rampant extremism in the country, she is likely to dominate the elections. Her constituency in the Sindh had been battered but could be salvaged and built into a movement, she claims, while the tribal areas, in which the Taliban and jihadi groups had made the most inroads, are electorally insignificant.

For Bhutto, the recent siege at the Red Mosque was evidence of the calamity facing Pakistan. "The country is experiencing its darkest hour," she says - General Musharraf stood by while a religious institution was transformed into a 7,000-strong army of would-be jihadis in the heart of the capital. "Nothing is as General Musharraf portrays it," she says. "He talks of the army battling militants who are trying to get a toe-hold. In fact, in the border regions, there are thousands of new madrasas. And they are not just madrasas, they are mini-cantonments, ruling the tribal areas through terror. Free and fair elections are the last chance to halt the expansion of al-Qaida and the neo-Taliban."

Musharraf has reiterated that he is still committed to holding an election, but the pressing question now being asked is whether Bhutto, if elected, is capable of bringing Pakistan back from the brink.

When the military was last forced into free elections, it was in 1988, after a decade of Zia's increasingly unpopular military dictatorship. Then it stacked the odds in its favour by dumping leaflets from the air that bore humiliating, doctored photographs of Bhutto and her mother in bikinis, beneath the slogan "Gangsters in bangles". When Bhutto won, despite the slurs, military intelligence stepped up its covert campaign. Much was made of the fact that the publisher of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses in the US was the same as for Bhutto's memoir, Daughter Of Destiny.

Bhutto was made to look like a woman of poor judgment. Weakened, she was forced out of office in 1990, and when she attempted to stand again in the election later that year, the ISI and military, according to documents lodged in the Pakistan supreme court, deployed a £1.5m slush fund with which they bribed religious candidates to slander Bhutto. The election was lost.

Seventeen years on, the Pakistan military, on the verge of conceding another election, may be even more vicious, having evolved into the most powerful economic entity in the country. The military have gone into business by stealth, accruing a fortune estimated at £6bn. Ayesha Siddiqa, a former research director for the Pakistan navy and author of Military Inc, which exposes the new-found wealth of Pakistan's armed forces, characterises Pakistan as "a racketeer state run by soldiers".

The military's empire has been built up by the auctioning of Pakistan's state assets to its own welfare organisations. Foundations established to look after servicemen and their families now run Pakistan's cement and fertiliser industries, as well as pharmaceuticals and telecommunications, banking, aggregates, aviation, transport and insurance. Everything - from the Tarmac people drive on to the petrol they put in their tanks, to the motorway tollbooths they can barely afford, to the road hauliers they hire - is owned by the military.

Since Musharraf came to power, originally choosing the title of Pakistan's chief executive, he has transformed Pakistan's market economy into a military one. The Army Welfare Trust, created in the 70s with a grant of only £6,000, now has assets of more than £200m. According to the IMF, such foundations control more than one quarter of Pakistan's economy. The personal wealth of Musharraf's key generals is estimated at £3.5m a head. And Musharraf himself, who has a combined salary of £700 a month for his jobs as president and army chief, has acquired a real-estate portfolio worth £5m.

Musharraf declined an interview with the Guardian. However, he has publicly commented on the military's business world, recently claiming, "We've got fertilisers, we're involved in banking, we are involved even in pharmaceuticals. So what is the problem? Why is anyone jealous? We do things well."

The Pakistan military, with their enormous economic clout, have become a new political class and ultimately might not care who wins the elections. Regardless of whether or not Benazir Bhutto returns to triumph at the polls, it is the military who will remain in power.