Selected Articles and Features

 ‘I do consider myself a role model,’ Benazir Bhutto said to me, when in 1988, having been elected Prime Minister of Pakistan aged thirty-five,  she became the youngest woman to assume the highest political office in the government of  a Muslim nation. And so she was, inspiring  thousands of women in a male-dominated society to dream that they too could become  politicians, doctors, dentists, journalists, television presenters, broadcasters, businesswomen and lawyers.   

To millions of men and women she was also an icon, both glamorous and bold, who, throughout the 1980s had dared to challenge a military dictator, General Mohammed Zi-ul Haq, the general who, in 1977, had overthrown her father, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto,  in a military coup d’etat, later sanctioning his ‘judicial’ murder.  Her early political activism led to several years under arrest, often in solitary confinement, which she described as  a time ‘when one existed but one didn’t exist.’   Later, having agreed to an arranged marriage to Asif Ali Zardari -   which surprised some of her western admirers -  she became a devoted mother to her three children, Bilawal, Bakhtawar and Aseefa.  For over thirty years, she remained my friend.

I first met Benazir Bhutto –Pinky to her immediate family -  Benazir Khala - Aunty Benazir - to her extended family -   ‘BB’ – to her political colleagues,  and now Shaheed  – in 1974. We were both students at Oxford University and, by chance, were in the same college, Lady Margaret Hall, a fact in which she delighted. I can even remember the first words she spoke to me, a radiant smile on her face: ‘Oh, you’re in my college, we must get together, come and have tea!’ Later, we  shared the triumph of both  successively   being elected President of the Oxford Union,   the prestigious debating society, where many of Britain’s  Prime Ministers first perfected their oratorical skills.  In 1970s Britain, the Oxford Union was still mainly a hallowed male-preserve, where even future Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had not been allowed to operate as a student, no woman being admitted as a member until 1963.

I knew little then about Benazir’s heritage -   the pain and trauma of partition as a new country was carved from  British India in 1947. I only vaguely understood  about  Pakistan’s struggle to assert its Islamic identity  and its festering relationship with neighbouring India because of the unresolved dispute over the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir.   But,  as I soon realised, while blending into   Oxford student life and its traditions -  the fun of going boating on a crisp summer’s day or enjoying a picnic whose staple fare was strawberries and cream - Benazir remained fiercely proud of her origins.  During her four years at Oxford,  she extended regular invitations   to her wide circle of friends ‘to come see for yourself what Pakistan is like.’ Her enthusiasm for her country was infectious....

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