IT was a shinny day of Dec 27, 2007 when a big crowd gathered at Liaquat Bagh, Rawalpindi, to see and hear their leader Benazir Bhutto, but none knew it would be the last glimpse of their leader. While she was still speaking to the people she fell to the bullet(s) of an assassin.

Her last words: “I put my life in danger and came here because I feel that my country is in danger”.

She had lately arrived in Pakistan after eight lonely and difficult years of self-exile, She could not stop tears pouring from her eyes and lifted her hands in reverence, in thanks, and in prayer.

She stood on the soil of Pakistan in awe. She felt that a huge burden had been lifted from her shoulders. She was home at long last.

Earlier when she had returned to Pakistan in 1986 after staying abroad for two years, she was greeted in Lahore by crowds swelling to one million.

The size of the crowd then was interpreted as an indicator of the support of the PPP standing up to military dictator Gen Ziaul Haq.

The tremendous outpouring of people from across the country was seen in Pakistan and all over the world as an affirmation of the forces of democracy against the dictatorship that had terrorised the nation for almost a decade.

Twenty-one years later Ms Bhutto knew, while flying from Dubai to Karachi, that the size of her ‘welcome home’ in 2007 would be compared to that of 1986’s.

She knew that those around Gen(r) Pervez Musharraf were chomping at the bit to proclaim that tepid response to her return would be a legitimisation of their authoritarian rule. When she stepped off that plane on October 18, 2007, she encountered on that day an enormous crowd which welcomed her after eight years in exile.

Of her many landmarks, here are a few: she gave missile technology to Pakistan, women’s bank, women’s police stations, women affairs ministry and appointment of women judges.

Humera Alwani
Thatta