Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's days in politics were numbered from the very beginning. But being the sort of feudal leader that he was, his story was inevitably told in epic proportions. When he was a child, his mother had taken the young Bhutto to a palm reader who predicted that the young feudal would blaze a trail of fire on the political landscape of his country.

The child was destined to leave a mark on the nation's psyche, claimed the fortune teller - but he could not (or would not) say what was in store for Bhutto after his fiftieth birthday.

As Bhutto reached the fateful date in his life, he grew ever more erratic and controversial in his thoughts and deeds. The man managed to inspire an entire generation of Pakistanis with his calls for rapid development and an end to the bad old days of the past.

His nationalisation scheme had uprooted the traditional ruling elites and turned the economy on its head. His violently patriotic rhetoric of national dignity and self-determination provoked a hostile response from the United States as well as Pakistan's more powerful neighbour, India.

However Bhutto the populist also proved to be Bhutto the demagogue and despot. While he laboured to put an end to traditional forms of domination and control, he also introduced new forms of coercion that were equally brutal.

His attacks on the free press, his manipulation of the judiciary, his use of restrictive laws, his penchant for declaring states of emergency whenever he or his party were under threat and his reliance on his own crypto-fascist Federal Security Force to intimidate (and even kill) his political opponents made it clear to the people that the so-called 'people's hero' was more than capable of turning on the people themselves.

But the fateful mistake came when Bhutto, in a flawed attempt to jolt the senior leadership of the armed forces, promoted a certain General Zia ul'Haq as its new commander in chief in 1976. The selection of Zia was meant to serve as a snub and a reminder that it was Bhutto who was calling the shots.

Monkey general

Bhutto wanted to show that he could make and unmake the leadership of the army (and any other institution in Pakistan for that matter) on his own terms. General Zia was the son of a lower ranking civil servant from Jullundur who had no foreign education or landed estates to speak of.

His promotion to the senior most position within the army was effectively a blow to the feudal system that had taken root within its senior ranks.

Once again, Bhutto was trying to show that he was in charge of the situation. His own relationship with General Zia was a highly complex, and at many times, painfully embarrassing one.

On a number of public occasions (including visits and meetings with foreign dignitaries), Bhutto would openly refer to Zia as his "monkey general" who would perform tricks for him. Bhutto poured scorn on Zia for the latter's humble family background, sartorial manners, appearance- even his moustache.

Meanwhile, Zia bided his time and slowly began to sow the seeds of the fall of his mentor. While Bhutto insisted that politics and religion should not mix, Zia was slowly going ahead with his plans to Islamise the armed forces from within, turning it into a "Mullah's army" that Bhutto found abhorrent.(1)

In the end, Bhutto's fall came when it became obvious that he no longer represented the values and ideas that he had spoken off all the while. By the late 1970s the 'people's leader' and 'democratic reformer' was, in fact, attempting to radically alter the constitution to give himself even more power and authority than ever before.(2)

The man who claimed to want to lead Pakistan away from the days of obscurantist religion and fundamentalism was also courting the radical Islamist parties left, right and centre. Bhutto gave the Jami'at-ul Ulema-I Islam (JUI) party a free hand in the north. (The JUI later became the principle sponsors of the Mujahideen and then the Taliban movement in the 1980s).

So desperate had he become to keep his image intact that Bhutto even went as far as donating a solid gold door to the shrine of the Sufi saint Lal Shabaz Kalander in Sehwan Sharif in his efforts to boost his Islamic image and credentials.

But none of Bhutto's efforts bore fruit. In a coup attempt code named Operation Fair Play, the army under the direction of General Zia took control and Bhutto was apprehended along with his clique of cronies and fellow collaborators.

He was accused of a host of crimes- ranging from corruption to treason and murder. But in the end, it was the testimony of the director of his own Federal Security Force (3) that sent Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to the gallows in 1979.

Zia and Pakistan's Islamisation

During the 1980s, Zia worked tactically with the Islamists (and vice-versa) to legitimise his grab for power and to justify the policies that he introduced. Pakistan opted for all-out Islamisation, particularly in the wake of the Iranian revolution of 1979.

Zia Islamised the state bureaucracy, encouraged the creation of more and more institutions of Islamic learning, and indirectly supported (or at least tolerated) the growth of numerous forms of Islamic militancy in the country.

The era of General Zia remains, for many Pakistani liberals and secularists, the darkest hour of the country. The ostensibly Islamic laws he introduced turned the country into a conservative homosocial environment where women were virtually absent from public space.

(During this time, Western movies were banned on the grounds that they were morally corrupt, but John Wayne flicks were regularly shown as they, at least, portrayed a 'positive' image of men as gun-wielding homicidal maniacs). Zia's Islamic laws also equated fornication and adultery with 'crimes against the State' and more importantly 'crimes against God'.

But ironically, it was the sheer brutality and oppressiveness of Zia's regime that helped to rehabilitate Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. In time, the people of Pakistan also grew fed up with the staid militarist rhetoric of Zia.

His Islamisation campaign was nothing more than a front for the army's consolidation of power and the 'holy war' against Communist Russia in Afghanistan turned into a massive black market industry for the smuggling of arms and drugs into the country.

The madrassah s that Zia promoted also turned into the breeding ground for all kinds of sectarian extremist groups, and in time the country was awash with blood as Sunni Muslims were killing Shia Muslims on a daily basis.

alignWhen Zia finally died in a plane crash in 1988, the people were more than willing to welcome back their feudal-despot leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. In his absence, they voted for his daughter Benazir, who proved to be every bit a feudal as her father was.

Irony of ironies, it was actually the harrowing experience of living under Zia ul'Haq's military regime that helped to rehabilitate the memory of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

No Zia for Malaysia

The same cannot be said of Malaysia. Since 1981, the country has been living under the rule of a government dominated by the overpowering personality of a sole charismatic leader, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad.

As we have pointed out earlier (see parts 1 and 2), Dr. Mahathir attempted an state-sponsored Islamisation programme of his own, like Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. But while Bhutto's brand of Statist Islam was heavily influenced by his own particular approach to Socialism and populist politics, Dr. Mahathir's school of Islam was directed towards a radically different agenda altogether: economic development along Liberal-Capitalist lines.

At the hands of Malaysia's technocrats and 'Islamocrats', Islam was reinvented as a work ethic that was business-friendly and conducive to economic growth and the free market.

Dr. Mahathir's brand of Islam was also anti-obscurantist and anti-fundamentalist (4), though for different reasons- he wished to create a new school of thought that broke away from the burden of historical baggage from the past. It was, in a sense, an attempt to reinvent Islam and to restore it at the same time.

The rest of the story we are all familiar with by now. Dr Mahathir could not complete this task on his own, and with the goal in mind he co-opted a number of Malay-Muslim Islamist activists, one of whom happened to be none other than the young student activist leader Anwar Ibrahim.

Anwar was himself a figure that spanned the Malaysian-Pakistani divide in more ways that one. His years in the wilderness of political activism had endeared him to the proponents of Islamisation in Malaysia and Pakistan, and in 1979 he was even awarded the Mualana Iqbal Centenary award by none other than that 'Islamist' military dictator, Zia ul' Haq of Pakistan.

But when the Malaysian economic model began to fall apart at the seams with the advent of the economic crisis of 1997, things came to a head between the two men.

The economic crisis of 1997-98 ended the Malaysian dream as it quickly turned into a political crisis. Between June and August 1997, the economies of Southeast Asia were rocked by the worst financial crisis in decades.

Due to the overheated and poorly-planned economic development that had taken off since the 1980s, the economies of the region were all suffering from the same set of problems: Banking practices were not properly regulated and there was a conspicuous absence of transparency, credit expansion was indiscriminate, the governments had embarked on a number of mega-projects that were economic unviable (not to mention hazardous to the environment) and there was a visible glut in commercial infrastructure in most of the major capitals and industrial zones in the region.

When economic bubble finally burst, the entire region experienced a rapid and devastating outflow of capital (dubbed 'hot money') which was made all the more fast and uncontrollable thanks to the fact that these economies were opened up to the yet-unregulated global economic and financial architecture.

Unflattering comparisons

In Malaysia, the financial crisis brought to the surface irreconcilable differences between the Prime Minister Dr Mahathir and his Deputy Anwar Ibrahim, who was also Finance Minister at the time.

The more conservative Mahathir favoured the introduction of fiscal injections to kick-start the economy and boost domestic consumption once more. His deputy Anwar opted for an austerity drive and higher interest rates that effectively led to a crippling credit squeeze in his attempt to prevent further outflow of capital from the economy.

Suddenly the tables had been turned: The nationalist Mahathir was seen by many to be defending his clique of 'crony capitalists' and political allies instead of the interests of his nation.

The one-time Islamist radical and vocal critic of the United States, Anwar Ibrahim, on the other hand, began to employ the rhetoric of 'reform and transparency' that was popularised not only by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) but also the reformist movement that ousted President Suharto in neighbouring Indonesia.

Things came to a head when the differences between Anwar and Mahathir came out into the open. Anwar not only parroted the discourse of the IMF but also denounced the Mahathir administration in an attempt to distance himself from his ex-mentor and political patron.

Anwar and his supporters also made unflattering comparisons between Mahathir and Indonesia's president Suharto (who was removed from office after widespread street demonstrations in May 1998).

Mahathir in turn accused Anwar of being in league with the IMF and the United States, and accused him of acting as a Trojan horse for Western multinationals and governments that were out to 're-colonise' Malaysia. Finally, Anwar was sacked by Dr. Mahathir on the 1st of September 1998, the day before the country announced that it would impose capital controls.(5)

Throughout September, Anwar took to the streets and mobilised the public in his campaign against Dr. Mahathir. He launched the 'Refomasi' (reformation) movement of Malaysia and was soon winning back the support of thousands of Malay-Muslim activists, students and Umno party members.

The fact that the movement was called reformasi was also significant - it was the same word used by Indonesian activists who toppled the government of Suharto. Then by the third week of September, Anwar was arrested and detained.

Following that a number of prominent Muslim activists, politicians and academics were detained as well. In the weeks that followed, riots broke out in the streets of the capital as soldiers and police confronted demonstrators even in places like mosques.

Martyrs and mentors

The actions of the Mahathir government succeeded only in making Anwar Ibrahim look like a political martyr in the eyes of the Malaysian (and especially Malay-Muslim) public.

By eliminating Anwar from the political scene (in a crude and brutal manner, one might add), the Mahathir administration had foreclosed any possibility of Anwar and his followers from coming to power. But by doing so, the establishment had also condemned itself.

For as a result of the political removal of Anwar, the Malaysian public will never know of the 'what ifs' that might have come about had Anwar and his followers from the reformist-Islamist camp come to power.

These questions, incidentally are still in the air and the current ruckus about PAS's claims that it wants to create an Islamic state in Malaysia if it wins the next elections shows just how sensitive these concerns remain.

We will never know what might have happened had Anwar and his followers been given the chance to gain political power in the country. Would Malaysia have taken the same route as Pakistan under Zia or Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini? (Two Islamist leaders who were glorified and valorised by Anwar, by the way).

Instead, we are now left with the prospects of a country that faces an uncertain future, not knowing for sure who the next Prime Minister will be. Here the paths of Mahathir and Bhutto part once again, this time for good.

Bhutto the populist despot was reclaimed by the people he betrayed because after his death came another leader whose brutality and hunger for power was even greater than his own. But Mahathir - the man once regarded by millions of Malays as their saviour - has instead been reinvented as the great Mahafiraun ,

Mahazalim and Mahakejam , for the simple reason that in his quest for power he has left no counter-factual examples against his own model and his own image (now tarnished, apparently beyond repair).

How this process came about we will try to address in the next article, entitled 'How Mahathir became the great Mahazalim'.

But the divergent paths that Bhutto of Pakistan and Mahathir of Malaysia have taken should remind us all that politics is never a predictable science (despite what political scientists like me would say to you), and that the arena of political activity can never be free from the elements of contingency and irony.

Endnotes:

(1) When he was first appointed, General Zia'ul Haq was warned by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto that he did not want a 'Mullah's army'. But all the while Zia was working hand in hand with the Islamist parties and movements in the country and he was actively engaged in promoting the ideas of Maulana Maudoodi, the founder-leader of the Jama'at-e Islami in particular.

Thousands of copies of Maudoodi's Tafhimul Quran (Translation of the Quran) were sold and distributed to regular army troops and officers. In July 1976, Zia himself distributed copies of Maudoodi's text as prizes during a debate arranged by the Army Education School.

The Tafhimul Quran was then proposed as a core text for the examination of junior officers who wanted to gain promotion to the rank of Major and above.

(2) Wolpert (1993) notes that while Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was presenting himself as a democratic leader who wanted to reintroduce democracy to Pakistan as soon as possible, he was in fact working towards a new constitutional arrangement that would give him even more power after the 1977 elections.

'He had hired an academic expert on constitutional government, Professor Leslie Wolf-Phillips of the London School of Economics and Political Science, who was busy preparing a presidential constitution in London, working for the Pakistan embassy there, devising 'secret codes' and deceptive uses of appendices to draft a document that no-one would be able to read or understand until Bhutto was ready to spring it on an unsuspecting nation.' (Stanley Wolpert, Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan: His Life and Times , Oxford Pakistan, Karachi. 1993. pg. 267).

(3) Bhutto was put on trial for the attempted murder of his adversary and rival Ahmad Raza Kasuri. During the trial, one of the men who accused him was his own follower Masood Mahmood, Director General of the Federal Security Force (FSF)- the para-military armed force that he had created for himself as his Praetorian Guard.

Masood claimed that Bhutto had ordered the FSF to carry out the killing and that he was the mastermind behind the botched assassination attempt.

(4) By the term 'fundamentalist' we are referring to a form of conservative scripturalism that is best compared to the Christian fundamentalist movements that have emerged in the West and in North America in particular.

(5) Mahathir's decision to remove Anwar was based on claims that the latter was both morally and politically corrupt. Anwar was accused of being a closet bisexual who had several sexual liaisons with both men and women.

Anwar in turn denounced Mahathir as the ring-leader in a complex 'high level conspiracy' to destroy his political career.