[Part of the Introduction by P. Chopra]I cannot think of any practising politician today who has shown the sweep of vision Bhutto shows in surveying military coups around the world, or has the intellectual penetration he shows in laying bare the roots of coup-gemony in Pakistan. But I can think of several practising politicians who could profit from four inter-connected warnings he gives to the Third World countries:
1."Military coup d'etats are the worst enemies of national unity."
2."If a coup d'etat becomes a permanent part of the political infrastructure, it means the falling of the last petal of the last withered rose, it means the end."
3."The events of the last 20 years have made me arrive at the
unambiguous conclusion that at present, the greatest threat to the
unity and progress of the Third World is from coup-gemony."
4."Coup-gemony is the bridge over which hegemony walks to stalk
our lands."
Bhutto contrasts the politics of India and Pakistan in all of these
respects, and he sums it all up in his own inimitable fashion:
If India has suffered from martial laws and military dictatorships
on the pattern of Pakistan, India would have been in three or four
separate pieces by this day. India is more heterogeneous than
Pakistan but India has been kept in one piece by the noise and chaos
of her democracy."
Kept in one piece, and kept free, Bhutto might have added
because it is democracy which allowed Indian nationalism to raise
enough noise to scare off any intruder who tried to bring in the
baggage of hegemony.
Is Bhutto sincere in all this, or is he only coining clever phrases?
Is he opposing military rule out of democratic conviction or because
that is the only challenge now left to his power? Why is he blaming "a
foreign power" for his overthrow? Because it is true? Or because that
is a handy dog to whip any day? If Bhutto lives long enough he will
have to answer these questions with his actions, and if the answers
are to be in his favour, his actions will have to be vastly better than in
the past. But for the present he is raising the questions and others
have to answer them.
The most troublesome question he asks, and in these very words
is "what about the nuclear reprocessing plant?" How good is Bhutto's
claim that he was the victim of a conspiracy between a foreign power,
by which he means the USA (though he hints at a Middle Easter,
accomplice) on the one hand and on the other General Zia and PNA?
And of course the ultimate question he asks it "What are the chances
of my survival?" He does not quite put it that way because "it is an
affront to my pride and vanity to speak of my own future." But he says
enough to suggest that he is asking for an intervention on his behalf
by leaders in Pakistan and in other countries.
Bhutto says "I wold not have suffered the fate I am suffering had
it not been for internal betrayal." What he means is:
(i) That those who had decided to deny Pakistan the nuclear
reprocessing plant (in brief the bomb) overthrew him because he
would not give it up.
(ii) That having overthrown him they had to imprison him
because otherwise the people would put him back in power;
(iii) That having overthrown him they want to hang him, or at
otherwise he could be back in power one day;
(vi) That external forces found it possible to do all this only
because they found accomplices within Pakistan;
(v) That the internal accomplices betrayed him because they
were bribed to do so, PNA receiving money and and the Chief of the Army
Staff receiving satisfaction of his lust for power.
How good is the evidence behind this allegation? For an answer
the allegation should be examined part by part, but in a brief summary
I would say that the evidence is very good about the events, but not
satisfactory about the motives behind them.
Bhutto is right in his explicit claim that he was able to negotiate
an agreement with France which would have given Pakistan a nuclear
reprocessing plant. He is also right in the claim which is implicit in his
boasting, although he does not spell it out in so many words that with
this plant Pakistan would have acquired the technical capability of
producing the bomb because the plant is capable of producing
weapons grade plutonium.
There is overwhelming, well authenticated and almost public
evidence that the United Slates put very strong pressure upon both
Bhutto and France not to go ahead with the agreement, and as a
consequence of this pressure France tried to pressurize Pakistan, but
only after Bhutto's overthrow, to agree to modify the plan in such a
way that it would not to able to produce weapons grade plutonium.
There is also evidence that Bhutto was threatened that if he
went ahead with acquiring the plant in its weapons grade form, he
would be overthrown and might face worst consequences. There are
two sources of evidence in support of the threat, apart from others
that there might be. Shirin Tahir-Kheli, Assistant Professor of Political
Science at Temple University, USA, says in an article published in
Asian Survey (Summer, 1978) that during her research on the subject
of this agreement, "one source" told her that the "out going American
ambassador (in Islamabad) had gone so far as to tell-Bhutto bluntly
that if he did no back down he would no longer stay in power!" It was
after this exchange that the United States is alleged to have supported
opposition candidates in the March 1977 elections and to have
encouraged the street agitation that ensued.
Bhutto's own statement is the second source. In the course of
the statement he gives a very vivid account, too vivid and convincing
to be fake, how his own minister for production warned him of the
peril to his office and personal safety if he persisted in acquiring the
reprocessing plant.
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