Posted on 12/27/2007 4:10:18 PM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!" was initially all that Dr. Amna Buttar could say this morning, stunned to find out that former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto had been killed in a suicide bomb attack at a political rally in Rawalpindi today.
Buttar, until recently an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Medical School, had been in Pakistan since October, joining Bhutto on the former prime minister's triumphant return to her native country after eight years in exile.
"Everyone is in shock," Buttar said. "It is very sad."
Bhutto was killed following a rally for the Pakistan Peoples Party, the party started by Benazir's father Zulkifar Ali Bhutto and others, including Buttar's father. Ali Bhutto was executed in 1979.
Buttar, in a phone interview today from Chicago, said the assassination will not deter the party from moving forward, but it will be a hard struggle now that their leader has been killed.
"We started down the path of hope, seeing light at the end of the tunnel," she said. "The leaders were back, there was electricity in the air, and now, we are back to square one of despair."
Buttar last talked to Bhutto by phone about three weeks ago.
"She was very hopeful about the elections, very excited about the campaign," Buttar said. "She was in a good mood."
The last time Buttar visited with Bhutto was when she was placed under house arrest by President Pervez Musharraf in November, when Bhutto was in Lahore, for the "long march" taking place in the Punjab provincial capital.
"Nobody could get into the house to see her but I was able to get in by telling security I was a doctor and had come from America to see her," Buttar said. "I showed them my Wisconsin driver's license as proof."
Buttar has been nominated for a seat in the provincial assembly in the Punjab province. Originally, she was going to be nominated for a seat in the national assembly, but Bhutto said it was better for her to start out in the provincial assembly since she just joined the Pakistan Peoples Party in August.
"She said she really wanted me in the provincial assembly now and in two years I would be up for a senate nomination," Buttar said. "She said 'you can show people who you are.'"
Buttar said losing Bhutto is like losing a family member.
"I was 16 when her father was hanged," she said. "It was like a person from my own family had died.
"We were so shook up then, so upset, and now I feel the same. This is the second time in my life I've faced a Bhutto death. It is stunning."
Buttar talked to a friend in Pakistan Wednesday about the pending national elections in January.
"Yesterday, we all said of course the elections will happen, but what about today," she said. "I feel so helpless.
"Many people had awakened, they were participating again, and today, that is being suffocated. The people of Pakistan are just not getting a chance."
Who will lead the party, now that Bhutto is gone?
"People asked, if something happens to Benazir, who will be the leader?," Buttar said. "The fight will go on. If not, you feel these lives have been lost for nothing."
Buttar had been scheduled to return to Pakistan Dec. 19, but stayed a little longer here to be with her family over the holidays. She now is set to return to Lahore on Saturday.
But what will she be returning to?
"I am still hopeful for the future of Pakistan," she said. "I hope the people don't become so despondent. With her death, it will make our conviction stronger."
Buttar said when she flew from Dubai to Karachi that pivotal day in October, joining Bhutto in her triumphant return to her homeland, the memory that stuck with her the most took place at the airport, when Bhutto's family was watching from the terminal window as the exiled former prime minister boarded the jetliner.
"I saw the helplessness in their faces," Buttar said, as she watched Bhutto's two daughters, son and husband say their good-byes from behind the glass. "I'm thinking about those girls and her son now.
"The nation is going to mourn her, but we also need to remember she's also a mom."
Buttar said she is fearful for her own life, as others are who belong to the Pakistan Peoples Party.
"You are always fearful for your life and for others' lives, but you can't stop," she said. "There is so much hope."
Not made of human parts, and insinuating idiocies. You can't make up your mind whether the security details were deliberately not doing their job, or Bhutto had a death wish, or something, but somehow it all has to be somebodies fault other than the attacker, and somehow it all had to be preventable by some bodyguard ninnie bossing around the world.
It is pure delusion. Moral courage runs the world, and moral courage begins when human beings face their own mortality and defy death - and the bastards who think everyone is afraid of it.
There is no safety, there is only free men doing what they think right with their eyes open. That isn't emotion at all, it is simply realism on a level too deep for you to fathom it.
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