December 31, 2007

Toronto Star updated their 10 to watch list for 2007-It’s been a dynamic 12 months for alumni of the Star’s annual ‘to watch’ list

December 31, 2007

Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy spoke to CNN’s Josh Levs about the reactions to Bhutto’s death in Pakistan.
Watch the video online: CNN

SHARMEEN OBAID-CHINOY

December 28, 2007

by Benjamin Law

Edited version published: Frankie #21 (Jan/Feb 2008)

We’re told that after 9/11 and the ousting of the Taliban, women in Afghanistan are better off. They’re now in parliament, they can drive, they can divorce, and they’re no longer forced to wear the burqa. But after documentary-maker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy visited the region last year, she told Benjamin Law that for Afghan women, the reality is far more complicated.

Towards the end of 2006, Pakistani film-maker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s documentary Beneath the Veil was broadcast around the world. It had a provocative thesis: that despite Western intervention, and the downfall of the Taliban, Afghani women were still subject to the same social, economic and physical degradation of the old regime. “Yes, women were in parliament,” Sharmeen says, “but they weren’t allowed to speak or make laws. And in the four and a half weeks that I was there, I didn’t see a single woman behind the wheel of a car.”

For the most part, Beneath the Veil was horrific viewing. It showed how decades of civil and international conflict had reduced an estimated two million war widows to begging on the streets in burqas. Girls continued to be forced into marriage—some as young as seven—while infant mortality rates continued to soar because of poor, or non-existent, health services.

However, the most disturbing images in the film were courtesy of Sharmeen’s visits to hospitals, which were packed with seriously burned women. Having been forced into marriages with no possible means of escape, Afghan women were protesting with their most basic of resources: their bodies. All over the country, women were pouring kerosene on themselves and lighting themselves on fire as protest.

“Afghan women are some of the bravest women in the world,” Sharmeen says. “To pour kerosene on yourself, then light yourself? It’s an act of defiance. It is a cry to the rest of the world: ‘I am suffering, and I refuse to die quietly.’” One particular girl Sharmeen interviewed had been sold into marriage five years earlier to fund her father’s addition to opiates. She was severely burned from the waist down after a self-immolation suicide attempt. All this, and she was only 12-years-old.

The first time she entered one of the hospital wards, Sharmeen says she was close to just bursting out in tears. “Every bed had a young woman who was disfigured—badly—and moaning in pain. There wasn’t enough morphine—the irony, being that Afghanistan is the largest opium producer in the world. These women had burns on 50 to 60 percent of their bodies, and no skin grafting because it’s not done in Afghanistan. It’s extremely expensive.”

A young Muslim woman herself, Sharmeen noted a massive disjoint between her personal understanding of Islam, and how the religion manifests in Afghan culture. For her, the problem isn’t with Islam, but how Afghan culture had appropriated it to undermine the entitlements of women. “Afghan culture has been perverted. A lot of people have said it’s the religion, but actually it’s Afghan culture,” she says.

“As a Muslim woman in Pakistan, my parents always told me I was on par with any man, anywhere in the world. Even as a child, I always thought I was equal to a man. In an environment like Afghanistan, men feel superior to women, and treat women as inferior. As a result, women feel that they’re inferior, and that this is all sanctioned by Islam.”

In one sequence of the documentary, Sharmeen talks to a war widow reduced to begging on the streets. When Sharmeen is crouching down, face to face with her, it’s as though viewers are presented with the two extreme opposites of what Muslim women can be in the contemporary world. One is a disempowered, poor, uneducated woman, deprived of resources, support, and personal agency; the other is Sharmeen.

“This is true,” Sharmeen says. “In some ways, it’s testament to the fact you can be ‘the other’. Often in the Western world, there’s a perception that Muslim women have been held back by their religion. But there are many women like me who are practising Muslims, but also lawyers and journalists and artists—and often doing better than most men in the country.

“In Afghanistan, I’ve almost been in screaming matches with men. I know: as a journalist, you’re supposed to step away from your subject. But I need to let them know that I am a practising Muslim, yet I can turn around and tell him he doesn’t make any sense at all. That it’s okay to allow your women to get an education, it is okay to allow your women to work. And in no way would that threaten you as a man.”

Sharmeen didn’t even have to open her mouth for her presence to be felt in Afghanistan. By simply donning a red head covering instead of a full-body burqa, entire groups of men would immediately turn their gaze towards her. “Afghan men are not used to seeing women like me, walking with my face uncovered,” she says. “Especially in a place that’s so grey and brown. All the women look the same under the blue head coverings.”

But why would a foreign journalist purposefully go out of her way to invite hostility from Afghan men? “In my travels in the Muslim world, I’ve found if you look a man in the eye—because Afghan women seldom do—he will look away and continue walking. I’ve found that to be a weapon. You let people know you’re not afraid; they will back off.”

Presumably, that is not something you can do in a burqa. “Well exactly,” Sharmeen says laughing. “That’s why I didn’t wear one. Look: covering the head is sanctioned by Islam. So any woman who chooses to cover her head is doing so because her religion dictates she does so. But that’s it. A woman who covers her face or entire body in a burqa or niqab is not sanctioned by Islam, in any way. It’s a controlling mechanism.”

Right now, Sharmeen is 28-years-old. Had she been born an Afghan, life at this age would obviously have been different, but to what extent? “Life in Afghanistan would mean marriage, and at least four kids,” she says. “Maybe five. Maybe even grandchildren. If you get married when you’re 14, and you have a child, then you’re a grandmother by the age of 28.”

At one stage in Beneath the Veil, Sharmeen asks the 12-year-old forced bride and burns victim what she would have done had she not been forced into marriage. (The girl’s bewildered response: “I was too young to wonder.”) Of course, there is a reverse question implied in that: “What would you do, if you were sold into marriage?”

“What could I do?” Sharmeen asks. “I logically thought about it: ‘Oh, can’t go back to the parents’ house, because the father would kill you. Can’t run to a friend’s house, because of her husband.’ Do you go the police? They’ll come and contact your father or your husband. How do you find a shelter in a city, considering there are only two across Afghanistan? How do you travel alone to get to the shelter? You are essentially, like the poet Nadia Anjuman said: caged, in a corner.”

Nadia Anjuman provided an interesting case study for the documentary. Here was an educated Afghan woman, a published poet and a journalist, but still trapped in the confines of Afghan convention. One extract of Anjuman’s poetry roughly translates to: “I am caged in this corner / full of melancholy and sorrow / my wings are closed and I cannot fly / I am an Afghan woman and I must wail.”

“You hear her poetry, you hear her story, and you say, ‘Wow, who is this woman? I’d like to meet her,’” Sharmeen says. “Then you find out, of course, she was killed.” In the film, Sharmeen talked to Anjuman’s family—who claimed Nadia’s husband was responsible—then fearlessly tracked down Anjuman’s husband for an interview. It makes for riveting but uncomfortable viewing. “I really wanted him to feel Nadia was not forgotten,” Sharmeen says. “That the fact she was murdered was important, and I believe he killed Nadia.”

When Sharmeen first visited Afghanistan in 2002, what struck her most was the people’s optimism. “They’d finally gotten rid of the Taliban, and things were going to get so much better,” she says. In 2007, that look was replaced by a tired look of resignation. “That really got me down,” Sharmeen says. “Because when people don’t have the will to bring about change, something in them dies.”

While there continues to be active fighting in the South, in Afghanistan’s north, some young girls are being educated. However, there’s no infrastructure or local economy to support jobs after finishing school, so they’re still panned off into marriage. Allied troops fight and secure towns, but move on immediately afterwards. “Are they really there to bring about change in Afghanistan, to bring about sustainable development?” Sharmeen asks. “What is the plan to make sure their lives are better, so they can move beyond their circumstances?”

In Sharmeen’s mind, the key is establishing a local, independent economy. “In Afghanistan, every single thing is imported. From milk to eggs to wheat. There’s nothing happening to show there might be prosperity in the coming years. You have to show them a better path. How do you do that? Make sure they have jobs, so they’re not obsessing about the women. You have skill centres where women can go in the morning and learn how to sew, to make bread, and sell that,” she says. “You have to give them something to hold on to.”

December 28, 2007

Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy spoke to NPR’s Morning Edition about the death of Benazir Bhutto.

Pakistan: The New Taliban

December 21, 2007

BY Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy

Watch Video

Length: 4:54
pupils at school.
There are as many as 10,000 Islamic schools in Karachi alone.

Editor’s Note: As campaigning continues for Pakistan’s pivotal January 8 parliamentary elections, FRONTLINE/World reporter Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy files the third in a series of dispatches — this one focusing on the rise of fundamentalist political forces challenging President Musharraf’s government.

On the streets of Karachi, the religious political parties are campaigning hard for the January elections. Their army of madrassa (Islamic school) students are wall chalking, hanging banners, handing out leaflets and encouraging people to bring the Islamists to power.

The religious parties have reason to believe that they may be victorious. In the 2002 elections, they made formidable gains — for the first time in the country’s history they took control of a quarter of the seats in parliament. Their aim this time: To win majority control of parliament and elect their own Prime Minister.

The religious parties have reason to believe that they may be victorious. In the 2002 elections, they made formidable gains.

There are as many as 10,000 Islamic schools in Karachi alone. Though the religious parties say they forbid political activities on their campuses, that’s not what I found when I visited one such school in Sohrab Goth, a very poor area on the edge of Karachi.

This is a vast, sprawling, dusty neighborhood, which came into existence in the early 1980s when refugees from the war in Afghanistan poured into camps set up by the Pakistani government. The camps are long gone. Now a mix of second generation Afghans and Pakistanis live here in concrete buildings. A traditionally conservative area, women seldom leave their homes unaccompanied by men, and the Afghan traditional blue burqa is the norm.

I arrived at Jamia Baitul Muqadas in Sohrab Goth on a crisp December morning at the invitation of its headmaster Maulana Mohammad Ghayas, who is contesting the upcoming elections. The maulana wanted to show me that he ran a liberal Islamic school, that Islamic religious parties were not a threat to the country, and that once elected they were going to bring peace and prosperity.

The madrassas headmaster.
Headmaster Maulana Mohammad Ghayas says he runs a liberal Islamic school.

Some madrassas are opening up their doors in an effort to allay the fears of those who believe that these institutions are hot beds of fundamentalist activities. Many madrassas forbid female journalists but I was allowed to walk freely through the halls of the school and speak to any of the students I chose to.

Classes were in full swing when I arrived, children as young as five were enrolled. As I passed one of the classes, I saw a teacher berating a student. He was holding a large pipe in his hand, ready to strike. When he saw me, he dropped it. Madrassa teachers have a reputation of being harsh to their students. Severe corporal punishments are handed out in the name of Islam.

The maulana on his tour insisted that the religious school was not a training ground for militants as people in the West thought. He was right in one sense: There were no weapons lying around. But the Islamic schools, even those without direct links to violence, promote an ideology that provides religious justification for violent attacks. An entire generation of Pakistanis is growing up in these madrassas, devoid of any critical thinking, and developing severe hatred for anything Western. These Pakistanis are the backbone of the religious parties and they have the street power to paralyze cities.

An entire generation of Pakistanis is growing up in these madrassas, devoid of any critical thinking, and developing severe hatred for anything Western.

In 2002, President Musharraf vowed to reform the madrassa system and its curriculum. Foreign students were to be registered with the government and the classroom content was to be vetted. Five years later, his plans have failed. Maulana Ghayas declared that the president could not control the madrassas because they were not funded by the government and did not rely on their resources. “We are an independent body,” he told me. “We rely on private donations, how can the president control us? We will never listen to him.”

At the madrassa I met 25-year-old Khan Sahab, an Afghani by birth, who told me that Pakistan’s true identity had been distorted by President Musharraf. “He thinks that Kamal Ataturk [the father of the modern Turkish republic] should be Pakistan’s mascot. Our ideal is our Prophet Mohammad, not some secular Turkish man.” Khan had spent the past four years studying at this madrassa, and he hoped that the headmaster would win the elections. “President Musharraf has women on television, there is no Shariah law here, women can walk around amongst men, we will change all of that when our leaders come to power. That is the true destiny of Pakistan.”

man praying.
Many who attend the religious schools are proud to be associated with the Taliban.

Downstairs, before the call to prayers, I met with 14-year-old Saeed Shah, who had seven siblings all studying at various madrassas around the city. “I am proud to say that I am a Taliban,” he told me. “A Taliban is not what you people think he is, he is a true Muslim, only America has made him to look like a villain. To us a Taliban is a hero, a true defender of Islam.”

The headmaster, Muhammad Ghayas, belongs to Pakistan’s largest Islamic political party, the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, which gained prominence in the 1970s when it played a vital role in assisting the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviets. Today, The Jamiat is known to have links with the Taliban on the Pakistan as well as the Afghan side of the border. In the past two years the party assisted Musharraf’s government in negotiating a peace deal with the insurgents in the tribal belt of Waziristan.

Though the party’s leader, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, is a suave politician and is not opposed to working with the more secular parties in Pakistani politics, his followers are more hard line. They want an Islamic Shariah-run government more severe than Saudi Arabia’s.

An active Islamist insurgency in the tribal belt has spilled over to other areas like the Swat Valley. There are bomb blasts on a daily basis; hundreds of Pakistanis have lost their lives in recent months.

They may be well on their way. Already an active Islamist insurgency in the tribal belt has spilled over to other areas like the Swat Valley. There are bomb blasts on a daily basis; hundreds of Pakistanis have lost their lives in recent months. In some areas in the northwest, women are forbidden to work and attend schools. Barbershops have been closed down, CD and DVD stores burnt. Renegade FM radio stations are broadcasting calls for Jihad.

Musharraf’s government has been slow to control religious extremism in Karachi and the rest of the country. This has emboldened the religious parties and leaders like Maulana Ghayas who feel the time is ripe to bring about an Islamic revolution. Not through violence, he told me, but by the ballot.

Video Credits:
Camera: Mahera Omar, Sohail Ahmed

December 20, 2007

Smith College Alumni Quarterly featured Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy’s work in their Winter 2007-2008 issue.

December 19, 2007

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s second Dispatch from Pakistan is now available on PBS Frontline World’s website. The “Other” Bhutto is a conversation with Benazir Bhutto’s niece, Fatima Bhutto.

December 10, 2007

This week PBS Frontline World’s Web Dispatch features Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy’s report from Pakistan. All through the month similiar dispatches will be posted on the website.

Pakistan: “The Liberal Dictator”

December 5, 2007

Watch Video

Length: 3:19
From left, Afia Zia and Nazish Brohi, founding members of the “People’s Resistance” group at their weekly candlelight vigil outside the Karachi Press Club.

Editor’s Note: When President Pervez Musharraf declared emergency rule in early November, fired his entire Supreme Court and arrested hundreds of judges and lawyers, mass protests followed, and the country was thrown into political turmoil. To take the current mood of the country, we asked our long-time correspondent in Pakistan, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, to write a series of diary dispatches in the run up to the elections Musharraf says will take place on January 8. In her first diary entry, Obaid-Chinoy reports from Karachi, where, she says, the city is alive with political activity for the first time in 20 years.

I landed in Karachi to find a city galvanized by politics. It’s been more than two decades since civil society has made any effort to engage in the political process. In fact, my generation, those in their 20s and 30s, has never seen such fervor in the streets. These are exhilarating times for Pakistan, both for those who oppose President Musharraf and for those who support him. Debates once held over dinner tables inside people’s homes are now being heard everywhere, from the pages of Facebook to blogs and radio shows.

On the first evening back in my hometown, I was invited to a meeting of individuals calling themselves the “People’s Resistance.” They came together soon after President Musharraf imposed the state of emergency on November 3, and their members are doctors, lawyers, women’s rights activists and journalists from this middle class neighborhood. During the past month, they had been organizing flash protests, candlelight vigils and demonstrations, often using graffiti to get their message across. “One coup per dictator” and “Go Musharraf Go” are two of their most used slogans.

I couldn’t help thinking that inadvertently President Musharraf’s emergency decree had been good for Pakistan. It had stirred up the dormant middle and upper classes, which seldom took part in the electoral process or even bothered to vote.

The agenda that evening was simple: Should the People’s Resistance boycott the upcoming elections or not? The 20 or so members present launched into a lively debate, where the women were far more vocal in opposing Musharraf than the men. In the end, they unanimously voted to boycott the upcoming elections if the ousted [Supreme Court] judges were not reinstated and current conditions persisted. [During the first week in December, Musharraf renewed his pledge to end the state of emergency on December 16 in preparation for the January 8 elections.]

I couldn’t help thinking that inadvertently President Musharraf’s emergency decree had been good for Pakistan. It had stirred up the dormant middle and upper classes, which seldom took part in the electoral process or even bothered to vote. Now they were asking tough questions of the state.

“Look, we have no romantic illusions about the political parties — we know they are corrupt and nepotistic,” Nazish Brohi, a social policy researcher and founder of the group, told me after the meeting. “We just want the system to work. Judges can’t be thrown out at the whim of one man. If we allow the system to work, then it will produce leaders who we can elect in the future.”

When I asked her if democracy could work in Pakistan, she responded with certainty: Yes, it could.

“I want to debunk the myth that an illiterate population will not be able to elect good leaders,” she said. “Education is not a prerequisite for intelligent voting.”

Activist Tarzia Mohuddin with her teenage daughters Michelle and Ghanwa at the vigil.

Another woman at the meeting, sociologist and columnist Afia Zia, acknowledged that Musharraf had advanced the cause of women in Pakistan. “It’s been funny because General Musharraf has been a liberal dictator,” she said. “He’s given us a lot of rights.” But she insisted that the military and Musharraf must “get out of politics” for democracy to have a chance.

Outside, I spoke to a young man who was closing his shop for the evening. Adil Khawar had heard the chants “Go Musharraf Go” coming from the meeting across the street. When I asked him about the current state of the country and the upcoming elections, he looked at me with a wry smile. “I don’t know what democracy is because I haven’t really experienced it, but I do feel a sense of freedom,” he said, adding, “I feel for President Musharraf — he is up against a lot, and I know that he means well for this country.” Then, pausing, he said, “Maybe we don’t deserve him.”

Later, while surfing through Facebook, where many young Pakistanis gather to talk about the political future of their country, I found at least as many groups for Musharraf as against him. Students as young as 14 were sharing their opinions under headings such as “We choose Musharraf but oppose emergency in Pakistan” and “A Turnip would make a better Head of State than Musharraf.”

A young musician called Imran Qadir told me that a number of his friends were joining rallies and protesting, but he supported Musharraf because he’d given many freedoms to Pakistanis.

A young musician called Imran Qadir told me that a number of his friends were joining rallies and protesting, but he supported President Musharraf because he’d given many freedoms to Pakistanis. “You know, when I was 14, you couldn’t wear jeans on television. Nawaz Sharif’s government was so anti-Westernization that if I wanted my music video aired on state-run television, I would have to heavily censor it. But in the last eight years, we have over 40 television channels; I can say what I want; I can wear what I want and will not be censored.” But Qadir said he was considering moving away from Pakistan because of the uncertainty: “I don’t want [former prime ministers] Benazir Bhutto or Nawaz Sharif to come into power, because they are not democratic in any way. They are despots, who are power hungry and will do anything to get what they want. In fact, I won’t be surprised if they turn back the clock for our generation.”

The debate has polarized Pakistan’s urban professional classes, many of whom sympathize with President Musharraf and have nothing but disdain for their democratic choices.

Another young woman, Sabina Ahmed, told me that she had never felt so passionate about politics in her life: “President Musharraf is a dictator. He may be liberal, but he is as power hungry as the rest. He has ruined this country’s judiciary and removed our best judges from power. It is going to take the country at least a decade to recover.”

The debate has polarized Pakistan’s urban professional classes, many of whom sympathize with President Musharraf and have nothing but disdain for their democratic choices. They credit the president with holding economic growth at 7.5 percent and for attracting billions of dollars in foreign investment to the country. But they also feel that he has crossed the line by removing the judiciary and silencing the media.

At a candlelight vigil the next evening, many expressed that they wanted the president to resign immediately. Tarzia Mohuddin had brought along her teenage daughters. Holding a sign that read, “Freedom of Thought and Expression,” she told me that Musharraf had disappointed her. “He started out so well,” she said. “But now he has destroyed everything he claimed he stood for. How can there be democracy when he has destroyed the very institutions that could uphold it?”

Video Credits:
Camera: Mahera Omar, Sohail Ahmed

Pakistan: The “Other” Bhutto

December 1, 2007

BY Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy

Fatima Bhutto.
Fatima Bhutto campaigning for her mother in Pakistan’s Sindh province.
Watch Video

Length: 4:54

Editor’s Note: Despite all the talk of boycotting the January 8 parliamentary elections in Pakistan, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has returned to the campaign trail. So has President Musharraf’s other main rival, Nawaz Sharif.

In her latest dispatch, FRONTLINE/World correspondent Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy visits the Bhutto ancestral home in the province of Sindh to interview former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s niece, Fatima, who has become a thorn in her aunt’s side. Educated in the U.S. and fast becoming a prominent figure in her own right, the 25-year-old could turn out to be a serious political challenger to Benazir in the coming years. And there’s no love lost between the two women. Fatima blames her aunt for the 1996 murder of her father, Benazir’s brother, and calls her “one of the most corrupt leaders the world has ever seen.” Watch excerpts from the interview and read more about Fatima below.

There are deep divisions within the Bhutto family. In 1996, Mir Murtaza Bhutto, Benazir’s younger brother and her political opponent, was brutally gunned down just steps from his house in Karachi, while his sister was the prime minister.

The authorities claimed he died in a police shootout with his body guards, but the public — depending on whom you talk to — point fingers at Benazir and her husband Asif ali Zardari.

Benazir Bhutto has publicly denied any involvement in the death of her brother.

A graduate of Columbia University, the 25-year-old Fatima spends her days campaigning against her aunt [Benazir Bhutto], who, she says, is “one of the most corrupt leaders the world has seen.”

Fatima is Murtaza’s eldest daughter. A graduate of Columbia University, the 25-year-old spends her days writing and campaigning against her aunt, who, she says, is “one of the most corrupt leaders the world has seen.”

Many Pakistanis see Fatima as an alternative to Benazir, a serious challenger in the coming years and the rightful heir to the country’s most powerful political dynasty. She seems to have the pedigree required to contest and win elections, if she so chooses. In Pakistan, a Bhutto surname is almost enough to guarantee someone the job of a premier.

As I drove up to 70 Clifton, the house in which Benazir grew up and where Fatima now lives near the Arabian sea in Karachi, I thought of the similarities between the two: Both their lives were shaped by the death of their fathers at a young age, and both spent time at Ivy League universities in the United States and are articulate and educated. But the similarities end there.

The house and its adjoining office are steeped in history. The walls are covered with historical photographs and the library is filled with speeches and documents from the ’60s and ’70s, written by former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Benazir and Murtaza’s father.

Over the years, Benazir Bhutto has filed property cases against Fatima and her mother. The former prime minister believes that the house is rightfully hers and has made several attempts to evict the current occupants.

Fatima Bhutto at father's grave.
Fatima Bhutto (center) visiting her father’s grave.

Without hesitation, Fatima tells me that politics is not a birth right. Sitting next to a life-size portrait of her father, she discusses the issues plaguing Pakistan.

“Part of the problem with Pakistani politics is that an entire nation has been held hostage to a very few, who treat politics like it’s a family business. We need the field to open up so that is why I am not running.”

But in the run up to the January elections, Fatima is busy campaigning for others in her family in Larkana, the Bhutto ancestral village in the province of Sindh. Her father founded an offshoot of the Pakistan People’s Party in the early ’90s, and her mother now is running for a place in the parliament against Benazir. “These elections are going to be tough,” Fatima tells me. “But I am determined to keep my father’s legacy alive.”

It has been more than 10 years since Fatima last spoke to her aunt. She feels that Benazir was complicit in the murder of her father. The proof, she says, lies in the report issued by a tribunal convened after her father’s death, which concluded that the assassination could not have taken place without approval from a “much higher” political authority.

Fatima’s statements are starting to affect Benazir. Local Pakistani newspapers published a story last month in which sources close to Benazir revealed that they were trying to patch things up between the two women.

Fatima’s statements and campaigning are starting to affect Benazir. Local Pakistani newspapers published a story last month in which sources close to the former prime minister revealed that they were trying to patch things up between the two women and to convince Fatima not to make statements against her aunt. Anwar Bhutto, who spoke on behalf of the Pakistan People’s Party, told journalists, “Benazir really wants Fatima to join active politics and she never considers her a rival. She will be an asset for Benazir and the PPP if she enters politics.”

The questions and accusations grow as elections draw closer. Before I leave she tells me that she is worried about what Benazir’s return means for the country. “Her legacy as a two-time prime minister is a legacy of gross corruption. She is estimated to have stolen $1.5 to $3 billion from the Pakistani treasury. It’s one of state violence…”

When I ask Fatima if a reconciliation is in the cards, her response is a vehement, “No.”

“Benazir needs to be tried in court for the crimes that she has committed. We do not see eye to eye on anything and we do not subscribe to her distorted version of democracy.”

Video Credits:
Camera: Mahera Omar, Sohail Ahmed