Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are opening
a file that is, without any exaggeration, one
of the heaviest, most complex, and I'd say arguably
most tragic dossiers in modern political history.
We're looking at a figure who essentially crafted
the blueprint for a nuclear -armed nation, split
a country in two, and then ended his own life
on the gallows. Yeah, we're talking about Zulfikar
Ali Bhutto. Exactly. And this is a man who is...
quite literally the definition of polarization.
Oh, absolutely. To some, he's a martyr for democracy.
To others, he's this Machiavellian villain who
broke Pakistan. There's almost no middle ground.
There really isn't. And I was reading through
the source material, this extensive biographical
record we pulled together, and the contradictions
are just screaming at you from every single page.
They really are. I mean, here is a guy who is
a Western educated aristocrat, studied at Berkeley
and Oxford, you know, wore several rose suits,
probably drank scotch. Right. Yet he branded
himself. The leader of the people. The leader
of the people. He was a champion of the poor,
who was also himself a feudal lord. And the contradictions
don't stop there. I mean, he was a Democrat who
gave Pakistan its first consensus constitution.
A huge achievement. A huge deal, yeah. But he
also ruled for a time as a civilian chief martial
law administrator. The two things just don't...
They don't seem to fit together. It plays out
like a Shakespearean tragedy. It really does.
And what's wild is that this story isn't just
history. It's not some dusty archive. I saw in
the notes that as recently as March 2024, the
Supreme Court of Pakistan revisited his trial.
That's right. Just a few months ago. 45 years
after his execution, the highest court in the
land officially gave an opinion that he didn't
get a fair trial. So they admitted it. They admit
it. So this isn't ancient history at all. It's
a wound that is still very much open in the political
psyche of South Asia. The ghost of Budo is still
a very real player in Pakistani politics. OK,
let's unpack this. We have a massive amount of
ground to cover. We need to look at his meteoric
rise, the absolute catastrophe of 1971, the Islamic
bomb and, of course, the judicial murder. Mm
hmm. But let's start at the beginning. Who was
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto before he became this this
legend? To understand the man, you have to understand
the soil he grew up on. He was born in 1928 in
Sindh, which was then part of British India.
And he wasn't just born wealthy. He was born
into like feudal royalty. OK. His father. Sir
Shahnawaz Bhutto was a massive figure. He was
the Dewan, or prime minister, of the princely
state of Juniga. So he grows up seeing power
being wielded at a very, very high level. He's
not learning politics from books. He's seeing
it at the dinner table. Exactly. But he doesn't
stay in that feudal bubble. And this is the first
pivotal shift. He goes to the United States for
his education. He lands at the University of
Southern California and then transfers to UC
Berkeley. And this is the late 1940s we're talking
about. Late 40s. So you can imagine Berkeley
in the late 40s. For a feudal kid from Sindh,
it must have been a completely different planet.
Oh, it must have changed his entire worldview.
It absolutely did. And at Berkeley, he's not
just, you know, going to parties. He is devouring
society. socialist theory. He's reading Marx.
He's actually giving lectures on campus debating
whether socialism can be compatible with Islamic
heritage. He's building this intellectual framework
that would later define his entire political
career. Right. But there is something else that
happens while he's there that is just it's crucial.
The notes mention he was in the U .S. when the
Soviets tested their first nuclear weapon. Yes.
In 1949. Yeah. And he witnessed the reaction
in the United States firsthand. He saw the fear,
but he also saw the respect and the sudden shift
in global power dynamics. He realized right then
and there that nuclear capability wasn't just
about a big explosion. It was about sovereignty.
It was the currency of power. If you had the
bomb, the world just, it treated you differently.
That is a fascinating connection. So the seed
for the Pakistani nuclear program wasn't planted
in some war room in the 70s. Nope. It was planted
in a dorm room in Berkeley in 1949. Precisely.
After Berkeley, he goes to Oxford Christ Church
College to study law. Then he gets called to
the bar at Lincoln's Inn. So by the time he's
done, he's polished, he's brilliant, he's incredibly
charismatic, and he is just fiercely ambitious.
And when he returns to Pakistan, he doesn't just
want to be a lawyer. Oh, no. He wants to rule.
And he rises fast. The sources say he became
a cabinet minister in 1958. He was the youngest
member of the cabinet. Yeah, first under President
Iskandar Mirza and then under the military ruler,
General Ayub Khan. You've got to picture this.
He's in his early 30s, surrounded by these old
generals and stuffy bureaucrats, and he is outshining
every single one of them. But the real turning
point, the moment Bhutto becomes Bhutto, the
figure we know, is when he becomes foreign minister
in 1963. Yes. This is where he starts to really
steer the ship. This is where he starts shifting
Pakistan's foreign policy, right? Because up
until then, Pakistan was... pretty firmly in
the American camp. Firmly is an understatement.
Pakistan was known as America's most allied ally
in Asia. They were part of Seattle and Cento.
Hold on. Let's just clarify those acronyms for
everyone. Seattle and Cento. Sure. Think of them
as the Asian versions of NATO. They were these
anti -communist military alliances designed to
contain the Soviet Union and China. Okay. Pakistan
was a key member, which meant it was officially
aligned against the entire communist bloc. But
Budo, he looked at the map and basically said,
this is insane. Right. You've got this massive
neighbor right there. Exactly. He's saying we
share a border with China. We have a hostile
India next door. Why are we alienating our most
powerful neighbor to please a superpower that's
halfway across the world? It just didn't make
strategic sense to him. So he decides to pivot
to Beijing. He becomes the architect of the Sino
-Pakistan relationship. He negotiates and signs
the Sino -Pakistan Boundary Agreement. He pushes
for trade, for military cooperation. And you
have to remember the context here. This is the
height of the Cold War. The U .S. must have been
furious. They were paranoid about China. So Budo
is basically poking the American bear right in
the eye. And he's doing it with style. But it
wasn't just diplomacy. There was a war involved
here, too. The 1965 war with India. This is where
we see the hawk side of Budo. He wasn't just
a diplomat. He was an agitator. He was the primary
advocate for something called Operation Gibraltar.
Operation Gibraltar. It sounds like an action
movie title. What was the plan? The plan was
to covertly infiltrate Pakistani troops into
Indian -administered Kashmir to try and incite
an uprising against Indian rule. And Bhutto convinced
President Ayub Khan that India would not dare
to cross the international border in retaliation,
that the whole conflict would just stay contained
in Kashmir. That turned out to be a massive miscalculation.
A colossal miscalculation. India responded by
launching a full -scale attack on Lahore and
Sialkot. right across the international border
it blew up into a full -blown conventional war
and what was the result well both sides claimed
victory but really it was a stalemate and that
stalemate eventually led everyone to the negotiating
table ayub khan went to tashkent in the soviet
union of all places to sign a peace treaty with
india The Tashkent Declaration. Right. And this
treaty basically just restored the status quo.
It was seen by the public in Pakistan as a total
surrender of what had been won on the battlefield.
So people were angry. They were furious. They
had been told by state media that they were winning.
And then suddenly their leader is signing this,
what they saw as a humiliating truce. Budo saw
this public anger and he tapped right into it.
He threw his boss under the bus. He absolutely
did. He resigned from the government and went
public, accusing Ayub Khan of losing at the negotiating
table what the army had won on the field. It
was a masterstroke of populism. He completely
distanced himself from the failure that he, in
large part, helped create. And he rode this wave
of anti -government sentiment. That brings us
to 1967. He's out of government. He's on the
streets. And he founds the Pakistan People's
Party, the PPP. And this is where he changes
the game. Until Budo, politics in Pakistan was
a drawing room affair. It was for the elite,
the landlords, the industrialists. Right. Budo
took it to the masses. He came up with a slogan
that is still to this day the most powerful political
slogan in the country's history. Rodi, Capra,
or Makan. Food, clothing, and shelter. Simple,
primal. It connects with everyone. But the full
manifesto was this potent cocktail. Islam is
our faith. democracy is our policy socialism
is our economy all power to the people that is
a fascinating mix you've got religion democracy
and socialism all wrapped up together it literally
covers every possible base it was revolutionary
for its time He mobilized the peasants in the
fields, the laborers in the factories, the radical
student unions in the cities. He traveled by
train, stopping at these tiny little stations,
rolling up his sleeves. I mean, literally unbuttoning
his collar and screaming himself hoarse. He made
the common man feel like he mattered for the
first time. He was electric. He was completely
electric. So he builds this massive fervent base
in West Pakistan. But then we hit 1970. And this,
this is the pivot point where the story turns
from a political drama into a national tragedy.
The 1970 elections are crucial. This was the
first ever general election held in Pakistan
on the basis of adult franchise. One person,
one vote. And the results were just... stark.
They highlighted the fatal flaw in the country's
geography. Right. Because Pakistan was two wings
west and east, separated by a thousand miles
of India. Exactly. And East Pakistan, what is
now Bangladesh, had a larger population. So in
the elections, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's Awami
League won virtually every single seat in East
Pakistan. So they gave them an absolute majority
in the national parliament. A clear, absolute
majority. So by all democratic rules, Sheikh
Mujib should have been the prime minister of
the entire country. But the power centers in
West Pakistan, the military, the bureaucracy,
and of course, Zulfiqar Ali Budo, they were not
ready to hand over power to a Bengali party.
Not at all. This is where Budo's democratic credentials
take a massive hit in the historical record.
He refused to sit in the opposition. He did.
He famously said that the legs of any party member
who went to the assembly session in Dhaka would
be broken. It was a direct threat. And he used
a phrase that has haunted history ever since.
We rule here, you rule there. Just splitting
the country down the middle. Now, there is some
debate about whether he used those exact words
in a public speech or if it was a headline that
summarized his position. But the sentiment was
undeniable. He was proposing a power showing
formula that had absolutely no basis in the Constitution.
He was telling the majority winner, you can't
rule over us. You have a deadlock, a total political
stalemate. And while the politicians are arguing,
the streets in the East are burning. It just
spirals completely out of control. The military
regime of Yahya Khan decides to solve this political
problem with military force. They launch Operation
Searchlight in March 1971. And what was that?
It was a brutal, horrific military crackdown
in East Pakistan. Sheikh Mujib is arrested. A
civil war erupts. Millions of refugees flee into
India. It's a humanitarian catastrophe. It doesn't
end well for Pakistan. It ends in total disaster.
India intervenes in support of the Bengali rebels.
War breaks out in December 1971. And within two
weeks, the Pakistan army in the east is surrounded.
On December 16, 1971, they surrender. 93 ,000
prisoners of war. Half the country gone. East
Pakistan becomes the independent nation of Bangladesh.
It was a psychological trauma that is hard for
us to overstate. The two -nation theory, the
very founding idea that Muslims of the subcontinent
were one nation, it seemed to collapse overnight.
The military was humiliated. Yahya Khan resigned
in disgrace. He had to. And who steps in to pick
up the pieces? Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. He flies
back from the UN in New York, and on December
20, 1971, he takes over. And here's that paradox
again. He becomes president. But because the
Constitution is suspended, he also becomes the
first and only civilian chief martial law administrator.
So he's a democratically elected leader, but
he's wielding the absolute power of a military
dictator to fix the country. That was his argument.
That it was necessary. The country was broken.
The state itself was on the verge of collapse.
He had to rebuild it from scratch. So what does
that rebuilding look like? I mean, where do you
even begin? He's got 93 ,000 soldiers stuck in
Indian POW camps. He's lost 5 ,000 square miles
of territory in the West. The economy is shattered.
The national morale is at rock bottom. You begin
with diplomacy. His first big test was the Simmel
Agreement in 1972. He goes to India to meet with
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Now, you have to
think about his negotiating position. He has
literally zero leverage. None. India holds all
the cards. They have the land and they have the
prisoners. He has nothing but a defeated army
and a demoralized nation behind him. So how did
he pull it off? Because the notes say he got
the land back and the prisoners back. He played
a brilliant psychological game. He knew that
Indira Gandhi didn't really want a chaotic, collapsing
Pakistan on her border. That would be a security
nightmare for India. Right. A failed state next
door is bad for everyone. Exactly. So he convinced
her that if she humiliated him too much, his
fragile new democratic government would fall
and the crazy generals would come back to power.
He pleaded, he charmed, he threatened. He used
every tool in his arsenal. He used his own weakness
as leverage. Precisely. And it worked. He managed
to secure the return of the 5 ,000 square miles
of territory and set the stage for the eventual
release of all 93 ,000 POWs. And critically,
he did it without compromising on Pakistan's
core stance on Kashmir. It was, objectively,
a masterclass in diplomacy. So he secures the
borders. Now he has to secure the state itself.
Yeah. That brings us to the 1973 Constitution.
This is arguably his most enduring positive legacy.
Pakistan had been struggling to write a viable
constitution for 25 years. It had gone through
multiple versions. Budo managed to get a consensus
document approved by every single political party.
Everyone signed on. The religious right, the
secular left. Everyone. The regional nationalists
from the smaller provinces. Everyone. It was
a moment of national unity. And what did it change?
It established a parliamentary system. which
meant Budo shifted from being president to the
more powerful position of prime minister. But
it also defined the state's religious identity
more sharply. It officially declared Pakistan
an Islamic republic and required that the prime
minister and president must be Muslims. OK. And
then there's the socialism part of his manifesto.
He started nationalizing everything, didn't he?
He did. And this is where the legacy gets really
murky. He wanted to break the monopoly of the
22 families, these wealthy industrial groups
that controlled the vast majority of Pakistan's
economy. So he nationalized steel, chemicals
and cement. Which. You know, for a socialist
agenda, that makes sense. It does. But then he
went further, much further, much further. He
nationalized all the banks, the insurance companies,
and then he went after the small fish. He nationalized
flour mills, rice husking units, even cotton
ginning factories. Wait, wait. So if I owned
a small family run rice mill in a village somewhere,
the government just. Took it over. Yes. And the
government bureaucrats who were sent to run it
had no idea how to run a rice mill. Efficiency
just plummeted. Corruption skyrocketed. And critically,
he alienated the middle class and the small business
owners, the very backbone of the economy. So
it completely backfired. It spooked investors
for decades. It's a policy that many economists
still point to as a major setback for Pakistan's
economic development. So mixed results on the
economy. Put it mildly. But on the global stage,
he was still trying to position Pakistan as a
major leader. Oh, absolutely. The 1974 Islamic
summit in Lahore. This was his show. He hosted
leaders from 37 Muslim countries. The Daffy from
Libya. King Faisal from Saudi Arabia. Yasser
Arafat from the PLO. It was this huge spectacle.
It cemented Bhutto's image as a leader of the
third world and the Islamic bloc. He wanted to
show everyone that even after losing half the
country, Pakistan was still a major player on
the world stage. And to be a major player in
that Cold War era, you needed one specific thing.
We have to talk about the Islamic bomb. We will
eat grass. That quote is just legendary. Pakistan
will fight. Fight for a thousand years. If India
builds the atom bomb, Pakistan will eat grass
or leaves, even go hungry. But we will get one
of our own. It sends shivers down your spine,
doesn't it? The sheer defiance in that statement.
And it wasn't just rhetoric. Bhutto is, without
a doubt, the father of the Pakistani nuclear
program. The notes mention a secret meeting in
the city of Multan in 1972, right after the war.
Yes, the Multan conference. It's almost mythical
now. He gathers the country's top scientists
and engineers. under a tent, literally, and he
asks them one question. Can you give me the bomb?
And what do they say? Well, they hesitate about
the timeline. They say it will take time. It's
complex. He pushes them. He demands it. He tells
them money is no object. And he brings in the
heavy hitters. He brings in Dr. Abdul Qadir Khan
Aq Khan, who was a metallurgist working in Europe
at a sensitive nuclear facility called Urengo.
Khan brought the crucial centrifuge technology
designs needed to enrich uranium. Budo gave these
scientists a blank check and total political
cover. But this wasn't happening in a vacuum.
The U .S. was watching. Oh, very closely. The
U .S. was terrified of nuclear proliferation,
especially in such an unstable region. There's
a famous and frankly chilling account of a meeting
between Budo and the U .S. Secretary of State,
Henry Kissinger, in Lahore. What happened? Kissinger
reportedly warned him, point blank, if you do
not cancel this program, we will make a horrible
example of you. Make a horrible example of you.
That sounds like a threat from a mafia don, not
a diplomat. It shows you the stakes. Budo was
direct. Yeah, he later used that threat from
Kissinger, didn't he? He did. He used it as a
badge of honor, claiming his life was in danger
because he stood up for the Islamic bomb and
for the sovereignty of the Muslim world. So he's
building the bomb. He's rewritten the constitution.
He's nationalized the economy. He seems to be
in total control. But looking at the timeline,
things start to get dark around the mid -70s.
The man of the people starts acting a lot like
the autocrats he replaced. Here's where the Democrat
label starts to seriously fray. streak a mile
wide. He did not handle dissent well. If you
disagreed with him, you weren't just a political
opponent. You were an enemy of the state. The
notes mention a federal security force. What
was that? The FSF. Theoretically, it was a special
federal force to assist the police with serious
crime. In practice, it was Bhutto's private militia.
They were used to harass, intimidate, and even
physically attack political opponents. They broke
up opposition rallies. They abducted critics.
It created a very real climate of fear. And then
there's the situation in the province of Balochistan.
He dismissed the elected provincial government
there, which led to a full -blown insurgency
that lasted from 1973 to 1977. He sent in the
army. It was a brutal, bloody conflict with heavy
casualties on both sides. I have to ask about
the Iraqi embassy raid. That detail in the notes
jumped out at me as just totally bizarre. It's
a fascinating anecdote that really shows his
ruthlessness. In 1973, Budo ordered a raid on
the Iraqi embassy in Islamabad. Now, you don't
just do that. That's technically sovereign territory.
It's a major diplomatic incident. Huge. But his
special forces went in and they found crates
containing 300 submachine guns and thousands
of rounds of ammunition, all hidden in diplomatic
bags. Since they were smuggling weapons via diplomatic
pouch. Yes. The weapons were allegedly destined
for the Baloch separatists. And Budo used this
discovery to justify his military crackdown,
claiming there was a foreign conspiracy to break
up Pakistan. He expelled the Iraqi ambassador
and really just flexed his muscles on the international
stage. Okay, so tensions are extremely high.
We get to 1977. He calls for new elections. He
was confident. He thought he would sweep them.
And on paper, the PPP did win a massive majority.
But the opposition alliance, a coalition called
the PNA, immediately cried foul. They claimed
the election was stolen. Was it rigged? Most
credible historians agree there was significant
rigging. Budo probably would have won anyway,
but his local party leaders wanted to ensure
a clean sweep, so they went overboard. They stuffed
ballot boxes in key constituencies. The scale
of the victory was just too good to be true.
And the reaction. An explosion. Street protests
erupted across the country. But here is the critical
shift. The opposition, which was a mix of parties,
started using religious language. They united
under the demand for Nizam -e -Mustafa, the rule
of the prophet. So they turned it into a religious
crusade against him. Exactly. They attacked Budo
for his drinking, his Western lifestyle. They
painted him as un - Islamic as an enemy of the
faith. And Bhutto tries to negotiate, right?
He does. He backpedals. He bans alcohol. He closes
nightclubs. He declares Friday as the weekly
holiday instead of Sunday, all in an attempt
to appease the religious right. But it was too
little, too late. It was blood in the water.
The chaos in the streets gave the military the
perfect pretext they needed to step in. Enter
General Zia -ul -Haq. The man Budo appointed.
And this is the great tragic irony. Budo had
skipped over five, some say seven, senior generals
to appoint Zia as the chief of army staff. Why
Zia? What did he see in him? He saw someone who
appeared to be totally apolitical. Zia was outwardly
religious. He was humble. He seemed subservient.
Budo famously and dismissively called him his
monkey general in private circles, thinking this
was a man he could easily control. He thought
Zia was safe. Talk about a miscalculation. A
fatal one. On July 5, 1977, General Zia launches
Operation Fair Play. He declares martial law.
Budo is arrested in the middle of the night from
his residence. But Zia says he's just going to
hold elections in 90 days and leave, right? That
was the initial promise. That was the promise,
90 days. But Zia quickly realized something that
must have terrified him. The intelligence reports
were showing that despite all the protests, The
PPP was still massively popular. If he held free
and fair elections, Budo might actually win again.
And if Budo wins? Zia is a dead man. Budo would
have him tried for treason under Article 6 of
the Constitution, the very Constitution that
Budo himself wrote. As the famous saying went
at the time, There is only one grave for two
men. Wow. Zia decided it wasn't going to be his
grave. So Budo has to go. But you can't just
shoot a former prime minister. You need a legal
justification. This leads to the murder charge.
The Ghazouri case. This goes back to 1974. A
rogue politician and a former Budo ally, a man
named Ahmed Raza Ghazouri, was ambushed in his
car in Lahore. Ghazouri himself survived, but
his father, Noab Mohammed Hamid Khan Ghazouri,
who was in the car with him, was killed in the
gunfire. And Ghazouri blamed Budo from the start.
Immediately. He went to the police station and
filed a report claiming Budo was the mastermind.
because Kasiri had been a vocal critic of his
in Parliament. The case had gone cold for years.
Zia revived it. And how did they pin it on Butoh?
What was the evidence? The star witness was the
former director of the FSF, that private militia
we talked about, a man named Masood Mahmood.
He was arrested, and he was basically offered
a deal. Turn state's witness against Butoh, testify
that Butoh ordered the hit, and we will pardon
you. And he took the deal. He took the deal.
His testimony was the cornerstone of the prosecution's
case. The trial itself. The notes call it a judicial
murder. That is the term history has settled
on, and for good reason. It was held in the Lahore
High Court. The bench was headed by a chief justice,
Malvi Mushtaq, who was known to have a deep personal
grudge against Buto Buto, had passed him over
for a promotion years earlier. So the judge was
biased from the outset. The whole atmosphere
was hostile. Buto was insulted in court. He was
placed in a dock like a common criminal. international
observers were watching this. Right. Like who?
The former U .S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark
witnessed parts of the proceedings and called
them a complete sham, totally biased. But it
didn't matter. The verdict came down. Guilty.
Sentenced to death. He appealed to the Supreme
Court. He did. And this is where it gets just
agonizingly close. The Supreme Court was deeply,
deeply divided. In the end, the conviction was
upheld by the narrowest possible margin. Four
to three. One vote. One single vote decided the
fate of the country's most popular, most consequential
leader. That is incredibly heavy. It's staggering
to think about. Did he ask for mercy? Did he
plead with Xia? No. Budo was a man of immense
pride. To him, that would have been the ultimate
humiliation. He refused to plead for mercy from
a dictator he considered an illegitimate usurper.
He spent his final days in a squalid death cell
in Rawalpindi, writing his final political testament,
a book called If I Am Assassinated. The world
must have reacted. I mean, leaders around the
globe must have been calling for clemency. The
world begged for his life. Leonid Brezhnev from
the Soviet Union, the Chinese leadership, the
Saudi King, the Pope, even U .S. President Jimmy
Carter appealed directly to Zia for clemency.
They all said, don't do this, exile him, imprison
him for life, but don't hang him. But Zia ignored
them all. He did. He was convinced that if Bhutto
lived, Zia would die. It was that simple for
him. On the morning of April 4th, 1979, Zulfiqar
Ali Bhutto was hanged at Rawalpindi District
Jail. The notes mention his last words. Reportedly,
as he was led to the gallows, he said, Oh, Lord,
help me, for I am innocent. They cut him down,
flew his body to his ancestral village in Sindh,
and buried him in the family graveyard before
the country even woke up. It's just such a heavy
ending. Zia must have thought that by killing
the man, he would kill the movement. And he could
not have been more wrong. His death made Bhutto
a martyr. The ghost of Bhutto haunted Zia for
his entire 11 -year rule. The PPP remained a
massive political force. And his daughter, Benazir
Bhutto, picked up the mantle. She did. She struggled
against the dictatorship, she suffered imprisonment
and exile, and eventually became the first female
prime minister of a Muslim country in 1988, right
after Zia died in a plane crash. And tragically,
she was assassinated too, years later. The Budo
family history is just steeped in blood and politics.
It's often compared to the Kennedys in the U
.S., the glamour, the power, and what seems like
a curse. But let's go back to that 2024 Supreme
Court opinion we mentioned at the start. What
exactly happened there? Why bring this up 45
years later? It was a presidential reference,
a legal question filed years ago that finally
got a proper hearing. And the Supreme Court of
Pakistan, in a formal opinion, officially acknowledged
the deep flaws in the judicial process of 1979.
So they didn't overturn the verdict because you
can't, but they admitted it was wrong. They essentially
admitted that the trial was not fair, that due
process was manipulated and that the judges were
not acting independently. In spirit, yes, they
admitted it was a wrongful execution. It's a
historic correction. It came 45 years too late
to save his life, but for his family and his
party, it was a vindication they had been fighting
for for half a century. So if we zoom out, how
do we sum up the legacy of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto?
It's a legacy that is cleaved right down the
middle, just like the country was in 1971. To
his supporters, the Jialas, as they're called.
He is the hero who gave the poor a voice, who
gave the country its only consensus constitution,
and who gave the nation the ultimate security
guarantee, the nuclear bomb. He put Pakistan
on the map. And to his critics. To his critics,
he was a feudal autocrat hiding in Democratic
clothing, a man who was dangerously intolerant
of opposition, whose economic policies ruined
the middle class, and whose refusal to share
power in 1971 was the primary catalyst for the
breakup of the country. It's amazing how one
person can be both of those things at the same
time. That's the nature of these huge transformational
figures. They don't fit into neat little boxes.
He was brilliant and he was deeply flawed. He
built institutions and he undermined them. Here's
a question that's been nagging me as we've talked.
We discussed the nuclear program and that famous
eat grass quote. Do you think South Asian geopolitics
would look fundamentally different today if he
hadn't pushed for that bomb? Oh, completely.
Without that nuclear deterrence, the power dynamic
between India and Pakistan would be vastly different.
Pakistan's strategic behavior, its confidence,
its alliances. All of it hinges on that nuclear
capability that Budo initiated. Whether you think
the bomb is a good thing or a bad thing, you
cannot deny that he fundamentally altered the
strategic DNA of the entire region. And one final
thought to leave our listeners with. We talk
about 1971, the great what if. Yes, the great
counterfactual of Pakistani history. If Zulfiqar
Ali Budo had just accepted the results of the
1970 election, if he had been willing to sit
on the opposition benches and let Sheikh Majid
become prime minister. Pakistan might still be
one united country today. Bangladesh might not
exist. The map of South Asia would look completely
different. The lives of hundreds of millions
of people would be different. And it's a haunting
question that really highlights the terrible,
terrible cost of political ambition. Something
to chew on. We've covered a lot of ground today,
from the halls of Oxford to the death cell in
Rawalpindi. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, a man who lived
fast, aimed high, and paid the ultimate price.
A fascinating and tragic deep dive into a life
that shaped history. Thanks for listening everyone.
We'll catch you on the next one.