Not far from the ruins of the ancient city of Mohenjo-Daro lies Benazir Bhutto’s feudal estate of Larkhana. In this backward and arid region amid the dry salt flats of the Indus plain, Bhutto’s family have long been the most prominent land owners, and the area is witness to many of the Borgia-like feuds that distinguish the lives of Pakistan’s feudal elite.

The last time I visited the estate, in 1994, a convoy from the house of Begum Bhutto — Benazir’s mother — to her husband’s grave had just been shot at by police, leading to the deaths of three of the family’s retainers. Begum was in no doubt that the police were acting to support Benazir.

Soon afterwards, there was the funeral of Benazir’s brother Murtaza, who had just returned to Pakistan to try to oust his sister from control of the family’s political wing, the Pakistan People’s party. He died, along with six of his supporters, in a hail of police bullets, yards from his front door. Many pointed the finger of suspicion at Benazir and her husband was later charged with complicity in the murder.

This week Bhutto has been doing the rounds of the television studios announcing her imminent return to Pakistan. Representing herself as the face of Pakistani liberal democracy, she has had an astonishingly smooth ride from interviewers.

But the distinction between democracy and military rule is not quite as sharp as Bhutto likes to imply. Behind Pakistan’s swings between military government and democracy lies a surprising continuity of interests: to some extent, the industrial, military, landowning, and bureaucratic elites are all interrelated and look after one another. The current negotiations between Musharraf and Bhutto are typical of the way that the civil and military elites have shared power with little reference to the electorate.

Real democracy has never thrived here, at least in part because landowning remains the principal social base from which politicians can emerge. The educated middle class is in Pakistan still largely excluded from the political process. It is this as much as anything else that has fuelled the growth of the Islamists.

According to the political scientist Ayesha Siddiqa, “The military and the political parties have all failed to create an environment where the poor can get what they need from the state. So the poor have begun to look to alternatives for justice. In the long term, flaws in the system will create more room for the fundamentalists.”

Pakistan today in many ways resembles pre-revolutionary Iran. A cosmopolitan middle class is prospering, yet for the great majority of poorer Pakistanis life remains intolerably hard and access to justice or education is a distant hope. Healthcare and other social services for the poor have been neglected, in contrast to the public services that benefit the wealthy, such as airports.

Secular democracy will only flourish in Pakistan if space is created for secular politicians from non-feudal backgrounds who represent the grassroots: the Pakistani equivalents of India’s dalit (untouchable) leader Mayawati, or Laloo Prasad Yadav. Until then, if Pakistanis only have a choice between the inter-related feudal and military elites, the growth of the Islamist parties will continue, and the country’s violent upheavals can only escalate. — The Guardian