The return of Benazir Bhutto from the political dead has been wondrous to behold. Ten years ago, her name was mud around the world: she had been sacked as prime minister; her brother had been gunned down by her own police force; her husband was in prison on corruption charges; and her Swiss bank accounts had been frozen at the request of the Pakistan government. When the heroine of the struggle against the dictatorship of Zia ul-Haq visited Britain, government ministers failed to return her calls.

A decade on, she is the darling of the western media once more, leading the opposition to another US-backed military ruler and somehow, at the same time, the last hope of the US and British governments of keeping a grip on the upheaval now engulfing Pakistan. As she was told by a senior US official in the late 1990s: “We can whitewash you in 24 hours if we need to.” But events are not playing out as the Washington choreographers intended.

The sweetheart deal they stitched together between the former Pakistani prime minister and the shopworn dictator was intended to produce a power-sharing arrangement which would keep the army on side but offer some modicum of legitimacy to General Musharraf’s discredited rule. For Bhutto, it offered a route back to

power and the dropping of corruption

cases against her. Many in her Pakistan People’s party naturally balked at this backchannel accommodation with the enemy. But in private meetings with her closest supporters, she recalled that her more radical father had been hanged “in the night, like Saddam Hussein” for his defiance of the US and that this was the way to get back and do something for the country. Her presence in Pakistan, she assured them, would create a new dynamic.

Which it certainly has, if perhaps not quite as her western sponsors intended. Musharraf’s declaration of martial law barely two weeks after Bhutto’s tumultuous and blood-drenched return to Karachi was a last throw of the dice to stop the newly assertive supreme court striking down his rigged re-election — whatever the general’s claims about its importance for fighting terrorism in the Waziristan badlands. But the impact of the violent crackdown, the arrest of thousands of political activists, the closure of independent TV stations and the street confrontations with striking lawyers have transformed the political situation and united the opposition to the dictatorship. Bhutto’s response this week has been to mobilise her party machine behind the protest movement, abandon all talk of negotiation, insist she would now not serve as prime minister under the general, and call for Musharraf to go. By doing so, she has staunched her loss of support over the perception that she was propping up the dictator, and put herself once again at the head of a popular democratic movement. Despite having insisted earlier this year that she would do no such thing, she has even appealed to the leader of the country’s Islamist coalition, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, to join a common front against the dictatorship. Unsurprisingly, there is still scepticism about whether Bhutto’s break with Musharraf is final and the protests, dominated so far by the middle class and party activists, have yet to draw in wider mass support.

If ever there were a country begging for a radical social transformation, Pakistan is surely it. This is a state whose potential has been ruthlessly stunted by feudal land ownership and parasitic moneymen, where a third of its 160 million people go hungry and 44% are living below the poverty line, where half the population is illiterate and barely one in two girls goes to school. Such conditions demand a sweeping programme of land reform and public investment in social welfare, health and education. Instead, Pakistan gets corrupt, knockdown privatisations, and most western aid goes straight to the army. Bhutto has at least been arguing the case for large-scale public welfare programmes paid for through deficit financing. But given her record in power, there is much cynicism about such commitments, while no other mainstream political force offers a genuine social alternative.

Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Pakistan’s former high commissioner (ambassador) in London and long-time Bhutto confidant, said he believed Musharraf would be gone within a week. If so, Bhutto and the other traditional political leaders will struggle to meet the pent-up demand for change they will inherit, and the extent of her commitments to the US will be put to the test.

For all her rhetoric, there is no reason to imagine that a Bhutto-led civilian government will make any more headway than Musharraf in the unpopular military campaign he is waging for the US in the Talibanised tribal areas. However, if Hasan proves over-optimistic and Musharraf digs in with American support, the possibility of a wider popular uprising is likely to grow — and with it, the chance of real and necessary political change. — The Guardian