Benazir Bhutto aspired to be a journalist: Hamid Mir

On the death anniversary of Benazir Bhutto – Pakistan’s only female prime minister and world’s first Muslim premier – Senior journalist Hamid Mir reflected on their last meeting. Speaking in HUM News’ morning show, Mir shares details of his last encounter with ‘BB’ before her tragic assassination on December 27, 2007.

“She was a very brave woman. She was one of the few Pakistani politicians from whom we truly learned a lot,” Mir said. Here is how Hamid Mir remembers the woman who shaped Pakistan’s politics and the legacy she left on the historical landscape:

“In her last days, she repeatedly said that she had come back to Pakistan to die. She knew she would be assassinated here but she said she didn’t want to die away from Pakistan.”

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“I still remember the final time I met her. It is still a painful memory for me,” Mir said of the time in 2007 when Pervez Musharraf was the president of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto was in exile and Hamid Mir was barred from being shown on screen. “In November of 2007, [Benazir Bhutto] called me early in the morning for breakfast at Zardari house. The weather was very cold but she had set up the breakfast table out in the garage, in the car porch.”

“She told me, with conviction, that she will be killed. And she wanted me to investigate her murder.”

Mir recalls the conversation where Benazir Bhutto said that she would leave a letter with Hamid Mir naming those she believed posed a threat to her life. “We discussed many names, and then the name of CNN journalist Wolf Blitzer came up as the right person to keep the letter and to investigate.”

“Then she decided to give the letter to [American author and publisher] Mark Siegel. She said that if something happened to her, Siegel will tell Blitzer.” Mir recalls BB asking him to ‘expose’ it too if something were to happen to her.

“It is at that time when I said ‘if you’re so sure that they will kill you, why don’t you leave the country for a while? To this she said that she came back here to die.”

Hamid Mir shared that he was not in favour of her negotiating with the military dictator-president at the time. “She was in negotiations with the then-Musharraf government and I opposed it, because I thought that it won’t benefit her. A senior member of [BB’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)] Naseerullah Babar also thought the same. But other PPP leaders were in favor of the negotiations. But when BB came back to Pakistan in 2007 and there was an attack on her in Karachi, then she told me that I was right.”

The PPP govt that came in the name of BB, after her assassination, tried a lot to punish those behind her killing, Mir said, adding, “But it failed due to multiple reasons. I believe that the state has not done justice to her. PPP has failed to get her justice.”

She wouldn’t approve of military courts

Speaking on what he thinks she would have done in today’s political climate, Mir said, “If you see being in power as the only goal of politics, then Zardari’s politics has been very successful. But if BB’s political views are to be looked at, then I will not hesitate to say that she would have never become part of a government that is using military courts to get back at the political opponents.”

“Because she had herself been a victim of military courts,” Mir recalls.

Also read: Another missing person ‘found’ in military court

She predicted correctly what Imran Khan would do

“When Imran Khan was holding discussions for making a party, I met with Asif Zardari and BB. She said to me “Do you know your friend Imran Khan wants to make a political party?” I said, “I met with him and advised him to stay away from politics. I told him that it’s not your job”.

“BB then asked me what Imran had said, and I told her that he said ‘Your advice is correct and I will act on it’. BB laughed out loud at my answer and said, “No no no he is lying. He will definitely announce a new political party.” I said that “If you think so, I believe it’s his right to make a party but I don’t think he will”.

“Merely days later, Imran announced his party [Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf].”

Several days later when I met her, she said, “Sometimes your news is correct, sometimes mine is”.

She wanted to be a journalist

Being able to correctly predict what Imran Khan would have done in politics was not by chance. It aligned with her career ambitions as well.

Hamid Mir shared that back in 1975-1976, Benazir Bhutto wanted to be a journalist. “She also started a program on PTV called Encounter where she’d invite guests and interview them,” he said, adding, “but the circumstances brought her into politics.”