A week before her death, travelling through the same lowland towns of the North-West Frontier province of Pakistan that are now half-buried under mud, Benazir Bhutto said to me: "Pakistan has changed Mr Burke, Pakistan has changed. And I need to learn about it once more."
Bhutto had returned to her native land three months earlier and after an eight-year exile, a comeback in large measure due to arm-twisting by the Bush administration's top officials and the British Foreign Office. With characteristic brio, she had thrown herself into campaigning for scheduled elections. Her comments came after she had halted her armoured vehicle to plunge into a market in the scruffy town of Pabbi to buy oranges. "I need to know the price of vegetables," she had told me as we got back into her vehicle. "I need to know about my people."
Read Full Article »