Bhutto’s fractured family

Fatima Bhutto, the niece of Benazir Bhutto, knows something about dysfunctional families, says Allegra Donn in British Harper’s Bazaar. When the 25-year-old author and activist first heard last December that her aunt had been assassinated, she was catapulted back to 1996 and the killing of her father, Murtaza—Benazir’s younger brother. “My immediate reaction was shock. It was too familiar. It was awful. It was like reliving my father’s murder. It feels like every 10 years we bury a member of this family, and not from natural causes.” Fatima’s grief was complicated by the fact that she long suspected Benazir of having had a hand in her father’s death, when she was prime minister. Murtaza had criticized the corruption of Benazir’s government, and had formed his own splinter party to oppose her; on his way home from a rally, he was killed in a fusillade of bullets. When a tribunal concluded that the government was somehow complicit in the assassination, Fatima turned on her aunt. “I confronted her in a letter, saying she had failed to protect my father, and she didn’t like that. That letter was the last contact I had with Benazir. I last saw her 11 years ago.” The two were estranged for the rest of Benazir’s life, but Fatima is letting go of her anger. “I knew two Benazirs. One, when she was prime minister, and the other, the young, struggling, brave woman who did what she thought was right. That is the one I like to remember.”

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