Whatever Benazir Bhutto’s failings as a politician, there was no denying the fact that she was a woman of great courage. This was not necessarily a quality acquired during her nearly two-decade-long participation in the rough and tumble of Pakistani politics. Courage seemed to come in her genes.

I was witness to this quality when she first entered politics in the mid-1980s only a few years after her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged by Gen Zia ul-Haq.

She was 35 years old when she launched her national campaign for the 1988 general elections with a 20-hour train journey from her political bastion of Karachi to Lahore, the citadel of Pakistan’s military and bureaucratic ruling elite.

Benazir was challenging this elite, and seeking to reclaim her father’s political legacy. It was soon apparent that she was evoking a tremendous response right across Pakistan. All through the night and the next morning, the train was besieged by hundreds of thousands of dishevelled, frenzied men screaming “Jiye Bhutto!”.

I was seated at the entrance to her railway coach, sharing a coupe´ with a senior Pakistani journalist who was her adviser. At every halt, Benazir would briskly walk past us and, standing unprotected at the narrow entrance door, address the massive, uncontrollably excited crowd that swamped not just her coach but the entire train, the platform and even the roof at every railway station. (Beside her stood her ever-faithful assistant Naheed Khan, who was also next to her when she was killed on Thursday.)

... contd.