When 19-year-old Bilawal Bhutto Zardari took over as the leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) soon after the assassination of his mother, Benazir Bhutto, it evoked an uneasy sense of deja vu for the leader of Kashmir’s largest separatist grouping, Hurriyat Conference, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq. For it was exactly at the age of 19 that Mirwaiz also became the head priest and Kashmir’s principal spiritual figure, after the political murder of his father Molvi Farooq.

“I see in Bilawal a bit of myself. He reminds me of my own traumatic experience,” Mirwaiz said about Bilawal while recalling his own takeover speech at Eidgah, Kashmir’s largest prayer ground, on the fourth day of his father’s assassination. “I had said I would follow my father’s footsteps. And I would urge Bilawal to do the same”.

His advice to Bilawal is to “be a bigger challenge to your mother’s killers and a bigger hurdle to their designs”. He also wants him to follow in toto the Benazir’s bold agenda for Pakistan. “I wish him to follow her vision for her country to be a modern Islamic state, free of terrorism and the forces leading the country towards anarchy,” Mirwaiz said. And of course, he would wish Bilawal to toe his mother’s “flexible policy” on Kashmir if not Musharraf’s four point proposals. “Benazir was more flexible than Musharraf. She was a very moderate person, against violence in Kashmir and not averse to new ideas on the settlement of the dispute”.

In fact, Mirwaiz said that in the last night telephone call he was told by the PPP’s new prime ministerial candidate Makhdoom Amin Fahim that his party would go ahead with “whatever All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) decides for Kashmir”. And Fahim is also among the advisors that Mirwaiz would like Bilawal to turn to, besides Sherry Rehman and Ahtizaz Ahsan, two PPP leaders.

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