Last of Pakistan’s ‘Old Guard’ Ready for Conflict With Another Bhutto

PESHAWAR, Pakistan —  The aging retired general took a long drag on his English cigarette and contemplated the end of his era.

“I am the only one left from the old guard,” mused Fazle Haq, long the undisputed ruler of Pakistan’s rugged North-West Frontier province and the only surviving army officer who had joined the late President Zia ul-Haq in his military coup 11 years ago.

It was Wednesday, election night. Haq was trying to relax in his comfortable home. And Benazir Bhutto, whose father was overthrown and later executed as a result of the coup that Haq had helped engineer, was on the verge of a historic victory.

But Haq, who retired from the Pakistani army to enter politics six years ago, hung tough.

Scores to Settle

“Naturally she would like to settle scores with me,” Haq said with a smile as he discussed the dramatic and imminent victory of the late Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s 35-year-old daughter.

“But I am ready for it. I am quite willing to face anyone--even Benazir. My conscience is quite clear, and I’m proud of my achievements. I’d be willing to face her at any time and in any place.”

On Thursday, it appeared certain that the arena will be the nation’s newly elected legislature, a 237-member body brought to office in Wednesday’s unprecedentedly peaceful and fair balloting, an event that could change the face of politics in Pakistan for years.

With the vote counting complete and Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party controlling 92 of the 205 seats at stake in the National Assembly, President Ghulam Ishaq Khan was still deciding whether Bhutto’s near-majority is sufficient to warrant her nomination to the post of prime minister.

Zia’s Legacy Dead

What was certain, however, is that tens of millions of Pakistani voters stated in unequivocal terms that the Zia legacy, 11 years of often-harsh rule by the military leader, is dead.

Under Pakistan’s complex constitution, Benazir Bhutto may yet be denied power despite her apparent victory. But already it is clear that the old guard of Zia’s followers has fallen.

“It is a changing of the guard,” observed one senior Western diplomat who analyzed the intricacies of the election Thursday. “The old guard is dying.”

In droves, the voters turned away many of the old guard. In contests nationwide, there were resounding defeats for all but two members of Zia’s Cabinet--many of them powerful political lords and trusted lieutenants who continued to rule after their leader’s death. Zia, along with most of the officers who joined him in the 1977 coup, was killed in a still-mysterious air crash last Aug. 17. The U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan was also killed in the crash.

Even the Pir of Pagaro, a traditional Muslim religious leader who once served as Zia’s personal religious adviser, was badly beaten by Bhutto’s People’s Party candidate.

Zia’s information minister, his minister of religious affairs and his powerful interior minister were defeated by huge margins, as was Mohammed Khan Junejo, who served under Zia as prime minister for more than three years before Zia dissolved the government last May.

Somehow, though, Fazle Haq survived. He narrowly won in a remote and conservative district along the Himalayan border between Pakistan and China, a strategy one diplomat termed “being in the right constituency at the right time.” And even then, Haq’s driver conceded that his boss had traveled more than 10,000 miles on the campaign trail in the past month to bring off the victory.

Long rumored to be a powerful baron in the frontier’s multibillion-dollar heroin trade, Haq was nonetheless a hero to the U.S. government for his ability to control the heavily armed Pushtun and Afreddi tribes along the province’s strategic border with neighboring Afghanistan.

But despite Haq’s own victory, the conservative, nine-party ruling alliance that he had helped cobble together as an “anybody-but-Benazir” coalition, won just half the number of seats that Bhutto’s People’s Party captured in the nationwide returns.

On the eve of his party’s crushing defeat, Haq was not only stoic but deeply analytical--and, it appeared, more than a bit concerned for his nation’s future.

Predicting accurately that no party would win a clear majority of the 205 seats at stake on Wednesday (the remaining 32 members will be appointed or elected later), Haq said: “I’m afraid the type of government I see in the making will be a very weak government . . . because the absolute majority will not be possible.

Haq Clearly Worried

“What that means is, in order to form a majority, the largest party will have to join with a minority party that won just 10 or 12 seats, and that small party, representing only a narrow group of people, then will be able to dictate the future course of government.”

But Haq clearly was worried for other reasons as well. A tough and highly respected military commander who since his retirement has run the key province adjacent to war-torn Afghanistan, first as governor and later as chief minister, Haq has what political analysts call “the personal dimension.”

The focus of his concern was a living ghost--Benazir’s late father, who is remembered with mixed emotions by most Pakistanis.

Tainted Vote Cited

During her recent monthlong barnstorming campaign, Benazir Bhutto glorified her father as a martyr who was hanged by tyrants. However, most historians and analysts have also stressedZulfikar Ali Bhutto’s more Machiavellian tendencies, citing tainted national elections and the charge that led to his trial and execution--that of conspiring to murder a political opponent.

And Fazle Haq remembers him with perhaps the least amount of affection.

“Her father called himself a prophet of democracy, but he was a tyrant,” Haq recalled, lighting another cigarette in his huge sitting room on election night.

‘Fair and Foul’

“He used all means, fair and foul, to suppress anyone who stood on his spot. He prostituted the constitution . . . and he suffered for what he did. He was hanged by the judges of the Lahore High Court.

“Of course, Benazir now is projecting the image that she is the aggrieved party. Well, people are beginning to realize that she is not all she claimed to be. The acid test will be the results tonight.”

But just hours before the early returns began showing Bhutto’s commanding lead, Haq added quietly that he has never met the daughter of his old enemy. Now, when they do meet, it is a strong possibility that it is Haq who will be on the side of the minority.

“But I assure you,” he said, still smiling, “I will sleep well tonight.”