Asif Ali Zardari: Outside the boundaries of judgment! (The Interview)

A deeper insight on the former Pakistani president, Asif Ali Zardari

Upon arriving, Zardari, pleasantly shook my hand (I noted his grip was light and reassuring), and the man himself was incredibly hospitable; “I apologise that the room is unpleasantly warm, but this is due to central heating of the hotel room” He stood and opened the windows, casually commenting on the weather, noting the whiff of cold air that entered the room. I told him it has taken me 2 years to get in touch with him, a bit surprised, he jokingly commented saying, “You must have been knocking the wrong doors.” Many are faced with the dilemma of the difficulty of reaching people in power, or the elites which rule the country, but this is due to the barriers that their staff and PR teams create, as once you reach these people, you find them as normal and vulnerable like you and I or anyone else. Zardari seemed very kind and relaxed, offering beverages and making small talk with my children.


Introductions aside, he asked what I do, and when I mentioned I am a political scientist, he jokingly remarked “Oh! Political scientist! I’m scared now!” “The whole world of international politics is conspiratory”. On a more serious note, he commented that dimensions of politics today has created the region of Pakistan and Afghanistan into a volatile place, and mentioned that when he went to Afghanistan in the 60s, “it was the Dubai of our region. I went in 67, it was like going to Dubai, and you could just go there with a card at the border post. Good hotels, shops on the streets, best hospital service, you could go out and see movies. I felt sick and I got diagnosed with malaria, in Afghanistan in 1967. A Kabuli was basically a businessman, everywhere he went, a Kabuli went he sold next year’s clothes to you”.

As one of his assistants served tea, another set up their own recording system, as the president had previously been misquoted this morning about his accommodation, he exclaimed and laughed, “This is not my flat – THIS IS RENTED, look at the Pakistani media, who said that Maulana Fazal-ur-Rahman met me in my flat. Look at this! This is a hotel apartment. You can only rent it”. Thus the official interview began.
I asked, “Bhutto’s quest was to make Pakistan strong by making it become the first Muslim country which would utilize ‘smart power’ through a policy of “Peace through strength”. However, Pakistan’s image is tarnished throughout the international community as a ‘rogue state’ harbouring terrorism. What were your efforts in office to improve Pakistan’s international image?”. After a few second, he thoughtfully responded, “I think Bhutto, if you read his book; ‘If I am assassinated’, he says “if I am assassinated, the Himalayas will cry”. Now when a philosopher or politician or international politician talks about the Himalayas crying, he is not talking about the fact that blood will be reaping out our of veins, it’s the circumstances that are created after.

And that is exactly what happened, when Mr Bhutto was assassinated, Zia ul Haq was in power, and if you do the research you will discover that there was not one Afghan and not one Pakistani willing to become (a terrorist), or blow himself up. They were willing, the Kashmiri Jihadis and other Jihadis. Our part of the world, we could be aggressive but not blow ourselves up. You couldn’t find one person wanting to do that. And today you find them blowing themselves up from Africa, all the way to Syria, Kashmir, even for example, Rajiv Ghandi was blown up by a lady who touched his feet”.


I inquired them who was responsible for this shift in the nature of the people, and very diplomatically he remarked “We can not place the responsibility on individuals but times. Zia Ul Haq, when he came into power, he found this (instrumentalising Islam) as an excuse to fight Bhuttoism, as that had meant democracy… he created these monsters (terrorist groups).” “When Musharraf came into power, I was happy. I said now, this will be the last marshal law, because you can’t survive 2 or 3 years (under it). I had been in prison 3 years and I said he won’t be able to survive but then 9/11 happened. I had compartmentalised and thought about everything, even Osama Bin Laden, because there were exercises going on in Oman”.
Going back to the phrase Bhutto used, “Peace through strength”, he gave the idea of Pakistan as a Smart Power, Zardari elaborated, “Bhutto had vision of ahead his time.... He was talking about modernisation. All the Arabs were shifting to Karachi, buying houses, they still have houses in defense so he was bringing them. Beirut was basically falling apart and Lebanon was falling apart so he was bringing in an alternative concept and then of course his dream was the nuclear power. And he started it when he was science and technology minister, he started it with Kanup, which was 4-8 MW of nuclear energy but for that, what happened is that the faculty of nuclear sciences was being evolved at universities and did not evolve this far ahead (In Pakistan)”.

Expanding the question, I asked, “This is the same Pakistan when you were talking about Afghanistan being liberal so why did Bhutto’s image of a modern Pakistan Tarnish?”. To this, he quickly responded, “It hasn’t tarnished, people who believe in Bhuttoism to date, they believe and have been believing for last 40 years and have always been with us but the megalomaniac intelligence services under Zia ul Haq, who produced all sorts of reports, all sorts of false images, they tried to spoil our image so that we could not get votes so that in the 18-month government (we had under Benazir), we couldn’t do anything. But even then so she delivered”.

Given the subject of the late Benazir Bhutto had come up, I stated “I interviewed Dr Liam Fox last year, he writes in his book, about his conversation with Benazir Bhutto, that she says “they will kill me” and he asks who are they and she says "The ISI", so did she ever discuss these concerns with you?”. He took time to contemplate this question, and carefully proceeded, saying “There is a ISI in power and an ISI out of power. Basically what I call them, are the non-state actors. These are like the Hamid Gul… they want conspiracies, which either don’t exist or they want them to exist in their own format and they in that philosophy or that think tank, come up with theories, which are totally stupid and undo-able”. “When I was arrested for the first time, who do you think was interrogating me? The ISI. The second time, again who was interrogating me? For 3 days at a time, I then took up fasting and no drinking water, nothing (to avoid interrogations) and they were 24/7 doing my interrogations”.
I wanted to ask more but as this appeared to be a touchy subject, I changed the subject and simply asked whether he was a feminist, to which he quickly (and rather joyfully) responded;

“Yes I am a Feminist! Don't you see that Asifa is Ambassador in the campaign to eradicate Polio from Pakistan Under my reign, I had a female foreign minister and a female Speaker”.

This nicely lead on to my next question; “So in your tenure, Pakistan had a female Foreign Minister and a very active ambassador in the United States who enhanced Pakistan’s image as a utiliser of ‘soft power’ (instead of the largely unfavourable ‘hard power’), but now Pakistan seems to be badly failing in its diplomatic dealings with the United States. We are seemingly constantly whipped to ‘do more’ in our efforts against terrorism; where do you think Nawaz Sharif has failed in his foreign policy when he seems to be acting as both the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister?” he chuckled and responded, “Well, first of all, he hasn’t even appointed a Foreign Minister so people can’t get to the Prime Minster 24/7”. “He is answerable as the Foreign Minister as well. I ask him, if you have not appointed a foreign minister then the foreign ministry lies with you, all the failures of the foreign policy as it is your domain”. He elaborated that the people that make up the foreign policies “claim to have love and affection for Pakistan but they do not understand the importance of Pakistan, they do not understand the creation of Pakistan, they do not understand what it would mean for a state of 300 million people to fail”.
Realising the population number was larger than what the current census number is, he laughed and clarified why he said 300 million. “I say 300 billion. 179 million what they have wrongly recorded. We just went into Bajor, there was a gentlemen with 2 wives and 27 children and this was undocumented by the census. There are places in Karachi that Kyani refused to go – he says that we can’t go, and those are overpopulated by refugees or migrants no one knows about”.
Moving on, I stated “The people of Pakistan have a history of struggle against military dictatorships; as was the case under the dictatorships of General Zia and General Musharraf. Despite this, why is it that support for the military is growing in Pakistan? Is it because people have become disillusioned with politicians and democracy?”
He contemplated and answered “It is in the interest of those non-state actors, and some people in the intelligence agencies and some rogue ex state actors and right-wing (authoritarian) policies – the right-wing blocks that are growing… and the right-wing mind set is increasing. The fear factor is this, everything is evolving around the fear factor. There is no such thing as indigenous ideas, even the defense minister of every country is running on fear factor so that they can increase the defence budget”. So I asked whether there is a proper institutionalised foreign policy maker, so he just said “Depending on what policy they are talking about, our relations with China have been the same since 1962. And in fact in my time it grew with greater commercial ties”. Which it rightly did, Zardari had more visits to China than any other president before him, so I mentioned he hasn’t got credit for it, and he smugly added, “But I don’t need the credit”.

I mentioned I wrote an article on him after attending a lecture on 2012, about him being judged and being labelled as Benazir Bhutto’s husband, so he quipped; “I carry it (The husband of Bhutoo label) with pride. You know I went to the UN and my PR man, he tells me you’re the president, you don’t need this, I said I need it, so I put up her (Benazir’s) picture there on the desk and showed it to the world; that she died for you”. Noting the sentiment in his voice, I remarked, “People cry for her, I’ve seen people cry for her. Dr Liam Fox nearly cried when I interviewed him”.

Going back to feminism (and hoping to lighten the mood before my next question), I brought up the fact that Nawaz Sharif promoted an anti-feministic image while Benazir was in power and that now he happens to be promoting his own daughter in politics so Zardari simply identified that Mr Sharif promoting his daughter is him carrying through Benazir Bhutto’s legacy, and he was completely in favour of it.
Carrying on a serious note, I finally asked about terrorism, “Mullah Mansour was recently killed in Pakistan, Osama bin Laden was also killed in Pakistan and Mullah Omar is also believed to have died in Pakistan. Because of this the international media is treating Pakistan as a ‘bedrock’ of international terrorism. Despite all of this, Pakistan refuses to acknowledge that it is a nursing ground of terrorism. What is your position on this matter as a former head of state?”. To this statement, he just exclaimed “Bedrock of terrorism – because we were created for it!” and further elaborated; “during the soviets war, there was a wide belief that the soviets wouldn’t go back, we thought the war would last for years, so they (the Americans) needed something to block the Russians, and this (terrorism in form of the Taliban) was that. When I was a child, I’d never heard of heroin, there was other thing called Hashish in the markets in Afghanistan (and in Pakistan), but no heroin. Heroin was created by scientists (it’s an unnatural concentrated compound from a natural flower) to act as a war weapon and the excuse was that it would be used against the soviets. The poppy trade and the heroin trade is linked to terrorism, there’s even a book about it. They used the money gained from this to basically fund terrorism so heroin is a war weapon. Now it is being used against the Americans by the Taliban”.

To conclude, I asked about the location of sovereign power in Pakistan, and he considerately answered “Power is not all in one place, take the USA for example. The US President doesn’t govern the US, there’s the senate, Supreme Court and the congress and then you have all the state senators and governors. Some states made marijuana legal, so who actually run the US? The powers are divvied and institutionalized, and never in one place. Only in monarchies and dictatorships will you find a single source of power in the state, otherwise it is never in one place. In practice, power lies in a consensus, you cannot ignore a 1 million army, you cannot ignore the judges, you can’t even ignore the media (they are all stakeholders in power) so there is no such thing as where power lies. Power lies in different places. Constitutionally it is under parliament but in practice, people answer to other places as well as parliament”.


On this note the interview concluded, and Zardari’s body language visibly relaxed and he started talking about Siraiki literature as he puffed his cigarette and offered light snacks, with a cake all the way from Hyderabad’s famous Bombay Bakery!

(This interview was conducted on 25th May 2016 at London, United Kingdom. )
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