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The Lessons of Benazir BhuttoCrafting a better Pakistan policy by studying her achievements.

By Mahnaz IspahaniPosted Monday, Jan. 7, 2008, at 12:09 PM ET

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Even in October 2007, when Bhutto was sent back to Pakistan with the Bush administration imprimatur, the U.S. intention was not to help strengthen a moderate civilian political constituency but rather to use Bhutto's electoral potential to prop up a dictator in decline. Bhutto was little more than yet another transitional strategy to provide life support for Musharraf—a leader who, some $10 billion in aid later, has proved himself an inept ally. Bhutto took what she could get from the United States and went home. In her brief time there, and unlike her political counterparts, she spoke out daily against the evils of extremism, about who is truly a Muslim. Knowing the risks she took, she kept her eye on the prize: freedom for Pakistan from the shackles both of soldiers and religious zealots—and, of course, a bit of glory for the Bhuttos.

Benazir Bhutto is dead, but studying her achievement might help craft better policy toward Pakistan. She sustained and built up Pakistan's most important federal political party, the Pakistan Peoples Party, no small feat in a country where hardly any large political parties have cohered over long periods. Founded by her father, the PPP has been the locus of politics for many millions of Pakistan's peasants, workers, people of all provinces but especially Sindh, and a vital home for Pakistani liberals, devout Muslims or not. True, Bhutto was also a feudal aristocrat who saw the PPP (and, occasionally, Pakistan) as a natural fiefdom of the Bhuttos, replete with sycophants. The recent nomination of her teenage son Bilawal as leader of the party, with her widower, Asif Ali Zardari, as regent, is a sign of this attitude. Still, while the PPP may need an infusion of the Bhutto legacy for populist purposes, it can be much more than a family cult. The PPP, could—indeed must—continue to play the vital role of sustaining Pakistani federalism, along with civil society and its judicial and civilian political allies. Asma Jahangir, Pakistan's foremost human- and women's-rights campaigner, and Nawaz Sharif, Bhutto's once bitter prime-ministerial opponent, both came to mourn Bhutto on her final journey home.

Any attempt at a civilian Pakistani future will require external support. To help a legitimate civilian government in Pakistan, the United States and its allies should send a clear message to Musharraf that he must not seek to dismember the PPP as it regroups after the death of its leader. They should also promise a prompt infusion of U.S. aid: $2.5 billion for starters, just a quarter of what Musharraf has reportedly got—to be used solely for social and economic development, dollars that would directly assist the voting public. The United States never offered such significant economic support to civilian governments. For moral and strategic reasons, it must do so if Pakistan is to be secured.

Benazir Bhutto died, as she loved to live, campaigning among the crowds with whom she had always connected. We may never know who killed her, but we do know that the killers feared her political legitimacy, her personal autonomy, and her womanhood. To honor the risks she took and the price she paid, we might consider what she argued in her final campaign: If we cannot jump-start genuine civilian politics in Pakistan and let the soldiers get on with the job of securing the country, we will be one more step down the road to nuclear-armed terror and the guaranteed failure of a democratic option in Pakistan. Bhutto was often wrongheaded, but this time, on the big issues, she got it tragically right.