Benazir Bhutto's 1990 autobiography was entitled Daughter of Destiny. The sense of destiny manifested itself last Thursday when she returned to Pakistan to reclaim the family legacy of ruling over a country with the toxic cocktail of nuclear arms and proliferation, virulent anti-Americanism, al-Qaeda and Taliban suicide terrorism, and Islamic fundamentalism.
The same sense of destiny that explains her sense of entitlement to rule is likely the wellspring of her remarkable courage in proceeding with the journey against the explicit advice of General Pervez Musharraf and the chilling threat from Islamist enemies of the "welcome" she could expect. They delivered immediately on their threat and killed more than 130 people, but not her.
Pakistan's destiny has been tied up with the story of the Bhutto family and its relationship with the army, the real arbiter of the country's government, politics and economy; with India, largely one of enmity with periodic peace feelers; and with the United States.
India may be the mother of dynastic democracies: from Jawaharlal Nehru to daughter Indira Gandhi (no relation to the Mahatma but the surname did no harm), her son Rajiv, his wife Sonia and their son Rahul as the likely successor. The story of dynastic succession is often punctuated with tragedies. Both Indira and Rajiv Gandhi were assassinated. Rajiv's younger brother Sanjay, who had been the heir apparent, died when the light aircraft he was piloting crashed in Delhi. Destiny then embraced an Italian-born Roman Catholic daughter-in-law of the Nehru family as a daughter of India and supreme leader of the party of independence.
Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have two political dynasties, as indeed does the US now with the Bush and Clinton successions. Non-monarchical dynastic succession has occurred also in Indonesia and Syria and is likely in Egypt.
The Bhutto dynasty in Pakistan has not been quite as dominant as the Nehru-Gandhi in India. Bhutto had to fight adversity to reclaim the prime ministership after military rule by a man who, hand-picked by her father, had him hanged. Her brother was also killed subsequently by the police in circumstances that remain murky.
The US may believe it was merely the midwife to the new power-sharing arrangement where Musharraf wins the presidency but sheds his uniform while Bhutto becomes prime minister. There is the very real risk, however, that the US will be viewed by millions of Muslims as the puppet master pulling the strings once again in yet another Islamic country and so feed into the long-running narrative of Islamic grievance.
I am not arguing that the US should disengage from the struggle for democracy, human rights, civil liberties and the rule of law in other countries. In an especially eloquent passage in his second inaugural speech three years ago, President George W.Bush said, "We have seen our vulnerability and we have seen its deepest source. For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder violence will gather, and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders, and raise a mortal threat. There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom."
That is an accurate diagnosis as well as soaring and evocative oratory. To be faithful to that call, the US should resist the temptation to pick winners by rigging or not playing by the rules. Instead it should insist on liberal democracy and accept the outcome; the strategic gains in the long-term will exceed inimical setbacks in the short-term.
The US focus on Musharraf as the solution to Pakistan-sourced extremism means firstly that the Americans are viewed by most Pakistanis as Musharraf's more than Pakistan's friends; secondly that the steady weakening of Musharraf's authority has led to a corresponding diminution of US influence over Pakistani politics; and thirdly, in a reprise of a story only too depressingly familiar, that Islam has fused with nationalism with an anti-US face in Pakistan. Little wonder that terrorists find ready sanctuary across north-western Pakistan.
The marriage of convenience between Musharraf and Bhutto, encouraged by the US, risked tainting her more than blessing him. The West's fascination with Bhutto may be explained by her Western education, looks, ability to manipulate the mass media by mouthing all the right cliches of female empowerment, democracy, championing the poor and fighting the extremists. They are all at odds with the actual record of her rule as prime minister not once but twice. She was complicit in encouraging and tolerating Pakistan's many pathologies: Faustian bargains with the Islamists that included tolerating anti-woman laws, state sponsorship of cross-border terrorism in Kashmir, and self-enrichment (her husband was widely derided in Pakistan as Mr 10 per cent based on what people believed was his share of any government contracts).
As Jemima Khan commented in Britain's Sunday Telegraph, "Make no mistake, Benazir may look the part, but she's as ruthless and conniving as they come a kleptocrat in a Hermes headscarf."
Her civilian successor Nawaz Sharif, the last legally elected leader, tried to curb some of the pathologies and made some effort at reconciliation with India. Bhutto made a British-US sponsored deal with Musharraf under which the intensely unpopular and besieged general can become president and corruption charges against her are dropped (Musharraf's National Accountability Bureau reckoned she had $US1.5billion in Swiss accounts) so she can return from eight years of self-exile. Her commitment to democracy is proven in cutting the last elected prime minister out of any power sharing, with Musharraf deporting him (against a Supreme Court judgment) so he cannot contest elections, free or rigged.
Her self-centredness is evident in dismissing advice to delay her return owing to several threats of suicide terrorists, rejecting the offer of a helicopter ride from the airport to her house in Karachi, encouraging a public rally from the airport to the city to welcome her, and organising an armour-plated bus for herself but leaving her crowded supporters vulnerable to terrorist carnage.
It's hard not to think of this transfer of the burden of risk to unprotected supporters as irresponsible self-indulgence. Pakistan's legendary cricketer-turned politician, Imran Khan, who was at Oxford with her, asks, "I don't know how Benazir has the nerve to say that 130 people killed in those bomb blasts sacrificed their lives for the sake of democracy in Pakistan." But they did for dynastic democracy.
Ramesh Thakur is distinguished fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and professor of political science at the University of Waterloo in Canada.