Homeward Bound

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B>TIME: Your husband has been in jail for five years. You haven't seen him for two years. It must be very difficult to sustain a healthy marriage under these conditions.

BHUTTO: It depends on what a healthy marriage is. For us, a healthy marriage is when there is love and respect and confidence and determination to make and build a family. I'm concerned about my husband. He's being wrongly confined, because the Supreme Court has set aside his conviction. What has been really traumatic for me is the number of people who have come to me and advised that I should dump my husband to save my political career. And the number of people who've gone to him and his family to say that he should dump me to save his financial career. I think it's evil that people can seek to destroy families in the pursuit of their political agenda. I'm very committed to the concept of the family and both my husband and I have stood by each other in a relationship of emotional strength and warmth and love, despite these tremendous assaults that have been made.

Of course, as far as politics is concerned I am a separate legal entity, and he is a separate legal entity, and he must make his own political choices as and when he is free. What I mean by this is sometimes people come to me and say maybe you should tell your husband to quit politics for the time being. And I say it's not for me to talk to him about his constitutional rights. He's got constitutional rights, like every other Pakistani. It's for him to decide whether he wants time out. It's for him to decide whether he wants to pick up and rebuild his businesses, in construction and trading in particular, which have taken such a beating during this particular period.

TIME: Doesn't the ruling in your favor reflect well on the Musharraf regime?

BHUTTO: I have sources in the intelligence community that told me until the last moment the intelligence tried to get me convicted. I have sources that tell me that until the last minute they pressured and pressured, and they pressured for retrial when they couldn't get a conviction. As to whether Musharraf was involved in this pressuring, I don't know. But I do know that the intelligence agencies did pressure. And I have sources that can prove this when the time is right. I'm not saying they pressured all the judges, but I'm saying that they did use pressure on certain elements of the bench. And their goal was to get me convicted, by hook or by crook. And their final offer was to say, 'All right, forget the five year conviction, forget the seizure of the properties, forget the fine, but give her one year.'

TIME: So you don't think Musharraf has been following through on his pledge to restore the institutions of democracy?

BHUTTO: It's more mixed. What is democracy? Is democracy the will of the people, because if it's the will of the people, a fair election must be open to all players and all political parties. So far General Musharraf has talked about elections being open only to certain players that conform to his requirements. That's not election. That is selection. But on the local elections, we will acknowledge that the election commission took a good stand and the local elections were fair. Musharraf has not spoken to me, so I am unaware of whether he is committed to democracy but there are others who are not. I am unaware of what Musharraf's own intentions may be. But as a regime, and as leader of the military regime, they have made it very clear that they want selection rather than election.

TIME: Would you characterize yourself as a reluctant participant in politics?

BHUTTO: Yes, I would. From the time that I was a child, and I was born in a political home, I always searched for peace and tranquillity, and somehow peace and tranquillity always eluded me. I don't know why it has always eluded me, but it has. All the time my family was moving, moving, moving and I wanted a sense of rooting. I want to be in one place, I want to be able to have a routine. I don't have a routine. I'm always traveling in suitcases, trying to travel light. I just have a sense that nothing in my life is permanent.

TIME: Reentering the political fray in Pakistan is hardly going to help you find peace and tranquillity.

BHUTTO: That's quite true, but there's also the sense of obligation, responsibility, duty that I have. It was duty to my father and his mission that brought me into politics. It was duty to my party that led me to fight the '97 elections, it was duty to my constituents. I have this tremendous sense of duty. And perhaps one of the reasons that I've not been able to chalk out an independent life of my own is because we have always been hunted. There's never been a period where there has been a normal change in government. That simply hasn't happened, not since Pakistan was founded, and certainly not in the last 23 years that I have been in politics.

TIME: You have referred to the Taleban threat. Is that a movement that you believe is going in strength?

BHUTTO: Very much so, and jeopardizing Pakistan's stability and with it regional stability and the stability of the Muslim world. Some Pakistanis fought the Afghan jihad, so the Taleban have a very close nexus with the camps in Pakistan. The Taleban in Afghanistan came from Afghan refugee camps within Pakistan, so there is a lot of recruitment and training that happens from the soil of Pakistan from these Afghan groups and our own intelligence apparatus that set them up. Our religious parties worked in training and motivating people to fight communism in the name of Islam. So there is a lobby within of Pakistan that feels that it should follow the route of the Taleban in our country.

Pakistan is right now caught in a battle between the pro-Taleban forces and the moderate forces, and the world of Islam right now is caught in that same battle. So there's really a battle for the soul of Islam, the direction that the Muslim world and the one billion Muslim who now inhabit the Muslim world will take. Whether it will be toward interfaith dialogue and harmony or whether it will be intrafaith confrontation. That is really the agenda that is becoming more and more marked because the Taleban believe in a new form of crusades.

TIME: When will you return to Pakistan?

BHUTTO: We will decide on April 17th the date for the return. The date will be announced three weeks before the actual return. Certainly it's not going to be before the end of the local bodies elections, which are scheduled to finish at the end of May, because we want our people to be free to take part.