London, February 15
Even as the Pakistan government has announced measures to crack down on militant religious organisations, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has expressed concern about the growth of a “parallel army” in the country.

Citing reports during the current military regime that religious parties were opening madarsas and training camps all over the country, she said: “The parallel army that is being recruited, trained and run by the religious parties, theoretically to spread Islam is really growing”.

She spoke of these concerns in a television interview with ANI which she undertook while breaking her journey in London on her way to her family in Dubai after a visit to the USA. She was responding to a question asking whether she thought that General Musharraf might lose control over the Pakistan army and what that would augur for the future.

Bhutto said: “I believe that the real threat to the army will come if there is a soft revolution, where democracy is suffocated and where irregular troops on the pattern of the Taliban are raised and recruited. It is in that eventuality that I think the people who support the raising of an irregular army would like dictatorship rather than democracy”.

She was dismissive of reports that General Musharraf was facing opposition from some of his corps commanders. Although the general ruled as leader of a cabinet of corps commanders, his decision to allow deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to flee into exile with his family was made unilaterally, and that made it difficult to believe that he was being put under pressure by his colleagues.

The former Prime Minister expressed delight at reports of tapes of telephone calls to the judge who presided over her trial and conviction for corruption in 1999 — tapes which are said to reveal that the judge was put under pressure by the Nawaz Sharif regime. She said: “the tapes are an indication of what I have been saying since the beginning that the charges against me were trumped up, that the judge was partisan and denied me the due process of law”. She had expected the charges to be thrown out at her appeal, which is due to be heard this month, even before the tapes had appeared. Now she was looking for an honourable acquittal.

Asked if she feared being arrested on returning to Pakistan, even if the appeal was successful, she replied: “It’s a political decision whether they arrest me or not, but I am not afraid of arrest. If they want to put me in prison, they can”. As leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), she wanted to go back as a part of a democratic movement. “I have told my party that I am available as soon as they are able to mobilise people and they have begun the mobilisation process,” she said.

Speaking of her visit to the USA, she thought South Asia and Kashmir would remain high on the agenda under the new administration, though only time would tell whether President Bush would regard it as a “personal preoccupation” as President Clinton did. She was optimistic that General Musharraf would move towards a settlement in Kashmir, but doubted the strength of his political base.

She said the imprisonment of her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, in Attock Fort was an attempt to put pressure on her and the PPP, which was a moderate party. Musharraf had chosen to rely on the support of the religious parties, none of whose leaders were under pressure and who were free to hold public demonstrations.