Bhutto on flight to Pakistan

Waved off by supporters in Dubai, and accompanied by her sister, Sanam, Bhutto was due to land around 2:00 p.m. (0900 GMT) in Karachi, where Al Qaeda-linked militants have threatened to assassinate her.

For years Bhutto vowed to return to Pakistan to end military dictatorship, yet she is coming back as a potential ally for General Musharraf, the army chief who took power in a 1999 coup.

“Pakistan is standing at a very critical juncture. One route leads to democracy, and the other leads to dictatorship,” Bhutto told journalists at Dubai airport, before saying goodbye to her two daughters and husband, Asif Ali Zardari.

General Musharraf is going through his weakest period, and there is strong speculation he will end up sharing power with Bhutto after national elections due in early January.

The United States is believed to have quietly encouraged their alliance in order to keep nuclear-armed Pakistan pro-Western and committed to fighting Al Qaeda and supporting NATO’s efforts to stabilise Afghanistan.

While the rest of Pakistan was transfixed by Bhutto’s imminent arrival, Musharraf spent the morning at his military offices in Rawalpindi, with no official engagements scheduled, an official said.

Before departing, Bhutto, wearing a green shalwar kameez (loose tunic and trousers) and trademark white scarf, made a familiar populist appeal by vowing to devote her life to changing the destiny of Pakistan’s poor.

But her imminent return also pleased investors. The Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) benchmark 100-share index struck a life high of 14,713.67 points, up around 1 percent on hopes that her return bodes well for stability and democracy.

Huge crowds were expected to greet her, but the likely scale of her reception was difficult to estimate as people stayed out of the midday sun.

Traffic in Pakistan’s biggest city was light as people stayed at home in anticipation of jammed roads and possible violence.

Some 20,000 security personnel have been deployed to provide protection against threatened suicide bomb attacks by militants.

Intelligence reports suggested at least three jihadi groups linked to Al Qaeda and the Taleban were plotting suicide attacks, according to a provincial official.

“She has an agreement with America. We will carry out attacks on Benazir Bhutto as we did on General Pervez Musharraf,” Haji Omar, a Taleban commander in the Waziristan tribal region on the Afghan border, told Reuters by satellite telephone.

Homecoming rally

Once back in Karachi, Bhutto’s procession was expected to take several hours edging through crammed roads to a venue close to the tomb of Pakistan’s founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, where a rally has been planned by her party.

The site for her homecoming address befits a woman whose family history is steeped in Pakistan’s torrid past.

Her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s first popularly elected prime minister, was overthrown and hanged, while her two brothers were killed in mysterious circumstances, one gunned down in Karachi, the other found dead in a French Riviera hotel.

She first came to power after military dictator Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq, the general who ousted her father, was killed in a plane crash in 1988. Both her governments were brought down amid allegations of corruption and ineptitude.

Yet no other leader has Bhutto’s mass appeal, because of the respect many Pakistanis retain for her father.

Muhammad Ali, a 25 year-old office worker from Larkana, a town in Sindh province where the Bhutto feudal home is located, hitched a lift to Karachi to see a leader idolised by his family.

“I have never seen her in real life before. I love Bhutto and her family, and so do all my relatives,” Ali said.

Red, black and green flags of Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party festooned streets and billboards displayed giant images of Bhutto’s face.

Musharraf has already granted an amnesty to protect Bhutto from corruption charges brought by the government of Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister he overthrew and later exiled.

But the Supreme Court could still disrupt a rapprochement between Bhutto and Musharraf.

Not only is it challenging Musharraf’s right to bestow an amnesty, it is also hearing challenges to the president’s right to have stood for re-election while still army chief in a ballot he won easily on Oct. 6.

Musharraf had promised to quit the army and become a civilian leader, meeting another of Bhutto’s conditions, if he was given five more years as president. There is speculation that he could invoke emergency powers or martial law if the court blocks him.