By Junaid Ahmad
From the moment Fatima Bhutto denounced the “genocide” in Gaza, you sensed the old fire: the moral heat, the lyrical indignation, the refusal to look away. But turn the lens back to Pakistan — to stolen ballots, silenced protesters, a military-state apparatus crushing dissent — and her voice recedes. That gap is no mere inconvenience. It’s rich in irony. A woman hailed as the heir to a legacy of resistance — against dynasties, state violence, impunity — appears to direct her fiercest fire almost exclusively at distant injustice, rather than confronting the injustice in her own backyard.
The expectation was clear. As daughter of Murtaza Bhutto and granddaughter of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto she bears a family name born of opposition to Pakistan’s military-political elite. Her memoir, “Songs of Blood and Sword”, read like a manifesto of internal betrayals and a brutal state system — a declaration of moral responsibility. So when she turns her moral clarity outward to Gaza — writing that “only the innocent die in war” — many of us cheered. Yet, at the same time, the domestic scene — elections in February 2024 widely alleged to be rigged, popular movements crushed, the military-civil complex still dominant and silencing — receives little of the same sharp prose or uncompromising challenge.
One must ask: if she genuinely believed in the “us” she invokes in her recent tweet about Pakistan’s survival and recognition of Israel, then who is that “us” in the daily lives of Pakistanis whose votes were stolen, whose protests were broken, whose women languish in jail, whose mediators of power go unaccountable? How curious that she demands Pakistan refuse to normalize with Israel — or states complicit in Gaza’s destruction — while she declines to urge Pakistan to refuse normalizing with its own regime of generals, pliant politicians and unresponsive institutions. Why plead with the rulers to desist from one recognition while granting them a free pass on the structural recognition of their own dominance?
This symmetry matters. It is not enough to decry atrocities abroad while ignoring atrocities at home. The credibility of moral outrage depends on consistency. When you invoke the Bhutto-legacy of resistance you establish a standard. Abandon it at home, and you undermine it abroad.
Let’s not mince words: Pakistan’s regime today bears the features of a totalitarian nightmare. The ouster of Imran Khan — via the Washington-backed, generals-orchestrated regime change and a parliament no-confidence vote in April 2022 — is a matter of public record. A UN working group declared his detention “arbitrary and in violation of international law”. While many human-rights groups and the UN protested, Fatima Bhutto’s silence was conspicuous. Like him or not, Imran Khan is arguably the most prominent and influential political prisoner in the world. And yet her platform has not echoed his plight in any forceful way.
Meanwhile, the crackdown on his party, the Movement for Justice (PTI), its supporters, its rallies and even its votes, is well documented. But one hears little of that from the Bhutto of yore. Perhaps because the movement for justice she once seemed to embody is now inconveniently aligned with someone she dislikes. Perhaps because speaking for them means speaking for the rival, and loyalty to one’s enemies appears easier than loyalty to your own people.
And yes, the argument will come: she lives abroad; the pressures in Pakistan are immense. But that is precisely the point — dissidents everywhere operate from exile precisely so they can beef out domestic tyranny from afar. The vantage point of exile is not a barrier; it is often an advantage. So why has she not persisted in exposing the full thick network of complicit elites, paramilitaries, generals, and foreign patrons that underpin Pakistan’s regime?
Consider the hypocrisy of calling for Pakistan ‘not to recognize Israel’ when one offers no equivalent public walk to encourage Pakistanis to not recognize or normalize the military-establishment paradigm that has long held sway. The “normalization” she protests in Gaza carries weight only if the speaker also rejects normalization at home — rejects the “business as usual” of elites exploiting ordinary Pakistanis. Why do we not see Fatima Bhutto drilling into that core? Why do we not hear her lament the women in Pakistani jails, the activists silenced, the protests dissipated, the stolen votes and squeaky elite compacts behind them? Because what we want isn’t just words about the genocide in Gaza — it’s the same words turned inward.
This is not to say one cannot or should not speak out for Gaza — quite the opposite. We need those voices, and thankfully we have many of those in all corners of the planet today. But when the same voice, the same platform, uses its fire for everywhere but the home-front tyranny, we are left asking: are you selective? Are you engaged in virtue signaling? Are you using the suffering of the distant “other” to enhance your own moral positioning, while conveniently stepping around the sufferings of the “us” you define but do not act for?
Let’s end with a provocative thought: the absence of Fatima Bhutto’s full-tilt critique of Pakistan’s ruling classes speaks more loudly than her prose. It speaks of fear, or comfort, or priorities misaligned. It speaks of how a regime conquers not only with tanks and courts but with silence and complicity. Today, Pakistan’s military-political elite flaunt their impunity — while exiled critics, even those born into the storied Bhutto lineage, can choose to speak about Gaza but not about the paramilitary patrols in Karachi, or the vote-rigging in Islamabad, or the deep-state covenants with foreign powers. The cost of speaking is there, yes — but if a voice keeps avoiding it, it becomes complicit by omission. A Bhutto-legacy is not just about eloquent rhetoric; it is about brave confrontation — for all injustice, near and far.
Fatima Bhutto still could return to that trajectory. She still could channel her formidable prose against Pakistan’s tyrannies — with the same ferocity she lays upon Gaza commentary. Because Pakistan too is bleeding. And because words mean something only when they bite back at power — especially at home. If she chooses silence now, the very legacy she claims becomes an emblem of what was lost: an unfulfilled promise of resistance. That would be the real tragedy.
Prof. Junaid S. Ahmad teaches Law, Religion, and Global Politics and is the Director of the Center for the Study of Islam and Decolonization (CSID), Islamabad, Pakistan. He is a member of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST – https://just-international.org/), Movement for Liberation from Nakba (MLN – https://nakbaliberation.com/), and Saving Humanity and Planet Earth (SHAPE – https://www.theshapeproject.com/).
30 October 2025
Source: https://countercurrents.org/2025/10/fatimas-fire-where-did-it-go/