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Bhutto returns to Pakistan amid adulation, hope and uncertainty

Benazir Bhutto hesitated on the top step, a flicker of nerves flashing across her face. Behind her was the plane from Dubai, the desert metropolis where she has spent much of the past eight years, battling to retain relevancy and waiting for this moment.

Ahead was Pakistan, the fragile, nuclear-armed country she had once run, and hoped to do so again. She paused again on the bottom step, her lips in silent prayer, her eyes filled with tears.

"It's good to be home," she said. "A dream come true."

Call it a personality cult, feudal politics or genuine democracy, but overwhelming street power is the potent calling card of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party. And on Thursday it delivered. A sea of supporters washed up against the fortified bus carrying Bhutto as it crawled through Karachi.

Adolescents waved from tree branches; men danced, jigged and screamed, craning for a glimpse of their leader with the adulation of boyband fans; leather-faced "aunties" -- elderly women supporters -- battled to hold on to the buses, which throbbed with disco music.

"Long live Bhutto!" they chanted, flinging petals into her path. "Benazir for prime minister!"

Bhutto watched from the bus roof top, jammed between party bigwigs in a green shalwar kameez. She smiled, waved, and in a nod to modern addictions, checked her e-mail on her BlackBerry.

She spurned the bulletproof shield that had been installed following threats of suicide bomb squads from Islamist militants. But mobile phone signals were jammed and a team of white-shirted bodyguards circled the bus.

"It's really overwhelming," Bhutto told the Guardian, looking out over the sea of supporters. "And we haven't even reached the main crowd yet."

Acknowledging that it was "not the same Pakistan" she had left, she said: "The militants have risen in power. But I know who these people are, I know the forces behind them, and I have written to General Musharraf about this."

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The size of the crowd was impossible to gauge. Newswires quoted a government official who said 150,000; Bhutto claimed 3 million. The clear truth, though, was that her party machine remains intact.

"Benazir's program is for the poor. We are just waiting for jobs," said Mansoor Ali Abro, an unemployed 24-year-old laborer who had driven 12 hours from a village in interior Sindh with 1,500 others.

"Criminal man is powerful. Poor man is on the ground," said his neighbor, Mashuk Ali. "I love Benazir."

The journey started in Dubai, where Bhutto bid goodbye to her husband, Asif Zardari -- who used to be known as Mr Ten Percent and has also faced corruption charges -- and two daughters. During her years of exile the local government was always keen not to publicize Bhutto's politics. Yesterday it was easy to imagine why.

Bhutto supporters whooped and yahooed amid the airport's brand-name shops and plastic palm trees. On the flight, as a boisterous Bhutto rally erupted in economy class, flight attendants looked on helplessly.

Bhutto has excited such emotions and expectations before, only to allow them to evaporate in bitter disappointment. Crowds lined the streets in 1986 when she returned from exile in London. But when her second government foundered 10 years later amid scandal and corruption, few were weeping.

This time it will be different, she promised.

"I have gained a lot of experience. I'm older now, and wiser I hope," she said.

Time will tell. For now her fate is tied with that of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who reportedly spent the morning at his army offices in Rawalpindi.

Did she think he was watching on TV?

"You must ask him," Bhutto said. "But I am glad there's been no disruption of my welcome. This is a good sign of reconciliation."

For critics the "reconciliation" is little more than a greasy political deal. Musharraf wants to keep power despite plunging ratings and Bhutto offers a solution. Many of those critics are within her ranks, and she will spend the coming weeks quietly convincing them.
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